Not Just for Medieval Monks: Wisdom for Us All from the Rule of St. Benedict

Lessons on money, prayer, and silence from one of the founding documents of Western Civilization

We are going to establish a school for the service of the Lord. In founding it we hope to introduce nothing harsh or burdensome.
—Prologue to the Rule of St. Benedict

It is, in fact, unsurprising that the Rule of St. Benedict should be a masterpiece of wisdom and spiritual counsel for ordinary laymen: it was written for ordinary laymen. In composing his Rule and forming his monastic communities, St. Benedict was not establishing a clerical institution, nor did he assume that his monks would be occupied with clerical duties. Indeed, one scholar affirmed that his Rule “is somewhat distrustful of priests,” and I must admit that Chapter 60 does give this impression:

If anyone of the priestly order should ask to be received into the monastery, permission shall not be granted him too readily. If he is quite persistent in his request, let him know that he will have to observe the whole discipline of the Rule, and that nothing will be relaxed for him….

It shall be granted him, however, to stand next after the Abbot and to give blessings or offer Mass, but only by order of the Abbot. Without such order let him not presume to do anything….

If any clerics … wish to join the monastery, let them be placed in a middle rank, and only if they promise observance of the Rule and their own stability.

Benedict’s project was not so much clerical as evangelical: he sought to create a structure in which laymen of all conditions could conform their lives to the ideals of the Gospel. In the prologue to the Rule he makes it clear that his words were written for—well, for you.

To you, therefore, my words are now addressed, whoever you may be, who are renouncing your own will to do battle under the Lord Christ, the true King.

We need not lament the fact that the Benedictines developed into a clerical order; the marriage of monastic and priestly labors has been a happy one. And we should rejoice that many monks have attained extraordinary sanctity and embraced mortifications that make worldly people like me break out in a cold sweat and start searching frantically for excuses. However, it is right to be dismayed if Benedictine life is perceived as utterly remote from the attitudes and practices of ordinary lay Christians. The Rule, as the old Catholic Encyclopedia points out, “is meant for every class of mind and every degree of learning.” It is not a manual of deathly penance and lofty mysticism for people on the verge of sainthood; rather, “it organizes and directs a complete life which is adapted for simple folk and for sinners.” Benedict himself had characteristically modest expectations, expressed as usual in the language of a kindly father (the italics are mine):

We have written this Rule that by observing it in monasteries we may show that we have attained some degree of virtue or the beginning of conversion…. Whoever you are, therefore, who are hastening to the heavenly homeland, fulfill with the help of Christ this most elementary Rule.

The images in this post are from an eleventh-century manuscript containing the Rule of St. Benedict.

It is said that monks take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Benedictines, however, do not take a vow of poverty. Rather, they vow stability, obedience, and fidelity to the monastic life as envisioned in the Rule. This is not to say that Benedictine monks have the option of being personally wealthy. Benedict strictly forbade private ownership, which the Rule calls a “most wicked vice.”

This vice especially is to be cut out of the monastery by the roots. Let no one presume to give or receive anything without the Abbot’s leave, or to have anything as his own…. Let all things be common to all, as it is written, and let no one say or assume that anything is his own.

If anyone is caught indulging in this most wicked vice, let him be admonished once and a second time. If he fails to amend, let him undergo punishment.

Thus, extreme personal poverty, though not a separate vow, is implied in fidelity to the Rule. My point here is that the Benedictine life entails poverty as one element within the context of the Rule, and the context of the Rule is this: that possessions held in common are not forbidden or even discouraged, and that monks will not be required to beg for alms or endure severe deprivation. In fact, the Benedictine monastery, as a community, should be wealthy enough to give alms and to build up infrastructure for the good of the surrounding society. And why would it not be? A spiritual family of able-bodied, highly educated men who live simply, shun self-indulgence, have no children to support, and esteem manual labor as a high road to heaven—this is a perfect recipe for material abundance. And material abundance is exactly what medieval monasteries acquired.

The relationship between sincere Christians and material wealth has long been a vexed one. The crux of the matter was captured memorably by Anna Sewell in the novel Black Beauty:

“Look here, mates,” said Jerry; “the gentleman offered me half a crown extra, but I didn’t take it; ’twas quite pay enough for me to see how glad he was to catch that train….

“Well,” said Larry, “you’ll never be a rich man.”

“Most likely not,” said Jerry…. “I have heard the commandments read a great many times and I never noticed that any of them said, ‘Thou shalt be rich’; and there are a good many curious things said in the New Testament about rich men that I think would make me feel rather queer if I was one of them.”

(Oh, to live in the days when “queer” was just a normal word that meant “strange” and could be used freely without stirring up a dust storm of distracting associations.)

Though many articles and several books could be written on how exactly a Christian family should pursue the ideals of evangelical poverty, I think that much insight and guidance can be gained simply by meditating upon the traditional Benedictine relationship with wealth. Material wealth is eminently good—that is, something to be accepted, appreciated, even actively pursued—when it builds up the community in a wholesome, balanced, and enduring way. Arable land, livestock, tools, granaries, flour mills, workshops, bridges, medicinal gardens, schools, libraries, scriptoria, shrines, oratories: these are things that bring collective stability and health; that make life more well-ordered and less physically burdensome; that improve the mind and soul through prayer, intellectual growth, and moral refinement. Such things are perfectly compatible with the Rule’s rejection of private ownership, and furthermore, they can coexist peacefully with personal poverty—even with radical personal poverty.

If this model is not directly applicable to family life, which faces the complexities of raising children and coping with secular society, it nonetheless can be applied far more than it usually is. Personal poverty—as a mentality or a spiritual disposition, yes, but also as a concrete, lived reality—is a beautiful, sanctifying, and liberating practice that need not prevent parents and families from building the holistic, socially productive wealth that medieval monasteries acquired. I admit that the thrilling ideal of the monk in his bare stone cell, the former wearing his one habit and the latter adorned by one crucifix, is beyond what familial normalcy would allow. But I think that many Christian families are much farther from this ideal than they ought to be—and I say this as one who, earlier in my life, pushed personal poverty close to its modern limits, and who therefore has tasted its sweetness. Though the monastic spirit has dissipated somewhat as I walk the path to which I am apparently called, I fondly remember the days when I had more land, more livestock, two barns, no mortgage, and only one computer.

However much we might associate monks with long hours of meditative prayer, their bodies cloaked in darkness as their minds sink into the mystical depths of the unseen realm, the Rule of St. Benedict gives direct, explicit instructions only for vocal public prayer. This public prayer was to consist of Psalms, Canticles, passages of Scripture, and readings from the Fathers, and it was envisioned as the central experience, principal labor, and all-encompassing inspiration for those who embraced the monastic life. That the laity of the postmedieval Church have diverged markedly from the paradigm of prayer found in the Rule is, for me, a source of great confusion and dismay. I see no justification for this, and the following observation, again from the old Catholic Encyclopedia, makes the situation appear even more anomalous:

By ordering the public recitation and singing of the Psalter, St. Benedict was not putting upon his monks a distinctly clerical obligation. The Psalter was the common form of prayer of all Christians.

Even if one were somehow convinced that the Rule’s basic model of prayer is inappropriate for the laity, the argument would flounder—as I said above, the Rule was written for laymen, and Benedict instructed his monks to pray the Psalter because that is precisely what Christians in general, clerical or lay, were already doing.

Do modern families need to pray the entire Psalter every week, as the Rule insists? No. The details can be adapted according to circumstance, and Benedict himself encouraged flexibility with regard to elements that he considered negotiable: “If this distribution of the Psalms is displeasing to anyone, he should arrange them otherwise, in whatever way he considers better.” He also said, and I find this particularly illuminating, that communal prayer should be “very brief,” or in a more literal translation, “altogether abbreviated” (“in conventu tamen omnino brevietur oratio”). Now when it comes to prayer, “brief” certainly means different things for different people, but the underlying principle is clear: for those who are novices in the spiritual life—and that includes me, maybe you, virtually all children or teenagers, and the men for whom Benedict wrote the Rule—lengthy periods of uninterrupted prayer are unwise. They can lead to roving minds, indolence, annoyance, resentment, maybe even spiritual burnout.

The Rule favors a system in which short sessions of formal, poetic prayer occur regularly from morning through night, such that the mind is frequently elevated and the soul frequently refreshed as we navigate the temptations, duties, and worldly labors of the day. If you have children and say the Rosary (perhaps with extra prayers tacked onto the beginning and end) every night, please be careful: if your kids seem to be in la-la land by the end of it, or if they express displeasure, apathy, grudging compliance, etc. through words, groans, or body language, I think you have a problem that St. Benedict has foreseen, and that his Rule can help you solve.

The third theme from the Rule that I want to explore is an especially thought-provoking and powerful one. It is also crucial to the process of rediscovering reality amidst the cultural and psychological wreckage of postmodern society. The theme I’m referring to is silence, and it will be our topic of discussion on Tuesday.