Monastic Orders


Orders, Monastic

 

in Catholicism, centralized monastic associations regulated by special charters, which, as a rule, are confirmed by the papacy.

The first Catholic monastic order was the Benedictines, founded in the sixth century. During the 11th and 12th centuries, at the time of the Crusades, a number of knightly religious orders came into being, as well as the order of the Cistercians. The rise of the mendicant orders dates to the 12th and 13th centuries; they were called upon to combat the influence on the masses of popular heretical doctrines and to strengthen the influence of the Catholic Church. The Jesuit order was established in the 16th century to combat the ideas of the Reformation.

The members of most Catholic monastic orders live in monasteries.