The Monks at Prayer: Separation from the World
Fifteen years after the Abbey began the tomb of the founder, Henry I, was positioned in front of the High Altar and later a life size effigy of the king was erected as a memorial to him. Prayers for his soul and for other benefactors of the Abbey were an important part of the worship of the monks.
To begin his Abbey at Reading, Henry called monks from the great Abbey at Cluny in France and from its daughter priory at Lewes in Sussex. The Cluniac monasteries, a reformed movement in the Benedictine Order, laid great stress on the liturgy and the beauty of services and church. At Reading the Church was laid out in the form of a cross, the choir and High Altar at its head pointing to the east. The singing of the monks rose into the roof and spread into the rest of the Church, the main body or nave to the west and the two cross arms or transepts. Where the choir met the nave stood the stone Rood Screen with a large wooden figure of Christ facing the worshippers in the nave. This Rood Screen marked the boundary between the world of the monks and the world of the ordinary people who normally stayed on the nave side.
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The funeral in 1136 of the founder of the Abbey, Henry I,
who was buried before the High Altar in the Abbey Church. A
modern reconstruction painting by Harry Morley. (1931.280.1)
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