of Monte Cassino. It was written for his own monastery and probably for a handful of
neighboring houses. St. Benedict relied in part on the slightly earlier Rule of the Master
and incorporated large amounts of Scripture into his Rule, but it was his unique blend of
practicality and moderation in a community designed to be almost a family of monks
under a fatherly abbot, that made it widely adopted. This Rule was popularized at the end
of the century by Pope Gregory the Great (r. 590–604), who wrote a Life of Benedict as
Book 2 of his Dialogues.
Benedict’s focus was on humility and obedience. The Rule laid out the steps of
humility, likened to Jacob’s ladder, and provided for the monk to climb that ladder under
the fatherly direction of an abbot to whom the Rule gave full authority, always with the
stipulation that he was responsible for the monks’ souls before God as well as his own.
The Rule stressed that the monks should give up normal physical pleasures, from fancy
clothes to red meat, and drew a sharp dividing line between the world within the cloister
and the always dangerous world outside. The monks especially had to give up individual
property, and could not even receive gifts from their secular relatives without the abbot’s
permission. Benedict assumed that some monks would enter the house as adult converts,
but many would arrive as boys, their parents’ offering to the monastery, and be brought
up and educated by the monks. When the abbot died, according to the Rule of St.
Benedict, the monks of the house would elect a new one, preferably unanimously, but
certainly by the choice of the “wiser part.”
Constance B.Bouchard
[See also: BENEDICT OF ANIANE; BENEDICTINE ORDER; MONASTIC RULES
AND CUSTOMARIES; MONASTICISM]
Benedict of Nursia. La règle de Saint Benoît, ed. Adalbert de Vogüé. Paris: Cerf, 1972.
De Vogüé, Adalbert. Community and Abbot in the Rule of Saint Benedict. 2 vols. Kalamazoo:
Cistercian, 1979–88.
Knowles, David. Christian Monasticism. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1969.
Lawrence, Clifford H. Medieval Monasticism: Forms of Religious Life in Western Europe in the
Middle Ages. 2nd ed. London: Longman, 1989.
BENEDICT OF ANIANE
(d. 821). The Rule of St. Benedict was popularized in France in the early 9th century in
large part due to the efforts of Benedict of Aniane. He founded the monastery of Aniane
in the diocese of Montpellier, ca. 779. Although initially he seems to have sought to
establish an especially rigorous form of monastic life there, within ten years he decided
instead to adopt the Rule of St. Benedict.
Under Louis the Pious, Benedict was encouraged to establish Benedictine monasticism
at all monasteries in Aquitaine. In a synod at Aix-la-Chapelle in 817, Benedict spelled out
legislation on how the Rule of St. Benedict was to be followed, with an emphasis on
seclusion, discipline, and moral conversion. His purpose was to create uniformity among
all Benedictine houses: una regula, una consuetudo. He greatly increased the emphasis
on liturgy and prayers for the dead and also made some modifications, such as allowing
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