# Cloister

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This article is about an architectural feature. For other uses, see [Cloister (disambiguation)](/source/Cloister_(disambiguation)) and [The Cloisters (disambiguation)](/source/The_Cloisters_(disambiguation))

A **cloister** (Latin *claustrum* 'enclosure') is a covered walk, open gallery, or open [arcade](/source/Arcade_(architecture)) running along the walls of buildings and forming a [quadrangle](/source/Quadrangle_(architecture)) or garth. The attachment of a cloister to a [cathedral](/source/Cathedral) or church, commonly against a warm southern flank,[1] usually indicates that it is (or once was) part of a [monastic](/source/Monastic) foundation, "forming a continuous and solid architectural barrier... that effectively separates the world of the [monks](/source/Monk) from that of the [serfs](/source/Serf) and workmen, whose lives and works went forward outside and around the cloister."[1]

Cloistered (or claustral) life is also another name for the monastic life of a monk or [nun](/source/Nun). The English term *enclosure* is used in contemporary [Catholic](/source/Catholicism) church law translations[2] to mean cloistered, and some form of the Latin parent word "claustrum" is frequently used as a [metonymic](/source/Metonym) name for *[monastery](/source/Monastery)* in languages such as German.[3] [Cloistered clergy](/source/Cloistered_clergy) refers to monastic orders that strictly separate themselves from the affairs of the external world.

## History of the cloister

The early medieval cloister had several antecedents: the [peristyle](/source/Peristyle) court of the [Roman](/source/Ancient_Rome) *[domus](/source/Domus)*, the [atrium](/source/Atrium_(architecture)) and its expanded version that served as forecourt to early Christian [basilicas](/source/Basilica), and certain semi-galleried courts attached to the flanks of early [Syrian](/source/Syriac_Christianity) churches.[4] [Walter Horn](/source/Walter_Horn) suggests that the earliest [coenobitic](/source/Coenobite) communities, which were established in [Egypt](/source/Coptic_history) by [Saint Pachomius](/source/Saint_Pachomius) c. 320, did not result in cloister construction, as there were no lay serfs attached to the community of monks, and thus no need for separation within the walled community.[5]

Horn finds the earliest prototypical cloisters in some exceptional[6] late fifth-century monastic churches in southern Syria, such as the Convent of Saints [Sergius and Bacchus](/source/Sergius_and_Bacchus), at Umm-is-Surab (489), and the [colonnaded](/source/Colonnade) forecourt of the convent of Id-Dêr,[7] but nothing similar appeared in the semi-eremitic Irish monasteries' clustered [roundhouses](/source/Roundhouse_(dwelling)) nor in the earliest [Benedictine collective communities](/source/Benedictine_order) of the West.[5]

In the time of [Charlemagne](/source/Charlemagne) (r.) the requirements of a separate monastic community within an extended and scattered [manorial estate](/source/Manorialism) led to the development of a "monastery within a monastery" in the form of the locked cloister, an architectural solution allowing the monks to perform their sacred tasks apart from the distractions of laymen and servants.[8] Horn offers as early examples Abbot Gundeland's ["Altenmünster" of Lorsch abbey](/source/Abbey_of_Lorsch) (765–774), as revealed in the excavations by Frederich Behn. Lorsch was adapted without substantial alteration from a [Frankish](/source/Franks) nobleman's [*villa rustica*](/source/Roman_villa), in a tradition unbroken from late Roman times.[9]

Another early cloister, in the [abbey of Saint-Riquier](/source/Abbey_of_Saint-Riquier) (790–799), took a triangular shape, with chapels at the corners, in conscious representation of the [Trinity](/source/Trinity).[10] A square cloister sited against the flank of the abbey church was built at [Inden](/source/Inden,_North_Rhine-Westphalia) (816) and the [abbey of St. Wandrille at Fontenelle](/source/Abbey_of_Saint_Wandrille) (823–833). At [Fulda](/source/Fulda_monastery), a new cloister (819) was sited to the [liturgical west](/source/Liturgical_east_and_west) of the church "in the Roman manner"[11] familiar from the forecourt of [Old St. Peter's Basilica](/source/Old_St._Peter's_Basilica) because it would be closer to the [relics](/source/Relic). More recently, [John D. Rockefeller Jr.](/source/John_D._Rockefeller_Jr.) commissioned the construction of [The Cloisters](/source/The_Cloisters) museum and gardens in medieval style in [Manhattan](/source/Manhattan) in 1930–1938.

## See also

- [Colonnade](/source/Colonnade)

## Notes

1. Horn 1973, p. 13.

1. ["The Code of Canon Law, Canon 667 ff. English translation copyright 1983 The Canon Law Society Trust"](https://web.archive.org/web/20060619055307/http://www.deacons.net/Canon_Law/cci.htm). Archived from [the original](http://www.deacons.net/Canon_Law/cci.htm) on 2006-06-19. Retrieved 2006-06-17.

1. Cf. German *Kloster*.

1. Horn 1973 gives these sources.

1. Horn 1973, pp. 39–40.

1. The normal Syrian monastery plan was an open one, Horn observes.

1. Horn 1973, plans, figs. 9 and 10.

1. Horn 1973, pp. 40 ff.

1. When Lorsch was rebuilt on a neighboring site by Abbot Richbold (784–804) the cloister was made a perfect square, against the south flank of the new church, precisely as in the plan of the 8th-century [Abbey of Saint Gall](/source/Abbey_of_Saint_Gall). Horn 1973, p. 44, figs. pp. 43ab, 45.

1. Horn 1973, p. 43 and fig. p. 42ab.

1. *Vita Eigili*, the life of Abbot [Eigil](/source/Eigil_of_Fulda).

## References

- Coomans, Thomas (2018). '**Life Inside the Cloister. Understanding Monastic Architecture: Tradition, Reformation, Adaptive Reuse'**. Leuven University Press. ISBN 9789462701434.
- Horn, Walter (1973). "On the Origins of the Medieval Cloister". *Gesta*. **2** (1/2): 13–52. [doi:10.2307/766633](https://doi.org/10.2307/766633). [JSTOR 766633](https://www.jstor.org/stable/766633). [S2CID 192563869](https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:192563869)

## External links

- [The Code of Canon Law, cf canons 667 ff.](https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG1104/__P28.HTM)
- [New Advent Encyclopaedia III ff. on "Nuns, properly so called"](https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11164a.htm)
- ["Cloister" in the New Advent encyclopaedia](https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04060a.htm)
- [New Advent Encyclopaedia on "Religious Life"](https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12748b.htm)
- [Photos and information on cloisters in France, Italy and Spain](http://www.marcuslink.com/travel/cloisters/)
- Vol. VI. pp. 35–36.

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