Although the tradition of Christian monasticism had its origins in 3rd-century Egypt and the Levant, its medieval form was firmly established by St. Benedict’s Rule of the 6th century. Benedictine monasteries adopted this set of rules and became widespread across Europe in the Early and High Middle Ages. However, over time some of these monasteries became both wealthy and powerful and in the eyes of many strayed from the church’s apostolic roots. In response, several new monastic orders arose to reform and redefine the monastic experience.   1. The Carthusians Photograph of Roche Abbey (Cistercian). Source: Wikimedia Commons   During the course of the 11th century, there was a growing interest in a return to the hermitic form of monasticism, as opposed to the cenobitic, or communal, form that was then prevalent in Benedictine monasteries. Some sought a more ascetic ideal of solitude and reflection than was the Benedictine norm, while the wealth and worldliness of the larger monasteries was also an impetus toward a different ideal. Several hermitic movements sprang up in Italy and Spain but it was in the French Alps that the most well-known such order would arise.   Around 1080 a man named Bruno of Cologne was inspired to leave his position at the cathedral school of Reims to live the hermetic life. In 1084 he was gifted a piece of land in an Alpine valley where he established a small group of hermits. However, it was a later arrival, Guigo du Pin, who would be most influential in crafting the rules that would define the Carthusian order (named after the Chartreuse Mountains).   Ironically, the Carthusians were not hermetic monks in the purest sense but rather their monasteries were somewhat of a hybrid between the hermetic and cenobitic traditions. Initially, the monks lived in individual huts loosely grouped together but over the course of the 12th century, a standard plan for Carthusian monastery buildings was adopted.   The cloister (a square colonnaded walkway), a feature of nearly all medieval monasteries, held a central position while radiating out from it were the individual cells of the monks, each with its own garden. These cells, not the cloister, church, or any other communal area, were the true focus of a Carthusian monastery.   Calvary with a Carthusian Monk, by Jean de Beaumetz, ca. 1389-95. Source: Wikimedia Commons   Carthusian building plans reflect the hybrid nature of this monastic order. Each monk would spend the majority of his time in solitude, either in his cell praying, reflecting, performing services, copying manuscripts, or working in the garden just outside. The strict observance of silence at all times, as prescribed in the Rule of St. Benedict but no longer followed in the majority of Benedictine monasteries, was rigorously adhered to.   Monks ate their meals alone in their cells (one meal per day in winter, two in summer), and their choice of food was strictly limited, with no meat allowed and only bread and water three days per week. Likewise, they used only the sparsest bedding and dressed in coarse clothing. This reflected the main purpose of a Carthusian monastery—to provide a place for contemplation. However, the monks did come together daily to perform Vespers and the night office, and on Sundays and festival days, they would take their meals together. Only on these days, in the afternoon, was a brief period of conversation allowed.   The Carthusian order is fairly unique in that its standards and ideals never really lapsed, and it was never itself the target of a later reform movement, as was the case with many other orders.   2. The Cistercians Life of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux- Saint Bernard exhorts the sick in body to enter his church with their spirits, in doing so returning to find their infirmities healed, Master of Saint Severin, after 1535. Source: The MET, New York   Whereas the Carthusians sought perhaps a “pre-Benedictine” hermetic ideal, the Cistercian monastic order had its sights fixed squarely on the Rule of St. Benedict. The goal of the Cistercians was a complete return to a strict observance of the Rule, from which it was felt that the eponymous Benedictines had drifted quite far, particularly at large and powerful monasteries such as Cluny.   The order was begun in 1098 when a group of monks from the abbey of Molesme received the blessing of Archbishop Hugh of Lyons to move to a wilderness area called Citeaux to found a new monastery in the remote solitude the area offered. The name Citeaux came to be applied to the order that grew out of this foundation and comes down to us as “Cistercian.”   The choice of the original remote site is illustrative of one of the core Cistercian ideals—the complete separation of the monastery from the outside world. The Cistercians saw the large Benedictine monasteries with their wealth, vast lands, vassals, and political entanglements as a gross deviation from the monastic ideal. This new monastic order strictly followed the Rule of St. Benedict, rejected wealth and property, and held hard manual labor to be just as important as prayer and religious services.   The monks lived simply, from their plain dress and simple meals to the lack of ornamentation or sculpture in their buildings. However, it became clear early on that these remote monasteries could not be self-sufficient, as was intended, but rather relied on conversi, or lay brothers, who performed the rest of the work which the monks could not and were their link to the outside world.   Tintern Abbey, Cistercian abbey in the UK, photo by ISAW Company. Source: Unsplash   It took relatively little time for the Cistercians to stray rather far from their strict ideals. Over the course of the 12th century, as new monasteries of the order sprung up across Europe, the Cistercians received numerous landed endowments from wealthy patrons, including the royal families of England and France. As their landed wealth grew so too did the business acumen of the Cistercian abbots, and soon most Cistercian foundations were involved in mercantile pursuits that would have been abhorrent to the founders.   By the 13th century, it could be said that the Cistercians had drifted even farther than the Benedictines had from their early ideals. However, the order remained popular with the nobles and royals of Europe and continued to grow in power and wealth over the following centuries.   The Mendicant Orders Portrait of a Franciscan Friar, by Peter Paul Rubens, between 1615-16. Source: Wikimedia Commons   During the late 12th and early 13th centuries, a new monastic ideal emerged in Europe which was less a reform of existing monastic traditions as a complete redefinition. In various ways these new groups, some of which would later go on to form official monastic orders, sought a return to a life based on the life of Christ and the apostles, rejecting property and living among the people, rather than secluding themselves in a monastery or as hermits.   This new ideal had its roots in the changes affecting medieval society in the previous century and a half. For one thing, the population, while still overwhelmingly rural, was becoming increasingly urban. Medieval cities were growing and trade networks, both within Europe and those connecting Europe to more distant lands, were expanding. The emergence of universities in cities spread literacy, and not just among the clergy. Laymen, mostly those involved in commerce, were also becoming increasingly literate. Thus, urban conditions were facilitating the spread of ideas which simply was not possible earlier in the Middle Ages when cities were smaller, scarcer, and less connected.   These changes led a growing number of people to notice and question the gulf between the apostolic life, as expounded in the Gospels, with the power, wealth, and lax morals of the clergy, both secular and regular. The rural structure of the medieval church prevented it from quickly addressing these largely urban issues.   Itinerant preachers began taking it on themselves to wander from city to city, after the manner of apostles, to preach the word of God. Several groups, including the Waldenses and Humiliati, adopted the ideal of poverty and itinerant preaching. The best-known Mendicant orders (from the Latin verb, mendicare, to beg), the Franciscans and the Dominicans, arose out of this movement.   3. The Franciscans Manuscript leaf with scenes from the Life of St. Francis of Assisi, unknown artist, ca. 1320-42. Source: Wikimedia Commons   The original ideals of the Franciscan order were the work of one man—St. Francis of Assisi. He sought a completely literal imitation of the life of Christ. As Christ owned nothing, was essentially homeless, and wandered about preaching the word of God, so would the followers of Francis. This meant that they could own absolutely nothing—not their clothes, the food they ate, the beds they slept in, and definitely not money. They were even required to travel barefoot. They either worked or begged for food, clothes, and lodging.   The Church at this time frowned upon laymen preaching, so Francis took his followers to Rome and in 1209 sufficiently impressed Pope Innocent III with his plan that it received papal sanction. As the number of Francis’s followers grew it was decided in 1217 to start sending groups into cities beyond the Alps (they had only been active in Italy thus far). In 1223 the official Franciscan Rule, called the Regula Bullata, was sanctioned by Pope Honorius III.   Saint Francis, by Sano di Pietro (Ansano di Pietro di Mencio), 1450s. Source: MET, New York   As the number of Franciscans grew and spread throughout Europe, they began to encounter some of the difficulties that their unusual structure produced. Francis’s stricture of absolute poverty precluded many of the activities that such a large and widespread order required, such as books to educate new members or churches in which to perform the sacraments.   In response to this Pope Gregory IX allowed the order to appoint a nuntius, essentially a non-member who could hold and administer property and money for them. Thus, contrary to Francis’s wishes, the order began to accumulate property.   Another problem was that the majority of Franciscans were lay, or unordained, brothers and as such could not perform the sacraments. These problems and a growing rift within the order between those who held to Francis’s original teachings of absolute poverty and those who approved of adjustments to the rules to fit a new reality caused the order to weaken internally, increasingly coming under the influence of the much-better organized Dominicans.   4. The Dominicans St. Dominic in Prayer, by El Greco, ca. 1586-1590. Source: Wikimedia Commons   Although the Dominican and Franciscan monastic orders arose around the same time, their origins were rather different. St. Dominic was an Augustinian monk, living under the Rule of St. Augustine—a much shorter and more simplistic rule than that of St. Benedict, and one which predated it by over a century. In the first years of the 13th century, he lent aid to a group of Cistercian monks who were having little success combating the Cathar, or Albigensian, heresy in southern France. He suggested that the only way to approach the problem of the Cathars was in the apostolic manner, as itinerant preachers, since this was something more akin to the Cathar way. Thus, the group abandoned everything but their clothes and set out on a preaching tour into Cathar country.   The Dominican order grew out of this episode. It is worth noting that the Dominicans had a lengthy involvement with the Cathars, being charged by Pope Gregory IX in 1231 with the operation of the Inquisition (not to be confused with the later Spanish Inquisition), whose aim was to root out Catharism, leading to many episodes of horrific violence, and earning the inquisitors the nickname Domini Canes, or hounds of the lord in Latin—a play on the Dominican name.   Saint Thomas Aquinas Aided by Saints Peter and Paul, by Bartolomeo degli Erri. Source: The MET, New York   Although the Dominicans were a mendicant order much like the Franciscans, owning no property and preaching itinerantly in cities, their organization was much different, and they retained some of the more traditional monastic aspects. Dominic took as the order’s rule the existing Rule of St. Augustine, with its typical monastic regime which the brothers observed among themselves. When not engaged in these activities the Dominicans attended to their preaching mission.   Dominic also targeted the big university cities, such as Paris and Bologna, for establishing chapters, as he sought the best and brightest minds of the time. The order also had a well-organized system of territorial provinces, with meetings of provincial chapters as well as an annual general chapter.   The organized and highly educated Dominicans came to powerfully influence the less-organized Franciscans, who could boast far fewer university-educated brothers. Over time the Dominicans came to include such influential figures as St. Thomas Aquinas among their ranks. Their order retained a dominant influence throughout the rest of the Middle Ages.   The End of Reform? Manuscript Illumination with Singing Monks in an Initial D, from a Psalter, 1501-2. Source: The MET, New York   The four reforming monastic orders discussed here are not the only ones. There were several before these, others contemporaneous with them, and some that came after. And religious reform was not unique to the monastic world. In the 11th century the Gregorian reform movement, named after Pope Gregory VII, was a powerful force in both the religious and secular realms. Likewise in the Late Middle Ages and the Renaissance the humanist tradition was a powerful force for church reform, perhaps best represented by Erasmus of Rotterdam. Indeed, what became the Protestant Reformation was not initially intended to split the Catholic church but rather to reform it, as the name suggests. Then, the Counter-Reformation was a church reform movement launched as a response to the Protestant Reformation. One could argue that church reform has never ended and that the more tolerant stance of the church under Pope Francis is yet another attempt at reform.