Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 128.djvu/60

50 He provided the missals and anthem-books, and saw to the repair of the organs. He was also the librarian and registrar of the convent, penned warrants and letters for the chapter, and had custody of the abbey seal. The precentor had also the supervision of the scriptorium or transcribing-room (in Worcester, a glazed-in part of the cloister) where the novices copied MSS. There is at present, in the library of Benet College, Cambridge, a very fine manuscript Bible in folio on vellum, clearly and beautifully written, which was copied in Worcester scriptorium in the reign of Henry II. The salary of a precentor, prior to 1314, was about 40s. per annum.

At Worcester there was also a magister capellæ, who it is supposed presided over the priests of the chapels in the cathedral, particularly St. Mary's and the infirmary.

The bell-ringers were sometimes employed in cleaning the church, and taking care of the church-vestments and the church-plate. They slept over the vestry, or in some little rooms leading out of the aisles. It was the care of these men to brush those great masses of cloth-of-gold and rich coloured needlework which were worn by the abbots and bishops of the Middle Ages, and to polish those bowls and chalices that were sent by wagonloads to the goldsmith's furnace at the Reformation.

Of the social importance of the coquinarius or kitchener no one can dispute who knows how often, when other vices are checked, the old Adam breaks out in gluttony. That fact is seen every day among"temperance" missionaries. The coquinarius had to roast the venison haunch, devise the "subtleties" of the dessert for the abbot, and frame the marchpanes and scented delicacies of powdered almond in fashion in the Middle Ages. It appears from the records of Evesham Abbey that he also marketed and bought meat and fish for the convent. He probably also hired the inferior cooks, and ruled the whole hot region of the kitchen with a rod of iron, — the spit.

Those important officers — the stern sub-prior, the pompous sacristan, the red-faced cellarer, the polite chamberlain, the courteous hospitalarius, the mild almoner, the cheery pittancer, the jolly coquinarius, the mournful infirmarius (who superintended the sick monks, provided physic and all necessaries, and washed and dressed the bodies for burial), the enthusiastic precentor, the stately master of the chapel, and the watchful tumbarius were called obedientaries, and were the principal fixed officers of the monastery under the prior. Imagine any morning of the week, at the same hour, the sacristan counting out huge candles for a Candlemas festival, the chamberlain giving out robes to the monks, the almoner doling his alms to a hungry crowd, the pittancer buying his fowls and pigeons for a gaudy day, the coquinarius cutting up a fat deer, the infirmarius feeling the pulse of a sick brother, the barber shaving a long-locked novice, the tumbarius watching the repair of a knight's tomb, and our readers will see that the monk's life was neither a dull, a monotonous, nor an idle one, and that there was scope in a monastery for many tastes, tempers, and degrees of intellect.

The monk's life, we hold from these facts, was by no means necessarily an inactive one. If no student, and incapable of unceasing return to prayer and praise, the energetic monk had many openings for his surplus energy. He could sweep the church or toll the great bells; he could learn masonry, and study the structure of those beautiful arches which he helped to raise; or if of a financial turn there were the prior's accounts to keep and rents to regulate. He could cook, or brew, or wash, or dig, or build; he could work in the orchards or assist in the abhot's stables; he could drive the plough or wield the axe; he could visit the poor or tend the leper at the gate; he could lend the infirmary help, dig a grave, or make the robes of the brethren; he could fish for the convent, or tend the fowls and turkeys. For the studious in those wild times, the convent library must have been a foreshadow of paradise; there they could pore over the subtleties of Origen, or the glories of him of the golden mouth; they could spend years over the inexhaustible fathers; or could knot their brains with theological difficulties. The ambitious could study the various modes of attaining ecclesiastical power, and the enthusiast could think himself into trances such as had visited the saints of whom he read.

The monastery treasury, the novices' school, and the singing-school were frequently situated in the cloister, or very near where the dormitory door opened. The rap of the ferule and the cries of the boys, were less disturbing there in the long arched walk where the studious and the contemplative loved to pace till their feet hollowed out the very stones. The abbey treasure was sometimes stored over 