The Role and Significance of the Monastic Life in Medieval Christianity
What is monasticism?
The central and original role of the monastic life can be drawn from the meanings of the words 'monk' and 'hermit'. the word 'monk' comes from the Greek word 'monaches' which means solitary and 'hermit' from 'heremites' a desert dweller. The early monks and nuns were just that: men and women who fled the worldliness of urban life and the ethos of a church that was at the time of Anthony and St. Paul and established institution of the Roman Empire. They fled to the desert to repent and seek God by prayer, fasting and hard manual labour. In the desert they practiced an aesthetical lifestyle of great poverty
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Therefore to begin with in order to set the monastic life in context I am briefly going to look at society in the medieval Christianity civilisation.
For many centuries in the medieval west the rule for monks composed by Saint Benedict provided the standard pattern of monastic observance.
What was the Benedictine rule?
Richly endowed, and sometimes exploited by lay rulers, the great Benedictine abbeys came to hold a prominent place in the social landscape of Europe as landowning corporations, ecclesiastical patrons and centres of learning.
''we must' wrote Benedict in his preface 'create a scola for the Lord's Service.' in the language of the sixth century the word scola had a military as well as academic sense; it meant a special regiment of corps d'elite.'
(Lawrence: :28)
The Benedictine monastery was not a place of quiet retreat or leisure, neither was it a school in the academic sense; it was a kind of unit in which the recruit was trained and equipped for his spiritual warfare under an experienced commander- the abbot.
The central objective of the Benedictine monasteries was the conquest of spirituality and self will that made a man receptive to God. In order to achieve this the rule prescribed careful ordered routine of prayer, works and study which filled the day, varying only according to the liturgical year and
Practices. Even though just about every pope has hurt the Church in his own unique way, there are some common sins among them, such as the acts of simony and selling indulgences. These sins are closely related because one led to the other. Simony is selling positions within the Church, which led to corrupt people buying their way in, and once they were in, they sold the people certificates called indulgences that were supposed to get one's soul out of purgatory, and then pocketed the profits from this. Once people started finding out about these shady dealings, it revealed the hypocrisy of the Church. They would preach ideas like the one found in 1 Timothy 6:10 "For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving
buildings within. I could also safely say that most of the other schools in the
Deep within the trees little hooded men walk along a path to meditate and pray dressed in brown robes tied with nautical rope. They dwell in silence and live a life of celibacy. This is what most of think of when we hear the word monk. Throughout the years, monks have always been people of intrigue. They live a different lifestyle than most. They live a life of seclusion far from the mores of modern society, which often makes people ponder who these people really are and why they choose to participate in such a foreign religious movement. This paper will attempt to unravel the mysteries of this peculiar movement of by researching it's origin, the true meaning of a silent lives, and how key leaders have helped to
Towards the end of the Middle Ages and into the duration of the Renaissance, the Medieval Church’s social and political power dwindled. Centuries prior the Catholic Church gained a surplus of control, largely due to the stability it maintained during the chaotic breakdown of the Western Roman Empire . Yet toward the end of the Middle Ages the Church set in motion factors that would ultimately lead to its downfall as the definitive figure of authority. However, despite political and social controversy surrounding the church, the institutions it established cleared a path for a new way of thinking, shaping society in an enduring way.
The five Benedictine Values are incorporated into every class as a way to better ourselves. Each is defined from the college website and includes topics that are important for continuing my education based upon what I have learned in class. The first one is community, which is creating an environment that promotes a sense of community by being responsible and supporting each other. To be a community we need to treat each other with love. Life chances is a part of being a community. Life Chances is where a person born into poverty stays in poverty. This is a phenomenon that refers to how families can never get out of poverty because it passes on to the next generation. Life chances are what each person is given to become something in life. Someone that has a lot of money has much better life chances than does someone born into poverty. A person born into poverty is more likely to remain in poverty. We can become a community by eliminating the lower, middle, and upper class in the United States. When we eliminate this monetary value we are just one big community that we are all open arms and willing to help anyone.
How did the rise of the monastic movement affect Augustine 's thinking about marriage in his Confessions? The monastic movement was questioning if it was the right thing to do, leaving the city to follow the Christian faith. The main idea that was on Christians minds was of sex, marriage, property and a career. Augustine wants to be baptized under the Christian faith when he was 33 years old because he made the decision that he was going to renounce about marriage and a successful career. When he wrote in his book the Confessions being married “Christians seemed like a pale approximation of authentic Christianity.”( The Christian
Religion had an enormous impact on almost all aspects of life in the medieval world. In the Christian belief, the first two people that were created by God were Adam and Eve. They were provided with a paradise to live in,the garden of Eden, and were only given one rule that they had to follow to not eat from the tree of good and evil. If they did eat fruit from the tree, then they would have to leave the paradise. Eve was tempted by Satan, and ate the fruit. She then gave some of that fruit to Adam, and they were banned from the garden. For this reason, women were seen as dangerous temptresses. This story showed that women were morally weaker, and were likely to lead their spouses into sin. They became known as the “weaker” sex, for it was a woman who first consumed the fruit in the Garden of Eden.
The Crusades were forceful battles acclimated by the Latin Roman Catholic Abbey throughout the Top Middle Ages through to the end of the Backward Middle Ages. In 1095 Pope Urban II announced the native campaign, with the proclaimed aspiration of subsiding Christian confirmation to the celestial places in and side by side Jerusalem. Proliferating students of history and some of those unpredictable at the time, in the same way as Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, accord agreeing precedence to included ecclesiastical authorized forceful battles attempted for an exhibit of religious, financial, and political reasons, for example, the Albigensian Crusade, the Aragonese Crusade, the Reconquista, and the Northern Crusades. Taking after the native in light of the fact that there was an exchange 200-year endeavor for command of the Angelic Land, with six included above campaigns and plenteous extra ones. In 1291, the fight finished up in premature birth with the decrease of the continue Christian bastion in the Angelic Land at Acre, thereafter which Roman Catholic Europe armed force no included articular affirmation in the east.
At the time, the monastic society was very disorganized. Seeing this, St Anthony took action and organized the system, making them name their cause and purpose. Because of this, St Anthony is often called the Father of Monasticism (“St Anthony of Egypt”, Crawley). St Anthony successfully avoided the temptation of the Devil. When St Anthony was tempted throughout his life, St Anthony stayed faithful to God and avoided the temptations. St Anthony was victorious over the devil, “From these psychic struggles Anthony emerged as the sane and sensible father of Christian monasticism” (Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica). Finally, St Anthony was a great saint. I like St Anthony because his devotion to God and prayer. For a majority of his life, St Anthony remained a hermit in solitude, praying to God (Orthodox Church in America). St Anthony was a great saint due to all of his accomplishments and devotion to
By The Middle Ages, one understands a relatively long historical period extending from the end of the Roman Empire to the 1500's. The conquest of The Roman Empire by Germanic tribes, and synthesis of Germanic and Roman ways of life formed the civilization which we call medieval (medieval-from Latin words; medium (middle) and aevum (age)). Medieval civilization was greatly influenced by the Muslims in Spain and The Middle East, and by Byzantine Empire and Christians in Southeast Europe.
Over the past years of my life I have seen many changes, some for the good and others not as good. Change can be demanding and also crucial. The early believers would encounter this. One can see that significant change happened, when reading through the gospels and the book of acts it is obvious to the reader that the believers who followed Jesus would never be the same again.
Early in second and third century Christian history, violence against Christians by the Roman Empire, struggles against pagan ideology, practices that were corrupting the Church, and certain lax spiritual discipline had crept into many areas of the Christian faith. As some leaders attempted to control the faith by growing their personal power and influence on the political front, others sought escape from the spiritual darkness they perceived among the world to retain their own spiritual purity.
People in the middle ages were very religious. People believed that Roman Catholic Church represent God. The church had a big influence on the content spread in the Middle Ages, and they were content with religious or moralistic. The only religion recognized in Middle Ages Europe was Christianity and specifically Catholicism. Christianity in the middle ages dominated the lives. The life of the medieval people was dominated entirely by the church and many religious institutions gained power and wealth. It was single the larges institution in west of Europe. It touched everyone’s life no matter what rank in social class they lived in. Everyone in western Europe was Rome Catholic Christian at that time. From the reaches king all the way down.
The Middle Ages were a period in Europe dating from the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West, around the 5th century. However, the fixing of dates for the beginning and end of the Middle Ages is arbitrary. According to the Norton Anthology, "Medieval social theory held that society was made up of three 'estates': the nobility, composed of a small hereditary aristocracy,...,the church, whose duty was to look after the spiritual welfare of that body, and everyone else..."( Norton 76).
The nature of Cluny lay in the circumstances of it’s foundation. It was endowed with a measure of independence by it’s founder, Duke William, allowing the monks to elect their own abbot, placing the abbey directly under the guardianship of St Peter and the Apostolic See. As a house dedicated to reviving strict Benedictine observance Cluny was not unique, but it was this indepencence, the succesion of talented abbots and it’s organisation set up by Abbot Berno that laid the foundations of the abbey’s later greatness.