Early Monasticism Unit 5 Topic 1

Monasteries

• Houses where men or women dedicated their lives to God by vows

• Live in community, pray, and work

• Places of stability

Monks (men) & Nuns (women) → cloistered (they stay at the monastery) 

Vows → obedience

(Benedictines) Stability conversion of life

Poverty, chastity, and obedience Jesus is the model(everyone else)

Novice 

Cloister → part of a monastery reserved for the use of monks/nuns only

Rise of Monasticism

• St. Benedict (480 - 547)

  • Abbot of Monte Cassino 

  • Wrote the Rule of St. Benedict 

    • Guide for monks 

    • Two major pillars: prayer and work (ora et labora)

  • Monasteries were in the country 

    • Self - sufficient 

St. Basil (Eastern monasticism)

Cluniacas and Cistercians 

Cluniacs (early 900s)

• Felt Benedictine abbeys had become too rich, lost the original spirit of the Rule

• Started a new abbey in Cluny

  • Restore primitive observance of the Rule 

Cistercians (1098)

• Felt Cluny had also become too rich 

• Founded at the abbey of Citeaux

• St. Bernard enters here

Nuns

• St. Scholastica (480 - 543)

  • Sister of St. Benedict 

  • Founders Benedictine nuns

• St. Hildegard of Binegen (c. 1098 - 1179)

  • Abbess, writer, composer

Abbot & Abbess → superior of a monastery

Abba → father 

→ (Aramaic)

Contributions of Monasteries

• Housed pilgrims and travelers

• Ran hospitals

• Centers of education 

  • Ran schools

  • Scriptoriums copied out books, preserving ancient works

    • Illuminated manuscripts

      • Decorated books