Are you living like a medieval monk without even knowing it?
The medieval past is taught to us in a way that makes our ancestors appear almost alien. How could anyone live that way? While there is a massive gulf between the medieval world and ours, in this series I want to emphasize our commonalities in order to contextualize the very real differences. Enjoy!
Are you living like a Medieval monk without even knowing it? Most of us imagine a medieval monastery as an enclave of austere, sexually repressed men with few useful skills beyond copying manuscripts. That may be true, but I think that the average American’s life more closely resembles that of a medieval monk than we might like to admit (perhaps minus the sexual repression.)
We’ll open with the stereotypical image of a monk working in the scriptorium.
You enter the scriptorium and find your seat. Quills scratch over the sound of monks murmuring to one another. The lighting is poor, and you’re forced to work by candlelight. You’re illuminating a land charter for a local knight, Sir Hugh. Hugh is rude, blustery man known for bullying peasants…
Suffocating, right? Thank God we don’t live like that.
You sit down at your desk and check your email. Fluorescent lights flicker in the drop ceiling above and keyboards tap all around you. Your coworkers swap gossip and talk about their weekends. You have an email from Hugh, the local branch manager for Wells Fargo. They need you to fill out more forms.
Ouch. Sorry if I just dealt some emotional damage. At least we get coffee machines and water coolers. And yeah, fluorescent lights suck, but they’re better than working in a dark hole… maybe.
Depending on the monastery, your scriptorium might look less like a dimly lit room, and more something like this…
Wow… that’s… terrible?
Why do I feel anxious?
I have to admit, I’m going easy on the monastery here to push my narrative. There were plenty of more pedestrian scriptoriums. It all depends on which corporation — I mean monastery, that you work for.
Remember that these monasteries were generally unheated spaces. Sometimes scriptoriums were placed adjacent to the kitchens to benefit from the heat of the wood fired ovens. Presumably these rooms were infused with the smell of freshly baked bread all day.
In some scriptoriums, you might even be forced to work essentially outdoors underneath the roof of the cloister, with sunlight streaming through the artisanal masonry. It sure would suck to have to experience the elemental reality of nature as part of your normal work week.
Hm… Perhaps a job in the scriptorium isn’t so bad? Much of our present-day office work isn’t so different. That’s why we call it clerical work! (Clerical: from the Latin clericus, meaning churchman.)
If our monk leaves the scriptorium for a moment, it will likely be to attend to his “Offices,” meaning official prayer tasks. Today the definition has broadened so that I can write to you from my “office.”
The connections between medieval monasteries and modern corporations run deep. Monasteries originated as religious communities, but their business models quickly expanded to fill niches from education to tourism to real estate management and more.
Today, commerce driven by religion may strike us as ironic or even duplicitous. But even a hardcore atheist from our modern era implicitly approves of and participates in parallel institutions, probably without even realizing it.
A bold claim, I know.
If you’re intrigued, or if you think I’m full of it and you want to be proven right, hit that follow button to be notified when I publish the next article in this series!
For now, just be satisfied that your office job doesn’t require you to take a vow of chastity. Not yet, anyway.
