the Benedictine rule would take a leading role in pioneering economic innovations and in "rationalizing" and improving the efficiency of farm operations.3 Some Benedictine achievements were far from what we now regard as religious. The term "Benedictine" as a type of brandy testifies to the role of Benedictine monks in pioneering the distillation of spirits of the liquid sort.
The goal of St. Benedict was not, of course, to make possible the invention of distilled spirits, or to make possible the agricultural development of Western Europe, and least of all to create what may be called the spiritual underpinning of modern Western capitalism. Indeed, his ultimate goal was not even the Benedictine rule or order as it developed in the centuries after his time.
Christian monasticism was already several centuries old in St. Benedict's day. The original inspiration for it may have come, indirectly, from India; certainly the monastic tradition has no real counterpart in Christianity's mother religion, Judaism, or its younger brother religion of Islam. A major early ________
2Arnold Toynbee, A Study of History, abridged by D. C. Sommervell, v. 2 (New York: Dell, 1957), p. 100.
3Peter Munz, Life in the Age of Charlemagne (New York: Capricorn Books, 1969), 106. center of monasticism was in Egypt, near the ancient trade route to India. Egyptian monasticism has been described as "fiery, individualist, competitive asceticism."4 The most famous of these early Eastern Christian monks was possibly St. Simon Stylites, who lived out his life atop a pillar. These monks sometimes lived together, but not in true communities, since each was individually devoted to personal meditation, with a relative minimum of social interaction.
Monasticism also spread in the West including a distinctive form which developed in Ireland. Western monasticism tended to be somewhat more communal, but still devoted to oth...