The Monk

The Monk is a Gothic novel by the English writer Matthew Gregory Lewis, published in 1796 in three volumes. It was issued anonymously when Lewis was twenty.

The central figure is Ambrosio, a Capuchin monk in Madrid whose reputation for piety has made him famous. Matilda, a young woman who has disguised herself as a novice in order to be near him, draws him into breaking his vows, and the novel credits her with supernatural help in doing it.

Once Ambrosio gives in, the book follows him through a chain of worsening crimes, from seduction to torture and murder, as he tries to protect his reputation and feed the appetites he has admitted. A second strand follows characters caught in the same web, including the noblewoman Agnes and the young Lorenzo.

The novel's treatment of sex, violence and the supernatural caused an outcry, and Lewis later prepared a censored edition himself. It stands as a prime example of the horror branch of the Gothic, sitting alongside the more restrained novels written in the same decade.