RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
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towns, and was used sometimes for other bodies or associations existing in them. As these military organizations would have a defi- 1 General nite code of regulations, so it was Character- natural for Benedict (called " magisistics. ,ter " in the first line of the prologue) to lay down a rule that should serve for all who were enlisted in the spiritual army (" servitium dominicum ") — priests or laymen, rich or poor. ' It separated the monks more absolutely from the world than Basil or Cassian had done, f Besides the requirements of poverty, silence, and chastity, others appear for the first time; that of " stability " or a permanent residence in one monastery as opposed to the wandering life of the earlier monks, and a specially designated habit. The aim of this life is complete surrender to the will of God, accomplished through entire obedience to the abbot and the rule. The abbot thus appears as an absolute ruler, responsible to God alone. It is true that in weighty matters he is to seek the counsel of the brethren, but the ultimate decision rests with him? Benedict seems to have hesitated in placing a propositus or prior next to him as assistant and, if need were, representative. "- In laying down the system of daily prayer, Benedict departed somewhat from the earlier practise by instituting the office of compline as the seventh of the canonical hours. The longest and fullest of all the offices was the nocturna vigilia (matins), recited at two o'clock. The day hours were much shorter — lauds at daybreak, not long after matins; prime; terce, with which at least on Sundays and festivals the Eucharist was connected; sext; none; vespers; and compline. One of the principles on which the system of devotion was laid out was the weekly recitation of the entire Psalter. When this is compared with the requirement by Columban of the recitation of the whole 150 Psalms in the night office of Saturday and Sunday, a second principle is perceived which governed Benedict not merely in the arrangement of the devotional exercises but in all his rule — a wise moderation 2. Hodera- and gentleness. It appears especially tion. in the regulations for meals, of which he allows two daily, except at times of fasting; it comes out in the rules for labor, which show consideration for the weaker brethren, and also in the system of punishment. Small offenses, as unpunctuality at meals or office, are to be punished without harshness; more serious ones call for two private warnings and one in public, after which the offender is cut off from the society of the brethren at meals and prayers. If he is still obstinate, corporal punishment is the next step, and finally, if the prayers of the brethren have no effect, he is to be expelled from the monastery. Penitents may be twice taken back, but on a third lapse there is no further possibility of restoration.
The fact that, in his provision for the clothing of the monks, Benedict took account of the conditions of more than one province has been made a ground for disputing the authenticity of the rule; but the climatic difference between the hill-country of his first settlement and the Campanian plain on the banks of the Liris is sufficiently notable to find
some reflection in the rule.) Benedict had lived as an anchorite and as a cenobite, in convents of varying size and in different parts of Italy, at the head of a single small house and of a whole group of houses. When, therefore, with this manifold experience of what suited the monastic life of his time, he drew up a rule for every 3. Org-ani- part of j^ in gucn a definite legislative
DfrecUonof sllaPe as none of nis predecessors^ithe Monas- Basil, Cassian, Pachomius, Jerome, tic Life. Augustine — had given their prescriptions, we may well believe that he was acting to a certain extent with the consciousness that he was giving to Italian monasticism a new form, stronger and more consistent than had been known before. This is the special importance of Benedict's work, both for the Church and for the world at large. About the time when the Roman See, vindicating and even increasing its independence of Arian kings and Byzantine emperors, was preparing to erect its universal empire on the ruins of the old, the monk appeared who knew how to apply the old Roman talents of legislation and organization to the growing but as yet incoherent monasticism. Thus he became the founder of the great Benedictine Order which for centuries concentrated in itself the extraordinary spiritual force of the technically " religious " life, and contributed in so marked a degree to the extension of the Western Church. The striking influence of the order would, however, be inexplicable if it had not early become the guardian of learning and literature. '''The rule required the brothers, in addition to their manual labor, to devote one or two hours daily to reading; it provided for a convent library from which the monks were to take certain books for study at appointed times; each brother was to have his tablet and stylus; Benedict himself undertook the education of the children of prominent Romans; and in at least one passage of the rule those who can not read are spoken of as an inferior class. ) All these things speak of learned and literary interests as belonging to the original foundation. Cassiodorus even goes further than Benedict, in whose lifetime probably he founded the double convent of Squillace, providing expressly for the study of classical literature— though it is impossible to determine how far this influenced the Benedictine Order after the infusion with it of Cassiodorus's monasteries.
III. The Earlier History of the Benedictine Order : The history of the early extension of Benedict's society is only scantily told. According to the traditions of Monte Cassino, the third abbot, Simplicius, achieved great success in this work. Under the fifth, Bonitus, the mother house was destroyed in 589 by the Lombards, the monks fleeing to Rome (the universal refuge of those days), carrying with them the copy of the rule written by 1. Period of Benedict's own hand. There was
<.?r°n^th l% probably already a monastery there the Time oi which followed this rule— that of St.
Andrew, founded by the future Pope Gregory the Great in 575; but Gregory's attachment to the order was presumably increased by the coming of the fugitives, who settled
Charlemagne.
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