impossible for inland monasteries to have fish enough, to eat flesh became unavoidable.[74] However, to the great rule all their articles of food bore relation; namely, bread, beer, soup, beans for soup, all Lent; oats for gruel, on Thursdays and Saturdays, in that season; flour for pottage, every day in the same season; fried dishes, _wastels_, or fine bread for dinner and supper, on certain feasts; _formictæ_, or fine flour cakes, in Advent, Christmas, against Lent, Easter, Pentecost, and certain feasts; ‘fat things,’ which appear to have been bacon,[75] were frequent with the Præmonstratenses; black beans and salt, with the Clugniacks; general bad fare with the <g>Cistercians</g>. In certain solemnities, we are told the convent was in the habit of retiring with the Abbot, leaving a few in the refectory, in order to eat meat elsewhere; and that they frequently dined in ‘extra-cloister’ apartments, where “they used to invite women (devout nuns, perhaps) to talk, eat, and drink with them.”[76]
<g>Diet</g> was strictly prescribed; variety of viands was forbidden; flesh was allowed only to the sick or invalids; fish, eggs, milk, butter, and cheese, were not to be used on common days, but only on special occasions, as dainties or “pittances.”[77] None but their guests and the sick were allowed any other than brown bread; they might use the common herbs of the country; but pepper and other spices were forbidden.
These observations, quoted from various authorities, apply to the monastic Orders generally, among whom the regulations of the refectory appear to have been nearly the same; but that order to which the Abbey of <g>Tinterne</g> belonged, professed the greatest abstinence, mortified diet, and abhorrence of all luxuries. To the devout taste of St. <g>Bernard</g>, the most rigid rules were the most agreeable; and hence he became a <g>Cistercian</g>, the strictest of the monastic orders in France. At that time they were but few in number, for, owing to their excessive austerities, men were discouraged from joining them. Bernard, however, by his superior genius, his eminent piety, and his ardent zeal, gave to this <g>Order</g> a permanent lustre and celebrity. At the age of twenty-three, with more than thirty companions, he entered into the monastery, and was afterwards appointed Abbot of <g>Clairval</g>. To those noviciates who desired admission, he used to say--“If ye hasten to those which are within, dismiss your bodies which ye brought from the world; let the spirit alone enter here; the flesh profiteth nothing.” “Yet, amidst all these disagreeable austerities,” says his biographer, “the soul of Bernard was inwardly taught of God; and as he grew in the divine life, he learned to correct the harshness and asperities of his sentiments.”