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Christianity

• The aim is to achieve holiness in fulfilling vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. Days are spent in prayer and work on behalf of God.

• The first monasteries were set up in the East in the 4th century

• There are two basic types: communal, under vows of silence; and the hermitage, which is a more private, spiritual retreat from the world

• Eastern monasticism tends toward personal, contemplative withdrawal from society (exemplified in the book, The Way of a Pilgrim)

• Western monasticism takes an active, social direction with strong influences upon society

• General characteristics of monastic life:

• a hierarchical governing under an Abbot

• a novitiate period before vows are irrevocable

• personal possessions are relinquished

• some lead a more ascetic life while others lead a more active life serving the larger society

• The Benedictine order, under St. Benedict in the 6th cent., was the first Western monasticism.

• The 13th century saw the development of mendicant (begging) orders such as the Franciscans (founded by St. Francis) who took vows of poverty and manual labor.

• The 13th cent also saw the development of teaching orders. The Dominicans, who were also mendicant, were the first western order to stress the ideal of study and preaching over work.

• The Jesuits, begun in the 16th century by Ignatius Loyola, rival the Dominicans as educators and, to this day, remain in the forefront of Roman Catholic education and church based schools (grade schools, colleges, universities, seminaries). The Jesuits developed as a counter to Protestant "heresies."

• The 20th century Trappist monk, Thomas Merton, wrote much about his own experience in coming to the monastic life in his autobiography The Seven Storey Mountain

Visit a monastery on-line
Take a virtual Tour of the monastery

• Many of the greatest of Medieval scholars and mystics were associated with one or another of these monastic orders

• Most of western medieval philosophy and scholasticism was done by Christians in service of Christian theology. Such thinking began with Augustine in the 4th century and climaxed with Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century.

• Aquinas made a strong case for the use of reason in support of faith ("Natural Theology" uses reason, "Revealed Theology" is based on scripture). He is famous for his "Five [cosmological] Proofs" for the existence of God: God as first mover, first cause, therefore necessarily self-existent, the measure of all perfection, the "argument from design" (God as intelligent designer of the cosmos)

Mysticism:

• Whereas scholasticism uses the mind and the intellect in service of religion, mysticism uses the heart and the emotions to attain direct religious experience.

• Some of the great mystics of the Church include the 12th century Bernard of Clairvaux; and the 13th century Dominican, Meister Eckhart; 15th century Thomas a Kempis, who wrote The Imitation of Christ; and women mystics as well such as Teresa of Avila.

Find out more about Christian Mystics

• Saints must be proclaimed by the Vatican after lengthy and in-depth investigation. One cannot be proclaimed a saint until after death and certain verified, signs (e.g., miracles) must have been part of their life or occur after their death in relation to the person being investigated (e.g., an apparition or miraculous healing).

• Seen as examples humans can live up to more so than the sinless Christ. Saints were ordinary humans, sinners who became saints.

• Saints are believed to exist in the spiritual realm of the afterlife and serve as mediators between sinful humans and the sinless Christ who, in turn, serves as mediator between humans and God

• The Virgin Mary is particularly important as the "Mother of God [the Son]". She and other female saints provide an important feminizing element to the spiritual life and the Church.

Learn more about saints

Little Pictorial Lives of the Saints on-line an alphabetical listing (click on the names for details about each saint)

• The 10th to 14th century Crusades began as attack against Muslim rule in Eastern Christian lands to regain the Holy Land, defend against Muslims and other enemies of Christianity. Although at first the West and East cooperated in this endeavor, the fourth and last Crusade was waged by the West against Eastern Orthodox Christianity, which it by then saw as an heretical enemy.

• The 13th century Inquisition was the Church’s attempt to identify heretics and either force their return to official church teachings or eliminate them. The inquisition was not primarily an attack on non-Christians but an attack on those Christians who were going too far afield from the Church's control (although non-Christians, e.g. Jews and Pagans, were also often targets – many Jews were forcibly converted to Christianity but continued to practice Judaism in secret)