Lesson 8.1: Monks and Monasteries

Monks and Monasteries

Monastery

• A monastery was a building, or buildings, where people lived and worshiped, devoting their time and life to God.
  • Monasteries were self-sufficient communities where monks gave up worldly goods to live a simple life of worship and prayer.
    • Self-sufficient means that they did not need to go anywhere for goods, because they were able to produce items themselves.
• Look below at the map of a typical monastery.  Notice the different locations on the map and how monks would be able to get anything that they needed.

Monks

• The people who lived in the monastery were called monks. 
• A Monk is a religious man who lives and worships God in a monastery.
• They were very important, because the monks in the monasteries were some of the only people in the Middle Ages who knew how to read and write.
  • They provided education for others.
  • They wrote and copied all of the books and kept records.
  • The monks who copied the books were called scribes.
    
    • The most popular book in the Middle Ages was the Bible, because this was the main book that the monks copied and people were very religious.
    • They also added illumination to the Bibles(works of art, sometimes with added gold leaf).
    • Illumination means to "bring light" to a book.
  • Without them, we wouldn't know much about the Middle Ages.

Here is an image of a scribe copying a bible and adding illumination.

Here is an example of illumination.

Watch this (optional) video to learn more about the life of a monk during the Middle ages.