Over time some monasteries became quite wealthy: they owned huge amounts of land and even had armies of soldier monks to protects them. In the A. Having mentioned the Essenes, who in all respects selected for their admiration and for their especial adoption the practical course of life, and who excel in all, or what perhaps may be a less unpopular and invidious thing to say, in most of its parts, I will now proceed, in the regular order of my subject, to speak of those who have embraced the speculative life, and I will say what appears to me to be desirable to be said on the subject, not drawing any fictitious statements from my own head for the sake of improving the appearance of that side of the question which nearly all poets and essayists are much accustomed to do in the scarcity of good actions to extol, but with the greatest simplicity adhering strictly to the truth itself, to which I know well that even the most eloquent men do not keep close in their speeches.
Thatcher, ed. Can we compare those who honor the elements, earth, water, air, and fire? But since these men infect not only their fellow countrymen, but all that come near them with folly, let them remain uncovered, being mutilated in the most indispensable of all the outward senses, namely, sight.
I am speaking here, not of the sight of the body, but of that of the soul, by which alone truth and falsehood are distinguished from one another. But the therapeutic sect of mankind, being continually taught to see without interruption, may well aim at obtaining a sight of the living God, and may pass by the sun, which is visible to the outward sense, and never leave this order which conducts to perfect happiness.
But they who apply themselves to this kind of worship, not because they are influenced to do so by custom, nor by the advice or recommendation of any particular persons, but because they are carried away by a certain heavenly love, give way to enthusiasm, behaving like so many revelers in bacchanalian or corybantian mysteries, until they see the object which they have been earnestly desiring.
And they depart, not to another city as those do who entreat to be purchased from those who at present possess them, being either unfortunate or else worthless servants, and as such seeking a change of masters rather than endeavoring to procure freedom for every city, even that which is under the happiest laws, is full of indescribable tumults, and disorders, and calamities, which no one would submit to who had been even for a moment under the influence of wisdom , but they take up their abode outside of walls, or gardens, or solitary lands, seeking for a desert place, not because of any ill-natured misanthropy to which they have learned to devote themselves, but because of the associations with people of wholly dissimilar dispositions to which they would otherwise be compelled, and which they know to be unprofitable and mischievous.
Now this class of persons may be met with in many places, for it was fitting that both Greece and the country of the barbarians should partake of whatever is perfectly good; and there is the greatest number of such men in Egypt, in every one of the districts, or nomes, as they are called, and especially around Alexandria; and from all quarters those who are the best of these therapeutae proceed on their pilgrimage to some most suitable place as if it were their country, which is beyond the Maereotic lake, lying in a somewhat level plain a little raised above the rest, being suitable for their purpose by reason of its safety and also of the fine temperature of the air.
Therefore many persons speak in their sleep, divulging and publishing the celebrated doctrines of the sacred philosophy. And they are accustomed to pray twice a day, at morning and at evening; when the sun is rising entreating God that the happiness of the coming day may be real happiness, so that their minds may be filled with heavenly light, and when the sun is setting they pray that their soul, being entirely lightened and relieved of the burden of the outward senses, and of the appropriate object of these outward senses, may be able to trace out trust existing in its own consistory and council chamber.
And the interval between morning and evening is by them devoted wholly to meditation on and to practice virtue, for they take up the sacred scriptures and philosophy concerning them, investigating the allegories as symbols of some secret meaning of nature, intended to be conveyed in those figurative expressions. Therefore, during six days, each of these individuals, retiring into solitude by himself, philosophizes by himself in one of the places called monasteries, never going outside the threshold of the outer court, and indeed never even looking out.
On this account they eat only so far as not to be hungry, and they drink just enough to escape from thirst, avoiding all satiety, as an enemy of and a plotter against both soul and body. Saint Anthony is credited with launching the greatest monastic movement in religious history. A healer, sufferer, pioneer of monasticism in Christianity, he promulgated celibacy and asceticism and spent most of his life praying and fasting in the desert, where it was said he was tempted many times by the devil, who often appeared dressed as a woman.
There is now an Anonite order of monks. Anthony was born in Egypt in Following the admonitions of Matthew, he sold all of his possession, gave his money to the poor so the at he could find the treasure of heaven. He fled to the deserts of Egypt, where he took up an austere life. Others followed his example and a monastic colony arose around his cave in the mountains. Since the Middle Age St. Anthony has been acknowledged as the patron saint of domestic animals.
The day of the saint is celebrated with bonfires in communities across Spain. Pachomius founded first true monastery on Tabenna, an island in Nile, in A. The difference between the monks here and their predecessors is that the monks associated with one another and performed daily chores and work in the fields in addition to praying, reading the scriptures and meditating. Basil composed monastic rule and is regarded as founder of the Christian monastic movement.
Around , he established a great monastery near Neo-Caesarea in Pontus on the Black Sea and established the creed that a monk must not only live for himself but must also help his fellow man. He discouraged extreme asterism and established schools, hospitals, hospices and orphanages in conjunction with his monasteries.
Monasteries are places where monks live, pray and work. Unlike Christian churches, which are often hierarchical institutions that emphasize community worship and social service, monasteries are generally democratic and anti-authoritarian institutions run for monks by monks, who keep the monastery going with donations and money earned from their work. Monasteries are not communal places for ordinary people to worship; they are self-contained communities set aside for people who have decided to devote themselves entirely to God.
Each monastery has traditionally had choirs, where monks chanted and prayed; altars where Mass could be performed; open places where Sunday processions could be held; cloisters, where monks worked and studied; a refractory, where the monks ate.
Most monasteries are divided into abbeys and priories, of which the abbey church is the central building. It in turn is surrounded by other buildings which include prayer rooms, libraries, schoolrooms, rooms for religious objects, cells or dormitories where the monks live, and often an infirmary that treated the sick and aged, an inn for travelers, workshops, and alms houses for the poor. Within the monastery compound have traditionally been fields and gardens for growing crops and herbariums are providing medicinal plants.
Monasteries have traditionally played a role in helping to educate people, providing medical care and giving orphans places to live. Through gifts and patronage some were able to mass great wealth and property. Some large monasteries resemble estates or college campuses. Others are like modest villages. Only some are open to the public. Monks have traditionally said prayers and devoted their time to learning and engaging is some kind of work activity.
They have developed music, copied manuscripts, written theological treatises, built abbeys, brought innovation to architecture, music and art, founded the first European universities, and clarified arguments in theology and philosophy For many centuries monks were practicably the only people who could read and write.
They also developed the finest schools in the Middle Ages. Charlemagne brought the monk Alcuin from England to set up an education system in the Holy Roman Empire. Monks have helped to preserve ancient civilization by copying ancient Greek and Roman texts many of which they obtained through their connections with Jewish and Muslim scholars.
We can thank medieval monks for the fact we can read Plato, Aristotle and Pliny and the Bible today. If they didn't copy these works by hand there is a good chance that would have been lost. Most of the historical information we know is based on the written word. That is why we no virtually nothing about Druids, who had no written language, and we know tons about the Greeks who did. Almost every monastery has a library. One monk went as far as saying that a "monastery without a library was like a castle without an armory.
Some have even had an "inter-library loan" that allowed the secular public to check out books. For the most part however monastery libraries have been very security conscious—just think of how valuable the books were based on all the time and work that went into copying each manuscript by hand.
Some monasteries had their books chained so they wouldn't be taken and others recited special curses directed at those who defaced or stole them. Many monasteries had a scriptorium, where scribes copied books by hand.
They used a quill and ink and were free to copy any books they wanted to since there were no royalty payments or copyright laws in the Middle Ages. Historian Daniel Boorstein wrote "the book was not expected to be, nor dared be, a vehicle for new ideas carrying messages from contemporary to contemporary.
Instead it was device to preserve and amplify the treasured revolving funds of literary works. The scribes labored for hours at their copying tasks. On monk described their duty as "not of his own free will but under compulsion, bound by fetters, just as a runaway and fugitive has to be bound.
The Spiritual Franciscans, along with strong mystical and apocalyptic beliefs, held to the doctrine of apostolic poverty, believing that Christ and the apostles owned nothing. This position was declared heretical in The Franciscan order in the following centuries spun off a number of separate sects and other orders.
Dominicans: The Order of Preachers Ordo Praedicatorum was founded by Dominiac in the 13 th century as a medicant, or preaching, order. Dominiac stressed vacility with vernacular languages, a strong academic education, especially in theology, and a life of simplicity and poverty so as to avoid hypocrisy. Two of its most famous members were the philosophers Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas.
The order grew quickly in its first centuries of existence and its influence expanded as its members were chosen for church offices. Eventually, the order was charged with running the Roman Inquisition. Existing for about two centuries , the Knights Templar was the most well-known of the military orders. They were constituted as a monastic order after the First Crusade as an inspiration of Bernard of Clarivaux.
The order was made-up of celibate lifetime members and temporary members, often married, from the knightly class who were mostly uneducated. The order also pioneered modern banking methods, such as credit and checking, to raise funds for the crusades, as well as to assist pilgrimages to the Holy Land.
The Order of Christ, begun in , succeeded the Knights Templar and absorbed many of its knights. It settled in Portugal. Over the centuries, it was reformed as both a religious order answerable to the pope and a civil order answerable to the king. The Knights Hospitaller, a 12 th century order working with the sick, after the First Crusade divided itself into two parts, the newer one pledged to protecting pilgrimages to the Holy Land.
They also fought with distinction in the Holy Land. Eventually, they absorbed much of the property of the Knights Templar, and its branches became military enclaves in later centuries, such as the Knights of Malta.
Timeline Life of Anthony. Pachomius begins one of the first communal monasteries Tabennisi, Egypt. Augustine of Hippo, On the Works of Monks , a work stressing value of manual labor.
Patrick commissioned as missionary to Ireland. Synod of Whitby resolves differences between Celtic and Roman Christianity. Bede, History of the English Church and People. Abbot Laffredus of Farfa poisoned by two monks for trying for enforcing the Benedictine rule.
Bruno founds the Carthusians. First Crusade captures Jerusalem. Bernard begins Cistercian abbey at Clairvaux. Knights Templar adopt that Cistercian rule. Life of Francis of Assisi. Death of St. Dominic, founder of the Dominican Order. Dominicans to staff the Roman Inquisition.
William of Ockham excommunicated for Spiritual Franciscan views. Eliot, Little Gidding. Overview of Medieval Monasticism Let a man consider that God is always looking at him from heaven, that his actions are everywhere visible to the divine eyes and are constantly being reported to God by the Angels. Introduction Christian monasticism is a structured, ascetic pursuit of the Christian life. Christian monasticism, while primarily concerned with the individual pursuit of the "spiritual life," that is an ascetic pursuit of God, has also arguably been responsible for: the survival of education and culture during the period following the fall of the Western Roman Empire; the perpetuation of important Greco-Roman and early Christian manuscripts in monastery scriptoriums; the development of important early medicines in rudimentary pharmacies; the beginnings of Western capitalism with early advances in agricultural production, manufacturing, corporation law, and labor division; important advances in art, music, and cooking; social stability in Western and Eastern Europe, often serving as an outlet for the second sons and daughters of wealthy aristocratic families; and for important reform movements within Christendom.
Possible Predecessors. Nazirites Numbers : Nazirites were of two types: those who were dedicated from birth to be a Nazirite e. Medieval legends Joseph of Arimathea : Medieval legends believed that Joseph of Arimathea founded the first monastic community in Glastonbury somewhere between 37 to 63 AD. The Grail legend is often associated with this. No real evidence exists for these claims, though Christian influence was relatively early in the British Isles.
Daughters of Philip Acts : The four unmarried daughters of Philip the Evangelist were considered by medieval monks as early ascetics. Almost all medievals believed Mary to be a perpetual virgin, and this understanding became part of the prizing of virginity as a higher, more heavenly life and as a living martyrdom and espousal to Christ. Early Types Eremetics: Hermits living alone, either living off what others brought them or by a simple means of subsistence existence, such as ropemaking.
Paulus the Hermit c. Eventually, many adopted a modified eremitic existence, living as hermits but near each other for occasional gatherings and support. Their power was in their words, words usually read aloud, in the way of traditional reading. In those manuscripts are stories, reflections on stories, ideas spun from human observation and experience. These manuscripts changed the world because their words were heard.
They were taken seriously, seriously enough at times to prompt rebuttal or controversy, admiration or adoption. But they were heard. We are at great risk of losing the capacity to listen and, therefore, of losing our ability to understand. The opening word of St. The wisdom contained in them is eroded by the forgetting that besets a diaspora community severed from its roots, resettled in a strange place and often undergoing the slow but inexorable loss of its language and distinctive ways.
What happens when we fail to listen, or forget the wisdom of the ancestors? No institution, however venerable, is immune to the consequences of forgetting its ideals or ignoring the voices of its critics.
Peter the Venerable was abbot of Cluny at its zenith; six centuries later, the monastery and its great church were plundered and its library burned. At one time Cluny had represented a great reform of Benedictine life. At its end, it represented everything the poor had come to hate about the concentration of wealth and power in the church and the aristocracy.
And yet, Benedictines are still here. We are still working on that. What is true of my small part of the human community is also true of nations when they forget to listen, or simply give up trying.
Our fragile planet has never been so threatened, nor the human beings who inhabit it so divided. The terrain for rational discourse has shrunk to a narrow strip between camps defined and limited by their political views, religious beliefs, race or ethnic identity, beset by anxiety that easily becomes fear and then violence. In such times as these, we must dig deeply into our respective stores of wisdom and offer whatever we find for the sake of mutual understanding, the only possible basis for reconciliation and for the resolve to move forward for the common good.
Our fragile planet has never been so threatened. We are today facing a new temptation to ostracize and demean, this time because of the sincerely held religious beliefs of our Muslim sisters and brothers. This is not simply a divisive geopolitical issue but an urgent local problem, even in my adopted state of Minnesota with its immigrant Somali and other Muslim communities. As medieval Christian scholars of Arabic manuscripts came to understand, their enemy was not Islam, however deep their theological differences.
The common enemy was—and remains—the fanaticism and ignorance that make understanding impossible. My roots in an ancient monastic tradition give me a certain perspective, and dare I say, a certain confidence and hope when considering the work that lies before us.
I recall the story told long ago by a young African man, confused and emotionally tormented, who heard the voice of a child chanting, Tolle, lege; tolle, lege. Pick it up and read it. His name was Augustine, and in time he would become the finest writer of Western Christianity. But first he had to pick up the book—of course it was a manuscript—and read.
May we do the same. Columba Stewart, O. Your source for jobs, books, retreats, and much more. These are the monks who still preserve ancient texts around the world. Columba Stewart December 27, What We Learn From Manuscripts Even though manuscripts—handwritten books— are at least several technological stages behind the ways we access information today, we still rely on them for access to the past. Saving Cultural Treasures From War The work I do today to preserve manuscripts began in as an effort by my monastery to microfilm Latin manuscripts in European Benedictine libraries.
Cultures Ancient and Modern: Books on the Bible. An Unusual Partnership: Islamic scholars at Jesuit universities. Columba Stewart Columba Stewart, O. Show Comments. Join the conversation: Login or create an account. Before you can comment, you need to update your profile to include your first and last name, as required in our comments policy. Then reload this page and you'll be set up for commenting. Update your profile. Comments are automatically closed two weeks after an article's initial publication.
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