t 10 in summer, 11 in winter, 12 on feast days, they have their dinner,
alone except on Sundays and feasts; the dinner is supplied from the
common kitchen through a small window. On many days of the year there is
but one meal; meat is never eaten, even in sickness--this has always
been an absolute rule among the Carthusians. In the afternoon they again
assemble in the church for Vespers; the lesser portions of the canonical
office, as well as the Office of the Blessed Virgin and the Office of
the Dead, are said privately in the oratories.

This manner of life has been kept up almost without variation for eight
centuries: among the Carthusians there have never been any of those
revivals and reforms that are so striking a feature in the history of
other orders--"never reformed, because never deformed." The Carthusians
have always lived thus wholly cut off from the outer world, each one in
almost entire isolation. They introduced and have kept up in western
Europe a life resembling that of the early Egyptian monks, as under St
Anthony's guidance monasticism passed from the utter individualism of
the first hermits to the half eremitical, half cenobitical life of the
Lauras (see MONASTICISM). Owing to certain resemblances in external
matters to the Benedictine rule and practice, the Carthusians have
sometimes been regarded as one of the offshoots from the Benedictines;
but this view is not tenable, the whole Carthusian conception, idea and
spirit being quite different from the Benedictine.

The superiors of the Charterhouses are priors, not abbots, and the prior
of the Grande Chartreuse is the superior general of the order. A general
chapter of the priors is held annually at the Grande Chartreuse. The
Carthusians have always flourished most in France, but they had houses
all over western Europe; some of the Italian _Certose_, as those at
Pavia, Florence and Naples, are renowned for their wonderful beauty.

The first English Charterhouse was established in 1178 at Witham by
Selwood Forest, and at the Dissolution there were nine, the most
celebrated being those at Sheen in Surrey and at Smithfield in London
(for list see _Catholic Dictionary_, art. "Carthusians"). The
Carthusians were the only order that made any corporate resistance to
the ecclesiastical policy of Henry VIII. The community of the London
Charterhouse stood firm, and the prior and several of the monks were put
to death in 1535 under circumstances of barbarous