Carthusians

In 1084 Bishop Hugh of Grenoble offered Bruno, the former Chancellor of the Diocese of Reims, a solitary site in the mountains of his diocese, in the valley of Chartreuse. There Bruno and six companions built a hermitage, consisting of a few wooden cabins opening towards a gallery that allowed them access to the communal areas, the church, refectory, and chapter room without having to suffer too much from inclement conditions.[5]

Six years later, Bruno's former pupil, Pope Urban II, requested his services. Bruno would only live in Rome for a few short months however, before leaving to establish a new hermitage in Serra San Bruno, in Calabria, a region of southern Italy. He died there on 6 October 1101.[5]

In 1132, an avalanche destroyed the first hermitage, killing 7 monks under the snow. The fifth prior of Chartreuse, Guiges, rebuilt the hermitage.[5]

The monastery is generally a small community of hermits based on the model of the 4th century Lauras of Palestine. A Carthusian monastery consists of a number of individual cells built around a cloister. The individual cells are organised so that the door of each cell comes off a large corridor.

The focus of Carthusian life is contemplation. To this end there is an emphasis on solitude and silence.[10] Carthusians do not have abbots—instead, each charterhouse is headed by a prior and is populated by two types of monks: the choir monks, referred to as hermits, and the lay brothers. This reflects a division of labor in providing for the material needs of the monastery and the monks. For the most part, the number of brothers in the Order has remained the same for centuries, as it is now: seven or eight brothers for every ten fathers.[11] Humility is a characteristic of Carthusian spirituality. The Carthusian identity is one of shared solitude.[12]

Choirmonks

Carthusian monk depicted in Petrus Christus's painting Portrait of a Carthusian.

Each hermit, a monk who is or who will be a priest, has his own living space, called a cell, usually consisting of a small dwelling. Traditionally there is a one-room lower floor for the storage of wood for a stove and a workshop as all monks engage in some manual labour. A second floor consists of a small entryway with an image of the Virgin Mary as a place of prayer and a larger room containing a bed, a table for eating meals, a desk for study, a choir stall, and a kneeler for prayer. Each cell has a high walled garden wherein the monk may meditate as well as grow flowers for himself and/or vegetables for the common good of the community, as a form of physical exercise.[12]

A typical Carthusian plan: Clermont, drawn by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, 1856.

Next to the door is a small revolving compartment, called a "turn", so that meals and other items may be passed in and out of the cell without the hermit having to meet the bearer. Most meals are provided in this manner, which the hermit then eats in the solitude of his cell. There are two meals provided for much of the year: lunch and supper. During seasons or days of fasting, just one meal is provided. The hermit makes his needs known to the lay brother by means of a note, requesting items such as a fresh loaf of bread, which will be kept in the cell for eating with several meals. Carthusians observe a perpetual abstinence from meat.[10]

The hermit spends most of his day in the cell: he meditates, prays the minor hours of the Liturgy of the Hours on his own, eats, studies and writes, and works in his garden or at some manual trade. Unless required by other duties, the Carthusian hermit leaves his cell daily only for three prayer services in the monastery chapel, including the community Mass, and occasionally for conferences with his superior. Additionally, once a week, the community members take a long walk in the countryside during which they may speak. On Sundays and solemn feast days a community meal is taken in silence.[6] Twice a year there is a day-long community recreation, and the monk may receive an annual visit from immediate family members.[14]

The Grande Chartreuse is the head monastery of the Carthusian order.

Today, the monastery of the Grande Chartreuse is still the Motherhouse of the order. There is a museum illustrating the history of the Carthusian order next to Grande Chartreuse; the monks of that monastery are also involved in producing Chartreuse liqueur. Visits are not possible into the Grande Chartreuse itself, but the 2005 documentary Into Great Silence gave unprecedented views of life within the hermitage.

Today, Carthusians live very much as they originally did, without any relaxing of their rules. Generally, those wishing to enter must be between the ages of twenty-one and forty-five. Nowadays, medical examinations are considered necessary before the Novitiate and Profession.[11] The Carthusian novice is introduced to the Lectio divina (spiritual reading).

In the 21st century, the Sélignac Charterhouse was converted into a house in which lay people could come and experience Carthusian retreats, living the Carthusian life for shorter periods (an eight-day retreat being fixed as the minimum, in order to enter at least somewhat into the silent rhythm of the charterhouse).

Painting in the Charterhouse of Nuestra Señora de las Cuevas in Seville by Francisco de Zurbarán. The scene depicts Hugh of Grenoble with his brothers in the refectory.

Before the Council of Trent in the 16th century, the Catholic Church in Western Europe had a wide variety of rituals for the celebration of Mass. Although the essentials were the same, there were variations in prayers and practices from region to region or among the various religious orders.

When Pope Pius V made the Roman Missal mandatory for all Catholics of the Latin Church, he permitted the continuance of other forms of celebrating Mass that had an antiquity of at least two centuries. The rite used by the Carthusians was one of these, and still continues in use in a version revised in 1981. Apart from the new elements in this revision, it is substantially the rite of Grenoble in the 12th century, with some admixture from other sources.[8] According to current Catholic legislation, priests can celebrate the traditional rites of their order without further authorization.

A feature unique to Carthusian liturgical practice is that the bishop bestows on Carthusian nuns, in the ceremony of their profession, a stole and a maniple. The nun, who may receive the consecration of virgins is then also invested with a crown and a ring. The nun wears these ornaments again only on the day of her monastic jubilee and on her bier after her death. At Matins, if no priest or deacon is present, a nun assumes the stole and reads the Gospel; and although in the time of the Tridentine Mass the chanting of the Epistle was reserved to an ordained subdeacon, a consecrated virgin sang the Epistle at the conventual Mass, though without wearing the maniple. For centuries Carthusian nuns retained this rite, administered by the diocesan bishop four years after the nun took her vows.[8]

The formation of a Carthusian begins with 6 to 12 months of postulancy. This is followed by 2 years of novitiate, where the novice wears a black cloak over the white Carthusian habit. Subsequently, the novice takes simple vows and becomes a junior professed for 3 years, during which the professed wears the full Carthusian habit. The simple vows may be renewed for another 2 years. Finally, the Carthusian makes the solemn profession.[11]

As of March 2020, there are 23 extant charterhouses, 18 for monks and 5 for nuns,[15][lower-alpha 2] on three continents: Argentina (1), Brazil (1), France (6), Germany (1), Italy (3), Korea (2), Portugal (1), Slovenia (1), Spain (4), Switzerland (1), the United Kingdom (1) and the United States (1).

• Bruno of Cologne (c. 1030–1101)
• Guigo I (1083–1136)
• Guigo II
• Hugh of Balma
• Hugh of Lincoln (1135/40-1200)
• Ludolph of Saxony (1295-1378)
• Dominic of Prussia (1382–1461)
• Denis the Carthusian (1402–1471)
• Peter Blomevenna (1466–1536)

• Into Great Silence
• List of Carthusian monasteries
• Carthusian Martyrs
• Institution des Chartreux
• Monastic Family of Bethlehem, of the Assumption of the Virgin and of Saint Bruno
• Spatiamentum
• Carthusian Rite
• Broken Silence, a fictional 1996 movie on the potential challenges of modern Carthusian exclaustration

• Lockhart, Robin Bruce. Halfway to Heaven. London:Cistercian Publications, 1999 (Paperback,ISBN 0-87907-786-7)
• The Wound of Love, A Carthusian miscellany by priors and novice masters on various topics relating to the monastic ideal as lived in a charterhouse in our day. Gracewing Publishing, 2006, 256 p. (paperback, ISBN 0-85244-670-5)
• André Ravier, Saint Bruno the Carthusian, translated by Bruno Becker, O.S.B., Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 1995. ISBN 978-0898705621. Selected chapters online.
• Klein Maguire, Nancy. An Infinity of Little Hours: Five Young Men and Their Trial of Faith in the Western World's Most Austere Monastic Order. New York: PublicAffairs, 2006. (Hardcover, ISBN 1-58648-327-7). A paperback edition (ISBN 978-1-58648-432-3) later appeared containing a section "Reading Group Guide Interview with Nancy Klein Maguire" on pages 259–264, which isn't found in the original hardback edition.
• Harris, Judith, "Nazi massacre of Carthusian monks recalled in new book", Catholic Herald, 5 September 2014.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Carthusian Order.

Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article "Carthusians".

• Official website of the Carthusian Order
• Vocational website of the Carthusian Order
• International Fellowship of Saint Bruno
• Quies
• Article from the Catholic Encyclopedia
• Cartusiana – History of the Carthusians in the Low Countries
• Official website Foundation The Carthusians of Roermond
• Writings by a former Carthusian monk
• "Carthusians" (1891): notable poem by Ernest Dowson celebrating the Carthusian order