How long did catholic monks train in the middle ages?

Answer 1

At the time they were not called Catholic, since in Europe there was no other religion - they were simply Christian monks.

People became monks in two different ways, with variable amounts of time before becoming a fully-professed monk:

• Oblates were young boys given to a monastery by their family, often because the family could not afford to support another child, or because the boy was a second son who by law could inherit nothing from his father.
• Conversi were adults who applied to join a monastic community.

For Oblates the rules changed over time; initially they took vows to become a monk at the age of maturity (17) after many years in the monastery school, training under the magister scholae. After the mid-12th century the Oblate system gradually ended, boys were still taken in to the schools but did not have to become monks at the end of their training.

For adults the novitiate (training period) was normally a year, but this could be shortened or lengthened depending on the novice. The Cistercians would only accept men aged 16 or over; the Carthusians took nobody under 21.