Monasteries were among the most important sites for the care of the sick and the dissemination of medical knowledge throughout the early and central Middle Ages, at least up to the thirteenth century. While the medical preoccupations of monastic communities reflect the fundamental Christian duty of visiting the sick, they also resulted from the self-contained character of these communities and their role as centers of learning. From the formulation of the Benedictine Rule (RB) in the sixth century, monasteries offered specially tailored facilities to sick monks and nuns, and such provision was sometimes extended to resident lay people, as well as to guests from outside the community. Key medical tenets about how to maintain and restore health were assimilated into the monastic way of life, shown particularly in the practice of bloodletting and the regulation of the diet, both of which were understood to prevent ill health by ensuring the proper humoral balance within a person’s body. Physical health, therefore, was an important consideration in monastic communities, indicating that, contrary to much historical thinking about medieval religious, monks and nuns did not repudiate their bodies.