Charterhouse of the Transfiguration

Charterhouse of the Transfiguration ( German: Charterhouse of the Transfiguration of the Lord) is the only existing Carthusian monastery in the United States. It lies in a valley of Mount Equinox, near the city of Arlington, in the south of the state of Vermont and is the transfiguration of the Transfiguration of the Lord, consecrated.

History

The Carthusians settled in the years after 1950 in the United States down, on the initiative of the former Benedictine monk, psychiatrist and educator Thomas Verner Moore ( 1877-1969 ). Moore had already in 1942 as prior of the Benedictine monastery of St. Anselm in Washington, DC St. Anselm College founded the local and was joined in 1947 in the Carthusian monastery of Santa María de Miraflores in Burgos in Spain the Carthusian Order.

In 1950 he received, supported by a circle of wealthy donors and through the mediation of Giovanni Montini, the future Pope Paul VI. , A private audience with Pope Pius XII .. After a visit to the Grande Chartreuse, the mother monastery of the Carthusian Order, Moore finally founded in December 1950 the first branch of the Carthusians on a farm near Whitingham, Vermont, near the border with Massachusetts.

First foundation

In the spring of 1951, other brothers of the Charterhouse of St. Hugh's settled ( at Parkminster in the South East of England ) in the new Charterhouse. In the 1950s the monastery was gradually expanded with additional hermitages and agricultural buildings. Thomas Vernon Moore returned in 1960 back to Miraflores, and died there in 1969.

Second founding

Having proved to be the site of the first monastery was founded as unsuitable for the life of the Carthusians, the brothers received a 28 km ² area as a donation by Joseph George Davidson ( 1892-1969 ), a former Vice President of the Union Carbide Corporation.

There the monks first lived in temporary accommodation, was started up in 1967 with the construction of the current building. In 1971, the construction works were completed. The monastery complex, built consisting of a wing for the monks' cells, one was for the lay brothers, the chapel, chapter house and refectory from 2400 about three -ton granite blocks.

The monastery can be visited. Only the parents of the friars and the candidates for admission to the Kartäuserleben, access may be allowed to the Charterhouse according to the rules of the Order.

From 1972 until his death in 1997, lived as a Carthusian monk Friedrich Alfred Prinz von Sachsen- Meiningen, the brother of Otto von Habsburg.