Lecture 26: Benedictine Monasticism and Its Influence
o Obedience to the Rule and the abbot (the head of the
monastery) structures the entire way of life. Benedict closely
connects disobedience to pride and obedience to humility, and
he envisages the return to God as an ascent (paradoxically) up
a ladder of increased degrees of humility.o The monk does not seek to do his own will but God’s.
Effectively, though, God’s will is mediated by the Rule and
the abbot.• Benedict explicitly embraces the “common life” (coenobites)
precisely because it provides a “school of the Lord’s service” for
beginners. He admires hermits because they are heroic, but his
beginners are not ready for that. In contrast, he despises those who
call themselves monks but only wander about in aimless pursuits.
o Benedict’s Rule does not demand severe physical asceticism.
In fact, in matters of clothing, food, and drink, his monks were
probably more comfortable—because more secure—than the
majority of peasants in the 6th century.o The asceticism demanded by the Rule is precisely that of life
together, avoiding murmuring and cultivating charity in the
daily grind of life lived in a face-to-face community.o The distinctive Benedictine vows, besides obedience, are
stability (to live in one community until death) and conversatio
morum, a continual “conversion of life” in the context
of community.o Benedictines do not take a vow of poverty even though “a
monk shall call nothing at all his own”; instead, they have a
community of possessions, all of which are subject to the
disposition of the abbot. Once more, the emphasis is on sharing
rather than on heroic self-dispossession.o The monk’s life of celibacy is not the subject of a vow but a
corollary of a single-gender community. Benedict’s sister