THE CAMBRIDGE MEDIEVAL HISTORY I 278
The Chief Work of the Benedictine Monk
18.10. The Chief Work of the Benedictine Monk
According to St. Benedict's scheme of the monastic life, work occupied notably more time daily than either the church services or reading; and this work was manual, either in the fields or garden, or about the house. This element of work was intended to be an integral part of the life; not a mere occupation, but a very real factor of the monk's service of God, and from six to seven hours were devoted to it daily. These long hours of manual labour, coupled with the unbroken fast till midday, or 3 p.m., or even till sunset during Lent, and the perpetual abstinence from flesh meat, may convey the impression that, after all, the life in St Benedict's monastery was one of great bodily austerity. But it has to be remembered that though members of patrician families were to be found in his community, still the great majority was recruited from the ranks of the Italian peasantry, or from those of the Goths and other barbarians who were then overrunning Italy. Neither the fasting nor the abstinence from meat would appear to Italian peasants in the present day, and still less in the sixth century, so onerous as they do to us in northern climes.
The other exercise of the monks, outside the direct worship of God, was reading, to which from three to five hours were assigned daily, according to the season. There can be little doubt that this reading was wholly devotional, confined to the Bible and the writings of the fathers, St Basil and Cassian being recommended by name. Out of this germ grew in the course of ages those works of erudition and of historical science with which the Benedictine name in later ages became associated: the first step forward along the path of monastic studies was taken not by St Benedict, but by his younger contemporary Cassiodorus in his Calabrian monastery at SquiUace.
But the chief work of the monk was, in St Benedict's eyes, neither field work nor literary work: all the services of Benedictines to civilisation and education and letters have been but by-products. Their primary and essential work is what St Benedict calls the "Work of God" — Opus Dei — the daily chanting of the canonical Office in the choir. To this work he says nothing is to be preferred, and this principle has been the keynote of Benedictine life throughout the ages. The daily "course" of psalmody ordinarily consisted of 40 psalms with certain canticles, hymns, responses, prayers, and lections from Scripture and the fathers. It was divided into the eight canonical hours, the Vigils or night office being considerably the longest. It is probable that this daily common prayer took some 4 to 4 and 1/2 hours, being chanted throughout, and not merely recited in a monotone. Mass was celebrated only on Sundays and holy-days. Private prayer was taken for granted, and was provided for, but not legislated for, being left to personal devotion.
The abbot governed the monastery with full patriarchal authority. He was elected by the monks, and held office for life. All the officials of the monastery were appointed by him, and were removable at his will. He should take counsel with his monks — in matters of moment with the whole community, in lesser matters with a few seniors. He was bound to listen to what each had to say; but at the end, it rested with him to decide what was to be done, and all had to obey. The great — in a sense it might be said, the only — restraining influence upon the abbot to which St Benedict appeals, was that of religion — the abiding sense, impressed on him again and again by St Benedict, that he was directly and personally responsible, and would have to answer before the judgment seat of God for all his actions, for all his judgments, nay, even for the soul of each one of his monks as well as for his own. But his government must be according to the Rule, and not at his own mere will and pleasure, as had been the case in the earlier forms of monachism; and he is warned not to overburden his monks, or overdrive them, but to be considerate always and give no one cause for just complaint.
The chapters specially written for the abbot (2, 3, 27, 64) are the most characteristic in the Rule, and form a body of wise counsel, not easily to be surpassed, for anyone in office or authority of any kind. This formation of a regular order of life according to rule, this provision for the disciplined working of a large establishment, was St Benedict's great contribution to Western monachism, and also to Western civilisation.
For as Benedictine abbeys came gradually to be established more and more thickly in the midst of the wild Teutonic populations that were settling throughout Western Europe, they became object-lessons in disciplined and well-ordered life, in organised work, in all the arts of peace, that could not but impress powerfully the minds of the surrounding barbarians, and bring home to them ideals of peace and order and work, no less than of religion.
Another point of far-reaching consequence was that St Benedict laid upon the monk the obligation of abiding till death, not only in the monastic life, but in his own monastery in which he was professed. This special Benedictine vow of stability cut off what was the veiy common practice of monks, when they grew dissatisfied in one monastery, going to another. St Benedict bound the monks of a monastery together into a permanent family, united by bonds that lasted for life. This idea that the monks of each Benedictine monastery form a permanent community, distinct from that of every other Benedictine monastery, is a characteristic feature of Benedictine monachism, and a chief distinction between it and the mendicant and other later Orders; without doubt it has also been the great source of the special influence and strength of the Benedictines in history.
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