“Berengar of Arundel, the assistant librarian. They were of an age, they had been novices together, it was normal for them to have things to talk about. That is what I meant.”
“Ah, that is what you meant,” William repeated. And to my surprise he did not pursue the matter. In fact, he promptly changed the subject. “But perhaps it is time for us to visit the Aedificium. Will you act as our guide?”
“Gladly,” Severinus said, with all-too-evident relief. He led us along the side of the garden and brought us to the west façade of the Aedificium.
“Facing the garden is the door leading to the kitchen,” he said, “but the kitchen occupies only the western half of the ground floor; in the other half is the refectory. And at the south entrance, which you reach from behind the choir in the church, there are two other doors leading to the kitchen and the refectory. But we can go in here, because from the kitchen we can then go on through to the refectory.”
As I entered the vast kitchen, I realized that the entire height of the Aedificium enclosed an octagonal court; I understood later that this was a kind of huge well, without any access, onto which, at each floor, opened broad windows, like the ones on the exterior. The kitchen was a vast smoke-filled entrance hall, where many servants were already busy preparing the food for supper. On a great table two of them were making a pie of greens, barley, oats, and rye, chopping turnips, cress, radishes, and carrots. Nearby, another cook had just finished poaching some fish in a mixture of wine and water, and was covering them with a sauce of sage, parsley, thyme, garlic, pepper, and salt.
Beneath the west tower an enormous oven opened, for baking bread; it was already flashing with reddish flames. In the south tower there was an immense fireplace, where great pots were boiling and spits were turning. Through the door that opened onto the barnyard behind the church, the swineherds were entering at that moment, carrying the meat of the slaughtered pigs.
We went out through that same door and found ourselves in the yard, at the far eastern end of the plain, against the walls, where there were many buildings. Severinus explained to me that the first was the series of barns, then there stood the horses’ stables, then those for the oxen, and then chicken coops, and the covered yard for the sheep. Outside the pigpens, swineherds were stirring a great jarful of the blood of the freshly slaughtered pigs, to keep it from coagulating. If it was stirred properly and promptly, it would remain liquid for the next few days, thanks to the cold climate, and then they would make blood puddings from it.
We re-entered the Aedificium and cast a quick glance at the refectory as we crossed it, heading toward the east tower. Of the two towers between which the refectory extended, the northern one housed a fireplace, the other a circular staircase that led to the scriptorium, on the floor above. By this staircase the monks went up to their work every day, or else they used the other two staircases, less comfortable but well heated, which rose in spirals inside the fireplace here and inside the oven in the kitchen.
William asked whether we would find anyone in the scriptorium, since it was Sunday. Severinus smiled and said that work, for the Benedictine monk, is prayer. On Sunday offices lasted longer, but the monks assigned to work on books still spent some hours up there, usually engaged in fruitful exchanges of learned observations, counsel, reflections on Holy Scripture.
AFTER NONES
In which there is a visit to the scriptorium, and a meeting with many scholars, copyists, and rubricators, as well as an old blind man who is expecting the Antichrist.
As we climbed up I saw my master observing the windows that gave light to the stairway. I was probably becoming as clever as he, because I immediately noticed that their position would make it difficult for a person to reach them. On the other hand, the windows of the refectory (the only ones on the ground floor that overlooked the cliff face) did not seem easily reached, either, since below them there was no furniture of any kind.
When we reached the top of the stairs, we went through the east tower into the scriptorium, and there I could not suppress a cry of wonder. This floor was not divided in two like the one below, and therefore it appeared to my eyes in all its spacious immensity. The ceilings, curved and not too high (lower than in a church, but still higher than in any chapter house I ever saw), supported by sturdy pillars, enclosed a space suffused with the most beautiful light, because three enormous windows opened on each of the longer sides, whereas a smaller window pierced each of the five external sides of each tower; eight high, narrow windows, finally, allowed light to enter from the octagonal central well.
The abundance of windows meant that the great room was cheered by a constant diffused light, even on a winter afternoon. The panes were not colored like church windows, and the lead-framed squares of clear glass allowed the light to enter in the purest possible fashion, not modulated by human art, and to illuminate the work of reading and writing. I have seen at other times and in other places many scriptoria, but none where there shone so luminously, in the outpouring of physical light which made the room glow, the spiritual principle that light incarnates, radiance, source of all beauty and learning, inseparable attribute of that proportion the room embodied.
For three things concur in creating beauty: first of all integrity or perfection, and for this reason we consider ugly all incomplete things; then proper proportion or consonance; and finally clarity and light, and in fact we call beautiful those things of definite color. And since the sight of the beautiful implies peace, and since our appetite is calmed similarly by peacefulness, by the good, and by the beautiful, I felt myself filled with a great consolation and I thought how pleasant it must be to work in that place.
As it appeared to my eyes, at that afternoon hour, it seemed to me a joyous workshop of learning. I saw later at St. Gall a scriptorium of similar proportions, also separated from the library (in other convents the monks worked in the same place where the books were kept), but not so beautifully arranged as this one. Antiquarians, librarians, rubricators, and scholars were seated, each at his own desk, and there was a desk under each of the windows.
And since there were forty windows (a number truly perfect, derived from the decupling of the quadragon, as if the Ten Commandments had been multiplied by the four cardinal virtues), forty monks could work at the same time, though at that moment there were perhaps thirty. Severinus explained to us that monks working in the scriptorium were exempted from the offices of terce, sext, and nones so they would not have to leave their work during the hours of daylight, and they stopped their activity only at sunset, for vespers.
The brightest places were reserved for the antiquarians, the most expert illuminators, the rubricators, and the copyists. Each desk had everything required for illuminating and copying: inkhorns, fine quills which some monks were sharpening with a thin knife, pumice stone for smoothing the parchment, rulers for drawing the lines that the writing would follow. Next to each scribe, or at the top of the sloping desk, there was a lectern, on which the codex to be copied was placed, the page covered by a sheet with a cut-out window which framed the line being copied at that moment.
And some had inks of gold and various colors. Other monks were simply reading books, and they wrote down their annotations in their personal notebooks or on tablets.
I did not have time, however, to observe their work, because the librarian came to us. We already knew he was Malachi of Hildesheim. His face was trying to assume an expression of welcome, but I could not help shuddering at the sight of his singular countenance. It was pale, and though he must have been barely halfway through his earthly sojourn, a fine web of wrinkles made him resemble not so much an old man but, as it seemed to me on first appearance (and may God forgive me), that of an old woman, due to a certain feminine quality in his deep and melancholy eyes. His mouth was almost incapable of managing a smile, and altogether he gave the impression of dealing with the pain of existence out of some sort of distasteful duty.
He greeted us politely, however, and introduced us to many of the monks who were working at that moment. Of each, he also told us what task he was performing, and I admired the deep devotion of all to knowledge and to the study of the divine word. Thus I met Venantius of Salvemec, translator from the Greek and the Arabic, devoted to that Aristotle who surely was the wisest of all men. Benno of Uppsala, a young Scandinavian monk who was studying rhetoric. Aymaro of Alessandria, who had been copying works on loan to the library for a few months only, and then a group of illuminators from various countries, Patrick of Clonmacnois, Rabano of Toledo, Magnus
