Kept across the provinces of the Anglican Communion. Religious orders were dissolved in the sixteenth century and refounded from 1841 onward, so that this church now has communities of monks and nuns under vows.
Religious orders were dissolved in the sixteenth century and refounded from 1841 onward, so that this church now has communities of monks and nuns under vows.
Kept in the Armenian Apostolic Church. The Coptic, Ethiopian, Armenian and Syriac churches likewise ordain married parish priests while drawing their bishops from monasteries, and Egyptian desert monasticism is the ancestor of the whole Christian monastic tradition.
Kept in the Church of Cyprus, autocephalous since the Council of Ephesus in 431. Orthodoxy ordains married men to the priesthood but requires that bishops be monks, so celibacy shapes the episcopate rather than the parish; Mount Athos remains the tradition's monastic centre.
Kept in the Church of England, the province from which the Prayer Book tradition comes. Religious orders were dissolved in the sixteenth century and refounded from 1841 onward, so that this church now has communities of monks and nuns under vows.
Kept in the Church of Greece. Orthodoxy ordains married men to the priesthood but requires that bishops be monks, so celibacy shapes the episcopate rather than the parish; Mount Athos remains the tradition's monastic centre.
Kept in the Church of Ireland. Religious orders were dissolved in the sixteenth century and refounded from 1841 onward, so that this church now has communities of monks and nuns under vows.
Kept in the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria. The Coptic, Ethiopian, Armenian and Syriac churches likewise ordain married parish priests while drawing their bishops from monasteries, and Egyptian desert monasticism is the ancestor of the whole Christian monastic tradition.
Digambara monks renounce even clothing, the fullest expression of non-attachment the tradition knows; it holds that a woman cannot attain liberation in her present birth, and so cannot take that final step.
Orthodoxy ordains married men to the priesthood but requires that bishops be monks, so celibacy shapes the episcopate rather than the parish; Mount Athos remains the tradition's monastic centre.
Kept in the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, the see of first honour among the Orthodox churches. Orthodoxy ordains married men to the priesthood but requires that bishops be monks, so celibacy shapes the episcopate rather than the parish; Mount Athos remains the tradition's monastic centre.
Kept in the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church. The Coptic, Ethiopian, Armenian and Syriac churches likewise ordain married parish priests while drawing their bishops from monasteries, and Egyptian desert monasticism is the ancestor of the whole Christian monastic tradition.
Kept in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. The Coptic, Ethiopian, Armenian and Syriac churches likewise ordain married parish priests while drawing their bishops from monasteries, and Egyptian desert monasticism is the ancestor of the whole Christian monastic tradition.
Kept in the Georgian Orthodox Church, which has used its own language and script in worship since the fifth century. Orthodoxy ordains married men to the priesthood but requires that bishops be monks, so celibacy shapes the episcopate rather than the parish; Mount Athos remains the tradition's monastic centre.
Kept in the Greek Orthodox churches. Orthodoxy ordains married men to the priesthood but requires that bishops be monks, so celibacy shapes the episcopate rather than the parish; Mount Athos remains the tradition's monastic centre.
The Lebanese monastic orders are the historic backbone of this church, and its saints are largely monks and hermits.
Nirmala scholars are often celibate and ochre-clad, an ascetic form unusual in a faith built on the householder ideal, adopted to free them for the study and exposition of scripture.
Monastic communities have been central to the survival of this body through three centuries of state pressure.
The Coptic, Ethiopian, Armenian and Syriac churches likewise ordain married parish priests while drawing their bishops from monasteries, and Egyptian desert monasticism is the ancestor of the whole Christian monastic tradition.
Quanzhen is the one Taoist school to establish celibate monks and nuns living under a rule in monasteries, an arrangement borrowed from Buddhism and the sharpest difference between it and the married priesthood of Zhengyi.
Rome requires celibacy of its Latin-rite priests as well as of monks and nuns, a discipline rather than a doctrine, and one it has never imposed on its Eastern Catholic churches, whose parish clergy may be married.
Kept in the Romanian Orthodox Church, the one Orthodox church of the Byzantine tradition whose language is Romance. Orthodoxy ordains married men to the priesthood but requires that bishops be monks, so celibacy shapes the episcopate rather than the parish; Mount Athos remains the tradition's monastic centre.
Kept in the Russian Orthodox Church, in the Slavonic recension of the Byzantine books. Orthodoxy ordains married men to the priesthood but requires that bishops be monks, so celibacy shapes the episcopate rather than the parish; Mount Athos remains the tradition's monastic centre.
Kept in the Serbian Orthodox Church. Orthodoxy ordains married men to the priesthood but requires that bishops be monks, so celibacy shapes the episcopate rather than the parish; Mount Athos remains the tradition's monastic centre.
Celibacy was absolute and was the defining discipline of this body: men and women lived in the same community, in separate quarters, and it grew entirely by conversion and by adoption. It is also why almost none of it survives.
Svetambara monks and nuns wear unstitched white robes and keep a few possessions, an alms bowl and a broom, holding clothing no barrier to liberation; the order includes large numbers of nuns, who may be liberated as men are.
Kept in the Episcopal Church, whose own Prayer Book descends from the Scottish rather than the English line. Religious orders were dissolved in the sixteenth century and refounded from 1841 onward, so that this church now has communities of monks and nuns under vows.
Theravada places the celibate Sangha at the centre of religious life, with the laity making merit by supporting it; ordination need not be for life, and temporary ordination for a rains season is normal in Thailand and Myanmar.
The Udasis are renouncers in a religion that rejects renunciation, tracing their celibacy to Guru Nanak's elder son Sri Chand and living as sadhus with ash and ochre, which is why their standing relative to the Khalsa has always been uneasy.
Monasticism follows the Studite and Basilian rules of the Christian East.
Kept in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Orthodoxy ordains married men to the priesthood but requires that bishops be monks, so celibacy shapes the episcopate rather than the parish; Mount Athos remains the tradition's monastic centre.
Tibetan Buddhism holds both, fully ordained celibate monastics in the great monasteries and married yogic and tantric lineage holders alongside them, with the Gelug school the most strictly monastic of the four.