I asked this under another thread and it was roundly ignored, so I thought I’d start one all of it’s own—
If you found yourself jobless and homeless and friendless and at the end of your rope, couldn’t you just join a convent or a monastery?
I mean, if you claim to have a “calling” and want to become Sister SaxFace or Brother Finagle (not that THEY are apt to wind up homeless, I’m just pulling names out of a hat!), wouldn’t they have to house you and feed you?
I believe that they would first question the seriousness of your commitment. Most convents and monistaries don’t just let you join right up on a whim. From my experience with friends that were interested in joining, the convent or monistary first makes you observe their daily life and routine, but I don’t think that they let you live there while you are doing this.
-Dragwyr
“If God had meant for man to eat waffles,
he would have given him lips like snowshoes”
-Rev. Billy C. Wirtz
They also won’t take you in that day. There’s an application process, forms, interviews and all the same bureaucracy you’d have to go to if you were applying to a college. It takes a fair amount of time just to get an okay from them to check them out. No way to get a hot meal and free bed because it’s cold outside.
And just for trivia’s sake…
When Hamlet tells Ophelia, “Get thee to a nunnery,” (Act III, Scene 1), he’s really tell her to go to a whorehouse – that being the period meaning of the word.
The context of the whole speech makes it clear; he offers her a dowry gift if she marries: that even if she is chaste and pure, she cannot escape evil rumor. And he denies his former love for her… so what does it matter? May as well be a whore.
OK, Bricker, call me an idiot, but I don’t know whether or not you’re kidding. If you’re serious, can you site a reference? My "know it all"ness is in jeopardy here.
Mr. K’s Link of the Month:
What is John Kricfalusi (“Ren and Stimpy”) doing these days?
On a related note: When I went home for Christmas this year, my parents told me about an amusing prank played by a Swiss television station or newspaper.
They choose a young couple. Man: long hair, beard, scruffy-looking. Woman: young, obviously pregnant. Both appearing destitute.
(Keeping in mind that this is three weeks before Christmas,) the young couple was sent to several churches / presbyteries in Switzerland. The young couple would arrive late at night, claiming not to have money for a hotel, and ask if there was a guest room or a place where they could spend the night.
Of course, the funny thing is the first five churches told them they had no room! Only on the sixth try did a female pastor agree to put them up for the night, and she made the obvious comment “You too could be Joseph and Mary.”
Afterwards interviews at the first five locations revealed that all had attached residences and/or guest rooms.
Or should that be “cite a reference”? Damn, I miss my Webster’s when I’m at work.
It depends what you mean by “join”. Some orders look after people who find themselves destitute as part of their vocation, others would only admit you if you joined the order in which case, as Dragwyr said, they would want to question their commitment.
I know from a friend’s experience that one of the first things the Church (of England) does with people applying for the priesthood is check that they are acting out of a genuine sense of calling rather than doing it as a career move.
Bricker,
Nunnery did, of course, also mean a convent in the late C16.
I think that the point about Hamlet’s “Get thee to a nunnery” and the various repetitions of it is that it’s open to both interpretations: the first time he says it (a few lines before “this plague for thy dowry”) he goes on to say “why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest; but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me”. In other words, it could be argued that he is advising her to eschew family life by joining a convent.
It is on the second occasion, when he follows it with “be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. Get thee to a nunnery, go: farewell” when it becomes more clear that the “brothel” meaning is also intended.
Here is a link to a thorough, though hardly conclusive, discussion of the meaning of “nunnery” in Shakespeare’s time. I’d say the jury is still out.
http://tech-two.mit.edu/Shakespeare/cgi-bin/commentary/get/main/2709.html
Hope this doesn’t mess up the side scroll…
MrKnowItAll,
Assuming you want a reference for the “brothel” meaning of “nunnery”, not Bricker’s interpretation of Hamlet, here’s one from the OED:
FWIW, The OED lists the Hamlet quote under the prmiary (convent) meaning.
. . . So I guess this means I’m not going to get ANY use out of my Naughty Nun outfit?
Neat hijacking job, gang!
– Uke, trying to picture Eve in a wimple
Post in haste, repent in leisure.
As others have ably shown, I wasn’t joking, but I could have been a little more complete.
TomH is exactly right when he suggests that the text leaves open both interpretations, with the first usage more amenable to the “convent” meaning and the second more in line with the “brothel” meaning.
I should have been more clear.
In response to the OP, my guess is you could be accommodated if your interest were genuine. (I must include a disclaimer that all my knowledge of monastic life comes from Ellis Peters’s Cadfael series.)
Someone sincerely seeking admission would not be denied, I think, on the grounds of current poverty, particularly if it were an order that took vows of poverty anyway. As I understand it there is a lengthy period of initiation required both to assist the novitiate to determine if this really is his/her calling AND for the monastery/convent to make their determination whether the applicant is sincere. And even if you were sufficiently duplicitous to fool everyone long enough to become an official member, you’d still have to abide by the rules, failure to do so being cause for dismissal.
So if things haven’t changed since the 12th century you could, in fact, hie to a nunnery when no other alternative was available.
I’m a vegetarian once removed. I only eat meat from animals that are vegetarians.
It’s still quite true. Monasteries do not want to be stuck with a gormless loser for decades; it take years to reach final vows. Rumer Godden’s (sp??) novel “In This House of Brede” is said to be a very solid portrait of modern convent life.
As to “Hamlet”, it is a fact that “nunnery” was period slang for “brothel”. But it is also a fact that the main meaning of the word was, and always was, “female monastery.” Shakespeare may have had the slang meaning in mind, but it is quite clear from the text that it is, at least, not the only meaning he intends, and it is entirely possible that he didn’t intend for it to be understood that way at all.
John W. Kennedy
“Compact is becoming contract; man only earns and pays.”
– Charles Williams
You can model it for me, Eve Honey. I’ll wear my priest outfit and hear your confession.
wink so outrageous it’s clearly meant in jest
Live a Lush Life
Da Chef
Here I thought you were going to a whorehouse, since you were quoting Hamlet.
Actually the nuns are having a pretty hard time finding housing now a days. Churches are
having ever dropping tithes each year, and the nuns are getting shifted around a bit to
places that can still support them.
Thanks, guys. Maybe now I know it all. (Something new will probably crop up tomorrow. Tch.)
Depends whether you’re a Netwit or not.
I noticed that, at a small campus run by nuns some 30 yr ago on the top of a hill in Los Gatos, CA.US, they recently found a meth lab. Don’t think any nuns were implicated, but it sounds like one approach to keeping the clan going, if not a means of handing some modern spear-shaker another meaning to attach to the word ‘nunnery’.
Ray (high on a hill. . .no, in Berkeley, with the cows)
My experience here comes from going to a Benedictine-run high school. They believe that every person ought “to be treated as though he were Christ himself,” and they’re real big on taking in basically anyone who asks. Now, they take them in as in providing a place to sleep and eat, however, I believe that if someone actually showed the desire to become a monk, that they would be more than happy to aid him, provided his desire was sincere.
Obviously one would have to demonstrate a sincere desire, and then as someone else pointed out, it’s a long process to even get to the point where you can take your first vows.
A Freudian slip is when you say one thing and mean your mother.