Word Finder - monasteries

definition

Building for housing monks or others who have taken religious vows

Other pictures are scattered about in the churches, monasteries and private palaces.

Eight monasteries were expropriated to make room for the chief state departments, pending the construction of more suitable edifices.

It excited also the animosity of the nobles jealous of their privileges, and of the monasteries, which were called upon to furnish the revenues for the new sees.

But it was no more a chantry than the other colleges, all of which, like the monasteries and collegiate churches, were to pray for their founders' and other specified souls.

Of these, 126 monasteries and 90 convents were situated in the city, 51 monasteries and 22 convents in the suburbicariates.

More questionable was Josephs policy in closing and confiscating the property of 213 of the richer monasteries of the land.

The proceeds of the sale of the suppressed convents and monasteries were partly converted into pensions for monks and nuns, and partly allotted to the municipal charity boards which had undertaken the educational and charitable functions formerly exercised by the religious orders.

It has several large churches, and formerly possessed five monasteries and three nunneries, which have been closed and their edifices devoted to educational and other public purposes.

As a Jesuit father, Courtois painted many works in churches and monasteries of the society.

Of the monasteries, that of St Mark should be mentioned, as containing many works of Fra Angelico, besides relics of Savonarola, while of the private collections the only one of importance is that of Prince Corsini.

They still contain many old and valuable ecclesiastical objects of art, although a great part has been removed to the various monasteries in Moldavia.

Passing from pride to humility he added "servant of the apostle," and "servant of Jesus Christ" to the imperial title, spent a fortnight in prayer in the grotto of St Clement and did penance in various Italian monasteries.

Its chapel became the parish church on the suppression of the monasteries.

As the chief feature of Norman London was the foundation of monasteries, and that of Plantagenet London was the estab-?

The standard of instruction, however, is very low, consisting only of reading and writing, though this is gradually being improved in very many monasteries.

He was likewise a good churchman and an able administrator of his diocese; he encouraged the reformation of the clergy and the monasteries.

This evidence is confirmed by (a) the canon of Theodore of Edessa (800) allowing metropolitans of China, India and other distant lands to send their reports to the catholikos every six years; (b) the edict of Wu Tsung destroying Buddhist monasteries and ordering 300 foreign priests to return to the secular life that the customs of the empire might be uniform; (c) two 9th-century Arab travellers, one of whom, Ibn Wahhab, discussed the contents of the Bible with the emperor; (d) the discovery in 1725 of a Syrian MS. containing hymns and a portion of the Old Testament.

Much more memorable, however, was a library formed by Iyeyasus grandson the feudal chief of Mito (1662I 700), who not only collected a vast quantity of books hitherto scattered among Shinto and Buddhist monasteries and private houses, but also employed a number of scholars to compile a history unprecedented in magnitude, the Dai-Nihon-shi.

However fiercely conducted, it failed, though the Uniate Church with slighter powers of resistance was now completely forced into Orthodoxy, its ceremonial being definitely forbidden and its monasteries dissolved.

The liberality of William the Lion had bestowed upon the corporation an extensive grant of lands; while in addition to the well-endowed church of St John, it had two monasteries, each possessed of a fair revenue.

From one of these monasteries the received text seems to have been taken to Rome.

When they returned to Palestine they all settled at Bethlehem, where Paula built four monasteries, three for nuns and one for monks.

He admonished the pope, appointed the bishops, watched over the morals and work of the clergy, and took an active part in the deliberations of church synods; he founded bishoprics and monasteries, was lavish in his gifts to ecclesiastical foundations, and chose bishops and abbots for administrative work.

A priory of friars of the Holy Trinity was founded at Hounslow in 1296, and existed till the dissolution of the monasteries.

The bishop was a prince of the Holy Roman Empire, while his diocese was one of the largest in Germany, including (shortly before the Reformation) most of Baden and Wurttemberg, and 12 out of the 22 Swiss cantons (all the region on the right bank of the Aar, save the portions included in the diocese of Coire) - in it were comprised 350 monasteries, 1760 benefices and 17,000 priests.

A story had gone about, even in the days of John of Gaunt, who, if we may trust the rhymer John Hardyng (Chronicle, pp. 290, 291), had got it inserted in chronicles deposited in various monasteries, that this Edmund, surnamed Crouchback, was really hump-backed, and that he was set aside in favour of his younger brother Edward on account of his deformity.

As is natural in a place long celebrated for its religious and educational pre-eminence, there is no lack of temples, monasteries and colleges, but few of these are of any architectural significance.

A " reformed " prince could seize the property of the monasteries, and appropriate such ecclesiastical foundations as he desired.

The schism extended down to the bishoprics, and even to the monasteries and parishes, where partisans of the rival popes struggled to obtain possession of sees and benefices.

Hundreds of castles and monasteries were destroyed by the frantic peasantry, and some of the nobles were murdered with shocking cruelty.

During the same years the monasteries, lesser and greater, were dissolved, and the chief shrines were despoiled, notably that of St Thomas of Canterbury.

At the time of the secularization of Church properties there were about 120 religious edifices in the city - churches, convents, monasteries, &c. - many of which were turned over to secular uses.

Subiaco in the Abruzzi was the cradle of the Benedictines, and in that neighbourhood St Benedict established twelve monasteries.

These fourteen are the only monasteries of which we have any knowledge as being founded before St Benedict's death; for the mission of St Placidus to Sicily must certainly be regarded as mere romance, nor does there seem to be any solid reason for viewing more favourably the mission of St Maurus to Gaul.

It is doubtful whether in Spain there were Benedictine monasteries, properly so called, until a later period.

As the result of their missionary enterprises the Benedictines penetrated into all these lands and established monasteries, so that by the 10th or 1 1th century Benedictine houses existed in great numbers throughout the whole of Latin Christendom except Ireland.

These monasteries became centres of civilizing influences by the method of presenting object-lessons in organized work, in agriculture, in farming, in the arts and trades, and also in.

The monasteries, however, played a great part in the educational side of the Carolingian revival; and certainly from that date schools for boys destined to live and work in the world were commonly attached to Benedictine monasteries.

In those times the monasteries were the only places of security and rest in western Europe, the only places where letters could in any measure be cultivated.

It was in the monasteries that the writings of Latin antiquity, both classical and ecclesiastical, were transcribed and preserved.

In a gigantic system embracing hundreds of monasteries and thousands of monks, and spread over all the countries of western Europe, without any organic bond between the different houses, and exposed to all the vicissitudes of the wars and conquests of those wild times, to say that the monks often fell short of the ideal of their state, and sometimes short of the Christian, and even the moral standard, is but to say that monks are men.

Under the auspices of Charlemagne and Louis the Pious he initiated a scheme for federating into one great order, with himself as abbot general, all the monasteries of Charles's empire, and for enforcing throughout a rigid uniformity in observance.

For this purpose a synod of abbots was assembled at Aix-laChapelle in 817, and a series of 80 Capitula passed, regulating the life of the monasteries.

For the first four or five centuries of Benedictine history there was no organic bond between any of the monasteries; each house formed an independent autonomous family, managing its own affairs and subject to no external authority or control except that of the bishop of the diocese.

But the influence of Cluny, even on monasteries that did not enter into its organism, was enormous; many adopted Cluny customs and practices and moulded their life and spirit after the model it set; and many such monasteries became in turn centres of revival and reform in many lands, so that during the 10th and 11th centuries arose free unions of monasteries based on a common observance derived from a central abbey.

Basing themselves on St Gregory's counsel to St Augustine, Dunstan, lEthelwold and Oswald adopted from the observance of foreign monasteries, and notably Fleury and Ghent, what was suitable for the restoration of English monachism, and so produced the Concordia Regularis, interesting as the first serious attempt to bring about uniformity of observance among the monasteries of an entire nation.

It was decreed that the Benedictine houses of each ecclesiastical province should henceforth be federated for the purposes of mutual help and the maintenance of discipline, and that for these ends the abbots should every third year meet in a provincial chapter (or synod), in order to pass laws binding on all and to appoint visitors who, in addition to the bishops, should canonically visit the monasteries and report on their condition in spirituals and temporals to the ensuing chapter.

Justina at Padua (1421), afterwards called the Cassinese, departed altogether from the old lines, setting up a highly centralized government, after the model of the Italian republics, whereby the autonomy of the monasteries was destroyed, and they were subjected to the authority of a central governing board.

Three or four monasteries of the revived English Benedictines were established on the continent at the beginning of the 17th century, and remained there till driven back to England by the French Revolution.

Thus the Benedictine polity may be described as a number of autonomous federations of autonomous monasteries.