MONASTICISM

Looking back at the Middle Ages, I think that the thing which seems most strange to the modern world is monasticism. In an era, where we are conditioned both to try and get as much for ourselves as possible, and to view our success or failure in terms of that, the idea of giving everything up and living a contemplative life of prayer seems, well, kind of weird.

But it's only weird because we think differently. For mediæval people, or at least for the aristocratic elite who were the driving force behind it and financed it, monasticism was intensely practical, as practical as carpentry or plumbing. Monks fought battles just as real as mounted knights fought battles; indeed, they were even more important, since they were against the supernatural enemies that everybody knew were present in the world. Secondly, they gave an outlet for penance. Mediæval penances could be extremely heavy. After the Battle of Hastings, and despite the fact that Duke William's invasion had been semi-blessed by the Pope in advance, Norman bishops gave a penance of one year for each man killed by the victorious army. For a knight who had just faced death in battle, trying to help conquer a whole kingdom in the hope of land and plunder, that must have been a real pain. So having a load of monks to do the penance for you (penance was hugely important, but it didn't matter who did it) must have been quite a relief. Thirdly, when wealth was a function of land ownership, and children expected to inherit, monasteries provided a way for great families to provide for some of their members without having to carve up their estates. A fairly cushy bachelor life, not dissimilar to all-male clubs a hundred years ago.

When the reasons are stated like that, it's easy to see how the monastic ideal could be corrupted. Indeed, taking the long view, the whole history of monasticism is a continual cycle, in which the initial resources provided to start things off (land, buildings, endowments, younger sons) eventually led to slackness, nepotism and great wealth; and finally a call for spiritual reform and renewal, starting the cycle in some new place.

Monasteries today are of course not like mediæval ones, they really are places where there is a simple and contemplative life. But because of that, there are also a lot fewer number of them than there were. Since being a monk in the modern world really is weird.

Walter Blotscher