The term monastery is used generically to refer to any of a number of types of religious community. They are also to be distinguished from collegiate churches, such as St George's Chapel, Windsor. Westminster Abbey was for a short time a cathedral, and was a Benedictine monastery until the Reformation, and its Chapter preserves elements of the Benedictine tradition. However, some were run by monasteries orders, such as York Minster. Most cathedrals were not monasteries, and were served by canons secular, which were communal but not monastic. In England, the word monastery was also applied to the habitation of a bishop and the cathedral clergy who lived apart from the lay community. The earliest extant use of the term monastД“rion is by the 1st century AD Jewish philosopher Philo in On The Contemplative Life, ch. of ОјОїОЅО±ПѓП„О®ПЃО№ОїП‚ вЂ“ monasterios from ОјОїОЅО¬О¶ОµО№ОЅ вЂ“ monazein 'to live alone' from the root ОјПЊОЅОїП‚ вЂ“ monos 'alone' (originally all Christian monks were hermits) the suffix '-terion' denotes a 'place for doing something'. The word monastery comes from the Greek word ОјОїОЅО±ПѓП„О®ПЃО№ОїОЅ, neut. The Plan of Saint Gall, the ground plan of an unbuilt abbey, providing for all of the needs of the monks within the confines of the monastery walls Various religions may apply these terms in more specific ways. Historically, a convent denoted a house of friars (reflecting the Latin), now more commonly called a friary. In modern usage, convent tends to be applied only to institutions of female monastics (nuns), particularly communities of teaching or nursing religious sisters. In English usage, the term monastery is generally used to denote the buildings of a community of monks.

These may include a hospice, a school, and a range of agricultural and manufacturing buildings such as a barn, a forge, or a brewery. Depending on the location, the monastic order and the occupation of its inhabitants, the complex may also include a wide range of buildings that facilitate self-sufficiency and service to the community.

A monastery complex typically comprises a number of buildings which include a church, dormitory, cloister, refectory, library, balneary and infirmary, and outlying granges. A monastery generally includes a place reserved for prayer which may be a chapel, church, or temple, and may also serve as an oratory, or in the case of communities anything from a single building housing only one senior and two or three junior monks or nuns, to vast complexes and estates housing tens or hundreds. A building or complex of buildings comprising the domestic quarters and workplaces of monastics, monks or nuns, whether living in communities or alone ( hermits).

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