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Early monks and monasteries
The oldest-known monasteries are in Egypt, where early Christian hermits lived alone but came together to pray in shared chapels and established small communities. The word 'monk' means solitary, and many of these early monks lived in remote caves or basic shelters in otherwise uninhabited sites.
Some of Egypt's early monasteries, boosted by modern-day tourism, still survive as active centres of the Christian faith. St Anthony's Monastery, close to Egypt's Red Sea coast, is claimed to be the oldest in the world, having been founded on the site of Anthony's tomb in the mid-fourth century AD. And the Greek Orthodox community at St Catherine's Monastery, in Sinai, can lay claim to being among the most famous.
The Christian monasteries of the Middle East were preceded by contemplative communities such as the Essenes, who withdrew from society to pursue their religious beliefs. Building on this tradition, the early Christian communities were in part a response to persecution and heavy taxation under the Romans. Indeed, the word 'anchorite', which is now used to describe a person who has retired into seclusion for religious reasons, originally referred to people who gave up their homes and land to escape imprisonment for debt.
Early Irish monasticism
The first monasteries in the British Isles were in Ireland, where St Patrick was sent to spread the Christian gospel around 433 AD. The earliest monasteries there predate his arrival, however, and by the beginning of the fifth century AD Irish monks were already setting up new communities in Cornwall, Wales, Scotland and later England. St Ninian set up a monastery at Whithorn in Scotland around 397 AD.
Other Irish monks followed his example in spreading the monastic life, including St Colomba at Iona (563 AD) and St Aidan at Lindisfarne (635 AD) in Northumbria. Among the lasting accomplishments of these Celtic monasteries were beautiful illuminated manuscripts, bibles and prayer books with exquisitely crafted illustrated pages, such as the famous Lindisfarne Gospels.
The Benedictine Rule
In about 529 AD, St Benedict founded the first of 14 monasteries in what is now Italy at Monte Cassino. Originally a hermit-monk himself, he realised that a community of monks living and working together could achieve far more than they could alone. Following a strict regime of prayer, hard work and good deeds, he established the 'Benedictine Rule', whereby monks were required to take vows of poverty, obedience and charity. When St Augustine came to England to spread the Christian message in 597 AD, it was a Benedictine monastery that he established at Canterbury.
Anglo-Saxon monasteries
The Anglo-Saxon monasteries established after the arrival of St Augustine were famous throughout Europe as centres of knowledge and learning. The best-known of them include Glastonbury and Jarrow, where the Venerable Bede, possibly the most important 8th-century scholar in the world, wrote his Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation from his tiny monastic cell.
Throughout the Anglo-Saxon period, and indeed during the thousand years from the collapse of the Roman empire to the Renaissance, monasteries such as these were virtually the only centres of scholarship and learning in Europe. Many monasteries contained big libraries, including important ancient texts, and a major part of the lives of monks was spent in copying religious and other texts. Much of our knowledge of the ancient world has only survived because of the existence of monks and monasteries.
Medieval monasteries
Until the latter part of the 11th century, virtually all monasteries (apart from a few Celtic ones) followed the Benedictine Rule. Over the next century, though, a variety of new orders emerged and hundreds of new monasteries were founded. Many Benedictine monasteries had grown wealthy and departed from their founding principles. A number of new monastic orders were formed in reaction to this, with varying approaches to how they interpreted and applied the fundamental monastic principles laid down by Benedict.
The Cistercians and other orders
The new orders establishing monastic settlements in Britain from around 1100 onwards included the Cistercians, Cluniacs, Augustinians, Brigittines and the especially severe Carthusians. There were also the Black and White Canons, who differed from other orders in that the monks went out preaching. In addition to the exclusively male monasteries, around 100 nunneries were established during the medieval period, although in general these were not as big or wealthy as their male counterparts.
The Cistercian Order started as an austere sect, which deliberately sought out wild and remote locations for its monasteries and specifically forbade its monks from building monasteries in or near towns. In common with other orders, though, by the later medieval period its settlements had accumulated great wealth. Some of the large Cistercian foundations, such as Fountains or Rievaulx abbeys, may have accommodated up to 1,000 monks at their height, and they controlled vast estates, especially in the upland areas of northern England. Many monasteries of all orders became important mini-economies in their own right, producing everything from cotton to iron.
Increasing wealth
Inevitably, perhaps, this increasing wealth attracted covetous eyes, and the growing worldliness of many monks and departure from the ideals of their orders' founders made them vulnerable to any attack on their privileges. The monasteries reached their peak of importance during the early 14th century, when there were at least 500 different ones in Britain. Some of the abbey churches built during this period (including Canterbury, Durham and Westminster) are among Britain's most magnificent cathedrals today.
Dissolution of the monasteries
The Black Death of 1348, however, hit many monasteries hard and large numbers never recovered. So by the time Henry VIII fell out with the Catholic Church over the Pope's refusal to grant him a divorce and broke with Rome in the 1530s, they were already in relative decline.
Henry finished them off following his break with Rome in the 1530s. The dissolution of the monasteries led to the closure of the monastic orders and the seizure of their assets. Their lands and property were redistributed or sold and most of their buildings demolished, providing plentiful supplies of building materials for local people for many years to come. Only the big cathedral abbey churches remained intact. Although some small monastic orders have been reformed in Britain since, the age of the monasteries was over.