ABSTRACT
The fourteenth century saw the traditional version of the cenobitic life being eroded by a process of general decay. The most obvious symptom of this malaise was a decline in the number of monks. The decline was accelerated by the catastrophes of war and plague. Under the pressure of economic difficulties, many abbeys of black monks took a decision to impose a limitation on the size of their community and to restrict the number of recruits. An anxiety to maintain institutional grandeur and domestic living standards at a time when real income was falling was the main reason for holding down numbers. It was the growth of more individualistic piety, the quest for personal religious experience, in the later Middle Ages that diverted the enthusiasm of the devout away from the structured life of community observances that was associated with traditional Benedictine monasticism. One of the signs of this trend in late-medieval Western spirituality was the flowering of mystical writing.
