ABSTRACT
The strategies for integrating economic activity into monastic life and the discourse of the monks and nuns suggest that the justification of economic activity and work for the mere necessity of biological subsistence is not sufficient. The first way to avoid the conflict between economic activity and the monastic way of life is the denial of the economic activity. Distance from the economic activity occurs through a process of externalisation, which consists of withdrawing monastics from the economic activities and replacing them with lay people or by extracting a factory from the enclosure. According to Max Weber, the disenchantment of the economy occurs when its development conflicts with the ethic of fraternity within the religions of salvation. The form of work a priori best integrated into the monastic utopia would be the work of producing religious or liturgical objects. Artistic activity would be a way for monastics to give an extra-worldly meaning to an intramundane activity.
