ABSTRACT
The landscape of the monastic economy on the international level is, however, blurred because the sources turn out to be very different, depending on the country, order or gender of the community. In this chapter, the authors look at where the income of today’s monastic communities comes from. Complete self-sufficiency was in fact rarely achieved in the monastic setting, even desert ascetics in the early days of monasticism would sell their handiwork in the city. Due to the fact that total self-sufficiency is neither possible nor desirable, monastic communities must find ways to generate financial income. The economy of aging is increasingly present in the monasteries of Western and Central Europe, especially female monasteries; it means that the main source of revenue are the pensions of the old sisters or brothers. In Poland, monasteries were not closed during communism, but their properties were nationalised.
