St Albans, the small town where I spent most of my working life, was dominated during the medieval period by a Benedictine monastery. The surviving abbey church, now a cathedral, is well worth a visit. The monastery was home to a number of interesting monks, such as the 13^th century historian Matthew Paris, but my favourite is Abbot John de Cella, who was abbot from 1195 until his death in 1214.

He came from a modest family living near Wallingford, and was sometimes known as John of Wallingford. The future abbot studied in Paris with a community of masters and students attached to the Notre Dame cathedral school, which was recognised as a university by the king of France in 1200. Paris was the second oldest university in Europe, after Bologna in Italy, Oxford in England being the third oldest. Boys usually began their studies at the age of 13-14 years and continued for up to 12 years. They studied the seven liberal arts: the “trivium” (grammar, logic and rhetoric) and the “quadrivium” (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music) before going on to more specialised studies such as law, theology and medicine. John was an excellent student and was accepted as a teacher there. Apparently he had an amazing memory – he could recite the whole of the psalter backwards, verse by verse.

He took vows as a Benedictine monk and entered Wallingford priory, where he was elected prior in 1191. The priory was a dependent cell of St Albans abbey, which was how he came to be known as “John de Cella” when he was elected abbot of St Albans four years later. His reputation was of a scholarly and religious man, but he wasn’t really suited to the top job. He spent an unusual amount of time in prayer and contemplation and tended to leave the administration of the abbey and the discipline of the community to his prior and cellarer. The number of monks  increased dramatically and the abbey needed to expand its buildings, both the living quarters and the abbey church which housed the relics of the saint. John recognised this but was unwise in his choice of contractors and this led to the work overrunning on both time and costs. His extension of the nave of the abbey church and the rebuilding of the west front were not finished until after his death.

John de Cella lived through some interesting times. He was abbot of St Albans during the time of the 13th century papal interdict. Bad King John’s resistance to the power of the Church resulted in England being placed under an interdict by the pope between 1208 and 1213, when the only religious services available to non-clerics were baptism and absolution for the dying. King John himself was personally excommunicated in 1209. The price of reconciliation with the church was not only a lot of money but the English monarch became a feudal subject of the papacy. John de Cella was still abbot, although he was probably quite old by then, in the summer of 1213, when barons and clergy led by the Archbishop of Canterbury met at St Albans abbey to discuss their grievances with King John, two years before the Magna Carta agreement. I have been unable to find the date of Abbot John's birth, but it was probably before or during the reign of Henry II (1154-1189), who inherited and acquired the vast Angevin Empire. At the time when John de Cella was studying in Paris, the French king ruled a far smaller part of what is now modern France than the English king. By the time king John, Henry II's younger son, died in 1216 he had lost most of the English lands in France.

Perhaps Abbot John would have made a better infirmerer, the monk in charge of the monastic infirmary (hospital), as he had excelled at his medical studies in Paris. In medieval times medical treatment had an interesting basis. Manuscripts of the period often include images of doctors holding glass urine bottles up to the light as this was a recognised method of diagnosing illness. The colour and other things were supposed to show the state of the bodily “humours”. The balance of these four totally imaginary humours was believed to be responsible for health and happiness. These manuscripts also included comparison charts available showing 21 colours of urine and the conditions they indicated.

Matthew Paris described John de Cella in his ‘Gesta Abbatum’ (vol.i page 246) as ‘an incomparable judge of urine’ after he accurately predicted from the appearance of his own urine that his death would occur in three days’ time. He had to get a colleague to describe it for him, as by that time his eyesight was very poor. He did indeed die three days later, in 1214. He had been abbot for nineteen years.