CLOISTER (from OP. cloistre, Fr. cloitre, from ML. elaustrum, inclosure, from clawkre, to close). Strictly, the entire space inclosed by the main encircling wall of a religious estab lishment (Germ. Kloster, monastery), including church, dormitories, and all other buildings. Thus, all the buildings for the body of canons attached to a cathedral were included in the term 'cloister.' A 'cloistered monk' is one living within monastic precincts. But common usage has recently limited the term to those rectangu lar courts, in the centre of the main group of monastic or canonical buildings, which are su• rounded on all sides by a covered arcade. These cloisters are the centre of monastic life; from their arcades the refectory, chapter-house. dor mitories, and church are reached. In their cen tral open space or garth are the well and garden. Cathedrals had their eloisters—usually attached to the north side of the church, the south side being reserved for the episcopal palace. But in monasteries the main cloister was in the south flank. Many large monasteries had more than one cloister; one for the lay brothers, open to all (sometimes in front of the church) ; one for the monks; a third, smaller, for the abbot. In such great early Benedictine monasteries as Saint Gall there was a cloister for the artisans.
The earliest examples of rudimentary cloisters are in the monasteries of the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries. in Syria ; the earliest in the West have disappeared, none being earlier than the eleventh century. From that time until the fifteenth century Romanesque and Gothic cloisters abound everywhere. With the advent of the Renaissance and the decay of the orders in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, cloisters are rarer, except in Italy.
The general type of cloister is a colonnade resting on a high parapet, usually with a single opening in the middle of each side of the quadrangle leading into the central garden. In earlier cloisters the columns are single, heavy, and short, and the galleries are more ordinarily covered with a wooden roof than vaulted. glove these galleries rises a second story, either a second gallery or a solid construction (dormi tory) ; in consequence of reconstructions, this upper story is very seldom preserved. During the twelfth century the single columns gave way to coupled shafts, slenderer and higher than those of the preceding style. Sometimes, espe
cially in the North, piers supplemented or re placed columns. The cloister followed the changes of style of other buildings. The finest Romanesque cloisters are in southern France and Italy; Germany and England enter the field particularly during the Gothic period; Italy, with few exceptions, furnishes the only fine Renaissance examples. Saint Trophine in Arles is a rich, and Le Pity in Velay is a plain. example of French Romanesque cloisters, while those of Thoronet and Sil•acane show the French Cistercian severity, and those of Fontfroide and Laon show transition to Gothic. In Italy at the same time there was far 'greater variety and richness. The northern examples at Verona (cathedral), Pomposa• and Bologna (San Ste fano) are simple; but farther south the twelfth century developed richer types, as in the Orien tal examples at Salerno, Ravello. and Amalfi. and the gem at Monreale (Palermo). with varied columns and mosaic decoration. These were soon to be followed by exquisite examples of the Roman school (Fossanova. Saint Paul, and the Lateran, Rome). In fact, Rome possesses an unrivaled series, from the heavy cloister of the Tre Fontane and San Lorenzo to the delicate cloister of Saint Paul, through all intermediate stages. Gothic cloisters were beautiful every where, but the finest specimens are those of the north of Europe, especially France. The arcades are surmounted by rich tracery. by which the galleries, BOW usually covered with lofty groin vaulting, are well lighted. In cooler climates the tracery, sometimes the entire gallery, was glazed. The cloisters of Noyon, Senmr. Sois sons—the last-named exquisitely rich—of "Mont Saint-Michel (with its novel tripod arrange ment of shafts), of Rouen, with a beautiful second story. express the ideas of the Golden Age of the thirteenth century in France; while those of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries are poorer and inferior, as at Bordeaux and Na• bonne. In Germany the most interesting are the Cistercian cloisters, like those of Maulbronn, Altenberg. and Ileiligenkrenz. In England, though there are some good early Gothic ex amples—as at Salisbury—the best are late, as at Gloucester, Hereford, and Canterbury.