According to an early biography, the young Saint Anthony (died 356) led a conventional Christian life until the day when, on the way to church, he “communed with himself and reflected as he walked how the Apostles left all and followed the Savior; and how they in the Acts sold their possessions and brought and laid them at the Apostles’ feet for distribution to the needy, and what and how great a hope was laid up for them in heaven” (Athansius, Life of Anthony 2). Anthony chose to give up his worldly routine in order to embrace Christ’s example as fully as possible, and in the fourth century, growing numbers of men and women embarked on the course that he charted. This way of life, called monasticism, imposed rigors and privations but offered spiritual purpose and a better hope of salvation. In western Europe, the focus of this essay, it exercised a powerful influence on society, culture, and art and was one of medieval Christianity’s most vigorous institutions.
The concept of withdrawal from society is essential to the Christian tradition of monasticism, a term that derives from the Greek word monachos , which means a solitary person. In regions around the eastern Mediterranean in the late third and early fourth centuries, men and women like Anthony—whose biography provided a model for future monks—withdrew into the Egyptian desert, depriving themselves of food and water as part of their effort to withstand the devil’s temptations. The ideal of the saint alone in the wilderness retained its appeal, but Pachomius (died 312/13) and others living along the Nile River pioneered an irresistible alternative in cenobitic monasticism, that is, retreat into a community of like-minded ascetics committed to daily regimens of work and prayer. In western Europe, some monks and nuns settled far from cities and towns, seeking lives of devotion and self-denial in inhospitable or fortified locations, but other communities flourished in populous places, where they might withdraw from the world in spirit and yet remain nearby to offer instruction and guidance.
Monks and nuns performed many practical services in the Middle Ages, for they housed travelers, nursed the sick, and assisted the poor; abbots and abbesses dispensed advice to secular rulers. But monasticism also offered society a spiritual outlet and ideal with important consequences for medieval culture as a whole. Monasteries encouraged literacy, promoted learning, and preserved the classics of ancient literature, including the works of Cicero, Virgil, Ovid, and Aristotle. To beautify the celebration of the liturgy, monastic composers enriched the scope and sophistication of choral music, and to create the best environment for devotion, monasticism developed a close and fruitful partnership with the visual arts. The need for books and buildings made religious houses active patrons of the arts, and the monastic obligation to perform manual work allowed many monks and nuns to serve God as creative artists. Exceptionally, some of them signed their works in words that seem intended not only to name the maker but also to identify the object as a prayerful offering. So the Latin inscription on an exquisite silver chalice (47.101.30) translates, “In honor of the Blessed Virgin brother Bertinus made this in the year 1222,” and the three nuns who made a fourteenth-century lace altarcloth (29.87) included their own names in the fabric along with the wish, “May our work be acceptable to you, o kindly Jesus.”
Every monastic community consisted of men or women vowed to celibacy and bound by a set of regulations. By 400, several rules were current, each of which stated the spirit and discipline of monastic life in a different way. In time, communities observing the same rule found a shared identity as an order. For instance, instructions written by Augustine of Hippo (354–430) for a group of nuns in North Africa gained the status of a rule for the Augustinian order. In addition to discussing the leadership and activities of the community, Augustine describes the emotional bond that links the monastery to the faithful outside it: “Amid the great offenses with which this world everywhere abounds, I may be comforted at times by thinking of your number, your pure affection, your holy conversation, and the abundant grace of God which is given to you so that you not only have renounced matrimony, but have chosen to dwell with one accord in fellowship under the same roof, that you may have one soul and one heart in God” (Augustine, Letter 211).
Explanation:
