Most monks worked at manual labor for about six hours a day. In their work projects the monasteries often showed great enterprise. Some succeeded in bold experiments with swamp reclamation and forest conservation. A German abbey at Waldsassen developed one of the greatest fish hatcheries of its time. English Cistercians, endowed with tracts of hilly wastelands, specialized in raising sheep for wool. Their venture proved so lucrative that in 1198, when King Richard was held captive in Austria, the Cistercians were able to pay more than a third of the huge ransom demanded for his release.
DOING EXTRA CHORES, monks sweep the church portico. Many brothers were skilled craftsmen: a monastery might have a miller, shoemaker, apothecary, beekeeper and even "master of fishes."
“Fighting the Devil by Pen and Ink”
Scholarly pursuits were considered virtuous in the monasteries. Monks were granted free time each day for studying (above), and every encouragement was offered to manuscript copyists. The Carthusian monks were permitted to keep writing materials in their bare cells; Cistercian copyists were exempted from labor in the fields.
Completing a manuscript was arduous work: a
Single monk might spend well over a year copying the Bible. Several copyists described graphically the torments of writing all day for weeks on end—the bent backs, the aching muscles, the fingers numbed by winter cold. But for the copyists, writing was a way of "fighting the Devil by pen and ink," and all shared the hope of one scribe who declared: "for every letter, line, and point, a sin is forgiven me."
AT DIVINE STUDY, a modern monk reads alone in his cell. As rrionastic learning flowered, one Danish abbey was founded in the hope "that therein men of prominent erudition. . . would compile the annals of the Kingdom."
AT CONFESSION, a monk and his brother confessor kneel in church. Private devotions, together with divine studies, occupied most monks for periods totaling about four hours each working day—as well as most of Sunday.
A PROCESSION OF BROTHERS emerges from church, into darkness and silence, after the final Office of the day. The Ride decreed that from then until morning "no one shall. . . say anything."
World History
