How medieval monks tried to stay warm in the winter
The best location for a monastery was one that was close to water and wood. Many monastic chroniclers mention this.
Orderic Vitalis, born in England near Shrewsbury in 1075 and sent to the Norman monastery of St Évroult at the age of five, was explicit about this twin need. Water for washing, sanitation, drinking, for making ink, for making lime mortar, and wood for building, and perhaps for keeping warm.
The Benedictine version of monastic life was the most popular across the medieval period, although many others existed. The rule attributed to St Benedict was set down, in 73 chapters, to provide guidance for how monks should live their lives. They should be focused on the world that is to come, on life after death, as well as on obedience and humility.
Monks could not own anything or have personal wealth, even though monasteries as institutions could be very rich indeed. Material comfort was not high on the agenda, at least in theory. Indeed, a contrasting relationship between material discomfort and spiritual worth is often identifiable in the religious expression of the period. In many ways it was seen as the greater the physical discomfort, the greater the spiritual value. The Cistercians, who emerged as a distinctive monastic grouping at the very end of the 11th century, and who followed the Rule of St Benedict too, laid great emphasis on austerity in all areas of their lives.
The regulation of monastic communities provides the context for their attitudes towards being cold. Concession to cold in the Rule of Benedict was limited – that monks in colder regions would need more clothes is recognised. In general the only difference between winter and summer wear was a thick and woolly cowl (a hood which extended across the shoulders) for the colder months and otherwise a thinner one.
Benedict was writing in 6th-century Italy. Conditions in northern regions in later medieval centuries were quite different, in many respects, to the early medieval Mediterranean. Not least in how cold monasteries could get. Orderic had a description of the effects of the winter at the end of his fourth book (of 13) of his Historia ecclesiastica. After writing a little about disputes and clashes on the frontier between Normandy and Maine, in what is now France, he notes that:
Mortal men are oppressed by many misfortunes, which would fill great volumes if the whole take of them were written down. But now, numbed by the winter cold, I turn to other pursuits; and weary with toil, resolve to end my present book here. When the warmth of spring returns I will relate in the following books everything that I have only briefly touched upon or omitted altogether.
But one room in a monastery was kept warm in cold weather. The calefactorium, or calefactory, that is to say, the warming room, was equipped with a fire, and in some cases other treats.
Very few buildings within monastic compounds had fireplaces. The church buildings would have been unheated, and so would the dormitories. The warming house was an unusual and important location in this respect. While some warming rooms were larger they would still not have been able to fit all that many people in at a time. It is easy to imagine a group of ten or so monks huddled round the fireplace, with wood crackling, talking quietly (talking was also discouraged in monastic houses), and seeking some measure of warmth in a cold environment. And that image is probably not far from the truth.
Despite their evident value to the community warming houses do not feature prominently in written records. Nevertheless, surviving examples of buildings and textual references do allow insights into monastic lives, and the difference that the calefactory must have made. Examples from medieval England included the Cistercian house of Meaux in Yorkshire. Founded in 1141 nothing survives of the building but an extensive chronicle does.
The record of new buildings made under Abbot Thomas from 1182 onwards includes mention not only of a fine refectory (dining room) for the monks, built in stone, but also the warming house and a small kitchen. That these should be be entered into the chronicle amongst the achievements of the abbot, as a record to future generations of the community, says a lot about the value placed upon it. It is of interest too that while the refectory went up quickly, paid for by a donor to the monastery, the kitchen and warming room were put together gradually and as resource allowed.
The value of fire
While the warming house of Meaux exists only in its historical record, good surviving examples of other warming houses are common enough. Rievaulx Abbey in north Yorkshire is a good example.
The warming house at Rievaulx is next to the refectory, and was altered quite substantially over the period from the 12th to the 16th century. Eventually two storeys, the warming complex also included clothes-washing facilities for the monks in winter.
And then to Durham. Here we turn to The Rites of Durham, a wonderful treatise from the 16th century (and later), the last memory of the practices of the pre-Reformation monastic house.
It reveals that the warming room, here referred to as a common house, was on the right-hand side as you exited the cloister. And inside there was:
a fyer keept all winter for the mouncks to come and warme at, being allowed no fire but that onely; except the masters and officers which had their seuerall fires.
While medieval buildings were difficult to heat, the presence of warm rooms was an indication of the value put on warmth. And in the case of the Durham Cathedral priory’s common house the monks were provided with additional treats around Christmas time, if the account is to be believed. Figs, raisins, cakes and ale were offered and taken in moderation.
Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?
Get a weekly roundup in your inbox instead. Every Wednesday, The Conversation’s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. Join the 47,000+ readers who’ve subscribed so far.
Giles Gasper receives funding from Arts and Humanities Research Council, Research England, the John Templeton Foundation and the Leverhulme Trust