Why did monks and friars take vows of poverty?

Answer 1

Answer 1: Partially it is a form of self discipline, to remove yourself from greed, envy, and covetousness; and to focus your efforts on doing the work of God.

It also ensures that any one member of the monastery or friary community will use a bare minimum of the resources available to it, thereby causing the entire community to consume less, which, in turn, means that there will be more that can be used for such things such as helping the poor.

Answer 2: Friars have always been called to live lives pursuant to the so-called "evangelical counsels," which are vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. With friars, poverty, then, is quite intentional. Many friars are also mendicant, which means that they literally beg for their food, and money to support the friary, and the order.

Starting in the 6th century AD, monks did not vow the evangelical counsels, but did take the Benedictine vows of obedience (to the head of the monastery), stability (committing to a particular monastery), and what was called "conversion of manners" (largely forgoing private ownership of things, and celibate chastity).

It was, in fact, the arrival on the scene of the very mobile (and so stability was, right there, not required) friars, in the 12th century, and their "evangelical counsels" vows of chastity, poverty and obedience, that caused monasticism to start re-thinking their own vows. Not long thereafter, even monasticism began vowing the "evangelical counsels;" and modern Roman Catholicism's canons 654-658 of the Code of Canon Law now require the "evangelical council" or "councils of perfection" vows of chastity, poverty and obedience of all holy orders.

Both monks and friars, then, are now avowed to a life of poverty; they have no choice.

The answer to the question, then, "why did monks and friars live a life of poverty," is that monks, at least, didn't necessarily have to, at first. Friars always did. Eventually monks (and nuns), too, did... and still do...

...because, in the main, they've promised to (though a vow is actually more potent and binding than a mere promise).

If the questioner is asking why the need to require friars and monks (and nuns, and priests, too) to live lives of poverty in the first place, then Answer 1, above, is probably about right.

That answer, in fact, explains why monks starting from the 6th century lived lives of poverty even before the friars came along in the 12th century, with their "evangelical counsels" vows of actual poverty, and caused the church to compel even monks to take vows of poverty, too. Even before monks were avowed to poverty, then, they saw the value of living a life of it so that more could be given to the persons they served... typicallly the poor and impoverished.

Answer 2

.

Catholic AnswerMonks do not take a vow of poverty, they take a vow of conversatio morum which commits them to poverty - among other things. Friars take a vow of poverty. This vow of poverty - or conversion of manners - is complete, it means that a monk or friar literally does not own the clothes on his back, they belong to his community. Back when I was reading the book, In This House of Brede, which was about a forty year old woman entering a Benedictine monastery in England back in the late 50's, she was describing a common feature, the nuns would gather each day, in community, and confess their infractions of the Rule. One old nun came forward, knelt before Lady Abbess, and proceeded to confess, with tears in her eyes, "I have broken our false teeth." She had dropped her dentures, and they had broken on the stone floor. But she knew, just as any junior monk just making his vows, that they own nothing, not only not the clothes on their back, but, in some instances, not even the teeth in their head!

.

There is a very good reason for this, poverty is an evangelical counsel of Our Blessed Lord to everyone. Everyone doesn't have to take it quite as literally as an elderly Benedictine nun, but everyone who aspires to be called a Christian by God on his death bed, better take all of Our Blessed Lord's "suggestions" very seriously. We came into this world with absolutely nothing, and we will leave this world with absolutely nothing. When we stand before Our Blessed Lord at the end of our life, we won't even have our bodies - it will be cooling in the bed in which we died. And we BETTER have nothing "in our hands" (in other words, we are holding on to nothing that we think is MINE) because if we value one single thing more than Our Blessed Lord, then we will have that thing and hell for the rest of eternity. That is why monks and friars joyfully take a vow of poverty, and why each of us must learn from them.