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Abbey

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abbey, monastic house, especially among Benedictines and Cistercians, consisting of not less than 12 monks or nuns ruled by an abbot or abbess. Many abbeys were originally self-supporting. In the Benedictine expansion after the 8th cent., abbeys were often important centers of learning and peaceful arts and, like Fulda Fulda , city (1994 pop. 58,710), Hesse, central Germany, on the Fulda River. It is a banking and financial center. Manufactures include textiles and clothing. Fulda grew around a Benedictine abbey founded in 744 by Sturmius, a pupil of St. Boniface, the missionary.
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, were sometimes the nuclei of future towns. The buildings surround a church and include a dormitory, refectory, and guest house, all surrounded by a wall. The courtyard, derived from the Roman atrium atrium , term for an interior court in Roman domestic architecture and also for a type of entrance court in early Christian churches. The Roman atrium was an unroofed or partially roofed area with rooms opening from it. In early times its center held a cooking hearth.
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, was a usual feature, as was the cloister cloister, unroofed space forming part of a religious establishment and surrounded by the various buildings or by enclosing walls. Generally, it is provided on all sides with a vaulted passageway consisting of continuous colonnades or arcades opening onto a court.
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 or arcade surrounding the court. Cluniac abbeys were always ornate, Cistercian ones notably bare. The Carthusians Carthusians , small order of monks of the Roman Catholic Church [Lat. abbr.,=O. Cart.]. It was established by St. Bruno at La Grande Chartreuse (see Chartreuse, Grande) in France in 1084.
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 with their special polity developed an altogether different structure called the charterhouse.

abbey

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The ruins of Fountains Abbey, a Cistercian monastery founded in the 12th century, near Ripon, North …
(credit: Andy Williams)
Complex of buildings housing a monastery or convent under the direction of an abbot or abbess, serving the needs of a self-contained religious community. The first abbey was Monte Cassino in Italy, founded in 529 by St. Benedict of Nursia. The cloister linked the most important elements of an abbey together. The dormitory was often built over the dining hall on the eastern side of the cloister and linked to the central church. The western side of the cloister provided for public dealings, with the gatehouse controlling the only opening to the outer, public courtyard. On the southern side of the cloister were a central kitchen, brewery, and workshops. The novitiate and infirmary were housed in a building with its own chapel, bathhouse, dining hall, kitchen, and garden. In the 12th–13th century, many abbeys were built throughout Europe, especially in France.


abbey
1. a building inhabited by a community of monks or nuns governed by an abbot or abbess
2. a church built in conjunction with such a building
3. such a community of monks or nuns

abbey
abbey: Plan of abbey of St. Germain-des-Prés, Paris, 13th cent. A, church; B, cloister; C, city gate; E, chapter house; F, chapel; G, refectory; H, cellars and presses; I, abbot’s lodging; K, ditches; L, gardens
A monastery or convent; particularly the church thereof.

Abbey 

a Catholic monastery governed by a father superior or, in a convent, by a mother superior, subordinate to a bishop and sometimes directly to the pope. The larger and wealthier monasteries owned much land and often played an important religious, political, and economic role in feudal Western Europe. Such monasteries included the abbeys of Cluny, Saint-Denis, Port Royal, Saint Gall, Fulda, and Monte Cassino. During the Reformation and especially during the bourgeois revolution, the abbey lost its significance in the life of European society. Many abbeys were liquidated, but some still exist today.



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Being known on her own authority as Miss Abbey Potterson, some water-side heads, which (like the water) were none of the clearest, harboured muddled notions that, because of her dignity and firmness, she was named after, or in some sort related to, the Abbey at Westminster.
Tis true, we can offer you nothing like the gaieties of this lively place; we can tempt you neither by amusement nor splendour, for our mode of living, as you see, is plain and unpretending; yet no endeavours shall be wanting on our side to make Northanger Abbey not wholly disagreeable.
Notre-Dame de Paris has not, like the Abbey of Tournus, the grave and massive frame, the large and round vault, the glacial bareness, the majestic simplicity of the edifices which have the rounded arch for their progenitor.
 
 
 
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