Monasteries and nunneries were both worlds within themselves and part of the wider communities of order and congregation, town and countryside, parish and diocese, castle and manor. The second half of this book therefore explores the life within the monastic house and its involvement in the world outside. This chapter begins by looking at the monastic world at its narrowest, that is, the individual monastery and nunnery. The questions which arise concerning these communities are many. What kind of men and women dedicated their lives to God there, and what were the conditions of their entry? How were the communities governed, and how was promotion to the highest office achieved? In these discussions I have found it convenient to separate the male and female monastic communities, since these pose different problems for the historian. I have begun with the large Benedictine houses which still, by the twelfth century, dominated the monastic world, and move on to the Cistercian houses, whose statutes imposed distinctive obligations on their abbots. My treatment of the female monastic community opens with an exploration of the link between recruitment and resources, which I argue is more pronounced in the case of female than male houses, and continues with a discussion of the male presence in nunneries and its implications for the structure of power, authority, and command. The chapter concludes by placing these individual communities in their wider monastic context, exploring how discipline was maintained and, in the case of those houses which belonged to an order, examining the nature of contacts within the monastic family.