The Water that Passes Through Alcoa and Baça: The Hydraulic System of the Monastery of Alcobaça

Abstract

This monastery, with its presence effectively defining the town of Alcobaça, provides an exemplary case of the Portuguese territorial layout, both in its balance and in the relationship between the genius loci that the local territory offers and the new, human-constructed landscape. Adopting water as the key natural resource, the monks of Alcobaça applied its use with wisdom and mastery in the most diverse fashions. Water not only becomes a frequent presence on the macro-agricultural scale of the Couto Alcobacense, but also appears in places of symbolic meaning, such as the cloister’s lavatorium. The members of the religious community were referred to as farmer-monks, also deriving from the core Benedictine principle of “Ora et Labora” that was in effect at this Cistercian monastery; furthermore, they applied the empirical knowledge of agronomic science and improved the techniques that would subsequently change the territories of their application.