Carthusians

Carthusians, a monastic order which owes its origin to St Bruno, who retired in 1086 with six companions to the solitude of La Chartreuse (q.v.—hence the name), where they built hermitages, wore rude garments, and lived upon vegetables and coarse bread. In 1134 the fifth prior, Guigo, composed a body of rules, called the Statuta Guigonis or Consuetudines Cartusie, but they have been often changed. After 1176, when the order received papal approbation, it extended rapidly. It dates from 1180 in England, where the name of Chartreuse was corrupted into Charterhouses (q.v.). The Carthusians were divided into two classes, fathers (patres) and brothers (conversi). Each occupied a separate cell, with a bed of straw, a pillow, a woolen coverlet, and the means of manual labour or of writing. They left their cell, even for meals, only on festivals and on days of the funeral of a brother of the order. Thrice a week they fasted on bread, water, and salt, and there were several lengthened fasts in the year. Flesh was forbidden at all times, and wine, unless mixed with water. Unbroken silence, except on rare occasions, was enforced, as well as frequent prayer and night-watching. These austerities were continued, with little modification, by the modern Carthusians. The order at one time counted 16 provinces, and boasted some of the most magnificent convents in the world—as La Grande Chartreuse, near Grenoble, and Certosa, near Pavia. They were given to hospitality and works of charity, and were on the whole better educated than the mendicant orders. Their principal seats were in Italy, France, and Switzerland; but they have shared the fate of the other monastic establishments, and their convents are now for the most part solitudes indeed.—The Carthusian nuns arose at Salette, on the Rhone, in France, about 1229. They followed the rules of the Carthusian monks, but with some mitigations, of which the most notable is that they have a common refectory.