LECTIO DIVINA
The Rule allows for a long period of meditative reading and
prayer, that is, for the furthering of the spiritual well-being
of the individual rather than for the promotion of his intellectual
powers. It involved the reading of the scriptures,
early monastic literature, and the writings of the Church
Fathers. Monks with superior intellectual capacities could
devote this time to the copying of manuscripts and to their
own creative writing. Chapter 48 of the Rule states that
"one or two senior monks should be deputed to go round
the monastery at the times when the brethren are occupied
in reading, to see that there be no slothful brother who
spends his time in idleness or gossip and neglects the reading."[103]
The same chapter recommends that some kind of
manual labor be given to those who cannot read.
When Abbot Ratger of Fulda, in the heat of an ambitious
building program that fatigued the monks beyond endurance,
shortened the time for the lectio divina, the brothers
made this the subject of a complaint to Emperor Charlemagne.[104]
Initially rejected, eventually they secured the
dismissal of their abbot.[105]
