Benedictine Rule

“ The monk spent all his time in the company of his fellow monks. Privacy was entirely unknown to him.
The rule of St. Benedict owes its popularity chiefly to the fact that Gregory I (590–604) was a Benedictine monk and gave the rule his support. St. Augustine, whom he sent as a missionary to England, was also a Benedictine, and carried the rule with him. So it was quite natural that it should have been the rule of all monasteries in England. St. Boniface, an Englishman, considered it a part of his reform to introduce the Benedictine rule into all the monasteries of Germany. ”

“ The famous chapter LXVI of the Benedictine Rule enunciated the principle that the professed monk should remain within the precincts of his cloister and eschew all wandering in the world [1067] . It is clear, however, that the Rule allowed a certain latitude and that monks and nuns were to be allowed to leave their houses under certain conditions and for necessary causes. Brethren working at a distance or going on a journey may be excused attendance at the divine office, if they cannot reach the church in time [1068] . ”

“ This is in brief the history of the successive rise of the Clugniacs, the Carthusians, the Cistercians, and the orders of Camaldoli and Vallombrosa and Grandmont; they all sprang [Pg 11] thus out of the Benedictine order, retaining the rule of Benedict as the groundwork of their several systems. Their departures from the Benedictine rule were comparatively few and trifling, and need not be enumerated in such a sketch as this: they were in fact only reformed Benedictines, and in a general classification may be included with the parent order, to which these rivals imparted new tone and vigour. ”

“ Men and women, therefore, who wished to keep themselves pure, withdrew to hermitages or monasteries, where they might be removed from temptation, and might fit themselves for heaven by prayer and fasting. In the fifth century Benedict of Nursia had organised in Italy a system of life for the monastery which he governed, and the Benedictine rule, as it was called, was soon accepted in almost all the monasteries of Western Europe. ”

“ It is natural to expect that legends of so remarkable a man should abound; and it is to the credit of the ecclesiastics of his order that they reproach the legendary writers for their improbable stories. Benedict saw his order spread during his life; but so widely did this rule supersede all others, that when Charlemagne made inquiry throughout his empire, if other monks existed, none were found but of the Benedictine order. ”

“ The last was only accessible to himself, he says regretfully, in Latin, because he knew no Greek—a loss which he greatly deplores, desiring to read the Greek Fathers. The third conversation is about the Benedictine rule, directed to the lawless monks who contended that they were only bound by the customs of the particular monastery they had entered, and not by the general ordinances of their founder. He combats at length the contention that the world has grown old, and that latter-day men cannot be expected to undergo the rigorous fasts and penances achieved by St. ”

“ The rest of the day is filled up with a round of work and reading. Work, and in St Benedict’s time it was predominantly field work, took an even more recognized and integral place in the life than was the case under St Pachomius or St Basil, occupying notably more time than the church services. St Benedict introduced too into the monastic life the idea of law and order, of rule binding on the abbot no less than on the monks ”

“ The one source of information regarding the life of Benedict of Nursia is the miracle-laden record of the miracle-loving pope Gregory the Great in the second book of his Dialogues. Benedict’s Rule comprises 73 chapters. The first principle of the monastic life is obedience to the Abbot, as representative of Christ. The choice of abbot lies with the brothers. Of serving brothers the rule knows nothing. The chief occupation is agriculture. Idleness is strictly forbidden. Charge of the kitchen and reading at table are duties performed by all the monks in turn week about. ”

“ Saint Benedict was the father of Western organized monasticism; he not only founded an order to which many religious houses already existing united themselves, but he established a rule for their government, which was adopted as the rule for monastic life by all such orders which existed in the Church down to the time of Saint Francis and Saint Dominic. What Benedict did for the monks, his sister Scholastica--who, being a woman, has received far less mention--accomplished for the nuns. ”

“ Monasticism, with its belief in brotherhood, was a leveller of class distinctions; but, like the rest of the Church, it found in the popular enthusiasm it aroused the path of temptation. Men, we have seen, entered the cloister for other reasons than pure devotion to God; and the rule of Benedict proving too strict they yielded secretly to sins that perhaps were not checked or reproved because abbots in time ceased to be saints and became, like the bishops, feudal landlords with worldly interests. ”

“ Benedict had made rules for the persons who wished to serve God, and to live apart from the world. They lived in buildings named monasteries, or convents; the men, who were called monks, under the rule of an abbot, the women, nuns, under an abbess. They took a vow of poverty, chastity, and obedience; lived and worked as hard as possible, and spent much time in prayer and doing good, teaching the young, giving medicine to the sick, and feeding the poor. They would fix their home in a waste land, and bring it into good order, and they went out preaching and convening the heathen near. ”

“ Benedict, and assuming the habit. In short, he came to our convent dedicated to St. Peter the apostle and St. Ethelrida, [9] implored the favour of the monks, and engaged to put himself and all he had under their rule. But, alas! the evil spirit, through whose malice Adam fell in paradise, will never cease from persecuting his posterity to the last man who shall exist. God, however, whose providence ordereth all things in mercy and goodness, in his omnipotence bringeth good out of evil, and out of good what is still better. ”

“ St Benedict’s Monachism.—St Benedict (c. 500) effected his purpose by a twofold break with the past: he eliminated from the idea of the monastic life the element of Oriental asceticism and extreme bodily austerity; and he put down the tendency, so marked in Egypt and the East, for the monks to vie with one another in ascetical practices, commanding all to live according to the rule. The life was to be self-denying and hard, but not one of any great austerity (for details see Benedict of Nursia; and E. C. Butler, op. cit. pt. i. pp. 237 and 251) . ”

“ And it was S. Thomas' Benedictine training that contributed much to make him such a man.
“The monks thought much, but talked little; thus the monastic system encouraged meditation, rather than intellectual tournaments; reserve rather than display, deep humility rather than dialectical skill. The Benedictines did not aim so much at unrestrained companionship of free discussion as at self control; not so much at secular-minded fantasy as at much prayer and sharp penance, till self was conquered, and the grace of God reigned, and giants walked the earth. ”

“ Let him always keep the place which he received on entering the monastery, except in his duties at the altar or in case the choice of the community and the will of the Abbot should promote him for the worthiness of his life. Yet he must understand that he is to observe the rules laid down by deans and Priors.
Should he presume to act otherwise, let him be judged not as a priest but as a rebel. And if he does not reform after repeated admonitions, let even the Bishop be brought in as a witness. ”

“ The Benedictines were so widely spread, so wealthy, and so powerful in the social relations which they maintained with the laity, that if they had continued to bring a balance of advantage to the Church and its rulers there would have been no need for the institution of new Orders. ”

“ Benedict of Nursia was born near Rome at the end of the fifth century. When a boy of fourteen he renounced the world, and, after many changes of abode, finally settled at Monte Cassino, and became the founder of that famous monastery, destroying the temple of Apollo that stood on its site. Benedict died in 543 A.D. Pope Grregory the Great (594-604) , the first real organizer among the popes, pressed the monks into the service of the church. It was the Rule of Benedict that he chose for his guidance, imposing it on a monastery that he himself had founded in Rome. ”

“ Benedict is as important as any constitution that was ever drawn up for a state. It is for the most part natural and wholesome. It provides that, since every one is not fitted for the ascetic life, the candidate for admission to the monastery shall pass through a period of probation, called the novitiate, before he is permitted to take the solemn and irrevocable vow. The brethren shall elect their head, the [Pg 58] abbot, whom they must obey unconditionally in all that is not sinful. Along with prayer and meditation, the monks are to work at manual occupations and cultivate the soil. ”

“ That the better part of his life work should have been done as a Benedictine only serves to emphasize the place that the religious had in the preservation and the development of culture and of education during the Middle Ages. ”

“ It is especially valuable in so far as it affords points of comparison and contact with the more complete and systematic Rule of St. Benedict. In some things it is exceedingly rigorous and very minute in the penances which [Pg 379] it imposes, even on the most venial and semi-deliberate faults. The first six chapters are devoted to the essential virtues of the monastic state—obedience, silence, self-denial in the use of meat and drink, poverty and chastity. The maxim—cibus monachorum sit vilis et vespertinus—seems to allow the poor monks only one plain meal in the day, and that after vespers. ”

“ Each congregation has its president, who is merely a president, with limited powers, and not a general superior like the Provincials of other orders; so that the primitive Benedictine principle of each monastery being self-contained and autonomous is preserved. Similarly each congregation is independent and self-governing, there being no superior-general or central authority, as in other orders. Leo XIII. established an international Benedictine College in Rome for theological studies, and conferred on its abbot the title of “Abbot Primate,” with precedence among Black Monk abbots. ”

“ The Angelical in his own gentle, overpowering way, giving not the slightest heed to these impertinences, went on replying to him with inimitable tenderness and patience; and whilst teaching a lesson which, after so many hundred years, men can still learn, drew on himself, unconsciously, the surprise and admiration of that vast assembly. Such was the way in which the Angelical brought the influence of Benedictine quies and benignitas into the boisterous litigations of the Paris schools. ”

“ Benedict to rule over them all. This was the beginning of St. Benedict's great work for God. He drew up a Rule which showed men how they could live in the way most pleasing to God. It was not so terribly hard as to be impossible for ordinary men, like some of the holy hermits and Saints in the past had taught. And so thousands and thousands of men began to promise to keep this Rule and to live together in monasteries, doing good. St. Benedict had many wonderful adventures during the rest of his life, but I must keep those stories to tell you another time. ”

“ As regards the nuns, most of the houses were affiliated to one or other of the above-named Orders.
I. Monks i. Benedictines
St. Benedict, justly called the Patriarch of Western Monachism, established his rule of life in Italy; first at Subiaco and subsequently at Monte Cassino about A.D. 529. The design of his code was, like every other rule of regular life, to enable men to reach the higher Christian ideals by the helps afforded them in a well-regulated monastery. According to the saint’s original conception, the houses were to be separate families independent of each other. ”

“ Then follows the command that all Cistercian foundations obey implicitly the regula of Benedict, as understood and practised at Citeaux, and that all follow the customs of Citeaux, and the same forms of chant and prayer and service (for we receive their monks in our cloister, and they ours) , “so that without discordant actions we may live by one love, one rule, and like practices (una charitate, una regula, similibusque vivamus moribus) .” ”

“ When, fortified by the Body and Blood of the Lord, he passed away with hands still uplifted in prayer, he had created a power which did more than any other to make the Church predominant in Italy. The rule, the definite organisations, of monasticism came to the world from Italy and from Benedict. Though the Benedictines were never actively papal agents, yet indirectly, by their training and by their influence on the whole nature of medieval religion, they formed a strong support for the growing power of the Roman see. ”

“ On the death of the abbot, the brethren desired to elect Benedict, but he, knowing their aversion to a reformation, left them, and retired to a hermitage, in 780, on the brook Aniane, on his own estate in Languedoc. Here he was joined by the hermit Widmar and other solitaries, who placed themselves under his direction. They earned their livelihood by their labour, and lived on bread and water, except on Sundays and great festivals. In a short while Benedict had three hundred monks under his rule, and he built a monastery ”