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Carthusian
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The Carthusian Order, also called the Order of St. Bruno, is a Roman Catholic religious order of enclosed monastics. The order was founded by Saint Bruno of Cologne in 1084 and includes both monks and nuns. The order has its own Rule, called the Statutes, rather than the Rule of St Benedict and combines eremitical and cenobitic life.
The name Carthusian is derived from the Chartreuse Mountains; Saint Bruno built his first hermitage in the valley of these mountains in the French Alps.
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The Carthusian Order, also called the Order of St. Bruno, is a Roman Catholic religious order of enclosed monastics. The order was founded by Saint Bruno of Cologne in 1084 and includes both monks and nuns. The order has its own Rule, called the Statutes, rather than the Rule of St Benedict and combines eremitical and cenobitic life.
The name Carthusian is derived from the Chartreuse Mountains; Saint Bruno built his first hermitage in the valley of these mountains in the French Alps. The word charterhouse, which is the English name for a Carthusian monastery, is derived from the same source. The motto of the Carthusians is Stat crux dum volvitur orbis, Latin for "The Cross is steady while the world is turning."
Carthusian character
A Carthusian monastery (Ordo Cartusiensis) might best be described, paradoxically, as a community of hermits. There are no abbeys and each monastery is headed by a prior and is populated by choir monks and lay brothers.
Each choir monk - that is, a monk who is or who will be a priest - has his own hermitage, usually consisting of a small dwelling. Traditionally there is a one-room lower floor for the storage of wood for a stove, a workshop as all monks engage in some manual labour. A second floor consists of a small entryway with an image of Mary, the Mother of Jesus as a place of prayer, and a larger room containing a bed, a table for eating meals, a desk for study, a choir stall and kneeler for prayer. The hermitage is set in a corner of a highly walled garden, wherein the monk may meditate as well as grow flowers and vegetables.
The individual hermitages are organised so that the door into the garden of each may be reached by a corridor. Near the door is a turnstile, so that meals and other items may be passed in and out of the hermitage without the monk having to meet the bearer.
The monk lives most of his day in the hermitage: he meditates, prays the Liturgy of the Hours on his own, eats his meals, studies and writes (Carthusian monks have published scholarly and spiritual works), works in his garden or at some manual trade. The Carthusian monk leaves the cell daily only for three prayer services in the monastery chapel, including the community Mass, and occasionally for conferences with his superior. Additionally, once a week, the community members take a long walk in the countryside during which they may speak; on Sundays and feastdays a community meal is taken in silence. Twice a year there is a day-long community recreation, and the monk may receive an annual visit from immediate family members.
The Carthusians do not enagage in work of a pastoral or missionary nature. Unlike most monasteries, they do not have retreatants and those who visit for a prolonged period are people who are contemplating entering the monastery. As far as possible, the monks have no contact with the outside world. Their contribution to the world is their life of prayer, which they undertake on behalf of the whole Church and the human race.
In addition to the choir monks there are lay brothers, monks under slightly different types of vows who spend less time in prayer and more time in manual labour; they live a slightly more communal life. The lay brothers provide material assistance to the choir monks: cooking meals, doing laundry, undertaking physical repairs, providing the choir monks with books from the library and managing supplies. All of the monks live lives of silence.
Carthusian nuns live a life similar to the monks, but with some differences. Choir nuns tend to lead somewhat less eremitical lives, while still maintaining a strong commitment to solitude and silence.
Today Carthusians live very much as they originally did, without any relaxing of their rule. Thus, there has been no reformed Carthusians as with other orders such as the Cistercians. Thus Pope Innocent XI coined the phrase Cartusia numquam reformata, quia numquam deformata. Literally this translates to "The charterhouse has never been reformed, for it has never been deformed".
Carthusians in Britain
The first Carthusian monastery or 'Charterhouse' in England was founded by Henry II in Witham Friary, Somerset as penance for the murder of St Thomas Becket.
The best preserved remains of a medieval Charterhouse in the UK are at Mount Grace Priory near Osmotherley, North Yorkshire. One of the cells has been reconstructed to illustrate how different the lay-out is to monasteries of most other Christian orders, which are normally designed with communal living in mind.
The third Charterhouse built in Britain was Beauvale Charterhouse remains of which can still be seen in Beauvale, Greasley parish, Nottinghamshire.
The London Charterhouse gave its name to a square and several streets in the City of London, as well as to the Charterhouse public school (in the British sense) which used part of its site before moving out to Surrey.
A few fragments remain of the Charterhouse in Coventry, mostly dating from the 15th century, and consisting of a sandstone building that was probably the prior's house. The area, about a mile from the centre of the city, is a conservation area, but the buildings are in use as part of a local college. Inside the building is a medieval wall painting, alongside many carvings and wooden beams. Nearby is the river Sherbourne that runs underneath the centre of the city.
A single Carthusian Priory was founded in Scotland during the Middle Ages, at Perth. It stood just west of the medieval town and was founded by James I (1406–37) in the early 15th century. James I and his queen Joan Beaufort (d. 1445) were both buried in the priory church, as was Queen Margaret Tudor (d. 1541), widow of James IV of Scotland. The Priory, said to have been a building of 'wondrous cost and greatness' was sacked during the Scottish Reformation in 1559, and swiftly fell into decay. No remains survive above ground, though a Victorian monument marks the site. The Perth names Charterhouse Lane and Pomarium Flats (built on the site of the Priory's orchard) recall its existence.
The London Charterhouse is famous for the deaths of the Carthusian Martyrs, hung, drawn and quartered in 1535 for refusing to accept royal supremacy over the Church.
Modern Carthusians
The Carthusians suffered greatly during the Reformation and during the French Revolution and after in France. A large number of their monasteries were closed during both periods.
Today, the monastery of the Grande Chartreuse is still the Motherhouse of the Order. There is a museum illustrating the history of Carthusian order next to Grande Chartreuse; the monks of that monastery are also involved in the production of the Chartreuse liquor. Although visits are not possible within the Grande Chartreuse, the 2005 documentary Into Great Silence gave unprecedented views of life within the hermitage.
Liturgy
Before the Council of Trent in the 1500s, the Catholic Church in Western Europe had a wide variety of rituals for the celebration of Mass. Although the essentials were the same, there were variations in prayers and practices from region to region or among the various religious orders.
When Pope Pius V made the Roman Missal mandatory for all Catholics of the Latin Rite, he permitted the continuance of other forms of celebrating Mass that had an antiquity of at least two centuries. The rite used by the Carthusians was one of these and still continues in use in a version revised in 1981. Apart from the new elements in this revision, it is substantially the rite of Grenoble in the twelfth century, with some admixture from other sources. It is now the only formally observed rite of a religious order; but by virtue of the Ecclesia Dei indult (or "permitted exception") some individuals or small groups are authorized to use some other now defunct rites.
A feature unique to Carthusian liturgical practice is that whereby the bishop bestows on Carthusian nuns, in the ceremony of their profession, a stole and a maniple. This is by some interpreted as a relic of the former rite of ordination of deaconesses. The nun is also invested with a crown and a ring. The nun wears these ornaments again only on the day of her monastic jubilee, and after her death on her bier. At Matins, if no priest is present, a nun assumes the stole and reads the Gospel, and although the chanting of the Epistle was, in the time of the Tridentine Mass, reserved to an ordained subdeacon, a consecrated nun sang the Epistle at the conventual Mass, though without wearing the maniple. Even before the rite of the consecration of virgins was made more widely available as part of the liturgical reforms undertaken after the Second Vatican Council, Carthusian nuns retained this rite, administered by the diocesan bishop four years after the nun took her vows.
Stages of the Carthusian's Life
- Postulancy (3 to 12 months) the postulant lives the life of a monk but without having professed any kind of vows.
- Novitiate (2 years). The novice wears a black cloak over the white Carthusian habit.
- Simple Vows (3 years) becomes a junior professed monk and wears the full Carthusian habit.
- Renewal of simple vows (2 years)
- Solemn profession.
Locations of Monasteries
There are 24 Charterhouses around the world, five of which are for nuns; altogether, there are around 370 monks and 75 nuns. They can be found in Austria, Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the USA. One was recently built in Argentina, the construction work having started in 1997.
Further reading
- Lockhart, Robin Bruce. Halfway to Heaven. London:Cistercian Publications, 1999 (Paperback,ISBN 0-87907-786-7)
- Kossmann, Benedict. Sounds of Silence. Authorhouse, 2005 (Paperback,ISBN 1-4208-7291-5)
- Klein Maguire, Nancy. An Infinity of Little Hours: Five Young Men and Their Trial of Faith in the Western World's Most Austere Monastic Order. PublicAffairs, 2006 (Hardcover,ISBN 1-58648-327-2)
See also
External links
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