The abbot as host

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Discriminating hosts
According to one of the Cistercians’ harshest critics, Walter Map, the White Monks were selective hosts who were welcoming to each other, to the powerful and also those whom they intended to fleece, but were less hospitable to members of the secular clergy, such as Map. He complained .that no members of the secular clergy were invited or dragged in after Vespers, or even permitted to enter the hostelry for refreshments after a long day. Consequently, the secular clergy only visited these houses as a last resort, when no other door was open and there was no other purse to provide for them.
[Walter Map, De Nugis Curialium - Courtier's Trifles (1983), p. 86. ]

By the end of the twelfth century some Cistercian abbots dined in a separate chamber with select guests, and not in the guest hall with the corpus of visitors. Ralph of Coggeshalle describes how three Templars who visited his abbey were initially shown to the guesthall. However, when the lay-brother who officiated there noted their noble appearance, he made arrangements for these visitors to be refreshed in the abbot’s private chambers. Interestingly, the Templars refused, and replied that it was not their custom to dine in private chambers, but in the hall with guests.(11) Gerald of Wales’ rather satirical, and no doubt embellished, account of a cleric who visited a Cistercian house on the Welsh border also suggests that this development was commonplace. According to Gerald, this cleric was welcomed upon his arrival and shown to the common hall of guests, but once it was discovered that he was a member of the bishop’s household and thus the chief official of the diocese, the visitor was swiftly redirected to the inner houses and the infirmary, where he was promptly served a slap up meal.(12)