SOURCE: "St. Benedict" and "St. Benedict's Idea" in Bendictine Monachism: Studies in Benedictine Life and Rule, Longmans, Green and Co., 1919, pp. 1-10; 23-34.

[In the following excerpt, Butler surveys St. Benedict's life and monastic ideals.]

St Benedict

One morning, in the early spring of the first year of the century, I was standing at a cave, looking out into the darkness that still enshrouded the scene. And as I looked the first streaks of dawn began gradually to lift the shroud of night and to reveal, first the rugged mountains across the ravine that lay beneath my feet; and then the cruel naked rocks, with never a tree or shrub to soften their austerity, surrounding the valley on all sides; and at last the wild grandeur of the scene in its solemn simplicity and solitude. And as the features of the landscape gradually took shape, my thoughts went back to a youth who just fourteen centuries before had passed the years of opening manhood in that cave, and on many such an early spring-day morning, belike in the first year of the sixth century, looked out on the same wild, grand, austere scene that was unfolding itself beneath my eyes. And the thought of that youth, that boy, arose in my mind—what he could have been like, who had the courage and the strength to live for three years in that cave, feeding his young heart on God alone; what must have been that spirit, what that soul, that could brave, and endure, three such years of solitary formation for the work God called him to do.

St Benedict was born somewhere about the third quarter of the fifth century; the year 480, traditionally given for his birth, is no more than an approximation, but it may be accepted as representing the date with rough accuracy. The only fixed chronological point in his life is the year 542, when he was visited by the Gothic king Totila at Monte Cassino; it is clear he was then advanced in years, and it seems he died not long after. All that we know of the facts of his life is what St Gregory the Great tells us in the Dialogues, the second book of which is wholly given up to St Benedict. St Gregory assures us that his information was derived from authentic sources, the reminiscences of four of St Benedict's own disciples whom Gregory had himself known. The Dialogues is in some ways a trying book to the modern mind; but the outlines of St Benedict's life may be traced from it with entire security.¹

St Benedict was born at Nursia, then a municipal town and the seat of a bishopric, on the slopes of the Sabine Apennies: the modern name is Norcia, in the province of Umbria, not far from Spoleto. St Gregory says he was born 'liberiore genere,'—of gentle family, we should say,—words suggesting the wealthy country gentry of the provinces, but not patrician or senatorial rank, and thus excluding the late fable that St Benedict was of the great Anician family. He was in due course sent to Rome to pursue in the Roman schools the studies of a liberal education; but disgusted and horrified at the general licentiousness prevailing in Rome, 'he withdrew the foot he had just placed in the entry to the world; and despising the pursuit of letters, and abandoning his father's home and property, desiring to please God alone, he determined to become a monk' (St Gregory). In accordance with the monastic ideas of the time, his resolve was to retire to a desert place and be a hermit. So he fled secretly from Rome and wandered through the hills of Latium, until he came to the ruins of Nero's palace and the artificial lake at Sublacum (Subiaco) on the Anio, some dozen miles beyond Tivoli and thirty miles from Rome; and here he found the cave that was suited for his purpose.

It has been usual to represent St Benedict as a mere boy at the time of his retirement from Rome; but those recent Benedictine writers are almost certainly right who have maintained that 'puer' means not a child but a young man;² for it seems clear that while in Rome he was old enough to have been in love (Dialogues, ii, 2). It is altogether more probable that he was of undergraduate rather than of school-boy age. The year 500 may be taken as an approximate date for Benedict's withdrawal from the world and inclusion in the Sacro Speco at Subiaco.

There in his cave we shall leave him awhile, in order to take a brief survey of the condition of things social, civil, and religious in Italy at the time, so as to have an understanding of the framework in which his life was set. The picture is one of decay, disorganisation, and confusion perhaps without parallel in history.³ The disintegrating processes that had been at work during the latter days of the Republic had gone on in ever-increasing volume during the Empire, and at last assumed vast proportions. Italy had become pauperised and depopulated: the ceaseless wars at home and abroad had thinned the population; the formation of huge estates worked by slave labour had crushed out the yeoman farmer class; oppressive taxation had ruined the provincial middle classes; the wholesale employment of barbarous mercenary soldiers, who in payment for their services often received allotments of the land of Italy, established in the country an element of lawlessness and savagery that was a perpetual menace to the inhabitants. The land was devastated by famines and pestilences, till by the end of the fourth century great tracts had been reduced to deserts, the people had become demoralised and degenerate, agriculture and education had well-nigh died out, and society was corrupt to the core. And then, to complete the ruin, began the long series of invasions of Italy by Teutonic and other barbarians. In 400 came the Visigoths under Alaric and swept over northern Italy; five years later came Radagaisus and his Goths, who were exterminated near Florence; in 408 Alaric returned and this time came to Rome, which he besieged thrice in three successive years, and gave up to plunder and sacking on the third occasion (410), and then penetrated to the southernmost parts of Italy. At the middle of the century the savage Huns, under Attila, the 'Scourge of God,' ravaged the valley of the Po (454), and Gaiseric the Vandal took and sacked Rome (455). A series of minor incursions into Italy, Alans, Herulans, and others from the north, and Vandals by sea from the south, followed in swift succession. Ricimer at the head of the Teutonic mercenaries of the Roman army besieged and sacked Rome (472), and four years later these same mercenaries demanded that one-third of the land of Italy should be given them; on refusal they broke into revolt, seized and plundered Pavia and Ravenna, made their leader Odovacar or Odoacer the ruler of Italy during seventeen years, and from him received the coveted third of Italian land.

In 489 came Theodoric and the Ostrogoths, and there ensued a four years' war between him and Odoacer over the length and breadth of northern Italy, the chief cities being in turn sacked, and other hordes of barbarians pouring into Italy to take part on either side of the fray. In 493 Theodoric slew Odoacer with his own hand and became ruler of Italy, recognised as such by the Byzantine emperor. Under Theodoric and his successor the desolated lands of Italy and the exhausted and decimated population experienced for a generation a respite from the horrors of invasion and war, and a period of recuperation. Theodoric reigned for thirty-three years, till 526. He was a strong and enlightened ruler, and with the assistance of his minister, the Roman Cassiodorus, he set himself to repair the evils that had befallen Italy. His policy is thus characterised by Hodgkin: 'the maintenance of peace and tranquillity, and the safeguarding of all classes of his subjects from oppression and violence at the hands either of lawless men or of the ministers of the law.'⁴ As part of this policy, till the last three years of his reign, though an Arian, he gave religious toleration to the Catholics. It is to be noted that the beginnings of St Benedict's monastic institute were made during this brief period of peace and rest for Italy.

And then, soon after Theodoric's death, Justinian conceived the idea of reuniting the Western Empire to the Eastern, and sent his great general Belisarius to wrest, first Africa, and then Italy from the Barbarians and restore them to the Empire. Belisarius landed in Sicily in 535 and passed to Italy the next year. Then began a long period of unparalleled suffering for the whole of the unhappy Peninsula. Naples first was taken, and then Belisarius entered Rome. A twelve months' siege of Rome by the Goths ensued and proved ineffectual. A desultory warfare of four years began, in which the chief cities of Italy—Rimini, Urbino, Orvieto, Milan, Fiesole, Osimo, Ravenna—were in turn besieged; while 100,000 Franks descended into Italy, attacking impartially both Goths and Romans, plundering and sacking indiscriminately, till a pestilence, that carried off a third of their number, compelled them to retire across the Alps. These years, 537-542, were a time of misery for the Italian peoples that baffles description: the entire country went out of cultivation, and famine, starvation, and pestilence raged throughout the land.

At this time Totila became king of the Goths (541), and the war broke out again all over Italy; Florence and Naples and many another city were besieged and taken, and then began Totila's siege of Rome (545). It lasted for a year and more, the inhabitants enduring the extremity of hardship and famine, till in December 546 Totila entered Rome animated with the grim resolve utterly to destroy the city and raze it to the ground. He pulled down great portions of the walls and prepared to fire the public buildings, when he stayed his hand and marched his troops out of Rome, carrying with him all, literally all, of the miserable remnant of the Romans, 'suffering not a single person to remain in Rome but leaving Rome absolutely desolate,' so that 'for forty days or more, no one, either man or beast, remained there.'⁵ For six years more was the war continued between the Roman generals and Totila with varying fortunes all over southern Italy, Rome being reoccupied by Belisarius and again besieged by Totila, unsuccessfully in 547, successfully in 549. Then after ravaging Sicily and suffering defeat at the hands of Narses, Belisarius' successor, at Gubbio in Umbria, Totila died in 552. The following year the remnant of the Ostrogothic race in Italy was brought to bay by Narses near Mount Vesuvius and was there annihilated, 553. The very next year the Alamans made an incursion, penetrating as far as Capua, where they also were defeated and almost destroyed by Narses. And then in 568 came the Lombards, who for half a century and more ravaged, harried, devastated the whole Peninsula from sea to sea. But this was after St Benedict. His life tallied almost exactly with the period of Ostrogothic dominion; for he was born but a few years before they came in 489, and he died a few years before their destruction in 553.

If we extend our survey over the rest of the Western Empire we shall see that the calamities of Rome and of Italy only symbolise those of the provinces. During the two centuries from 400 to 600 covered by the foregoing sketch, what was happening in Italy was happening throughout western Europe. Everywhere was going on the same round of invasions, of internecine warfare between the Teutonic races, of ravages, famines, pestilences, sieges, sackings, burnings, slaughterings—all the horrors of war, utter destruction of the civilisation and institutions of Rome, unspeakable misery and destitution. Gaul, Spain, Britain—it was the story of Italy repeated, for the invasions of Italy were but incidents in the progresses of the various barbaric races through Europe. The Visigoths, and the Huns, and the Vandals in turn swept through Europe in the first half of the fifth century, to say nothing of the lesser peoples that preceded or followed them. At the date of St Benedict's birth the Teutonic settlements may be described thus: Italy formed the kingdom of Odoacer, whom the mixed multitude of revolted Teutonic mercenaries in Roman armies had set up as king; but he was destined to be in a few years overthrown by Theodoric and his Ostrogoths, then occupying what now is Hungary and the lower Danube lands. The Visigothic dominions extended over Spain, except the north-west corner, whither they had driven the Suevi, and over the southern and central parts of Gaul to the Loire. The southeastern parts of Gaul, the country of the Rhone, formed the kingdom of the Burgunds. The north of Gaul and of the Rhineland was held by the various tribes of the Franks, still pagan, like the Angles and Saxons, whose conquest of Britain was in progress. The pagan Alamans held Switzerland and the Black Forest, and had pressed their way almost to the heart of Gaul; while in the great German background hovered the pagan Frisians, Saxons, Thuringians, Lombards, all destined to play their part in the making of Europe. Finally, in northern Africa, the Vandals had established their kingdom, which included Sardinia and Corsica.

In such a time of upheaval and confusion it is needless to say that the bonds of morality were relaxed and society sunk in a deep corruption. The barbarous Teutons had indeed the vices, but had also the virtues, of the savage. Salvian of Marseilles (cir. 450) balances the virtues and the vices of all the principal races: 'not one of these tribes is altogether vicious; if they have their vices, they have also virtues.' It is the Romans, the relics of a luxurious and effete civilisation, that are altogether bad. 'You, Romans and Christians and Catholics, are defrauding your brethren, are grinding the faces of the poor, are wallowing in licentiousness and inebriety.' 'Shall we be surprised if God gives all our provinces to the barbarians, in order that through their virtues these lands may be purified from the crimes of the Romans?' In short, the vices of the Romans are the real cause of the downfall of the Empire.⁶ The picture is one of deep corruption of life and manners in the Roman world, and it shows forth the degenerate Roman populations as more vicious and more depraved than their wild conquerors.

Nor was the religion of the Western Empire in better plight than the morals. In such a time of relaxed morality and material and social catastrophe no high religious level can be looked for. The Teutonic nations were in St Benedict's time still in great part pagan, and those that had accepted Christianity were Arian; both races of the Goths were Arian, as also the Vandals and Suevi, and later the Lombards. The Franks alone, converted about 500, were Catholic. This meant that in St Benedict's lifetime, in Italy, in southern Gaul and Spain, Arianism was the religion of the dominant races. The Teutonic settlers in all these countries constituted a large proportion of the population, for they were no mere invasions of armies but migrations of nations. Catholicism was buried beneath these populations of heresy.⁷ In many parts the Arians carried on long and bitter persecutions of the Catholic Church, and throughout Arianism was held fanatically by the conquering races. Thus the religious map portraying the western Europe of 485 shows it all pagan or of Arian ascendancy, fully Catholic districts being only in the northwest corner of Gaul and in Wales and Ireland.⁸

In St Benedict's Italy the religious situation may be summed up thus: a Catholic substratum of the remains of the old Roman or Italian population, overlaid by numerous settlements of dominant Arian Teutons of many races (like the Protestant Plantation of Ulster, except that during Theodoric's reign there was toleration for the Catholics); and underlayers of still surviving paganism, for paganism lingered long and died hard in Rome itself, and long survived in the remoter districts, as appears from St Benedict's own life.

And so in the year 500 there was a Europe to be reconverted, christianised, civilised anew; law and order to be restored; the fabric of society to be rebuilt; the dignity of labour to be reasserted; agriculture, commerce, education, the arts of peace to be revived; civil and political life to be renewed: in short, a Europe to be remade. And the man marked out by Providence to play in the ultimate event a giant's part in the colossal work of reconstruction, had left the world never to return, and was spending the years of opening manhood in his cave at Subiaco, with none other thought in his mind than 'the desire to please God alone' (St Gregory).

After three years passed in entire solitude in the Sacro Speco, Benedict's existence became gradually known to the shepherds and country folk around; and then disciples began to come and place themselves under his guidance, so that a community of monks grew up, in such numbers that in the course of a few years he was able to establish in the neighbourhood twelve monasteries of twelve monks each, with abbots whom he appointed. At this time, too, Roman nobles, even of patrician rank, began to entrust their sons to his care, to be brought up as monks. Before long the influence he was rapidly and widely gaining stirred up the jealousy and enmity of a neighbouring priest, who manifested it in such wise that Benedict determined to yield to evil and go elsewhere with a selected band of monks, leaving the twelve monasteries at Subiaco in charge of their superiors. The little band travelled southward till it reached the Roman municipal town of Casinum, halfway between Rome and Naples. Behind it rises abruptly from the plain a mountain standing solitary, of considerable height. On the summit was an ancient fane of Apollo, where still lingered on among the mountain folk the relics of their pagan worship. Benedict and his monks climbed the mountain, and cut down the sacred wood, and turned the temple of Apollo into a chapel of St Martin, and established there their monastery, destined to be the one before all others associated with St Benedict's name, ever after looked on as the centre of Benedictine life and spirit, the Holy Mount of the Benedictines, whence flowed over Europe streams of religion and civilisation and culture.

Some year about 525 is a likely date for the foundation of Monte Cassino. The remaining years of his life, perhaps some five-and-twenty, St Benedict passed there, to us at this distance a dim patriarchal figure standing out colossal through the centuries. We catch in St Gregory's pages glimpses of him working in the fields with his monks, or sitting reading at the monastery gate, or spending the hours of the night in prayer, or ruling and guiding his monks. We see him preaching to the half-heathen folk of the country-side, and alleviating the sufferings of the poor in the famines and pestilences of those troublous times, always a centre of beneficent influence to whom men turned naturally in their difficulties. Often must he have watched from his mountain top the Roman and Gothic armies in the plain below, as they marched and countermarched through the land, spreading havoc and desolation around them. He became the most notable personage in the district, the one whom Totila desired to meet in 542, and from whom he received in patience a stern rebuke that made him henceforth less cruel (St Gregory). We read in St Gregory's picture the beautiful story of the last visit of his nun-sister, Scholastica; how when night began to fall and Benedict prepared to say adieu and return to the monastery, Scholastica prayed, and God sent such a storm of rain that her brother had against his will to stay, and so they passed the night together in holy converse on the spiritual life. We read too of the wonderful contemplation St Benedict had from the tower, a contemplation expressed by St Gregory in language so extraordinary that theologians, and among them St Thomas, have discussed whether it was really a foretaste of the Beatific Vision, and Benedict, like Moses and St Paul, for a moment saw the Being of God; an experience in any case so exalted and so spiritual that it makes good his claim to a place in the ranks of the highest and most gifted of the mystics.

Finally, there is the picture of his death; how being overcome by fever, he caused himself to be carried to the oratory by his monks, and there being fortified for death by the Body and Blood of the Lord, his feeble body supported in the arms of the monks, he stood with hands upraised to heaven and breathed his last breath in words of prayer. And the monks saw a path stretching straight from his cell to heaven, strewn with rich garments and bright with lamps. And One radiant, of venerable aspect, standing above declared: This is the path whereby the beloved of the Lord, Benedict, hath mounted up to heaven.

St Benedict's Idea

In another connexion I have written as follows: 'How far have Benedictine history and work in the world, and, it may be said, Benedictine ideas, gone beyond anything that can have been in St Benedict's mind. How little he thought that his monks were to be apostles, missionaries, civilisers, school-masters, editors of the Fathers. How surprised would he have been at the figure of a medieval mitred abbot, a feudal baron, fulfilling the functions of a great landlord and of a statesman. How bewildering to him would have been the gorgeous church functions and the stately ceremonial that have become one of the most cherished traditions among his sons. How meaningless would the work that has come to be regarded as characteristically Benedictine have seemed in his eyes, and how strange would the adjective "learned," associated as a sort of constans epitheton with his name, have sounded in his ears, who (to use St Gregory's quaint phrase) fled from the Roman schools "scienter nescius et sapienter indoctus." What a development, what a transformation is here! Yet, for all that, it is by common consent recognised that, on the whole and in its great currents, Benedictine history has been true to the idea of the Founder, a legitimate development, not a perversion."⁹

In this passage is applied to Benedictine monachism the principle accepted in regard to all institutions, social, political, religious, that live on and work during long periods of time, that they must needs change and develop and grow, it may be almost out of recognition. It is a sign of life; for to live is to grow and to change, and such changes, however seemingly great, which are but as the vital responses of a living organism to the conditions and needs of its successive environments, are justified as legitimate and true developments of the original idea. Hence to isolate St Benedict's idea, or St Francis' idea, and make it the sole measure of Benedictine or Franciscan history, ruling out whatever was not explicitly present to the Founder's consciousness, would be unhistorical, uncritical, and untrue.

And so, if we now endeavour to bring out into the clear St Benedict's own idea, his reconstruction of monasticism as it shaped itself in his mind, it is not at all with the object of showing that whatever is outside his concept is thereby false to his idea, or that the most literal reproduction of the physical conditions of life in his monastery would be the most faithful presentation of his mind and spirit throughout all ages. Quite otherwise. But, on the other hand, it is true that fidelity to the original type and continuity of principles are the chief tests of the truth of historical developments.'" And so an examination and appreciation of St Benedict's idea in its simplicity and as it was in his own mind is the necessary prelude to any study of Benedictine monachism, the norm by which must be judged all manifestations of Benedictine life and activities at all times. We have, therefore, at the outset to try to arrive at a correct conception of what St Benedict's idea was.

1. It is fortunate that he tells us himself quite definitely what he intends to do: 'We are going to establish a School of God's Service, in which we hope we shall establish nothing harsh, nothing burthensome, (Prologue)." St Benedict, we have seen, when he first made up his mind to be a monk, acting according to the Egyptian monastic ideals current in western Europe, retired to a desert spot and dwelt in a cave, enduring hunger and thirst, heat and cold, and all the inclemency of the weather. But when he came to write his Rule and to legislate for the life of his own monastery of Monte Cassino and any others that might adopt his Rule, his ideas had undergone a change, embodied in those words in which he says that in the school of divine service he was founding, he intended to establish 'nothing harsh or burthensome.' These words have very commonly been interpreted as a pious exaggeration or device to encourage his disciples, and as not really meaning what they say; but it is easy to show that they do mean exactly what they say. They are borne out by other passages of the Rule. The forty-ninth chapter opens: 'Though we read that a monk's life should at all times have the Lenten observance, yet as few have this courage, we urge them in these days of Lent to wash away the negligences of other times.' Similarly in the fortieth chapter: 'Though we read that wine is not for monks at all, yet as in our days monks cannot be persuaded of this, at any rate let us agree to use it sparingly.' And there are other cases in which what may be called the appeal to monastic tradition in regard to austerity of life is made, only to be set aside, that mitigations may be deliberately adopted.¹² This point will be worked out in some detail in the next chapter; here it will suffice to quote St Benedict's words when summing up in the last chapter of the Rule: 'We have written this Rule in order that by observing it in monasteries we may show we have in some measure at any rate integrity of morals and a beginning of the monastic life."¹³ And in concluding he calls his Rule 'a very little rule for beginners' (minima inchoationis regula).

   In this St Benedict is not using the language of feigned humility, but is speaking the very truth, as appears from a comparison of his Rule with the records of the monachism of Egypt or of western Europe in his day. However austere may seem in the twentieth century a life according to the letter of St Benedict's Rule, in his own day it can have appeared but as an easy form of monastic life, when compared either with the existing monastic rules and accepted traditions on the one hand, or with the ordinary discipline of the Church for the faithful, as in the matter of fasting and penitential code, on the other. Indeed, Dom Morin declares that in these matters St Benedict's régime was no more than was often imposed on Christians living in the world.¹⁴ Thus in his reconstruction of the monastic life St Benedict's idea was to establish a manner of life, self-denying, of course, and hard; but not a life of great austerity. Benedictine life is not, and is not intended to be, what is called a 'penitential life'; and any one who feels called to such a life should go to some other order and not become a Benedictine, for a life such as this is not in accordance with St Benedict's idea.

2. Another of St Benedict's fundamental ideas appears in the first chapter of the Rule. He lays it down that he writes his Rule for cenobites (i.e. monks living in community), and for cenobites only. After speaking of other kinds of monks, both good and bad, he says in conclusion: 'Let us proceed to legislate for the strongest and best kind, the cenobites.'¹⁵ He has just given a definition of cenobites; but as this chapter is in large measure based on passages of St Jerome and Cassian (see my edition of the Regula, p. 9), it will be helpful to know precisely their idea of cenobites, which St Benedict had before his eyes when framing his own definition. St Jerome only says that cenobites may be called 'men living in common' (in commune viventes), or 'dwelling in common' (qui in commune habitant) (Ep. xxii, 34, 35). Cassian's description is: 'Who live together in a congregation and are governed by the judgement of a single elder."¹⁶ St Benedict explains cenobites as 'monasterial, serving as Christ's soldiers under a rule or abbot."¹⁷ He uses the word 'monasterial,' not monastic, as the latter would be applicable to hermits as well as cenobites.¹⁸ 'Monasterial' receives its interpretation in various places in the Rule; 'dwelling in cenobia' (c. V), 'persevering in the monastery till death' (Prol. 128); and, as a matter of fact, the whole tenor of the Rule contemplates nothing else than an organised community living a fully common life under rule; common prayer, common work, common meals, common dormitory; a life lived wholly within the precincts of the monastery, the occasions of going forth being reduced to a minimum, and regarded as definitely undesirable and dangerous (c. IV fin., c. LXVI fin.).

   St Benedict speaks, indeed, with admiration of the eremitical life (c. I), which then formed an integral part of European monachism, and was commonly regarded not only as the most perfect realisation of the monastic life, but as the goal to be aimed at in practice by those who had the necessary courage and strength in virtue; but he expressly declares that he legislates for cenobites alone. Consequently, when we find instances of eastern or western monks, especially Irish, going forth from their monasteries to lead the eremitical life; or when we see them undertaking pilgrimages or wanderings as a practice of asceticism, as is common now among Buddhist ascetics, such things have great interest for the general history of monasticism: but they have no interest for Benedictine history, and afford no help for the interpretation of St Benedict's idea, which was plainly and only cenobitic. There are other kinds of monks, good and bad; but St Benedict's idea of his own monks was that they were to be cenobites, spending their lives in the monastery, under the conditions of community life.

3. But St Benedict introduced a modification into the idea of cenobitical life. Up to his time monks, though looked upon as bound, whether by vows or without them, irrevocably to the practice of the monastic life, so that to abandon it was considered an apostasy, still were not tied to a particular monastery or community, but were allowed with little difficulty to pass from one house to another. St Benedict's most special and tangible contribution to the development of monasticism was the introduction of the vow of stability. It will be necessary later on to inquire with some care what was his own full idea of stability. Here it will be enough to say in general that by it he put a stop to such liberty of passage from monastery to monastery, and incorporated the monk by his profession in the community of his own monastery. St Benedict thus bound the monks of a monastery together into a permanent family, united by bonds that lasted for life. This idea that the monks of each Benedictine monastery form a permanent community, distinct from that of every other Benedictine monastery, is among the most characteristic features of Benedictine monachism, and a chief discriminant between it and the later orders. This idea of the 'monastic family,' at any rate in its concrete realisation, was St Benedict's. The great Coptic monasteries of Pachomius and Schenute were far too big to be families; they were rather great agricultural colonies, divided into houses, and organised on the basis of the different trades carried on in them. Concerning the inner life of St Basil's monasteries we have not sufficient information; but neither St Martin's at Tours, where the eighty monks abode in separate caves, nor the huge Celtic monasteries with their hundreds of monks, can be regarded as embodying the family type so characteristic of Benedictine monachism: nor could they, without the idea enshrined in the Benedictine vow of stability.
4. In view of current notions concerning religious orders, it is necessary here at the outset to bring out a negative side of St Benedict's idea, and emphasise the fact that he had no thought of instituting an 'order.' There was no such thing in his time as monastic or other orders. St Benedict had no intention that the monasteries wherein his Rule was followed should form a group apart; nor did they for many centuries, but each Benedictine monastery was a separate entity, autonomous and self-contained, having no organic bond with other monasteries. Among the houses of the Black Monks, pure and simple (that is, outside of the systems of Cluny and Citeaux), each abbey continued to stand in its primitive isolation, until the formation of national chapters at the beginning of the thirteenth century.

   Moreover, associated with the modern concept of a religious order is the idea of some special work to be done, some need of the Church to be met; and a man joins the order hoping thereby to be enabled the better to carry out this work to which he feels called. But with the Benedictines it was not so: there was no special form of work which their organisation was designed to undertake. A man became a monk precisely because he felt called to be a monk and for no other purpose or object whatever, nor as a preparation for anything else—except Heaven. The monk's object is to sanctify his soul and serve God by leading a life in community in accordance with the Gospel counsels. Works of various kinds will be given him to do; but these are secondary, and no one of them is part of his essential vocation as a monk. What has been here said may be illustrated and enforced from the earlier pages of Cardinal Gasquet's Sketch of Monastic History.¹⁹ The monastic life 'is nothing more than the Christian life of the Gospel counsels conceived in its full simplicity and perfection. It has no determinate object in view beyond this; it has no special systems or methods. The broad law of Christian liberty is its only guide; it is neither strict nor lax; it aims neither at too high things nor is it content with any low standard of conduct; but it adapts itself to the workings of grace in each individual soul, and gains its end when it has brought that individual soul to the highest perfection of which its natural and supernatural gifts render it capable' (p. xiv). Again: 'It is merely a systematised form of a life according to the Gospel counsels, existing for its own sake, as a full expression of the Church's true and perfect life' (p. xi).

5. Returning to St Benedict's definition of his monastery as 'a school of the service of God,' we ask what was the kind of service that he established? It may be said to be contained in the three services: Self-discipline, Prayer, Work. Of these three services, self-discipline is, of course, the subjective basis and condition of the others, that which gives its meaning to the whole life; it will be enlarged upon in the two succeeding chapters.

   Of the external services St Benedict placed prayer, and in particular common prayer, the celebration in choir of the canonical office, first in order of thought and importance. He calls it 'the duty' or 'the task of our service' (servitutis officium, vel pensum, c. XVI, 5; c. L, 8); it so filled his mind that it is the one subject on which he legislates in minute detail, devoting eleven chapters to that ordering of the psalmody and office which after fourteen centuries is still used by his sons: 'the Work of God' is his name for it, and he says that 'nothing is to be set before the Work of God' (nihil operi Dei praeponatur) (c. XLIII). That by 'Work of God' (opus Dei, opus divinum) St Benedict means precisely the public recital of the office, and nothing else, is made clear by an examination of the places where the term occurs in the Rule.²⁰

   The prominence of the opus Dei in St Benedict's mind has been erected into a principle, that the public celebration of the office is the purpose of his institute, and that Benedictines exist for the sake of the choir, 'propter chorum fundati.' I have heard of a Benedictine abbot who expressed this idea so crudely as to say to his monks: 'You have the choir and the refectory; what more do you need?' But the view finds expression also in Abbot Delatte's excellent Commentary on the Rule, which I read in general with great agreement: 'The proper and distinctive work of the Benedictine, his portion, his mission, is the liturgy. He makes his profession in order to be one in the Church—the society of divine praise—who glorifies God according to the forms instituted by herself.'²¹ This means that the essence of a Benedictine vocation is the celebration of the Liturgy. If that be the case, it is due to St Benedict himself, and must be counted among the innovations he made in the monastic life, for it was not part of the inheritance he received from the earlier monasticism. The public celebration of the canonical office always held a prominent place in cenobitical life of whatever kind; but the idea that it was the essence of the life does not emerge from the records of the Egyptian monks, nor from the writings of St Basil or Cassian. So far as the earlier monachism goes, a much stronger case could be made out for Fr Augustine Baker's contention that private spiritual prayer is the scope of the monastic state.

   The 'nihil operi Dei praeponatur,' when taken in its context and in relation to the passage in the Rule of Macarius on which it is based, does not afford ground for thinking St Benedict narrowed the conception of the monastic life in this way. Is it to be supposed that his idea was: I want to secure the celebration of the divine office, and therefore will I establish a monastery. This no doubt has been true of many a founder of individual monasteries, collegiate chapters and chantries in the middle ages; but can hardly be true of St Benedict. Was not his idea rather: I want to establish a monastery to be a school of God's service, wherein the primary community service shall be the public celebration of the divine office. Consequently I agree with Dom Morin in holding that the 'propter chorum fundati' is an exaggeration.²² I believe the idea arose at a later date, in the ninth or tenth century, at a time when manual labour had dropped out of the life of the monasteries, and there was a prodigious increase in the church services, masses, offices, additional devotions, so that the monks spent most of their time in church, as will be explained in a later chapter. It was then too that the liturgical pomp and circumstance and the elaboration of ritual underwent a great development; whereas St Benedict's liturgy was doubtless of a severe simplicity that would nowadays appear puritan.

   But whatever view be held on this point of Benedictine theory, all will accept what Cardinal Gasquet has written on the actual place the office holds in Benedictine life: 'The central figure of the society (of the monastery) was its divine King. The monastery was a palace, a court, and the divine office was the daily service and formal homage rendered to the divine Majesty. This, the opus Dei, was the crown of the whole structure of the monastic edifice. It was pre-eminently the work of the monk which was to take precedence of every other employment, and to which monastic tradition has ever given a marked solemnity. Day by day, and almost hour by hour, the monk, purified by his vows, enclosed from the world, seeks to renew the wonderful familiarity with his God and Father which our first parents forfeited, but which, through our second Adam, is restored in the Christian Church. In a word, the divine office is the soul of the monastic life' (Sketch, xiii). The Declarations of the English Congregation say that 'our primary duty is to carry out on earth what the angels do in heaven,'²³ and to this probably no exception will be taken.

6. Of the service of Work it will here suffice to say that the work fell under the categories of manual labour and reading, between which were apportioned the hours of the day not spent in the church. The labour was predominantly work in the fields and garden, or the housework in kitchen and elsewhere, necessary for the life of a large community. The reading, it may safely be said, was confined to the Scriptures and the Fathers, and was devotional rather than intellectual in character and scope: 'lectio divina' is St Benedict's way of describing it (c. XLVIII, 3).

A simple life it was, made up of a round of simple duties; and the monks were quite simple men: though no doubt some were of the same station in life as St Benedict himself, the great majority of them were recruited from the Italian peasantry, or from the semi-barbarous Gothic invaders (Dialogues, ii, 6). They were not priests, they were not clerics; there were only two or three priests, perhaps only one, in the community, just sufficient to celebrate the Sunday mass and administer the sacraments. The general conditions of life were probably not rougher or harder than would have been the lot of most of them had they remained in the world. The difference lay in the element of religion brought into every detail of their lives. And so they lived together their common life, serving God by the daily round of duties in choir, in farm and garden, in kitchen and bakehouse and workshop—chanting, praying, working, reading, meditating—their lifework and their life-interests being concentrated as far as possible within the precincts of the monastery or its immediate vicinity.

Such were the primitive Benedictines, St Benedict's own monks, such was the mustard seed which has grown into the great and varied and complex tree that will be revealed to us when we come to study St Benedict's institute as it has developed itself in history. Such was St Benedict's own idea of the monasticism which in the maturity of his religious experience and spiritual wisdom he established at Monte Cassino and legislated for in his Rule. And this was the community, and these the men, destined by God to play so great a part in repairing the ruin, religious, social, material, in which Europe was lying, and in converting, christianising, and educating the new nations that were to make the new great Christian Commonwealth.

From what has been said the pertinent observation follows, that to set up, as has been done, St Benedict in his cave at Subiaco as the embodiment of the truest Benedictine ideal, and the pattern which it would be well for Benedictines, had they the courage and firmness of mind, to try to imitate, is unhistorical and untrue: no less untrue than it would be to set up St Ignatius at Manresa as the best embodiment of the spirit and life of the Society he founded. Such episodes in the lives of these and other great founders were only periods of formation and preparation for their work of religious creation; and when they came forth from their retirement they did not shape their institutes on the lines they had themselves at first adopted, but in conformity with the lessons they had learned therein in many things they turned their back upon their own early experiences; so that their fully formed and matured idea is to be seen in their rules and in their institutes in the final form in which they left them.

It is impossible to include under any single formula St Benedict's idea, or the Essence of Benedictinism; just as impossible as it is to include under any single formula the Essence of Christianity. All that can be done is to state various aspects which taken together may afford an adequate conception. The following description gathers up the points that have been brought out in this chapter. St Benedict's idea was to form a community of monks bound to live together until death, under rule, in common life, in the monastery of their profession, as a religious family, leading a life not of marked austerity but devoted to the service of God—'the holy service they have professed,' he calls it;²⁴ the service consisting in the community act of the celebration of the divine office, and in the discipline of a life of ordered daily manual work and religious reading, according to the Rule and under obedience to the abbot.

It will be of interest in conclusion to confront this account of original Benedictine life with Newman's impressions of it as given in his essay on 'The Mission of St Benedict.' Benedictines have reason to be grateful that one of Newman's knowledge and insight and historical genius should have given them this objective study of their life and spirit. The monks of those days, he writes, 'had a unity of object, of state, and of occupation. Their object was rest and peace; their state was retirement; their occupation was some work that was simple, as opposed to intellectual, viz. prayer, fasting, meditation, study, transcription, manual labour, and other unexciting, soothing employments.… The monastic institute, says the biographer of St Maurus, demands Summa Quies, the most perfect quietness; and where was quietness to be found, if not in reverting to the original condition of man, as far as the changed circumstances of our race admitted; in having no wants, of which the supply was not close at hand; in the "nil admirari"; in having neither hope nor fear of anything below; in daily prayer, daily bread, and daily work, one day being just like another, except that it was one step nearer than the day before it to that great Day which would swallow up all days, the day of everlasting rest.'²⁵

Notes

¹ Modem Lives of St Benedict are Abbot Tosti's S. Benedetto, 1892 (translated into English and French), and Dom L'Huillier's Patriarche S. Benoit, 1904.

² Tosti, Schmidt.

³ What follows is in large measure based on Hodgkin's Italy and her Invaders.

⁴op. cit. iii, 248.

⁵ Quoted from Procopius and Marcellinus Comes, contemporary historians, by Hodgkin, iv, 507.

⁶ Quoted from Salvian's de Gubernatione Dei, by Hodgkin, op. cit. i, 918-34. Dill, Roman Society, 318-23, thinks that Salvian's pictures are overdrawn, but he does not question the substantive truth of his thesis of the deep corruption of Roman society. Cf. also Gregorovius, City of Rome, i, 252.

⁷ See Newman, Development of Christian Doctrine, 'The Church of the Fifth and Sixth Centuries,' §I.

⁸ See Heussi-Mulert, Atlas zur Kirchengeschichte, v.

⁹Hibbert Journal, 1906, p. 490.

¹⁰ They are Newman's first two 'Notes of a Genuine Development of an Idea,' in the Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine. The other Notes are: Power of Assimilation, Logical Sequence, Anticipation of its Future, Conservative Action on its Past, Chronic Vigour.

¹¹ 'Constituenda est ergo nobis dominici schola servitii. In qua institutione nihil asperum, nihil grave nos constituturos speramus' (Regula, Prol. 116; the lines added in references to the Rule are those of my 'Editio critica-practica,' Herder, 1912).

¹² See cc. XVIII fin., XLVIII, 16-22.

¹³ 'Regulam hanc descripsimus, ut hanc observantes in monasteriis aliquatenus vel honestatem morum aut initium conversationis nos demonstremus habere' (Reg. LXXIII).

¹⁴L 'Idéal Monastique, iii.

¹⁵ 'His ergo omissis (scil. heremitis, sarabaitis, gyrovagis) ad coenobitarum fortissimum genus disponendum veniamus' (Reg. 1). 'Fortissimum genus' is difficult to translate. Evidently it does not mean 'most austere,' or 'most strenuous.' It has been translated 'most steadfast,' or 'most valiant,' or even 'best.' This latter is what it really means. On the whole the rendering given above, 'strongest and best,' seems to bring out the meaning.

¹⁶ 'In congregatione pariter consistentes unius senioris iudicio gubernantur' (Coll. xviii, 4).

¹⁷ 'Monasteriale, militans sub regula vel abbate' (Reg. 1). 'Vel' with St Benedict often is equivalent to 'et' (see my ed. of the Regula, p. 197). There were many monasteries without any rule other than the living voice of the abbot, but there were not any with a rule and no abbot, or other superior. At the present day the 'idiorhythmic' monasteries of the Eastern Church are governed by a board of seniors without any personal superior.

¹⁸ 'Monasticus' is from monachus; 'monasterialis' from monasterium. The word is found elsewhere, but it is not common.

¹⁹ Prefixed to reprint of translation of Montalembert's Monks of the West, 1895, vol. i.

²⁰ See my edition, Index, pp. 191 and 203. 'Opus Dei' was used in the same sense at Lerins, as appears in the Lerins Psalmody and in the Rules of Caesarius; but in other literature of early monasticism it has a wider meaning and signifies the works of the spiritual and ascetical life (loc. cit.).

²¹ 'L'oeuvre propre et distinctive du Bénédictin, son lot, sa mission, c'est la liturgie. Il émet profession pour être, dans l'Église, société de louange divine, celui qui glorifie Dieu selon les formes instituées par elle' (p. 153).

²²L 'Idéal Monastique, vii.

²³ 'Primarium officium nostrum est in terra praestare quod angeli in caelo.'

²⁴ 'Servitium sanctum quod professi sunt' (c. v, 4).

²⁵Mission of St Benedict, 3 (p. 29 in separate reprint).