[ILLUSTRATION]
ORIGIN AND DIFFUSION OF MONASTIC LIFE IN LATE ANTIQUITY AND THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES, 4TH-9TH CENTURIES
Western monachism is rooted in an esoteric religious counter culture that emerged at the outer fringes of Roman society in the sere fastness of the
Nitrian desert and the Thebaid of Egypt. It was the creation of religious fanatics who, by severing their ties with the secular world, immersing themselves
in meditation, prolonged fasting, severe deprivation, and self-mortification, sought mystical union with God. Out of a society engaged in a last heroic
struggle to regroup strength by adopting a new religion, monachism spread by word of mouth, then through writings of the Fathers, finally to gain the
momentum of wildfire and sweep the whole length of the Roman empire in two bold arcs: one swung north through Palestine, Syria, and Anatolia beyond
the outermost boundaries of the Roman world into Babylon, Arabia, Armenia, Persia; the other, following a path of even more astonishing expansion
across the Mediterranean into Italy and Gaul, then raced to the empire's farthest northwestern borders, the Celtic territories of Ireland and Scotland. In
these lands, never entered by Roman legions, monachism dramatically reversed its course and redescended upon the Continent to play a decisive role in the
internal reconstraction and territorial expansion of the Christian church in lands now held by the Barbarian conquerors of Rome.
All this occurred in only 250 years—as if on the apron of a vast, dark stage where the lineaments of a new world order were dimly beginning to appear.
The map shows, within this emerging world, the growth and diffusion of a new, Romanized monachism enunciated in the Regula Benedicti and
propagated by the Papal See in close alliance with the house of the Carolingian rulers. Differences between the two polar forms of pre-Carolingian
monachism—those of Saints Anthony and Benedict—are described on pp. 327ff. Historically they are separated by a series of intermediary forms, in the
development of which Egyptians, Anatolians, Romans from Italy, the provinces of Gaul, Pannonia, Scythia, and even Celts, played decisive roles.
prologue to part IV
THE MONASTIC POLITY
ORIGIN AND DIFFUSION OF CHRISTIAN MONACHISM IN EGYPT, THE NEAR EAST AND EUROPE
IN LATE ANTIQUITY AND THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES, 4TH-9TH CENTURIES
St. Anthony considered the anchorite's solitary asceticism the highest form of monastic devotion. He spent most of his life in total seclusion, emerging
from desert retreats only briefly, to comfort imprisoned Christians or organize the life of the many monks who followed his example.
Anthony's followers, Ammun and Macarius, allowed groups of hermits to live close to one another for instruction and common prayer, which led to
establishment of clusters of cells scattered around a common center containing a church, and in its later, more developed form, even a refectory and bakery.
St. Pachomius considered organized monastic life preferable to that of the anchorite because only in communities could the weaker find support from
stronger members, and the community as a whole attain a solid economic basis. St. Basil went a step further, declaring the communal life superior on both
theoretical and practical grounds: seclusion, he argued, mitigated against the apostolic law of charity and further, faults of selfishness and pride could not
be corrected unless observed by others.
In 339 St. Athanasius introduced anchoritic monachism to Italy, making it known worldwide through his Life of St. Anthony. Jerome did the same
for coenobitic monachism through his Latin translation of the Rule of Pachomius (386/7). In 364 St. Martin founded in Ligugé, Aquitaine, the first
monastery of Roman Gaul, followed by many others, primarily coenobitic, all south and southwest of the Loire—the majority filiations of Marmoutier.
Lerins, founded by Honoratus in 410, adopted the ideal of group hermitism. St. John Cassian, founder of the abbey of St. Victor of Marseilles, in 415,
saw eremetic life as a heroic ideal but in practice provided guidance for establishment of coenobitic communities. All these forms spread north along the
Rhone Valley from Lerins and Marseilles. Monastic life there profited from the fact that Provence had become a haven for Gallo-Roman aristocrats who,
anticipating the Germanic invasions, had retreated from estates in the threatened northern parts of Gaul, after the seat of the government had been
withdrawn from Trier to Milan in 395, and who, as the secular world collapsed, quickly recognized that they could retain social status by becoming
leaders in the episcopal church.
St. Patrick, trained in Lerins-oriented Auxerre, took Egyptian style eremetism to Ireland in 432. By 563 St. Columba had founded Iona in the Hebrides
as a center of conversion for Scotland; in 653 St. Aidan established the famous monastery of Lindisfarne off the Northumbrian coast. In those 200-odd
years, some Irish inland monasteries became great centers of learning with scriptoria that produced some of the finest works of medieval book illumination.
But in most places along the Irish coast and windswept offshore islands, monks either lived in isolation, or in groups of twelve under an abbot, each
residing in his own beehive hut, sallying forth by land or sea, "tramping the heather all day, to preach by the burnside at evening."
St. Columban carried his mission into Gaul with a step of epochal importance: he addressed himself immediately to the court of Sigibert, thus binding his
missionary activities to the Frankish power structure. Equally important, he created a new monachism combining his native Irish with Benedictine
custom. The abbey of Luxeuil, ceded to Columban by Childebert, became a primary point of radiation for this mixed rule in the Frankish kingdom and
along its eastern borders, also spreading through intimate alliance with Frankish aristocracy. At the time of Columban's death in 615, in Bobbio, every
known variety of monachism was practiced in Europe, including the slowly advancing Benedictine form. Its ascent and diffusion, accompanying a concerted
effort to reform and unify the secular Church, was the accomplishment of no more than a half-dozen men working in close co-operation with the Papal See
and fully supported by secular rulers in England and on the Continent.
Dispatched by Gregory the Great to "convert the Angles into Angels," St. Augustine landed in 597 on Thanet Island, Kent, and established at Canterbury
the first Benedictine monastery outside Italy. His successors carried the mission into northern England. Foremost among these was Benedict Biscop who,
between 665-672, founded Monkwearmouth and Jarrow, the bases of conversion for Scotland. The advance to the north was strengthened when the Synod
of Whitby in 644 declared for the Benedictine mission. From northernmost England—in a reversal of course as radical as that which Irish monachism had
experienced under Columban—the movement struck back upon the Continent, south and southeast, bypassing and encircling the Frankish crown lands (yet
supported by their rulers) and pressing west against them from strong positions in the semi-heathen borderlands of Frisia, Hesse, Thuringia, and Bavaria.
The main protagonists in this mission were the two Anglo-Saxons, Willibroad († 739) and Winfrid, called Bonifatius, both issuing from York—the
latter, between 770-790, unquestionably the most powerful churchman east of the Rhine. West of the Rhine the reform advanced mainly by synodal
action, in the framing of which, besides Bonifatius, the bishop Chrodegang of Metz and Fulrad of St. Denis played decisive roles.
By the century's end, the Benedictine conquest was so complete that all other rules had virtually sunk into oblivion. Benedict's Rule prevailed because
only it could spin the thread that would weave the spiritual and administrative fabric of Church and State into a whole cloth, engendering a dialectical
interaction that was to rubricate the entire course of Western history. The inner dynamics of this process and its cultural implications are discussed in the
next chapter, "The Monastic Polity."
MAP DESIGN AND DRAWING BY ERNEST BORN IN COLLABORATION WITH WALTER HORN AND FRIEDRICH PRINZ (UNIVERSITY OF MUNICH)
