📚 Monasticism

The ruled life: monks, friars, and what the copyists and gardeners of the orders handed down.

Below are the 30 works carrying the subject monasticism and religious orders in the Open Library catalogue with the most editions in print. Author and first year are as the record states them; a missing year means the record does not carry one, not that the book is undated. Novels set in the subject are left out, because a list of historical fiction is not a list of history. Where one author dominates the reprint counts, no more than two of their titles appear.

Cover	Title	Author	First published	Editions
	Les moines d'Occident depuis Saint Benoit jusqu'a Saint Bernard	Charles de Montalembert	1860	74
	Regula	Benedict Saint, Abbot of Monte Cassino.	1760	58
	English monastic life	Francis Aidan Gasquet	1904	28
	A Time to Keep Silence	Patrick Leigh Fermor	1953	21
	The waters of Siloe	Thomas Merton	1949	19
	The religious orders in England	Knowles, David	1948	18
	English monks and the suppression of the monasteries	Geoffrey Baskerville	1937	16
	From St. Francis to Dante	Coulton, G. G.	1906	14
	The silent life	Thomas Merton	1957	14
	A supplication for the beggars	Simon Fish	1871	12
	The English abbey	Frederick Herbert Crossley	1935	11
	Medieval Monasticism	C. H. Lawrence	2014	11
	Regula	Augustine of Hippo	1574	9
	British monachism	Thomas Dudley Fosbroke	1802	8
	Saint Columba	Charles de Montalembert	1868	8
	Monasticon Praemonstratense	Norbert Backmund	1949	8
	Irish monasticism	Ryan, John	1931	7
	The desert a city	Derwas J. Chitty	1966	7
	History of religious orders ... together with a brief history of the Catholic church in relation to religious orders	Charles Warren Currier	1898	6
	The spirit and origin of Christian monasticism	George A. Birmingham	1903	6
	The Spiritual Franciscans	Muzzey, David Saville	1907	6
	Early Buddhist Monachism	Sukumar Dutt	1960	6
	The love of learning and the desire for God	Jean Leclercq	1961	6
	Un traité de la vie solitaire	William of Saint-Thierry	1940	5
	Guide to the Catholic sisterhoods in the United States	Thomas P. McCarthy	1952	5
	Vom Geheimnis der Mönche	Walter Nigg	1953	5
	Assyrie chrétienne	J. M. Fiey	1965	5
	The Carmelites	Joachim Smet	1975	5
	The Benedictines in the Middle Ages	Clark, James G.	2011	5
	Fruits of Grace	Minke de Vries	2017	5

List built from Open Library (CC0 metadata) · retrieved 03 Nov 2026 UTC · capped at 30 works per subject.

Nearby shelves

MoneyMongoliaMoraleMosaicsMotivationMotorcycles

Want the ideas behind these books explained rather than listed? Try Study for short explainers, Academy for deeper tracks, and the periodic table or the night sky when the book is about matter or stars.