Cloister

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
The cloister at Salisbury Cathedral, UK.

A cloister (from

serfs and workmen, whose lives and works went forward outside and around the cloister."[1]

Cloistered (or claustral) life is also another name for the monastic life of a

metonymic name for monastery in languages such as German.[3]

History of the cloister

The Cloisters at Gloucester Cathedral, UK

Historically, the early medieval cloister had several antecedents: the

Saint Pachomius c. AD 320, did not result in cloister construction, as there were no lay serfs attached to the community of monks, and thus no need for separation within the walled community.[5]

Horn finds the earliest prototypical cloisters in some exceptional

In the time of

"Altenmünster" of Lorsch abbey (765–74), as revealed in the excavations by Frederich Behn.[9] Lorsch was adapted without substantial alteration from a Frankish nobleman's villa rustica, in a tradition unbroken from late Roman times.[10]

Another early cloister, in the

Fulda, a new cloister (819) was sited to the liturgical west of the church "in the Roman manner"[12] familiar from the forecourt of Old St. Peter's Basilica because it would be closer to the relics. More recently, John D. Rockefeller Jr. commissioned the construction of The Cloisters museum and gardens in medieval style in Manhattan
in 1930-1938.

Gallery

See also

Notes

  1. ^ a b Horn 1973, p. 13.
  2. ^ "The Code of Canon Law, Canon 667 ff. English translation copyright 1983 The Canon Law Society Trust". Archived from the original on 2006-06-19. Retrieved 2006-06-17.
  3. ^ Cf. German Kloster.
  4. ^ Horn 1973 gives these sources.
  5. ^ a b Horn 1973, pp. 39–40.
  6. ^ The normal Syrian monastery plan was an open one, Horn observes.
  7. ^ Horn 1973, plans, figs 9 and 10
  8. ^ Horn pp 40ff.
  9. ^ When Lorsch was rebuilt on a neighboring site by Abbot Richbold (784–804) the cloister was made a perfect square, against the south flank of the new church, precisely as in the plan of the 8th-century Abbey of Saint Gall (Horn 1973:44, figs 43ab, 45).
  10. ^ When Lorsch was rebuilt on a neighboring site by Abbot Richbold (784–804) the cloister was made a perfect square, against the south flank of the new church, precisely as in the plan of the 8th-century Abbey of Saint Gall (Horn 1973:44, figs 43ab, 45).
  11. ^ Horn 1973:43 and fig 42ab.
  12. ^ Vita Eigili, the life of Abbot Eigil.

References

External links