medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
On 23/12/2011 17:06, Christopher Crockett wrote:
>
> would it be too far afield to consider the earliest Cistercian foundations to
> be prototypes of this?
Yes, it probably would.
> founded in remote, unsettled and very frequently waste areas, in
> contradistinction to the (mostly, in northern France at least) suburban
> Benedictines (who may have started their institutional life, centuries
> earlier, in remote, unsettled and very frequently waste areas), for the
> purpose of allowing their monks to lead a life of, if not absolute solitude,
> at least of silence, a near-penitential level of physical exercise, intense
> practice of contemplation (a.k.a. "meditation") and extremely restricted
> contact with the outside world.
That is mostly Cistercian propaganda. In England, all available land was
already under cultivation. The first house was at Waverley in Surrey -
this is still countryside, but was never remote, unsettled or waste.
Frequently (especially in Yorkshire), the peasants had to be cleared off
the land to make way for the monks' solitude. The displaced peasants
were then recruited as "lay brothers" - that is believed to be the
source of lay brothers in all countries.
John Briggs
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