Refectory

The refectory (English refectory, from Latin: refectio, restoration ',' recovery ',' refreshment ') is the dining room of a monastery. Originally a free-standing building, it is often associated with a wing of the cloister since the Carolingian period. It belongs - next to the church and chapter house - the most important rooms of a monastery.

Description

In some monasteries, meals are taken by the religious silence, while sections from the necrology of the monastery, the Martyrology, the Rule or news from the press are often at the table reading from the table reader spiritual or secular literature, read aloud.

At times, there was in some monasteries, such as the Benedictines or Cistercians, separate refectories for clerics and converse or choir and lay sisters. Especially in the Baroque, there was also often a heatable winter and often not a heatable summer refectory, most of which were splendidly decorated ( for example, in Geras ). These separations no longer exists today usually.

Sometimes there are separate dining rooms for guests. In some monasteries were and there is also a separate dining room for entertaining special guests of the abbot.

Famous refectories for example, there in Marienburg and in the Trinity Monastery of St. Sergius.

Orthodoxy

In Orthodox monasteries, the refectory (Greek Trapesa, Russian трапеза, Greek τραπέζι ) as a sacred place considered. In some cases, it even has an altar and iconostasis one, but at least an icon, before burning an oil lamp.