Insidious, Lief and RÃ*an debate all things great and small.

[Insidious Rex]

This thread is like a message board version of a pentathlon. *out of breath* You have to go from being an expert at genetics to monastic life in the middle ages to what is love. When is the discus??

Originally Posted by Mercutio

You should realize that the articles you quoted above are merely singular exceptions to general monastic life.

singular exceptions?? They mentioned whole regions in Britain where this was common place and various ages hundreds of years apart. I hardly would call that “singular exception�.

"Now I'm sure this was not true of EACH and EVERY monastery." Of course not! It is so easy to dig up examples of corruption in any institution on the internet.

yes but these were found by doing a search for “monastic life� or “monk medieval typical� or something like that NOT “monk corruption hedonist bad sinful abuse� if that’s what you are thinking. Try it yourself. See what you find. I think in very little time youll pull up a number of sources that talk in depth about the wide spread corruption in monasteries. Lief has already admitted this anyway. I was just fleshing it out a little more because it very much supported my point. At that time monks had plenty of good reasons to become monks. And many became corrupted to boot. Free will must not be as strong as some insist here if corruption is shown to be so consistent within the monastic order.

I also saw your third article (beginning "Perhaps the most interesting") is from a free essay website, so I'm a lot less inclined to believe it.

are you saying you think its outright lies? Didn’t you notice they referenced what they said? Rather dubious of you to refuse to recognize it outright simply based on the name of the web site I think.

It looked like they got on average 5 hours of sleep. Constant prayer times; manual labor; 1-2 meals a day; etc. Doesn't look quite so easy to me.

don’t forget a roof over their heads. An education during a time when education was rather rare. Access to libraries during a time when libraries were seen by a fraction of a percent of the population. Decent enough food. Companionship. Etc. etc. stuff ive said before that you ignored. And I really need to know the status of these people who became monks before they were monks. Lief has shown that later on the rich joined and it became less of a strict pure existence and more of a money making affair but before that we are lead to believe that these monks living in extreme Spartan conditions gave up breeding opportunities and families and great wealth and genetic power essentially and became monks. Can you show that that’s how it was? What if a large number of individuals who chose to become monks were NOT in such a great position relatively speaking. What if they were social outcasts or unpopular with the ladies or had disfigurations or neuroses that made the prospect of being highly successful gene bearers unlikely? What if they were impoverished or without land or title or lame or mute? In that case becoming a monk would actually be a step up for them. Not even counting those that went corrupt and knocked up the nuns.