A Journey of Silence. The Carthusian Monastery of Santa Maria Scala Coeli

Abstract

Santa Maria Scala Coeli was the last monastery of the Carthusian Order in Portugal. For centuries, space was a world accessible only to the monks who lived there. With the departure of the last religious in 2019, the complex was temporarily visitable until it closed again to welcome the sisters of the Order of the Incarnate Word. The change of paradigm (from the masculine to the feminine order) will bring a new experience to the iconic Alentejo monastery, but the atmosphere will certainly remain unchanged, based on a religious community structured around silence and isolation. This reflection aims to reproduce a dichotomous view between religious space and time, enclosure and isolation, the axis from which the old – and new – community align their daily experience. Because the spirit of the place has only been touched upon, the methodology crosses investigation and narrative poetics in an attempt to better reproduce the transiently experienced atmosphere.