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ST BENEDICT

‘Let Christ be the chain that binds you’

The world into which St Benedict was born was a troubled, torn apart, uncertain world. It knew little of safety or of security, and the church was almost as troubled as the secular powers. It was a world without landmarks. It had this in common with the twentieth century: life was an urgent struggle to make sense of what was happening. The fall of Rome in A.D. 410, seventy years before the birth of St Benedict, had been a traumatic shock to the entire civilized world, and since then the invasions of successive barbarian hordes had begun to dismember the empire. By the middle of the century Huns were ravaging northern Italy and Rome had been sacked for a second time. The church too was torn apart, not only suffering through wars and political disorders but split theologically, particularly on the question of grace, which was a major concern in the fifth century. Christians must have looked back with nostalgia to the age of the Fathers and asked themselves if ever again the church could produce a St Augustine and a City of God to hold out the promise of peace and order and light on a scene which seemed instead to be rapidly descending into chaos. And then on this scene there appeared the man who built an ark to survive the rising storm, an ark not made with hands, into which by two and two human and eternal values might enter, to be kept until the water assuaged, an ark moreover which lasted not only for one troubled century but for fifteen, and which has still the capacity to bring many safely to land.

The builder of that ark is essentially known to us through his handiwork, the Rule. Unlike so many of the great names of Christendom, St Benedict remains curiously faceless. Our main authority for his life is the second book of the Dialogues of St Gregory the Great, written in Rome in 593 – 4, less than fifty years after his death. This life is not a biography in any modern sense of the term, for St Gregory is primarily interested in the power of working miracles and in the gift of prophecy which he saw in this vir Dei, this man of God. But he does at the same time give us genuine facts about his life, even if it is not always easy to separate these from the symbolic or the imagined, for he mentions actual places and people whose existence can be substantiated. Thus we learn that St Benedict was born around the year 480 in the Umbrian province of Nursia, into what the Dialogues describe as ‘a family of high station’. He went to Rome to study liberal arts but then abandoned his studies and left the city, first for a stay of about two years at Affile and then for Subiaco, where for three years he lived a solitary life in a cave on a hillside, a mountain fastness surrounded by scenery formidable in its wild beauty, with a view of the ruins of Nero’s palace and the broken arches of a Roman aqueduct lying below, symbols of the crumbling imperial greatness. Here he was quite alone apart from the ministrations of a neighbouring monk who brought him bread but kept his whereabouts secret. Ultimately he was discovered by such numbers of disciples that he established twelve small monasteries, scattered close by on the hillside, each with about a dozen monks. After some years, probably in 528 or 529, he left the valley and, taking some of his monks with him, he went south to Monte Cassino, the imposing mountain mass rising up in the central Apennines. After destroying a pagan shrine he built his new monastery in its place and here he remained for the rest of his life. Once a year he met his sister St Scholastica, who had established herself nearby with her community of nuns. Here he acquired a widespread reputation as a holy man, and here, sometime in the middle of the sixth century, he died, on a date which is traditionally held to be 21st March 547. His remains were not, however, destined to be allowed to lie in peace. About forty years after his death the monastery was destroyed by Lombards and left abandoned until it was refounded in about 720. There is considerable uncertainty about what actually did happen, but it seems that at some time in the mid-seventh century the remains of St Benedict and St Scholastica, which had been buried in the same tomb, were removed to France and the relics of St Benedict ultimately came to the abbey of St Benoît-sur-Loire, where they remain today.

The twenty-eight chapters of the Life as St Gregory presented it in the Dialogues concentrate mainly on wonder working miracles and encounters with demons, much that seems difficult and unedifying to the modern reader. But to dismiss this too quickly would be to lose the opportunity of finding here another dimension to our understanding of St Benedict’s life. For the interest of the author does not lie in chronology and in events, it is much more in the line of biblical story telling, the plot line rooted in a journey motif. As St Gregory unfolds the life it is seen as a quest, a pilgrimage set in the narrow mountain passes and the broad sweep of plains that will ultimately lead St Benedict to the mountain top. There is something here of what the Rule itself promises, starting with a narrow gate and then widening out. Perhaps too it reflects something of what St Benedict, bred and shaped in the mountains, knew himself. But there is more to it than this. St Gregory wanted his readers to see in St Benedict an example of God at work in man’s life. He illustrates the law of paradox; genuine fruitfulness comes from what at first seems sterile; life comes out of death. Again nothing touches more closely the thinking of the Rule itself, with its central theme of dying and rebirth.

Yet the St Benedict of the Dialogues still eludes us as a person. The Rule itself remains the source which ultimately reveals the personality of the man. For both its aim and its language set it apart from other similar monastic rules, and it is this which tells us so much about its author. The academic discussion of the degree of originality of the Rule is mercifully something which does not concern us here. An immense amount of impressive scholarship has been devoted to a question which is of the greatest significance to contemporary scholars, but which would in all probability have seemed absurd and irrelevant to St Benedict himself. He was happy to take what was good from the existing monastic heritage, to make it his own, and to colour it with his own personal experience. As he looked round he found various types of monastic life with their own traditions and achievements. There were some forms of the life which allowed much scope for individual development and for the life of solitude; others stressed more the value of a corporate life in a settled community. He drew these different strands together, and the discovery of the sources from which he derived much of his own material does not reduce the importance of his own contribution, rather it enhances it in showing his extraordinary skill in selecting and blending elements to form a balanced, positive and complete unity. But this is not just the work of an intellectual, the cerebral achievement of a skilled codifier. This is the work of a man who has lived what he is writing about, both in the cave at Subiaco and in the monastic enclosure at Monte Cassino. The consummate wisdom which it shows could only have emerged from a long and thorough assimilation, not simply in his mind but in his whole being.

It is his new understanding of the relationships between the members of the community that is the great breakthrough. The older ideal had been essentially that of the novice finding a holy man and asking to learn from him, and the monastery had been a group of individuals gathered round the feet of a sage. One of these earlier rules, the Rule of the Master, had given enormous power to the abbot. St Benedict changes this almost exclusively vertical pattern of authority by emphasizing the relationships of the monks with each other. They are of course disciples who have come to the monastery to be trained, but they are also brothers bound in love to each other. So for St Benedict the monastery has become a community of love and the abbot a man who is expected not to be infallible or omniscient, but a man who will exercise his discretion as the circumstances demand. The Rule of the Master had used the word ‘school’ nine times, St Benedict uses it once only; as well as magister, master, he speaks of a loving father. The way in which the monks relate to each other is of little interest in the Rule of the Master; the Rule of St Benedict devotes three splendid chapters to it (69 – 71), with chapter 72 a masterpiece on what is involved in loving one another.

The monks are to bear with patience the weaknesses of others, whether of body or behaviour. Let them strive with each other in obedience to each other. Let them not follow their own good but the good of others. Let them be charitable towards their brothers with pure affection. (72. 5 – 8)

Textually his Rule may be almost the same in many of its phrases as that of the Master; but in its mood and its outlook it is a world apart. This chapter above all reflects the Benedictine ideal; this is the imprint of St Benedict himself. The ark which he was building was to contain a family.

The monasteries of the sixth century, as they grew in St Benedict’s lifetime, were essentially small and simple, intended for a group of about a dozen, and all the daily activity had the characteristics of a large family at work. The monastery itself would be a small single-storey building, and scattered around would lie offices, outhouses, farm-sheds. Neither dormitory, refectory or oratory needed to be large or elaborate. The cloister was a thing of the future. The small community who gathered here as a Christian family to live, work and pray together would probably make small claim for themselves, for most were simple men, few were priests or scholars. The pattern of the day was established by the opus Dei, the work of God, the purpose of the monastic life. So seven times a day the monks would gather in the oratory, at hours which varied slightly between the summer and the winter months, to say together those offices which began soon after midnight with Vigils, were followed at daybreak by Lauds, and continued until the day ended, last thing in the evening, with Compline. The rest of the time was fully occupied with domestic or agricultural work, with study and reading, besides two meals and the hours of sleep. Here were men living together to serve God and save their souls, glad to care for those who sought them out but content to remain essentially ignorant of the world outside their walls.

At the time of his death St Benedict’s Rule was one amongst many. Within a century or two St Benedict himself had become the patriarch of western monasticism and his Rule the most influential in the Latin church. From the seventh century onwards the Benedictines brought both Christianity and civilization to much of Europe, Cruce, libro et atro as the tag ran, with cross, book and plough. Before long the whole of western Christendom was carrying a scattering of monasteries like a mantle. The ‘monastic centuries’ had begun. It now becomes possible to see how deeply the life of Christendom was to be shaped by the Benedictine presence. Whereas in the very earliest days monks had gone out into the desert leaving behind them a comparatively sophisticated life, now that pattern was reversed. In a world in which barbarian invasion, political uncertainty, and the power of the sword seemed the most immediate realities, and in a simple agrarian world where parishes were served by priests of humble peasant birth, the monasteries came to stand out as centres of light and learning. Here men and women might expect to find a rich liturgical life, informed devotion, a love of learning and intelligent companionship, in communities now much larger than those of the sixth century. The small buildings housing a dozen men became a great complex, possibly for a hundred or more monks, with a large church, accommodation for the sick and the infirm, guest houses, and offices to administer extended estates. As time went on they accumulated stores of illuminated manuscripts, relics and works of art. Pilgrims and visitors from every rank of society from crowned heads to poorest peasants, came in search of prayers or alms, protection and hospitality. This mingling of the enclosed life with the life outside the walls was certainly not something foreseen by St Benedict, but it became too deeply part of the way of life to be eradicated. It meant many different things to many people. At one level it meant that abbots often became figures of political importance; at another that the surrounding countryside learnt much about agricultural efficiency and expertise. To sketch the history of the Benedictines in the Middle Ages would be not only to write a history of the church, it would be to write a history of medieval society as well. In every country of Europe the black monks, as they became known, established themselves as landowners, administrators, bishops, writers. New foundations were appearing all the time, not least those which sprang up under the stimulus of the monastic renewals which from the tenth century brought a re-ordering, a re-emphasis of the original Rule. First Cluny and then Citeaux appear as offshoots of the main trunk, each responding to the new demands of an increasingly complex society, yet without losing touch with the heart of the Rule. First the Cluniacs emphasized the good order and administration, and put magnificent worship to the fore; then the Cistercians recovered the role of austerity and of hard manual work which they felt had become neglected. By the beginning of the thirteenth century in England and Wales alone the number of houses of black monks had grown from fifty in 1066 to three hundred in 1200, and the white monks (the Cistercians were distinguished by their habits of undyed wool) by 1200 had some seventy houses. Few people in England today live far from the ruins of some great Benedictine or Cistercian foundation, or do not know cathedrals which were in the Middle Ages the churches of some Benedictine community.

But while we pay homage to the power and presence of the past we might all too easily forget the continuing link of the Church of England with the Benedictine life. For the Benedictine presence, so strong in England in the Middle Ages, left its mark on the church at the time of the Reformation. It was Cranmer’s genius to condense the traditional monastic offices into the two Prayer Book offices of Matins and Evensong, and their continued usage through the following centuries has shown how highly appropriate for parish church and cathedral worship those adapted offices can be. It is hardly too much to claim that the Benedictine spirit is at the root of the Anglican way of prayer, as both clergy and laity have been nourished by the daily recitation of the psalms and the regular reading of the Scriptures. And, if the Benedictine way stands above all else for balance and moderation, so also does the Anglican via media.

Today many thousands of men and women, some Anglican and many more Roman Catholic, are following the monastic life according to the Rule of St Benedict. How is it possible that one common bond can link together, over a space of fifteen hundred years, those first small communities of a dozen, those great powerful medieval establishments, and the amazing variety of contemporary expressions of the same life? How is it possible that this same Rule can also speak to men and women who are trying to follow Christ without undertaking the commitment to community? Perhaps one of the stories which St Gregory tells about St Benedict may hint at the answer. It comes not from the Life but from the third book of the Dialogues. A certain hermit named Martin had chained himself to the side of his solitary cave near Monte Cassino. When he heard of it St Benedict sent him this message: ‘If you are indeed a servant of God, do not chain yourself with chains of iron. But rather, let Christ be the chain that binds you.’ St Benedict points to Christ. It is as simple as that. Christ is the beginning, the way and the end. The Rule continually points beyond itself to Christ himself, and in this it has allowed, and will continue to allow, men and women in every age to find in what it says depths and levels relevant to their needs and their understanding at any stage on their journey, provided that they are truly seeking God.