The Carthusians are the most austere of the Western contemplative orders, and their proudest claim is a negative one: that they have never needed reforming because they never declined.
Hermits in community
The order was founded by Bruno of Cologne, who withdrew with six companions to the mountainous site of the Grande Chartreuse near Grenoble in 1084. Its form is distinctive, a compromise between the hermit and the monastery: each monk lives alone in a cell opening onto a private garden, keeping silence, praying, studying and working by himself, and the community gathers only for certain of the offices and for a weekly walk and meal together. The life is one of solitude supported by a light communal framework, and it is deliberately hidden, the order shunning publicity and permitting few visitors.
Stability across nine centuries
The Carthusian boast, that the order was never reformed because it was never deformed, is close to true: it has kept its rule with unusual constancy since the eleventh century and has never split into observances as the Benedictines and Cistercians did. It has always remained small, its houses few and its numbers deliberately limited, and it admits both monks and, in separate houses, nuns. The green liqueur made by the monks of the Grande Chartreuse, whose recipe the order keeps, is the one point at which this most enclosed of orders touches the ordinary world, and it funds the silence rather than interrupting it.