The world of St Benedict

A first step into the monastic Rule that has become something of a standard in the modern era, a short-hand for monasticism in general.

Part 22 of our Ulterior Lives series: A Slow Research Project into The Outsider Politics of Monasticism. Read the introduction here.

---

A century after St Augustine, we finally arrive at the monastic Rule that has remained something of a standard ever since. It remains a living document, having been consistently observed for one and a half thousand years.

The Rule of St Benedict is a striking synthesis of sincere devotion and good common sense. Just as the Rule of Pachomius was not an innovation but a formalisation of an existing pattern, the Benedictine Rule was a sensible refinement of the various Rules that had gone before.

We don’t know much about the Italian Benedict of Nursia. He was a redactor and a refiner of Rules, an abbot who had started twelve monasteries, after three years of hermetic seclusion. His own Rule clearly shows the marks of his long experience in community. He has an artless gentle wisdom. The kind moderation of his Rule sits rather at odds with the legend that his first community tried to poison him, but perhaps his wisdom came through the school of difficult experience. Only gradually, beyond his own lifetime, did the Benedictine Rule become the Rule par excellence, adopted from place to place.

Living in the fifth and sixth century, we should not imagine him wandering about some grand abbey. A normal monastic community of that time and place might be ten to twenty people, living together in a simple dwelling, sharing working duties and keeping a well established pattern of prayers at set hours, fasting and celebrating holy days in smallness and simplicity.

The very first chapter gives us a curious window into the monastic scene of his day. “There are clearly four kinds of monks,” he begins. He describes them like so:

“First there are the Cenobites; in other words, those who live in monasteries and do their service under a rule and an abbot. The second are the anchorites, that is, hermits: they are no longer in the first fervour of the monastic life, but have been trained by a lengthy period of probation in the monastery with the support of many others and have learned to fight against the devil. Well-armed, they go out from the ranks of the brothers to the single combat of the desert.”

There is a notable turn in Benedict’s framing here. The Rule of Life, as he sees it, is not a progression onwards from the primitive days of the hermits. He puts it the other way round. A Rule of Life is a starting point, a scaffold with which one might begin toward the ideal of the Hermits, who lived faithfully beyond the elementary bounds of Rule and Superior.

We’ve already said much about the relationship between these two kinds of monks, but what of the other two kinds? Benedict goes on to mention the Sarabaites. He calls them “the most detestable kind of monks.” Little is known with certainty about this group. According to Benedict they have neither the Rule of the Cenobites, nor discipline of the hermits. They go about in ones, twos and threes, and are accused of cutting rather licentious path.

The fourth group are the gyrovagues; that is, those who “wander in circles.” These were travelling monks, also without Rule or Superior. Having called the Sarabaites the “most” detestable, Benedict goes on to say that the gyrovagues are “in every way worse than the Sarabaites.” He says it is better not to talk about them at all, and indeed, from thereon no more is said.

Other writers, Jerome, John Cassian, Isidor and such also mention these various schools, with similar verdicts. This certainly suggests that the landscape of Monasticism was complex, with various experimental forms of life in play. Some stuck and some didn’t. Since Benedict complains that the sarabaites and gyrovagies had not been tested by any Rule, and since he suggests that anchorites (hermits) are monks who have graduated from years lived under community Rule, one might take the misapprehension that the Rule is what divides the good from the not good here.

But of course, the original hermits did not come from any Rule or Superior; rather, the Rule and Superior emerged to give form to the prior example of the hermits. The grievance with the sarabaites and and gyrovagues, rightly or wrongly, was to do with their lack of ascetic rigour. To be attacked with those slurs was to be viewed as one who had not bothered to exorcise homo-economicus and the other demons of civilisation; to be a rogue creature, out of balance with the creaturely. It was the common view that there could be no peaceable human community apart from the difficult ascetic road.

We may come back to these itinerant and unattached forms of Monasticism later. For now, we return to Benedict’s understanding of what a Rule of Life is, and where it sits in relation to the ideal of the Desert Fathers and Mothers:

In the final chapter Benedict concludes:

“We have written this rule so that by living in accordance with it in monasteries we may demonstrate that we are to some extent living virtuously and have made a start on the religious life. But for someone who is in a hurry to attain perfection in this way of life, there are the teachings of the holy fathers: by observing these a man will be led to the heights of perfection. [...] But we are lazy and reprehensible and careless lives, and we ought to be ashamed of ourselves. Whoever you are, then, who are hurrying towards the heavenly country, observe this little rule for beginners…”

Follow more of David Benjamin Blower’s writings over at his own Substack. Stay tuned for the next part on St Benedict, later this week :)

---