The Domician Monastery
occasion of such family festivals made a significant contribution to the monastery's
finances. The various guilds gave gifts when their feast days were celebrated. The
Merchant Guild, for example, each year in December gave the friars a tun of meat, a tun
of codfish, and a tun of peas. Rich burgers left legacies to the monastery for the privilege
of having a family tomb in the church, But these did not suffice to sustain all those whom
the monastery housed. The friars, in consequence, becaipe farmers and fish-mongers. In
addition they ran a brewery, which produced four different kinds of beer. In northern
Europe beer occupied the place enjoyed by wine in the south, and was a staple element of
both the monastic and secular diet. The monastery also drew profit from the veneration of
relics. Many documents mention twelve silver reliquaries containing the heads of saints.
Some reposed on the high altar whereas others were enshrined on side altars. Each `head
annaabi.ee 
