Monks Apart from the Church, devout Christians had another kind of organisation. Some deeply religious people chose to live isolated lives, in contrast to clerics who lived amongst people in towns and villages. They lived in religious communities called abbeys or monasteries, often in places very far from human habitation. Two of the more well-known monasteries were those established by St Benedict in Italy in and of Cluny in Burgundy in .
Monks took vows to remain in the abbey for the rest of their lives and to spend their time in prayer, study and manual labour, like farming. Unlike priesthood, this life was open to both men and women – men became monks and women nuns. Except in a few cases, all abbeys were single-sex communities, that is, there were separate abbeys for men and women. Like priests, monks and nuns did not marry.
From small communities of or men/women, monasteries grew to communities often of several hundred, with large buildings and landed estates, with attached schools or colleges and hospitals. They contributed to the development of the arts. Abbess Hildegard (see p. ) was a gifted musician, and did much to develop the practice of community singing of prayers in church.
From the thirteenth century, some groups of monks – called friars – chose not to be based in a monastery but to move from place to place, preaching to the people and living on charity. ACTIVITY Discuss examples of expected patterns of behaviour between people of different social levels, in a medieval manor, a palace. and in a place of worship. The word ‘monastery ’ is derived from the Greek word ‘monos’, meaning someone who lives alone.
In Benedictine monasteries, there was a manuscript with chapters of rules which were followed by monks for many centuries. Here are some of the rules they had to follow: Chapter : Permission to speak should rarely be granted to monks. Chapter : Humility means obedience. Chapter : No monk should own private property.
Chapter : Idleness is the enemy of the soul, so friars and sisters should be occupied at certain times in manual labour, and at fixed hours in sacred reading. Chapter : The monastery should be laid out in such a way that all necessities be found within its bounds: water, mill, garden, workshops. St Michael’s, Benedictine abbey in Farnborough, England. A Benedictine monk working on a manuscript, woodcut.
T HE T HREE O RDERS T HEMES IN W ORLD H ISTORY By the fourteenth century, there was a growing uncertainty about the value and purpose of monasticism. In England, Langland’s poem, Piers Plowman (c. - ), contrasted the ease and luxury of the lives of some monks with the ‘pure faith’ of ‘simple ploughmen and shepherds and poor common labourers.’ Also in England, Chaucer wrote the Canterbury Tales (see quotation below) which had comic portraits of a nun, a monk and a friar.