A monk (/mʌŋk/; from Greek: μοναχός, monachos, "single, solitary" via Latin monachus) is a man who is a member of a religious order and lives in a monastery. A monk usually lives his life in prayer and contemplation. The concept is ancient and can be seen in many religions and in philosophy across numerous cultures.
The Greek word for "monk" may be applied to men or women. In English, however, "monk" is applied mainly to men, while nun is typically used for female monastics.
The monastic community of Mount Athos is an Eastern Orthodox community of monks living on the Mount Athos peninsula in Northern Greece.
The monastic community enjoys autonomous self-government within the borders of the Athos peninsula. The Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs manages relations between Athos and the Government of Greece. The community includes 20 monasteries and dependent settlements. The monasteries house around 2,000 Eastern Orthodox monks from Greece and many other countries, including Eastern Orthodox countries such as Serbia, Romania, Moldova, Georgia, Bulgaria, Montenegro, Ukraine and Russia, who claim to live an ascetic life at Athos, isolated from the rest of the world. The Athonite monasteries feature a rich collection of well-preserved artifacts, rare books, ancient documents, and artworks of immense historical value, and Mount Athos has been listed as a World Heritage Site since 1988.
Jizya (Arabic: جِزْيَة, romanized: jizya), or jizyah, is a type of taxation levied on non-Muslim subjects of a state governed by Islamic law. The Quran and hadiths mention jizya without specifying its rate or amount, and the application of jizya varied in the course of Islamic history. However, scholars largely agree that early Muslim rulers adapted some of the existing systems of taxation and modified them according to Islamic religious law.
Historically, the jizya tax has been understood in Islam as a fee for protection provided by the Muslim ruler to non-Muslims, for the exemption from military service for non-Muslims, for the permission to practice a non-Muslim faith with some communal autonomy in a Muslim state, and as material proof of the non-Muslims' allegiance to the Muslim state and its laws. The majority of Muslim jurists required adult, free, sane males among the dhimma community to pay the jizya, while exempting women, children, elders, handicapped, the ill, the insane, monks, hermits, slaves, and musta'mins—non-Muslim foreigners who only temporarily reside in Muslim lands. However, some jurists, such as Ibn Hazm, required that anyone who had reached puberty pay jizya. Islamic Regimes allowed dhimmis to serve in Muslim armies. Those who chose to join military service were also exempted from payment; some Muslim scholars claim that some Islamic rulers exempted those who could not afford to pay from the Jizya.
A priory is a monastery of men or women under religious vows that is headed by a prior or prioress. They are found in the Catholic Church, Lutheran Churches, and Anglican Communion. Priories may be monastic houses of monks or nuns (such as the Benedictines, the Cistercians, or the Charterhouses). Houses of canons & canonesses regular also use this term, the alternative being canonry. Mendicant houses, of friars, nuns, or tertiary sisters (such as the Friars Preachers, Augustinian Hermits, and Carmelites) also exclusively use this term.
In pre-Reformation England, if an abbey church was raised to cathedral status, the abbey became a cathedral priory. The bishop, in effect, took the place of the abbot, and the monastery itself was headed by a prior.
Medieval Scandinavian law, also called North Germanic law, was a subset of Germanic law practiced by North Germanic peoples. It was originally memorized by lawspeakers, but after the end of the Viking Age they were committed to writing, mostly by Christian monks after the Christianization of Scandinavia. Initially, they were geographically limited to minor jurisdictions (lögsögur), and the Bjarkey laws concerned various merchant towns, but later there were laws that applied to entire Scandinavian kingdoms. Each jurisdiction was governed by an assembly of free men, called a þing.
The court assembly, the thing, used the law and heard witnesses to rule whether the accused was guilty or not. There were usually two types of punishment: outlawing and fines. The most common means of justice were, however, fines; the amount varied, depending on the severity of the offense. This system was extremely intricate and the fines themselves, singularly a "mulct", were also varied according to the social status of the accused and/or the victim. Disputes of innocence were often solved by trial. These trials consisted of different tests for men and women. However, as long as the courts were not made aware of the crime, it could go unpunished or was settled outside of legal bounds by payment. There was no written code of law until after the Viking Age, but the code of fines, duels, and disavowing criminals was the standard across the Scandinavian world.