A charterhouse (french: chartreuse; german: Kartause; it, certosa; pt, cartuxa; es, cartuja) is a

monastery A monastery is a building or complex of buildings comprising the domestic quarters and workplaces of monastics, monks or nuns, whether living in communities or alone ( hermits). A monastery generally includes a place reserved for prayer whi ...

Carthusian The Carthusians, also known as the Order of Carthusians ( la, Ordo Cartusiensis), are a Latin enclosed religious order of the Catholic Church. The order was founded by Bruno of Cologne in 1084 and includes both monks and nuns. The order has i ...

monks. The English word is derived by

phono-semantic matching Phono-semantic matching (PSM) is the incorporation of a word into one language from another, often creating a neologism, where the word's non-native quality is hidden by replacing it with Phonetics, phonetically and semantically similar words o ...

from the French word ''chartreuse'' and it is therefore sometimes misunderstood to indicate that the houses were created by charter, a grant of legal rights by a high authority. The actual namesake is instead the first monastery of the order, the

Grande Chartreuse Grande Chartreuse () is the head monastery of the Carthusian religious order. It is located in the Chartreuse Mountains, north of the city of Grenoble, in the commune of Saint-Pierre-de-Chartreuse ( Isère), France. History Originally, the c ...

, which St Bruno of Cologne established in a valley of the

Chartreuse Mountains The Chartreuse Mountains (french: massif de la Chartreuse ) are a mountain range in southeastern France, stretching from the city of Grenoble in the south to the Lac du Bourget in the north. They are part of the French Prealps, which continu ...

in 1084. The

London Charterhouse The London Charterhouse is a historic complex of buildings in Farringdon, London, dating back to the 14th century. It occupies land to the north of Charterhouse Square, and lies within the London Borough of Islington. It was originally built ( ...

was the first English site to which this English version of the word was applied.

References

Carthusian Order Christian monasteries {{Christian-monastery-stub

See also

References