Retreats

In Byzantium

At the beginning of Christianity, Christians retired from active life to consecrate themselves to God in a life of prayer and celibacy. In reaction to the decline in the ethical life of Christians in the fourth century—the persecution of Christians ended and Christianity had become the majority religion—, monasticism became a more radical religious movement: monastics separated themselves from society and either lived as hermits (the Egyptian anchorites left Lower Egypt to live—retire (anakhōrein)—in the desert), or joined a community, in monasteries (Koinobion: common life). Monasticism, which began in the East (Egypt and Syria), spread throughout Christendom. Western monachism was organized according to the Rule of St. Benedict of Nursia (the Benedictines), but in the East each monastery had its own foundation charter (typikon), drawn up by the monastery’s founder. However, all the charters were based on the monastic Rule composed by Basil the Great in the fourth century.

After a period of initiation (novitiate), monks received the monastic habit and progressed through several stages along the monastic path (from wearing a portion of the habit to a full habit). Unlike monks in other religions, Christian monks made a life-long commitment to God. Monasteries also welcomed people who weren’t monks, prominent figures (sometimes emperors) who wanted to end their days in a monastery, and private individuals who, in exchange for a donation, were able to reserve a place in a monastery (adelphaton). Some monasteries had regular visitors who attended religious services and received spiritual guidance from a monk. Monasteries were also places of forced retreat (disgrace and imprisonment).

There were various types of monastery in Byzantium. The anchorites lived alone in a hut or small hermitage attached to a monastery. The lauras were groups of cells inhabited by reclusive monks grouped in a large area around a church where the hermits gathered for Sunday worship (Mar Saba in today’s West Bank). The cenobitic monasteries housed varying numbers of monks—several dozen to several hundred—in one establishment. A monk could change from one form of monastic life to another during the course of his life. In theory, after the laws introduced by Justinian (sixth century) favouring cenobitism, which was easier to control, monasteries were dependent on the local bishop. But, monasteries linked directly to the patriarch of Constantinople (‘stauropegiac’ monasteries), and even completely independent monasteries gradually increased in number.

Monasteries were usually surrounded by an enclosing wall, which sometimes took the form of ramparts, as in the fortified monasteries of Mount Athos, where solitary hermits took refuge in the event of a hostile incursion. The monastery’s buildings, grouped around the church (katholikon), where monks gathered for worship, comprised guest quarters for accommodating travellers, the monks’ cells (kellia), and communal areas (refectory, kitchen, storerooms, infirmary, library, and scriptorium). Life in the monastery was dictated by the liturgy: the Divine Liturgy (Mass) and the Liturgy of the Hours, composed of seven offices consisting of psalms, hymns, and metanies (bowing at the waist or prostrations), in private in the monk’s cell or in the church. Time not consecrated to prayer was divided into field work, craftwork, copying manuscripts, and domestic duties in the monastery (cooking, washing clothes, etc.).

Monasteries were established throughout the Byzantine Empire, in towns, cities, and villages. But they were mainly grouped in several large monastic centres, the most well-known of which is Mt. Athos, which occupies the easternmost of the three promontories of the Chalcidice (Khalkidhikí) Peninsula in northern Greece. Inhabited exclusively by monks and barred to women and female animals, the Athonite peninsula comprises dependencies (skítes) and large monasteries, such as the Lavra monastery (or Great Lavra monastery, founded in the tenth century by St. Athanasius the Athonite), the Iveron monastery (Georgian monks), the Hilandar monastery (Serbian monks), and the Vatopedi monastery. The Autonomous Monastic State of the Holy Mountain is administered by the Holy Council (comprising one senior representative of each of the monasteries), headed by a Protos (first elder or head monk). There are other isolated monastic colonies, such as Mount Latros near Miletus, Mount Olympus in Bithynia, and the Meteora in central Greece. In Constantinople, many monasteries attest to the important role played by monks in the Empire’s political life: the monastery of Stoudios, whose Rule was composed by Theodore the Studite (ninth century), influenced the regulae in many monasteries. From the eleventh century, Byzantine emperors and aristocrats were keen to establish monasteries that also housed charitable institutions; hospitals were added to some of these monasteries, such as the Pontokrator monastery founded by Jean II Comnenus, and the monastery of Petra founded by the Serbian King Milutin.

Although each monk had to live in poverty, many Byzantine monasteries possessed substantial landed property which generated income. The emperors and senior figures ensured they received divine protection by endowing the monasteries in exchange for the monks’ prayers, and anything given to a monastery was inalienable and exempt from tax. However, as the Empire’s financial situation declined, the State confiscated monastic property to fund the military.

Although the fall of the Empire led to the disappearance of many monasteries, particularly in Constantinople, many of the large monastic complexes have survived and played a key role in maintaining Byzantine Orthodoxy under the Ottoman Empire. More than 2,000 monks inhabit Mount Athos today.

In Western Europe

The origins of monastic life

The term monk (from the Greek monos, ‘alone’) designates a person who lives in seclusion to consecrate their life to God, through prayer and meditation. Christ had already set the example in the Gospel when he went into seclusion in the wilderness for forty days. And, in Judaism, the Essenian sect (1st cent. BC to the 1st cent. AD) was composed of structured communities that lived in seclusion in order to practice a rigorous religious life. With the rise of Christianity in the third and fourth centuries AD monastic life developed rapidly, particularly in the Holy Land and Egypt, and took two forms:  hermits or anchorites (recluses), like Saint Anthony, opted for complete solitude, while the coenobites like Saint Pachomius or Saint Basil of Caesarea preferred to live in a monastic community secluded from the world.

The beginnings of Western monasticism

St Martin introduced monastic life to Gaul at Ligugé (circa AD 361), then Honorat in the Lérins Islands, and Jean Cassien in Marseilles, at the beginning of the fifth century. As in the East, these communities had varied organizational rules. For example, Jean Cassien wrote a number of treatises, including the Institutions cénobitiques, which had a great impact in the West. Monastic life involved seclusion from the world, embracing poverty, humility, asceticism, prayer, chastity, stability, and obeisance to the father of the community—the abbot—chosen by the monks. The monks were generally not ordained priests, but they did take vows that implied commitment.

In the sixth century, St Benedict of Nursia (circa 480–504) drew up a very clear and practical Rule comprising 73 articles, for the foundation of Monte Cassino. It followed on from and simplified preceding Rules, like the so-called Master’s rule. It organized monastic life around celebrations, individual reading and meditation (lectio divina), and manual work. Despite the success of the rigorous Irish monasticism introduced to the continent by St Columban at the end of the sixth century, Pope Gregory the Great (590–604) promoted St Benedict’s Rule, which was still unknown at the time of the founder’s death, particularly in the recently evangelized British Isles, and it gradually spread elsewhere. In Merovingian Gaul, Irish monasticism declined, and the kings appointed the abbots—who were often laymen—and the abbeys became royal possessions. The actions of Carolingian kings from AD 751 gave fresh impetus to monastic life, at a time when the Benedictine rule predominated.

Carolingian monastic reform

The action of Benedict of Aniane, advisor to the Carolingian Emperor Louis the Pious, resulted in a series of monastic reforms at the beginning of the ninth century. The Benedictine Rule also became widespread. The synods held at Aix-la-Chapelle in 816 and 817 reorganized monastic and canonical life under imperial authority. The liturgy became more elaborate, and the recital of the monastic hours punctuated the monk’s day. At the same time, monastic space was reorganized in a more functional way. The plan of St Gall—addressed to this monastery’s abbot from the monastery of Reichenau by the bishop of Basel in around 820—copied the plans elaborated in the entourage of Louis the Pious and proposed a modular organization around the cloister, in the centre of the monastery. It was flanked by the church, which generally faced north, and to the east by the building where the monks read and copied books (the scriptorium), which had a dormitory on the first floor. Later, the capitular room was added between the church and the scriptorium; its name came from the reading of a chapter of the Rule. It was also the place where the abbey’s day-to-day issues and questions of discipline were discussed. The refectory and the storeroom flanked the southern and western sides of the cloister. The ensemble was closed off (the origin of the word cloister), the monks were forbidden to leave without the abbot’s permission, and secular people were not allowed to enter. A building outside the compound was reserved for guests, and there were buildings for the abbot, sick or infirm monks, novices, and future monks. Other areas for economic activities were also established. So, Western monasteries gradually took on their typical structure, which contrasted with the Byzantine monasteries. Finally, monasteries were enclosed with isolating walls, regardless of whether they were in the countryside or towns. The monastery’s economic activities led to the development of monastic faubourgs next to these walls.

Canonical institutions also sprang up during the Carolingian era. At the end of eighth century, St Chrodegang, the Bishop of Metz, organized the priests living around him into a community of canons who practised communal monasticism. However, the canons were restricted to the confines of the compound, because they had sacerdotal functions with regard to the worshippers, and they also kept their belongings, because they didn’t take the monastic vows of poverty. As the Benedictine Rule was not adapted to their special status, a Rule was established based on certain orientations in the writings of St Augustine—the Augustinian Rule. The canons were definitively organized during the synod of Aix, in AD 816. Thereafter, the cathedrals were adjoined by a canonical enclosure, developed around a cloister, with shared buildings.

The golden age of monasticism in the eleventh to twelfth centuries

Founded in AD 909 / 910 by William the Pious, the duke of Aquitaine, and Abbot Bernon, Cluny was emblematic of monastic expansion during feudal times. Its direct link to Rome, which preserved it from the abuse of secular authorities and local clergies, and the strength of character of its first abbots led to its success. An elaborate liturgy developed, with particular attention paid to the commemoration of the dead, and its architectural achievements, sculptures, manuscripts, and music all expressed beauty and harmony. The Cluniacs adhered to the Neoplatonic concept that earthly beauty was the expression of divine perfection. In the eleventh century, Cluny headed a network of around one thousand abbeys and actively participated, for example, in the Christianization of Spain after it was recaptured from the Muslims.

Other orders flourished during eleventh century, attesting to the dynamism of spiritual life: Vallombreuse, founded by Jean Gualbert, Grandmont by Etienne de Muret, la Chartreuse by St Bruno, Fontevraud by Robert d'Arbrissel are just a few examples. Some of these orders, like that of the Grande Chartreuse, combined hermitic and communal monastic life. Colleges of regular canons also sprang up, as a reaction to the canons of cathedral chapters, at that time called lay canons because they no longer practised communal life and had become important people who elected the bishop and sometimes played a political role. The regular canons went to the towns, where they carried out parish functions, while taking part in communal life.

The Cistercian order, founded in 1098 by Robert de Molesme, flourished when Bernard—St Bernard de Clervaux—joined the order along with thirty or so members of Burgundy’s nobility, in 1112. The Cistercian order reached its zenith in the twelfth century. Although it was originally founded on the Benedictine Rule, other texts like the Charter of Charity, or customaries, gave the order its specific characteristics. In reaction to the Cluniacs, the Cistercians reinstated the importance of manual work, and were assisted by the lay brothers, the original institution that, with the barns associated with the abbey, brought exceptional economic activity. They simplified the liturgy and promoted an ideal of austerity, destitution, and simplicity that can be seen in the rigour of their abbeys. Sculpted or painted iconographic representations disappeared because they were thought to distract monks from their prayers and meditation. The monasteries were organized hierarchically like a family: Cîteaux controlled the four daughter houses, whose abbots had a say about the mother abbey; from the four daughter houses other abbeys sprang up, which, in turn, led to other foundations. Every year, the abbots of all the houses met in an annual general chapter at Cîteaux. This remarkable system was adopted by other orders, particularly the Benedictine ones.

New forms of religious life: the mendicant orders

With the urban expansion of the twelfth century, the monks, who were completely isolated from the world, were unable to provide solutions for a society that needed spiritual guidance. And, new forms of religious life sprang up at the dawn of the thirteenth century: the mendicant orders, whose members were brothers, not monks, and connected to convents, practised a form of collective poverty (not merely individually like the monks, of which there were many in the abbeys), from which their name is derived. They lived from alms and small jobs, and promoted the evangelical ideal of poverty and humility. St Francis (1181 / 1182–1226), founder of the Order of Friars Minor (Franciscans), was an excellent example of this movement: although he was born into a rich, merchant family in Assisi, he renounced everything and asked his fellow citizens to follow his example in destitution. The Pope backed his movement in 1209, but it took some time to formalize the order, and two Rules were elaborated in 1221 and 1223. St Dominique (1170-1221), a Spanish canon and theologian, denounced the Cathars, a movement that had developed in the south of France, as heretics. He organized the order of the ‘friar preachers’, or Dominicans, between 1215 and 1219, and gave them a Rule. Every Dominican was a priest, and they advocated predication, theology, and the guidance of souls; they also renounced worldly goods. The Carmelites, who came from the Holy Land (St Mary of Carmel), were established in 1209 by St Albert, the patriarch of Jerusalem. After the loss of the Latin strongholds in the East, they founded their order in the West and reorganized their order in 1247 and in 1252. The hermit friars of St Augustine (Augustinians) came from a hermitic order from central Italy. They became a mendicant order in 1256, and became a definitively established order at the end of the thirteenth century. To avoid the disruptive influence of multiple orders, the Council of Lyon (1274) limited the number to four. At the end of the Middle Ages, laymen came to the towns looking for new ways to affirm their devotion to God, in the brotherhoods, or Beguine convents. In 1540, St Ignatius Loyola founded the Society of Jesus: the Jesuits then constituted a new order with a promising future. Western Christianity was a dynamic force that was constantly searching for new paths to salvation.

Th.S.