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{{Short description|Open space surrounded by covered walks or open galleries}}
{{hatnote|This article is about an architectural feature. For other uses, see [[Cloister (disambiguation)]] and [[The Cloisters (disambiguation)]]}}
{{use dmy dates|date=April 2024}}
[[File:Salisbury Cathedral, cloister, from top of tower.jpg|300px|thumb|upright= 1.5|The cloister at [[Salisbury Cathedral]], England]]
A '''cloister''' (from [[Latin]] {{Lang|la|claustrum}}, "enclosure") is a covered walk, open gallery, or open [[Arcade (architecture)|arcade]] running along the walls of buildings and forming a [[quadrangle (architecture)|quadrangle]] or garth. The attachment of a cloister to a [[cathedral]] or church, commonly against a warm southern flank,{{sfn|Horn|1973|p=13}} usually indicates that it is (or once was) part of a [[monastic]] foundation, "forming a continuous and solid architectural barrier... that effectively separates the world of the [[monk]]s from that of the [[serf]]s and workmen, whose lives and works went forward outside and around the cloister."{{sfn|Horn|1973|p=13}}

Cloistered (or claustral) life is also another name for the monastic life of a [[monk]] or [[nun]]. The English term ''enclosure'' is used in contemporary [[Catholicism|Catholic]] church law translations<ref name="Code of Canon Law">{{cite web |url=http://www.deacons.net/Canon_Law/cci.htm |title=The Code of Canon Law, Canon 667 ff. English translation copyright 1983 The Canon Law Society Trust  |access-date=2006-06-17 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060619055307/http://www.deacons.net/Canon_Law/cci.htm |archive-date=2006-06-19 }}</ref> to mean cloistered, and  some form of the Latin parent word "claustrum" is frequently used as a [[metonym]]ic name for ''[[monastery]]'' in languages such as German.<ref>Cf. German ''Kloster''.</ref> [[Cloistered clergy]] refers to monastic orders that strictly separate themselves from the affairs of the external world.

==History of the cloister==

[[File:The Cloisters at Gloucester Cathedral.jpg|300px|thumb|The Cloisters at [[Gloucester Cathedral]], UK]]
The early medieval cloister had several antecedents: the [[peristyle]] court of the Greco-Roman ''[[domus]]'', the [[atrium (architecture)|atrium]] and its expanded version that served as forecourt to early Christian [[basilica]]s, and certain semi-galleried courts attached to the flanks of early Syrian churches.<ref>Horn 1973 gives these sources.</ref>  [[Walter Horn]] suggests that the earliest [[coenobite|coenobitic]] communities, which were established in Egypt by [[Saint Pachomius]] {{circa | AD 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.{{sfn|Horn|1973|pp=39–40}}

Horn finds the earliest prototypical cloisters in some exceptional<ref>The normal Syrian monastery plan was an open one, Horn observes.</ref> late fifth-century monastic churches in southern Syria, such as the Convent of Saints [[Sergius and Bacchus]], at Umm-is-Surab (AD 489), and the [[colonnade]]d forecourt of the convent of Id-Dêr,<ref>Horn 1973, plans, figs 9 and 10</ref> but nothing similar appeared in the semi-eremitic Irish monasteries' clustered [[roundhouse (dwelling)|roundhouse]]s nor in the earliest [[Benedictine order|Benedictine collective communities]] of the West.{{sfn|Horn|1973|pp=39–40}}

In the time of [[Charlemagne]] ({{reign | 768 | 814}}) the requirements of a separate monastic community within an extended and scattered [[manorialism |manorial estate]] 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.<ref>Horn pp 40ff.</ref> Horn offers as early examples Abbot Gundeland's [[abbey of Lorsch|"Altenmünster" of Lorsch abbey]] (765–774), as revealed in the excavations by Frederich Behn.<ref>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]] (Horn 1973:44, figs 43ab, 45).</ref> Lorsch was adapted without substantial alteration from a Frankish nobleman's [[Roman villa|''villa rustica'']], in a tradition unbroken from late Roman times.<ref>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]] (Horn 1973:44, figs 43ab, 45).</ref>

Another early cloister, in the [[abbey of Saint-Riquier]] (790–799), took a triangular shape, with chapels at the corners, in conscious representation of the [[Trinity]].<ref>Horn 1973:43 and fig 42ab.</ref> A square cloister sited against the flank of the abbey church was built at [[Inden, North Rhine-Westphalia |Inden]] (816) and the [[Abbey of Saint Wandrille |abbey of St. Wandrille at Fontenelle]] (823–833).  At [[Fulda monastery |Fulda]], a new cloister (819) was sited to the liturgical west of the church "in the Roman manner"<ref>''Vita Eigili'', the life of Abbot Eigil.</ref> familiar from the forecourt of [[Old St. Peter's Basilica]]  because it would be closer to the relics. More recently, [[John D. Rockefeller Jr.]] commissioned the construction of [[The Cloisters]] museum and gardens in medieval style in [[Manhattan]] in 1930–1938.

==Gallery==
<gallery mode="packed" heights="150px">  
File:The Cloisters from Garden.jpg|The Bonnefont [[Monastic garden|medieval garden]] at [[The Cloisters]] in [[Manhattan]]
File:Claustro de Santo Domingo de Silos. Galería sur.jpg|The [[Romanesque architecture|Romanesque]] cloister of [[Abbey of Santo Domingo de Silos|Santo Domingo de Silos]], Spain
File:Cloitre_prieure_Saint-Michel_de_Grandmont.jpg|Cloister of [[Saint-Michel de Grandmont Priory]] ([[Languedoc-Roussillon]], France)
File:Amalfi-Chiostro del paradiso.jpg|Chiostro del Paradiso, [[Amalfi Cathedral]], Italy
File:Domhof, Dom, Kreuzgang Hildesheim 20171201 011.jpg|Cloister of [[Hildesheim Cathedral]], Germany
File:Kreuzgang, Kloster Eberbach 20140903 1.jpg|Cloister of the former Cistercian [[Eberbach Abbey]], Germany
File:Utrecht Pandhof 9086.jpg|Cloister of the [[St. Martin's Cathedral, Utrecht]], Netherlands
</gallery>

==See also==
*[[Colonnade]]

==Notes==
{{Reflist}}

==References==
*  {{cite book |first=Thomas|last=Coomans|title=''Life Inside the Cloister. Understanding Monastic Architecture: Tradition, Reformation, Adaptive Reuse''|year=2018|publisher=Leuven University Press|isbn=9789462701434}}
*  {{cite journal |first=Walter|last=Horn |title=On the Origins of the Medieval Cloister |journal=Gesta |volume=2 |issue=1/2 |year=1973|pages=13–52 |doi=10.2307/766633|jstor=766633|s2cid=192563869 }}

==External links==
{{Wiktionary}}
* {{Commons category-inline}}
* [https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG1104/__P28.HTM The Code of Canon Law, cf canons 667 ff.]
* [https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11164a.htm New Advent Encyclopaedia III ff. on "Nuns, properly so called"]
* [https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04060a.htm "Cloister" in the New Advent encyclopaedia]
* [https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12748b.htm New Advent Encyclopaedia on "Religious Life"]
* [http://www.marcuslink.com/travel/cloisters/ Photos and information on cloisters in France, Italy and Spain]
* {{cite EB9 |wstitle = Cloister |volume= VI | pages=35-36 |short=1}}

{{RC consecrated life}}
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[[Category:Church architecture]]
[[Category:Colonnades]]
[[Category:Christian monastic architecture]]
[[Category:Courtyards|*Cloister]]