The Benedictines | Monasticism | Books | Sources

The Benedictines

St. Scholastica Monastery, Duluth
Explore the Benedictine community featured in SISTERS on their Web site. Learn about monastic life and the sisters' ministries, community involvement and history. View the campus by taking a virtual tour.

The Order of St. Benedict
Read the Rule of St. Benedict, locate Benedictine communities and institutions worldwide or make a prayer request at the Web site of the Benedictine order. Latin text and translations are available in Dutch, English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish.

Benedictine Health System
Learn more about this Catholic healthcare organization, find information on member facilities and a “Prayer Resource” offering prayers for “every situation.”

Minnesota Public Radio: Sisters Plan Advertising Campaign to Reach More Women
Read or listen to this 2003 public radio feature about an advertising campaign launched by St. Scholastica to target potential members.

Federation of St. Benedict
Get news and publications from the Benedictine community and read the Benedictine Peace Statement 2005, a document concerning the war in Iraq sent to President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in March 2005.

Monasticism

Vision: An Online Vocation Guide
Learn about religious communities, resources and opportunities in North America, and find out if you’re suited to religious life by taking quizzes and asking questions of Catholics who have taken their vows.

Medieval Sourcebook: High Medieval Church Life
Explore selected sources on Western Monasticism, including a database of 1146 women's religious communities.

EyeWitness to History: Life in a Christian Monastery, ca. 585
Read an eyewitness account about daily living in a fifth-century monastery and learn about the moral structure that governed monastic life.

The History Guide: Early Medieval Monasticism
Find out how Christian monasticism began with the flight of Saint Anthony in the third century in Egypt, and how it eventually led to the writing of the Rule of St. Benedict.

The Met: Monasticism in Medieval Christianity
Read and view images from a brief history of monasticism in Europe, including art and architecture of the period, from New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

Books

The Cloister Walk
By Kathleen Norris
(Riverhead, 1996)
In this New York Times bestseller, Norris, a married, Protestant woman, details her experiences living with a community of men in a traditional Benedictine monastery in Minnesota.

Virgin Time: In Search of the Contemplative Life
By Patricia Hempl
(Ballantine, 1993)
Part travelogue, part memoir, poet Patricia Hampl—a lapsed Catholic—recounts her quest for connection to the religion in which she was raised. Hempl's journey takes her from the "old world" of Catholicism in Italy and France back to America, where, in a visit to a Northern California monastery, she discovers the contemplative silence that had eluded her.

Sources
The following served as information sources for several pages on this site: