Monasticism and Religious Orders
"Behold, how good it is, and how pleasant, / where brethren dwell as one!" — Psalms 133:1
Throughout the history of Christianity, there have always been individuals who, by temperament, situation, or vocation, desired more intense modes of living a life oriented around worshiping God, seeking forgiveness from God, or living out one’s deepest convictions about God. Many — perhaps most — early and medieval Christians with such feelings found ways of integrating their religious feelings into their “normal” lives, even if duty, circumstance, or sheer fatigue allowed this to be achieved only imperfectly. Other early Christians found fulfillment by seeking clerical status, entering the priesthood or diaconate and thus serving God by performing sacraments, leading worship, and tending to the poor, sick, and needy under their jurisdictions. From the fourth century on, however, a new option emerged in Christendom: monasticism.
Monasticism within early and medieval Christianity constituted a way of life that allowed one to turn away from “the world” (meaning the life of secular affairs such as family, politics, and trade) in order to focus on religious devotional practices. Two basic traditions or varieties of monasticism exist within historical Christian contexts: eremitic monasticism and cenobitic monasticism. Eremitic monasticism (from the Greek word eremos, “desert”) involves withdrawal from the world into a life of solitary or semi-solitary prayer and other devotional practices, including often ascetic practices such as fasting or the mortification of the flesh). Practitioners of eremitic monasticism (usually called “hermits”) often lived in places of difficult access, such as deserts, forests, mountaintops, although they are sometimes found in more urban settings as anchorites or anchoresses dwelling in enclosed cells adjacent to churches or cathedrals. In contrast, practitioners of cenobitic monasticism (from Greek koinos bios, “common life”) withdrew from the world to seek out a life of religious devotion in community with others, usually in monasteries but, in the later Middle Ages, sometimes also in other forms of community living. Cenobitic monastics were typically called either monks or nuns.
In a certain sense, monasticism is as old as Christianity itself. The Gospels tell of the figure of John the Baptist, who lived alone in the Galilean wilderness, subsisting on locusts and honey, and who preached repentance and baptism for the forgiveness of sins. Behind John is the Old Testament figure of Elijah, the Hebrew prophet who found himself exiled to the desert, where he eventually encounters God Himself, first in the form of a great whirlwind and finally as “a still, small voice” (1 Kings 19:12). And of course, continuing in the line of both John and Elijah is Jesus Christ himself, who retreats to the desert and fasts there for forty days, successfully withstanding three great temptations by the Devil (cf. Matthew 4:1-11). Christian hermits and anchorites certainly saw in all these figures a model for how a deeper spiritual life could be led in isolation from society, a direct exposure of one’s will, of one’s whole self, to God. At the same time, Christianity from its earliest origins also reveled in life lived in community, as Paul frequently emphasizes in his epistles. Many medieval Christians, especially those in cenobitic monasteries, would look back to Jesus and his disciples, hoping to recapture in some way the spirit of the original apostolic community, a life of shared resources and mutual love.
While there had probably always been some individuals who felt that their devotion to God could best be practiced away from the cares of the world (and the eyes of society), the first stirrings of a widespread monastic movement came in the late third century. The more Christianity became an accepted religion within the Roman Empire, even a religion of the masses, the more certain individuals sought spiritual fulfillment beyond society, beyond the compromises and exigencies of what they came to call “the world.” Typically, these people fled to the “desert” places of Egypt, Palestine, and Arabia in search of a purer way — we might now say a more “authentic” way — of communing with their God, of living out a life in accordance with the precepts of Christ. These were the so-called “Desert Fathers” and “Desert Mothers,” early practitioners of eremitic monasticism. They explicitly rejected the values of the secular world and sought instead a life of ascetic rigor, solitary meditation, and prayer, dwelling in huts or caves and scraping by on subsistence farming, basket weaving, or other minor trades. Much like many Buddhist monastics, the Desert Mothers and Fathers recognized that the self — with all its cares and foibles, its residual fears, and its almost perpetual tendency toward self-aggrandizement — needed constant supervision and regulation, and they strove to leave their selves behind and to expose them, like carrion exposed to the desert sky, to the scrutiny and will of God. The goal was ceaseless prayer of praise and thanksgiving to God, a life focused solely around God. As Abba Bessarion supposedly once said, “The monk should be all eye, like the cherubim and seraphim.” Or, as a story related in the Verba Seniorum (The Sayings of the Elders) relates:
“Abba Lot came to Abba Joseph and said: Father, according as I am able, I keep my little rule, and my little fast, my prayer, meditation, and contemplative silence; and according as I am able I strive to cleanse my heart of thoughts: now what more should I do? The elder rose up in reply and stretched out his hands to heaven, and his fingers became like ten lamps of fire. He said: Why not be totally changed into fire?”
St Antony of Egypt (259-356) is commonly held to be the earliest of the Desert Fathers, retreating into the tombs in the Egyptian wilderness around 270 CE. His explicit goal was to cultivate virtue and thus bring his soul in accord with the will of God. His life in the desert, as his great biographer Athanasius of Alexandria relates, was a non-stop struggle with temptation: the temptation to return to the comforts of society, the temptation to heed the distracting dragons of the self, and especially the temptation to indulge in physical pleasures. Athanasius, who knew Antony, describes the hermit’s ceaseless vigilance against the assaults of demons, who would torment the saint with the “stumbling blocks” of evil thoughts. As Antony preached,
“We must not fear their suggestions; for by prayers and fastings and trust in the Lord they are defeated at once. Yet when defeated they do not cease, but come back again wickedly and deceitfully. For when they cannot mislead the heart with plainly unclean delights, they attack again in another way and try to frighten it by weaving phantoms, taking the forms of women, of beasts and reptiles, and gigantic bodies, and armies of soldiers. But even so we must not fear their phantoms; for they are nothing, and quickly disappear, especially if one fortify oneself with faith and the sign of the Cross.” (34)
Antony’s warnings may strike a modern reader as morbidly austere, even delusional; and certainly the asceticism of Antony and the other Desert Fathers and Mothers has borne some dubious fruit in later Christian notions about the body and sexuality. However, what Antony and the others realized and were trying to convey was, again, that the biggest obstacle toward living in communion with God was one’s very self. To get the self out of the way, to rebuff the manifold (demonic) cravings of the body and mind — only such discipline would allow the seeker to fully realize Jesus’ words that “The kingdom of heaven is within you” (Luke 17:12).
The history of the Desert Fathers and Mothers is ironic. The more success they found in their spiritual practices, the more their solitary lives were disturbed by others looking for advice and illumination. Antony in his later years surely found “disciples” more distracting than demons. In response, some of the hermits moved farther out into the desert, or removed to other inaccessible locales. The Syrian hermit Simeon the Stylite allegedly sat atop a pillar for years in search of respite from the crowds who came to solicit his advice. Other desert hermits adopted cryptic ways of speaking in order to repulse all but the most serious seekers, while others simply accepted the distractions as another hardship sent by God to temper their souls. The Egyptian Abba Pachomius (292-348), however, began to codify some “rules,” or ways of life, that his followers should practice, with an eye toward how the increasing numbers of seekers might live together in community. Cenobitic monasticism was thus born, and Pachomius’ rule became the basis of many later monastic rules. Pachomius allegedly had organized up to seven thousand monks in such communities in the Egyptian desert. A similar community sprang up in Lower Egypt, with up to five thousand monks and nuns. Melania the Elder (d. ca 410 CE), a Roman noblewoman from Spain and associate of Athanasius, set up a similar monastery in Jerusalem. Honoratus of Lérins (ca 350-429) adapted the rule of Pachomius for his followers on an island off the southern coast of Gaul. Even the famous Augustine of Hippo (354-430) composed a rule of life for his small group of intimates. It was probably John Cassian (ca 360-ca 435 CE), however, who was most responsible for introducing desert monasticism to the broader Roman world. A native of Asia Minor, Cassian spent much time among the monks in both Palestine and Egypt, and became deeply acquainted with the teachings of the Desert Fathers and Mothers. Fleeing theological controversy in Alexandria, Cassian eventually founded a monastery along the Pachomian Egyptian model near Marseilles in Gaul. His book The Institutes lays out a basic outlines of a devoutl life for monks and nuns, while his Conferences is a thematic collection of many dozens of sayings of and anecdotes about the Desert Fathers and Mothers. Both books proved pivotal in transmitting the ideas of desert monasticism to the Latin West.
The fifth and sixth centuries saw the steady proliferation of cenobitic monasticism, loosely following John Cassian’s model, throughout Gaul, Spain, Italy, and the British Isles. In more remote locales, like Ireland and Northumbria, these monasteries became important agents in the Christianization of their regions, the ranks of the monks and nuns often swelled by local elites seeking alternatives to secular power. Over time, variants of Pachomius’ or Cassian’s rule emerged; Caesarius of Arles (d. 542), Columbanus of Bobbio (d. 615), and others developed locally influential monastic rules. The former Roman senator Cassiodorus (d. 585), who established a monastery for both monks and hermits on his estates in southern Italy, composed his own Institutes as a way of providing a structure for their life of prayer and study. Cassiodorus' work proved influential for later monks and nuns, who would continue his mission of having monasteries be places for the copying of both classical and Christian texts and for the preservation of learning.
Monasticism especially flourished in Italy, where social unrest due to the collapse of the imperial government and the advent of the Ostrogothic regime drove many people to seek alternative ways of life. It is in this context that Benedict of Nursia (480-548) began to found monasteries and, eventually, to construct a new rule, adapting bits and pieces from some of the previous rules. The new Rule of Saint Benedict, as it came to be known, became in the long run the most influential and widespread of all monastic rules, especially after the ninth century, when it became the recommended monastic paradigm within the Carolingian Empire. The Rule of Saint Benedict was balanced, practical, and deeply humane. It focused the monastic life around work and prayer. While it eschewed the more extreme ascetic practices of desert monasticism, it was nonetheless committed to high spiritual seriousness, and it sought ways to encourage spiritual growth in the context of monks’ and nuns’ daily lives. Each Benedictine abbey (as they came to be called) was led by an abbot or abbess, who looked upon the monastics under his or her care both as a spiritual flock to be shepherded and as a spiritual family in need of parenting. Benedict emphasized that the abbot would be responsible to God for the mishandling of the souls under his care.
As for the monks and nuns themselves, Benedict’s Rule aimed at cultivating obedience and humility, and it stressed charitable work for the benefit of the community, and private study and prayer for the spiritual development of each individual; the Rule allowed concessions for age and physical health. The communal Benedictine life revolved around seven rounds of prayer — the canonical hours — at set intervals throughout the day: Vespers (at sunset), Compline (just before bed), Vigil/Matins (in the middle of the night), Lauds (just before dawn), Prime (early morning), Terce (mid-morning), Sext (noon), and Nones (mid-afternoon). (Their precise times varied seasonally, since, in the age before clocks, people naturally structured their time around daylight.) Each "hour" consisted of the chanting of a number of psalms, along with hymns or canticles, short prayers, and readings from Scripture; a full mass with Eucharist was typically celebrated on Sundays — more often later in the Middle Ages. In between these canonical hours, monks and nuns participated in various types of work, often agriculture, crafting, private reading, charitable assistance to the sick and destitute, or hospitality to travelers. Meals were eaten in common, usually accompanied by a reading from the Bible or from the work of an authoritative theologian, especially John Cassian, Augustine, Jerome, and Gregory the Great.
Physically, monasteries tended to consist of a cluster of buildings surrounded by a wall. The buildings would typically include a church or chapel, where the monks would meet to celebrate the canonical hours; a chapter house, where the monks could meet to conduct business; a refectory for dining; a dormitory, sometimes consisting of private cells; an infirmary for caring for the sick; a library; and sometimes a scriptorium, or other specialized buildings such as a bell-tower, a school, a brewery, or a guest house. Many monasteries also included a cloister, an enclosed arcade surrounding a usually square garden or open-air green, in which monks could gather, walk, or meditate. The monastery would be situated on farmlands that the monks (or their lay servants) might till or graze flocks upon, or which they might rent out to locals to generate further income. A monastery's real estate might also include a mill, a fishery, or other light industries. Monasteries might also have varying relations with the local population, some relying more than others on lay servants, some taking the responsibilities of landlordship more or less seriously, some providing charitable services (such as schooling or healing) to the local populace. Other abbeys, especially the Carthusian and Cistercian houses of the twelfth century, might have more minimal contact with the locals. Over time, some monasteries (like St Gall in Switzerland or Fontevrault in Anjou) grew wealthy, comfortable, and expansive, while others, faced with a poor endowment, poor terrain, or simple mismanagement, struggled to survive. More successful monasteries often established "daughter houses," or they supported priories — smaller satellite houses that comprised ten to twenty monks or nuns.
The rich and powerful in the secular world would often donate to monastic foundations, or would sometimes even establish new ones. Occasionally, the rich and powerful would themselves retire to such abbeys, hoping to atone for the misdeeds they may have committed in their secular life. At the very least, monasteries provided a place to house noble children who proved too inconvenient to marry off (third sons, unmarriageable daughters, children with chronic illness or handicaps, etc.). Over time, many abbeys thus became quite prosperous and even comfortable, and many rules were gradually relaxed; the very flexibility of The Rule of Saint Benedict provided the seeds of its undoing. And so, throughout the Middle Ages, a cyclical pattern emerges: a religious order is established with a sense of energy and rigor; it falls into a sort of corruption after several generations; it is then re-founded or renewed, always promising a return to the more primitive spiritual ideals of its original foundation. Hence the original Benedictine Order was reformed in the early ninth century under Benedict of Aniane (d. 821), who sought to restore the rigor of the original Rule. It was reformed again in the tenth century, this time even more dramatically, by Odo of Cluny (d. 942). The Cluniac houses, as those monasteries accepting Odo’s reforms came to be called, emphasized the independence of religious orders from secular influence and developed a far more elaborate liturgy around the canonical hours.
The last great reform of the Benedictine Order came in the later eleventh century, when Abbot Robert of Molesme (d. 1111) established a new monastery at Cîteaux in southern France, dedicated to return (again) to the rigors of the original Rule of Saint Benedict and focused especially on the encouragement of contemplative prayer. Known as the Cistercians, these new Benedictines profoundly affected the spiritual renewal of the twelfth century and produced some its most influential writers: Aelred of Rievaulx, William of St.-Thierry, and the famous Bernard of Clairvaux. Aspiring to the ideal of the monastery as a retreat from the world, the Cistercians chose to establish their houses in remote locations or difficult terrain. There, the industry of the Cistercians in clearing land and grazing sheep soon led to prosperity — and all the attendant worldly corruptions.
The eleventh and twelfth centuries also saw the emergence of newer types of monastic (and semi-monastic) lifestyles that moved beyond the Benedictine template. The Camaldolese Order of St Romuald (d. 1027) provided a rule for hermits, structuring their life around meditation on the Psalms. The Order of Carthusians, founded by Bruno of Cologne in 1084, aimed at combining cenobitic and eremitical forms of monasticism; the Carthusians embraced more ascetic practices than Benedictines (like fasting and silence) and made more space in their way of life for private prayer. The Augustinian Canons (or Canons Regular) adopted a looser rule, based on the rule that Augustine of Hippo had established for his household. Their establishments were priories, typically smaller than monasteries, and, though they cultivated their communal life, they were also involved in much greater pastoral outreach in the areas in which they lived. The Gilbertine Order, founded in 1130 by Gilbert of Sempringham, was an offshoot of the Augustinian Canons. The Premonstratensians or Norbertines (after their founder, Norbert of Xanten, d. 1134), who were another offshoot of the Augustinian Canons, embraced a more austere lifestyle.
As Europe became increasingly urbanized toward the end of the twelfth century, new types of religious orders sprang into being: the fraternal orders. Rather than eschew the world as most earlier monastics had done, most of the fraternal orders emphasized spreading the word of God and practicing charitable works, especially ministry to the poor. These orders thus did not think of themselves as monks but as friars. Unlike the typical cloistered monks, the friars were not bound to the monastery but found charitable work out among the people. Because they also were committed to vows of poverty, they made their way through the world primarily through begging, and were thus also known as the mendicant orders. The earliest of these were the Carmelites (or White Friars), who began as a group of hermits living in the Holy Land. The most famous were perhaps the Franciscans (the Grey Friars), named after their charismatic founder, the extraordinary Francis of Assisi (1182-1226); their sister order for nuns was known as the Poor Clares. Committed to living in solidarity with the humanity of Christ, the Franciscans were committed to providing pastoral care to the masses, preaching the gospel in village squares and on city streets; St Francis himself once even tried to convert the Sultan of Egypt. Famous Franciscan friars include Anthony of Padua, Roger Bacon, Bonaventure, Duns Scotus, and William of Ockham. The Dominican friars (also called the Black Friars) took their name from their founder, the Spanish priest Dominico de Guzmán (1170-1221). Calling themselves the Order of Preachers, the Dominicans saw their mission as education: they sought to preach the gospel and to fight against heresy. On the one hand, the Dominicans produced some of the sharpest and most learned minds of the Middle Ages: Vincent of Beauvais, Thomas of Camtimpré, Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, Catherine of Siena, Meister Eckhart, and Henry of Suso, as well as the painter Fra Angelico. They also, however, spearheaded the various Inquisitions set up to stamp out heresy during the Middle Ages and beyond, including the inquisition against the Cathar heresy and later the infamous Spanish Inquisition. The Augustinian Friars (or, in Anglophone contexts, the “Austin Friars”) constituted groups of mendicant hermits living under the Rule of Augustine seeking penance and solitude. Several smaller mendicant orders existed as well: the Servites, the Mercedarians, the Trinitarians, the Minims.
A notable feature of many of the mendicant orders was their openness to lay participation, surely a function of their missionary work among the people. Both the Franciscans and the Dominicans offered “tertiary orders” or “lay orders”: a member of the laity could become a member of the Franciscans or Dominicans, living under a modified version of their rule without taking vows and while still participating to some extent in their daily lives of work and family. Pious married couples, widows and widowers, or anyone feeling an intense spiritual calling might potentially join one these lay orders. There is evidence that the Florentine poet Dante Alighieri may in fact have been a Franciscan tertiary. In the later Middle Ages, religious order for the laity beyond the framework of the mendicant orders began to appear. The most well-known of these are the Beguines, groups of laywomen, mainly in the Low Countries in the thirteenth century, who lived in intentional religious community but did not take formal vows. They devoted themselves to prayer and charitable works, and their semi-monastic/semi-secular lifestyles produced some of the richest religious writings of the period, including Hadewijch of Brabant’s poems and visions, Mechtild of Magdeburg’s Flowing Light of the Godhead, and Marguerite Porete’s Mirror of Simple Souls. Another lay religious order, the fourteenth-century Friends of God, was a study and prayer group with mystical inclinations based in Basel, Strasbourg, and Cologne. Yet another lay order, the Brethren of the Common Life, were, like the Beguines, laymen who lived and worked together but who did not take formal vows. They were dedicated to living a life of pious humility and simplicity in accord with the human life lived by Jesus and to fighting against clerical corruption. Founded by Gerard Groote (1340-1384) in the late fourteenth century, the Brethren’s chief literary expression arrived with The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis (d. 1471), which was a major influence on Erasmus, Thomas More, and Martin Luther, and, through them, on the religious reformations of the sixteenth century.
As the above survey has shown, the monastic life throughout the Middle Ages was manifested in a rich variety of forms. Its legacies have been likewise mixed. Certainly monastic foundations were responsible for keeping much learning alive throughout the earlier Middle Ages: much of the intellectual output of Antiquity survived because monastic houses — Benedictines in particular — dedicated manpower to the copying of manuscripts and the maintenance of monastic libraries. Indeed, most Western European books of any sort before the year 1100 were likely produced in a Benedictine monastery. Monk, nuns, and friars also constituted some of the finest medieval historians (such as the Venerable Bede, William of Malmesbury, and Matthew Paris) and most of the finest theologians (including Anselm of Bec, Hildegard of Bingen, Richard of St Victor, Bernard of Clairvaux, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, Catherine of Siena, and Meister Eckhart). Gregorian plainchant, a product of the Benedictine reforms of the ninth century, was a pervasive influence on the history of Western music. Monasteries also served as valuable safe havens for travelers throughout the Middle Ages, and later orders, especially the mendicant orders, were instrumental in establishing what we now think of as “social services”: hospitals, orphanages, soup kitchens.
At the same time, human nature being what it is, religious orders, like all human institutions, had a tendency toward complacency and corruption. Critics of religious orders are rife throughout the Middle Ages; the privileged status of monks and friars, as well as their relative immunity from secular authority, only emphasized their potential hypocrisy. Guibert of Nogent bears first-hand witness to many instances of petty vice within the monastery walls, the Goliardic poets of the twelfth century lampooned the Benedictines, Walter Map mercilessly critiqued the Cistercians, Jean de Meun satirized all the mendicant orders — and even in the Middle Ages “pregnant nuns” were a running joke. Many a monk and friar is to be found in Dante’s Inferno, more often among the lowest circles of Hell. Boccaccio's Florence is positively teeming with lascivious friars. Chaucer’s hypocritical Monk, a lover of the hunt and of fine food, his wrathful and avaricious Friar, and his fastidious but bloody-minded Prioress (presumably a Benedictine) stand as perhaps the more memorable instances of clerical vice. Such critiques continued throughout the Middle Ages and doubtless constituted part of the mental world of Martin Luther — himself a former Augustinian friar — at the opening of the Protestant Reformation.
All that said, the long history of medieval religious orders, both within and without the abbey walls, also bears witness to the perennial human impulse toward a higher life, the constant human aptitude toward renewal and, in medieval Christian terms, conversion. The religious orders, in their ideal incarnations, offered to their most serious practitioners an almost seamless interweaving of what Agamben has called the structure and the content of one’s life. Whether expressed as desert asceticism or anchoritic contemplation, as Benedictine “work and prayer” or Franciscan fellow-feeling, as penitential retirement or as mystical ecstasy, the medieval religious orders promised a well-trodden road to salvation, a mode of keeping one’s whole life in tune with the melody first sung by Jesus Christ Guibert of Nogent, never ignorant of the shortcomings of religious orders, saw life in the monastery as far preferable, and far more conducive to the salvation of one’s soul, than the magnificent follies committed by rich and poor alike in the secular world. Christina of Markyate could look back at her life before the anchorage and the priory and rest assured that she could be her true self more as a bride of Christ than as the wife of an oafish burgher’s son. Herrad of Landsberg looked upon the abbey she oversaw as almost an outpost of Paradise, the nuns under her care — young and old, sweet and sour, lovely and unlovely — as future citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven. The most ardent Franciscan friars, remembering their master’s Christ-like humility and his breathless “Canticle of the Sun,” could look around them and see everywhere evidence of God’s grandeur. In an age as imperfect as any other, medieval religious orders kept alive the human potential for self-transcendence and perfection.
Further Reading
- Giorgio Agamben, The Highest Poverty: Monastic Rules and Form-of-Life, trans. Adam Kotsko (Stanford University Press, 2013)
- Benedict of Nursia, The Rule of Saint Benedict, trans. Bruce L. Venarde, Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library (Harvard University Press, 2011)
- Fiona Bowie, ed., and Oliver Davies, trans., Beguine Spirituality: Mystical Writings of Mechtild of Magdeburg, Beatrice of Nazareth, and Hadewijch of Brabant (Crossroad Publishing, 1990)
- John Cassian, Conferences, trans. Colm Luibheid (Paulist Press, 1985)
- Guibert of Nogent, Monodies and On the Relics of Saints, trans. Joseph McAlhany and Jay Rubinstein (Penguin Classics, 2011)
- Julie Kerr, Life in the Medieval Cloister (Continuum, 2009)
- David Knowles, Christian Monasticism (McGraw-Hill, 1969)
- Jean Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God (Fordham University Press, 1982)
- The Life of Christina of Markyate, trans. Samuel Fanous and Henrietta Leyser (Oxford University Press, 2008)
- Gert Melville, The World of Medieval Monasticism: Its History and Forms of Life, trans. James D. Mixson (Liturgical Press, 2016)
- Thomas Merton, intro. and trans., The Wisdom of the Desert (New Directions, 1960)
- Anne Savage and Nicholas Watson, trans., Anchoritic Spirituality: Ancrene Wisse and Associated Spiritual Works (Paulist Press, 1991)
- Columba Stewart, Cassian the Monk (Oxford University Press, 1998)
- Ugolino di Monte Santa Maria, The Little Flowers of St. Francis of Assisi, trans. W. Heywood (Vintage Spiritual Classics, 1998)
- Helen Waddell, trans., The Desert Fathers, preface by Basil Pennington (Vintage, 1998)