ABSTRACT
Chapter 7 analyzes relations between individual members and compares the situation for monks and nuns in terms of their relationship with their superior, on the one hand, and with one another as peers, on the other. It answers the following questions: What forms of individualized personal contact and relationships are possible to develop and maintain within a monastic community? What forms of disclosure, and to whom, are legitimate? What are the conditions and possibilities for friendship within monastic communities? The chapter reveals significant differences between the conditions for Cistercian monks and those for nuns. Monks experience less pressure to open up to the abbot; they are free to select a spiritual guide to open up to and discuss spiritual matters with and also permitted to meet and speak with fellow monks as they wish – to the extent that they respect the general call for silence in the monasteries. The abbot faces the threat that spiritual guides will influence monks in ways that conflict with abbatial authority. The abbess has a more central position because nuns are expected to share things exclusively with their abbess; they need to ask for permission to speak with other nuns.
