No Western Monasticism

With a POD no earlier than AD400, can you think of a scenario which would stop the rise of Western Monasticism? Do you think it is possible, or do you think that pre-printing press Christianity is always going to see people wish to take up the religious life?

Furthermore, how do you see the development of Western European without monasticism? How different do you think it would be, or do you think that ultimately something similar to monasticism would arise in the West anyway?
 
I don't know about how you could stop it emerging, but if it failed to appear it would make Christianity less resilient to attack. I read somewhere that one of the reasons that North Africa so quickly collapsed in the face of the Muslim invasions and lost its religion so fast after that is that they didn't have a monastic tradition there to help safeguard it. So you could see the same thing happening elsewhere, for instance perhaps the Muslims are able to at least maintain a significant foothold in Iberia as a larger portion of the populace converts from Christianity.

It could also increase centralisation in the Church, as the monastic communities and their leaders always had a great deal of autonomy so by removing them much of the Church's theology might not even come about and you might see a far more united Church. Of course, the Church may well be smaller as the monks played a very important part in spreading Christianity throughout pagan Europe.

In terms of knowledge, the monasteries were important as centres of learning and helped a great deal in preserving knowledge. Without them, the comparatively smaller libraries of the nobility and regular clergy will be all that is left. Many more ancient works would probably be lost to us. There would be far, far few books produced before the invention of the printing press and so knowledge would be even more limited to the upper echelons of society. On the flip side, the need for large numbers of scribes may be filled by a kind of new class who help strengthen the middle class of the period and more evenly distribute power, perhaps even eventually becoming the nucleus of the modern state at an earlier point than OTL as the rulers concentrate the scribes in their hands (although I think such an outcome unlikely at best). In the field of exploration, some monks like St Brendan the Navigator went off and discovered new places. Without them it may take longer to fill in the map of the known world.

After the Dissolution of the Monasteries in England, levels of charity given to the poor didn't recover until the Elizabethan period (if I remember correctly) so many of the peasants of Europe could well be worse off. I would expect the nobility and the rest of the Church to take up some of the slack, but neither group was quite so dedicated to it compared to the monks in my opinion.

All in all, I think it would be worse for Europe as a whole (not even counting all the beautiful monasteries that would never be built).
 
Ive been doing a little reading and it seems western monasticism was already pretty much solidified as a popular practice by 400AD, so you will probably need an earlier POD to stop it becoming so popular. I think once the practice of eremitic monasticism is established, its only a matter of time before the hermits develop into communities and eventually monastery-like institutions are established unless you can keep the number of eremitic monks low as they were in the really early Church (as in only a handful of holy men/prophet-types rather than a significant portion of society). Killing St Anthony the Great early on (maybe when he went to Alexandria to be martyred in 311AD) before he can popularise the movement may do, but that's a fair way before your date of 400AD. Short of the Church and Christianity in general being completely devastated, I don't think monasticism will collapse with a POD after 400AD.

Others will probably be able to suggest other PODs but that's my best shot.
 
There is little you can do from 400 AD.
There has always been a tendency among religious groups to isolate themselves from others and practice in peace. Christian monasticism owes its origins to already entrenched practices in the ancient world among religions such as Judaism and Greek philosophers.

The Greeks already had the Cynics who attempted to live as the philosopher Diogenes had, the greatest of the Cynics, rejecting and attacking the accepted norms of the times and living a life of asceticism and poverty, but also of great respect. One particular cynic during the early Roman Empire publicly criticised Vespasian who was touring the Empire. The Emperor famously responded in his sardonic wit declaring him a "good dog," (Kynikos means dog due to Diogenes declaring that he was like a dog, he was loyal to his friends and barked at scoundrels).

The Jews already have the Essenes (John the Baptist was purportedly among their ranks) who removed themselves from public life to reflect on faith and there were already growing Christian communities and monastic groups around Egypt and the Middle East with some extreme cases like the Anchorites out in the desert.

Its pretty hard to eradicate a innate human desire among certain groups of people. The need to remove themselves from society and do what makes a fulfilling life for themselves or to make themselves happy.

The consequences however would be rather disasterous for society in Western Europe once the Roman Empire collapses in the West. With no where to keep all those books no one to dedicate their entire lives to copying and reproducing great works of the Ancient world, the literature of Ancient Europe would be devastated. I cannot even begin to think about what could be lost as there is already so much that we will never see that we only get small glimpses of.

Literature would be poorer for one. Art will suffer as there will be no beautifully crafted bibles or books and there would be astonishing levels of poor education in the ruins of the West.
 
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