Monasteries

thumb|Sharabai Monastery (Himachal Pradesh) A monastery is a building or complex of buildings comprising the domestic quarters and workplaces of monastics, monks or nuns, whether living in communities (as cenobites) or alone (as hermits). A monastery generally includes a place reserved for prayer which may be a chapel, church, or temple, and may also serve as an oratory, or in the case of communities anything from a single building housing only one senior and two or three junior monks or nuns, to vast complexes and estates housing tens or hundreds. A monastery complex typically comprises a num

commune in Nord, France

thumb|Miniature of Vincent of Beauvais writing in a manuscript of the Speculum Historiale in French, Bruges, c. 1478–1480, [[British Library Royal 14 E. i, vol. 1, f. 3, probably representing the library of the Dukes of Burgundy.]]

thumb|An Advaita Vedanta monastery and Vidyashankara temple at Sringeri Sharada Peetham, [[Sringeri, Karnataka.]]

institutions of higher learning of the Early Middle Ages

kitchen garden and ornamental garden in a monastery

building in Putian, China

The term '''''' (; ) is derived from the verb (to donate) and originally meant 'a donation'. Such donations usually comprised earning assets, originally landed estates with serfs defraying dues (originally often in kind) or with vassal tenants of noble rank providing military services and forwarding dues collected from serfs. In modern times the earning assets could also be financial assets donated to form a fund to maintain an endowment, especially a charitable foundation. When landed estates, donated as a to maintain the college of a monastery, the chapter of a collegiate church or the cathe

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former abbey in Contigliano, Italy