My favorite christian monk story is of Saint Moses the Black.
originally from Ethiopia and spending his early life as a bandit, he would eventually take refuge in a Greek monastery in Egypt when his past deeds caught up to him. over time he came to admire the monk lifestyle and converted to Christianity and became one himself. he soon became the brother most often sent on the most dangerous missions. his first three converts were bandits themselves, who thought an old unarmed monk was easy prey until Saint Moses beat them half to death with his cane, as they lay there bruised and bleeding Moses proselytized to them, and told them to go to the monastery and tell them Moses sent them. his defining moment was when he was asked to weigh in on how to punish a fellow monk who had broken the monastary's rules. he entered the chamber with a barrel of water on his back, and only said "I have placed my manifold sins behind me, where I cannot see them, and have come to judge my brother." long story short the brother in question was forgiven. basically he was Samuel L. Jackson dialed up to 11.
@Hanuman if you like waking up at around 4 am, possibly getting beat with a stick just for maybe sneezing during prayers, which were said when they wake up, before they eat anything, and before they went to sleep, (at least i think that's how many times they say the prayers) and supposed to be EXTREMELY humble (i think) then yes. being a Monk is the right job for you :> oh! you have to be pretty disciplined as well by the way.
Because you can't be religiously devout without being a "fanatic", right? No middle-ground monks that wanted to live a life of peace and servitude but weren't overly strict, right? /s
I may be wrong, but wasn't the monastery also a place where father's could send their homosexual sons, to mask the fact they weren't interested in women?
@LadyVirgo9 This is interesting because a lot of monasteries were fairly tolerant of homosexual couples. I've read that love letters still exist as well as documents of affrèrement between the brothers.
Hmm, I sense another comic, Humon.
@LadyVirgo9 I kinda just assumed that that was the case, like what else would you do in medival Europe if you were gay? Join a house full of other guys and no women or try to somehow eek by in the outside world. Monastery seems like the better choice
@LadyVirgo9 That would make sense given that the more brothers a person has the more likely they are to be gay, and Catholics bread like rabbits back then
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My college roommate, while studying medieval French literature described the works of monks like this:
"100 pages about the glory of God - followed by a shit joke."