University of Virginia Library

INTRODUCTION

FOLLOWING the example of St. Anthony (251/2-ca. 356), the earliest monks established themselves in the
Egyptian desert, living in eremitic isolation, entirely free from the fetters of any form of communal life.[1] Even when
hermits lived in groups, they lived out of earshot of one another and assembled only on Saturdays and Sundays for
divine services. Their practice of abstinence and self-mortification reduced the problem of securing nourishment to
negligible proportions.

Conditions changed when St. Pachomius (292-346) introduced in southern Egypt a new concept of monastic
withdrawal, in which large groups of monks banded together to live and worship in common, within the stable
enclosure of a fixed architectural settlement. Survival, worship, and conduct under such conditions had to be
based on rules and order; and St. Pachomius, the founder of this type of cenobitic monachism, spent the better part
of his life organizing and directing his order, which at his death included nine monasteries with some three thousand
monks, and a nunnery. Each monastery consisted of a number of separate houses, accommodating thirty to forty
monks, segregated accorded to trades—fullers in one, shoemakers in another, carpenters in still another, and so on—
and each house had its own praepositus, its own cellarer as well as a variety of other administrative officers.[2] Most of
the religious services were performed in these individual houses; only the more important ones took place in the
common church.

Although the order as a whole had a remarkably centralized structure with a superior general, a common chapter,
and a system of periodic visitations, the spirit within each monastery was surprisingly individualistic. Each monk
was permitted to pit himself against the others in order to obtain a record in ascetic exercises such as reducing his
measure of sleep and nourishment to the narrowest possible limit, and submitting to the harshest austerities. St. Basil
(ca. 330-379), who had occasion to become familiar with the Pachomian system while journeying in Egypt, set

himself against these excesses of bodily austerity and perfected the coenobitic form of monastic life by declaring
its theoretical supremacy over the eremitical form or the Pachomian syncretism.

When monachism spread through the crumbling Roman empire, the West adopted both the eremitical form of
life that had been practiced by St. Anthony, and the cenobitic form established in Egypt by St. Pachomius, and in
Asia Minor by St. Basil (ca. 330-379). It developed, in addition, a variety of hybrid forms—as in the famous island
settlement of Lerins in Gaul, where the senior monks lived in separate cells in the more isolated spots of the island,
joining the others for the celebration of the divine services or to receive instruction from the abbot. In their isolated
retreats they still followed the Egyptian ideal of asceticism by fasting for prolonged periods and inflicting upon
themselves those extreme forms of chastisement leading to ecstasy and devotional hallucination.

St. Benedict of Nursia (ca. 480-ca. 547) began his monastic career by practicing these extreme forms of the
prevailing type of monachism. For three years he lived in a cave without conversing with men, receiving his food on
a rope, which the monk Romanus let down from the high rock that overhung his cave. From St. Gregory's dialogue
we learn that he wore animal skins, that he came near to starvation, on at least one occasion, and that on others he
overcame temptation by rolling himself naked in the thicket of briars and nettles.[3]

But in the maturity of his later life St. Benedict turned his back on these austerities and wrote a Rule for monastic
life that formed such a complete departure from the prevailing types of monachism that it has been termed a revolution
rather than a development from the earlier forms. The decisive features of this new concept are a deliberate
rejection of the individualistic rivalry in ascetic achievement, which had been the keynote of Egyptian monachism,
and the complete submersion of the individual in the community. While the life which St. Benedict prescribes may
seem austere if viewed in a present day perspective, it was nothing of the sort when seen in the light of his own time.

Whereas Egyptian monachism prohibited the consumption of wine and flesh and demanded that even the permissible
types of food be reduced to the lowest limits required for survival, St. Benedict allowed a hemina of wine and
a pound of bread per day, and prescribed in addition two dishes of cooked food and a third of fruit and young
vegetables.[4] He permits the meat of quadrupeds to be fed to the sick and convalescent,[5] and is so vague about the
consumption of fowl that later generations had no scruples in allowing it during the weeks of the great religious
festivals.[6] Whereas in Egyptian monachism cleanliness was thought to be a sign of worldly corruption or sensuous
self-indulgence, St. Benedict permits the bath to both the healthy and the sick.[7] Although certain Egyptian abbots
could rule that the monks' clothes should be such that if they were left on the road, no one would think of taking
them,[8] St. Benedict orders the abbot to see to it "that the monks' clothes fit them, that they are to get new clothes
while the old ones are still fit to be given to the poor, that they are to have warmer clothes in the winter, lighter in the
summer; that they are to change their clothes for the night, and that they are to be washed."[9] While in Egypt it was
held that sleep should be battled by eternal vigilance and that the monks should lie on bare ground with stones
for pillows, St. Benedict not only allowed his monks a normal and healthy ratio of sleep, but besides, also assigned to
each a blanket, a coverlet, a mattress, and a pillow.[10]

The keynote of all of this is moderation, and it is in the general cultural acceptability of this very concept of
moderation that we must recognize one of the primary reasons for the eventual universal success of Benedictine
monachism.

The second decisively new and creative element of Benedictine monachism pertains to the relation of the
individual to the community. Egyptian asceticism had a clearly asocial tinge, which remained a dominant trend even
where monks banded together, as in the monasteries of St. Pachomius. St. Benedict, adopting a monastic philosophy
that had been developed and propagated in Asia Minor by St. Basil the Great (ca. 330-379), abolished this
individualism altogether. His Rule frowns on any special form of penitential practice that would have pitted one
monk against another in rivalry. He established instead one common mode of life for all, to which the abbot was
held no less than the monks, and in which all segments of the community were bound to each other for life in a daily

round of objective duties, consisting of public common prayer, manual work, and reading. It is in this orderly
integration of the individual into the monastery as a corporate body that we must recognize a second primary reason
for the acceptance of Benedictine monachism by both the ecclesiastical and the secular hierarchies.

A third one is to be found in the soundness of the monastery's economic organization. Since the better part of the
monk's day was taken up by services rendered to God,[11] the bulk of the basic industrial and agricultural chores on
which the community depended for its physical sustenance had to be taken on by others. This brought into the orbit
of the monastery, both within and without the monastic enclosure, a host of servants, serfs, and tenants, very much
of the kind one would find about the manors of secular dignitaries. The Benedictine monastery in this way acquired
the character of a landed estate, which differed from those of the secular lords solely by the fact that it had embedded
in it a house of religious devotion and a school for religious learning.

The successful management of this complex cultural organism depended on the existence of a well-trained staff
of monastic administrators. The responsibilities of these men are defined in the Rule of St. Benedict, to the extent
to which their offices existed in his days. Later developments are reflected in a brief about monastic officials written
around 834-836 in the monastery of Bobbio by Abbot Wala,[12] brother of Abbot Adalhard of Corbie and the latter's
successor at Corbie (823-833). A good deal of additional information can be gleaned from the Administrative
Directives of Abbot Adalhard.[13] Complete translations by Charles W. Jones of these two important sources are
given in Volume III, Appendix II.

There is no need to stress the fact that the review of monastic administrative organization offered in this chapter
must by necessity remain abstract. There were many local variations in the number of existing positions, and in their
titles. For a more detailed account of these one must turn to local sources such as the chronicles of St. Gall by Ratpert
and Ekkehart IV, and to the unusually rich documentary legacy of this monastery, published by Wartmann.[14] All
of these abound with references not only to the various administrative departments (called ministeria or officia) but
also to the names and titles of their individual holders (officiales).

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MAJUSCULE LETTERS. OXFORD, BODLEIAN LIBRARY, HATTON 48, FOLS. 58R, 11V, 51V [shown same size as originals].
These letters (and passages reproduced below, pp. 330-45) are from the oldest extant copy of the Rule of St. Benedict, written in England
around A.D. 700. The text is rendered in SCRIPTURA CONTINUA (i.e., without word spaces) in uncial letters of massive dignity, the opening
of each chapter enhanced by handsome rubricated capitals. Ornamented initials are a distinctive trait of 7th- and 8th-century Hiberno-Saxon
schools of illumination. Often initials extend over an entire page, suppressed beyond legibility in waves of the most exuberant, yet always
carefully constructed interlace (cf. figs. 178-85, fig. 245).

Through such manuscripts the Rule of St. Benedict was transmitted to the new barbarian nations of the north. On them is founded the entire
history of medieval monasticism. They played a crucial role in deliberations of two reform synods of Aachen, from which the Plan of St. Gall
emerged.

D. H. Farmer (The Rule of St. Benedict, Oxford, Bodleian Library, Hatton 48, Copenhagen 1968) believes Hatton 48 is the English
copy of a manuscript of the Rule brought to England by St. Winifred, who died in 709.

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II QUALIS DEBEAT ABBAS ESSE

1 Abbas, qui praeesse dignus est monasterio, semper meminere
debet, quod dicitur, et nomen maioris factis implere.

2 Christi enim agere uices in monasterio creditur, quando ipsius
uocatur pronomine

WHAT KIND OF MAN THE ABBOT SHOULD BE

An Abbot who is worthy to rule a monastery should always
remember what he is called and realize in his actions the name
of a superior. For he is believed to be the representative of Christ
in the monastery, and for that reason is called by a name of his