Monasticism in Switzerland has a continuous history from late antiquity to the present, encompassing both eremitic and cenobitic forms of religious life. Monastic foundations appear in the territory of present-day Switzerland from the 5th century onward, first in the west under the influence of Lérins and Burgundian monasticism, and from the 7th century in the east through Frankish, Irish, and Alemanni foundations such as Saint Gall and Reichenau. Successive waves of reform—Cluniac, Cistercian, Premonstratensian, and the mendicant orders—shaped the medieval monastic landscape, before the Reformation led to the dissolution of houses in Reformed cantons in the 16th century. Monastic life flourished anew in Catholic cantons during the Catholic Reform and Baroque periods, suffered renewed setbacks during the Helvetic Republic and the 19th-century Kulturkampf, and recovered until the mid-20th century.
Numbers have declined sharply since the 1960s. As of the mid-2020s, around 200 monks and nuns live in Benedictine communities in Switzerland, roughly half the figure of two decades earlier. The remaining communities have engaged lay teachers, opened their schools to girls and non-Catholics, and increasingly turned to hosting retreats for outside visitors.
In its strict sense, monasticism refers to membership in a monastic order, with life within the cloister generally taking precedence over outward activity. Western monasticism, in renunciation of the world, sought a life of poverty, celibacy, and strict obedience to a superior representing Christ, understood as the most complete form of the imitation of Christ. In practice, this ideal proved difficult to realize. Adaptations to changing social, economic, and political conditions were unavoidable, but also carried the risk of decline. For this reason, reformers repeatedly sought to return to the ideal by going back to its origins. The branchings and new foundations of orders that occurred in every era can likewise be understood as responses to changing demands.
Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages
Monasticism originated in its two basic forms—eremitism (hermitism) and cenobitism (life in a fraternal community)—in late 3rd- and 4th-century Egypt, Palestine, and Syria. It reached the Western Church as early as the 4th century. At the time of the Great Migrations, the influence of the monastery of Lérins, on the islands off Cannes, can be traced as far as present-day French-speaking Switzerland. Around 430, the brothers Romanus and Lupicinus founded an hermitage at Condat (today Saint-Claude) in what would later be the French Jura; the monastery that soon developed there followed the rules of Lérins and the institutions of John Cassian. Condat probably extended its influence as far as Romainmôtier in what would become Vaud. On the recommendation of the abbot of Lérins, the monastic community at the tomb of the martyr Maurice (Saint-Maurice) adopted the observance of Condat, adapted to western conditions, thereby joining the Rhône valley monasticism.
Influential bishops were the great patrons of southern Gaulish monasticism, while the Frankish-Irish monasticism that spread from around 600 was protected by Frankish lay magnates and Merovingian kings. The most important representative of the Irish monastic tradition, Columbanus, founded around 590 the abbeys of Luxeuil, Annegray, and Fontaines in the Belfort Gap. For the many Frankish nobles who entered these houses, Columbanus drew up his Regula monachorum, setting aside the strict Irish penitential discipline in favor of the milder Rule of Saint Benedict. This rule was initially also followed at Moutier-Grandval Abbey, founded thanks to a donation from the dukes of Alsace and settled directly from Luxeuil. Under increasing Frankish influence, the Christianization of the Alemanni—settled between the Romanized Burgundy and long-Christianized Rhaetia—was completed by the late 8th century. As part of the establishment of state organization, local nobles and high officials of the Frankish imperial aristocracy, such as the counts and dukes of Alsace and Alemannia, founded richly endowed and privileged monasteries, among them Reichenau and the cenobitic community on the site of the former hermitage of St. Gall. The first abbot of the latter, Otmar (from 719), is said to have adopted the Benedictine rule at the urging of the Frankish mayor of the palace. The priory of Lucerne dates from around 750, and Rheinau Abbey probably from shortly after 800.
The first women's convent in Alemannia was founded by Louis the German at Zürich in 853. In Rhaetia, the women's community of Cazis, founded around 700 by the Zaccons (Victorids), predated the male abbeys of Disentis and Pfäfers, richly endowed by the same dynasty in the first half of the 8th century. Charlemagne himself may have taken part in the foundation of Müstair Abbey on the road over the Ofen Pass, while the women's convent of Schänis was a foundation of the Rhaetian count Hunfrid (814/823). The Carolingian period brought a flowering of monasticism in southern Alemannia and Rhaetia, marked by relatively dense settlement of well-populated monasteries, increasingly clerical in character, by extensive land clearance, and by religious and cultural influence in which St. Gall surpassed all others.
Owing to the early medieval interweaving of religious, cultural, and political forces, the fate of monasteries depended on their closeness to the ruling house, which secured them legally and materially through grants of immunity, free abbatial elections, and donations, while at the same time placing them in the service of the realm; the St. Gall abbots Grimald and Salomo III, for example, served as chancellors of the East Frankish king. Einsiedeln Abbey also belongs to this Carolingian-Ottonian type of royal monastery. Founded in 934 as a private monastery by the Swabian ducal couple Hermann I and Reginlinde, it was raised to the rank of imperial abbey by Otto I in 947. After being shaped monastically and intellectually on the model of St. Gall, it joined the Lorraine imperial-monastic reform movement and became the leading center of reform in Swabia, sending many of its monks as abbots to other communities.
High Middle Ages
The 11th and 12th centuries were marked by a revival of monasticism, oriented on the one hand toward the ideas of the Cluniac movement, founded at the Burgundian abbey of Cluny in 910, and on the other taking new paths with the Cistercians and Premonstratensians. Einsiedeln carried out its reform while remaining fully integrated into existing structures of authority, respecting the autonomy of each abbey and not seeking to form an association of dependent monasteries. Cluny, by contrast, from around 1000 sought to build the Ordo cluniacensis as a centralized association claiming exemption, in which numerous priories (alongside a few older abbeys) owed obedience to the grand abbot. In present-day Switzerland, twenty-six Cluniac houses can be identified. Only four—Payerne (under Cluny from 965), Romainmôtier (from 966), St. Victor near Geneva (from c. 1000), and St. Alban in Basel (before 1095)—had the rank of conventual priories with the minimum required complement of twelve monks for full monastic life. The smaller priories, often housing only one or two monks, could not sustain such a life.
Besides Cluny, other Savoyard and Burgundian abbeys covered western Switzerland with a network of twenty-two subordinate priories. Apart from the conventual priories of Lutry, Cossonay, Grandson, and St. Jean near Geneva, these served mainly to manage estates. The monastic landscape of western Switzerland thus differed from that of Alemannia and Rhaetia, even accounting for the new 11th- and 12th-century foundations there that were indirectly influenced by the Cluniac reform.
During the Investiture Controversy, anti-imperial south German dynastic families gathered around the anti-king Rudolf of Rheinfelden, duke of Swabia, began to favor the new reform centers of St. Blasien—which had taken up the Consuetudines of Fruttuaria in Piedmont—and Hirsau in the Black Forest. Cluniac influence was reflected in their demand that founders give up the system of proprietary churches, in favor of free election of the abbot and Vogt and the transfer of monasteries to the Holy See, which forced these houses to take sides in the struggle between emperor and pope. In both abbeys, the first abbots were removed and replaced by reformers. Even the Habsburg founding family converted their house monastery of Muri in Aargau into a priory dependent on St. Blasien, but under pressure from the community soon raised it again to the rank of abbey. The Nellenburg foundation of Allerheiligen in Schaffhausen was made by William of Hirsau one of the leading houses of his successful reform branch. The newly founded Benedictine houses of Erlach and Trub, and—by way of Muri—Engelberg, took on the imprint of St. Blasien, while Beinwil, Rheinau, Wagenhausen, and Fischingen came under the influence of Hirsau. Muri, Engelberg, and Allerheiligen in particular soon became important communities with lively intellectual life and leading scriptoria. Another feature of the high medieval wave of reform was the establishment of double monasteries (for example Muri, Engelberg, Rheinau, Wagenhausen, and Fischingen), in which the women's convent stood under the full jurisdiction and property administration of the abbot. The same was true of foundations on separate sites (Fahr under Einsiedeln, Rüegsau under Trub) and of women's convents later relocated.
Like the Cluniacs, the Cistercians—the second monastic reform movement of the High Middle Ages—had their roots in Burgundy. In conscious contrast to the "worldly" Cluny, Cîteaux, founded in 1098, rigorously emphasized the Benedictine ideals of solitude, poverty, and manual labor, and tightened the liturgical service. The Cistercians allowed individual abbeys a degree of autonomy, but linked them to the order as a whole through the annual general chapter of all abbots, which, according to the order's constitution (Charta caritatis), held supreme authority in matters of discipline and interpretation of the rule, and through a continuous filiation system in which the abbot of the founding abbey held the right of visitation in its daughter houses. The initially intensive direct cultivation of estates organized as granges was possible only through the institution of the conversi, the separation of choir monks (who were ordained priests) from subordinate lay brothers. From Burgundy, the Cistercians first gained a foothold in western Switzerland, where the nobility and the bishops of Geneva and Lausanne promoted their expansion. Bonmont (1131) was followed by Montheron (1126/1134), Hautcrêt (1134/1143), and Hauterive (1132/1137). In the Diocese of Constance, Frienisberg (1131/1138) and, considerably later, Kappel (1185), St. Urban (1194), and finally Wettingen (1220/1227) were added. Cistercian houses were located in wilderness sites already uninhabited or reclaimed by displacing peasants. Little is known of their monastic and intellectual life; the sources are abundant only on their land policy and economic management.
After early Christian eremitism had been revived in Italy by Saint Romuald and given a settled form of life by Peter Damian, a new synthesis of eremitic and cenobitic life emerged, which Saint Bruno of Cologne also realized in his foundation of La Grande Chartreuse in 1084. The Carthusian order likewise entered Switzerland first in the west, with the foundations of Oujon (1146) and La Valsainte (1295). The five later houses, including the important one in Kleinbasel, date only from the 14th or 15th century.