Johnston R.A. All Things Medieval: An Encyclopedia of the Medieval World

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Monasteries

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a few nights after their journey. Pilgrims, too, stayed at monastic guest-

houses. Monasteries on main roads found their resources taxed by too

many guests, and they had to restrict their hospitality. Less stringent mon-

asteries sometimes rented space to doctors and shops for pilgrims. Some

outside tradesmen came and went, too; professional barbers and tailors

made visits to monasteries on a regular schedule.

The cloister compound contained many practical work and farm build-

ings. Even in a monastery without a large staff of lay brothers, the monks

had to do some manual work to keep their community fed and clothed.

Most monasteries kept bees so they could make their own candles, and

many had ﬁ shponds. Large monasteries that did full-scale farming had the

complete set of barns, butchering sheds, smoking sheds, dairies, and poul-

try yards. Some had mills, and Cistercian lay brothers could even run iron

foundries or weaving and fulling sheds.

Men and women who were joining the monastery or convent were nov-

ices. They lived apart from the rest of the monks, and they were under

special care. Their lives were usually not as rigorous; they were permitted

more food and clothing. Each person had to live for a year as a novice to

be sure the life of the cloister was really his or her permanent choice. When

the time came to make a full profession as a monk, there was a reception

ceremony with the whole community present. The newly professing monk

made a will giving away all his possessions, and his head was shaved in a

tonsure. During a Mass, he took the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedi-

ence. In some orders, the new monk spent three days in seclusion before

joining the community.

The youngest residents of a monastery were the oblates. Until the Fourth

Lateran Council of 1215 outlawed the practice, parents could give a young

child to a monastery as a sacriﬁ ce to God. The child was usually around

the age of beginning school or work training—between 7 and 10. Oblates

were raised and taught at the monastery, and when they were of age,

they took full vows. Some of the most famous medieval saints were oblates

given to the cloister when they were very young; the monastery was the

only life they knew.

Convents often found themselves caring for elderly ladies who either

joined as nuns in their last years or just came to stay at the convent as

guests. Monasteries, too, ended up providing nursing care for more than

just their own aging monks. They kept inﬁ rmaries, but individuals also

could rent a room or come to stay at the guest quarters. Monasteries also

became an early sort of boarding school; they took in younger children of

both poor and wealthy families and educated them. Many of these children

took vows, renewed them when they were older, and lived out their lives in

the monastery or convent. Not all were oblates; some were only there

for temporary education.

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511

Both monasteries and convents dealt with their share of community

problems. There were conﬂ icts and ﬁ ghts, and even some cases of violent

mental illness that caused a brother to be locked up. The requirement of

chastity caused continual problems for brothers and sisters who fell into

temptation. Nuns were kept under great restraint and isolation; even when

a convent was built next to a monastery and was under its protection, the

sisters were never allowed into the monastery for any reason. Monks were

supposed to keep themselves underfed and engage in cold baths to suppress

sexual stimulation; they were also to avoid watching animals mate. Hired

servants who had wives were supposed to live outside the precincts so that

even their wives could not come near the brothers. Monks who oversaw

novices were supposed to be careful neither to leave them alone nor to be

alone with them without a third person as witness. Even with all these rules

and safeguards, there were always reports of nuns becoming pregnant and

sub-priors having affairs with servants’ wives.

One of the monastic vows was the vow of stability, a promise not to leave

the cloister without permission. Monks and nuns who became unhappy

did sometimes run away. Some orders did not accept them back; a runaway

Carthusian monk was unﬁ t to be a Carthusian. Other orders accepted them

back if they showed remorse. The rigors of monastic life—waking up at

night for Matins, avoiding speech, always obeying the prior, seeing women

and children so seldom, eating the bare minimum—were not easy to keep

up over a lifetime. But compared to the rigors of secular medieval life, the

monastic life was not as difﬁ cult as it appears to modern eyes. Many people

never had enough to eat and did repetitive, dull work. The monastery of-

fered friendship, health care, and security for the present life with the sure

promise of heaven in the next life.

See also: Books, Church, Hospitals, Latrines and Garbage, Music, Water.

Further Reading

Brooke, Christopher. The Age of the Cloister: The Story of Monastic Life in the Mid-

dle Ages. Mahwah, NJ: Hidden Spring Books, 2003.

Carmody, Maurice. The Franciscan Story: St. Francis and His Inﬂ uence since the

Thirteenth Century. London: Athena Press, 2008.

Kerr, Julie. Life in the Medieval Cloister. New York: Continuum Press, 2009.

Knowles, David. The Monastic Order in England. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-

sity Press, 2004.

Lawrence, C. H. Medieval Monasticism: Forms of Religious Life in Western Europe

in the Middle Ages. New York: Longman, 2000.

Milus, Ludo J. R. Angelic Monks and Earthly Men. Woodridge, UK: Boydell Press,

1999.

Venarde, Bruce L. Women’s Monasticism and Medieval Society: Nunneries in France

and England, 890–1215. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999.

Monsters

512

Monsters

Medieval readers appear to have been highly naive and credible in their

willingness to believe in both monsters and monstrous humans in other

parts of the world. The standard Latin bestiary books included mythical

animals with real animals, and there was no way for medieval Europeans to

distinguish them. The Latin literature of the fantastic included a supposed

letter Alexander the Great wrote to Aristotle to tell him about the amaz-

ing things he had seen in India and the Liber Monstrorum, a book about

monsters. In Alexander’s letter, real elephants and hippopotamuses were

mixed in with fantastical poisonous snakes, men clothed in tiger skins, and

talking trees.

The mythology of monsters combined the imaginative lore of the Greeks

and Romans, which seemed unquestionably true to many in the Middle

Ages, with the traditional monster lore of Northern Europe. Where the

two overlapped, it seemed certain that the monsters truly existed. Dragons

were known all over the world, as were elephants, and since few had seen

elephants, the lack of actual dragon sightings meant nothing. Latin stories

and Norse stories both talked about dragons, so they must be real.

Most monsters were considered evil. They were outside of God’s house-

hold of faith, and some considered them to be the offspring of Cain,

Adam’s murderous son, or of Ham, Noah’s mocking son. These men pre-

served the knowledge of sorcery, according to the legend, and the mon-

sters were their offspring and were evil to the core. One notable exception

was Saint Christopher, a dog-headed man who was martyred for his Chris-

tian faith. Some monsters were neutral, and some even symbolized tenets

of the Christian faith. The phoenix symbolized resurrection.

Other monsters may not have been considered real even to medieval

readers. Some—especially hybrids of known animals—were merely artistic

creations. The ﬁ eld of heraldry created a wide range of creatures that may

or may not have been considered real. Some were based on poorly reported

distant animals, such as the transformation of the real jackal into the ﬁ c-

tional “thos,” a maned wolf with cloven hoofs. Some were purely artistic,

such as winged stags. Most existed in between these clear categories, such

that some people may have known they were ﬁ ctitious, while others be-

lieved in their existence.

The dragon is the most outstanding case of a monster that nobody had

ever seen but that everyone believed was real. The dragon, in every place

and time, has been a large winged lizard, usually with the ability to breathe

ﬁ re. There was no speciﬁ c region assigned to dragons; they were thought

of as migratory, seeking out treasure to hoard or victims to eat. Some drag-

ons were drawn as small as a wolf, no more than predators of sheep, while

others were drawn huge, with wide wings and long tails. Dragons were

Monsters

513

generally considered to be evil and destructive, but they were also noble,

perhaps due to their association with gold or perhaps because a Roman

legion used a dragon as its emblem. King Arthur also was believed to

have used a dragon as his emblem after his father saw a vision of a starry

dragon.

In medieval dragon stories, saints and bishops were often able to com-

mand dragons. The most famous was Saint George, who ﬁ rst appeared in a

13th-century Latin book of saints’ lives; the story originated in the Byzan-

tine Empire. Saint George was a Roman Christian who came to a town in

Libya where a dragon was terrorizing the town. Having fed the dragon all

their sheep, they were feeding him their children, and that day the king’s

daughter had been sent to die. Saint George wounded the dragon, and he

used the princess’s girdle to put it on a leash. They led it back to the town,

where the townsfolk all became Christians in exchange for the dragon’s

public execution. There were other stories of dragons that ﬂ ew into a

region and terrorized everyone until a holy man commanded them to go

away or submit to death.

There were two small but terrifying monster reptiles. The basilisk was

eventually renamed the cockatrice. It was probably at ﬁ rst a true report

of a large crowned lizard in Asia, but, in time, medieval artists and writers

gave it a rooster’s head. It was said to be exceptionally poisonous; it could

kill not only with its bite, but also with its touch, the sound of its voice, its

smell, and a glance of its eyes. Medieval bestiaries recommended reﬂ ect-

ing its look back with a mirror so it would kill itself. It was also good to

keep a weasel to ﬁ ght with it or a rooster to frighten it by crowing. The

Medieval artists were never quite sure

what some mythical beasts looked like.

The dragon shown this French

commentary on the apocalypse (the

end of the world) does not have wings

or legs. It appears to be more like a

giant snake than like a lizard. The

four-footed beast behind it is called the

behemoth, an animal mentioned in

the book of Job, but without any real

description beyond its great size and

strength. A world that could contain

these amazing beasts could easily have

giant frogs or any other kind of

monster an artist could imagine. (Paul

Lacroix, Science and Literature in the

Middle Ages, 1878)

Monsters

514

salamander, which we know today as a small, harmless lizard, was consid-

ered a large, poisonous lizard that lived inside volcanoes.

Any number of reptilian monsters were thought to live in the sea. The

Norwegian sea monster was called the kraken; they believed it was large

enough to be mistaken for an island. Reports circulated that other monsters

had washed up on beaches or had been sighted in lakes. Sailors believed sea

monsters lived in the distant oceans. Other sea monsters were less danger-

ous and had speciﬁ c names. They were animals, but in ﬁ sh form. The ma-

rine lion was, literally, a ﬁ sh thought to be shaped like a lion. There was a

marine sow, a sea dog, and even a monk ﬁ sh, a ﬁ sh with a monk’s head and

tonsure. The ocean was a mysterious, large place, and it was full of strange

things; anything could be out there.

The phoenix was a large bird monster borrowed from classical mythol-

ogy. It looked like an eagle, but it was purple, the most royal color. Clas-

sical mythology reported that the bird lived on a nest of spices (surely the

most expensive kind of bed). Every 500 years, it set its bed on ﬁ re, died in

the ﬁ re, and was reborn as a small maggot that grew into a new phoenix.

Bestiaries explained that God created the phoenix as a symbol of the resur-

rection of Jesus.

Some monsters were hybrids of known creatures. Medieval books told

about mermaids and mermen who were ﬁ sh on the lower half and human-

like on top. They were considered dangerous and deceptive, and humans

were told to avoid them, although they were beautiful to see and hear. Mer-

maids were popular devices on shields. There was also the centaur, brought

from Greek stories. It had a human head and arms and the body of a horse

or bull. The satyr, believed to live in Ethiopia, had the upper half of a man

and the lower half of a goat. The most elaborate hybrid was the grifﬁ n. Bes-

tiaries stated that grifﬁ ns lived in Bactria, between the Himalayan Moun-

tains and the plateau of Central Asia. The grifﬁ n had the lower body of a

lion and an eagle’s upper body and head, with blue or white wings and red

eyes. Grifﬁ ns were considered evil, but they were also interesting and noble

and appeared on many heraldic crests.

The unicorn was the king of monsters and appeared in the most coats

of arms, paintings, and tapestries. There was no doubt as to the unicorn’s

existence in reality. The Latin Bible used a word like unicorn to translate a

Hebrew word now interpreted as “wild ox.” The medieval Bible, then, ap-

peared to refer to unicorns. This made them seem more real because the

Bible talked of other animals of the Near East that were not seen in Europe.

If lions were real, why not unicorns? Bible manuscripts sometimes had il-

lustrations with unicorns, and sometimes unicorns were present in scenes of

Noah’s ark. All travelers in India reported seeing unicorns, and if they did

not, artists drew unicorns anyway, since everyone knew unicorns lived in

India. When Marco Polo, traveling in Asia, saw a rhinoceros, he was certain

Monsters

515

he had ﬁ nally seen a unicorn. Rather than doubting the unicorn’s existence,

he reported that the artists had surely gotten it all wrong; this was no beau-

tiful beast, but rather a boar-like creature that lived in mire.

Some early unicorn pictures show an animal the size of a goat, with clo-

ven hoofs. Some gave him a low-slung body more like a lion’s. Some pic-

tures showed unicorns with spots like a leopard or a fawn, and others with

a curved horn. By the late Middle Ages, artists had settled into depicting

the unicorn as a white horse , the size of a small horse, with a goat’s beard

and the long, straight spiraled horn of a narwhal. Its tail often was still more

like a dog’s than a horse’s, with a brushy plume.

Some medieval writers described the unicorn as the ﬁ ercest beast in the

world. Pictures showed it attacking elephants, lions, and armed hunters.

During the unicorn’s mating season, it was the ﬁ ercest of all and could

attack anyone with success. In hunting pictures, the unicorn gored dogs

and horses. The lore of Physiologus, an early bestiary, assured Europe that a

unicorn could only be captured by a trick. It could not resist the purity of

a young girl, and it would be entranced and come to her. It would lay its

head in her lap or allow her to pet it. Then, said Physiologus, she could lead

the unicorn to the king. But in depictions of unicorns in books, tapestry,

and sculpture, hunters usually kill the unicorn with spears while it is dis-

tracted by the girl.

The bestiaries also stated that the unicorn had the ability to purify poi-

soned water by dipping its horn. Pictures showed animals coming to drink

at a stream and waiting until the unicorn has done its work. Sometimes,

poisonous animals are shown running away. For this reason, there was a

Early unicorns were much less horse-like

than the modern depiction of a unicorn.

Artists knew that they had one horn, but

apart from that, some unicorns looked

more like goats, lions, or donkeys.

The white horse of later unicorn

mythology began to show up only at

the end of the Middle Ages, usually on

tapestries. (Richard Huber, Treasury of

Fantastic and Mythological Creatures, 1981)

Music

516

market in unicorn horns, which were most often narwhal horns but were

sometimes carved from an elephant’s tusk. They were used to purify food

or drink that could have been poisoned.

The unicorn’s meaning increased with pictures that interpreted it as sym-

bolic of Christ or love. Christ was pierced on the cross as the unicorn was

pierced by hunters. The analogy could not be extended any more than that,

but another analogy with Christ presented itself: as the unicorn allowed

itself to be tamed by a young woman, so Christ’s divine nature allowed it-

self to become a baby in Mary’s womb. In some 15th-century depictions,

the unicorn could symbolize a man’s love, which permits a young woman

to tame it and slip a collar on it. When the unicorn is shown tamed, in a

collar or within an enclosure, love is more likely the meaning than Christ.

The unicorn could also symbolize the virtue of chastity, since it was tamed

by young maidens and could purify water. In some illustrations, a chariot

drawn by a unicorn suggests that the woman riding in the chariot is par-

ticularly chaste. In some pictures, a lion and a unicorn together symbolized

a marriage: the union of the brave and the chaste.

See also: Animals, Books, Heraldry, Tapestry.