Why Is Monastic Important?

Monastics have been instrumental in creating, preserving, and enhancing institutions of religious and secular learning and in transmitting cultural goods, artifacts, and intellectual skills down through the generations.

What is the monastic way of life?

Monasticism is a way of living that's religious, isolated from other people, and self-disciplined. In many religions, monks and nuns practice monasticism.

What was the importance of the monastic movement to medieval Europe?

Monks and nuns performed many practical services in the Middle Ages, for they housed travelers, nursed the sick, and assisted the poor; abbots and abbesses dispensed advice to secular rulers. But monasticism also offered society a spiritual outlet and ideal with important consequences for medieval culture as a whole.