Life in a Medieval Monastery

The word monastery comes from the Greek word ‘monos’, which means alone. The first Christian monks and nuns were hermits who lived on their own in lonely places, which enabled them to live lives of purity and prayer.

Monastic life in Western Europe began with St. Benedict (AD 480 – 547) who started the first Benedictine Monastery at Monte Cassino in Italy.

The abbot or abbess was, and still is, the spiritual head of the monastery. The abbot/abbess could be a landless noble, who used the church as a means of social advancement. Often the second sons of noble families would be sent to monasteries to become an abbot to prevent them from rebelling against the advantages provided to the eldest son.

Under the abbot/abbess was a prior/prioress, who would be in charge of the monastery in the absence of the abbot, who might be required to travel on church business. There could also be a sub-prior. Other important members of the monastic community included the cellarer (in charge of food storage and preparation) and specialists in the care of the sick, building maintenance, farming, masonry and education.

Abbeys were self-sufficient and grew all their own food and carried out their own building repairs and new construction projects. Many monasteries made money from farming projects such as breeding sheep for wool as well as renting out some of their lands.

Any man or woman could become a monk or a nun but once they had joined a monastery or convent and taken their vows they were expected to spend the rest of their lives in the same monastery living by strict rules. They could not own any property and they were not allowed outside the monastery walls without permission from the abbot. They were not allowed to receive letters from home.

If a monk or nun disobeyed the rules of their order they would be punished with exclusion from common prayer and in severe cases, expulsion.

The life of a medieval monk would have been strictly regulated by periods of prayer, beginning before dawn in the morning and finishing late in the evening. These periods of prayer could easily occur every three hours during the day.

The daily routine would differ from one order of monks to another. Monastic life was generally one of physical hard work (at least 3 hours a day were spent in manual labour), scholarship and prayer.

Meals would be served once a day in winter and twice in summer. All monks were expected to be silent during mealtimes but often they developed their own sign language so that they could still communicate with each other. Meals were simple and rarely included meat.

Monasteries were most numerous in Britain during the early 14th century, when there were as many as 500 monastic houses throughout the country. The Black Death (also known as the Plague) of the 1340’s dealt a hard blow to the monasteries as many of the monks caught the disease from mission work visiting the sick. The numbers never fully recovered before Henry VIII closed down all the monastic houses during the Dissolution of the Monasteries.

The main income for the monasteries were pilgrims. Pilgrims were people who travelled a great distance to a monastery. They could be encouraged to come in a number of ways, but the most common was to see a religious relic owned by the monastery. Such a relic could be the bones of a Saint, the blood of Christ, a fragment of the Cross and so on. Once pilgrims arrived at the monastery to pray at the relic they were often persuaded to buy a symbol to prove that they had visited that particular shrine.

Throughout the Medieval period the monasteries were the main places for scholarship and learning. The monks were by far the most educated members of society and many monasteries doubled as libraries for ancient manuscripts. The monks often spent their time writing out sacred texts.

Some monasteries also had ‘hospitals’ attached to them and the monks would carry out medical procedures themselves. Often, this was the only source of medical treatment for many people, especially the poorer members of society.