Rievaulx Abbey: History
• Sources
• Foundation
• Consolidation
• Rise and Fall
• Dissolution

Rievaulx Abbey: Buildings
• Precinct
• Church
• Cloister
• Sacristy
• Library
• Chapter House
• Parlour
• Dormitory
• Warming House
• Day Room
• Refectory
• Kitchen
• Lay Brothers' Range
• Novices' quarters
• Abbot's Lodging
• Infirmary
• Guesthouse
• Gatehouse

Rievaulx Abbey: Lands

Rievaulx Abbey: People

The chapter-house

1. For a detailed analysis of the Rievaulx chapter-house, see P. Fergusson and S. Harrison, ‘The Rievaulx Abbey chapter-house’, Antiquarian Journal LXXIV (1994), pp. 216-253.
2. Fergusson and Harrison, ‘The Rievaulx Abbey chapter-house’, p. 216.
3. For further discussion of this, see Fergusson and Harrison, ‘The Rievaulx Abbey chapter-house’, pp. 217-221 and pp. 232-234.
4. For these arguments, see Fergusson and Harrison, ‘The Rievaulx Abbey chapter-house’, pp. 241-244; 5. Fergusson and Harrison, Rievaulx Abbey, p. 99.
6. Fergusson and Harrison, ‘The Rievaulx Abbey chapter-house’, p. 246.
7. Stephen of Sawley, ‘Mirror for Novices’, in Stephen of Sawley, Treatises, tr. J. F. O’Sullivan (Kalamazoo, 1984), ch. 10, pp. 102-3
8. See M. Cassidy-Welch, Monastic Spaces and their Meanings (Turnhout, 2001), p. 123.
9. Statutes I, 1181: 2.
10. Ecclesiastica Officia, 70 (pp. 202-8), ‘Out of the depths I have cried to thee, O Lord.’
11. According to the twelfth-century customary of the Order, the first time that an archbishop, bishop, papal legate or king visited an abbey – and whenever the pope arrived – he was to be ceremoniously received by the entire community at the gate and led to the choir of the church. Thereafter he was led to the chapter-house for the blessing and reading; the visitor might address the community after which he was refreshed in the guesthouse, Ecclesiastica Officia 86: 1-12 (p. 246).