Louis J Sheehan 63362 H18

The Carthusians suffered greatly during the Reformation (particularly in England) and during the French Revolution and after in France. A large number of their monasteries were closed during both periods.

Today, the monastery of the Grande Chartreuse is still the motherhouse of the order. There is a museum on the Carthusian order next to the monastery of the Grande Chartreuse; the monks of that monastery are also involved in the production of the Chartreuse liquor. Although visits are not possible within the Grande Chartreuse, the recent documentary Into Great Silence gave unprecedented views of life within the hermitage.

There are 24 Charterhouses around the world, five of which are for nuns; altogether, there are around 370 monks and 75 nuns. Most of these Charterhouses are in Europe—including one in Sussex, England—but there are also two in South America, one in the United States and one in South Korea.

The Charterhouse of the Transfiguration on Mount Equinox near Arlington, Vermont is the only Carthusian monastery in the U.S., and for a time was the only Carthusian monastery outside of Europe. Founded in the 1950s, the monastery remains active enough that it is attempting a daughter monastery in Brazil.

[edit] Liturgy

Before the Council of Trent in the 1500s, the Roman Catholic Church in Western Europe had a wide variety of rituals for the celebration of Mass. Although the essentials were the same, there were variations in prayers and practices from region to region or among the various religious orders.

When Pope Pius V made the Roman Missal mandatory, in general, for all Catholics of the Latin Rite, it permitted the continuance of other forms of celebrating Mass that had an antiquity of at least two centuries. The rite used by the Carthusians was one of these and still continues in use in a version revised in 1981.[1] Apart from the new elements in this revision, it is substantially the rite of Grenoble in the twelfth century, with some admixture from other sources.[2] It is now the only extant rite of a religious order; but by virtue of the Ecclesia Dei indult (or "permitted exception") some individuals or small groups are authorized to use some other now defunct rites.
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A feature unique to Carthusian liturgical practice is that whereby the bishop bestows on Carthusian nuns, in the ceremony of their profession, a stole and a maniple. This is interpreted as a relic of the former rite of ordination of deaconesses.[3] The nun is also invested with a crown and a ring. The nun wears these ornaments again only on the day of her monastic jubilee, and after her death on her bier. At Matins, if no priest is present, a nun assumes the stole and reads the Gospel, and although the chanting of the Epistle was, in the time of the Tridentine Mass, reserved to an ordained subdeacon, a consecrated nun sang the Epistle at their conventual Mass, though without wearing the maniple. Even before the rite of the consecration of virgins was made more widely available as part of the liturgical reforms undertaken after the Second Vatican Council, Carthusian nuns retained this rite, administered by the diocesan bishop four years after the nun took her vows