What was the purpose of medieval monastaries?

Question

other than housing clergy... what did they do?

Answer 1

Monasteries have been instrumental in creating, preserving, and enhancing institutions of religious and secular learning and in transmitting cultural goods, artifacts, and intellectual skills down through the generations. Monastic institutions have also fulfilled medical, political, and military functions, though since 1500 the latter two have become completely secularized in most societies.

The truly universal characteristic of monasticism follows from its definition: the monastic separates himself from society, either to abide alone as a religious recluse (hermit or anchorite) or to join a community of those who have separated themselves from their surroundings with similar intentions, that is, the full time pursuit of the religious life in its most radical and often in its most demanding guise.

Answer 2

Daily Life. Although the details of daily life differed from one order to the next (as mentioned above), monastic life was generally one of hard physical work, scholarship and prayer. Some orders encouraged the presence of "lay brothers", monks who did most of the physical labour in the fields and workshops of the monastery so that the full-fledged monks could concentrate on prayer and learning.

The Daily Grind. The day of a monk or nun, in theory at least, was regulated by regular prayer services in the abbey church. These services took place every three hours, day and night. When the services were over, monks would be occupied with all the tasks associated with maintaining a self-sustaining community.

Abbeys grew their own food, did all their own building, and in some cases, grew quite prosperous doing so. Fountains Abbey and Rievaulx, both in Yorkshire, grew to be enormously wealthy, largely on the basais of raising sheep and selling the wool.

Answer 3

Just as monastaries today - a place for monks to live and work. In the middle ages it was also a place to rule from. Monastaries like Mount St. Michel held 8 monks who ruled thousands of people along the coast of Normandy and Brittany.

Answer 4

The early Church was led by men and women who were persecuted for their faith. There are those who see this persecution as a fulfillment of the phrase from the Sermon on the Mount "Blessed are they who are persecuted for my sake". Others felt that this kind of hardship strengthened the faith of those who endured through all of this.

The mendicants, like St. Anthony, were people who, after the persecutions ended, sought solitude and fasting as a way to strengthen their faith, having been relieved of the suffering of their predecessors.

A monastery is a collection of such men or women, and sometimes and women, who seek by hard labor, prayer, and sometimes service to the poor, to strengthen their faith. To do so, people such as Augustine, Benedict, Bernard, and Dominic, established orders by which the brethren and or sisterhood would live. Poverty, prayer, and chastity were the ideal, though these were not always followed as well as might be.

There were monasteries established for nuns, monks, and sometimes, though rarely, both together for worship and work, but not in the living spaces.

The word mendicant says quite a lot, about the monastic movement. The brothers saw bishops getting fat and prosperous, and were dismayed. They chose to fast, pray and sometimes chastise themselves physically, in an effort to "mend" the foundations of the Church, "damaged" as they saw it by prosperity.

Some, Francis of Assisi is the one who comes to mind, were unable to establish an order for living for their followers, at least not beyond what is written in the Gospels. For Francis, a phrase like "freely have you received, so freely give" and the commandment to poverty given to the Apostles when they were sent out in pairs to preach, heal and teach by Jesus during his teaching ministry were all the instruction needed for his "little brothers of the poor".

Here's a link from New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia on Monasticism.

Answer 5

Monasteries (and convents) provided places for people with religious or scholarly leanings to follow those inclinations--to spend a great deal of time in prayer or study. They also served as hospitals and places of refuge. Many of them were (or included) schools, and, especially for girls, such institutions were often the only institutions of learning available. And some monasteries made wine or even brandy--and some still do!

Answer 6

Medieval monasteries served the same purpose as the Church at the present time i.e. keep secrets, keep the common people down, lie to, and rob the people. Then as now they're parasites...

Answer 7

They provided education and produced important literary works (monks copying literary works).