Mapping the Church and Asceticism in Ostrogothic Italy 495
father, and guide of twelve monasteries in Subiaco and of Monte Cassino.
We do not know what influence the communities founded by Benedict, who
died 21 March 547, were able to have on the Italian monastic scene during the
Ostrogothic era. Indeed it was probably the exodus of the community at Monte
Cassino to Rome, after the Lombard invasion destroyed the monastery in 581,
that brought Benedict to the attention of Pope Gregory who in those years was
leading a monastic life in his family home on the Caelian Hill, which he had
transformed into the monastery of St Andrew.
Monastic Rules in Italy: Latin Translations and New Models
Although the Benedictine model, which combined prayer, meditation, and
study with the exercise of complex economic activities related to the organi
zation and control of the territory in which a monastery was built, came to
dominate monastic life in the West from the 9th century, it was hardly the
norm during the Ostrogothic period. Rather, late 5th and 6thcentury Italy
was awash in a variety of practices and written rules, some Latin translations
of Greek texts, others local creations, and still others amalgams of different
monastic materials taking the form of what is known as the ‘mixed rule’. The
oldest of these were the rules of Pachomius (d. 346) and Basil of Caesarea
(ca. 330–79). Rufinus of Aquileia had translated Basil’s Asketikon for the monks
of the monastery of Pinetum, praying that they would make copies to send
“to other monasteries”.85 In 404, his contemporary Jerome produced a Latin
version of the Pachomian Rule.86 John Cassian (ca. 360–410) helped to renew
the same enthusiasm for asceticism in Rome (where he resided in 405) that
had existed in the time of Athanasius. His Instituta and Conlationes made east
ern traditions and spirituality accessible to the monks of the Italian peninsula
(and beyond), who avidly read these works between 420 and 430.87
In fact Cassian’s works strongly influenced two of Ostrogothic Italy’s most
important ‘indigenous’ rules, the Regula Magistri (ca. 500–25) and the Regula
S. Benedicti (ca. 530–60). An anonymous text attributed to “the Master”, the
Regula Magistri presents a highly detailed, lengthy discussion of virtually
every conceivable aspect of monastic life, from the ordering of daily prayers
85 Ruf., Praef. in Reg. s. Basilii, ed. Simonetti, p. 241.
86 Jerome, Translatio Latina Regulae S. Pachomiae, ed. Boon, Pachomiana Latina.
87 Chadwick, John Cassian.