One of the first attempts to reform Benedictine monasticism was the “Reform of Cluny” but by the 12th century Cluniac monasteries were increasingly being challenged for their slack observance of the Rule. Others tried to combine it with the eremitical tradition which was never very popular in the West and thus emerged communities like that of the Camaldolese, founded by Romuald of Ravenna, the Vallumbrosans, founded by John Gaulbert, etc. They lived a very strict ascetic life following the Rule of Benedict with austere simplicity. But the severe regime of fasting, mortification and perpetual silence made them institutions for a contemplative elite and never became an attraction for many. The total isolation from the outside world necessitated the introduction of lay brothers or conversi who were fully professed monks but who did not share the full duties of the monks and managed the administrative side of the monastery. This practice was adopted by others later.

But the desire to break away from existing forms of monasticism and the search for seclusion from the outside world with corporate as well as personal poverty found its classical expression in the Carthusians, deriving the name from “Grande Chartreuse,” the place where it was founded. Its prime mover was Bruno of Cologne. About the year 1084 he began with a group of companions an eremitical way of life high up in the valley of the Alps. Although he is the patriarch of the Carthusian Order, he is not, properly speaking, its founder. He was summoned to Rome in 1090 by Pope Urban II never to return. The real founder of the order was Guigues du Pin, whom the monks elected prior in 1109. It was he who settled the foundation at Grande Chartreuse.

Here was the best example of combining eremitism and coenobitism which drew upon a wide range of monastic experience. The trials of solitude were mitigated by some degree of community. Each monk lived and slept in the solitude of his cell. Each cell had also a small plot of garden and a private lavatory. The monks assembled daily in the Church for the common celebration of Vespers and the night office. The remaining services of the day were done privately. The single meal of the day in winter and the two meals of the summer were prepared and eaten by the monk in solitude from the materials provided by the common kitchen. Common eating took place on Sundays and feast days when mass was celebrated and on the occasion of the election of a prior and the funeral of a monk. In the afternoon of these days conversation was allowed, the only time the rule of absolute silence was relaxed. The diet was sparse. Meat was excluded and on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays bread and water were the rule though wine was permitted with food. Everything was done in a spirit of austerity and poverty. Obviously the enclosed hermitage could only survive provided others serviced it. For this purpose the Carthusians adopted the practice of using lay brothers and institutionalized it. They performed manual work, and did the necessary selling, buying etc. They lived in separate establishments known as the lower house. The principle of early monasticism that the monks should live by the work of their own hands was thus abandoned. There was also a religious reason for it because it offered to many lay people who really wanted to experience monastic life a chance for it. But with that another important rule of early monasticism too was broken that in the monastery all were to be equal. For the Carthusians the fundamental purpose of monastic life is contemplation. Another task especially recommended was making of books, “the everlasting food of souls.” Monks who could not read or write had to learn to do so. They restricted the number as a deliberate policy to obviate the need for large scale endowments, a necessary condition to preserve poverty. The most important contribution of the Carthusians was that they successfully domesticated the ideal of the desert in the form of a permanent institution, which never relaxed or compromised its distinctive pattern of life, so that it has remained one of the few religious orders which never required a reform.

Isaac Padinjarekuttu
(Professor of Church History at Oriens Theological College, Shillong)