The Monk

Terry Jones examines the truth behind the medieval monastery. The ideal of giving up everything for a life of prayer and solitude was often undermined by monks' ability to make money out of almost anything; from sheep, iron-smelting, and even prayer itself.

Category:

• Documentary

Starring:

• Terry Jones

Directed by:

• Paul Bradshaw

Produced by:

• Paul Bradshaw

Written by:

• Terry Jones

[StuPadazzo]

I am EXTREMELY upset with how all the advertisements in all of this series is so poorly setup and ends up stopping the video and or resetting it completely. AND the ads pop up in the most inconvenient places. Fire the person responsible for the incompetency that IS your advertisement web programmer.

[Brammimonde]

He snarks EVERYTHING, though. Watch the other shows in the series-- no one is spared.

Working from the evidence instead of the spin, a very human picture emerges. That's why I like him so much.

[gladiator1010]

And the judges of today still keep the lifestyle alive..."pretended" holiness, businessmen that ran everything, confessing our sins...yup...sounds about right

[denis505]

@Xiaolian7 GO spread your propaganda elsewhere or kick it up a notch even so I can have a good laugh. Example: "The CCP has killed over 500 million people here and infected people with the black plague just because they don't like us. They rape women and force them to eat their own children." YOu know... the kind of stuff that gets to 1st wolders and makes them sick of the country. I don't want to defend the post Mao CCP but you can't really say you'd be better off without it.

[uncletigger]

@Xiaolian7 Mate, you bring it on yourselves. It is a dictatorship, it can't be beaten by passive resistance UNLESS it cares about what people think of it.

You can't fight city hall.

[LukeAlto2007]

I'd have liked to hear more about the relationship between the monks and the existing church. I'd have thought that the monks' capitalizing on religion would have put them at odds with the church. I'd also like to hear more about the relationsihp between the original generation of monks that became corrupt, and the cistercian monks that became corrupt later.

[Washu1973]

Monasteries were the cornerstone of western civilization during the dark ages, they were the only hospitals and centers of higher learning in Europe, and provided an early form of social security for people when they provided alms to the poor.

[AlternityGM]

An interesting episode. Learned a lot about the monasteries during the Middle Ages. Not something they teach Catholics today.

[maxgunn555]

the only sort of history worth knowing. rather than what king killed however many people for whatever political stupid reason.

[SuperGreatSphinx]

The term monk is generic and in some religious or philosophical traditions it therefore may be considered interchangeable with other terms such as ascetic. However, being generic, it is not interchangeable with terms that denote particular kinds of monks, such as cenobite, hermit, anchorite, hesychast, or solitary.

[SuperGreatSphinx]

Although the term monachos (“monk”) is of Christian origin, in the English language it tends to be used analogously or loosely also for both male and female ascetics from other religious or philosophical backgrounds.