To administer such a society required the most efficient management.  An abbot on this scale was a very great man, indeed, who enjoyed an establishment of his own, close by, with officers in no small number; for the monks alone numbered sixty, and even these were not enough for the regular church services at seasons of pilgrimage.  The Abbot was obliged to entertain scores and hundreds of guests, and these, too, of the highest importance, with large suites.  Every ounce of food must be brought from the mainland, or fished from the sea.  All the tenants and their farms, their rents and contributions, must be looked after.  No secular prince had a more serious task of administration, and none did it so well.  Tenants always preferred an abbot or bishop for landlord.  The Abbey was the highest administrative creation of the Middle Ages, and when one has made one’s pilgrimage to Chartres, one might well devote another summer to visiting what is left of Clairvaux, Citeaux, Cluny, and the other famous monasteries, with Viollet-le-Duc to guide, in order to satisfy one’s mind whether, on the whole, such a life may not have had activity as well as idleness.

This is a matter of economics, to be settled with the keepers of more modern hotels, but the art had to suit the conditions, and when Abbot Jordan decided to plaster this huge structure against the side of the Mount, the architect had a relatively simple task to handle.  The engineering difficulties alone were very serious; The architectural plan was plain enough.  As the Abbot laid his requirements before the architect, he seems to have begun by fixing the scale for a refectory capable of seating two hundred guests at table.  Probably no king in Europe fed more persons at his table than this.  According to M. Corroyer’s plan, the length of the new refectory is one hundred and twenty-three feet (37.5 metres).  A row of columns down the centre divides it into two aisles, measuring twelve feet clear, from column to column, across the room.  If tables were set the whole length of the two aisles, forty persons could have been easily seated, in four rows, or one hundred and sixty persons.  Without crowding, the same space would give room for fifty guests, or two hundred in all.

Once the scale was fixed, the arrangement was easy.  Beginning at the lowest possible level, one plain, very solidly built, vaulted room served as foundation for another, loftier and more delicately vaulted; and this again bore another which stood on the level of the church, and opened directly into the north transept.  This arrangement was then doubled; and the second set of rooms, at the west end, contained the cellar on the lower level, another great room or hall above it, and the cloister at the church door, also entering into the north transept.  Doorways, passages, and stairs unite them all.  The two heavy halls on the lowest level are now called the almonry and the cellar, which is a distinction between administrative arrangements that does not concern us.