Carthusian monk

The monastery and the site of Large Chartreuse

The monastery founded in 1084 is located at the foot of the Grand Som, fourth plus high summit of the solid mass of Chartreuse. The first site was abandoned after its destruction by the avalanche of 1132 which killed most of the community. Rebuilt a few hundred meters downstream, on the place more sheltered than it still currently occupies, the monastery underwent several other disasters with the wire of the centuries.

In 1678, after an eighth fire, it was rebuilt according to the architectural party that one knows to him. The buildings are classified historic building since 1920. The Carthusian monks, who had been expelled by it with the Revolution (1790), during the suppression of the religious orders, returned in 1816 there.

Expelled again the April 29th 1903, the community of Chartreuse took refuge in Italy, with chartreuse of Farneta (Lucques) and the head office only in 1940 could reinstate, while benefitting from the `rout'. It is not owner of the buildings, confiscated in 1903, but rents them at the French State, with the help of a moderate rent and the current trickle charge.

In the two decades which followed the Second world war, the flood of the tourists became so awkward for the silence and the loneliness of the monks, whom the superiors of the order seriously planned to leave the solid mass of Chartreuse and to transfer the community on a site less polluted by the noise and the indiscretion from the passers by. Finally, with the collaboration and the support of the political authorities, the antique spaces monastic was classified like historic site and natural, prohibited with the overflight of the private planes and was closed with the motor vehicle traffic. For this reason, the monastery is not visited, but a museum is installed in Correrie, downstream from the monastery. One can see there reconstitutions of cells of monks.

Establishment of the Carthusian monks in the solid mass which gave to them its name made of this site the type of monastic space cartusien, although the order put up as of the 13th century to urban sites and houses located in plain, even at the seaside.

The religious order

Tended towards God alone, the monk Carthusian monk leads a contemplative to the variation of the world and any activity pastoral, caritative life or intellectual other that the prayer and what led there.

This order is one of most austere: the monks observe a perpetual fence, an almost absolute silence, frequent fasts and the whole abstinence of meat; they receive the visit of their family only two days per year. They wear a white cloth dress, tight with a belt of leather, and a scapular with capuce of the same cloth, called cuculle. They always carry the Cilice maintained to the size by a cord called lombar. The members are either priests or intended to become to it (monks of the cloister or Fathers), or laic (brothers convers or given).

The life of the Carthusian monks is the search for a balance between the eremitism and the Cénobitisme. Within their monastery, the Fathers share their life between the loneliness of a maisonnette called cell where they sleep, only eat, work and request, and of the moments of common life devoted to the celebration of the divine worship and to certain moments of relaxation. They gather the every day for the mass and vespers like for the office of crossbred sung in the middle of the night. Sundays and feastdays, they eat together at midday only and have a common recreation. Once per week, they have a Community walk during which they walk on two by two and speak freely. This loneliness vis-a-vis God and with oneself requires not very common provisions, a great abnegation and a suitable psychological balance.

Completely ordered with the prayer of intercession, worship and praise, they refuse any pastoral activity, cleans heart, spiritual accompaniment towards the people of outside.

The Frères monks devote themselves primarily to manual work necessary for the maintenance of the convent and the material subsistence of the Fathers. They also take part in a liturgy adapted in their state.

The order is controlled by the general chapter which currently meets every two years. The prior of the Large-Chartreuse (called Reverend Père or general Father) control surface the order in the name of the general chapter which delegates its powers between each chapter to him. The tradition is that it never leaves the limits of the desert of Large-Chartreuse. It is assisted by a council and Visitors who visit on his behalf each house of the order between the chapters. Each house is directed by a prior, elected by the community or designated by the higher authorities of the order. The superiors are not elected for a given period, but they must resign in each general chapter which decides to renew them or not in their loads; they can also be deposited by the canonical visitors of their house, elected by the general Chapter. There is no abbot in Chartreuse. It is thus inappropriate of speaking about abbey in connection with the houses of the order.

The abstract currency about the Carthusian monks, appeared tardily, is " Stat the Crux dum volvitur orbis" (The cross remains while the world turns). It is not any official.

The blazon of the order, attested in documents as of the 13th century, is much older than the currency. It comprises a summoned sphere of a surmounted cross of seven stars. By humility, the stars are sometimes placed under the sphere. They symbolize Bruno and his companions whose arrival in Grenoble was announced by a premonitory dream where the holy bishop Hugues pays to have seen seven stars.

History

The order of the Carthusian monks was founded in 1084 in the mountainous solid mass of Chartreuse, above Grenoble into Dauphine, by Bruno, écolâtre of Rheims, German originating in Cologne and six companions including two laic.

In 1090, Bruno was called by Urbain II in Rome. Quickly, it left to found in Calabria new a Ermitage, without institutional bond with the first foundation of Chartreuse. After its death, on October 6th 1101, this second foundation was incorporated quickly with the Ordre cistercian. It was affiliated with the Ordre cartusien only at the 16th century, when the Carthusian monks settled there in a durable way.

Institutional evolution

Bruno did not write a rule and left like authentic writing only two short letters and a profession of faith. Towards 1127 Guigues I, fifth prior of the house of Chartreuse, put in writing Habits practiced by the monks of Large-Chartreuse, at the request of various close communities which wished food on the same mode.

The first general Chapter of the Order, joining together all the houses, was held in 1140 under the priorat of Anthelme saint. This date marks the canonical birth about the Carthusian monks which takes from now on place beside the great monastic institutions of the Moyen-âge. About the same time, the moniales of Prébayon in Provence decided to embrace the rule of life of the Carthusian monks. ” (Current Statutes I.1) fastening took place about 1145 and was the beginning of the female branch of the cartusienne family.

The general chapters met thereafter regularly. Their decisions or statutes were gathered in collections. They had the force of law on the whole of the affiliated houses. United with the Habits of Guigues which they had as a function to interpret and adapt, they were published in the form of collections which accepted, with the wire of the new increased editions, the names of " Statutes of Jancelin" (1222), d'" Antiqua Statuta" (1259), of " Nova Statuta" (1368), of " Tertia Compilatio" (1509). In 1510, were printed for the first time in a new single edition the Habits of Guigues, the " Antiqua" and " Nova Statuta" , the " Tercia Compilatio". The work accepted the name of " Statuta". But the principle of cumulative codings, adopted hitherto, reached its limits. After more than ten years of work, the edition of 1582 devoted a legislative revolution which was not called into question until our days. Giving up the principle of compilations practiced hitherto, the order decided to melt all the former editions in only one structured synthetic text. As from this moment the Habits of Guigues disappear from the legislation cartusienne itself and were not reinstated any more there, if not in the form of quotations or of selected extracts.

Demography

Guigues had limited the number of the inhabitants of chartreuse to 12 fathers and 16 brothers. But the success of the order, in particular to, resulted in multiplying the houses, then to exceed this number. In spite of that the order cartusien never developed in a way comparable with the other monastic orders because of the natural selection operated by the consequences of a radical loneliness, in particular the absence of human project suggested at the horizon of the candidates to support their entry in the desert and to enable them to be inserted there.

Currently, 18 houses of monks and 4 houses of moniales lodge on three continents 335 monks including 170 priests (or Fathers) and forty-eight moniales (statistical at December 24th, 2004 according to Annuario Pontificio 2006).

Retreat…

The order to date counted 210 different establishments or foundations since 1084. Some were very transitory, others were closed then re-occupied. The houses of moniales simultaneously in activity seldom were more than five.

Since the end of the 19th century, the Carthusian monk undergoes full whip them violent sociocultural jolts of the modern world.

In addition to the Large Chartreuse, the order counted at the 19th century 92 more establishments of which most important were those of Florence, of Pisa and Pavia, to which 5 communities of moniales were added, including 3 in France.

During the 20th century, it is nearly 75 houses which were closed the ones after the others. In France, after the attacks of the anticlericalism and the First World War, much of communities were never raised. Italy and Spain transfer several houses closed following the second world war.

Secularization, the rise in the educational level and the standard of living of the Western companies, the crisis of the vocations, increasingly strong in Europe since the end of the year fifty, completed its reduction with the adequate portion, helped by a spirituality and a lifestyle which did not allow any other pastoral vocations but the publication of plates and booklets summary on the life cartusienne.

In about fifty years, the order lost more than 50% of its manpower, drops never yet observed, even after the French revolution.

… and foundations

It is necessary to await second half of the 20th century so that the order crosses the Atlantic and left the European borders. Sometimes at the request of the local hierarchy (Brazil), sometimes with their own initiative, the Carthusian monks undertook several foundations. The house founded in the USA in 1950, was set up in regular house in 1971 in Arlington (Vermont (the USA). With the agreement of the general chapter, in the middle of the Eighties, then again ten years later, the Reverend general Père Dom Andre Poisson diligenta several missions of prospection in Brazil, the request of the president of the Episcopal conference, then in Southeast Asia (Filipino, Korea) and finally in Argentina. They led to the foundation in the course of stabilization of three houses in Brazil (1984), in Argentina (1998) and South Korea (monk and moniales).

Since 2001, the closing of chartreuse of Sélignac led the order to an original attempt consisting with the establishment in the walls of the monastery of a laic, capable community to receive reprocessing and to prolong the presence of wire of Bruno saint in the walls of the old house.

The foundation of the sisters and monks of Bethlehem, established in particular in the old chartreuse one of Currière, supported by Dom Andre Poisson, then prior of Chartreuse, was looked a long time with suspicion by part of the order which considered being the only agent of the charisma of saint Bruno .

The current crisis slowly makes evolve/move the spirits and brings back the apologetic speech élitiste a long time in force to more realism. Naive and romantic admiration their friends of outside, maintained by an unsuited ecclesiastical speech, as far as by the secrecy from which the Carthusian monks protect their loneliness, contributed to compare them to a kind of aristocracy of the monastic life, populated désincarnés beings. This mentality, of which other orders more attentive with the social-cultural movements were more quickly separated, because indirectly much of wrong to the recruitment of the order, with the comprehension which it has of its charisma and with the diffusion of its religious message of simplicity and poverty in the search for God (see below: Spiritual life).

In this context, the turning and the diffusion of the film Great Silence (film, 2005), at the request of the general superior of the order, showing some aspects of the life of the monks of Large Chartreuse, must be regarded as an major event of the history of the order, and more especially of the phase of demythologisation in which it engaged, not without difficulty, since a small score of years; the film, not without awkwardness, indeed indicates an intention to cause a new glance on a monastic form of life among most original but also most foreign with manners and modern, jusques mentalities and including within Catholicism.

Current houses

See also: List of the monasteries Carthusian monk

Spiritual life: loneliness and silence

The Carthusian monks do not have clean spiritual doctrines. It is their way of life and their liturgy, celebrated according to a clean rite, the Rite cartusien, which structure their spiritual life. No author or delivers particular does not summarize the integrality of this one, if not perhaps the posterior editions of the Statutes to the Concile Vatican II. They indeed contain several principles of spiritual life of one great depth. The master word of the spirituality of the Carthusian monks is LONELINESS, i.e. total and absolute dedication to God alone, in the form of the renouncement of the ordinary social contacts, as far as allows it the balance of the people and Christian charity. SILENCE is the corollary; he is not lived in Chartreuse in an absolute way (the Carthusian monk speaks with its fellow-members, with its superiors, when the material life, the work or the heart require it) but as an interior requirement which calls with the listening of God alone, whose Absolute transcends any human speech and is expressed in only one Word which is his/her Son, man like us, died and ressuscity. This listening is thus more the imitation of a model of life, Jesus-Christ admirer of the Father and life given for the safety of the world, that the analysis of a intellectual speech which would be translated in the words of a teaching.

The austerity of the monastic observances is only the institutional expression and the anthropological translation of this ideal, in particular through the renouncement of displacements, the visits (only the close relatives are received two days per annum), of the newspapers, to the radio and on television, to the telephone, the free conversations, the correspondence, even spiritual, with the instrumental music, etc Its interpretation extreme goes until seeing in the writing and the professional work a possible danger to a monastic simplicity conceived in spite of anthropological realism usually included/understood.

Silence and loneliness cartusiens have direction only like ways towards poor acceptance and patient of the mystery of God. Its transcendence, irreducible on the data of the experiment and the human thought, is binding initially to the monk like a painful absence then like an imperceptible presence. Associated with the dereliction of the Son on the Cross, confronted like any man with the absence of God - “Or is he your God? ” (PS. 41,4) “My God, my God, why did you give up me? ” (PS. 21,2) - the Carthusian monk finds in the life of Jesus, synthesis of all that God intends to say to the man and of all that the man has to say to God, the single word necessary to his crossing of the desert and rest of the promised land.

The way of the mystical life then consists in being acclimatized to the silence of God, reverse of his transcendence, with the wire of a difficult significant, and especially psychic examination, whose fruit is Peace.

This examination renvoit the man with itself, with the simple existence common to any human being in his poverty of each day, taken out of clipper between hope, joys simple and sufferings, which are it a little less, especially when the ordinary means of the religion (liturgy, vocal prayer, song, human friendship, fine words of the fellow-members and even pious reading or lectio divina, support sensitive sacraments etc) are more lived only in the nudity of the naked faith, preserved by the monastic observance of the most obvious subterfuges and of the derivatives which support sometimes do not remove the human condition but him its limits. One day the monk discovers that the fruit of this effort is not at the end of the road. He is in the dust which he presses with the feet, the sigh of its neighbor, song of the bees in the flowers of the apple tree; they suddenly took for him the face of God who makes them be and which suffices for its happiness, so simple that it is invisible.

Structure

The matter of life cartusien, associating Cénobitisme and eremitism, gave rise to an original architecture and to an organization of the conventual buildings. This plan, probably fixed as of the posterior rebuildings at the avalanche of 1132 which destroyed the wood buildings of Chartreuse primitive was adopted by all the cartusiens establishments through Europe. The provision described here is found with some alternatives in all the houses of Carthusian monk in Europe. (Purple-the-Duke described the chartreuse ideal one starting from the plan of the Chartreuse de Clermont that it had been able to observe before his destruction.)

General structure of the buildings

All the monks must live in absolute loneliness and silence, guarantors by the geographical space of the desert and the surrounding walls.

With the image of the community which lives them, the buildings of the life cartusienne occupy two distinct spaces, one sheltering the fathers (cells and large cloister) and the other the brothers (buildings of the brothers, obétiences or workshops). Both are gathered around the buildings of the common life (church, chapter, refectory, cemetery).

Each father of the cloister occupies a small house connected to the others by a corridor or common cloister, which allows circulation the shelter of the bad weather and connects the quadrilateral of the cells (large cloister) to that of the common life (small cloister, also called " galilée") around are laid out the church, the refectory, the chapter.

According to the primitive Habits, the places of the life cartusienne were distributed between high house, where the fathers live, and low house where the brothers live, enclosed in the space of the same desert. The community of laic (convers) lived, worked and requested in the buildings of the low house, separated, at the origin, of a few hundred meters of the house of the fathers. One calls also the low house " correrie" , of the name of the place where it is established in Large Chartreuse (even stereotyped). As of XIIIe century, when the conditions of lonelinesses curve insufficient, the distinction between high and low house was gradually removed, initially in the new foundations, then in the old houses. Consequently, the brothers occupied of the buildings reserved inside the fence of the high house, and close to their workshops or " obédiences" , but sufficiently separated from the cells not to disturb silence of it.

The distinction between high house and low house does not have any more course today.

This unit is characterized by simplicity and sobriety suitable for the order.

The conventual church and places of worship

Each chartreuse includes/understands several churches and vaults:

1. The conventual church.

The conventual church is the center of the monastery; it is a construction often narrow and deprived of side aisles. The church cartusienne is divided into four parts:

the sanctuary

It includes/understands the furnace bridge and the gate vault. On the right of those, the swimming pool is a cupboard practiced in the thickness of the wall where the sacred vessels line up and the oblats for the offertoire prepare according to the Rite cartusien. Also on the line by facing the furnace bridge, is fixed, against the wall and perpendicular to the furnace bridge the cathèdre or sits of celebrating.

chorus of the monks

It occupies approximately two thirds of the nave. Each wall is bordered of a line of stall simple and a line of “forms” or long praying mantis of a part which skirts all the line of the stalls and on which are posed the liturgical books during the offices. In the medium, in the lower third, in the center of the nave, the “lectoire” or desk intended for the readings of the office of night is placed, with the song of the epistle of the mass and the speeches of Laudes and Vêpres.

chorus of the brothers

It is separated from the chorus of the monks by one jubé, walls of wood, closed by a double door which is open during the mass and the offices. The brothers gather there to attend with part of the office of night, with the mass and certain common offices. Since the council the Vatican II, it is permissible for them to take part in the offices in the chorus of the Fathers and to join them by the song, if they have the desire and the capacities of them. With jubé, surmounted of a cross, are leant, in the chorus of the brothers two furnace bridges, on both sides of the door of the chorus of the Fathers.

the platform

A platform in height, the top of the chorus of the brothers, makes it possible to accommodate the foreigners at the community admitted to take part in the offices. It there forever of organ in the churches cartusiennes.

In the beginning, as in the recent construction industries, the churches cartusiennes include/understand one furnace bridge. In XIIIe century only it was authorized there the construction of two secondary furnace bridges, built against jubé which separates the chorus from the Fathers of that of the brothers.

Three doors are practiced in the walls of the churches cartusiennes. One allows circulation between the small cloister and the chorus of the Fathers. It is by it that they enter to the church for the offices. Opposite it the door of the “cloakroom” or sacristy is, where the priest revêt the vestments for the mass and by which he makes his entry with the sanctuary during the song of the introït of the mass. Into chartreuse, the term of sacristy, and its ordinary function, are rather reserved for the cell of the monk charged with this office (Dom Sacristain). A third door is practiced under the platform, at the bottom of the chorus of the brothers and gives access to them the church. According to the layout of the premises, the processions of burial also pass by this door to enter to the church after the lifting of body or to go to the cemetery after the mass of burial.

Finally a bell-tower shelters the bells which stress the life of the monastery. It always is located plumb with crossed nave and sanctuary, with the entry of the chorus of the Fathers who in turn sound the bell progressively of their arrival to the church before vespers and the early hours of Sunday.

2. The chapter.

The chapter, generally equipped with a devoted furnace bridge, shelters the celebration of the conventual chapter Sunday after premium and nun (the celebration of premium to the church, Sundays and festivals was removed following the council the Vatican II, but not the office which continues to be celebrated in cell. Nevertheless the chapter of premium was also deleted on this occasion.) The chapter shelters also various liturgical ceremonies (sermons, rectal injection of the feet Thursday-Saint, etc) and can also be used for the celebration of the masses read.

3. The vault of the brothers or the low house.

The vault of family or vault of the brothers. Originally it was the church of the low house. The prosecutor celebrates the mass for the laic brothers there. Itself or a father designated by him also made there a weekly spiritual conference with the brothers. Those celebrate some jointly there their own offices (prayer of the morning and evening).

4. The vault of the relics.

Each old house shelters a vault of the relics, particularly decorated and equipped with windows or cupboards to shelter the relics preserved in the monastery. The community gathered there each year to listen to the nomenclature of the relics of the monastery at the time of the festival of All Saints' day (November 1st). In several houses, a bench thus traverses its circumference to make it possible the community to sit down during this reading. Its furnace bridge can be used the remainder of the year for the celebration of the masses read.

5. The external vault.

The external vault has its sanctuary located encloses some and its nave except fence, separated from the sanctuary by a grid with counter. The mass is celebrated there for the families, the women - who cannot enter in fence - and people of the surroundings.

6. Interior vaults.

The interior vaults are exclusively intended for the celebration of the masses read, the morning after or before the conventual mass. They multiply at the same time as the Carthusian monks adopt, tardily during XIIIe century, the practice of the masses read daily, without to multiply the number of the side furnace bridges systematically their churches. They undoubtedly constitute the element less known and less studied history of architecture cartusienne. Disseminated in the buildings, their establishment completely varies from one house to another. Their decoration is often representative of the spirit of the periods and the inhabitants and would deserve an attentive study. Their number is indefinite, generally close to the full number of priest which can be sheltered in a house.

Cells

Each cell opens on the large-cloister. The door gives initially on a passage or a corridor called promenade which makes it possible to take exercise during the bad season. The cell includes/understands three parts: 1° an anteroom called Ave Maria, because of the prayer which the monk recites there before entering the cubiculum when it returns from outside; it was used originally as kitchen, currently its use is not defined; it is often used as workshop for small manual work; 2° a cubiculum (principal room, heated by a stove of cast iron or a furnace, with a bed, a table, a bench, a library, and an oratory); 3° a workshop for manual work. Between the cell and the gallery of the cloister is a counter laid out in the thickness of the wall made it possible to distribute the daily ration of food by the brother convers who is charged with it, without this one not having to cross the door of the cell. A garden closes is laid out in front of the cell, cultivated by the occupant with his own way. According to the provision of the grounds and the practices local, the cells are built on one or two stages, the high parts being reserved for the habitat.

Chartreuses of mountains, chartreuses urban and chartreuses necropoles

The first chartreuses ones were founded in mountainous areas with the hard climate and were marked until in their lifestyle by this geographical context. The statutory number of cells, fixed by the Habits of Guigues in 1127, was of twelve cells, for which it is necessary to add a low house intended to shelter 16 brothers. The initial field of Large Chartreuse hardly made it possible indeed to nourish a more community.

However, starting from second half of XIIIe century, the foundation the chartreuses urban ones (the first was the chartreuse one of Paris) involved important structural modifications.

From 1290, following important gifts, the general chapters made it possible to double the number of the cells of certain houses (Paris, then Gaming in Austria, and Large Chartreuse, in 1332 From where the name of “chartreuse doubles” qualifying the houses of 24 cells (for example Farnetta (Italy: Lucca). With the Chartreuse de Clermont, described like chartreuse ideal by the Purple one the Duke, eighteen cells surrounded the large cloister, all arranged on the same plan. In Large Chartreuse as with Valsainte (until work of 2006), 34 Fathers could be lodged.

Moreover, as long as the Carthusian monks remained established in difficult to reach mountainous areas, their loneliness was guaranteed by the isolated geographical framework (deserted). With the arrival in the cities, the demographic development and the bringing together of the inhabited areas, loneliness became more fragile and involved the construction of surrounding walls and the safeguarding of individual loneliness by the construction of partition walls preventing the access from abroad to the cells and locking up the monks in space closes of their garden, originally open on the surrounding countryside. Moreover, the primitive simplicity of chartreuses urban was sometimes exchanged, in certain exceptional remained cases, against the magnificence of the decoration wanted by the benefactors as in Italy with Pavia, Florence, or in Spain with Miraflorès close to Burgos, which remains about identical so that it was in 1480, Aula-Dei, etc

The liquor of Chartreuse

Since the end of the 19th century, the monks draw part of their incomes of marketing of a liquor which bears their name (Chartreuse), developped at the point at Large-Chartreuse. Only two monks of the monastery know the secret receipt of Chartreuse which caused in the past many covetousnesses (flights, confiscations, blackmails, including inside the order, etc) Actuellement, the exploitation of liquor is entrusted to a laic privately held company, located at Voiron (Isere).

Notes and references of the article

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