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.”