CHAPTER 57
104 The Rule, Chapter 57 Hubert Van Zeller, in his commentary on the Rule of St.
Benedict, makes this remark about the eating habits of abbots:
"All that can be said is that whenever in history the abbot has decided to abide by the words of the Rule [in Chapter 56] there has been trouble. So much so that more than one General
Council of Abbots can be cited as forbidding the abbot to make a regular practice of eating on his own with guests/'1
Is there any practical advice for Oblates in chapter 56 of the Rule? Yes, it is: Be solicitous for the guests who come to your home. We are again reminded of that in the Rule.
CHAPTER 57
The Artisans of the Monastery There never was a time when a "No Artists Need Apply" sign was posted at the monastery gate. History has proved that art and monasticism have gotten along well over the centuries.
Monks have themselves been artists and they have patronized the arts. St. Dunstan, a monk who became Archbishop of Canterbury in 959, was a painter, a carver in wood and bone, and worked with gold, silver, iron, and brass. He also did embroidery.
One of Ireland's most precious works of art is the Book of Kells, an illuminated manuscript of the Gospels begun in the eighth century and completed in the ninth. A modern authority in illumination states the Book of Kells should be included among the great wonders of the world. It is the work of monks.
Some monks spent their whole lifetime in the scriptorium making books. It is estimated that one scribe could produce forty books if he lived an average life span. These books were needed for the Divine Office, for the monastic library, for the monks' private lectio. When new monasteries were founded,
The Rule, Chapter 57 105 books had to be sent with the monks. In some monasteries, laymen had to be hired as scribes, but it was common for each monastery to have at least twelve monks employed full time in the scriptorium. What were the monks copying in all those years before the invention of the printing press? Scripture, of course, and the Church Fathers, but they were also preserving the literature of classical Greece and Rome as well as the stories and myths of their own ancestors. Books were so highly valued in the monasteries that whenever barbarian tribes were raiding the neighborhood, the books were the first things to be hidden. When Monte Cassino was sacked in 577, the monks fled with their books and left behind the body of St. Benedict.
The Benedictines and Cistercians argued about art and architecture in the eleventh century. The Cistercian St. Bernard of Clairvaux has this to say about the Benedictines of Cluny:
I will not dwell upon the vast height of their churches, their unconscionable length, their preposterous breadth, their richly polished panelling, all of which distracts the eyes of the worshipper and hinders his devotion. You throw money into your decorations to make it breed. Your candlesticks as tall as trees, great masses of bronze of exquisite workmanship, and as dazzling with their precious stones as the lights that surmount them, what think you, is the purpose of all this? Will it melt a sinner's heart and not rather keep him gazing in wonder? O vanity of vanities— no, insanity rather than vanity.1
The Cistercians wanted to simplify their architecture and their art. Abbot Suger, the Benedictine who built the first
Gothic church in Europe (for his monastic community of St.
Denis in Paris) and who immortalized himself in stained glass prostrated at the feet of our Lady, answered St. Bernard's objections:
There are those who tell us that a holy mind, a pure heart and a right intent suffice for the ministration of the altar, and I would grant these are the principal, proper and peculiar
106 The Rule, Chapter 57 qualifications. But I maintain that we should do homage also to the rite of the Holy Sacrifice, as to nothing else in the world, with the outward splendor of holy vessels, with all inward purity and all outward magnificence.2
When the Benedictines came to this country in the nineteenth century, Abbot Boniface Wimmer, the first abbot of our
Order on American soil, said: "Our monasteries and their schools should be centers of the arts where music, art and accompanying crafts are developed and advanced. Theologically we state that the properties of God are truth, goodness and beauty. I suspect more souls are won to God by beauty than by truth and goodness/'3 Wimmer clearly disagreed with St.
Bernard of Clairvaux and reasoned more in line with Abbot Suger for the promotion of art.
St. Benedict says artisans in the monastery "are to practice their craft with all humility, but only with the abbot's permission. If one of them becomes puffed up by his skillfulness in his craft, and feels that he is conferring something on the monastery, he is to be removed from practicing his craft and not allowed to resume it unless, after manifesting his humility, he is so ordered by the abbot."
A monk artist usually doesn't have to read chapter 57 of the Rule to be reminded about humility. There is always someone around to humble an artist. Some years ago, an abbey in this country asked a European Benedictine monk to paint a mural in the apse of its church. He chose to depict
Adam and Eve before their fall. One day while he was on the scaffold painting, the bishop of the diocese came to look at the monk's work. The bishop was shocked to see a naked man and woman on the ceiling of the abbey church. "Cover them up," he told the monk artist. The artist protested. "But, Your
Excellency, look at the Sistine Chapel in Rome. There are nudes in it." "Yes," the bishop said, "but that's art."
About the marketing of crafts, St. Benedict says, "When-