Abstract
In Values in a Time of Upheaval, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI reflected on the numerous elements that united Europe. Among these elements are the common inheritance of the Bible and the early Church, followed by the same empire and same ecclesiology; the third important agent of unity between East and West that Benedict XVI lists is monasticism. So, monasticism has a double bridge-building capacity and value in it. This chapter analyzes the chronologically the history of medieval and modern monastic orders that set foot in Albania. It focuses primarily on the trichotomy: monks as artifices, monks as custodes, and monks as pontiffs to the advancement of Albania's national, cultural, and religious traditions. The history of monastic establishments evinces the intricate political-religious landscape that Catholicism had to face in Albania, which was located on the empires' peripheries, between East and West, and was constantly shifting allegiances among the Roman, Byzantine, Serbian, Bulgarian and later the Ottoman Empires.