‘The monastic era is a page of European history best quickly skipped over.’
At least, that is the attitude of many protestants and evangelicals towards a movement that was dissolved by Protestant rulers like Henry VIII to make way for the Reformation. Monasteries were reputed to be places of corruption and hypocrisy, wealth and worldliness, unbiblical rituals and regulations.
Yet that perspective lacks understanding on how European civilisation was shaped. For monasteries were the building blocks of the European civilisation that emerged in the Middle Ages out of the rubble of the collapsed Roman Empire.
This weekend, we hold the third in our Geloof in Mokum series on the role of faith in shaping the development of Amsterdam. That story is actually a microcosm of the European story. Four weeks ago we focused on the 13th century in the Oude Kerk, Amsterdam’s first church and oldest building. What did Amsterdammers believe then and how did that shape their daily lives? Then two weeks ago we gathered in the Begijnhof chapel as thousands of pilgrims converged on Amsterdam for the quiet annual night-time procession commemorating the 14th century miracle that made Amsterdam a pilgrim city.
This Sunday afternoon, we meet in the 15th century the Waalse Kerk, the former chapel of the Paulusbroeders, later offered to French Huguenot refugees fleeing from Spanish and French persecution. Mink de Vries will tell the story of the rise of some twenty monastic communities in 15th century Amsterdam, expressions of a movement called the Modern Devotion.
This renewal movement started in the Netherlands lasted 200 years. It is most famously known through The Imitation of Christ, by Thomas a Kempis, the mostly widely-read Christian devotional book of all time. Of which Vincent van Gogh once wrote: ‘that book is sublime’. The movement stressed humility, obedience, simplicity of life, and integration into the community. In recent years Mink has been promoting these values in a Postmodern Devotion movement in city councils of the locations where the original movement was once active.
Egyptian desert
The second oldest building in the city is the Sint Antoniuspoort, the former city gate named after the father of the monastic movement. St Antony’s 3rd century solitary lifestyle in the Egyptian desert inspired others to gather in the first communities of prayer, worship, study and contemplation, a model since replicated by literally millions around the world. From Egypt, monastic communities spread up through Palestine and Cappadocia to eastern Europe, and through Italy, Gaul and Ireland to Britain and onto mainland Europe.
OK, so what? What have monasteries ever done for us?
Well, to start with, the lower case letters you are reading right now were an invention of the Irish Celtic monks, a great improvement for reading on the CAPITAL LETTERS THE ROMANS ALWAYS USED. Made famous by the Anglo-Irish monk Alcuin, Charlemagne’s minister of education, they were known as Carolingian miniscule script.
Which leads us to the development of books, libraries and scriptoria for copying manuscripts and keeping learning and classical literature alive. And for the preservation and multiplication of Bibles.
The double-column method of book-keeping was developed by a Franciscan friar and mathematician, Luca Pacioli, seeking how to bring God’s order into his financial chaos.
Reading and writing leads directly to education. Monastic communities in Ireland, for example, attracted thousands of students from across Europe to sit at the feet of scholar-monks. The first universities grew out of colleges attached to monastic orders, such as in Bologna, Paris, Oxford and Cambridge. Architecture and furniture in universities was inspired by monastic styles. Academic gowns still reflect the garb of monks. Various academic titles are derived from monastic origins: rector, provost, dean…
Art and music were promoted by monasteries, which produced some of the finest medieval art in manuscripts such as the Book of Kells and the Lindisfarne Gospels. A Benedictine monk, Guido of Arezzo, developed a way of writing down music, staff notation, thus enabling the spread and tunes and liturgies. The do-re-mi scale was derived from the first syllables of certain words from a Latin song to the spirit of John the Baptist.
Medical knowledge and healthcare was another speciality of monasteries, as monks and nuns (brothers and sisters) cared for victims of plagues and diseases, and cultivated herbal gardens for medicinal purposes. Hostels and hospices were opened along pilgrim routes, developing into hospitals where today nurses are still called sisters and the cross remains a symbol for healing institutions.
Monks of course pioneered both the beer and wine industries across Europe. Wine was essential for the celebration of the mass. Beer was far healthier to drink than the water available. Prior to the Reformation, Utrecht had 28 monasteries and 24 breweries!
The Renaissance was triggered by Eastern Orthodox monks fleeing Constantinople from the Ottoman invaders, introducing western scholars to the Greek manuscripts they brought with them. And let’s not forget that the Reformation itself was incubated in Martin Luther’s monastery.
One of the most profound contributions of monastic lifestyle was a new concept of human association for living together, based on covenant before God between brothers and sisters. Covenant communities were contingent on agape love, a radical Christian concept, not based on blood or power but on love for God and neighbour. Covenantal association was replicated in guilds as well as the emerging city-states of northern Italy and the Low Countries. Which prompted Erasmus to ask: what is a city but one big monastery?!
Some have identified monasteries as political laboratories demonstrating governing through service and democratic procedures for electing leadership.
So, what have monasteries ever done for us? Could we say they were the midwives of western civilisation?
Till next week,
