The monks' choir

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A late twelfth-century service book
© The British Library
<click to enlarge>

A considerable part of the monks’ day was spent in the church where they celebrated the Canonical Hours in their choir. In the twelfth-century, the monks’ choir occupied the crossing and the first bay of the nave in the eastern part of the church. The monks took their places here in inward-facing wooden stalls. They prayed upright, rather than prostrate, but stood for the night office of Vigils. This was probably to reduce the risk of anyone nodding off. During Aelred’s abbacy (1147-67) numbers peaked, and about 120 or 140 monks may have congregated - or rather crowded - here. By the time of the dissolution of the abbey in 1538 numbers had dropped considerably and there were only about twenty-three members of the community.

The monk appointed as priest for the week, known as the hebdomadary, led the Office. A monastic official called the precentor stood to the right of the choir and led the chant. He and his helper, the succentor (sub-cantor), were responsible for encouraging the singing in choir and making sure that the monks were attentive.

Sing for salvation
According to Matthew of Rievaulx’s poem, De Disciplina Psallendi, singing was an important way to help the monk move from the shadows to the kingdom of heaven.

[See M. Cassidy-Welch, Monastic Spaces and their Meanings, p. 101]

The job of precentor could be extremely stressful and Matthew of Rievaulx, who held this post in the late twelfth / early thirteenth century, attributed his aches and ailments to the strains of his duties; he also complained of insomnia, from rising early to lead the Night Office of Vigils. Matthew begged to be released from his office which, he explained, was too much for one man.(4)

The monks’ choir was separated by several steps from the presbytery, the liturgical heart of the abbey and the most sacred part of the abbey. To the west of the monks’ choir a large partition known as the pulpitum, divided it from the retrochoir, where those who could not participate in the full monastic day were seated, such as the elderly and sick. Significantly, they occupied the area behind the monks, but in front of the lay-brothers from whom they were segregated by another partition, the rood screen. The pulpitum at Rievaulx bore a statue of Christ in Majesty, a visual symbol of the message of salvation.(5)

During the day the monks entered the church from a door in the cloister, which led to the south side of their choir. At night they used a covered passage that connected their dormitory to a flight of stairs (the ‘nightstairs’); these brought them to a door in the SW corner of the south transept. In the later Middle Ages a large wooden clock in a wooden case stood at the base of the nightstairs and also a statue of St Christopher, which the monks would have seen as soon as they entered the church to celebrate Vigils.