Abstract
AbstractPrayer lies at the centre of the monastic life, but what is prayer? For medieval monks and nuns, prayer was above all a ‘lifting up of the mind and soul to God’, whether in speech or song, requiring the whole of one’s attention and thus careful preparation and life-long discipline. It was a service offered to God, an exercise of penance, and a battle fought on behalf of one’s neighbours against the powers of darkness and sin. Like modern Christians, medieval monks and nuns worried whether their prayers were offered with appropriate devotion and understanding. Their most important models for and sources of prayer were the psalms of the Old Testament, which they sang daily in the Divine Office.
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