The Rules of Benedict

     
     
      The rules, regulae, of St. Benedict, are worthy of special consideration, since they constitute the real foundation of his success and of his fame. His order was by far the most important monastic brotherhood until the thirteenth century. Nearly all the other orders which sprang up during this interval were based upon Benedictine rules, and were really attempts to reform the monastic system on the basis of Benedict's original practice. Other monks lived austere lives and worked miracles, and some of them formulated rules, but it is to Benedict and his rules that we must look for the code of Western monachism. “By a strange parallelism,” says Putnam, “almost in the very year in which the great Emperor Justinian was codifying the results of seven centuries of Roman secular legislation for the benefit of the judges and the statesmen of the new Europe, Benedict, on his lonely mountain-top, was composing his code for the regulation of the daily life of the great civilizers of Europe for seven centuries to come.”
      The rules consist of a preface and seventy-three chapters. The prologue defines the classes of monks, and explains the aim of the “school of divine servitude,” as Benedict described his monastery. The following is a partial list of the subjects considered: The character of an abbot, silence, maxims for good works, humility, directions as to divine service, rules for dormitories, penalties, duties of various monastic officers, poverty, care of the sick daily rations of food and drink, hours for meals, fasting, entertainment of guests, and dress. They close with the statement that the Benedictine rule is not offered as an ideal of perfection, or even as equal to the teaching of Cassian or Basil, but for mere beginners in the spiritual life, who may thence proceed further.
      The Benedictine novitiate extended over one year, but was subsequently increased to three. At the close of this period the novice was given the opportunity to go back into the world. If he still persisted in his choice, he swore before the bones of the saints to remain forever cut off from the rest of his fellow beings. If a monk left the monastery, or was expelled, he could return twice, but if, after the third admission, he severed his connection, the door was shut forever.
      The monk passed his time in manual labor, copying manuscripts, reading, fasting and prayer. He was forbidden to receive letters, tokens or gifts, even from his nearest-relatives, without permission from the abbot. His daily food allowance was usually a pound of bread, a pint of wine, cider or ale, and sometimes fish, eggs, fruit or cheese. He was dressed in a black cowl. His clothing was to be suitable to the climate and to consist of two sets. He was also furnished with a straw mattress, blanket, quilt, pillow, knife, pen, needle, handkerchief and tablets. He was, in all things, to submit patiently to his superior, to keep silence, and to serve his turn in the kitchen. In the older days the monks changed their clothes on the occasion of a bath, which used to be taken four times a year. Later, bathing was allowed only twice a year, and the monks changed their clothes when they wished.
      Various punishments were employed to correct faults. Sometimes the offender was whipped on the bare shoulders with a thick rod; others had to lie prostrate in the doorway of the church at each hour, so that the monks passed over his body on entering or going out.
      The monks formerly rose at two o'clock, and spent the day in various occupations until eight at night, when they retired. The following rules once governed St. Gregory's Monastery in England: “3:45 A.M. Rise. 4 A.M. Matins and lauds, recited; half-hour mental prayer; prime sung; prime B.V.M. recited. 6:30 A.M. Private study; masses; breakfast for those who had permission. 8 A.M. Lectures and disputations. 10 A.M. Little hours B.V.M., recited; tierce, mass, sext, sung. 11:30 A.M. Dinner. 12 noon. None sung; vespers and compline B.V.M., recited. 12:30 P.M. Siesta, 1 P.M. Hebrew or Greek lecture. 2 P.M. Vespers sung. 2:30 P.M. Lectures and disputations. 4 P.M. Private study. 6 P.M. Supper. 6:30 P.M. Recreation. 7:30 P.M. Public spiritual reading; compline sung; matins and lauds B.V.M., recited; half-hour mental prayer. 8:45 P.M. Retire[D].”
      [Footnote D: Appendix, Note D.]
      Such a routine suggests a dreary life, but that would depend upon the monk's temperament. Regularity of employment kept him healthy, and if he did not take his sins too much to heart, he was free from gloom. Hill very justly observes: “Whenever men obey that injunction of labor, no matter what their station, there is in the act the element of happiness, and whoever avoids that injunction, there is always the shadow of the unfulfilled curse darkening their path.” Thus, their ideal was “to subdue one's self and then to devote one's self,” which De Tocqueville pronounces “the secret of strength.” How well they succeeded in realizing their ideal by the methods employed we shall see later.
      The term “order,” as applied to the Benedictines, is used in a different sense from that which it has when used of later monastic bodies. Each Benedictine house was practically independent of every other, while the houses of the Dominicans, Franciscans or Jesuits were bound together under one head. The family idea was peculiar to the Benedictines. The abbot was the father, and the monastery was the home where the Benedictine was content to dwell all his life. In the later monastic societies the monks were constantly traveling from place to place. Taunton says: “As God made society to rest on the basis of the family, so St. Benedict saw that the spiritual family is the surest basis for the sanctification of the souls of his monks. The monastery therefore is to him what the 'home' is to lay-folk.... From this family idea comes another result: the very fact that St. Benedict did not found an Order but only gave a Rule, cuts away all possibility of that narrowing esprit de corps which comes so easily to a widespread and highly-organized body.”
      In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, however, it became necessary for the general good of each family to secure some kind of union. The Chapter then came into existence, which was a representative body, composed of the heads of the different houses and ordinary monks regularly appointed as delegates. To the Chapter were committed various matters of jurisdiction, and also the power of sending visitors to the different abbeys in the pope's name.
      Each society was ruled by an abbot, who governed in Christ's stead. Sometimes the members of the monastery were consulted, the older ones ordinarily, the whole congregation; in important matters. But implicit obedience to the abbot, as the representative of God, was demanded by the vows.
      The abbot was to be elected by the monks. At various periods popes and princes usurped this power, but the monks always claimed the right as an original privilege. Carlyle quotes Jocelin on Abbot Samson, who says that the monks of St. Edmundsbury were compelled to submit their choice to Henry II., who, looking at the committee of monks somewhat sternly, said: “You present to me Samson; I do not know him; had it been your prior, whom I do know, I should have accepted him; however, I will now do as you wish. But have a care of yourselves. By the true eyes of God, if you manage badly, I will be upon you.”
      In Walter Scott's novel, “The Abbot,” there is an interesting contrast drawn between the ceremonies attending an abbot's installation, when the monasteries were in their glory, and the pitiable scenes in the days of their decline, when Mary Stuart was a prisoner in Lochleven. In the monastery of Kennaquhair, which had been despoiled by the fury of the times, a few monks were left to mourn the mutilated statues and weep over the fragments of richly-carved Gothic pillars. Having secretly elected an abbot, they assembled in fear and trembling to invest him with the honors of his office. “In former times,” says Scott, “this was one of the most splendid of the many pageants which the hierarchy of Rome had devised to attract the veneration of the faithful. When the folding doors on such solemn occasions were thrown open, and the new abbot appeared on the threshold in full-blown dignity, with ring and mitre and dalmatique and crosier, his hoary standard-bearers and juvenile dispensers of incense preceding him, and the venerable train of monks behind him, his appearance was the signal for the magnificent jubilate to rise from the organ and the music-loft and to be joined by the corresponding bursts of 'Alleluiah' from the whole assembled congregation.
      “Now all was changed. Father Ambrose stood on the broken steps of the high altar, barefooted, as was the rule, and holding in his hand his pastoral staff, for the gemmed ring and jewelled mitre had become secular spoils. No obedient vassals came, man after man, to make their homage and to offer the tribute which should provide their spiritual superior with palfrey and trappings. No bishop assisted at the solemnity to receive into the higher ranks of the church nobility a dignitary whose voice in the legislature was as potent as his own.”
      We are enabled by this partially-quoted description to imagine the importance attached to the election of an abbot. He became, in feudal times, a lord of the land, the richest man in the community, and a tremendous power in political councils and parliaments. A Benedictine abbot once confessed: “My vow of poverty has given me a hundred thousand crowns a year; my vow of obedience has raised me to the rank of a sovereign prince.”
      No new principle seems to be disclosed by the Benedictine rules. The command to labor had been emphasized even in the monasteries of Egypt. The Basilian code contained a provision enforcing manual labor, but the work was light and insufficient to keep the mind from brooding. The monastery that was to succeed in the West must provide for men who not only could toil hard, but who must do so if they were to be kept pure and true; it must welcome men accustomed to the dangerous adventures of pioneer life in the vast forests of the North. The Benedictine system met these conditions by a unique combination and application of well-known monastic principles; by a judicious subordination of minor matters to essential discipline; by bringing into greater prominence the doctrine of labor; by tempering the austerities of the cell to meet the necessities of a severe climate; and lastly, by devising a scheme of life equally adaptable to the monk of sunny Italy and the rude Goth of the northern forests.
      It was the splendid fruition of many years of experiment amid varying results. “It shows,” says Schaff, “a true knowledge of human nature, the practical wisdom of Rome and adaptation to Western customs; it combines simplicity with completeness, strictness with gentleness, humility with courage and gives the whole cloister life a fixed unity and compact organization, which, like the episcopate, possessed an unlimited versatility and power of expansion.”