![]() As donations were not enough, the monastery cultivated plants, raised livestock, and tried to generate surpluses that were sold to others. A monastery was required to feed all the people in the institution. It is true that they carried many burdens: maintenance of the monks and lay brothers, patient care or education, aiding the poor, welcoming pilgrims. This is why monasteries were often rich in their heyday (12th century). Even though time reserved for prayer was important for religious reasons, the production of the monastery was often more efficient and therefore more economically viable than the work of artisans and peasants of the secular world. It was a free and highly-skilled labor force available to the monastery, with the help of many brothers, nuns, peasants and paid craftsmen. Monks and nuns were seen as intellectual elite who could read and write (uncommon in medieval Europe). ![]() The monasteries were indeed a center of stability and remarkable technical innovation at this time. ![]() But the intellectual and economic influence of the monasteries was not proportional to their numbers. These houses consisted of between twenty and up to 400 monks at Cluny in its heyday. There were almost one thousand monasteries in medieval France, of which 251 were Cistercian abbeys and 412 were Benedictine abbeys, along with over 700 monasteries in England. Translator: Bruce LeeĪmong the regional products from Medieval Times, many originated from the monasteries that invaded Europe between the 9th to 15th centuries. ![]()
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