Seeking God. Esther de Waal

his monks with him, he went south to Monte Cassino, the imposing mountain mass rising up in the central Apennines. After destroying a pagan shrine he built his new monastery in its place and here he remained for the rest of his life. Once a year he met his sister St Scholastica, who had established herself nearby with her community of nuns. Here he acquired a widespread reputation as a holy man, and here, sometime in the middle of the sixth century, he died, on a date which is traditionally held to be 21st March 547. His remains were not, however, destined to be allowed to lie in peace. About forty years after his death the monastery was destroyed by Lombards and left abandoned until it was refounded in about 720. There is considerable uncertainty about what actually did happen, but it seems that at some time in the mid-seventh century the remains of St Benedict and St Scholastica, which had been buried in the same tomb, were removed to France and the relics of St Benedict ultimately came to the abbey of St Benoît-sur-Loire, where they remain today.

      The twenty-eight chapters of the Life as St Gregory presented it in the Dialogues concentrate mainly on wonder working miracles and encounters with demons, much that seems difficult and unedifying to the modern reader. But to dismiss this too quickly would be to lose the opportunity of finding here another dimension to our understanding of St Benedict’s life. For the interest of the author does not lie in chronology and in events, it is much more in the line of biblical story telling, the plot line rooted in a journey motif. As St Gregory unfolds the life it is seen as a quest, a pilgrimage set in the narrow mountain passes and the broad sweep of plains that will ultimately lead St Benedict to the mountain top. There is something here of what the Rule itself promises, starting with a narrow gate and then widening out. Perhaps too it reflects something of what St Benedict, bred and shaped in the mountains, knew himself. But there is more to it than this. St Gregory wanted his readers to see in St Benedict an example of God at work in man’s life. He illustrates the law of paradox; genuine fruitfulness comes from what at first seems sterile; life comes out of death. Again nothing touches more closely the thinking of the Rule itself, with its central theme of dying and rebirth.

      Yet the St Benedict of the Dialogues still eludes us as a person. The Rule itself remains the source which ultimately reveals the personality of the man. For both its aim and its language set it apart from other similar monastic rules, and it is this which tells us so much about its author. The academic discussion of the degree of originality of the Rule is mercifully something which does not concern us here. An immense amount of impressive scholarship has been devoted to a question which is of the greatest significance to contemporary scholars, but which would in all probability have seemed absurd and irrelevant to St Benedict himself. He was happy to take what was good from the existing monastic heritage, to make it his own, and to colour it with his own personal experience. As he looked round he found various types of monastic life with their own traditions and achievements. There were some forms of the life which allowed much scope for individual development and for the life of solitude; others stressed more the value of a corporate life in a settled community. He drew these different strands together, and the discovery of the sources from which he derived much of his own material does not reduce the importance of his own contribution, rather it enhances it in showing his extraordinary skill in selecting and blending elements to form a balanced, positive and complete unity. But this is not just the work of an intellectual, the cerebral achievement of a skilled codifier. This is the work of a man who has lived what he is writing about, both in the cave at Subiaco and in the monastic enclosure at Monte Cassino. The consummate wisdom which it shows could only have emerged from a long and thorough assimilation, not simply in his mind but in his whole being.

      It is his new understanding of the relationships between the members of the community that is the great breakthrough. The older ideal had been essentially that of the novice finding a holy man and asking to learn from him, and the monastery had been a group of individuals gathered round the feet of a sage. One of these earlier rules, the Rule of the Master, had given enormous power to the abbot. St Benedict changes this almost exclusively vertical pattern of authority by emphasizing the relationships of the monks with each other. They are of course disciples who have come to the monastery to be trained, but they are also brothers bound in love to each other. So for St Benedict the monastery has become a community of love and the abbot a man who is expected not to be infallible or omniscient, but a man who will exercise his discretion as the circumstances demand. The Rule of the Master had used the word ‘school’ nine times, St Benedict uses it once only; as well as magister, master, he speaks of a loving father. The way in which the monks relate to each other is of little interest in the Rule of the Master; the Rule of St Benedict devotes three splendid chapters to it (69 – 71), with chapter 72 a masterpiece on what is involved in loving one another.

      The monks are to bear with patience the weaknesses of others, whether of body or behaviour. Let them strive with each other in obedience to each other. Let them not follow their own good but the good of others. Let them be charitable towards their brothers with pure affection. (72. 5 – 8)

      Textually his Rule may be almost the same in many of its phrases as that of the Master; but in its mood and its outlook it is a world apart. This chapter above all reflects the Benedictine ideal; this is the imprint of St Benedict himself. The ark which he was building was to contain a family.

      The monasteries of the sixth century, as they grew in St Benedict’s lifetime, were essentially small and simple, intended for a group of about a dozen, and all the daily activity had the characteristics of a large family at work. The monastery itself would be a small single-storey building, and scattered around would lie offices, outhouses, farm-sheds. Neither dormitory, refectory or oratory needed to be large or elaborate. The cloister was a thing of the future. The small community who gathered here as a Christian family to live, work and pray together would probably make small claim for themselves, for most were simple men, few were priests or scholars. The pattern of the day was established by the opus Dei, the work of God, the purpose of the monastic life. So seven times a day the monks would gather in the oratory, at hours which varied slightly between the summer and the winter months, to say together those offices which began soon after midnight with Vigils, were followed at daybreak by Lauds, and continued until the day ended, last thing in the evening, with Compline. The rest of the time was fully occupied with domestic or agricultural work, with study and reading, besides two meals and the hours of sleep. Here were men living together to serve God and save their souls, glad to care for those who sought them out but content to remain essentially ignorant of the world outside their walls.

      At the time of his death St Benedict’s Rule was one amongst many. Within a century or two St Benedict himself had become the patriarch of western monasticism and his Rule the most influential in the Latin church. From the seventh century onwards the Benedictines brought both Christianity and civilization to much of Europe, Cruce, libro et atro as the tag ran, with cross, book and plough. Before long the whole of western Christendom was carrying a scattering of monasteries like a mantle. The ‘monastic centuries’ had begun. It now becomes possible to see how deeply the life of Christendom was to be shaped by the Benedictine presence. Whereas in the very earliest days monks had gone out into the desert leaving behind them a comparatively sophisticated life, now that pattern was reversed. In a world in which barbarian invasion, political uncertainty, and the power of the sword seemed the most immediate realities, and in a simple agrarian world where parishes were served by priests of humble peasant birth, the monasteries came to stand out as centres of light and learning. Here men and women might expect to find a rich liturgical life, informed devotion, a love of learning and intelligent companionship, in communities now much larger than those of the sixth century. The small buildings housing a dozen men became a great complex, possibly for a hundred or more monks, with a large church, accommodation for the sick and the infirm, guest houses, and offices to administer extended estates. As time went on they accumulated stores of illuminated manuscripts, relics and works of art. Pilgrims and visitors from every rank of society from crowned heads to poorest peasants, came in search of prayers or alms, protection and hospitality. This mingling of the enclosed life with the life outside the walls was certainly not something foreseen by St Benedict, but it became too deeply part of the way of life to be eradicated. It meant many different things to many people. At one level it meant that abbots often became figures of political importance; at another that the surrounding countryside learnt much about agricultural efficiency and expertise.