Unexpected Rules Christian Monks Have Followed Throughout History

Many religions have some tradition of monastic or similar spirituality, in which individuals withdraw from the normal order of the world and devote themselves to spirituality and religious work. Christian men who do so are generally called monks (though strictly speaking, the Catholic church uses other terms depending on specific situations), and live together or as hermits according to the general rules of poverty (holding very little or no private property), chastity (refraining from sexual relationships and marriage), and obedience (to their superiors and to God). Additionally, most monks live under guidelines specific to their religious orders (Franciscan, Dominican, Cistercian, etc.), similar to the rules nuns must observe.

In addition to these particular rules organizing the monastic life, monks have also followed particular rules due to the time and place in which they lived and the particular needs their churches or communities faced. Christian monks have served as warriors, administrators, diplomats, scribes, religious advisers to the public, and in many other roles over the centuries of Christian monasticism. Accordingly, they've found themselves subject to some unusual rules.

Hermits were an important part of early Christian spirituality, especially in the eastern Mediterranean, and contributed hugely to the development of Christian monasticism. Some of these early hermits lived as anchorites (feminine: anchoresses), living in a single small room and dedicating themselves to prayer and solitude. As monastic communities spread through the Christian world, fewer people lived as hermits, with most people who felt called to the religious life joining one of these establishments.

But this wasn't enough for some of the devoted, and during the 11th and 12th centuries, a revived form of the anchorite life became popular in western Europe. A woman or man (there were actually more anchoresses than male anchorites) would be bricked into an 8-square-foot room, generally in the side of a church, and would never leave. (This consensual immurement mirrored the occasional real-world punishment of being walled up alive.) Food and other essentials were passed in (and waste passed out) through a small opening called, grandly, a "hagioscope," or more approachably a "squint." A hole in the ground of the cell served as a reminder of death during the anchorite's life and served as their grave when the time came.

The people who chose this life had widely varied backgrounds, ranging at the extremes from repentant former sex workers to wealthy men who built cells for their comfort and retained servants; after they were walled in, they were far more nearly equal than they might have been in life, if never wholly so. Within their communities, anchorites ideally served as examples of service to God and the pious life, though as one might imagine, reports survive of both rebellious behavior and mental illness among medieval anchorites.

Among the many comforts some monks do without: shoes. Discalced orders are religious orders whose members either do not wear shoes or who only wear sandals, depending on the specific rules of the order. (For outsiders who object that a sandal is a shoe, we must assume they've taken it up with God.) Both men's and women's orders may be discalced, and some groups, like the Carmelites, are not in general shoeless but have discalced offshoots. Additionally, some formerly wholly discalced groups have readopted sandals — it's easy to imagine bare feet in winter becoming a genuine frostbite risk in the cold climates of Europe.

The people credited with the introduction of this practice are Saints Francis and Clare, Italian monastics of the 13th century who preached both radical poverty and connection to Creation. Some sources  go further and connect this practice to an incident in Exodus, in which God instructs Moses to remove his footwear when standing on holy ground on Mt. Sinai. (Available Bible translations do not agree on whether he is instructed to take off his sandals or his shoes, nor does the text address whether God and His messenger discussed the issue.)

The Order of Malta has a complex and wildly colorful history that begins, not in Malta, but in Jerusalem during the 11th century. A group of Italian merchants petitioned the caliph of Egypt, who was then the person whose permission was needed, to establish a convent and hospital to aid Christian pilgrims in the Holy Land. It became a formal religious order in 1113 and was charged by the crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem with the care and military defense of pilgrims.

The Kingdom of Jerusalem fell to Muslim armies in 1291 (having lost and never recovered the city of Jerusalem itself in 1187), and the Knights of Malta retreated to Cyprus. They then bought the island of Rhodes and ruled it, serving as a Christian military force in the eastern Mediterranean. The Ottoman Empire took Rhodes in 1523, and after some diplomacy the Knights wound up in control of Malta. Dislocated again during the Napoleonic Wars, the Knights hid out in Russia for a while before giving up on the whole "we are a bunch of monk-knights with our own country" idea and setting up shop in Rome (where a keyhole looking into their priory has become a niche tourist destination). Crucially, they were still recognized as a sovereign entity, a distinction they retain to this day.

Today, the Knights of Malta have diplomatic relations with 114 countries, the better to pursue their original role of providing care and protection to the sick and injured. Additionally, the Knights sometimes serve as conflict mediators. Not all members of the modern Knights of Malta are professed religious under vows, but a core of knights under vows still exists within the order.

While most people associate the Crusades with the Middle East, crusades were also called against heretics and pagans within Europe. During the mid-12th century, the territory of today's Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania along the southern coast of the Baltic Sea was occupied by tribes that had stubbornly resisted Christianization. Pope Eugenius III declared in 1147 that a crusade against these tribes would result in the same forgiveness of sins as a crusade in the Holy Land — and of course, presented the same opportunities for wealth, glory, and killing people.

In 1202, the bishop of Livonia (roughly Latvia and Estonia) received papal permission to establish a local order of knights under religious vows. Members of the Order of the Brothers of the Sword took vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, and within a few years the order had become a significant military power in the region, grinding out a state through conquest of tribal territories in southern Estonia and around the Dvina River.

Their luck ran out in 1236. After raiding into Lithuania, a local chieftain leading an army made up of various Baltic tribes and even a force from a nearby Russian city, smashed the Brothers of the Sword at the Battle of Saule. This was the chance the Pope needed. The Brothers' savagery against both converts and "heathens" and their apparently predominant interest in expanding their own statelet rather than God's kingdom had become problems, which Gregory IX addressed by forcing the now-weakened Brothers of the Sword to become a sub-branch of the less troublesome Teutonic Knights, who ultimately completed the conquest of the Baltic tribes.

Tonsure, noun or verb, can refer to the once-distinctive haircut of a male monastic or to the act of his first receiving this haircut. Specifics differ depending on the exact role a man is taking and on the specific church or order he belongs to, but a key part of the tonsure may have been to create a visible difference: You look like a monk now. Various tonsuring practices have included shaving any hair that grows forward of an ear-to-ear line over the top of the head, the familiar bald-on-top ring-of-hair style familiar from images of some saints, or full shaving of the head. In modern Eastern churches, simply cropping the hair close is sometimes considered sufficient. (The tonsure was ditched for Roman Catholics by Pope Paul VI in 1972.)

The origins of the practice are not totally clear. Some sources compare it to old Greek and Middle Eastern rites of offering hair as a sacrifice, while others claim it was intended to make the tonsured man resemble a slave (and thus someone humble). Whatever the source, the tonsure quickly spread as the mark and symbol of a religious man. In some cases, it was part of a "humane punishment": A deposed ruler or other politically inconvenient person might be tonsured against his will as part of his placement into the religious life and out of his rival's way.

The idea of a "vow of silence" is a bit of an exaggeration, but this misconception springs from a genuine reverence Christian monastics have for silence. Intentionally kept silence removes distractions from prayer and devotion; limits opportunities for sin (think how often you wish you simply hadn't said something); and serves as a penance and as a practice of discipline in itself (again, think how hard it is to keep your mouth shut). 

The Trappists, formally Cistercians of the Strict Observance, note on their own website that "silence" is not an explicit vow they take. Instead, Trappist monks (and nuns) take an overarching vow of "conversion of manners," by which they swear to observe faithfully the ancient Rule of St. Benedict that defines their order. Trappists will then follow the traditions of their particular communities, which generally permit conversation in order to perform work projects, interact with a spiritual director, and discuss the business of the community. Additionally, Trappists may at times talk to each other for pleasure or spiritual growth. This way of life is not wholly silent, but as the Trappists observe, it is much, much quieter than the average life outside monastery walls. And of course, communication need not be verbal: Medieval monks developed a system of hand signs to transmit information in silence.

The influential sixth-century Rule of St. Benedict identifies two central responsibilities of the monastic: work and prayer. This dictum is often rendered in the catchy Latin phrase "ora et labora" and emphasizes that while monks retreat from the world, they are not retreating from duty or responsibility, and participate in some way in the work of the monastery. (Also, per St. Benedict, "idleness is the enemy of the soul.") Before the rise of movable type and the printing press in Europe in the 15th century, one common job for a monk was to work as a scribe, hand-copying texts in a room called a scriptorium. In addition to copying, skilled monks might work as illuminators, adding decoration and illustration, or as bookbinders.

Not only did the work of copying manuscripts help spread and preserve Christian texts, but it was also surprisingly difficult work (the better to improve the soul). Monks may or may not have known the language they were copying and had to transcribe "by eye," copying shapes without being able to read them. A single manuscript could take weeks of labor, and particularly skilled scribes might be exempted from some prayers so they could continue working.

Human error could and did creep in. For example, the legend of St. Ursula and the alleged 11,000 virgins who accompanied her to martyrdom is now thought to result from an ancient mistranscription of her legend. Despite the occasional extra few thousand mythical virgins, however, we have these monks to thank for the continued survival of many ancient texts.

Celibacy is one of the key tenets of the monastic life. It is difficult, requires real sacrifice, and helps to separate a monastic from the connections to the outside world that sex, marriage, and family would necessarily represent. Some monks take their promise of celibacy so seriously (and think so little of their own self-control) that they take the avoidance of women to extremes, at least from an outsider's perspective. 

The Monastic state of Mount Athos, which occupies a Greek peninsula, is home to a number of Eastern Orthodox religious houses. Its special status in Greek law allows it to maintain its thousand-year-plus ban on the presence of any and all women, who are not allowed within 500 meters of the coast. One monk at Mt. Athos, Michael Tolotos, may have never seen a woman after his birth. Even female domestic animals are forbidden, with the exception of cats: Cats are both hard to sex from a distance and very useful in vermin control, and one effortless way to maintain a supply of cats is to allow females. 

While this no-girls-allowed policy seems sexist to some modern readers, there is a sweet (if apocryphal) origin story: Per the legend, the Virgin Mary was going to Cyprus (for whatever reason) and was stranded on Mt. Athos by a storm. She liked it so much Jesus granted it to her, so she is the only woman to have a presence on the peninsula.

Most Christian monasteries today are Catholic or follow one of the various Orthodox churches (of which there are many!), but there are a small number of Protestant monastic foundations in the world today. During the Reformation, many Protestants opposed the monastic life. The influential theologians Martin Luther and John Calvin wrote against it, and Protestant rulers followed their lead. Henry VIII dissolved every monastery and convent in England and Wales in order to blunt their influence (and seize their wealth), while the ruling abbess of Zurich, Katharina von Zimmern, calmly handed her authority (and her abbey) to the city council and lived the rest of her life in the Reformed church.

Despite this traditional opposition to monasticism, however, some Protestants remained drawn to communal religious life. Today, both Anglican and Lutheran monasteries exist in the United States. They follow the theology of their respective denominations (and are, therefore, not under the jurisdiction of Rome or the Pope), but follow one of the sets of rules laid out by early church figures. It's worth noting that the popular and influential Rule of St. Benedict, which lays out guidelines for monastic conduct, was written in the sixth century, long before there was such a thing as a Protestant, and so this document can serve as an example even to those who reject some of Rome's other teachings.

Aksum, a powerful city-state that was a predecessor of modern Ethiopia, became Christian in the fourth century, and since then Ethiopia has been home to a distinctive strain of Christianity. A founding legend of the Ethiopian church and culture more broadly is the alleged descent of the Ethiopian emperors from a liaison between King Solomon (of wisdom fame) and the Queen of Sheba (of wealth fame). Supposedly, when this son, Menelik, went to Israel to meet his father, he left with the best late birthday present ever: the Ark of the Covenant. Famous to Christians, Jews, and fans of Indiana Jones as the resting place of the stone tablets bearing the Ten Commandments, the Ark remains an important symbol to Ethiopian Christians, with a replica in each Ethiopian Orthodox Church ... and, allegedly, the original resting in an Aksumite monastery to this day.

The Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion, according to the faithful and those who like believing in treasure, still houses this priceless antiquity — and no, you can't look at it. A single priest guards it from prying eyes, including those of the head of the Ethiopian church. Legends claim these guardians are trained in lethal hand-to-hand combat; a firsthand account by a Slate journalist more prosaically reports small talk while the guardian stepped out for a break. The ark present in the church is almost certainly not the original (among other reasons, it's not mentioned as being in Ethiopia until long after it ostensibly arrived) ... but given its potential power, perhaps it's just as well it stays under guard. Just in case.