Front matter
Ham
THE RULE OF ST. BENEDICT
bBBfi&diCtus. SoiY>t obbot ob lYlOhtC. Cqssivmo With an Introduction, a new Translation of the Rule and a Commentary, all reviewed in the Light of an earlier Monasticism by The Reverend Basilius Steidle Monk of the Archabbey of Beuron translated with a few brief Annotations by Urban J. Schnitzhofer, O.S.B.
Holy Cross Abbey Canon City, Colorado Nihil Obstat: Henry Lacerte, O.S.B., J.C.D., S.T.D., Ph.D.,
Censor Deputatus Imprimatur: Charles A. Buswell, D.D., Bishop of Fueblo, Dec.
8, 1966 lmprimi Potest: Edward J. Vollmer, O.S.B., L.L.D., Abbot of Holy Cross Abbey, April 11, 1967
DIE REGEL ST. BENEDIKTS
Eingeleitet, ubersetzt und aus dem alten Monchtum erklart von
P. BASILIUS STEIDLE
Monch der Erzabtei Beuron
BEURONER KUNSTVERLAG
BEURON/HOHENZOLLERN, DEUTSCHLAND
«TI 0 J;n 3 c
MAO I HO 11/ < : -„.uL
I C C P J
Copyright 1952 by Beuroner Kunstverlag, Beuron in Hohenzollern
To Father Urban, monk, scholar and pastor, whose literary labor was a profound concern for monastic reform and whose spirit, while patiently bearing his bodily pain, lived to serve his brothers, a grateful community dedicates this work.
"Love is slow to lose patience" 1 Cor 13,4.
FOREWORD The volume in the hands of the reader was intended as an ap peal to all—whether in religion or in the world at large—for whom the Patriarch of Montecassino, in particular his Rule, but above all those for whom monachism and life in the cloister have a modicum of meaning. It was meant to appeal also to those who have a special penchant for the monastic ideal. In deed, it takes some such enthusiasm for granted. The author has gone to some pains to place before those who are interested a plain, overall intelligible presentation. He makes no pretensions to an especially scholarly make-up or arrangement. Nor does he set himself up to project before the reader any controversial analyses of other interpretations of the Rule, which in most cases are familiar only to dedicated masters of the subject. He does, however, claim that it is grounded on a scholarly Benedic tine basis. Furthermore, it is hoped that it will serve as an in centive for deeper research into the Holy Rule and above all as a spur to our younger Benedictine members for a greater in terest in the manifold problems and questions which the Rule it self poses.
It has been the special concern of the author to point out in particular the close relationship which the Holy Rule bears to the ecclesiastico-monastic tradition, the dominant role which Jesus—that is—his life and his counsels—plays in its provisions, and the truth that the monastic community, in the highest and best sense of the phrase, is but a practical working out of Christ's concept of his Church. He also presumes to accentuate the humble simplicity and unpretentiousness of the Rule, which does not call for any worldly type of culture to be properly and clearly understood.
Those who are specialists in the study of the Holy Rule will certainly have close at hand or easily procurable the following works: Altaner (Patrologie: Leben, Schrijten und Lehre der
Kirchenvater; zweite, erweiterte A uflage 1950) or Bihlmeyer (K. Bihlmeyer—H. Tuchle, Kirchengeschichte, Erster Ted: Das christliche Altertum, zwolfte, verbesserte and erganzte A uflage,
1951) or Das Buch Aszese und Mystik in der Vaterzeit von M.
II Viller—K. Rahner (1939). Therein one will easily find the source-writings and other literature to go along with them. With this book he has submitted only the titles of such writings as were directly used. This does not imply that any judgment has been passed upon writings not cited. His book does give the locus of each important quotation from all the works consulted.
Since the so-called Verba Senior am have been arranged in alp habetical sequence, it should not be difficult to find the locus and the name of the Desert Father quoted. As often as the rule of St. Augustine is drawn from, the citation is from the so-called
Second Rule unless otherwise indicated.
Although the author has for a long time been mulling over in his mind the idea behind this book and considering ways and means of carrying it out, the concrete execution of the task has not been possible until now. But in spite of the fact that he has spent many hours delving into the works of the Church Fath ers and those of the Desert Fathers, the book rests upon the solid labors of others, as the bibliography attached to it will show. Some of these he cannot pass over without a word or two of appreciation, Thus, for example, he has garnered much use ful material from the solid toil of the Rev. Matthew Rothenhausler, O.S.B. Among the jubilee writings that appeared with the 14th centenary of the death of St. Benedict, he is specially indebted to those published by the Archabbey of St. Ottilia and edited by the Rev. H. Suso Brechter, O.S.B. Were it not for the valuable book of the Rev. Adolar Zumkeller, O.S.E.A., Das
Monchtum des heiligen Augustinus (1950), he could not have quoted so often and so extensively from the works of that great doctor and monastic patriarch. Although from the author's point of view, St. Benedict was not directly or essentially influenced by the African Church Father, still the latter's ideas constitute the finest commentary on the Roman abbot's Rule. In reality, the patriarch of Montecassino and the great teacher on grace from Hippo are the real patriarchs of the West. Nor must the writer fail to mention Karl Heussi's book, Der Ursprung des
Monchtums (1936), which, despite some valid objections raised against it, is still an important work.
One who shared with the author the task of giving the transla-
Ill tion of the Holy Rule a thorough, and for him at least a defini tive testing, was the Rev. Corbinian Gindele, O.S.B. The book is indebted to him for the excellent excursus following chapter six on Der Gesang in der heiligen Regel (The choral Chants in the Holy Rule), not to speak of his constant and manifold en couragement.
The book was not intended, however, to exempt the reader from the duty of personal reflection and study.
Finally, may it be hoped that this work, in spite of its many shortcomings, will serve as a modest contribution to a truer, deeper, and more fruitful grasp, of our Holy Rule?
P. Basilius Steidle
TRANSLATOR'S FOREWORD
There is not much that a translator can ordinarily say about his rendering of an author's work in another language, except, perhaps, that he has endeavored to do his best to make it a rea sonably faithful and intelligible presentation.
Those who may wish to know the general principles which the translator has followed in his work may consult: "Norms for the Translator," an address in French delivered by Pope Pius
XII before the International Federation of Translators meeting in Rome, on March 1, 1956 (cf. The Pope Speaks, 1956)1 He can also look up an article by Julie Kernan, entitled, "Trans lating: Trials and Rewards," which appeared in the Catholic
Reporter, December, 1961.2
One difficulty every translator undeniably must have when he is working from a medium which happens to be his mother ton gue, say German as here, is avoiding the pitfall of introducing too many Germanisms into his translation (or idiomatic phrases and expressions from some language medium). Critics often for get that the backgrounds of the English language are largely
Teutonic or Saxon in character, at least in the smaller words and terms. A phrase or clause, consisting of words to be found
1 Translated from the French by the Rt. Rev. Monsignor J. C. Fenton 2 Miss Kernan is herself a translator, author, and editor, now employed by P. J.
Kenedy and Sons, Publishers.
IV in the same sequence in German, is not by that fact alone neces sarily a Germanism.
A few other explanations, also, seem to be in order or de manded by an occasional reader or student. The translation has gone through several emendations and critical comparisons with the original German, in order to render it as faithful to the other as possible. The Scriptural passages quoted or cited were trans lated directly from the original for two excellent reasons. First of all, the German version of such quotations were so alike or similar to those of the Douay Scriptures, in the terms chosen and in the sequence of the wording that the Douay version was used in the translation rather that the version from the Con fraternity edition.
In the second place, the Scriptural quotations as given in the Latin of the Rule differ so often and so much from the Vulgate of St. Jerome that our translation of these passages again made use of the German translation of them by the author in his text of the Rule. Here it must be borne in mind that St. Benedict obviously made use of a Latin version of the Scriptures that was older than that of the Vulgate, possibly that of the Vetera Latina or that of the better known Itala, the latter also used by St.
Augustine. The reason for this was either that St. Benedict was not acquainted with the Latin Vulgate or because that version was not as yet universally accepted in the West. This can also be the reason why his quotations from the Scriptures, especially from the psalms, often differ from the Vulgate of St. Jerome.
Most of the interpolations in brackets are those of the author, except in a few instances where brackets have been used by the translator to elucidate some word, phrase, or expression.
Longer passages of the latter class by him have been marked as such.
With this brief explanation, it is hoped that the translator's efforts have amply done justice to the author's interesting book and that the translation of it will be nearly as widely read and appreciated as was his German offering. This, of course, will not be due to the translation's excellence, but because the book will now be made available to a larger circle of readers.
The translator.
AUTHOR'S FOREWARD . I
TRANSLATOR'S FOREWARD .Ill
CONTENTS . V
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION . 1
Jesus . 6
Ascetics of the Early Church. 9
Ascetics of the Church of the Martyrs . 10
Origen . 11
Eastern Monasticism . 13
Backgrounds of the Holy Rule . 5
The Hermits — St. Antony .14-16 The Cenobites — St. Pachomius . 18
St. Basil .:. 19
The Lauras . 21
Latin Monasticism. 22
* St. Martin of Tours . 23
St. Augustine . 23
Abbot John Cassian. 25
The Island Cloister of Lerins . 27
EXTRINSIC HISTORY OF THE HOLY RULE . 32
Time and Place of its Composition .. 32
Its Language . 33
The original Manuscript . 33
The Text of the Rule. 35
Commentaries and Translations . 37
Internal Layout of the Holy Rule . 38
Sources of the Holy Rule. 38
Phases of the Rule's History . 40
The Holy Rule in England. 41
In the German Lands . 41
In the Land of Gaul. 42
In the Land of Italy . 42
Other Phases of its History and of Benedictine Monasticism . 43
UNIQUE CHARACTER OF THE HOLY RULE . 46
TRANSLATION AND COMMENTARY (Pp. 66-67)
THE PROLOGUE . 57
THE CONSTITUTION (of the Cloister Chapters i to iii includ.) Chapter I The Kinds of Monks . 63
Excursus I St. Antony, Fighter of Demons . 65
Excursus II Wrong Theories on the Origin of Monasticism .
Excursus III Juridical Status of the Old Monasticism 67 V
In Relation to the State . 67
In Relation to the Church. 68
Excursus IV Cultural Attitude of the Old VI Monasticism . 69
Excursus V Antagonists of the Old Monasticism.. 71
Excursus VI Shadows over the Old Monasticism.. 73
Chapter II What Kind of Man the Abbot ought to be . 77
Excursus I The Abba Father . 82
Excursus II The Abbot as the Representative of Christ . 85
Naturalism . 86
Supranaturalism. 87
Monastic Tradition . 87
Excursus III The Will of God . 88
Chapter III Assembling the Brethren in Council . 89
Excursus I The Monks . 91'
Excursus II The Lay-Brothers . 93
The Oblates . 95
Excursus Ill The Monastic Ecclesia (community).. 95
Excursus IV Admonition (Kritik) of Superiors . 99
THE PURSUIT OF MONASTIC VIRTUE (Chapters iv to vii incl.) Chapter IV The Instruments of Good Works (133-138)
The Chief Commandment (Instrs. 1&2 . 102
The Other Commandments (Instrs. 3-9 . 102
Self-renunciation (Instrs 10-13) . 103
The Works if Mercy (Instrs. 14-19) . 103
The Monk's Profession (Instrs. 20 & 21) . 103
Meekness and Righteousness (Instrs. 22-33) . 103
Predominant Faults (Instrs. 34-40) . 104
Preeminence of Divine Grace (Instrs. 41-43) . 104
The Four Last Things (Instrs. 44-47). 104
Self-restraint (Instrs. 48-50) . 104
Recollection (Instrs. 51-54) . 105
(Spiritual) Reading and Prayer (Instrs. 55-58) . 105
Subjugation of Body and Soul (Instrs. 59-64) . 105
Fraternal Charity (Instrs. 65-73) . 106
The Virtue of Hope (Instr. 74) . 106
Excursus The Virtue of Hope . 107
Chapter V Obedience .,. 109
Excursus Obedience . 110
Chapter VI The Habit of Silence. 112
Excursus Taciturnity . 112
Chapter VII The Virtue of Humility ... 113
Excursus I The Triune God — Fear of the Lord 120
Excursus II Humility .j 122 Excursus 111 Charity . 124
VII Eros . 124
Agape . 125
Agape and Eros as Grace. 126
Amor, Dilectio, Caritas . 128
Abbot John Cassian . 129
The Holy Rule . 129
St. Augustine . 130
The Synod of Orange . 130
EXTERNAL (Liturgical) WORSHIP OF GOD (Chapters viii to xx incl.) 131 Chapter VIII The Divine Office, at Night (Matins) . 131
Excursus I Ancient Reckoning of Time . 132
Excursus II Daily Order in the Cloister . 134
The Winter Order . 136
The Lenten Order . 137
The Summer Order. 137
The Order for Sundays & Feast days.. 1 38 Chapter IX The Number of Psalms to the chanted at the Night Office ./.
Excursus The Choral Chants of the Rule . 140
The Individual Chant Forms . 140
Distribution of the Chants . 141
Gregorian Plain Song . 142
Monastic Chants and the Songs of Art 142 The Order of Personnel in Choir . 143
Chapter X The Chanting of the Night Office in Summer. 143
Chapter XI The Chanting of the Night Office on Sundays . 144
Chapter Xll The Chanting of the Office of Lauds . 145
Chapter XIII The Chanting of Lauds on ordinary Days . 146
Chapter XIV The Chanting of the Vigils on the Birthdays of the Saints . 147
Chapter XV The Seasons for the Chanting of the Alleluia . 147
Chapter XVI The Performance of the Work of God in the Daytime . 148
Excursus 1 The eight Prayer Periods . 148
The Night Office of Matins . 149
The Morning Office of Lauds . 150
The Office of Prime . 150
Tierce, Sext, and Nones . 151
The Office of Vespers . 151
The Office of Compline . 151
Excursus II Symbolism of the Prayer Periods . 151
Excursus III Piety and Devotion as evoked by the
VIII Psalms. 154
Chapter XVII The Chanting of the Psalms at the various Hours .... 156
Chapter XVIII The Order for the Chanting of the Psalms . 158
Chapter XIX The Proper Decorum while chanting the Psalms .... 160
Chapter XX Reverence at Prayer. 161
Prayer should be short . 166
Prayer should be pure . 166
Fervor of Heart in Prayer. 167
The Prayer of Tears . 168
Excursus II The Holy Eucharist in the Old Excursus I Prayer in the Cloister. 162
Monachism . 169
DISCIPLINE IN THE CLOISTER (Chapters xxi to xxx incl.) Chapter XXI The Deans in the Monastery . 176
Chapter XXII The Manner in which the Monks are to sleep . 177
Chapter XXIII Excommunication for Faults . 179
Benedict's Time . 179
With the Hermits . 179
With St. Pachomius . 181
With Abbot Schenute of Atripe . 182
With St. Basil . 182
With St. Augustine . 182
With Abbot Cassian . 183
Excursus II Penal Practice of the Holy Rule . 183
Excursus I Penal Discipline before St.
The Judge . 184
The Transgressions . 184
The Regular Discipline . 184
Private Reprimand . 185
Public Reprimand . 185
Minor Excommunication . 185
Major Excommunication . 186
Expulsion from the Cloister . 186
Sacramental Penance . 187
The Spiritual Father . 188
Chapter XXIV The Measure of Excommunication . 189
Chapter XXV Graver Faults .. 189
Chapter XXVI Those who without leave consort with the Excommunicated . 190
Chapter XXVI1 Solicitude of the Abbot for the Excommunicated .... 190
Chapter XXVIII Those who, though often corrected, do not amend .. 191
Excursus Christ the Physician . 192
Chapter XXIX Readmittance of Monks who have left the Cloister .. 193
Chapter XXX Correction of Boys and Youths . 193
IX ADMINISTRATION (Chapters xxxi to lvii inch) Chapter XXXI The Kind of Man the Cellarer ought to be . 194
Chapter XXXII Tools and other Property of the Monastery . 196
Chapter XXXIII Should Monks have anything of their own . 196
Excursus Monastic Poverty . 197
Chapter XXXIV Should all receive Necessaries in like Measure . 198
Chapter XXXV The Weekly Service in the Kitchen . 199
Chapter XXXVI The Sick Brethren . 201
Excursus The Sick Brother . 202
Chapter XXXVII The Old Monks and the Children. 204
Excursus Aged Monks and Children. 204
Chapter XXXVIII The Weekly Service of Reading (at Meals) . 205
Chapter XXXIX The Measure of Food . 206
Excursus The Meals . 207
Chapter XL The Measure of Drink . 208
Excursus The use of Wine . 210
Chapter XLI The Hours at which the Brethren should dine . 209
Chapter XLII No one should speak after Compline . 211
Chapter XLI1I Latecomers to the Work of God or to the Table .... 212
Chapter XLIV The Satisfaction to be made by the Excommunicated 214 Chapter XLV Those who make Mistakes in the Oratory . 214
Chapter XLVI Those who fail in any other Matter . 215
Chapter XLVII The Signals for the Work of God . 216
Chapter XLVIII The Daily Manual Labor . 216
Excursus Manual Labor . 219
Chapter XL1X The Observance of Lent . 221
Excursus The Pascal Forty Days . 222
Chapter L Brethren who labor far from the Monastery or are on a Journey . 224
Chapter LI Brethren who do not go far away . 224
Chapter LI I The oratory of the Monastery . 224
Excursus The Layout or plan of the Cloister .... 225
Chapter LI 11 The Reception of Guests . 226
Excursus I Guests. 228
Excursus 11 The Kiss of Peace . 229
Excursus III Benedictine Peace . 231
Excursus IV The Washing of Feet . 233
Chapter L1V Letters or Gifts that a Monk may receive . 234
Chapter LV Clothing and Footwear of the Brethren . 235
Excursus The Monastic Habit . 237
Chapter LV1 The Abbot's Table . 240
Chapter LVII The Craftsman of the Monastery . 240
GROWTH OF THE MONASTIC COMMUNITY (Chapters Iviii to Ixvi) Chapter LVIII Procedure in admitting new Members . 241
Excursus I The Novitiate . 245
Excursus II Monastic Profession . 247
X History of Monastic Profession. 247
The Profession Formula . 250
The Vows . 251
Stability .252
Obedience . 254
Conversatio Morum . 254
Excursus III The Monk's Consecration . 257
Chapter LIX Noblemen or the Poor who offer their Sons in the Cloister. 260
Chapter LX Priests who wish to reside in the Cloister. 262
Chapter LXI The Reception of Pilgrim Monks . 263
Chapter LXII The Priests of the Monastery . 264
Excursus The Priest-Monk . 265
Chapter LXIII The Order of Precedence in the Cloister . 267
Chapter LXIV Appointment of the Abbot . 269
Excursus I The Discretio . 272
Definition . 272
Monastic Tradition . 273
Excursus II The Abbatial Prelate . 275
Chapter LXV The Prior of the Monastery . 276
Excursus The Prior . 278
Chapter LXV1 The Porter of the Cloister. 279
SUPPLEMENT (Chapters lxvii to lxxii inch) Chapter LXVII Brethren who are sent on a Journey . 280
Chapter LXVIII If a Brother is ordered to do impossible things. 281
Excursus Impossible Charges . 282
Chapter LX1X No one should presume to defend another. 283
Chapter LXX No one should presume arbitrarily to strike another 284 Chapter LXX1 The Brethren should obey one another . 284
Chapter LXXII The good Zeal which Monks should have . 285
EPILOGUE Chapter LXXIII Not every Observance of Righteousness is laid down in this Rule . 286
Excursus I The Meaning of Monachism accord ing to the Holy Rule . 287
Excursus II The literal Observance of the Holy Rule . 289
BIBLIOGRAPHY . 294
INDEX Authors, Persons, Subjects . 302
INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
We are indebted to Pope Gregory the Great (f 604) for everything that we know of the life-story of St. Benedict (f c.
547), to whom he devoted the entire second book of his "Dia logues." Were it not for this "second book," we should know practically nothing of his life-work and his miracles, practically nothing of the man whom we have come to revere as the mo nastic Father of the West, the reformer and patriarch of West ern Monasticism, the founder of the world-famed Archabbey of Montecassino, center and cradle of the Benedictine Order. Like wise, without this second book, we should know little if any thing of the legislator who gave his name to a code of laws, which, though it drew its inspiration from the East, yet gave
Western Monasticism its form and its structure, at the same time adapting Eastern Monasticism to Western conditions and circumstances.
This second book of "Dialogues," of course, gives us also our first bit of information concerning the existence of the Holy Rule. Said the saintly pontiff to his deacon Peter: "And you must not remain ignorant of this fact, that the Man of God, in addition to the many miracles which made him famed the world over, shone no less on account of his teaching; for he wrote a rule for monks, distinguished for its wise moderation as well as for the clarity of its statements. Should a person wish a better understanding of his strenuous life of virtue, he will find all his efforts embodied in the instructions of that Rule; for the holy man could not teach otherwise than he lived" (chap, xxxvi). Since Pope Gregory's time, the paeans of praise that followed in the wake of St. Benedict's Rule have never lapsed into silence.
In order to arrive at a true, deep, and fruitful under standing of the Holy Rule, we must become convinced of its origins in the ecclesiastico-monastic tradition. One cannot con sider the Rule apart from or isolated from that tradition. For it is rooted decidedly and completely in the pre-Benedictine period, beyond that in the life of the early Church, and lastly
but most deeply in the Gospel itself. Neither pagan nor secular antiquity contributed anything essential to an explanation or an understanding of it.
It would be entirely incorrect to liken St. Benedict's mon astery, as the Holy Rule outlines it, to the abbeys of the feudal nobility during the reign of the Carolingians or to those of the Middle Ages. The same should be said of the 17th century abbeys of the French Congregation of St. Maur, which seem to have been communities made up almost entirely of scholars and savants: likewise, of the Baroque abbeys of the nobility, or of the modern abbeys of the 20th century. It would be also in correct to read into the Rule ideas of a much later period such as ours or to derive ideas of the kind from it.
The more intensely one occupies himself with the study of the Holy Rule, the more he must revise his preconceived no tions concerning it. What Hans Ufs von Balthasar says in the foreword of his book, Kosmische Liturgie; Maximus der Bekenner: Hohe und Krise des Griechischen Weltbilds, concerning the higher study of the Church Fathers, applies with particular em phasis to that of the Holy Rule. To one who buries himself, so to speak, in the study of it calmly, patiently, and with com plete detachment from merely materialistic data and with com plete freedom from fanatical and too abstract enthusiasms, it will immediately appear smaller and more remote, larger and touch closer than it did at the start.
We say smaller, because, despite its richness and fruitfulness, it was still only a beginning in the long history of Western Monasticism. For it only hinted at many a point, left many a provision imperfect and defective, and did not expressly mention many a thing which was rightly recognized to be im portant and basic by later generations of monks. One need only compare the plain monastery of St. Benedict with the no bility-peopled abbeys of the Carolingians and of the Middle
Ages, with the scholar-inhabited abbeys of St. Maur, with the princely abbeys of the Baroque period, with the modern abbeys of the 20th century. Let him also compare the simple lay monk of the Rule with the priest-monk of today, his cultural interests, pastoral problems and cares. Likewise, with all these he need
but set the lay abbot of the Holy Rule alongside the modern abbot, with his prelatial insignia and privileges, to see how the Western Monasticism of our time has diverged in its develop ment from the simple letter of the Rule. We say more remote, because the circumstances under which the Rule was written and the conditions surrounding contemporary monachism were entirely different from what they are today, indeed partly op posite to what they are in our time. Christian antiquity was on the whole religious in thought and more favorably disposed to monastic ideals; the modern world, on the other hand, is by far consciously godless, aware but rather complacent in its worldliness, and rather contemptuous of the whole monastic concept.
Then we say larger, because the Holy Rule as a starting point in Western Monasticism is ever more directional than preceptive, and will remain so. Benedictine Monasticism, under every species of development and transformation, will have to orient itself again and again with the Holy Rule as a compass, unless it wants to be indifferent as to whether or not it loses all contact with its origins and basic ideals. And if its further development and expansion are not to flow on shore less and without restraint, in a word, unless it wants to bring about a complete break with its monastic beginnings, the Holy
Rule will have to remain its polestar and its refuge in every ad vance and vicissitude. The Rule of St. Benedict, as an integral thing, will never be remodeled or become passe. Finally, we say much closer, because despite every development and every progressive step, the final questions and problems of mon achism ever are and ever will remain the same: flight from the world, or at least from its spirit, and an unreserved surrender to the Lord in humble obedience. Moreover, notwithstanding its complete capitulation to the spirit of the world, our age is ap parently more open than the previous century to the attraction of the original and pure ideals of monastic life, so wonderfully well expressed in the marvelous simplicity and artlessness of the Holy Rule. One can see the danger in an eventuality wherein the letter of the Rule should ever more and more be abandoned
and its spirit be sacrificed to the weltgeist of the age; For the letter is the vessel of the spirit.
This book was intended to be of service—and that is still its most earnest purpose—to a true and fruitful understand ing of the Rule's significance. In three introductory sections, it treats first of the native soil (Mutterboden), or backgrounds, of the Rule; secondly, of the external history of the Rule; and lastly, of its unique character.
As we have remarked in a previous paragraph, "we cannot consider the Rule apart from or isolated from its ecclesiastico-monastic tradition." We shall try, therefore, to deter mine the exact position which it holds in the history of Western
Monasticism.
In connection with the backgrounds of the Rule, should the question arise as to what is decisively important for an understanding of it the query as to when and where the Rule was written becomes for this book a matter of minor import ance. The same holds true for the question as to the original manuscript and other matters of a similar nature. The mean ing of the Holy Rule will, moreover, hardly be affected by any answers to them. The history of Benedictine Monasticism can be touched upon only in summary fashion. A separate work would be needed for a complete treatment of this particular subject.
More important than these is the singular and unique character of the Holy Rule. Any comparison with the weight iest of the older monastic ordinances must result unequivocably in its favor. For through it St. Benedict emerges the greatest religious educator and organizer of the Western world.
Our translation of the Holy Rule has endeavored to adhere as closely as possible to the Latin wording.* In this effort we
* (In rendering the German translation of the Latin text into English, I have consulted several English translations of the Rule, among them Abbot Justin
McCann's, Abbot Martin Veth's, Boniface Verheyen's, Hunter Blair's, Bernard Hayes', and others. In the main, though, I have been guided by the German translation of the author. However, the interpretations placed upon certain pas sages of the text by him have of necessity and as a matter of courtesy been faith fully followed by the translator. Naturally, moreover, the latter was not invited to edit the work or to function as its critic but merely to translate it. Needless to
have not balked at any language difficulties presented by the original text. We have tried to render synonymous Latin words with synonymous German terms.1 Wherever within the narrow confines of the Latin text some words seem to call for a better understanding of their meaning than their apparent German counterparts, we have given alongside them possibly better equivalents.
To certain passages of the text in German we have add ed appropriate comments by way of footnotes at the bottom of the corresponding pages.
Finally, in special excursuses, appended immediately at the end of many chapters, we have treated of questions posed by the text itself or that might in some way thow more light on it in connection with an earlier monasticism. For that earlier monasticism must never be lost sight of.
BACKGROUNDS OF THE HOLY RULE
At the time St. Benedict (f c. 547) committed his Rule to writing, monasticism had been in existence more than 250 years. He arrived on the scene not at the beginning but at the end of the old monasticism. He was not its creator nor its founder. Yet the Holy Rule is not to be identified with any previous type of monachism. It is merely one of the concrete and marked stages which monasticism had to go through again and again from its beginning. And when in what follows we speak of the backgrounds of the Holy Rule (German: Mutterboden), we merely wish to pose the questions: to what extent is it indebted to the previous monastic periods and how much did the patriarch of Montecassino owe the 250 years of mo nastic theory and practice that had prevailed before his time?
Naturally, we are interested here only in the essential elements of monastic life, merely in its underlying and supporting ideas.
We are not concerned with its external features, for example, the clothing of the monks, the arrangement of the hours or mansay, he has been deeply in sympathy with the author's attitude and ideas. - - The translator.) 1 See translator's foreword.
ner and type of prayer, the various practices of mortification, and the like. These questions will find their answers in the ex planations or comments in footnotes to the individual chapters or in special excursuses appended to many of them. Nor, when we come to speak of the backgrounds, will we be content with merely uncovering the root-system of the Rule in the aforesaid
250 years. But we shall endeavor to get an insight into the well-springs of monasticism as they flowed forth from the Church of the martyrs, from the early Church in general, and, finally, from the person of Jesus, his counsels and his example.
We think it most proper, therefore, that our exposition begin with the personality of Jesus and stay with it down through the centuries.
Jesus.—Our Lord's counsels are clearly and unmistak ably a call to follow him on his way to the cross: to self-denial, to renunciation, to abandonment of the goods of the world, to poverty, celibacy, and complete oblation of oneself to God for the sake of heaven and eternal life. A few quotations from his sermons should clarify the truth of that statement. "If any man come to me and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple" (Luke xiv, 26) . . . "So likewise every one of you that doth not renounce all that he posseseth, cannot be my disciple" (Ibid, xiv, 33). This counsel concerning re nunciation was taken to heart and followed to the letter by monks who came not long afterwards, so that they might be come perfect disciples and followers in the Master's footsteps.
Accordingly, keeping in mind the Lord's words, they called themselves the "renouncers" (Entsagenden). Similarly, in the very second sentence of the prologue, the Holy Rule contains the words: "Whosoever thou art . . . that renouncing thy own will."
The meaningful words in the foregoing chapter of St.
Luke's Gospel (xiv, 33) are an embodiment of monasticism and of the monastic profession. Likewise, in the light of these and other passages from St. Luke, it becomes impossible to under-
stand how, until a few decades ago, non-Catholic researchers could contend that there is no connection or association at all between Jesus and the monks. Our Lord clearly distinguished between two ways, one of which all true believers must follow and another one which those should follow who wish, voluntar ily and freely, to adopt and follow his counsels. When the rich young man came to him and asked: "Good Master, what shall
I do that I may have life everlasting?" Jesus referred him to the observance of the commandments: "If thou wilt enter life everlasting, keep the commandments." And when the young man could say: "All these have I kept from my youth; what is yet wanting to me?" Jesus answered him: "If thou wilt be per fect, go seli what thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven, and come follow me." At these words the young man went away sad, for he had great possessions.
Close upon this incident, Jesus spoke of how difficult it was for a rich man to "enter the kingdom of heaven ... It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven." Whereupon Peter took up the word and said to him: "Behold we have left all things and have followed thee; what reward shall we have?"
And Jesus answered him: "Amen, I say to you, who have fol lowed me, in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit on the seat of his majesty, you also shall sit on twelve seats, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And everyone that hath left house, or brother, or sister, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or land for my name's sake, shall receive an hundred fold, and shall possess life everlasting" (Matt, xix, 16-29).
The mere thoughtful hearing of those words of our Lord induced the most famous of all monks, the great Antony (+
356), and after him countless others, to forsake the world as well as their families and possessions to become hermits. The Lord did not mean to belittle the conjugal union, but he did proclaim the ascetic tenet of voluntary celibacy for the sake of the kingdom (Matt, xix, 12). Consequently, he also endorsed the entire renunciation of worldly goods and of the world itself
as a special means of attaining perfection. His words, then, constitute an invitation as well as a counsel to follow him on this particular way of the cross for the sake of eternal life. Monachism does not pretend to be anything else than a voluntary acceptance, in theory and practice, of this counsel and this in vitation.
Needless to say, our blessed Lord added to his words his own sublime example. The Gospels throughout depict him completely poor and without possessions, celibate and virginal, in a consistent attitude of unreserved obedience to his heavenly
Father. Monachism strives merely to be an imitation of the Lord and a practical working out of his divine example. The Holy Rule, also, from beginning to end, takes it entirely for granted that the Lord is the prototype of the monk, the ideal model whom he must strive with might and main to imitate and thereby to follow.
A few passages should show and elucidate this assump tion. "Assuredly, these (obedient monks) find their model in these words of our Lord when he says: 'I came not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me' " (John vi, 38; Holy
Rule, chap. v). In the seventh chapter on humility, St. Benedict wrote: "The seventh degree of humility is that a man for the love of God subject himself to his superior in all obedience, imitating the Lord, of whom the Apostle says: 'He was made obedient unto death' " (Phil, ii, 8). One of the instruments of good works reads: "To deny oneself in order to follow Christ"
(chap, iv, 10). In the prologue our Holy Father wrote also that monks should "follow Jesus to glory."
But let us not anticipate. Long before, others had the same thought. Monachism in general and the Holy Rule in particular aimed at a practical working out of the Lord's coun sels in order to follow his example. This idea was so firmly fixed in the minds of the early monks that they took it for granted that Jesus had been the founder of monasticism. "When one looks at their manner of life, it becomes evident to him that the Savior as well as his disciples actually did follow this
pattern. He lived virginal and poor, prayed under the stars on the lonely mountain side, subjected himself in obedience to his
Father unto the death of the cross, and did not act in accordance with his own will but with the will of the Father who sent him, doing just that up to and including his very passion ... In other places and on other occasions, he taught what were virtu ally the principles of monastic life." In this passage, Archbishop
Symeon of Thessalonica (1429), speaking of renunciation in connection with our Lord's words to the rich young man, sum med up most concisely and factually the conviction of the earlier as well as of contemporary monasticism (Von den Mysterien 53).
Apart from Christ, isolated from Christ, monachism is mean ingless. Fie is the starting point, the half-way mark, and the final goal of all monasticism. The Rule of St. Benedict, as we shall see, offers impressive evidence of that orientation.
Ascetics of the early Church.—The Church of the apostles adopted the counsels and followed the example of the Lord with enthusiasm and joy. Its members, according to the Acts of the Apostles, lived together in a voluntary community of posses sions and had but "one heart and one soul" (Acts, ii, 42ff and iv, 32ff). This first Church of Jerusalem was the model which Pachomius (f 345), Basil (f 379), Augustine (f430), and Ben edict (f 547) never lost sight of while writing their rules. Only lately again has monastic life been referred to by one writer in a way incomparably striking and beautiful in that he spoke of it as a "homesickness for the primitive Church" (P. Danielou).
According to the teaching of St. Paul, voluntary virginity is in a special way evidence of an entire oblation of oneself to the Lord (1 Cor. vii, 25ff). The ideal of virginity was adopted by the young communities with a special ardor. The seer of Patmos beheld it in his visions: "And lo a Lamb stood on Mount Sion, and with him an hundred forty-four thousand, having his name, and the name of his Father, written on their foreheads . . . And they sung as it were a new canticle, before the throne, and before the four living creatures, and the an cients: and no man could say the canticle, but those hundred
forty-four thousand, who were purchased from the earth. These are they who were not defiled with women: for they were vir gins. These follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth. These were purchased from among men, the first fruits to God and to the Lamb: and in their mouth there was found no lie; for they are without spot before the throne of God" (Apoc, xiv,
1-5). Virginity was from the very beginning so clearly taken for granted by monachism that St. Benedict does not expressly speak of it.
Ascetics of the Church of the Martyrs.—As St. Ignatius of Anti och testifies, there was already in existence a special class of virgins, or virgines, as they were called (Smyrna Letter #12).
Virginity is a particular expression of the perfect following of Christ, indeed, an embodiment of Christian sanctity. The Church positively rejected the attempts of rigorists and heretics
(e.g., Montanists, Gnostics, and Marcionists), who wanted to make the counsels and example of the Lord compulsory for all
Christians, thus trying to raise the Church forcibly up to an ascetic standard. On the other hand, she honored the volun tary virgines and permitted them to come more and more into the general view of the faithful. Individual ascetics here and there, it is true, with a proud over-confidence in their own moral strength, vied with one another at establishing a record in ex treme penitential practices. These, however, were again and again frowned upon by responsible Church authorities.
Two letters to the virgines, that were not written by Pope Clement (f after 96) as was supposed by some, but belong to the first decades of the third century, give us clearly to un derstand that the saner ascetic constituted an organic stage in a gradual transition to the later monasticism. Their way of life was a perfect following of Christ. It meant a life of mortifica tion and an outstanding pursuit of virtue. In their lives there still seemed to be operative those marvelous charisms of the primitive Church, just as they occasionally appeared again in the lives of certain monks. They still lived in the bosom of their families but apparently kept in touch with one another. More-
over, they distinguished themselves by a constant readiness for martyrdom. We must here pass over many a glorious account of their pure lives left us by the Church Fathers of the period.
It should suffice at this point to adduce merely the testimony of a pagan physician, Galenus by name, who died shortly before the year 200. He writes: "These Christians really put into practice things which they (the philosophers) considered essen tial to a philosophic life. We can see plainly that they despise death . . . There are among them women as well as men who all their lives long abstain from all commerce with the opposite sex; indeed, there exist among them such as have so far ad vanced on the way of self-conquest and discipline of soul and in the extraordinary effort to attain a high degree of moral worth that they are not a whit behind the true philosophers."*
What the pagan referred to as a "philosophic life" meant in the minds of the early Christians a putting into practice the counsels and example of the Savior.
Origen.—There was one Church Father who supplied a great amount of the impetus towards the monasticism that was soon to come, namely, Origen of Alexandria (f 254), in his time the most influential and prominent theologian of the Oriental
Church. According to the church historian Eusebius (f 339), Origen took the counsels of the Lord with intense earnestness and followed his example to the letter. He lived as a celibate, in the most extreme poverty, in a kind of austere self-denial, and, while he lived, yearned constantly and ardently for martyr dom. His manner of life was the inspiration for a numerous band of disciples (Church History VI).
Origen was not the first formulator of the monastic ideal.
He sought, however, to ferret out and make his own those ele ments of truth that were undoubtedly to be found in the ideals of virtue as advanced by the Greek Jew, Philo of Alexandria, and as could be found also in the contemporary philosophies of * (It may help beginners to grasp the full force of this passage if they bear in mind that among the old pagans, particularly the Greeks, philosophy meant not merely a science or a system of thought but also a way of life, and they pledged them selves to live in conformity with it. - - The translator.)
neo-Platonism, neo-Pythagoreanism, Stoicism, Cynicism, and Gnosticism. Of course, he strove at the same time to bring these elements of truth home, so to speak, and to incorporate them into the traditional ideal. His endeavor was to set up a Christian pattern of perfection that would not only be scripturally correct but would also appeal to the sympathies of cultured and pious pagans as something worth adopting and striving for.
Though his terms and references were drawn largely from the philosophies of the period, nevertheless the matter of his teach ing was grounded essentially on the counsels and example of the Lord as the Gospels had delivered them.
There was already from this time on talk in the Church of the "ascetics," that is, those who "practiced," those
"in training"—of "practice," of "training," of apatheia, that is, freedom from all human passions as the height of perfection.
These Christian ascetics called themselves the "philosophers," and their ascetic wisdom, actually a biblical wisdom, a "philos ophy." When the monks later on termed themselves "philos ophers" and their way of life a "philosophy," they were but following the example of these ascetics. They liked to clothe their biblical thoughts and the Royal Road of the Cross and the following of Christ in the terms and language of Greek philoso phy. This was especially true of monks like Gregory of Nyssa
(+ 394) and Evagrius Ponticus (f 399), who were enthusiastic disciples of Origen.
The way, that is, the ascent of the soul to God, to union with God, and to the contemplation of God was an accomplish ment to be attained by stages or degrees. This schema of Origen's, of ascent to God by stages or degrees, became the common possession of later monachism (cf. chap, vii, Excursus
III). The idea of the twelve degrees of humility that the monk had to scale in order to attain to the "love of God," that is, to monastic perfection, takes us right back to Origen. It is im material whether St. Benedict was aware of the association or not (chap. vii). The aim or purpose of ascetic exercises was to free the soul from its bondage to the material world, to its pas sions, and to its sins. As such, asceticism was a constant, inexor-
able battle against human passions and against demons. And the battle's arena was within the soul itself. Asceticism was an in dispensable requirement for that interior mystic ascent to God and therefore for perfection.
Humility was the strong bulwark of the ascetic. For his ascent to the heights was accompanied by temptations, set backs, and defeats, but also by blessed afflictions, consolations, and bestowal of graces. Origen's ascetic did not as yet flee from his home or his association with fellow Christians in the world.
Only in his special pursuit of virtue did his separation from the world consist (LV horn., xi, 1). He was the humble servant of his Christian brethren and dedicated himself with loving devo tion to the task as their spiritual teacher, physician, and shep herd. In this ideal of the spiritual teacher, which Origen held up to the Christian view and put into practice in his own life, we can clearly recognize the essential features of the Abba, that is, the spiritual father which the Holy Rule subsequently took for granted from the start (cf. chap, ii, Excursus I). The prototype of this spiritual father was in the mind of Origen, as it was for a later monachism, the person of our Lord Jesus
Christ. The Holy Rule is indebted^ to that renowned Church Father in many ways, as for example, in its stand on asceticism and its high conception of the spiritual teacher. Origen was actually a monk in the proper sense of the term before the advent of monasticism as such. All that was wanting to him in this respect was a topical flight from the world, which, as we have seen, he had for years definitely renounced.*
Eastern Monasticism.—'We do not know who was actually the first to put into practice that topical flight from the world. We do not know when or where it took place. Nor do we know who the first hermit or monk really was.
Near the year 300, indeed, already some years before the close of the century, monasticism was an established fact.
Numerous ascetics lived apart from all human habitations, some * (The foregoing fine and sympathetic description of the character and life of Origen leads one to think, and in all probability rightly so, that modern research and thought have softened considerably the long accepted estimate of this great teacher, and that for the better. - - The translator.)
of them just outside but apart from some village; others in ex cavated tombs, in the ruins of temples, on the sides of a moun tain, or in the wilderness. It was not long before the desert wastes became their favorite refuge. These sites offered the world-fleeing monk the best assurance that he would not have to put up with any close contacts with the world. They also afforded him a better opportunity to test his virtue in his strug gle with the devil and his own passions. Mere residence in the desert, however, did not constitute the essential element in the monk's calling.
Egypt thus became in the course of the fourth century the classical land of the monks. Famous above all others as a resort or refuge for them was the wilderness between the Nile and the Red Sea, a waterless and inhospitable range of hills; next, a plains area west of the Lower Nile: namely, the Nitrian and Scetian wastes; and finally, in the southermost part of Egypt on both sides of the Nile, the great desert called the Thebaid.
The Egyptians, or Copts, like the Celts or Irish of a much later period, showed themselves especially adaptable or susceptible to monastic ideas. It was not long after the year 300 that num erous monks could be seen also in Palestine, the land of biblical history, in Syria, in Mesopotamia, and in Asia Minor.
The Great Antony.—Antony the Great (f 396), so-called, was not the first hermit or monk, but he was by far the most illus trious. Perhaps he was the first to go into the desert. At least his friend and biographer, St. Athanasius, thought so (Life, iii & xl). It was he who gave us a description of his life and mir acles, his wise instructions, his struggles with demons, and his glorious death. In his story of St. Antony, Athanasius paints for us an ideal picture of the hermit and monk as the Church would have him be and as Antony also brought him to living reality. Step by step or degree—here one can perceive the in fluence of Origen—he watches Antony's ascent to the heights of spiritual perfection: flight from the world, conflict with the world and human concupiscence, austere asceticism, and attain ment of the parrhesia. This signifies friendship with God, an intimate walking with God, the power to work miracles, and arrival at the final goal, union with God. The various degrees
of Antony's development of soul, or ascent to God, correspond ed with his wanderings from place to place: first, from the company of men to the outskirts of a village, then, successively to a burial cave, into the wilderness, and finally to the hilly solitude of Kolzim, a spot east of the Nile and about 25 miles from the Red Sea.
Antony, it seems, had to pass through these various out er and inner stages before he could arrive at perfection. Athan asius places him before us as the glorious victor over the devil in the varied fields of his Satanic activity—in the desert, against heathendom, and against heresy. He was the ideal Christian and man of God, who, by virtue of the Incarnation and Re demption of the Son of God, had been restored in a sense to his condition of original justice, to immortality, and to sonship with the Father. Not without reason did his biographer stress the fact that Antony, despite his 105 annual cycles, really never wasted away with the years. "His eyes, even at that age, were still healthy, and he could see well. Of his teeth, not one of them had fallen out . . . His hands and feet were those of a man in the best of health; in fact, he appeared to the ordinary observer brighter and stronger than many a one accustomed to a varied diet, baths, and changes of clothing" (Life, chap, xciii).
Antony, the monk, was the most cogent argument for the truth of the Athanasian doctrine concerning our Lord and his re demption of man, which he had summed up in a sentence: "God became man in order that man might become as God." The entrancing picture which the great bishop of Alexandria paint ed of Antony had previously found ample corroboration in the so-called "Sayings of the Fathers" (Verba Seniorum). These had dwelt upon the struggling ascetic and tireless fighter, who had to contend constantly against the wiles of the evil spirit.
However, the picture which Athanasius gave the world of his day took first place among the others in the years that followed
(cf. chap, viii, Excursus I).
St. Antony, as a matter of fact, became for the older monasticism a sort of yardstick for judging the character of a true monk. The Holy Rule undoubtedly had him in mind first of all when it pointed so frequently to the example of the
"Fathers" and recommended for reading the story of their lives (Vitae Patrum) (cf. RSB, chaps, xviii & xliii). It was often asked in that age: "Might a monk see the Fathers?" The answer was: "He might see them, but he would not see Antony among them." To the question: "Where is Abbot Antony?"
The answer invariably was: "In the place where God is, there is Antony." The dying Desert Father Sisoes in a vision saw first of all St. Antony, then the choir of prophets, then that of the Apostles, and then the angels. Whatever else may be said of him, he was surely the outstanding figure among the great ones of monasticism. "In the inaccessible fastness of the moun tainside on which he lives, he rules as the mystic king of all the monks who dwell in the Scetis and elsewhere over the length and breadth of Egypt" (Karl Heussi). Numberless maxims and anecdotes are associated with his name.
The hermits.—It must be said first of all that we have fairly re liable accounts of these hermits, or fathers of the desert. There are, for example, their occasional mercilessly austere asceticism and bodily castigations, their fervor at prayer, their zeal for perfection, the wisdom of their maxims, their terrific struggles with demons and their own passions, their hospitality, their simplicity, their interior detachment and maturity, their occa sional tremendous visions of God, their cultivation of the under standing heart, and their miraculous powers. We also have an extensive collection of the "Sayings of the Fathers" (Verba Seniorum), short maxims and anecdotes, which, like candid photo graphic snapshots, give us a satisfactory insight into the routine of their days. The name of the compiler of this collection, which takes us back into the earliest periods of Egyptian monachism, is unknown to us. In addition to the great Antony, there pass before us in alphabetical sequence all the great heroes of mortification and sanctity. There are, for example, Arsenius, a former high-ranking Roman official, proficient in every phase of Greek and Latin culture, as also Agatho, Pambo, Poimen,
Macarius, and Sisoes, to mention by name only an illustrious few. Nor must we neglect to mention in passing the Amma
(r Mother) Synkletica.* * (This was apparently a collection of the doings and sayings of the female hermits,
It can readily be understood that the lives and virtues of the Egyptian monks, not overlooking, of course, their asceti cism and numerous miracles, exerted an extraordinary attrac tion. The "mighty wind" of the Pentecostal spirit could again be distinctly heard. And the Savior himself, through the per vasive and persuasive power of his counsels and example, was granting his Church a "Second Spring." The elite of the human family soon declared itself in favor of the new ideal. Many high-minded men and women traveled to Egypt and Palestine in order to view in these districts the theory of monastic life in practice, to study it in its own habitat, and even to put it into practice in their own lives. Naturally, there were also many curious people and sensation mongers among those who hurried there. It became almost a fashion to see for oneself the lives of the desert monks. There soon came into being a body of literature, some of it in the form of romantic travelogues, which lauded and glorified the heroes of asceticism.
Among the more trustworthy of such writers was Rufinus of Aquileia, who, about the year 400 wrote his Historia Monachorum (History of the Monks), which tells of the adventures of seven monks, who traveled through Egypt about the years
394-395, to visit and interview the most famous of the Desert Fathers. It was no pleasure excursion. The desert wastes, the saltpeter marshes, wild animals, hostile tribes, overflowings of the Nile, and crocodiles more than once exposed the travelers to the danger of losing their lives. But a word from the hospit able monks whom they were seeking was enough to make them forget the perils of travel. They visited also the monastic settle ment of Oxyrhynchos on the Upper Nile, where dwelt allegedly some 10,000 monks and 20,000 nuns, a veritable monastic eden. The Monastic settlers attended divine services in as many as twelve churches. The spirit of Christian piety and char ity so thoroughly pervaded the soul of the commune that the provost—a sort of municipal officer—directed his assistants to post a guard before the walls in order to keep a lookout for needy travelers and lead them to the town hall to receive needof whom there were thousands in Egypt and elsewhere - - in particular of their ammas, that is, their spiritual mothers or abbesses. - - The translator.)
ed alms. (chap, v.) In painting his picture, the writer had undoubtedly dip ped his brush in gold. But it cannot be denied that there exist ed localities in Egypt, where the custom of grouping monaster ies or cells of hermits in towns and settlements was not an un usual occurence. Besides the work of Rufinus, there should be adduced "The lives of the Holy Fathers" (Historia Lausiaca) compiled by Bishop Palladius about the year 420. Similar in content was a "History of the Monks" (Die Monchsgeschichte) by Bishop Theodoret of Cyrus (+ 460), who singled out the monks of Syria for special praise. Alongside many an edifying and wonder provoking history, there must have crept into this type of literature a lot of questionable material, especially des criptions of contests that certain monks had to put up with in preserving their chastity against the perversive artfulness of the evil spirits. Yet the Holy Rule nevertheless seems to regard the hermit as the perfect monk (chap. i).
The Cenobites.—lt was not long, however, before the extreme dangers that menaced the eremites became apparent to thought ful souls. Many of the hermits who had fled to the desert simply had not matured to the grandeur and austerity of the task they had undertaken. Not a few of those who had begun the life with the best of good will, fervor, and enthusiasm later on became spiritual and physical wrecks. And small wonder! The wild desert wastes, lack of proper nourishment, real or fancied demons, robbers, interior desolation, listlessness, tedium
(acedia), dark anxieties, disgust, sickness of soul, and incipient despair, added to a poverty of interior recollection as well as a want of adequate experience and a need for intelligent direc tion, were just too much for them. All this proved that the hermit's ideal was attainable by only the very few. At this juncture, there came to the rescue of the imperiled state of monachism that highly talented and illustrious organizer St. Pachomius.
St. Pachomius.—Pachomius, or Pakhome,* as he was known among the Copts, like St. Antony a Copt by birth, and for some time a Roman soldier, was the real and acknowledged founder
*(Cf Stephanus Hilpisch, Benediktinisches Monchtum, 1929, p. 35).
of the monastic common life. As the Holy Rule takes for grant ed, Pachomius was the creator of the cloister. It was he who actually built the first monastery, erected the first cloister wall, and established the first clausura (enclosure). In this way he led the imperiled hermits out of the wilderness into the privacy and safety of the cloister, the koinobion, the cenobitic life. It was this form of monastic life rather than the hermit's cell that was to find its future home and greatest following in the West.
But to resume, Pachomius organized prayer in the same manner as he did manual labor. If, on the one hand, he left the kind and severity of penitential practices almost wholly to the choice of the individual, he did not, on the other hand, curtail as a rule the pensum of practices which each one set for himself.
His organization had one principal aim or purpose: to "attract souls," to save souls, and to safeguard the salvation of souls. It was the first system to afford individuals the possibility of de voting themselves without anxiety to asceticism, prayer, and contemplation. The dangers which threatened the hermit in the desert were definitely eliminated.
It would be entirely beside the point to regard Pakhome's monastery as a kind of military camp, a mere workshop, or factory. Undoubtedly there was a kind of discipline there that reminds one of the military. And yet there prevailed over all a spirit of wise and benevolent moderation. The surpassing significance, the excelling service that Pachomius rendered to monasticism, was that he founded the cloister, a religious life in common, which all the later monastic planners, St. Benedict included, knowingly or unknowingly, merely built upon or elaborated. As around the person of the great Antony, so also about that of Pachomius an astounding wealth of written tradi tion was built up, and that in many languages, among others
Coptic, Greek, Syrian, Latin, and Arabic. A most striking evidence of the historical significance of his powerful person ality!
Saint Basil.—If the hermit Antony is to be regarded as the model monk of early monasticism and Pachomius its organizer, then surely Basil of Caesarea in Cappadocia (f 379) must be looked upon as its theologian. Unlike any other monastic Father before
or after him, he built the cloister community solidly upon a theological foundation. In his conception, the monastery is an exhibit or projection of the Church of Christ in miniature. In fact, the monastic community is the body of Christ informed and animated by the Holy Spirit. Not only pressing bodily and spiritual needs call for the common life, but the new law of brotherly love demand it as well. The ideal of complete and true Christian perfection can be attained only in the community.
For only in the community can there be realized that spirit of sacrificial service of humble and self-effacing fraternal affection which our Lord demands, and which he demonstrated at the washing of feet. Only in the community is true interior progress possible. Only the community can have the plenitude of the Holy Spirit and of his Pentecostal gifts. In the monastic com munity each member enjoys his own gifts of the Spirit and at the same time shares in those of his brethren (The Longer Rules,
#7). The Holy Rule, again, takes this conception of the mo nastic community for granted. It can hardly be wondered at that St. Benedict speaks expressly of "the rule of our Holy
Father Basil" (chap, lxxiii).
It would in truth hardly be correct to say that Basil re jected offhand the monastic ideal of the hermits. He did, how ever, most emphatically show his preference for the dignity of the common life as against that of the hermit's existence, attain able indeed with so much difficulty but fraught with so many perils. His friend and like-minded follower, St. Gregory of Nazianzen, said in his eulogy on the great bishop and monastic
Father: "Since the eremitical life and the common life are as a rule contrasting ideas, neither one nor the other all light or all shadow, and though the former brings with it more peace and quiet and binds the soul more closely to God but fosters dark ness and poses no tests to virtue, while the latter is more effici ent and active, though not without severe trials, Basil bound the two together, setting up the one, so to speak, as a foil to the other. He did, indeed, establish both hermitages and settlements of hermits (lauras), neither one very far from some monastic community (cloister), and did not separate them one from the other as it were by a wall, but brought them together in a kind
of close relationship, in such wise that the (purely) contempla tive life would not be devoid of all human contacts, while the strictly cenobitic would be kept in touch with the contemplative.
It might be compared to a kind of land and water distribution, each contributing to the good of the other and both working to gether for the glory of God" (Sermon xliii, 62).
The Lauras.—Between the austere type of eremitical life as con ceived and lived by St. Antony, and the cenobitic life as Pachomius, Augustine, Basil, and Benedict embodied it in their foundations, there flourished in the East, particularly in Pales tine, the so-called laura, literally, a street, a defile, or enclosure.
By the term is to be understood a coterie of disciples or a colony of hermits, all grouped around the cell of a well known abbot or desert Father, in a kind of loose association under his spiri tual guidance. From the lauras there undoubtedly could and did develop a cenobitic establishment. There was the celebrat ed "Great Laura," or "Old Laura," which was under the direc tion of Abbot Sabas (f 532). It was in this laura that there lived for a time the monk Cyril of Scythopolis (f 558), to whom we are indebted for valuable biographies of some of the great monks of Palestine.
The organic progression of an oriental monk was rough ly as follows. He began his religious life in the elementary or beginning school of the monastery. By far the largest number of monks would never graduate, so to speak, from these schools or ever leave them. It was to this form or manner of religious life that Sts. Pachomius, Augustine, Basil, and Benedict devoted practically all their energies (cf. RSB, chap. i). For this class of monks they wrote their rules. One who aspired to a higher degree of perfection did at times leave the precincts of the cloister and migrate to a laura, a milder form of the eremitical life. It was hoped that the highest peak of perfection could eventually be reached by a radical adherence to this manner of living. There was never any fundamental doubt in the East as to the primacy of the eremitical way. Both forms of monasticism, eremitism and cenobitism, existed side by side in a friend ly relationship, though occasional rivalry was not lacking. The cenobites lived under an "archimandrite" (that is, first of the
fold), whom the monks elected, more exactly, whom they set up and presented to the Patriarch of Jerusalem for final ap proval. At least that was the procedure in Palestine. The "second in command," a sort of vicar of the "first," was simi larly chosen. The hermits dwellers in the lauras lived under a superior who was chosen in like manner.
Latin Monachism.—The East was the home base of monasticism.
From there it migrated to the West. The Occident needed first to take it over and then adapt it to its own peculiar religious attitudes and conditions of life. In contrast with the Orient,
Latin Monachism was not adopted with such resistless ardor, nor did it at all spread so rapidly. However, the exile of St.
Athanasius of Alexandria, who, on account of his uncompro mising opposition to the Arian heresy, was banished from Egypt and sojourned for a time, first at Treves (335) and later at Rome (340), without much doubt contributed greatly to its propagation in the West. By the year 370, the biography which he wrote of St. Antony and dedicated to his name had been translated into Latin. It exerted a profound influence every where. Even St. Augustine during his sojourn in Milan was captivated by it. In the eighth book of his "Confessions" he wrote: "There took place a conversation about the Egyptian monk Antony, whose name at that time was held in high honor, but who up to that hour had remained unknown to us. As soon as Ponticianus—a countryman of Augustine's—remarked this, he dwelt longer upon the subject and made us better acquainted with the story of this man, marveling at the same time very much at our ignorance. We, on the other hand, wondered also as we listened to the well authenticated miracles that had taken place so short a time since, practically in our own days"—St.
Antony died in 356, Augustine being born in 354—"and that within the true faith, in the very bosom of the Catholic Church.
After this he went on to the great number of monasteries, to the pursuit of virtue on the part of the monks, in their ways all so redolent of Thee, and to the spiritually fertile deserts, all of which we knew nothing. There was actually then a monastery in Milan, outside the city walls, which was full of worthy breth ren, and we knew nothing at all of it" (Confessions VIII, vi).
According to the testimony of St. Jerome, dating from the year 412, there was also a monastery in the city of Rome that follow ed the rule of St. Pachomius (Letters cxxvii, 5).
Saint Martin of Tours.—The first great monastic pioneer of the West was unquestionably St. Martin of Tours (f 397). His monasticism was of the Coptic variety, a combination of eremitism and cenobitism. St. Martin did not write a rule for his monks. His powerful personality, however, contributed con siderably to the spread of occidental monasticism. His life and miracles were made illustrious, first through his friend Sulpicius
Severus (f c. 420), later by St. Gregory of Tours (f 594), and lastly by Venantius Fortunatus (f c. 600). Today numerous monasteries flourish under his patronage. St. Benedict himself led the way by dedicating a chapel in his honor at the summit of Montecassino.
Saint Augustine.—The second illustrious patriarch, together with St. Benedict deservedly entitled a Father of Western monasti cism, was the great Augustine (f 430), Bishop of Hippo in North
Africa. He had come to know of monasticism in Milan and Rome and had introduced it into Latin North Africa. But what ever Augustine's monachism may have had in common with the of the aforetime as well as with that of the Holy Rule, it still bore the peculiar stamp of his own personality. As with Sts.
Pachomius, Basil, and Benedict, the central aim of his concep tion of monastic life was to reproduce a perfect copy of the Church of Christ. Through all Augustine's monastic thinking, there ran like a golden thread that axiom of Christian charity, as he himself expressed it: "Let there radiate over everything the love which is eternal" (Rule, viii). We shall deal with the rule of St. Augustine in another connection. Let it suffice here merely to add a word or two concerning the significant role of St. Augustine in Western monachism and its meaning for re ligious life in general.
Had it not been for the animating influence of the Afri can Church Father upon the monachism of the West, it would not have developed as it did. The gradual emergence, whether mediate or immediate through Cassiodorus and the great Greg ory, of the priest monk, the pastoral monk, and the monk of
culture and learning, harks back to the influence of Augustine.
It was he who preserved Western monachism from the peril of Pelagianism, that overweening confidence in merely personal effort and achievement.
Unfortunately, the invasion of the Vandals into North Africa and the resultant persecution of the Arian Kings, Geiserich (f 477), Hunnerich (f 484), and Thrasanund (f 523), in flicted severe and crippling wounds upon the Augustinian mon asteries in that region. Yet only with the advent of Islam did the African Church and the African monasteries come to a violent end. But already close upon the heels of the Vandal persecutions, the monastic ideas of St. Augustine had been car ried over into Italy, France, Spain, and Portugal. Thus as early as the year 440, a monastery was founded at Naples, where the spirit of Augustinian monachism flourished for many years. In a monastery near Naples (after 500), there lived
Abbot Eugippus, a true disciple of Augustine. Before that there had come to the throne of Peter Pope Gelasius (f496), an African and a warm admirer of the bishop of Hippo. The popes of the succeeding reigns all manifested a sympathetic reverence for the great "teacher on grace." Thus Gregory the Great (f 604) wrote to an African who had asked him for a copy of his commentary on Job: "Read the writings of your countryman, the blessed Augustine, and after you have partaken of his unadulterated wheaten flour, you will no longer hanker after Our branny meal" (Letter x, 16). It has been said of Gregory's teaching that it was a reflection of Augustine's doc trines. The African bishop, Fulgentius of Ruspe (f 533), was an enthusiastic disciple of the bishop of Hippo. He founded monasteries both in Africa and Sardinia. Augustinian mon achism was to be met with also in France as early as the first half of the sixth century. The Rule for Monks and the "Rule for Nuns" of St. Caesarius of Arles (t 542), contemporary of St. Benedict, are permeated with Augustinian ideas. Later
Gallic rules also show the influence of Augustine. In the rule of Bishop Donatus of Besancon (f 650), we meet with Augus tine and at times with Caesarius of Arles, Benedict, and Co-
lumban (f 615). Around the year 570, Spain had monasteries that had been founded by monks driven out of Africa. Shortly after that Portugal, too, had her monasteries.
In the eleventh century, the rule of St. Augustine set out anew upon a truly triumphant march when it was adopted by the choir canons. At the height of the Middle ages, besides the Augustinian choir canons and Recollects, the Premonstratensians, Dominicans, military orders and numerous other re ligious bodies affiliated themselves with Augustine's rule. In the course of the centuries, more than 100 religious groups or congregations have adopted it.
Abbot John Cassian.—The Holy Rule recommends with insistent emphasis the "Conferences of the Fathers" and the "Institutes for Monasteries" of Abbot John Cassian, who had received his first religious training around the year 385 in a monastery at Bethlehem, came to know Eastern monasticism through a ten-year sojourn with the monks in Eygpt. In the two works mentioned, he embodied the monastic wisdom of the Egyptians and further enriched them with what he had learned during a two-year association with a former monk of Antioch, Bishop
St. John Chrysostom, subsequently Archbishop of Constantin ople. He had been elevated the deaconship by Chrysostom in the year 403. Later researches have brought to light that Cas sian had also garnered material from a few rather questionable sources. In the year 404, he was ordained to the priesthood at Rome and while there he championed the cause of his former patron, then an exile from his see, before Pope Innocent. He then founded at Marseilles about the year 415 first a monastery for men and then one for women. His death took place some time between the years 430 and 435. In the years 419 and 426, there appeared the twelve books on the "Institutes for Monas teries and the Eight Remedies against the Eight Capital Vices."
Books I to IV treat of the rules and customs that prevailed in the monasteries of Egypt and Palestine, among others, the cloth ing of the monks, their practices as to prayer and the recitation of the psalms, and the conditions for the reception of novices.
Books V to XII deal with the eight vices which the monks had
to combat and the means at their disposal for doing so success fully. The 24 "Conferences of the Fathers," most probably fictionalized interviews with the most prominent Egyptian her mits, appeared after the year 420.
It was through these works that Abbot Cassian became mentor to St. Benedict. The ascetic wisdom of Benedict is to a very great extent that of John Cassian, even though Benedict hardly used much of Cassian's learned ascetic terminology.
Over against Cassian's towering edifice of monastic asceticism, in which there can easily be recognized distinct structural ele ments drawn from Origen and from the monk mystic Evagrius
Ponticus (f 399), St. Benedict set up the plain, grandly simple, and humbly artless "Rule for Beginners" (RSB, chap, lxxiii).
From the somewhat confusing plethora of Oriental ideas and subtle distinctions, the Patriarch of Montecassino culls with marvelous assurance and objectivity what he thought to be cru cial and genuine and set it down tersely and plainly in his Rule.
As with St. Benedict, so with Cassian, in whose mind the hermit was the true monk while the cenobite was but a beginner in an elementary institute, a faith-inspired fear of God is the source of a vocation to the monastic state. Out of this fear there springs renunciation, the renunciation of everything that is not supernatural (cf. Conferences iii, 6). But his re nunciation of externals is not enough; it must be perfected in one's heart and soul. For renunciation means a dying, a pain ful dying, a daily dying. But it means also a returning to God, a returning to Christ. The monk now becomes a "serf to Christ," to whom he belongs unreservedly and before everything else. A longing for Jesus and a love for Jesus takes possession of him. He is a soldier of Christ and battles unceasingly against the demons and the eight capital vices that would separate him from Christ (Institutes V—XII). Renunciation in practice is thus a literal following in the "way of the cross." It manifests itself especially through voluntary poverty, humility, obedience, and patience. Christ is ever present to the monk as his glorious ideal. And like St. Benedict, Cassian is an illustrious protag onist of the contention that Christ is the starting point, the mid-
way station, and the final objective of all monasticism. Every effort of the monk is oriented towards the love of God. This love is at one and the same time a gift of God and the fruit of the monk's wearisome asceticism. Asceticism it is that renders the heart pure, that is, the agency that purges it of its sins and passions, the lamp out of which bursts the flame of divine love.
Out of the pure and God-loving heart come genuine prayer, constant meditation, and a zealous preoccupation with the divine (cf. Institutes V--XII).
Ceaseless, also, must be the reading and study of the Scriptures, which is to provide the soul with the materials for meditation. Although constant contemplation of the loftiest things seems to be the special achievement of the hermit, the cenobite can arrive at it also at times, but only if he succeeds in keeping his heart pure. It is entirely an accepted truism that the genuine monk keeps his eye hopefully fixed upon the future bliss of heaven and yearns for it ardently. His good fortune consists in this that God dwells in him, that Christ is his life, and that the Holy Spirit is his guest. In the consciousness and realization of this, he cheerfully accepts and willingly takes upon himself all the hardships of the monastic state. So much for Cassian. His significance for St. Benedict can hardly be over stressed.
The Island Cloister of Lerins.—In an effort to determine as ex actly as possible the historical position or place of the Holy
Rule within the compass of Western monasticism, the question has lately been raised as to whether the island cloister of Lerins, near Nice, just off the southern coast of France, was not the immediate background and the actual school from which St.
Benedict drew his monastic ideas. It is not so much a question as to whether the founder of Montecassino derived the individ ual ascetic, liturgical, and disciplinary prescriptions of his Rule from Lerins, but rather a question as to whether the monastic and ascetic attitude of the Holy Rule, as it is brought out in the prologue and in the seventh chapter, does not hark back to the monastery at Lerins. Is St. Benedict to be identified with the monastic tradition which is inseparably associated with the
names of Lerins and Cassian? The monks of that monastery were presumably the most zealous adherents of the abbot of Marseilles. It was to Honoratus, their abbot, and to Eucherius, one of their confreres, that he dedicated the second part of his
''Conferences" (xi, xxiv). Cassian s friend, Eucherius, later worked out a digest or compendium of the Conferences, pos sibly also of the Institutes, which have since been lost (cf.
Gennadius, Catalog. #63). He thereby made the abstruse Cassian more palatable to the average monk's taste, so that a reading of the difficult originals was no longer so imperative.
There is also the question whether Cassian, the theorist, did not likewise "live" his ideas, that is, see them put into actual practice at Lerins.
In some unaccountable way, the "Rule of the Lerins Cloister," which Caesarius of Arles mentions in his "Rule for Nuns" (chap. Ixvi), has not come down to us. Does it survive wholly or partially in some of the other rules for monks?
During the entire course of the fifth century and even during the time of St. Benedict, the island cloister of Lerins was not only the most illustrious "Island of Monks" along the Mediterranean littoral, but it was also the most flourishing cen ter of monastic observance in the West. Founded by Abbot
Honoratus about the year 410, it soon outshone the monasteries of St. Martin of Tours as well as those of the abbot of Marseil les. Lerins truly became "a warm hearth of lofty spiritual en deavor" (M. Rothenhausler), a veritable "Isle of Saints."
Whereas bishops had formerly been drawn preferably from amongst the disciples of St. Martin, they were now chosen from amidst the monks of Lerins.
Above every other distinguishing characteristic, the mo nastic school at Lerins stood out for its tenacious adherence to the traditional monastic doctrine on grace. During the entire course of the fifth century, this teaching on grace still held an honored position alongside the more progressive, and in critical comparison with that of Lerins, the more theologically pure doctrine of St. Augustine. Its spokesman and chief champion at Lerins was Abbot Faustus (f c. 500). With the beginning
of the sixth century, however, this doctrine had to recede more and more before the Augustinian teaching and finally to give way before it completely. From the beginning, the Church at Rome granted its warmest adherence to the "Teacher on Grace" from Hippo, without, however, either fully accepting all the dif ficulties of his doctrine or condemning outright that of the Lerins scholars.
According to the older monastic teaching on grace, which Augustine also professed up until the year 395, the de cisive role in the performance of good works at their beginning was taken by man's free will (i.e., his nature), however, weak and insufficient that beginning might be, while divine grace actually brought the works to completion. As far as their ex cellence, dignity, power, and efficacy were concerned, grace was the deciding factor. But in point of the priority in their operation, the natural free will came first, in other words, the will began the work but grace completed or perfected it.
It would be entirely abortive here to contend that early monachism misunderstood the decisive significance of grace.
Rufinus of Aquileia, in his "History of the Monks," speaks of Abbot John as distinguished between two kinds of boasting and in this connection as saying: "The second kind of braggadocio consists in this that someone, for example, who had arrived at a high degree in the practice of virtue, should ascribe every thing to his own work and efforts and not to God" (chap. i).
Valerian (jafter 450), formerly a monk at Lerins, says in his eleventh homily: "It were downright presumptuous on the part of a soldier to take all the credit for a victory to gain which the general himself had taken part in the battle. If you only will, you can readily acknowledge to whom the evil is to be imputed and to whom the good is to be credited . . . The good we must ascribe to God, and the evil to the human will; for just as the good takes place under the providence of God, so the evil is per petrated under the fatherhood of the devil." Valerian, how ever, still shows himself loyal to the doctrine of Lerins, since he adds shortly afterwards: "Our task is to will the good;
Christ's work is to complete it ... You can see, also, that the
will to do good must go before, while the fulfillment rests in the power of God."
It would be more misleading to assume beforehand, or a priori, the mediate or immediate influence of St. Augustine in everything in which there is a question of grace. The earnest desire of the early monks was to stress the absolute need of trying to be good, the great necessity of monastic training or asceticism, and everyone's personal responsibility in the search for eternal salvation. In this earnest desire, their monachism stood solidly upon the ground occupied by the Gospels, which urge the Christian ceaselessly towards a life of virtue and threat en with eternal anathema any denial of its necessity. And as their monachism adhered fast to its awareness of the absolute need for divine assistance, its consciousness of any doctrinal error was not at first affected. In any event, the teaching on grace as manifested in the day by day monastic observances seemed to be correct and to suffice. Just as the Holy Rule, so likewise did Lerins profess to devote itself to a manfully virile, conscientiously responsible, and consistently energetic piety, which ventured to place a high estimate upon moral knowledge and ability, without, however, leaving the need for divine help out of consideration.
The weak, or tainted, spot in this doctrine on grace as applied to the observance of daily monastic practices lay pre cisely in this, that it was not able satisfactorily to solve, that is theologically, the closer interrelation between grace and nature.
It seems to have contented itself with a sort of extrinsic synergismus, that is, a mere cooperation between nature and grace.
This, of course, to a more deeply thoughtful mind must have appeared superficial and unsatisfactory. It was at this point that Augustine's critical inquiry logically fitted in. Herein, also, consisted his "advance," which was in reality but a return to the complete and undiminished New Testament revelation. Aug ustine attributed also every beginning of a meritoriously good work to the operation of divine grace. His teaching was, and is, more conformable to the New Testament conception and to sound theological thinking on grace than that of Lerins. Con-
sequently, it soon commanded the adherence of all future thought on the subject. It also took precedence at the Council of Orange in France in 529. Caesarius of Arles, himself a former monk at Lerins and an enthusiastic son of Rome as well as a follower of Augustine, presided at the meeting and presumably led the discussions; and the Church at Rome im mediately confirmed the decrees of the synod (cf. chap, vii,
Excursus III). It would not be right, however, offhand to brand the monks of Lerins as heretics on account of their im perfect doctrine on grace. The Council of Orange itself, doubt less out of a charitable consideration for the venerable monastic tradition of Lerins, to which Caesarius himself had belonged, did not essay to "call any names."
The question as to whether Lerins was the direct or im mediate background of the Holy Rule is a purely academic one and is still waiting for a solution. Likewise still unsolved is the question, often mooted today, whether the socalled Rule of the Master (RM) is to be credited to the same fruitful origin. Up to the present time this full-bodied, thought-provoking, and nameless rule for monks has been regarded as a sort of exten sion or commentary on the Rule of St. Benedict (RB). It was then thought to have originated no farther back that the eighth century. On the other hand, there is a serious discussion in progress today as to whether this Rule of the Master was not the principal source from which St. Benedict drew his material.
Both rules agree practically word for word in their prologues and in chapters i to vii. Also the outline or plan of develop ment in both rules is by far the same (cf. RB, chaps. 1 to lxvi).
And both rules seem to follow the same doctrine on grace. In this year of our Lord (1952), the controversy is still in full swing. The passages in the prologue and in chapter vii which appear to point to Lerins are given in the footnotes or com ments.
It has become the fashion since the 16th century to characterize the south-Gallican, more exactly the Lerins teach ing on grace, as "semi-Pelagianism." This is to brand it with the mark of heresy at the outset. We have already disposed
of this reproach against Lerins. And we have also pointed out the specific defect in its teaching on grace. On the other hand,
St. Augustine did not succeed in making his own doctrine, which the monks of Lerins thought to be an innovation, so convinc ingly clear as to preclude all contradiction. It is known that his teaching occasioned great confusion in his own African mon asteries as, for example, at Hadrumentum. Some of the monks believed the grace of God to be so overpowering that alongside it a free act of the will was impossible. And, of course, where a free act of the will is not possible, any attempted move to wards moral conduct or true asceticism is out of the question.
Thus a monk could properly deny a superior's right to correct him by pointing, namely, to the all-powerful effect of grace; for under its operation, the task would necessarily be brought to proper completion. And where grace is lacking, a man must of necessity fail. Augustine's doctrine, of course, was not defin itively declared or clarified because of any opposition on the part of the Gallican monks. Nor did Lerins without any good reason at all oppose the doctrine of the "Teacher on Grace" from Hippo. Neither would it redound to the dishonor of St.
Benedict were further learned research into the island cloister of Lerins discover and recognize his monastic "school for be ginners" in that venerable place.
EXTRINSIC HISTORY OF THE HOLY RULE
We must now turn to the Holy Rule itself. Of course, there are a few observations to be made about the place and time of its composition, the peculiar character of its style and language, the original manuscript or autograph, the form of its text, its commentaries and translations, as well as its lay-out and build-up. Its basic sources have been mentioned, but it may also be of advantage to point out a few authors and writ ings, of which there are in the Rule certain traces or indications.
Finally, a word or two concerning the spread of the Holy Rule and of Benedictine monasticism in general should close the sec tion.
Time and place of its Composition.—Si. Gregory says nothing
about where and when the Rule was written. According to the traditional acceptance of the matter, this took place hardly any where else but at Montecassino; and in the form in which we have it today, it is generally placed sometime during the last years of St. Benedict's life. The years between the years 529 and 534 are arbitrary. Our Holy Patriarch rightly character ized his code of monastic laws as a "Rule" or as "The Holy
Rule."
Its Language.—The language of the Holy Rule is not that of the classical authors, nor even of the Latin Church Fathers, an overwhelming majority of whom still manifested a leaning to wards beauty of style and form. And yet the Latin of the Rule is not without some art, and by no means barbarous or uncouth.
It was the Latin which the cultured men of the time used in their conversations with one another, not, however, the language as it appeared in the rich phraseology of their contemporary literature. St. Benedict's language shows undeniable excel lences, which must not, however, be overdrawn. From its form and construction, we may gather that a deterioration of Latin into the various later Romance tongues had already begun.
Ideal editions of the Holy Rule must let that factual relation be tween the two become clearly apparent. In this respect avail able editions of the Rule have completely lost contact with its original language, because their editors have tended to com pare the gramme r and orthography of its text with those of the classical tongue.
The Original Manuscript.—There does exist at the present time a prevalent view as to the original exemplar of the Holy Rule.
It was first advanced by the distinguished Munich philologist, L udwig Traube (f 1907), and was based upon the statements of two Cassinese monks, Paul Warnefried (-f 799) and Leo of Ostia
(f 1115), as also upon a few still extant Carolingian documents.
This view is substantially as follows:
St. Benedict's own manuscript, or autograph, of the Rule was brought to Rome by the monks who had fled thither in the year
577, after the destruction of their abbey. They found refuge in the recently established monastery of the Lateran. There
for the time being the manuscript was stored away. It is not known why or when it was transferred to the papal archives.
About the year 750 Pope Zacharias returned it to the monks who had gone back to the restored abbey at Montecassino. (This seems to have been under the leadership of Abbot Petronax).
When, however, the mountain abbey was again threatened by the Saracens in the year 883, the precious document was trans ported for safekeeping to the cloister at Teano, situated between Montecassino and Capua, where, according to the testimony of Leo of Ostia, it fell prey to the flames of a disastrous fire in the year 896 (Chronicle I, xliv-ff).
At the express wish of Charlemagne, however, the em peror on the occasion of his Italian campaign of the year 787, had visited Montecassino and without doubt had there been shown the manuscript in question, a faithful copy was made of it, and this ectype was brought back to him for his court library at Aix-la-Chapelle. It was apparently as an authentic for this copy that Paul Warnefried, on the order of Abbot Theodemar
(f 797), wrote an accompanying letter. In the mind of Charl emagne, the Aix copy was to serve as a pattern for a monastic reform, which St. Benedict of Aniane (f 821) later on carried through. This ectype, too, eventually disappeared and was not heard of again. However, we do have a copy of it, exact as to letter and syllable, made by two monks of Reichenau, Grimalt and Tatto, at the request of Regimbert, their librarian. These two monks had been sent to Inda near Aix by Abbot Heito, in order to be indoctrinated and trained in the monastic reform instituted in that model cloister. Their precious manuscript arrived at Reichenau in the late summer of 817, and when in the year 841 the monk Grimalt became abbot of St. Gall, he took it with him. Obviously, no one at Reichenau had taken any special interest in the document, and it reposes today as Codex 914 in the endowed library of St. Gall. It is regarded at the present time as a sort of link with the pure and unadult erated holograph of St. Benedict, but only through the Aix-laChapelle ectype.
Nevertheless, serious questions underlie all the docu-
ments upon which L. Traube based his opinions. The same may be said of the statements made by the two Cassinese monks,
Paul Warnefried and Leo of Ostia. It would be utterly impos sible to check back on their reports anent the early history of Montecassino, in as far as they relate events subsequent to those mentioned by St. Gregory the Great (cf. Dialog. XI, xvii).
Deep and total darkness hovers over the early history of that venerable mother abbey. Likewise, there does not seem to be any organic link or continuity between the foundation of St.
Benedict and the restoration by Abbot Petronax. Whatever direct succession there was rests entirely upon the first reports of the aforementioned Cassinese historians and chroniclers.
Similarly, the Carolingian documents, which also play a role in the reputed history of Codex 914, are for weighty reasons open to considerable doubt.
The Text of the Rule.—According to the present generally ac cepted opinion of L. Traube, which rests upon the discovery of numerous manuscripts, the text of the Holy Rule lies before us in a twofold form: in the authentic version as it is presented to us in Codex 914 of St. Gall and in the deformed and corrupted subsequent versions. In the latter versions again we are con fronted with a text which was either unwittingly changed and corrupted through the inattention or carelessness of the copy ists or knowingly and intentionally changed, or "improved," in older to make it more conformable to classical standards in grammar and orthography. An earlier opinion held, mistakenly so, that St. Benedict himself was the author of the two text versions: that the corrupted version was a sort of "first edition" and that the "pure" text constituted a final and definitive pres entation of the Rule. According to L. Traube and H. Plenkers, an opinion generally accepted at the present time, the alleged first draft of the Rule was in reality a corruption of the genuine text.
Besides the aforementioned Codex 914 of St. Gall, there are the following valuable manuscripts, which also lay claim to be genuine, pure, and authentic texts of the Holy Rule: the Codex Vindobonensis 2232 (of Vienna), which dates from some-
time before 850; the Codex Monacensis 28118 (of Munich), also dating from before 850; the Codex Monacensis 19408 (of Munich), sometime in the 9th century; and a few manuscripts preserved at Montecassino. The socalled "Rule of the Master," which we have spoken of before, likewise claims to be a genuine text.
As to the corrupted texts: the oldest, alleged to have been written before 700, but actually dating only from the 12th or 13th century, is the Codex Oxoniensis (of Oxford), Hatton
48; also the following valuable manuscripts: the Codex Veronensis LII (of Verona), from about the year 800, and the Codex
Sangallensis 916 (of St. Gall), after the year 800. With a claim to the same category is the Rule for Nuns (about 650) of Bish op Donatus of Besancon, which is a composite of the rules of St. Benedict, St. Columban, and St. Caesarius of Arles.
As the oldest commentators of the Rule, like Paul Warnefried (f 799) and Hildemar of Civate near Milan (c. 850) testify, a rather diversified mixed text had come into general use in the monasteries of the Order. And it remained in gen eral use until the appearance of the new critical text editions, and this is still to some extent the case at the present time.
Only in recent years has any effective concern been shown for the work of a really critical and philological investigation into the Holy Rule. "The undeniable honor of being the first to bring adequate philological equipment, that is, manuscripts and knowledge, to bear upon a critical revision of the Rule be longs to the Bavarian Congregation" (S. Brechter). Spurred on by the genial Abbot Daniel Haneberg of St. Boniface in Munich, the Rev. Edmund Schmidt, a monk of the Abbey of Metten, published the first critical edition of the Rule. It was
Schmidt's work that "inaugurated the subsequent research into the Rule and finally set in motion the quest for the original man uscript" (S. Brechter). Up to that time the labors of the Mun ich philologist Ludwig Traube, whose researches were contin ued by his pupil, Heribert Plenkers, had really blazed the trail and pointed to the ultimate goal. Of course, as already inti mated, the basic and most weighty results of Traube's research-
es have lately been questioned and controverted. To these be long first of all his views on the famous Codex 914 of St. Gall, to which he attributed the most prominent role, a prominence which it still holds today. Plenker's announced edition of the Rule never came out, and Traube's theses will really bear re newed analysis.
At the present time, the critico-practical text edition of the learned English abbot, Cuthbert Butler, is the one most commonly used (3rd Ed., 1935). In the year 1922, the Rev.
Benno Linderbauer, a Benedictine of Metten, published a philo logical text and commentary of the Rule. His text appeared in the Florilegium Patristicum (Vol. XVII) of the year 1928. The Belgian Benedictine, Philibert Schmitz of Maredsous, better known through his voluminous (7 vol.) "History of the Bene dictine Order," in 1946 issued the text of the Codex 914 of St.
Gall. Despite all these publications, there is still need for a really ideal edition, which will give as nearly as possible the original text of St. Benedict's manuscript, with all its linguistic, grammatical, and orthographical peculiarities.
Commentaries and Translations.—The first commentary on the Holy Rule was written by the Longobard, Paul Warnefried (f
799), a monk of Montecassino. Other commentators worthy of mention here are: Abbot Smaragdus of St. Michael near Verdun
(c. 820), the monk Hildebrand of Civate on Lake Como (c.
850), Abbot Bernard of Montecassino (f 1282), the Dominican Cardinal Torquemada (f 1468), Abbot John Tritheim (f 1516), and Archbishop Perez of Tarragona (f 1637). Commentaries of a more scholarly character were produced by Hugo Menard
(c. 1638), Prior Haeften of Afflighem in Belgium, a monk of St. Maur (j1648), P. Martene (f 1739), Augustine Calmet, abbot of St. Maur (f 1757), and abbot Paul Delatte of Solesmes
(f 1937). More recent commentaries worthy of mention are those of the Benedictine Cardinal Schuster of Milan (f ),
Abbot Ildephonse Herwegen of Maria Laach (f 1946), and of the Cassines monk, Anselm Lentini.
With the exception of the Holy Scriptures, no other book has been handed down to us in so many manuscripts as the Holy
Rule. Likewise, with the exception of the Bible, hardly any other work is available to us in so many translations.*
Internal Lay-out of the Rule.—From the many efforts to arrive at an explanation of the internal arrangement of the Holy Rule, we shall give preference to those which prudently and therefore modestly break it up into as few sections as possible. One who tries to divide it into too many parts must seem to do unneces sary violence to the Rule itself. "For just as the build-up of the Rule and the sequence of its chapters clearly show, the composition did not evolve according to a logically systematic plan, but developed gradually as the occasional demands and experiences of daily living dictated, and thus grew to its pres ent-day compass and proportions. It represents the codifica tion of statutes and customs, whose practical usefulness was be ing observed over the years, then only put down in writing piece by piece and combined into a unified whole. It was thus that St. Benedict's Rule came into being, and so still shows traces of its development" (H. Edmunds). We accordingly present the following lay-out:
The Prologue I The Composition of the Rule (Under Extrinsic History) II The Pursuit of monastic Virtue III External (liturgical) Worship of God
IV Discipline of the Cloister V Administration VI Recruiting of the Brotherhood Supplementary Epilogue Sources of the Rule.—The question as to the well-springs of the Holy Rule has entered an entirely new phase today. If up to this time the Rule has been regarded as an indivisible work, or as the result of one outpouring, the latest researches would have it disclose seams and ridges that permeate the entire fabric.
They would establish sections of the text and phases of evolu- * (Since no mention is here made of specific translations, it may be presumed that as often as the aforesaid commentaries were written in the vernacular rather than in Latin, they were also accompanied by translations of the Rule in the same lan guage. - - The translator)
tion that should prove its gradual development. One speaks of a "first edition," which comes to a close with chapter lxvi, and of a "second edition," the form which it has at present.
That the whole arrangement or grouping of the chapters was not the personal work of St. Benedict but was taken over from other ordinances is a possibility that cannot be denied. No such adoption from other rules, however, has been definitely proved.
The question whether and in how far the so-called "Rule of the Master" was or was not the main source of the Holy Rule has still not been entirely cleared up or disposed of.
It must strike even a casual observer how freely and how aptly the Holy Scriptures, in particular the psalms, have been quoted from (cf. Prologue and chapters ii to vii). The word of God has been introduced not merely by way of orna mentation, but is of the very warp and woof of the text. Next to the Bible should be mentioned the Latin Church Fathers, to whose works quite a few literal passages can be traced: Cyprian of Carthage (f 258), Hilary of Poitiers (f 367), Ambrose of Milan (f 397), Jerome (f420), Augustine (f 430), Leo the Great (f 461), and Rufinus-Origen (f 410). The very first sen tence of the prologue recalls to mind the famous letter on asceti cism (letter xxii), written by St. Jerome to the noble Roman vir gin and nun Eustochium. Among all the authors from whose writings the Holy Rule drew its material, by far the most prom inent was the southern Gallic abbot, John Cassian (f c. 430). He was, as we have pointed out before, the preceptor, so to speak, of St. Benedict (cf. chaps, xliii & lxxii). Throughout the Rule, also, we come upon echoes and literal borrowings from the pat riarchal sayings and biographies of the ancient monks. Not a few of these must have circulated like the proverbial "winged words" among the old hermits. Surely, the Patriarch of Montecassino was acquainted with the older monastic rules in as far as they were available to him in Latin translations. We shall deal later on with the most important of such monastic ordin ances when we come to speak of the peculiarities of St. J3enedict's Rule. The best review of the literal sources of the Holy
Rule, if hardly an exhaustive one, is accessible to the student in
Abbot Cuthbert Butler's "critico-practical" edition of its text.
St. Benedict indeed possessed considerable, though hard ly an extraordinary, acquaintance with the writings of the Latin
Church Fathers. The Greek Fathers he knew, of course, only through their Latin translations, which, however, were available to him in sufficient number. But we must in truth deny that St. Benedict understood Greek. Nor did he have an extensive knowledge or appreciation of the profane writers. The Holy
Rule does not warrant our drawing any conclusions about the studies of the youthful Benedict during his sojourn in Rome.
(Beyond the cryptic phrase scienter nescius et sapienter indoctus) St. Gregory, too, is silent concerning his secular education.
However, should further learned research bring to light new sources from which the Holy Rule garnered so much wis dom, St. Benedict will nevertheless remain its general or man aging editor, the originator of the artifact; and this will always be true, even though he himself obviously wished to remain hidden in the background and personally placed little value upon a reputation for creative achievement.
Further Phases of the Rule's History.—Owing to the want of re liable data, as we have already intimated, an admittedly impen etrable darkness hovers over the early period of Benedictine history. In the second book of the "Dialogues," St. Gregory, again, is silent concerning the further fortunes of the Holy Rule.
It would be next to impossible to check back over the largely legendary accounts of the later Cassinese chroniclers, the first of whom was Paul Warnefricd (f 799), living as he did practic ally more than 200 years after Gregory wrote. It is also quite possible that St. Benedict's autograph of the Rule disappeared simultaneously with the destruction of Montccassino by the Longobards* in the year 577. It would likewise be no easy matter to map out in detail the paths along which the Holy Rule traveled on its journey into the future. Its surpassing excellence,
* (The author's term "Longobards" (longbeards) has been retained throughout, since the Longobards of the 6th, 7th, and 8th centuries were a thoroughly Tuctonic tribe, and though later converted and settled in the north of Italy, are not to be identified with the Lombards of today. Paul Warnefricd, the chronicler, was probably one of the first of his people to become a Benedictine. - - The translator)
the high ecclesiastical approbation placed upon it by Gregory (Dialogues II, xxxvi), and, finally, its enthusiastic promotion by the greatest authorities in both Church and state warranted its irresistible, even if slow spread and propagation in the West.
We may assume, naturally of course, that in the begin ning the Rule of St. Benedict was being observed alongside and together with other monastic ordinances. This simultaneous observance of more than one rule in the same cloister was a usual procedure common to the period both before and after the year 600. St. Gregory of Tours (f 594), in his "History of the Franks" (x, 29), relates of Abbot Aredius (j591): that "he founded a monastery in which were being followed not only the rule of Cassian but also those of Basil and other patriarchs who had laid down regulation for the religious life." Obvious ly, Gregory of Tours was not yet cognizant of the Rule of St.
Benedict.
The first of such mixed rules known to us, which ex pressly made use of the rules of Sts. Cassian, Columban, and Benedict, was the already mentioned "Rule for Nuns" by Bishop
Donatus of Besancon (c. 650). Caesarius in his rule made use of the rule of St. Augustine and the rule of the Lerins cloister.
His second successor in the see of Arles introduced the "Rule for Nuns" into his own monastery. It is remarkable how pro lific in monastic rules was the land of the future French, then known as Gaul.
The Holy Rule in England.—According to the present generally accepted opinion, the missionaries whom Pope Gregory sent to England in 597 brought the Rule of St. Benedict, of course, along with other rules, to the Anglo-Saxons. It is not easy, how ever, to supply historical evidence for this assumption. Al though monastic life, in its Irish-Celtic form, already existed in England when the Latin Rule arrived from Italy, the latter bloomed rapidly alongside it, and gradually, though rather slow ly, the Rule of the Cassinese patriarch became dominant. Yet it is noticeably strange how seldom the Venerable Bede (f 735) makes any reference to St. Benedict.
In the German Lands.—From England the Holy Rule came to
the Teuton nations through the monks who evangelized the Germanies. The Abbey of Fulda was founded by St. Boniface in the year 744, subsequently becoming an important monastic center in middle Germany. Soon after the arrival of Boniface, the already existent monasteries of Bavaria and Austria also adopted the Rule of St. Benedict. The abbey of Tegernsee (c.
756) remained for some centuries one of the most famous of the Bavarian monasteries. In the year 777, through the gener osity of Duke Tassilo, the Austrian abbey of Kremsmunster was founded. East of the Rhine the oldest Benedictine Monastery is reputed to be that of Reichenau on Lake Constance. Accord ing to a common but not too well grounded assumption, its founder, St. Pirmin (c. 724), was already a Benedictine. This clo ister became in the course of time one of the most illustrious centers of monastic life in southwest Germany. In the year 747, under Abbot Othmar, the abbey of St. Gall in Switzerland adopt ed the Rule of St. Benedict. It was after this manner that the ord inances of the Patriarch of Montecassino gradually replaced those of the Celtic Abbot Columban.
In the land of Gaul.—Besides England and Germany, France showed herself particularly susceptible to the monastic idea.
Up to the present time the monastery of Altaripa in southwest France has had the name of being the oldest abbey to follow the Rule of the Italian abbot exclusively, that is, without the admixture of any other. However, the document upon which all accounts are based is for various reasons open to serious question. Although there were in Gaul from the year 600 on some 20 rules in actual practice, around the year 700 the Rule of St. Benedict was incontestably in greater use than all others, even more so than that of St. Columban. Luxeuil in Burgundy and Bobbio in Italy, in the years 629 and 643 respectively, add ed St. Benedict's Rule to that of their founder. During the following decades, the immoderately severe ordinances of Col umban were everywhere supplanted by the Holy Rule.
In the Land of Italy.—It was only after the Longobards, known in the vernacular of the time as the "Longbeards," had become reconciled to the Church of Rome, that monasticism could be-
gin to flourish again in Italy. From the year 577 to the year 717, Montecassiono lay in ruins. Abbot Petronax of Brescia first came to reawaken monastic life on St. Benedict's mountain.
But it was reserved to the Anglo-Saxon Willibald, who so journed at Montecassino from 729 to 739 to reintroduce there the observance of the Holy Rule. About this time, too, the two famous abbeys of Farfa in the Sabine Hills (c. 705), and St. Vincent in Volturno in lower Italy were already practically in full vigor. The restored abbey of Montecassino likewise rap idly grew to a wonderfully flourishing condition. Up to the present hour this monastic establishment has been the ideal center of all the abbeys that follow the Rule of St. Benedict.
It is well known what an important part the Emperor Charlemagne (f 814), particularly his successor, Louis the Pious
(f 840), as well as many of the landed nobles and bishops play ed in the spread of the Holy Rule in the West. But it was due, mainly if not entirely, to that energetic apostle of monastic re form, Abbot Benedict of Aniane (f 821), supported, of course, by Charlemagne and Louis, that the Holy Rule eventually and for a time reigned alone. Only since the time of Benedict of Aniane can one in strict sense speak of "Benedictines" or of Benedictine Monasticism.
Other Phases of Benedictine Monasticism.--In its long history Benedictine monasticism has gone through a continuing series of flowering and reflowering. It reached its first if brief flour ishing period at the time of the Carolingians. The fruits of this first blooming were the abbeys of Reichenau and St. Gall in the Allemagne and Swabian regions, Fulda in Hesse, Prum in Lor raine, Corbei in Saxony, Tegernsee and Niederalteich in Bavaria, and Kremsmunster in Austria. But the really illustrious period of Benedictine monasticism began in the middle of the tenth century, perdured without a break through the whole of the eleventh century, and extended far into the twelfth. It is as sociated especially with the names of Cluny in Burgundy (after 910), of Gorze in Lorraine, of Einsiedeln in the Allemagne, and of Hirsau in the Black Forest. It grew shortly to splendid mag nificence in England, France, Germany, and Italy, establishing
and building up the mighty monastic culture of the early Middle Ages. Everywhere could be seen feudal abbeys with their mas sive churches, monastic strongholds (Gottesburgen),--^-g., Alpirsbach and Maria Laach—and their powerful landed estates, worked and managed mostly by serfs.
Nevertheless, with all this glory signs of decay began to appear. With the letter of the Rule practically gone, its spirit also soon went by the board. The monasteries began to admit members of the nobility almost exclusively. The ideal of un conditional obedience laid down in the Rule was distorted into an attitude of mere Teutonic loyalty. The monks more and more affected to look down with contempt upon manual labor without ever taking any steps to fit themselves for any other spiritual occupation in its stead. The manner of life of both monks and abbots grew ever more luxurious, and the spirit of the world in many ways began to invade the cloister. Of course, this deterioration could not go on indefinitely. Indeed, in the eleventh century, especially in parts of Italy, attempts were be ing made to get back to the letter of the Rule or even to a severe type of oriental monasticism. After this manner there originated the reforms of Camaldoli and Vallumbrosa. Cluny, whose matchless influence had been felt in almost every corner of the Western world, had to put up silently with the severest reproaches from the reform of Citeaux, whose vociferous spokesman was its abbot, St. Bernard (f 1153). Undoubtedly, it was this initial opposition of the reform of Citeaux to the general Benedictine laxity that gave real impetus to the rise of a separate order within the monastic family of St. Benedict.
Likewise, the fact that the monastic orders had practi cally abandoned or neglected the care of souls among the lower classes of society gave rise to other new orders, v.g., the Premonstratensians, who adopted for their order the rule of St.
Augustine. The mendicant orders of St. Francis and St. Domi nic in the High Middle Ages crowded Benedictine activities still farther out of the general picture. Of course, there were still numerous abbeys that continued to maintain a high stand ard of monastic discipline, but without any visible cooperation
or united efforts among them, their activities remained largely unnoticed. However, after about the year 1450 the order ex perienced a period of wonderful rejuvenation and intensification of its monastic life through the abbey of Bursfeld in the Duchy and Free State of Brunswick. The religious revolt of Martin
Luther also drew many of the decadent monasteries together.
Moreover, the Council of Trent brought monasticism a second spring. The monasteries united themselves into various con gregations, among which should be mentioned the Unions of the Swiss and the Swabian. Then came the French Congrega tion of St. Maur, which, after the year 1618, brought Benedictinism out again into the open view of the Christian world. The members of this congregation gained for themselves an enviable reputation and outstanding merit by their publication of most of the Church Fathers. From these monks of the St. Maur
Congregation must have stemmed the proud name of Benedic tine learning and diligence.
The magnificent baroque abbeys of Weingarten, Neresheim, Zwiefalten, Ochsenhausen, Ettal, Melk, Gottweig, Kremsmunster, Einsiedeln, Engelberg, etc., today still point to the visible if outward splendor of the 18th century. However, the dissolution of the monasteries under Napoleon in the year 1803 inflicted a lethal blow upon German monasticism. Then in Bavaria new life was breathed into it at the abbeys of Scheyem and Metten. With these two and a few other restored founda tions, the Bavarian Congregation, which had been established in 1684 under Pope Innocent XI, was revived in 1858 by Pope
Pius IX. Next, the Wolter brothers in the year 1863 founded the Beuronese Congregation. After that Prosper Gueranger in France provided a new home for Benedictinism. From Ba varia and Switzerland (since then also from England, France,
Spain, Italy, and Hungary) the Order has come to North, South, and Central America. In Bavaria, also, the German missionary congregation of St. Ottilia has waxed into a splendid and robust tree. Indeed, there is hardly a Christian or part-Christian land in the world today (1963) where the Holy Rule is not observed.
The Order of St. Benedict at the present time numbers 16 con-
gregations. At its head is the Abbot Primate, who has his head quarters at the international Benedictine house of studies at San Anselmo in Rome.
The Holy Rule experienced its first traceable historical development in the feudal Germanic-Romance abbeys at the time of the Carolingians as well as during the following periods.
It was this age that gave the letter of the Rule its direction in meaning and introduced essential changes. And this first splen did evolution of the Order must indeed have brought it about that the following centuries even up to our own day could see in an abbey of St. Benedict, at least outwardly, something rep resentative, imposing, illustrious, aristocratic, a center of culture, education, learning, and cultivation of the liturgy. But one who understands the spirit of the Rule as well as its letter knows, too, that all this development was not in the mind of St. Bene dict nor of the least concern to him. His idea was—and in this he stood solidly on the same ground as an earlier monasticism— flight from the world and with its spirit and a restoration in miniature of the perfect Church of Christ within his own small world of the cloister.
THE UNIQUE CHARACTER OF THE HOLY RULE
The hermit who can regulate his life, that is, decide what he wants to do and what he wants to omit accordingly as he himself thinks best, needs no rule. Sufficient for him is a brief quotation from the inspired word of God, or, as the need sug gests, a maxim from one or other of the Desert Fathers. A cenobitic establishment, on the other hand, must have a rule that will regulate the life, prayer, and work of the cloister, as well as the conduct of its individual members. It is not essentian to a rule that it be committed to writing. It could, per se, as well remain unwritten and consist in the faithful practice of a series of oral traditions. However, in keeping with the lessons of experience, it obviously is best for a living and working ordi nance that it be set down in the form of a written code.
The oldest known rule for monks, as has been intimated, has come down to us under the name of St. Pachomius (346).
If in its present-day form it could not possibly be the work of the great patriarch, in its gist and basic ideas it does hark back to the founder of the cenobitic life. Composed originally in Coptic, the Egyptian language of the time, it was soon translated into Greek and about the year 404 into Latin by St. Jerome.
It was a fortunate pass for St. Pachomius that among his first followers there were a number of Greeks, who spoke and wrote in their mother tongue. We are indebted to these monks for the fact that his rule and ordinances became known beyond their narrow Coptic environment and passed out into Greek and Ro man Christendom. With its 192 provisions, the rule is not an organic whole like of St. Benedict, but rather a motley collection of precepts for particular cases and situations, although it al ready reveals certain monastic principles and groups of ideas
(v.g., what kind of man the superior ought to be). It really advanced a sort of monastic code in primitive form, which has no actual similarity to the Holy Rule. On the other hand, it cannot be sufficiently impressed upon our thinking that it was
Pachomius who laid out the ground plan of the cloister and of the cenobitic life, and that a great number of the individual prescriptions of his rule have become our common monastic heritage. The Holy Rule itself rings with echoes from Packhome's rule, without, however, granting it sepcific mention.
The "Rule of our Holy Father Basil" has, as we have said been expressly mentioned by St. Benedict (chap, lxxiii). St.
Basil (t 379) had collected the greater part of the monastic wisdom of his age in two rules, "The Longer Rules" and the "Shorter Rules." The Longer Rules, which consist of 55 more or less sizeable sections, are really digests of instructions that had been given the monks on the basic principles of monastic life. The Shorter Rules consist of a motley collection of 313 short questions and answers concerning the life of a monk. Rufinus of Aquileia (f 410) fused the two rules into one and translated the product into Latin. It was in this Latin form that St. Benedict made use of it. The Greek versions of St. Basil's rules are up to the present time still the monastic code of the Greek, Slav, and other oriental monasteries, the inmates of
which German authors refer to as the "Basilians" (Basilianer).
Jn its Latin version it was looked upon with high regard in the West, particularly in Gaul, where, for example, St. Gregory of Tours (f 594) still mentions it in his Historia Francorum ("His tory of the Franks" ). But neither the Greek form nor the Latin version can be regarded as a real code of monastic laws.
Whence it is understandable why in the West the Latin form of the Basilian rules was in time everywhere supplanted by the Rule of St. Benedict.
There were also various smaller rules that came out of the East and available to St. Benedict in Latin translations.
Among them should be mentioned the rule of St. Antony, the rule of Abbot Isais, the rules of Sts. Serapion, Macarius, Paphnutius and the other Macarius, the rule of the Fathers, the In structions of Horsiesi, and others. All of them, however, are but collections of maxims, short bits of instruction, or ascetic counsels, offering but fragmentary prescriptions for the mon astic life. They can hardly lay claim to the title of "rules."
The oldest Latin rule, which was written more than a hundred years before St. Benedict wrote his Rule, has St.
Augustine for its author (f 430). It consists of two parts.
The first part St. Augustine wrote about the year 389, while he was still a layman at Tagaste; the second part was written after he had become a priest at Hippo. The whole rule appeared in complete form around the year 395. An opinion that has been current up to our day that St. Augustine wrote only a rule for nuns has now been proved erroneous. His so-called "Rule for Nuns," as well as his reputed letter #211, which was a sort of preamble to that rule, originated in Spain only in the seventh century, and probably had St. Fructuosus, Archbishop of Braga, for their author. The fact that the Augustinian rule made its way independently and spread freely alongside the Holy Rule was understandably due to the unequaled esteem in which the great Doctor was held in the West, as well as the excellence of the rule itself. Iudeed, after the High Middle Ages, as the Holy
Rule retreated into the background, the rule of St. Augustine scored a real triumph. In the closing days of Christian antiq-
uity, it was Caesarius of Arles (-f542) and Pope Gregory the Great (f 604), themselves former monks, who impregnated
Western monachism with the ideas of St. Augustine. Granted that the Holy Rule had been composed independently of any im mediate inspiration from that monastic patriarch, later Bene dictines could hardly withdraw themselves from the salutary in fluence of the African Church Father, nor would they by any means wish to do so. By itself, however, apart from his other writings and judged purely on its own merits, the rule of the African patriarch cannot at all compare with the Holy Rule.
However great the esteem in which they were held, the writings of Abbot Cassian, so frequently mentioned, from which a "Rule of Cassian" was soon compiled, do not enter into the question as a rule for monks. The rules of Caesarius and Aurelian of Arles, of which we have spoken before, and the other Gallic rules were ever more and more crowded out of the picture by the Rule of St. Benedict. The so-called "Rule of the Master" (M agister regel), so much under discussion at the pres ent time, despite its wealth and depth of ideas, remained largely unknown and could not supersede or prevail against the shorter and more objective Rule of the Cassinese Patriarch.
Summing it all up, it can be said that of all the monastic ordinances of Christian antiquity St. Benedict's Rule for Monks, by reason of its clarity, artless objectivity, and comprehensive provisions, is immeasurably the superior. It can be regarded as the product of more than 250 years of monastic evolution and experience. St. Benedict stood, as it were, at the close of Christian antiquity and collected the monastic wisdom of the East together with the practices and customs of the West, save those of Africa, and combined them into the one model code of the Rule. The question whether and in how far he was active creatively in all this is one of minor importance. As a matter of fact, there was nothing new to be created. The East present ed the West with the concept of the cloister and of community life. To borrow a metaphor, the pieces of the mosaic had been prepared and lay ready to hand. St. Benedict but fitted them into a whole picture, though the island cloister of Lerins could
have supplied him with a wealth of ideas.
Basically, we should be on our guard against speaking all too readily of the "new things" St. Benedict is supposed to have introduced into monasticism. Innovations were farthest from his mind. He was so thoroughly grounded in the ecclesiastico-monastic tradition that the Holy Rule must first and pri marily be explained in the light of that tradition, and wants to be so explained. The canons of that tradition, so difficult for us moderns to understand, must exclude the probability of any immediate profane, that is, secular influence on the Rule's com position. How sensitively the monks of the period reacted to any innovations can be surmised from a booklet by the priestmonk Vincent of Lerins (f before 450), entitled Merkbuchlein
(Memorandum), in which he attempts to refute the doctrine of Augustine on grace as contrary to the prevailing teaching in line with the aforenamed tradition. The Holy Rule stands un compromisingly under the law of that sacred tradition (cf. chaps, xviii and xlviii).
Thus it is unlikely, to begin with, that the Rule was in fluenced essentially and directly by the idea of the Roman fam ily, of the Roman paterfamilias, of the contemporary vocation al guilds, of the Roman military oath, or of the Roman law.
Benedict, the Roman, was not the organizer of early monasti cism but Pakhome, the Copt. The idea of the Roman influence should not be too strongly stressed, whether in the personality of St. Benedict as we know it from the second book of the "Dialogues" or from the Holy Rule itself. That the Rule has the matter-of-fact attitude of the Latin West and leans more towards the concretely practical is known and admitted. And its "juridical imprint" is hardly an essential trait. The Rule is by no means a law book in the strict sense of the term, in other words, a systematic compilation of monastic community laws in somewhat the same sense as those which the Emperor
Justinian had ordered compiled in his Corpus Juris shortly be fore or after the year 530, namely, the "Institutes" (4 books), the "Digests" (50 books), and the "Codex" (12 books). St.
Benedict, for example, speaks of the abbot in the beginning of
his Rule (chap, ii) only to take up the same theme again at the end of it (chap. lxiv). If we sometimes speak of the Holy Rule as a law book, we do so because, more than any of the other early monastic ordinances, it seeks to regulate life in the clois ter in a comprehensive if not in a systematic way.
Nor must we strive to characterize the Rule as a defin itive work. In the centruies following its composition, St. Bene dict's ordinances were amended and perfected in many an im portant detail. The Augustine conception of the priest-monk and of the clerical monastery also affected and gradually transform ed St. Benedict's monasteries, which, originally and in the think ing of their founder, were to be peopled mainly by lay-monks.
In fact, during the course of the ninth century the clerical trans formation of the Benedictine houses was essentially complete.
Moreover, St. Augustine's idea of a clerical monastic apostolate, which he felt the priest-monk owed as a debt to Holy Church, in time also transformed the monks of St. Benedict—to whom the thought of any considerable missionary activity was a wholly strange concept—into outstanding missionaries and spiritual shepherds.
On the other hand, St. Pakhome's plan of a federation of monasteries, an idea which St. Benedict did not envision but rather precluded, has turned out to be practical and operative also in our days. The individual cells which Pachomius pro vided for his monks from the start were basically not in St. Ben edict's mind. But which Benedictine monk would want to dispense with his cell in this day and age? Pachomius, Basil, and Augustine certainly permitted the personality of the individ ual to come more to the fore than did Benedict. Moreover, the idea of a "second," that is, of a prior whom Pachomius actually looked upon as a "first," namely, a sort of vicegerent of the abbot at a separate house, and this clearly contrary to the pro vision in chapter lxv of the Holy Rule, also gradually came into use.
Let us not try to envision, either openly or secretly, a kind of world-enjoying, worldly frank, world-experienced, and culture-loving humanism in the possible content of the Holy
Rule. One may not picture the Patriarch of Montecassino as a "humanist." St. Benedict was undeviatingly oriented in the direction of Christ, of everlasting life, and of the heavenly fatherland, that nothing of an earthly character apart from these in terests had any attraction for him. That he was no humanist can be surmised from the fact that he tolerated the analphabetoi, that is, illiterates, in his cloister, and—in notable contrast to Pachomius—makes no provision in his Rule for eliminating much illiteracy there (cf. chap, lviii). The artisan who conceived vain notions of his importance to the community in virtue of his craft was to be removed peremptorily from his occupation (cf. lvii). One must be careful, too, not to derive from the Holy
Rule any inherent or express justification for the modern abbey's penchant for culture or trend towards more commerce with the outside world. It does not concern itself with worldly posses sions or with the care of them for their own sake. Its solici tude, its only concern, is how to help the monk fulfill the prom ises made at his profession and how to exemplify in practice the Church of Christ.
It would be a useless task, then, even from motives of love or zeal for souls, to water down the Rule's ineluctable con sistency. The perfect fulfillment of the promises made at his profession implies flight from the world, submission, and a dying in order to live to Christ. In the light of this considera tion, everything earthly loses all intrinsic value, and in that point of view St. Benedict was wholly in accord with the old monachism. He was no "humanist" like St. Jerome or like his contemporary, Cassiodorus, who would have had monks train ed in all learning and culture. And had the sons of St. Bene dict adhered to the letter of the Rule, had they not adopted the example of Cassiodorus, and had they remained laymen, who knows whether their abbeys would later have attained their sur passing cultural significance? Against the old pagan cult of the Ego, their holy founder set up the renunciation of self. This was the main and ultimate objective of the old monachism: to stress the extreme littleness of the human personality in God's eyes and to dethrone it from the central eminence it had always
held in the estimation of the ancient world. That is also the ultimate purpose of the Rule's seventh chapter. On the other hand, self-annihilation was not its aim but a perfect and unre served oblation of self to the Most High. Earthly possessions have no value except in so far as they subserve this end.
It is incorrect, therefore, to credit the Holy Rule with medieval, humanistic, baroque, or modern ideas. It were equal ly bootless to read into it later forms of piety or to derive such forms from it. In saying this we do not mean to give voice to a disapproval of the modern abbey. Our concern is merely to point out the limitations of the Rule as such and its condition ality upon the age in which it was composed. What the Church today approves of or gives her consent to needs no sanction from the Holy Rule. She stands under all circumstances and in all ages above both Rule and Patriarch.
Organically, the Rule grew out of the old monachism as a blossom buds forth from its plant. This close relationship be tween St. Benedict and the monachism that preceded him can not be stressed too strongly or brought out too emphatically.
Through that relationship the Holy Rule is a bond uniting the West to the East. True, it always openly maintains its simple matter-of-fact form; that it ever modestly and humbly devotes its attention to cenobitism, the "school for beginners," and not to anchoritism, the choice of the "perfect ones"; in that it keeps constantly before our eyes the way to contemplation rather than contemplation itself; and that it would have us for the time being concentrate our energies upon the ground plans and foun dations of the edifice of monastic virtue rather than upon its completion and final dedication. The sons of St. Benedict, be cause of the Rule, will do well to keep that bond between the East and the West ever in their thoughts when there is talk of the eventual reunion of the twain.* * (Could one not possibly see in the biblical story of Esau and Jacob a prefigure or parallel of what was to happen centuries later to the history of the primitive
Church? As the twin brothers at their birth were delivered closely together, the second-born holding in his hand the foot of his brother, so the Eastern and West ern Churches were born in the same throes that racked the mystical body of Christ. And as to the younger twin went the inheritance and the scepter of Juda, so to the Western Church went the inviolable deposit of eternal truth, as well as
The Holy Rule, then, ties Christian antiquity td' the Germanic-Romance Middle Ages as well as to the twentieth cen tury. In that Rule, St. Benedict transmits his monastic wis dom, born of the monachism of the East and tested in the monacfr-ism of the West, down to our modern times. His most valuable legacy to the future world was the coenobium, or the abbey. ''It represents the concrete working out through the Rule of his* ideas on the religious life in common. Essentially rooted in Christian antiquity, St. Benedict's abbeys march serenely for ward down the centuries, almost timeless, though truly serving the times into the very present. The abbey is not comparable to any of the numerous Church confraternities or societies that have chosen a specific type of work, but is an ideal presentation of the Church of Christ in miniature. Accordingly as a monas tic community does or does not attain to this lofty ideal, or achieves it only imperfectly, it succeeds or falls short of making the best use of its true inmost talents, however splendid the achievements it can show in its various other fields of endeavor.
The ultimate and deepest raisond'etre of an abbey is really not the worthy and solemn celebration of liturgical services, nor the cultivation of the choral chant, nor learning, nor research, nor the education and training of youth, nor the care of souls and missionary work, nor the pursuit of the arts and crafts, nor the establishment of model industries.
The Patriarch of Montecassino did indeed give his abbeys a specific task, in fact, the task, the "Work of God," the official prayer in common, to which "nothing is to be preferred" (cf. chap, xliii). They were free to engage in any other type of work or activity so long as it did not imperil their becoming an ideal
Church or render this impossible. One cannot bring out promi nently enough the truth that the last aim end of an abbey is to exemplify a community informed by the Holy Spirit and ani mated by the personality of Christ, who is its real head visibly represented by the abbot. It must aim to be a community the papacy and the spiritual custody of the nations. Similarly, may not one ex pect the two Churches to be reconciled eventually, as were the twin sons of Isaac?
- - The translator)
whose members are the monks, emulating one another in the Holy Spirit and united with him and their head in humble, selfsacrificing, and obedient love (chaps, lxxi & lxxii). This first and most fundamental purpose of an abbey is at one and the same time its most beautiful contribution to society and its heaviest and most wearisome task, which from day to day makes ever new demands and imposes new obligations upon the entire body, head as well as members.
Every work and task that is performed in one of St.
Benedict's cloisters must contribute in some way towards ex emplifying the monastic "Church of Christ." Not every abbey will be able to show splendid outward achievements, but each one can and must strive with all the means at its command to work out this, its basic aim and objective. If a community strives seriously to reach that monastic ideal, it will, even with out any visible accomplishments, become a beacon in the dark ness to both the Christians and the neo-pagans of its time, to which they will both look up to with faith and confidence. It will not need to furnish outward achievements by way of just ification for its existence. It will have that justifying principle in itself, in its realizable objective—the Christian Church in min iature— consequently, not in the possession of great scholars, spiritual leaders, school administrators, preachers, orators, pas tors, researchers, or writers. Happy the abbey that can also pro duce and show such accomplishments. On the other hand, fame and glory, without anything better to its credit, can hardly serve as conclusive evidence that it is attaining its true aim and end.
Granted that in the course of the ages, many individual provisions of the Holy Rule have been abrogated, amended, or replaced by others on the authority of the Church through her sacred canons, the Benedictine abbey or cloister must still, in keeping with the spirit of the Rule and the mind of St. Benedict, work at becoming a perfect Christian community after the pat tern of the Church. The Christian yearning after the pure, holy, and ideal Church of Christ is an attainable reality that
must be the final objective of its zealous labor, here and now, in each Benedictine abbey. St. Benedict was admittedly hardly a noteworthy theologian. But he was all the more a practical one. He speaks rather with restraint of the Church. Thus in chapter lxxii he tells in forceful, pithy sentences how he pictures the monastic Church in his own mind and how he wishes it to become. It has been, and it will continue to be, a special con cern of this book to call the reader's attention without letup to this final and fundamental significance of St. Benedict's cloister.
Through the instrumentality of his Rule, without plan ning it that way or ever dreaming of it, St. Benedict became one of the brightest luminaries in the long history of the Church.
Out of his abbatial enclosures, there poured the envoys and heralds who led to the faith and through the faith to Christ the young peoples of England, France, and the Germanies, trained them, and brought them the blessings of civilization. In the midst of a general barbarism, a hopeless decline and fall, these abbeys, alone and unaided (except for the influence of St. Aug ustine), became cities of refuge, wherein they fostered, copied and stored the treasures of Christian faith and Christian mo rality, not to speak of what remained of the ancient Christian and pagan cultures, only to give them out again to the young nations so ready to receive them. Thus is was that this Rule, this Sacularwerk (this "work of the Centuries"), as a son of St.
Augustine recently referred to it, which earned for St. Benedict the honored titles of "Father of the West" and "Patriarch of<
Western Monasticism."
It will depend upon the abbeys that must put St. Bene dict's Rule into serious practice whether this holy law book will eventually become only a precious museum piece or whether it will continue to be, also in the living present, a glorious influ ence in the history of the Church, and their holy founder go on to bear h's honorable titles far into the distant future.