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Monks and Nuns

Can you guess these facts about monks, nuns, and friars in history and modern culture?
Quiz by Quizmaster
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Last updated: August 26, 2022
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First submittedAugust 26, 2022
Times taken6,115
Average score70.0%
Rating4.39
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Answer
Albanian nun who won a Nobel Peace Prize for her work in Kolkata
Mother Teresa
Common term for a place where nuns live, starting with C
Convent
Monk who supposedly nailed his Ninety-five Theses to a church door in 1517
Martin Luther
Whoopi Goldberg movie about a woman who poses as nun to hide from the mob
Sister Act
Trappist monks in Belgium are famous for making this
Beer
"H" word that refers to the clothing of a nun or monk
Habit
Perhaps feeling guilty for dissolving the monasteries, this king's last words
were "monks, monks, monks"
King Henry VIII
Venerable monk who wrote a history of England in the 8th century
Bede
Russian mystic known as the "Mad Monk" who was assassinated in 1916
Rasputin
What Hamlet said to Ophelia
Get thee to a nunnery
Before China invaded in 1950 - about half of the male population of this
region were Buddhist monks
Tibet
Modern country with the most Buddhist monks per capita
Myanmar
Chinese monastery known as the cradle of kung fu
Shaolin
"A" word which refers to the head of a monastery
Abbot
Friar whose pea plant experiments led to the understanding of dominant
and recessive genes
Gregor Mendel
Beverage which French monk Dom Pérignon is inaccurately
credited as having invented
Sparkling wine
The three typical monastic vows are poverty, ______, and obedience
Chastity
Friar who was a companion of Robin Hood
Friar Tuck
Country in which you'd find Mount Athos, famous for its many monasteries
Greece
Work by Geoffrey Chaucer whose many characters included a monk,
a friar, and two nuns
The Canterbury Tales
+2
Level 87
Aug 27, 2022
Nice quiz on a truly eclectic subject.

Maybe accept Abbot with one t?

Pedantic I know…

For some more pedantry, is Mt Athos strictly Greek?

+5
Level 83
Aug 27, 2022
Considering it's in Greece, yes.
+1
Level 68
Aug 28, 2022
It's a semi-independent "monastic Republic", so it has a special status, but yes, it's definitely in Greece.
+1
Level 89
Dec 20, 2022
Athos is a very Greek-sounding name so that was an easy answer for me.
+3
Level 95
Aug 27, 2022
Abbot only has one t, not 2.
+3
Level 80
Aug 27, 2022
You’re saying that Greg Abbott is not the leader of every monestary?
+1
Level ∞
Aug 27, 2022
Fixed
+1
Level 82
Aug 27, 2022
Most quizzes asking for a king, you only need to give a name, not name and number (ex. George accepted for George III) so I didn't bother trying numbers for the king question. Could you change it or add a caveat to clarify the numbers are needed?
+1
Level ∞
Aug 27, 2022
Henry will work now
+8
Level 77
Aug 27, 2022
Accept celibacy for monk's vows?
+1
Level 72
Sep 2, 2022
Yep, that's what I tried too.

Very interesting topic for a quiz, nonetheless. I definitely enjoyed it. :)

+2
Level 70
Dec 20, 2022
Accept "cloister" for the "convent" clue?
+1
Level 71
Dec 20, 2022
Is abstinence not the same thing as chastity?
+1
Level 63
Dec 20, 2022
These definitions may vary across traditions, but at least in the context of Catholic monasticism, chastity only entails abstinence (also called continence) for the unmarried. So they coincide for those who have made a vow of celibacy (i.e. to remain in an unmarried state), but not in general. It would probably be fair for the quiz to accept any of these terms because they imply each other for monks and nuns, but they're not equivalent.
+1
Level 85
Dec 26, 2022
The sad thing, of course, is that abstinence makes the heart grow fonder.
+1
Level 79
Dec 20, 2022
I tried 'celibacy' and 'abstinence' for chastity.
+1
Level 66
Dec 20, 2022
Could you accept Canterbury Tale please? Didn't realise there were several oops.

Also a place where nuns live is called an Abbey or a Nunnery - why specify the C-word when this is not universal?

+2
Level 77
Dec 21, 2022
BTW, learned somewhere that Hamlet didn't mean a convent but a brothel when telling Ophelia to go to one. Apparently "nunnery" was used in that meaning in Shakespeare's time (perhaps as an anti-catholic insult).
+1
Level 92
Apr 10, 2023
That interpretation gained a brief amount of fame in the mid-20th century, but I think it has fallen out of favor more recently. But, since Shakespeare frequently used bawdy double meanings, it's possible that was his intent, and it'll give High School English teachers something to debate for many decades to come.