Exploring monastic culture

To understand what is essential to monastic culture, it is worth taking a look at the beginnings of monastic life. Much of what shaped monastic culture 1,500 years ago is still kept alive by monks and nuns today. In their interaction with the world, they are also breaking new ground, where their traditional attitude to life appears surprisingly modern.

By Martin Erdmann

Monastic culture is a broad and diverse field, and exploring and measuring its possibilities is a task that cannot be completed quickly. How could it be otherwise, given that this 1,500-year-old cultural phenomenon has undergone just as many changes over time and, despite all its ups and downs, has proven its vitality and ability to be creative? Hence, we can still rightly present monastic life as a living phenomenon in our society, one that is far more than a reminiscence of times gone by in the style of ‘The Name of the Rose’. Whether it is about illuminating the monastic work ethic, modern architecture, the phenomenon of monastery gardens, the winegrowing of old monasteries and abbeys, or providing insights into the studios of monastic artists – it always becomes clear that in the monastery there are both the big picture and the specific details, but never other than in the form of concrete communities, which in turn are made up of individual personalities. These protagonists of everyday life, nuns and monks, try to live within the horizon of experience and in the experimental space of the monastery in order to find a viable model for life.

A different view of the world.

At first glance, this sounds a little sober: the search for a viable model for life. After all, the father of Western monasticism – as St. Benedict of Nursia (today’s Italian town of Norcia; he lived from about 480 to 547) is often called – placed great emphasis on the quest for God as the core of monastic life.

As true as that is, Benedict was nevertheless a thoroughly everyday person, and that is precisely what prompted him to write a rule for everyday monastic life in all its facets, to provide a model. This is because monks and nuns also live in the world – no one can completely withdraw from it – but at a critical distance from it. Critical because they make it their task not to accept and participate in everything without questioning it, but to choose what should carry weight in life and what should not. That is why they are supposed to also practise the ‘discretio’ of which Benedict speaks, the discretion. This again, according to the origin of the word, means nothing other than the ability to discern, and as an inner attitude or goal this corresponds to ‘dilectio’, the discerning, selective love. ‘The good ones go into the pot, the bad ones go into the crop,’ as the fairy tale says.

And so, with these few notions, we come closer to understanding the monastery as a model for life. Monastery means critical distance from the world, it means gaining a different, alternative, discerning view of the world. Discreet, indeed loving criticism, if one can sympathise with this double notion. But this involves a considerable amount of energy, as it means constantly re-evaluating one’s life and practising joyful renunciation when one notices that one is straying from one’s original youthful enthusiasm for travelling light. That is why the monastery represents both a horizon of experience and an experimental space, because it has a history, both in one’s own life and as a whole.

Travelling light.

In fact, the first monks travelled light. They moved to the desert and tried to live a minimalist life. Whether alone or in groups, these desert fathers and mothers, as the early Christian ascetics are also called, wanted to leave everything behind and lead a life of prayer and inner peace without material needs. Some anecdotes have been handed down about them, small lessons that show how they repeatedly struggled with their desert experiment when they realised that the world, sooner or later, was giving them a tug, like a puppet on a string. The pull of the world could and can be felt, especially when one tries to escape it.

But at least one thing can be said for certain: monastics and ascetics (which simply means ‘someone exercising’) from the very beginning were existentialists who wanted to lead a conscious life. Once you realise this, it is easy to see that there have probably always been monastics, people who withdraw and renounce many things in order to be freer and to better understand the meaning of life. Here certainly also lies the core of the fascination that monastic life exerts on many people today. It is the fascination of freedom. However, not arbitrary freedom, but the reassurance of being part of a living tradition in which many before have already practised a life of conscious dialectics between monastery and world. Some ancient philosophers had a very similar way of life, and we find it among Buddhist monks long before Christianity emerged.

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Remaining faithful to the place.

Monastic culture, however, only took a new turn with the Rule of St. Benedict, which was written in the sixth century. Although the Rule of St. Augustine preceded it by one century, the Rule of St. Benedict is so comprehensive and true-to-life that when reading it, one not only has a vivid picture of monastic life at that time, but even today in a monastery one can still see its realisation at every turn. It flourished not until the 9th century, as until then it had been one of many other rules. The Rule of St. Benedict simply fitted so well into Charles the Great’s programme of renewal that, although imposed from above, it inevitably began its triumphant march, being the ingenious, self-effective spiritual concept that it was.

In his rule, Benedict proposes an orderly monastic community under the leadership of the abbot. In a masterful way, he knows how to connect democratic and hierarchical, liturgical and work-related, everyday and festive elements with each other and so to form a rhythm. Above all, the combination of prayer and work – reading, which is just as important, unfortunately often is forgotten here – is probably one of the best-known features of this rule and has become proverbial as ‘Ora et labora! – Pray and work!’ Taken as a whole, wherever one looks in this rule, one will find that it is not a statute with a dictatorial stance, but that everything is created to promote development and rhythm. Insofar, monastic life does not correspond to our modern longing for wellness, but is demanding and awakening. In a monastery, one lives consciously and by one’s own free will, and not arbitrarily.

City and countryside as monastic spaces.

Hence, the large, venerable monasteries emerged, which we often still admire today and many of which are still inhabited by members of religious orders – for the time being, at least! In the High Middle Ages, the orders branched out and, yet again, took very different paths.

Some urged a return to the original rigour, because the oscillation between vigour and awakening and slackening and decadence is also inherent in monasticism, as in all other cultural phenomena. The Cistercians emerged. They too live according to the Rule of St. Benedict. But they sought out rough places, swampy forests, where they could clear the woodland and work hard. They detested nothing more than making it easy for oneself. They rejected anything superfluous and any comforts. And lo and behold, thanks to this pioneering spirit, but also because they were the first to establish a network of subsidiaries and continuous communication throughout Europe, they were extremely successful and in the 12th century spread at breathtaking speed. Even today, there is hardly a cultural landscape in Europe that has not been influenced or shaped in some way by the Cistercians. It is not entirely unreasonable to say that the Cistercians established a prototype of the Internet, because they were really extremely well connected and were thus able to benefit from each other’s spiritual insights, and, last but not least, from newly acquired technical knowledge.

Mendicant orders: practical and spiritually mobile.

Die Dominikaner in Prenzlau

The mendicant orders took a different path. While the Cistercians set out to settle in various places, thus cultivating the Benedictine ideal of permanence, the Franciscans and Dominicans embraced the trend towards urbanisation and the increasing mobility of people. They founded monasteries in cities, which were more like bases than places of retreat, and saw their task as pastoral care, charitable work and education. They could be found in the gutters among the poorest members of society as well as at the universities. Settling in one place was not their precept; on the contrary, they often changed locations, which in turn created a communication network that enabled cultural exchange over long distances. The mendicant orders, as an urban phenomenon, mentally had a completely different concept. They placed little or no value on manual labour, as they were not based in the countryside and had thus distanced themselves from the rural way of life. And this has been the case until today, albeit with transitions and hybrid forms.

Producing and using – from a monastic perspective.

Back to the Benedictine monasteries. What work ethic does the Rule of St. Benedict propose? Some of our modern concepts will strongly be brushed the wrong way here. For example, self-fulfilment, which is so important to us when we critically assess our lives and our work. The Rule states that this is definitely not what monastic work is about. If someone is conceited about their abilities and thinks the monastery will benefit that way, then that work should be taken away from them especially. In today’s performance society, this is an outrageous, even disconcerting demand. Did Benedict only want amateurs and semi-educated people to work in his monastery? Hardly, because he repeatedly emphasises that everything should be executed carefully and skilfully. But he has a holistic view of humanity in mind. It is not for nothing that he explicitly speaks of ‘manual labour’. It is crucial to realise that work is part of being human, in general and without judgement in particular. One should not be too proud to get one’s hands dirty. Benedict sums it up as follows:

“They are truly monks when, like our fathers and the apostles, they live from the work of their hands.”

At another point, he emphasises that idleness is the enemy of the soul. Monastic culture thus lives between the poles of looking to heaven, which explains the critical distance from the world, and standing firmly on the earth by taking practical care of daily needs.

All is sacred altarware.

And in this contrast, the monk father Benedict also sees the tools and, more generally, the things we deal with every day. They should all be regarded as ‘sacred altarware,’ he says. How could anyone better express the appreciation of work and sustainability that comes from a loving devotion to things? The comparison with altarware is telling. Who would treat a precious chalice carelessly? But what about a coffee-to-go cup? We throw it away. Surely, it’s not made of gold. But does that really make a difference? This is about mindfulness, about noticing and appreciating resources and people’s work, and in fact, about a positive culture of everyday life.

Discontinuations and new beginnings.

But what is the current state of this monastic habitat? Monasteries are in line with the trend of longing for deceleration and the essentials in life. Quite a few people dream of or are taking holidays in monasteries. Much of what constitutes monastic culture can be found under different names in our alternative lifestyles today: minimalism, sustainability, networking, the ethics of things … Nonetheless, monastic culture is under threat because for some time now, many monasteries have been unable to attract new recruits. Over the last 50 years, the total number of religious has fallen by 40% (men) and 45% (women). Certainly, many a monastery is closing unnoticed because of a lack of new blood. Perhaps they will survive as museums or cultural centres. But in this case, it is good to look at the history of monasteries and the waves of change that have alternated between rise and decline. In some places, we are seeing new beginnings in monastic life, for example in France, but also here in Germany. In addition, new forms of monastic life are emerging, such as the monastic communities of Jerusalem. Its members consciously live in large cities, without their own property, and divide their day between professional work ‘outside’ and contemplative retreat in the monastery. Monastic culture always seems to unfold its power when it responds to the signs of the times and takes seriously the longing for a clear, resolute, structured life.

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Monasteries are breaking into urban areas.

If today we look back at centuries of monastic culture and at the same time look around the current monastic landscape, we will discover that it is actually cities that are spawning new forms of this ancient, universal and archetypal way of life. This is because the basic coordinates – horizon of experience and space for experimentation, critical distance from the world, structured life and the quest for God under the commandments of love for God and of neighbour – still apply. It only matters what form they take and also – again, without arbitrariness – whether this form is on the whole connected to their original motivation, the Imitation of Christ. The construction of new, widely visible and classic monastery complexes currently is the exception. What is more characteristic is what Father Nikolaus Nonn, a Benedictine monk, says about the cella in Hanover: “Not everyone knows that there is a monastery here.”

Hanover, cella, monastery? In fact, there is little in the northern district of Hanover to indicate that a religious order is based there. But indeed, a neat house with a historicist façade in Vossstrasse is home to this smallest monastic unit, hence the name cella. Cella is a classic monastic term, referring to a cell, which has the same root as a prison cell, except that in a monastery, a cell is a place of retreat and not a chamber of forced deprivation of freedom. The cell as a living space, with a limitation to the essentials and therefore also providing protection: this is a concept that fits surprisingly well with urban culture. Housing is scarce, and every city dweller basically longs for a safe place that may be small, but where he or she can be themselves and truly find peace. And it is precisely such a space that the Missionary Benedictines of Königsmünster, with astonishing foresight, established in the middle of Hanover already thirty years ago.

Those who discover and visit the cella will indeed find many classic monastic elements amidst this residential building: a miniature meditation garden directly behind the garage courtyard; inside the monks’ cells, of course, only half of which are occupied by three monks; a small dining hall, common rooms and, of course, the chapel. Mostly, however, it is the silence and atmosphere of contemplation in the house that are surprising. Anyone who is even slightly practised in embracing new situations can get some peace and ease of mind astonishingly quickly. The use of forms also contributes to this: everything is restrained and clear, with a bright design. The chapel is unadorned, but not cold. Its forms refer to the most important aspect of worship: the inner attitude. This is not a space that requires a large number of visitors, on the contrary. With just a handful of people, you feel at home here and you are surprised at how good the singing sounds.

Sharing everyday life with one another.

The monks do not impose themselves with their cella, nor do they walk through the city with a wagging finger, admonishing everyone else to be calm and slow down. No, they have integrated themselves into urban life, they have not occupied a space for their supposedly more exemplary life, but they are seeking a way to find a new form based on classical monasticism. Visitors are welcome, but the cella does not want to become a bustling information centre.

In fact, the monks live their everyday life in a meaningful way and allow others to participate in it. This extends to their professional activities. Father Nikolaus is a musician and lecturer in Gregorian chant, but he also expresses his artistic talents in flower arranging. His fellow brothers work as a voice therapist and in social media consulting. As Missionary Benedictines, it is important to the three monks to bear witness to their way of life locally, ultimately, bear witness to a quest for God that is founded in the everyday life of a city. A monastic life of that kind can be more strenuous than in a large classical monastery, where the division of labour and the organisation relieve the individual of many small everyday worries. In the cella, one lives somewhat off the beaten track, left to one’s own devices, more self-reliant, but still part of the larger monastic community to which the cella belongs. And for its guests, whether they happen to drop by or visit the Cella regularly, this miniature monastery in the middle of Hanover, in a surprising and inspiring way, is part of their everyday life.

Monastic community as a network.

The city seems to be an experimental space which monasteries are currently having a try at, with reduced but nevertheless distinctive possibilities. The cella conveys a classic element through its name. Not far from Hanover, in Bielefeld’s old town, we find another structure. The name ‘CityKloster’ (city monastery) already suggests that this is a new urban form. First of all, there are, despite the classic sacred buildings, no longer any members of religious orders there. Five hundred years ago, Franciscans lived on Klosterplatz and celebrated Holy Mass in what is now the parish church of St. Jodokus. They have long since left Bielefeld, but the building complex still stands and continues to shape this part of the old town. Today, CityKloster is a spiritual centre, a haven of peace, or better still, the hub for a community of monastic people spread across the entire city.

A community across the city.

And this reveals what a monastery really means, apart from any affiliation to a particular order, apart from world withdrawal, vocation and vows and whatever else one might mention in this context: the fundamental attitude of searching for the where? and the where to? In a city, this can also be understood in a symbolic sense: in the web of neighbourhoods and streets, to resolve one’s where? and where to? Meeting like-minded people as well. And that is what happens in Bielefeld. The team of about twenty people consists of men and women with a wide variety of talents and approaches. Several of them work in the small monastery shop, where you can also have a cup of coffee or tea and which functions as the communication centre of the CityKloster. Others actively participate in church services and prayers or help with smaller courses that take place at the CityKloster. Even one or two guests can be accommodated on an ad hoc basis.

Here, the monastery is alive as an idea and a way of life, not as a community with juridical ties and exclusive admission processes, as is the case in a religious order. One could argue that this makes such a CityKloster less distinctive and committed. Certainly, but in its own special way, it is a good reflection of everyday urban life. Through its participants, it succeeds in adding a little monastic accent to many parts of the city. And the monastery’s team is certainly communicative: on Saturdays, market day, there is a mobile church pew where you can simply sit down to chat or philosophise. This is only logical, as the CityKloster feels committed to a mysticism of the street, with its friendly and many-voiced mission statement: desire for more depth, passion, experience of God, bearing witness, prayer, faith, orientation, community, spiritual life.

Where religious life can lead to.

The road is also the motif of Berlin worker priest Christian Herwartz. As a Jesuit, he carries an attitude to life that differs significantly from the monastic seclusion of the old, contemplative orders. The bearded man in his mid-seventies, who is perhaps somewhat reminiscent of the energetic fisherman and apostle Peter, says of himself:

“My reference point is the life of Jesus, who described himself as the road (truth and life). I just try to get closer to that, whatever place I am at.”

Christian Herwartz did not leave it at this beautiful thought, but years ago, in conversation with someone seeking advice, he was inspired to create the “Straßenexerzitien” (street retreats). The street is to be experienced as an ‘other-place’, challenging, setting perceptions in motion. The exercises during the street retreats are quite simple: look, listen, smell, touch, taste – let your heart be touched, let yourself be enthused and learn to talk about it in a group. Herwartz also practised this outside openness at home, in an open living community with a fellow brother and many people who were often marginalised in the city, with whom he shared his life. Certainly, a very consistent, but definitely liberating way of life, as he himself says. His community is no longer the exclusive convent; he has not bound himself to a specific place through vows. Herwartz values the process of alienation and befriending. And perhaps that is precisely as things are now, where religious life has led to at present, in contact with the city.