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Lay brother is an outdated term which referred to a male member of areligious order who has not beenordained as priests. The term was particularly used in theCatholic Church. Lay brothers were distinguished fromchoir monks orfriars in that they did not pray in choir, and fromclerics, in that they did not prepare forholy orders. This specific definition is no longer applied by the Catholic Church.
Lay brothers played a crucial role in maintaining the upkeep of facilities, performing community service work, and providing technical and administrative expertise to assist with the mission of their order, while clerics typically focus on preaching, liturgy, and leadership.[1][2][3][4]
Inreligious institutes for women, the equivalent term waslay sister. Lay brothers were originally created to allow those who were skilled in particular crafts or did not have the required education to study forholy orders to participate in and contribute to the life of a religious order.
"In early Westernmonasticism, there was no distinction between lay and choir religious. The majority ofSt. Benedict's monks were not clerics, and all performed manual labour, the wordconversi being used only to designate those who had received the habit late in life, to distinguish them from theoblati andnutriti. But, by the beginning of the 11th century, the time devoted to study had greatly increased, thus a larger proportion of the monks were inHoly Orders, even though great numbers of illiterate persons had embraced the religious life. At the same time, it was found necessary to regulate the position of thefamuli, the hired servants of the monastery, and to include some of these in the monastic family. So inItaly the lay brothers were instituted; and we find similar attempts at organization at theAbbey of St. Benignus atDijon, underWilliam of Dijon (d. 1031) andRichard of Verdun (d. 1046), while atHirschau Abbey,AbbotWilliam (d. 1091) gave a special rule to thefratres barbati andexteriores."[1]
Leslie Toke in theCatholic Encyclopedia (1910) writes that
AtCluny Abbey the manual work was relegated mostly to paid servants, but theCarthusians, theCistercians, theOrder of Grandmont, and most subsequent religious orders possessed lay Brothers, to whom they committed their secular cares. In particular, atGrandmont, the complete control of the order's property by the lay brothers led to serious disturbances, and finally to the ruin of the order; whereas the wiser regulations of the Cistercians provided against this danger and formed the model for the later orders. In England, theBenedictines made but slight use of lay brothers, finding the service of paid attendants more convenient.[1]
Nonetheless, he adds that they are "mentioned in thecustomaries of theAbbey of St. Augustine atCanterbury and theAbbey of St. Peter at Westminster".[1] Craig Lescher notes theGilbertines, the Order of Grandmont and the Cistercians as providing historical examples of revolts carried out by lay brothers.[5]
In 1965, theSecond Vatican Council issued the documentPerfectae Caritatis, which called upon all religious institutes to re-examine and renew theircharism. As part of the subsequent reforms and experimentation, many of the distinctions between lay and choir religious in terms of dress and spiritual regime were abolished or mitigated. In many religious institutes, lay and choir religious wear the same habit.
Lay brothers were found in many religious orders. Drawn from the working classes, they were pious and hardworking people, who though unable to achieve the education needed to receiveholy orders, were still drawn to religious life and were able to contribute to the order through their skills. Some were skilled in artistic handicrafts, others functioned as administrators of the orders' material assets. In particular, the lay brothers of the Cistercians were skilled in agriculture, and have been credited for the tilling of fertile farmland.[1]
Lay brothers were sometimes distinguished from their brethren by some difference in theirhabit: for instance, the Cistercian lay brother previously wore a browntunic, instead of white, with the blackscapular; inchoir they wore a large cloak, instead of acowl; theVallombrosan lay brothers wore a cap instead of a hood, and their habit was shorter; the English Benedictine lay brothers wore a hood of a different shape from that of the choir monks, and no cowl; aDominican lay brother would wear a black, instead of a white, scapular. In some orders they were required to recite daily theLittle Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary, but usually their labor in the fields (and hence away from the church) prevented them from participating in the Liturgy of the Hours. Lay brothers would instead prayPaters,Aves, andGlorias.[1]
A great number of lay brothers left religious life in the years following the Second Vatican Council. Bruce Lescher notes that, as of 1990, departures were proportionately greater among lay brothers compared to both religious sisters and ordained clergy.[5]
Lay sisters were found in most of the orders of women, and their origin, like that of the lay brothers, is to be found in the necessity of providing the choirnuns with more time for the Office and study, as well as creating the opportunity for the illiterate to join the religious life. They, too, wore a habit different from those of the choir sisters, and their required daily prayers consisted of prayers such as the Little Office or a certain number of Paters.[1]
The system of lay sisters seem to have appeared earlier than that of lay brothers, being first recorded in a ninth centuryhagiography ofSaint Denis. In the early medieval period, there was also mention of lay brothers attached to convents of women and of lay sisters attached to monasteries. In both configurations, the two sexes were strictly kept separate, housed in distinct buildings. This arrangement, however, has since been long abolished.[1]
Toke, Leslie (1913)."Lay Brothers". In Herbermann, Charles (ed.).Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. Retrieved13 June 2019.| International | |
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