The Benedictine Rule, therefore, was to be the channel through which contemporary monasticism might keep in touch with its origins. A monk was to be defined by the Rule of Benedict as a canon could be defined by the Rule of Augustine. It is not surprising, then, that we find the RB to be the object of study at this period: it is the time of the first commentaries. Aside from the work of Benedict of Aniane, which is not a commentary in the strict sense, the earliest28 is that of Smaragdus, abbot of St. Mihiel in Lorraine, in the first decades of the ninth century.29 He was present at the Synod of Aachen and probably wrote his Expositio on the RB shortly after. The commentary shows considerable acquaintance with Latin Patristic and monastic literature. Another commentary seems to date from around the middle of the ninth century. It is preserved in several recensions, one of which is attributed to Paul the Deacon in some manuscripts.30 It seems, however, that the work cannot be older than the mid-ninth century; hence the authorship of Paul, who died before 800, is out of the question.31 More likely it is the work of Hildemar, who may have been a monk of Corbie.32 Both of these commentaries are of considerable interest in reflecting the concerns of the period, and they are the beginning of a form of literature that has continued to accumulate around the RB to the present day.33
The decline that followed the abortive reform of Benedict of Aniane led to a reaction with the foundation of new centers of reform in the tenth century. The first and most prominent of these was Cluny, founded in 910, but there were numerous lesser centers that, like Cluny, formed groupings of monasteries, following the RB through the observance of the same statutes. The formation of such “orders,” centralized in varying degrees, was necessary to counter the influence of lay and episcopal overlords, from whom “exemption” was achieved, in some cases, by submission of the abbey to the Roman See. Some of these centers were Brogne in Belgium, founded by St. Gerard in 923; Gorze, reformed by John of Vandières in 933; Fleury, reformed by Odo of Cluny in 931 but remaining outside the Cluniac organization; and St. Benignus of Dijon, reformed by William of Volpiano in 989. In the eleventh century there were added such centers as Verdun, reformed under Richard of St. Vanne in 1005, and Bec in Normandy, founded by Herluin in 1035, the monastery that produced Lanfranc and St. Anselm. These reforming houses differed considerably in details of observance and in structure, but all unquestioningly accepted the RB as the basis of their life, interpreted according to a conception fundamentally that of the Carolingian reform.
The same development occurred in other countries. In Italy the reforming activity of Odo of Cluny brought the RB to the monasteries of Rome and implanted the Cluniac ideal, which flourished in the eleventh century in the congregation of Cava. In England the destruction wrought by the Danish invasions was followed in the tenth century by a restoration under SS. Dunstan, Ethelwold and Oswald on the basis of the Regularis Concordia, statutes that borrowed from continental models.34 In Spain the Cluniacs introduced the Benedictine Rule in the eleventh century and established a network of monasteries along the pilgrimage route to Compostella. In Germany, William of Hirsau introduced a modified Cluniac observance in 1079 and formed a union of over a hundred monasteries, which resolutely supported Gregory VII in the investiture struggle.
Characteristic of this form of Benedictine monasticism was a certain centralization and uniformity of observance, an enormous development of ritual, a refined monastic culture based upon intensive study of the Bible and the Fathers, a genuinely contemplative orientation, a far-reaching charitable activity, serious though limited work, especially that of the scriptorium, and a discreet practice of the eremitical life alongside and subject to the coenobium.35 Its most impressive realization was that of Cluny, which grew into a monastic empire of almost incredible proportions and yet for more than two centuries, under a series of abbots whose sanctity was equal to their discretion and administrative ability, maintained a disciplined and fruitful monastic life that constituted the most powerful reforming influence in the Church.36
In the eleventh century and well into the twelfth, while these monasteries were still prosperous and fervent, a reaction was nevertheless developing. They had become the Establishment; they had not changed with the times, whereas society was beginning to undergo profound transformations. For this reason, there developed a fervent and widespread desire for a life that would be more simple, less institutionalized, more solitary, less involved in the political and economic fabric of society — in short, a return to monastic origins. It is not surprising, then, that it often led to a reintroduction of the eremitical life. This movement, which sprang up spontaneously all over Europe, brought about a revolution in the monastic world and produced a whole variety of new “orders” and observances alongside the established houses. Though it was often chaotic and sometimes deviated into excess and heresy, under the direction of its most worthy representatives it produced remarkable fruits of holiness in the Church and enriched monasticism with forms of life that in many cases endure to the present day.37
Almost all these movements remained under the patronage of the RB. The Rule had become so entrenched that while it was desirable to go beyond it to seek out the deepest monastic roots, few wished to dispense with it. It remained the most direct approach to the ancient monastic tradition, and its flexibility was again demonstrated as it became combined with the particular emphases of the “new orders.” The earliest of these was Camaldoli, founded in 1010 by St. Romuald, who combined the RB with the practice of the solitary life; the same formula, with greater emphasis on austerity, was followed by his disciple Peter Damian at Fonte Avellana. John Gualbert, on the other hand, instituted a fully cenobitic life, but one marked by austere simplicity, at Vallombrosa in 1022. Robert of Arbrissel combined the austere life of a hermit with itinerant preaching; then, to provide for his many followers, he established in 1099 the double monastery of Fontevrault under the RB, with large numbers of monks and nuns governed by an abbess who exercised complete jurisdiction. The congregation eventually grew to over a hundred houses. St. Bruno went to the desert of Chartreuse in 1084 to lead the solitary life with a few companions; after six years he was summoned to Rome to serve as adviser to Pope Urban II. Only later were the Consuetudines adopted and the various hermitages that grew up united into an order. The Carthusians have never followed the RB, though their life stresses many of the same values.
The most successful of the new orders was that of Cîteaux, founded in a Burgundian swamp in 1098 by Robert of Molesmes and twenty-one companions. Robert himself had founded Molesmes, an observant though traditional monastery, but the Cistercian pioneers wanted greater solitude and poverty and the “literal” observance of the Rule of St. Benedict. Robert was ordered back to Molesmes by the Pope, but the rest remained at Cîteaux, living in great austerity under Alberic and then Stephen Harding. In 1112 St. Bernard arrived with thirty companions, inaugurating a deluge of vocations that continued for a century and filled all Europe with Cistercian abbeys, from Scandinavia to the Balkans and from Ireland to the Holy Land. When Stephen died in 1134, there were 19 monasteries; at Bernard’s death in 1153, there were 343; at the end of the twelfth century, 525. While there was a strict uniformity of observance, the rigid centralization of authority characteristic of Cluny was abandoned in favor of a looser structure defined in Stephen Harding’s Carta Caritatis (1114): each abbey was autonomous, but was subject to some control by the annual general chapter and by visitations from the abbot of its motherhouse. Cîteaux’s phenomenal success soon brought it prominence, wealth, power and the very involvement in temporal affairs that the first white monks had sought to escape.38
During the Middle Ages the Benedictine community became a quite different reality from that outlined in the RB. For a long time the monks had been more and more assimilated to clerics insofar as their life demanded a level of education that separated them from the laity. As vernacular development made Latin the language of an educated minority, the people became less active in the liturgy, which was
more and more identified as the work of clerics and monks. In the course of the Middle Ages, there was a gradual increase in the number of monks admitted to sacred orders. The ritual development in the monasteries meant that the monks were occupied chiefly with sacred duties and did less of the common work. The new orders developed the institution of the conversi to take care of the work. They seem to have appeared first at Vallombrosa; later we find them at Hirsau and especially at Cîteaux, where they were very numerous. The conversi were not lay brothers in the modern sense, but laymen who were admitted to a religious life different from that of the monks. Their vocation was not to a life of liturgical and private prayer and lectio, but to a life of service for the monastery; they were often illiterate and were generally occupied with work.39 In the Cistercian abbeys they spent most of the week at distant granges and came to the monastery only for Sunday. It was only much later that they were considered a kind of second-class monks. Many of them became extremely holy men, but this new development harbored an ambiguity whose effects remain to the present day.
In every period of monastic history, women as well as men fully lived the monastic life. The life of the nuns was unfortunately one of the neglected areas of monastic history until fairly recently. From its very beginnings, in the East, women played an important role in monasticism. The Apophthegmata mentions female solitaries in the desert; Pachomius established a monastery for virgins, and Basil legislated for them. Paula and Melania and the other associates of Jerome and Rufinus were among the most enthusiastic propagators of the monastic life in the Latin world. St. Gregory speaks of nuns in the entourage of St. Benedict and has left us an unforgettable portrait of St. Scholastica’s power of prayer. A number of Latin rules were written especially for women. In the Anglo-Saxon world they were of special importance: one thinks of Hilda presiding over the double monastery of Whitby, and of Lioba and the other female collaborators who contributed so much to the work of Boniface and who appear so frequently in his letters.
Throughout the high Middle Ages, the dowries required for entrance to monasteries usually limited admission to women of the aristocratic and middle classes. The law in Western Europe severely restricted the status of women, but in fact they often exercised a great deal of actual power. Many abbesses ruled large establishments with complicated economic, political, and sometimes military problems. Some abbesses in England, for example, played an important role in the wool trade, since their monasteries possessed large flocks, and in the late thirteenth and throughout the fourteenth century several abbesses were summoned to parliament, because kings wanted to tax their wealth. While many were involved in secular affairs, there were also such inspiring figures as SS. Hildegard, Mechtild and Gertrude, who illustrate the high degree of culture and spirituality that flourished in women’s monasteries. Hrosthwitha (tenth century) of the Saxon abbey of Gandersheim achieved in her times a considerable fame as author, poet and translator of the plays of Terence; many of her poems had as their theme opposition to the classical view of the frailty of women. The abbess Hildegard (1098–1179) of Rupertsberg in Hesse, Germany, served as physician to Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, and her book On the Physical Elements shows a rare degree of careful scientific observation; she was one of the most famous physicians of the twelfth century. Although attempts were made for a stricter enclosure, the life of nuns was fundamentally the same as that of monks. Throughout history, nuns have often lived the Rule in a more authentic and fruitful manner than the monks, and have constituted an eloquent testimony to its ability to lead Christians to sanctity.40
The climax of the Benedictine centuries was reached in the unique flowering of religious culture that came to fruition in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The fruits of monastic lectio then appeared, enriched with new insights gained from an acquaintance with the Greek Fathers, in the religious literature produced by monks of this period. There are no really essential differences among monastic authors of different schools: Bernard of Clairvaux, William of St. Thierry, Aelred of Rievaulx and the lesser Cistercians; John of Fécamp, Peter of Celle and Peter the Venerable among the black monks; and Carthusian writers like Guy I and Guy II. They share the same basic approach to religious reality, one that grew out of a life of self-discipline and inner conversion, nourished by silence and prayer, a contemplative orientation less concerned to analyze than to rest peacefully in grateful admiration of the mystery of God and his works. The unity of this “monastic theology” is more striking than the divergences among its various representatives. It is an eloquent testimony to the latent ability of the RB to stimulate a productive spiritual growth in the lives of those who assimilate its doctrine and submit to its discipline.
3. DECLINE AND RENEWAL: THE RB FROM THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY TO MODERN TIMES
If it is true that the practice of the RB reached its high point in the achievement of the Benedictine centuries, this does not mean that all that has happened since is but an anachronistic survival of a golden age. Profound changes in society led to the establishment of new forms of religious life from the thirteenth century onward; these new forms have contributed immensely to the life of the Church. The monastic life, which in the West had become identified with the Benedictine Rule, thus lost its monopoly. But it continued during the following centuries to play a role, even though a less conspicuous one. The RB has continued to provide the principal framework for the monastic life and to put monks into contact with their origins. Since the constitutive period of Western monasticism was completed by the twelfth century, however, we can summarize more briefly the role that the RB has played in the monastic order down to modern times.
In the late Middle Ages both the black and the white monks fell quite rapidly into decadence. There were many causes for this, some of them external to the monasteries: the shift from feudalism to urban life ruined the economic base of the monasteries; ecclesiastical and secular princes impoverished them by exacting revenues and interfered in their internal affairs; the Black Death and the Hundred Years’ War severely depopulated many houses; and the great schism of the West divided orders and communities into conflicting allegiances. One of the worst abuses was the commendam system, hardly new but much more generally extended, especially by the Avignon popes in the fourteenth century: an outsider, not himself a monk, was appointed abbot of a monastery so that he could collect its revenues, though he did not live as a monk himself and did not perform the traditional role of an abbot.
There were also, however, internal causes of decadence. Too many monasteries had been established, and not all of them could be maintained at a level of fervor when the number of monastic vocations sharply declined in the thirteenth century. The monks often seemed incapable of adapting to the development of society around them and seemed intent solely upon preserving the past. Much of the leadership, the vitality and the supply of fervent vocations passed to the new mendicant orders, which responded so well to the needs and the spirit of the times. Inertia often became an occupational hazard of large monasteries, and many seemed unable to meet the challenge of the new learning, the new economy, the new aspirations of the rising generation. Sometimes they sank into a comfortable mediocrity, satisfied with drawing their revenues and perpetuating their privileges.
The abbot, when he was still a monk, often functioned as a powerful prince, enjoying the rights and insignia of bishops. He drew his own revenues, which had to be separated from the community’s income to protect the monks from total impoverishment. He became more and more separated from the community, with separate dwelling, and concerned himself with administration, defending the rights of his abbey and playing the role of a great lord. If he was a commendam abbot, he made no pretense of even living at the monastery. Some held title to several abbeys at the same time, and some monasteries were given in commendam to boys of tender age. In these circumstances, the concept of the abbot’s spiritual fatherhood, a foundation stone of the spirituality of the RB, deteriorated beyond repair. The monks usually did not do
manual labor to provide for their own subsistence, but lived from benefices. They still performed the divine office, but the liturgy was also in a serious state of decadence at this period, and they easily became influenced by sentimental and anthropocentric currents of spirituality.
Consequently, the contemplative orientation of the Benedictine life deteriorated, and candidates were sometimes accepted who came to seek an easy life rather than to seek God. The splendid religious culture of the twelfth century degenerated into mediocrity and sometimes ignorance. The ever-increasing clericalism led to large-scale ordination of monks, and they became more and more assimilated to regular clerics, so that monasticism was no longer recognized as a distinct form of life with a value of its own. Clericalism, in turn, sometimes led to the assumption of activities that removed monks from the life of the community. There were abuses of poverty, for the various officials, who were virtually irremovable, received revenues they came to use as they saw fit; and monks received “pittances” in memory of deceased benefactors who had provided for them in their wills.
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