The calefactory, or warming room, was one of the more immediately appealing rooms at the Royal Abbey of l’Épau, largely because it contained something that would have been in relatively short supply elsewhere in the monastery, namely heat. This would normally have made it especially welcome, although when I visited Le Mans it was oppressively hot outside and the prospect of gathering around a large medieval fire had lost some of its charm. I think I have mentioned the heat already, so I shall resist documenting it further.
The room opens directly from the cloister and would have provided a practical refuge during the colder months. Its enormous fireplace dominates the space, with a broad hearth and a monumental stone hood projecting from the wall. The blackened interior shows that it once did rather more than merely provide an attractive architectural feature, although the fire was presumably managed with greater competence than I demonstrate whenever given responsibility for one.
The rest of the abbey was deliberately austere and largely unheated, in keeping with Cistercian ideals of simplicity and discipline. I suspect I would have coped reasonably well with that, as I am generally better with the cold than the heat. I might even have regarded the calefactory as unnecessarily decadent to be honest.
As an aside, the word ‘calefactory’ comes from the Late Latin ‘calefactorius’, meaning something with the power to warm or heat, itself derived from calefacere, ‘to make warm’. This combines calēre, meaning ‘to be warm’, with facere, ‘to make or do’, which is all rather neat.