Benedictine Order of Monks
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Early in the sixth century AD, a young man of the old Roman senatorial nobility found himself face to face with a deep emotional and spiritual crisis. He had been brought up a Christian the final triumph of Christianity over paganism was a century or two old by his day but for the most part his education and the values he had been imparted by his family and associates were the traditional late Roman ones. In effect, he had been trained to be a member of the governing class of the Roman Empire. But the Roman Empire, by his day, no longer existed. He was born in about the year 480.1 Four years earlier, in 476, the last Roman Emperor in the West had been dethroned by a Germanic warlord. Decades earlier, most of the provinces of the West had fallen under "barbarian" rule. In the East, the Emperor at Constantinople retained his power, but the Eastern Empire was gradually changing out of recognition, becoming not "Roman" but Byzantine in culture and spirit. The young man's name was Benedict. He is known today as St. Benedict of Nursia, founder of the Benedictine Order of monks. And, more than any other single man, he may be called the father of Western European civilization as it has emerged in the fifteen centuries since the fall of ancient Rome. The Benedictine Rule, which he established for the monastery he founded on Monte Cassino, embodied the principle that laborare est orare: labor is ________ 1C. Warren Hollister, Medieval E
. . .
ught to encourage a "spirit of self subordination, of regular moderate living."6 Quietude not dramatic solitude and utter silence, but genuine day by day quiet was the very essence of the Benedictine rule. To Benedict, true quietude was to be found
... in the nil admirari; in having neither hope nor
fear of anything below; in daily prayer, daily bread,
and daily work, one day being just like another,
except that it was one step nearer than the day
before it to that great Day which would swollow up
all days, the day of everlasting rest.7
The other essential feature of the Benedictine monastery was that it was self contained; in the economists' technical expression it was "autarkic."8 Labor was prayer, and labor meant first and foremost physical toil in the fields. Thus, the Benedictine monastary could feed itself. By a simple and logical extension, prayer also included other types of work, in workshops, providing the other basic necessities of the monks' simple lives. So the monastery could not only feed itself day by
day, but also make itself self sufficient in other respects.
________
5Ibid.
6Moss, 105.
7Ibid., 106, quoting [Cardinal?] Newman.
. . .
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2166
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)
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