Monks, Monasteries, and Missional Education

My last post focused on cultural change that the early church’s educational

institutions helped to spawn. The social status conferred by paideia was, however, not a luxury that the cultural icons of the middle ages were afforded. These icons were, of course, monks, and the educational institutions that they bred were the precursor to the modern university: monasteries.

Of the monks who built monasteries across the Celtic, Germanic, Slavic, and Frankish world, none became more famous than St. Patrick. It is said that Patrick was the first to take the call to “teach all nations” literally, as his teaching extended even to the barbarians beyond the frontier of the empire. Records indicate that Patrick helped to establish 365 churches and monasteries, including the storied monastery of Iona, which was the launching point for the evangelization of Scotland and England.

Monasteries were the centers of learning in medieval Europe. Latin was taught to the young as a foreign language, and consequently, writing skills, a technology otherwise nearly unknown in the barbarian West. They also functioned as scriptoriums, where the great biblical and classical texts of the West were copied and preserved. In Irish monasteries, young Anglo Saxons were “welcomed in the cells of Irish monks, where they received food and the books they needed at no expense” (Hunter, 59).

Monasteries were both centers of learning as well as outposts for evangelization. Their ministry focused on regional and local aristocracy, based on the idea that if you convert a king, you convert a country. Barbarian kings such as Clovis of the Franks, Ethelbert of Kent, and Edwin of Northumbria were among the most important converts to Christianity.

In Christianity, the pagan kings saw a more advanced civilization, and converting to Christianity was often just as political as spiritual, both a blessing and a bane for posterity. The advanced learning and culture, embodied in agriculture, law, architecture, and scholarship, was a significant motivation to choose Christ over the plurality of gods.

Monks built monasteries, which were both centers for learning and for mission. Where are these types of missional schools today? This past week I had a conversation with a friend at Denver Seminary, who outlined his understanding of a missional education. “Locate your school’s objectives not in students themselves, but in the greater mission of God in the world.” As a curricular application, he suggested having NT students present the argument of Romans to non-believers instead of only seminary professors. Mission can exist as a part of the curriculum. A good idea to say the least.

Yet when I look at monks and monasteries, I see a civilization that brought scores of influential leaders to faith through providing a “more advanced civilization.” Simply stated, their education was the best, and so the barbarian kings changed their minds.

Until we can produce schools that are centers of learning, schools that make surrounding schools seem barbaric in comparison, a widespread missional education can’t happen. Quality is missional. The door to “teach all nations” will be open not for a pious but substandard curriculum. Instead the flowering of learning in the lives of missional educators on the fringes of unbelief in a pagan, urbanized West—this flourishing of learning can and has changed culture in the past. There is no reason why it can’t again today.