Medieval Monasticism Essay, Research Paper

There is small uncertainty that the cloistered ideal exercised a powerful influence on

the communities in which monasteries were found. It has been estimated that

there were about 340 spiritual houses and about 15,000 work forces and adult females in

spiritual orders in the last one-fourth of the 12th century in England and

Wales. Rievaulx and the other lasting Yorkshire abbeys are testimony to the

major constructing work so under manner in that portion of the European community.

Abbots such as Ailred became influential 52figures in the church ( Coleman,

1993 ) . Italian archimandrites were automatic members of male monarchs? councils, merely

because of their station, their influence, and their service. Though non the

foremost monastery founded to function Christian beliefs, and non even the first

founded by St. Benedict, Monte Cassino was founded in 529 by Saint Benedict of

Nursia on the site of an Apollonian temple, northwest of Naples, and was to

go the best known. Monte Cassino became the place of the Benedictine Order

and was for many centuries the taking monastery in western Europe. It was

destroyed by Lombardsin 590, by Saracens in 884, and by temblor in 1349, and

was rebuilt each clip. The present edifices are in the manner of the 16th and

seventeenth centuries. Judged by the criterions of the clip, the Benedictine regulation

imposed no great sum of asceticism or asceticism. It required the proviso of

equal nutrient, vesture, and shelter for the monastics. Depending on the season of

the twelvemonth and the festival celebrated, the monastics each twenty-four hours devoted a period of

four to eight hours to observing the Divine Office and one period of seven or

eight hours to kip ; the balance of the twenty-four hours was divided about every bit between

work ( normally agricultural ) and spiritual reading and survey. The archimandrite was given

full patriarchal authorization over the community, but was himself capable to the

regulation and was required to confer with the members of the community on of import

inquiries. During the life-time of Benedict, his adherents spread the order

through the states of cardinal and western Europe ; it shortly became the lone

of import order in T

hose lands, staying so until the initiation of the Austin

Friars in the eleventh century and of the mendicant orders in the thirteenth century.

During the 11th and 12th centuries it was a centre of acquisition, peculiarly in

the field of medical specialty. The celebrated medical school at Salerno was established by

Monte Cassino monastics. Regardless of order, about all monasteries provided

community services missing in their local countries. They were the centres of

larning in a clip when illiteracy was the norm. They provided remainder and shelter

for travellers, and reding and consolation for any who asked. It was the nature of

a monastery to be self-supporting. With the attending given to prayer and

self-contemplation, it was necessary to go to to the affairs of endurance in the most

efficient manner possible, go forthing as much clip as possible for religious or

scholarly chases. That the order was ( and remains ) influential is indicated by

the sheer Numberss of leaders and those who were? sainthood eligible?

generated through it: Gregory I was the first of 50 Benedictines who have

occupied the apostolic throne ; some others were Leo IV ( 800? -55 ) ; Gregory VII ; Pius

VII ; and Gregory XVI ( 1765-1846 ) . St. Augustine, the adherent of Gregory the

Great who took the Benedictine regulation to England tardily in the sixth century, became

the first of a long list of Benedictine archbishops of Canterbury. Equally early as

1354 the order had provided 24 Catholic Popes, 200 cardinals, 7000 archbishops, 15,000

bishops, 1560 canonized saints, and 5000 sanctum individuals worthy of canonisation, a

figure since increased to 40,000, and it had included 20 emperors, 10 empresses,

47 male monarchs, 50 Queenss, and many other royal and baronial individuals. The order had

37,000 monastics in the fourteenth century ; in the fifteenth century it had 15,107. The

Reformation drastically reduced the Numberss of the Benedictines, but today, 1400

old ages after its initiation, the order non merely still exists, but is rather active

in diverse countries of the universe. Contemporary Christians are frequently cautioned,

? Don? T be so heavenly minded that you? re no earthly good. ? The

monitors could hold taken their cue from these active, lovingness, involved

monasteries.