§ 61.

The monks' parlour (auditorium juxta capitulum) was a narrow vaulted apartment in the ground-floor of the eastern range between the chapter-house and the sub-vault of the dorter. It was occasionally used, as at Beaulieu and Waverley, for a passage to the infirmary; but a separate passage, where the infirmary stood east of the range, was also made, as at Fountains, through the adjacent bay of the dorter sub-vault, which was walled off from the rest. The sub-vault, a long apartment, which at Furness extended no less than twelve bays south of the passage, was generally divided into two vaulted alleys by a central range of columns. It may have been partitioned off and applied to various uses, but at Furness it seems to have been undivided. From arrangements which are known to have existed at Clairvaux in 1517, it is now supposed to have been used, at any rate in part, as the house of the novices, possibly divided into a day-room, dorter and lodging for the novice-master. In a few instances, as at Croxden, Furness and Jervaulx, one or two of the southernmost bays originally formed an open loggia, with piers and arches taking the place of the outer walls: this space, however, in the two latter cases, was walled in after no long time. It may be noted that in the Benedictine houses of Peterborough and Westminster, where the common house was, according to the ordinary plan, in the sub-vault, a chapel was built as an eastern annexe, which was probably used at Peterborough as the chapel of the novices. This appears to bring corroborative evidence to the prevailing theory of the use of the Cistercian sub-vault, of which no part, however, was employed as the common or warming-house.