How to Live Like a Monk: Medieval Wisdom for Modern Life

by Danièle Cybulskie

Religious belief, like human nature, is complex, changeable, and in many cases flexible, and that is not necessarily a flaw.

Green, above all colours, is most agreeable to the eyes. —The Ancren Riwle

After all, as The Ancren Riwle says, “An angel has seldom appeared to man in a crowd.”

Julian of Norwich, an anchorite who wrote in the fifteenth century, recorded visions of Jesus on which she would later meditate, many of which involved his blood, sweat, and tears. Her very first vision was of Jesus’s crown of thorns: Suddenly I saw the red blood trickling down from under the garland, hot and freshly, and right plentifully, as it was in the time of His passion when the garland of thorns was pressed on His blessed head.

Even Julian’s meditations were sometimes tame, such as when she reflected on a vision in which Jesus handed her a hazelnut, and she realized that even small things like this contained the vastness of God’s love.

Often, dear sisters, ye ought to pray less, that ye may read more.… In reading, when the heart feels delight, devotion ariseth, and that is worth many prayers. —The Ancren Riwle

Cassiodorus’s declaration that he has built this collection for the monks with God’s help shows that the wisdom of the ancient world, though pagan, was to be treasured, not despised.

In addition to the works of the ancients, and perhaps more surprisingly, monks collected the works of Islamic thinkers, many of whom were far ahead of Europeans in their knowledge of medicine, astronomy, physics, and mathematics. The Canon of Medicine by Abū-ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn-ʿAbdallāh Ibn-Sīnā—known to Europeans as Avicenna—was the go-to text for medical study, while Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi’s calculus pushed Christian thinkers to new heights of mathematical discovery.

Autopsies were uncommon in medieval Europe, so monks’ understanding of the inner workings of the body were mainly dependent upon their knowledge of animal bodies, injuries, and the writings of past scholars—especially Islamic doctors, whose knowledge of medicine was far more advanced than the West’s during much of the Middle Ages.

Ye ought not, like unwise people, to promise to keep any of the external rules.… Ye may even change them, whenever ye will, for better ones. —The Ancren Riwle

Far from being reviled or feared, science was devotional: it was monks’ way of understanding how God had designed the universe. Here, God uses a compass as he creates a spherical Earth. Image du Monde, fol. 9v, 1489 (detail)

Perhaps above all other sciences, monks embraced astronomy, which gave them the knowledge they needed to tell time, navigate, and predict celestial events. This is likely a picture of Lady Astronomy revealing her secrets.

Mechanical clocks found their homes in churches and monasteries well before it became the fashion to install them in town squares.7 Believe it or not, it was the church’s acceptance of, and active push for, better timekeeping that led directly to our time-obsessed modern culture.

Blank space presented irresistible opportunities for colorful and irreverent marginalia, even in the most serious manuscripts. Although this page describes the betrayal of Jesus, the margin features a cheerful elephant dressed as a pilgrim in the funeral procession of Reynard the Fox.

In the Middle Ages, as now, a person isn’t usually expected to be forgiven for something they’re not sorry for. A fundamental part of forgiveness is for a person to show contrition, “to amend his faults and not justify his sin.”

Be always doing something from which good may come. —The Ancren Riwle