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In St. Patrick's boyhood the Empire still ruled all the West, even his
native Britain. He had been dead nineteen years when St. Benedict of
Nursia was born (480) and by that time the Empire had disappeared even
from Italy. The Italy of St. Benedict was the Italy of the Ostrogoths
and Theodoric, of Belisarius and Justinian's war of recovery. The
seventy years or so of his life covered that period when plague and
famine and war cleaved the abyss that separates Romans from Italians.
He himself is one of the last of the Romans, and it may be safely said
that the spirit of Rome, baptised now, is the inspiration of all that
is new, revolutionary even, in his work. St. Benedict was not, however,
Roman by birth, although educated in the ancient capital. He came from
Nursia, which is near Spoleto, and his family were wealthy country
landowners. At the age of seventeen he fled from Rome to live as a
solitary, thirty miles away, in the wild fastness that is now Subiaco
(c. 497). Disciples gathered round him whom finally he organised in
twelve communities of twelve monks each. There were rebellions against
his rule, attempts even to poison him, and twenty years or so after his
first coming to Subiaco he moved to Cassinum, half way between Rome and
Naples. Here he dwelt for the remaining years of his life, the years
that saw the murder of Boethius, the downfall of Theodoric's kingdom
and the victories of Belisarius and Narses. Here the Gothic king Totila
visited him, and heard the prophecy of his fate. Here, too, most
important of all, the saint wrote the Holy Rule. The date of his death
is not accurately known. The year which used, traditionally, to be
considered correct -- 543 -- is almost certainly wrong and the latest,
well-reasoned, theory would place it between 555 and 557.
The circumstances in which the great work was composed are not known.
The latest and most ingenious suggestion is that it was written, not
for any particular monastery St. Benedict had founded, or was about to
found, nor for any particular group to be formed in the future from his
own foundations, but simply as a universal rule for monks: that it was
compiled to serve for all time as the quasi-official code of monastic
life and compiled at the request of some pope, most probably Hormisdas
(514-523). [ ] We do, however, know of St. Benedict's varied experience
through twenty-five years of life as a superior of monks, and the text
of the rule itself reveals him as a man thoroughly well acquainted with
all the earlier literature of Monasticism. Holy Scripture, the
preceding rules of the Egyptians and Eastern founders, the lives of the
primitive saints, the works of the Fathers -- especially of John
Cassian who, founder of the monastery at Marseilles, was to the West
the greatest of all guides in this matter -- a knowledge of all these
is easily traced in the rule. It is however no mere mosaic of
compilation, but a work of striking originality.
Earlier rules had been little more than lists of prohibitions, or of
spiritual maxims, with brief statements of practical details. Now, for
the first time, there came into being an ordered practical code,
covering every aspect of the monk's life, a code which itself created a
way of living and would, ultimately, create a type of monk. Monastic
life, so far, had been life in the tradition of some great monastic
personality. Henceforward not personalities, but the universal decreed
law is to form the monk, the "Holy Rule" (a new expression), the
"Mistress Rule" to use the saint's own phrase. Not the abbot as such is
supreme, but the rule which he administers and whence he, too, derives.
It is the old Roman notion of the rule of law transferred to the
service of the religious life, and thence derives one of the rule's
leading characters -- it does not counsel but commands. It is
objective, permanent, absolute. The superior does but apply it.
The Holy Rule-begins with a succinct survey of current monastic
practice, and its decision that monks who "fight under the rule and an
abbot" lead a life superior to that of the solitary who is his own
lawgiver, ended for all time ill the West the prestige that so easily
accrues to more picturesque methods of asceticism. The rule describes
itself as "a little rule for beginners." It sets up " a school of
divine service," and its whole spirit is described when it orders that
"all things must be done in moderation for the sake of those who are
less hardy." Again and again this experienced discretion shows itself.
The first psalm of the night office is to he said slowly, in order to
give the laggard a final chance. The food is to be sufficient and,
since what suits one may not suit another, two dishes are always to be
provided. Again, " Although we read that 'wine is not the drink of
monks at all,' yet, since in our days they cannot be persuaded of this,
let us at least agree not to drink to satiety, but sparingly, Because
wine maketh even the wise to fall away." [ ]
A sufficiency of sleep is prescribed and of clothing too. There is no
such thing as corporal punishment, nor any provision for such
penitential exercises as hair-shirts, spiked belts, self-inflicted
scourgings. Private feats of this nature are sternly discouraged. The
monks should do nothing except what the common rule of the monastery
and the example of superiors exhorts. Once and for all, with this "Rule
for Monks," the extravagance of the East, whose example burdened early
Western Monasticism beyond what the ordinary man could bear, is set
aside. In the matter of mortification, as in all else, individualism
ceases to be set at a premium. Rivalry in such things is not to be
tolerated. Association in a common mode of life is the way of the
monk's sanctification. This twofold break, with corporal austerities
and individual self-maceration, is again revolutionary.
The asceticism of the rule is none the less real. Its basis is, of
course, an utter renouncement of one's own will "to walk by another's
judgement and command." The routine of prayer, study and work; the
frequent fasts; the perpetual abstinence from meat; -- these were the
monk's aids, striving ever more earnestly to strip himself of all
slavery to self, that he might give himself wholly to God. The monks
"do not live by their own free will, or obey their own desires and
pleasures, but walk by another's judgement and command." “It is not
lawful for monks to have either their bodies or their wills at their
own disposal."
The rule carefully prescribes the hours of rising and for sleep,
different in winter and summer. It regulates in detail the order of the
day's occupations, the different hours for the common prayer, which is
"the work of God," for the reading, the manual labour, the meals. Monks
who are priests are exceptional, and they are warned against
temptations to pride and insubordination which may arise from the
distinction.
The nature of the primitive life under the rule of St. Benedict has, in
recent years, been the subject of much discussion. The first
monasteries, it is suggested, would be founded by the generosity of the
wealthy, endowed with lands and all that then necessarily went with the
land, its villages, its slaves and its serfs (mancipia and coloni). The
rule seems to suggest that agricultural work would be exceptional, a
thing to which the monk ought gladly to submit if poverty or local
necessity made it inevitable. Abbot Chapman even says, "the idea that
monks were agriculturalists would have horrified St. Benedict." What
then was the work which occupied the monks? The different arts and
crafts necessary for the maintenance of the property, and the household
duties: kitchen, cellar, service, garden, wood and metal work; copying,
teaching the younger monks "To 'study' or to write books would be rare"
[ ] and St. Bede is almost the only simple monk of the early times to
be an author (as he remains the one Benedictine canonised as a simple
monk). "The sixth-century monk was not a scholar nor an author like
some of the Maurists, nor a farm labourer like the Trappists. But he
worked hard and he read enormously." [ ]
The discipline is never that of a regiment, but that of an ordered
Christian family whose aim is to realise the gospel ideal. The
continuity of this family spirit is based upon yet another of St.
Benedict's innovations, the famous vow of stability by which the monk
pledges himself, not merely to live as a monk for ever, but to live as
a monk for ever in the community which now receives him. This has been
described as St. Benedict's most important and most characteristic
contribution to Monachism in the West. Since the rule contemplates a
family, the superior is primarily a father, and if the rule gives to
the abbot practically unlimited discretion, it never ceases to remind
him that his authority is paternal and that his pattern in its exercise
is Christ Himself-Whose name indeed few pages of the rule are without.
Here, again, is to be noted the trace of the saint's experienced
humanity -- the abbot is bidden to consider the weaklings and not to
allow the strong to set the pace of the monastery's observance, and he
is warned “not to be too suspicious, or he will never be at rest." It
is the monks who choose their abbot, and they choose him for life. In
turn the abbot chooses his assistants -- chooses them and changes them
at will.
A compassionate understanding of the weakness of human nature, a serene
patience in presence of its failure, a calm confidence in the ultimate
attainment of the highest ideals through the perfecting of the ordinary
ways of life, an absence of exaggeration -- in the Holy Rule the Gospel
finds the greatest of its human reflections. It was to produce in the
ensuing centuries hundreds and thousands of communities, and the
autonomous self-sufficing monasteries where they dwelt were to be, in
the nature of things, centres of economic and social life no less than
of religion. With their slaves, their tenants, the pilgrims whom
religious motives drew, the abbeys became inevitably centres of trade,
fostering the arts and crafts, with a social role like to that of the
Roman cities now rapidly decaying. Along with the bishop, the abbey was
to be the greatest force staving off the universal tendency to social
disruption; and for the Church it was the appointed instrument of
apostolic work in the age of transition from an urban to a rural
economy.
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