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A monastery is a building or complex of buildings comprising the domestic quarters and workplaces of monastics, monks or nuns, whether living in communities or alone ().A monastery generally includes a place reserved for prayer which may be a chapel, church, or temple, and may also serve as an oratory, or in the case of communities anything from a single building housing only one senior and ...
Monasticism (from Ancient Greek μοναχός (monakhós) 'solitary, monastic'; from μόνος (mónos) 'alone'), also called monachism or monkhood, is a religious way of life in which one renounces worldly pursuits to devote oneself fully to spiritual work.
Early Benedictine monasteries were relatively small and consisted of an oratory, refectory, dormitory, scriptorium, guest accommodation, and out-buildings, a group of often quite separate rooms more reminiscent of a decent-sized Roman villa than a large medieval abbey. A monastery of about a dozen monks would have been normal during this period.
In the early Middle Ages, this was one of the few heated rooms in the monastery – the others being the infirmary, the guest house and the kitchen. This policy was generally relaxed, save for a few very strict orders, by the latter part of the medieval period when fireplaces became common throughout the claustral buildings.
A priory is a monastery of men or women under religious vows that is headed by a prior or prioress. They were created by the Catholic Church . Priories may be monastic houses of monks or nuns (such as the Benedictines , the Cistercians , or the Charterhouses ).
Monasteries provided a stable environment for learning in Medieval Europe. While much of the learning was contained to the confines of the monastery walls, knowledge did extend beyond the relatively isolated centers through travelers and pilgrims who would stay at the monasteries.
The cloister of Sénanque Abbey, Provence Church of the former Bath Abbey, Somerset An interior of the Bridgettine's Nådendal Abbey, a medieval Catholic monastery in Naantali, Finland An abbey is a type of monastery used by members of a religious order under the governance of an abbot or abbess .
768–814) the requirements of a separate monastic community within an extended and scattered manorial estate led to the development of a "monastery within a monastery" in the form of the locked cloister, an architectural solution allowing the monks to perform their sacred tasks apart from the distractions of laymen and servants. [8]