Abstract

Monastic utopia integrates of necessity economic activities which it tries to deny because off it religious character. Monks spread then an arsenal of strategies of reorganization to reconcile economy and religious life. These tensions between work and prayer are essential of the monastic life, but modernity and secularization of society bring with them new data who require monks a more successful economy. The social background which defines the status of the monk depends on each country, and the European comparison between France, Italy, Germany and Belgium allows to determine the intrinsic characteristics of the monastic economy and those which are contingent, according to place and period in whom it takes place. The more the monks seem extraworldly, the more their products win in symbolic value, so building a charismatic economy. Although in theory outside the world, the monastery is not nevertheless hermetic to its outside environment. Even, we can observe offers and demands between society and monasteries, this last one answers to demands of tradition and natural which society is expecting. Role of monks in the religious modernity thus recomposes around a new charisma which is not only religious. Unlike to the institutional Church, monks keep more credibility thanks to the other canals of communications which they can develop with the world, in particular by economy.