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Updated: June 23, 2025
These Benedictines had suggested the sensation of kneeling worship and the very fragrance of the Gospel, as artists of wider scope had failed in doing. Their attempt, however, had begotten no following, and at this day the school is almost dead, producing nothing but feeble prints for old women designed by the lay-brothers. How, indeed, could it have been anything but still-born?
Within, the church is divided by a screen into two parts, the choir for the Fathers, the nave for the lay-brothers. Over the screen is a rood, and beneath, two altars, dedicated in honour of St John the Baptist, who went into the desert, and St Bruno, the founder of the Order. Here, too, is the stole of St Hugh and a bone of St Bruno.
The late-Norman nave, with its solemn double line of round columns, the extremely graceful arches of the Chapel of the Nine Altars, and the magnificent vaulted perspective of the dark cellarium of the lay-brothers, are perhaps the most fascinating portions of the buildings.
The cells are delightful to look upon, "a solitude within a solitude"; each consists of five rooms, two below and three above, reached by a staircase, the whole approached from a passage closed by a door giving on to the Great Cloister. Here live and pray some thirty-six monks, with a like number of conversi or lay-brothers.
In and out of the shadows, swift and silent, on sandalled feet, moved the lay-brothers serving the feast; watchful of each detail; quickly supplying every need. At length they loaded the table with fruit; put upon it fresh flagons of wine, and finally withdrew; each black-robed figure merging into the black shadows, and vanishing in silence. The Bishop's Chaplain appeared in a distant doorway.
At the present moment the number does not exceed three hundred, including superannuated, exempt from service, and lay-brothers, whilst the native clergymen in effective possession of curacies, and including substitutes, coadjutors and weekly preachers, exceed one thousand.
You must bear in mind that in all California down to 1854 there were no lay-brothers accompanying the fathers to perform such work as is done by our lay-brothers now, who can very well compete with the best of secular artisans. The church of St. Boniface, San Francisco, and the church of St. Joseph, Los Angeles, are proof of this.
But as he passed at last through the lay-brothers' choir and stood looking through the gates of the Fathers' choir up to the rich altar with its hangings and its posts on either side crowned with gilded angels bearing candles, to the splendid window overhead, against which, as in a glory, hung the motionless silk-draped pyx, the awe fell on him again.
Some of the other occupants of the monastery monks, lay-brothers, pupils occasionally passed by, but they did not even lift their eyes. Still, there was a certain sense of publicity about the interview which made Dino feel that he was not to be welcomed only judged. Father Cristoforo's face was terrible in its very impassiveness.
There was a Jester standing by, that counterfeited the fool so naturally that he seemed to be really one; the jests which he offered were so cold and dull that we laughed more at him than at them, yet sometimes he said, as it were by chance, things that were not unpleasant, so as to justify the old proverb, 'That he who throws the dice often, will sometimes have a lucky hit. When one of the company had said that I had taken care of the thieves, and the Cardinal had taken care of the vagabonds, so that there remained nothing but that some public provision might be made for the poor whom sickness or old age had disabled from labour, 'Leave that to me, said the Fool, 'and I shall take care of them, for there is no sort of people whose sight I abhor more, having been so often vexed with them and with their sad complaints; but as dolefully soever as they have told their tale, they could never prevail so far as to draw one penny from me; for either I had no mind to give them anything, or, when I had a mind to do it, I had nothing to give them; and they now know me so well that they will not lose their labour, but let me pass without giving me any trouble, because they hope for nothing no more, in faith, than if I were a priest; but I would have a law made for sending all these beggars to monasteries, the men to the Benedictines, to be made lay-brothers, and the women to be nuns. The Cardinal smiled, and approved of it in jest, but the rest liked it in earnest.
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