Fountains Abbey: History
• Origins
• Sources
• Foundation
• Consolidation
• Trials and Tribulations
• Strength and Stability
• End of Monastic Life

Fountains Abbey: Buildings
• Precinct
• Church
• Cloister
• Sacristy
• Library
• Chapter House
• Parlour
• Dormitory
• Warming House
• Day Room
• Refectory
• Kitchen
• Lay Brothers' Range
• Abbots House
• Infirmary
• Outer Court
• Gatehouse
• Guesthouse

Fountains Abbey: Lands

Fountains Abbey: People

The parlour

(1/1)

The monks were expected to observe silence in the claustral area and to communicate by signs when necessary. Nevertheless, there were times when conversation was necessary and this took place in the parlour. The parlour at Fountains stood to the south of the chapter-house, between the chapter-house and the toilet-block (reredorters). A door in the west wall led to the cloister, one in the east to a yard. The parlour was remodelled in the late twelfth century and was finely decorated for a building of this kind, perhaps, as it was considered an extension of the chapter-house design, which was completed at the same time.(50)

A warning against gossip
The German Cistercian, Idungus of Prufung, criticised Cluniac monks for chatting and complained that they eagerly gossiped after the daily chapter meeting ‘by permission of the order’. He compared the noise they made to the din in a tavern full of sots where the men talked ‘with their fellow spouses’ and the women drinkers chatted with their companions. Idungus warned of the perils of such behaviour: ‘From the permission to chatter arises the wherewithal for brawling. From the brawl come threats and acrimony, so much so that at times it is necessary to recall the chapter by striking the wooden tabula’.
[Idungus, Dialogue, I: 23 (pp 36-7).]

The parlour was not to be used for idle gossip, but for essential communication only. The master of novices might speak with visiting monks here and was also permitted to talk to novices under his charge, during the first two months of their probationary period. The prior could hear novices’ confessions in the parlour during the time allocated to reading, and the monks gathered in the parlour after the daily chapter meeting for the allocation of tasks. The parlour may also have been used by the monks to hang their cowls.(51 )