1.4: 1.4 Monasticism

Monks and nuns took vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience when they left their normal lives and joined (respectively) monasteries and convents. Attending to the spiritual needs of laypeople (i.e. people outside of the Church) was the primary function of priests. Thus, monks and nuns devoted themselves to prayer and to useful works, activities that were thought to encourage piety and devotion, and often proved to be extremely profitable to the monasteries and convents.

Monasteries and convents grew to become some of the most important economic institutions in medieval Europe. Over time, activities like overseeing agriculture on monastery lands, brewing beer or making wine, or painstakingly copying the manuscripts of books often became a major focus of life. In addition, they encouraged innovative new forms of agriculture, sold products at a healthy profit, and despite their vows of poverty, successful monasteries and convents became lavishly decorated and luxurious for their inhabitants. In essence, many monasteries and convents became the most dynamic and commercially successful institutions in their home regions.

Simultaneously, medieval elites left land and wealth to monasteries and convents, with the expectation that such actions would improve the chances of entering heaven. The result was astonishing. Statistically, monasteries owned a full 20% of the arable land of Western Europe by the late Middle Ages.

Learning

Scholarship did continue and even prosper within the church during the late Middle Ages. Numerous priests were literate in Latin and deeply knowledgeable about Christian theology. In addition, they had made major strides in considering, debating, and explaining the nuances of Christian thought. The church provide meaningful guidance and comfort to medieval Christians, and some of its members were exemplary thinkers and major intellectuals.

If there was a single event that changed education and scholarship in the late Middle Ages, it was the arrival of the lost works of the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, who had produced learned works on philosophy, astronomy, physics, biology, literary criticism, and logic. Over the course of the eleventh century, translations of Aristotle's work on formal philosophical logic re-emerged in Europe. Most of his work had been preserved in the Arab world. Enterprising scholars - many of them Jewish philosophers who lived in North Africa and Spain - translated his work on logic from Arabic into Latin. Later, Greeks from Byzantium brought their translations to Europe.

Aristotle's work on logic offered a formal system for evaluating complicated bodies of work like the Christian Bible. For example, the Christian Bible is full of parables, stories, and accounts of events that are often difficult to interpret. Even the four gospels sometimes offer conflicting accounts. What did Christ mean when he said "Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God" (Matthew 19:24)? How was a Christian to make sense of the stern, vengeful God described in the Old Testament and the deity of peace and forgiveness represented by Christ? Most medieval Christians were content to simply accept the sacraments and offer prayers to the saints without worrying about the theological details. Yet, increasingly, educated priests wanted to understand the nuances of their own religion.

Armed with his newly-rediscovered system of logical interpretation, key figures within the Church began to analyze the Bible and the works of early Christian thinkers with energy and focus. The result was scholasticism, the major intellectual movement of the High Middle Ages. Because the cathedral schools of the late Middle Ages increasingly relied on scholasticism to train and teach new priests, it spread rapidly across all of Europe.

By roughly 1100 CE, a new form of formal education based on scholasticism was the method of instruction in cathedral schools. The instructor 'lecture' or read a short passage from the Bible or an early Christian intellectual leader, then cite various authorities on the meaning of the passage. Then, students would consider the possible meanings of the passage in a period of meditation. Finally, students would debate their respective interpretations, citing the passage itself and any supporting evidence from the vast body of sacred and ancient writings. As a result, large numbers of newly-minted priests emerged with a strong understanding of Christian thought and an equally strong grasp of rhetoric, debate, and logic.