Indeed, the decay of the monasteries should not be overgeneralized, for not all houses were reduced to this state. There is no period in history at which there were not some fervent and disciplined abbeys. Even in the worst of times there were valiant reforming efforts, and new forms of Benedictine life continued to spring up. In the thirteenth century, St. Sylvester Gozzolini founded Monte Fano, from which the Sylvestrine Congregation grew;41 and the hermit St. Peter Morrone, the future Pope Celestine V, organized his disciples into the abbey of Monte Majella, which grew into the Celestine Order. A century later St. Bernard Tolomei, after living the solitary life in a harsh desert near Siena, gave the RB to his disciples and founded the Olivetans. These branches of the Benedictine family all flourished, bringing forth fruits of holiness in an unfavorable time, and, except for the Celestines, still exist today.
The Holy See also attempted to bring about the reform of the monasteries. Already in 1215 the Fourth Lateran Council, convoked by Innocent III, prescribed that monasteries should meet in general chapter every three years on a national basis and appoint visitators to ensure the maintenance of discipline. Except in England, these provisions were never consistently carried out, and in fact they were not entirely clear nor free from internal contradiction. Again, in 1336 a much more detailed program of reform was promulgated by the Cistercian Pope Benedict XII in the bull Summi Magistri, but it too proved ineffectual in the long run. For many complex reasons it was not possible to reverse the general trend toward decline. Not all these reasons were the fault of the monks, who were often at the mercy of the civil and ecclesiastical power.
The fifteenth century saw a great flowering of reform movements. The prototype in the Latin countries was the reform brought about by Louis Barbo at the abbey of St. Justina in Padua. After restoring poverty, stability and the common life in his own monastery, he extended the reform to several other houses. As the movement progressed, some radical measures were taken to prevent its being undone by the commendam system: the autonomy of the monasteries and the traditional abbatial office were suppressed; all monks were professed for the congregation; and supreme authority resided in the annual general chapter, which appointed all the superiors and could move monks as well as abbots from one house to another. Originally called the Congregatio de Unitate, it became the Cassinese Congregation after Montecassino entered it in 1504. It eventually reformed practically all the Benedictine monasteries of Italy, though at the price of rather notable departures from the Rule.
In Spain a similar though somewhat less radical system was followed in the Congregation of Valladolid. These measures were not necessary in the German countries, where the commendam system had never become firmly established. Hence, a more traditional approach prevailed in the reforms of Melk in Austria and Bursfeld in Germany, which grew out of the reform efforts of the Councils of Constance and Basel. The former was simply an observance without real congregational structures, but the Bursfeld Union, which eventually embraced about 180 monasteries, was a clearly structured juridical entity. In France political conditions defeated all efforts to overcome the commendam, and no general reform was possible, though limited success was achieved in some monasteries.
In the countries affected by the Reformation, about half the monasteries disappeared in the sixteenth century. In England they were totally suppressed,42 though the English Benedictines later organized several houses in exile on the continent that devoted their efforts to the English mission and continued to prosper in France until they were allowed to return to England in the eighteenth century. In the Scandinavian countries, monasticism disappeared completely. In the Low Countries, Switzerland and the German regions, the situation was more complex: in the regions that became Protestant, all the monasteries eventually ceased to exist; elsewhere they survived, but often under conditions of great hardship because of the religious wars. In Italy, Spain and Portugal, many houses continued to prosper.
During the Counter Reformation the surviving monasteries were grouped into national congregations, and generally the state of discipline was quite good. In France there was a remarkable revival in the Congregations of St. Vanne and especially St. Maur, both founded in the early seventeenth century with a structure modeled on that of the Cassinese, deemed necessary to combat the commendam. St. Maur, which came to embrace nearly two hundred fervent monasteries, devoted the talents of its most gifted members to ecclesiastical studies. The Abbey of Saint-Germain des Prés in Paris became the center of European scholarship. The Maurists did pioneer work in paleography and historical criticism, and produced editions of the Fathers that have, in some cases, not yet been surpassed. At the same time, a remarkable Cistercian reform was undertaken at the Abbey of La Trappe by the famous Armand-Jean de Raneé, founder of what became the Trappist observance.43
In the eighteenth century, however, widespread relaxation developed, even though many monasteries throughout Europe remained observant. Monks became unpopular in an age dominated by rationalism, and they were themselves infected by the spirit of the times. They were considered tolerable only if they contributed something “useful” to society; thus, the Austrian monasteries in the time of Joseph II were obliged to undertake parish and school work in order to avoid suppression. Increasingly, secular princes began to cast envious eyes upon monastic property and were delighted to be provided with justifications for confiscating it. In France the Revolution wiped out all the monasteries, and in the confused decades that followed, the mania of suppression swept across Europe. Promoted by liberal governments, it continued to appear sporadically through the nineteenth century. By the end of the Napoleonic period, there were scarcely thirty monasteries left of the hundreds that had for so long played a major role in the life of Europe.
The nineteenth century brought the monasteries back. In some cases it was a question of continued existence of houses that had survived, as in Austria, or the restoration of pre-revolutionary Benedictine life along the same lines, as in Bavaria. In other cases there was a complete break with the past and a new beginning based upon a rethinking. The pioneer of this new type of Benedictine life was Prosper Guéranger, who in 1833 re-established the monastic life at Solesmes. He deliberately decided against the restoration of pre-revolutionary monasticism in favor of an older model, the style of the high Middle Ages. If the effort was strongly colored by the romanticism of the times and failed to go far enough in its return to sources, it was nevertheless a fruitful beginning that held rich potentialities for the future. A similar program led to the establishment of the Beuronese Congregation in Germany by Maurus and Placid Wolter in the 1860s.
Most of the Benedictine and Cistercian monasteries existing today owe their origin to the efforts of their nineteenth-century forefathers, who ensured that the RB would continue to be influential in shaping monastic life. By the end of the century, it seemed desirable to Pope Leo XIII to create a structure uniting all the black-monk monasteries, in order to promote communication and concerted action among them. His initiative led to the formation of the Benedictine Confederation, a loose international union of congregations and unaffiliated monasteries, presided over by an abbot primate, who periodically assembles all the abbots and priors for discussion of questions of mutual concern. A similar unification was effected for the Cistercians of both the strict and common observances. In recent times the smaller branches of the Benedictine family—Camaldolese, Vallombrosans and Sylvestrines—have entered the Benedictine Confederation.
4. THE RULE IN THE NEW WORLD
Long before any permanent colony was established in North America, the RB was already being followed elsewhere in the New World. The earliest monasteries of both monks and nuns are said to have been implanted in Greenland by Scandinavians already in the thirteenth century.44 In the sixteenth century, the reformed Portuguese houses, erected into a new congregation in 1566, sent a colony of monks to Brazil, where they founded the abbey of Bahia in 1581. Before the end of the century, three other monasteries had been
established in Rio de Janeiro, Olinda and São Paolo. They were erected into a separate Brazilian congregation in 1827. Although almost annihilated by an anti-clerical government, they were revived in 1895 by Beuronese monks.45 All four of these sixteenth-century abbeys exist today. Peru and Mexico also possessed monasteries in colonial times.
In the eighteenth century, several Americans from the Maryland colony became Benedictines in English monasteries in exile on the continent. Richard Chandler of Charles County made his profession for the Douai community in 1705, after having been sent there for study. Seven Maryland women, including three sisters from the Semmes family, went to Europe in the eighteenth century for schooling and subsequently joined the English communities of Benedictine nuns at Paris, Ghent, Brussels and Pontoise.46
The first Benedictine in the United States is thought to have been Pierre-Joseph Didier, a monk of St. Denis in Paris, who came to America in 1790 when the French monasteries were suppressed and spent the rest of his life doing pastoral work in Ohio and St. Louis.47 Trappist refugees from the Revolution came in 1803 and for many years underwent extraordinary hardships in an unsuccessful attempt to establish a foundation; a later effort finally resulted, in 1848, in the foundation of a permanent monastery at Gethsemani, Kentucky 48
Before this, however, the first Benedictine monastery, St. Vincent, was established at Latrobe, Pennsylvania, by Boniface Wimmer. Wimmer was a young diocesan priest when in 1832 he entered the newly re-established abbey of Metten in Bavaria. He conceived a great interest in doing missionary work in America among the German immigrants, who were in danger of losing their faith because of the lack of German-speaking priests. Although his superiors did not share his enthusiasm, having problems enough of their own in re-establishing the monastic life in Bavaria, he was finally permitted to set out in 1846 with a group of eighteen candidates who were not yet monks.49
Wimmer’s foundation prospered, in spite of the many hardships and obstacles he encountered. Vocations were numerous and expansion rapid. Generous financial support was provided by King Ludwig I of Bavaria and by the German missionary society he had founded in Munich, the Ludwig-Missionsverein. After ten years Wimmer was already making foundations in other parts of the country. In 1856 he sent monks to far-off Minnesota to found what was to become St. John’s Abbey.50 The following year other foundations were made in Atchison, Kansas,51 and in Newark, New Jersey. Wimmer also sent monks, in the years that followed, to North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Illinois and Colorado. When he died in 1887, there were five abbeys and one conventual priory, and four of his other foundations were later raised to abbatial status. The American-Cassinese Congregation had been established already in 1855.
On his very first return to Bavaria in 1851, Wimmer appealed to the Benedictine community of St. Walburga’s Convent at Eichstätt to send nuns to Pennsylvania. The following year Sister Benedicta Riepp and two other nuns arrived and established a convent at St. Mary’s, Pennsylvania.52 This convent was the original source from which the Benedictine life for women eventually spread throughout the United States. The first foundation was made in Erie, Pennsylvania, already in 1856;53 the following year sisters were sent also to Newark and to Minnesota.54 Although the Eichstätt community, which had been sending more nuns in the meantime, wished to retain the American mission as a dependency, Father Wimmer succeeded in obtaining its separation from Bavaria in 1859. The Roman decree specified that the sisters in America could make only simple vows, since they could not maintain strict enclosure, and would be subject to the diocesan ordinary. The sisters further expanded to Kentucky in 1859, Illinois in 1861, Kansas in 1863,55 and Indiana in 1867.56
Meanwhile, monks from Switzerland had arrived in the United States with their tradition of the observance of the Rule. The Swiss abbeys were being hard pressed by anti-clerical governments in the mid-nineteenth century and were also attracted by the needs of the American Church. Monks from Einsiedeln arrived in 1854 and settled in southern Indiana. This foundation, named for St. Meinrad, which became an abbey in 1870, was the first Swiss-American monastery.57 In 1873 the abbey of Engelberg also sent monks, who established Conception Abbey in Missouri (1873; abbey, 1881)58 and Mount Angel in Oregon (1882; abbey, 1904). St. Meinrad founded daughter houses in Arkansas (New Subiaco, 1878)59 and Louisiana (St. Joseph, 1888), and sent monks to work for the conversion of the American Indians in the Dakotas, an apostolate in which Conception Abbey also cooperated.
Benedictine sisters also came from Switzerland after the founding of Conception Abbey. They were from the recently founded convent of Maria Rickenbach, which was closely associated with the monks of Engelberg. Five sisters arrived in Missouri in 1874; they settled first at Maryville, but moved to Clyde the following year. Within a few years contingents had gone out to Yankton, South Dakota; Mount Angel, Oregon, and Pocahontas, Arkansas. Maria Rickenbach continued to send nuns, and two other Swiss convents also made American foundations: Sarnen at Cottonwood, Idaho, in 1882, and Melchthal at Sturgis, South Dakota (later moved to Rapid City), in 1889. These sisters, like those from Bavaria, experienced a rapid and fruitful growth, and, while suffering severe hardships under the rough conditions of frontier life, contributed generously to the apostolate in the rapidly expanding American Church.
By the end of the nineteenth century, the Rule of St. Benedict was guiding the lives of men and women throughout the United States. The growth continued in the first part of the twentieth century, though more slowly. The majority of Benedictine monasteries of monks now belong to one of the two large federations that reflect their national origin. The American-Cassinese Federation groups together twenty-two independent monasteries descended from Boniface Wimmer’s foundation of 1846.60 The Swiss-American Federation, established in 1881, is composed of the monasteries founded from Einsiedeln and Engelberg and their descendants, now fifteen in all. Each federation has one abbey in Canada, and the American-Cassinese also has one in Mexico. Several of the monasteries in each federation have dependencies, both in the United States and in other parts of the world, notably Latin America.
Other Benedictine congregations are also represented in the United States. The English Congregation has three monasteries. The Ottilien and Belgian Congregations, the two Camaldolese Congregations, the Sylvestrines and the Olivetans have one each, and the French Congregation has an abbey in Quebec. There are also two independent monasteries that are not affiliated with a congregation but belong to the Benedictine Confederation. St. Gregory’s Abbey at Three Rivers, Michigan, is a Benedictine monastery belonging to the Episcopal Church. The Cistercians of the Common Observance have three monasteries, and the Cistercians of the Strict Observance, who experienced an enormous growth after World War II, have twelve.
The formation of congregations for the nuns was a slow and arduous task. The convents remained subject to the bishops until the second quarter of the twentieth century. Most of them now belong to one of four principal federations. Having been formed much later than the founding era, they do not always reflect precisely the historical origin of each convent. The oldest and largest is that of St. Scholastica, established in 1922 after the failure of earlier efforts dating back as far as 1879. It consists of twenty-three convents, all descended from the Bavarian foundation at St. Mary’s.61 The Federation of St. Gertrude the Great, formed in 1937, includes fifteen communities of chiefly but not exclusively Swiss origin. The Clyde convent, however, and several houses founded from it constitute the Congregation of the Benedictine Sisters of Perpetual Adoration. Another federation was formed in 1956 by St. Benedict’s Convent, St. Joseph, Minnesota, together with six other houses. All of them except one are daughter houses of St. Benedict’s.62
There are a few communities of nuns outside these federations. The community of Jonesboro, Arkansas, founded by Swiss nuns from Maria Rickenbach, via Maryville, in 1887 (originally at Pocahontas, Arkansas), has been affiliated with the Olivetans since 1893.63 Regina Laudis at Bethlehem, Connecticut, is a founda
tion of Jouarre in France, made in 1947. The convent at Norfolk, Nebraska, belongs to the Benedictine Missionary Congregation of Tutzing in Bavaria. The nuns of Eichstätt have two American dependencies at Greensburg, Pennsylvania, and Boulder, Colorado.64 The Trappistines, who came to America only after World War II, have already grown to four convents, and there is one of Cistercian nuns of the Common Observance.
The Rule of St. Benedict has proved its flexibility over the centuries as it has been lived in many different ways in a bewildering variety of social and cultural situations. The American experience of it—or rather, the variety of American experiences, for there have been and continue to be many different forms of life according to the Rule in America—has had its own unique contribution to make.65 However the American monastic phenomenon may be judged eventually by history, it is clear that even in the changed circumstances of the New World, the RB has retained its viability to teach men and women.66
5. THE RELEVANCE OF THE RULE TODAY
The purpose of this section is not to propose a particular interpretation of the Rule for our time nor to resolve the question of this or that particular monastic practice, but rather to point out the contexts in which the question of relevance has arisen and to suggest a framework in which the discussion of its relevance can be pursued.
The question of whether or not and to what extent the Rule of St. Benedict is relevant to the lives of Benedictines in the twentieth century arises in the first instance because it is obvious to even a casual observer that a great many of the concrete provisions of the Rule are not observed today. Indeed, there is no monastery in the world in which all of the provisions of the Rule are observed. This has, of course, been the case for well over a thousand years. In the past, the perception of the discrepancy between the letter of the Rule and monastic practice has often troubled the consciences of those who had made their profession to live “according to the Rule of St. Benedict,” and has led to various reform movements aimed at restoring the observance of the Rule more or less in its full integrity. It is doubtful, as most historians will grant, whether any of these movements ever succeeded in that goal. What they usually produced was a new, and often fruitful, observance and adaptation of the Rule for their own time.
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