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had nearly 200 years of monastic wisdom to turn to. He knew the Desert Fathers particularly well, and had also learned of some of the organized communities that had sprung up across southern Europe. But on a rocky hill (Monte Cassino) about 130 km south-east of Rome, he put together a new plan for monastic life that fitted the needs of his own place and time – what became known as the Rule of St Benedict.
It was a grim period for the church, with Rome under the control of one barbarian kingdom after another, and many leaders compromised by false teachings about the dual nature of Christ – his divinity and humanity. Italy and much of Europe was, in effect, the scene of constant power struggles in both church and society. For this reason and, more personally, to work out his own salvation, Benedict founded what would become the most important expression of Christian community for centuries to come. In a complex and troubled world, he happened on a very simple idea: ‘we are about to open a school for God’s service,’ he declared in the prologue to the Rule. He added, ‘As our lives progress, the heart expands and with the sweetness of love we move down the paths of God’s commandments’ (Meisel and Mastro, 1975, p. 45).
So, right at the start, we see how his incarnation of the gospel was a communal endeavour, focused on spiritual growth and serving God out of love. Benedict referred to it as a ‘guidance of souls’. While the lonely outpost of Monte Cassino seemed, at first, irrelevant to the troubling social and political realities of the day, it soon became a major attraction to those seeking spiritual renewal, wholeness and stability. Even the barbarian kings came to witness the distinctive life of the monastery. The community formed by the Rule was profoundly relevant – the only reminder, over vast stretches of time and place, that there was such a thing as life in the kingdom of God ‘under the true King, the Lord Jesus Christ’ (Meisel and Mastro, 1975, p. 43).
Not that such an experiment was entirely new. Organized communities had emerged as a natural response to what the earliest Christians referred to as the ‘way of the apostles’, expressed in Scriptures like 1 Peter 1.13: ‘Therefore, prepare your minds for action; discipline yourselves; set all your hope on the grace that Jesus Christ will bring you when he is revealed.’ We might also recall 1 John 1.7: ‘if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin’. The apostle Paul called this ‘training in righteousness’ (2 Tim. 3.14), and it was taken very seriously by those who thought that following Jesus changed everything.
Benedict had thought long and hard about what this sort of conversion required. After some trial and error, he developed the tools, the patterns and practices, needed to walk with Jesus on a day-to-day basis in the company of fellow disciples. Conversion required a community. The details on how to live well together span the areas of worship, work, and the reading and study of Scripture. Ultimately, a daily rhythm of these activities formed an alternative culture that expressed what one Benedictine scholar has called ‘the love of learning and desire for God’ (Leclercq, 1961, p. 151). The sevenfold pattern of prayer in a daily cycle was the most conspicuous feature of the new model. At first, it seems the Benedictines were overly attentive to such details, so a closer look is required.
Participation in the carefully structured liturgies was crucial because it was there that a certain kind of knowledge of God was gained. Some call this ‘participatory knowledge’, because it is about a way of knowing God that comes through the visual, symbolic and embodied actions of worship (Wood, 2001, p. 118). This knowledge does not come individually but corporately, and it is the product of careful coordination or synchronization involving spirit, mind, and body. What is most interesting about this kind of knowledge is that it is more implicit than explicit and it comes by being involved as whole persons. It picks up on the rhythms, the patterns, the structures of communal life and worship, and internalizes them so that we are shaped or conformed to the reality they point to.
For Benedict, this reality was God’s love. By entering into the whole experience of the ‘hours’ members of the community came to a deeper knowledge of their relationship to God and each other. That is because the liturgy ordered these relationships by embodying some of the most fundamental teachings in Scripture on fellowship. It meant adopting practices and patterns of life previously experienced at Antioch, like the Eucharist and table fellowship, as well as a conspicuous focus on the reading and recitation of the Psalms. These activities communicated volumes about the heart and soul of the community in ways that participants could experience with all five of the senses.
It was a matter of some urgency to Benedict that Christians find an alternative script to that of the violence and confusion of the world beyond the monastery. He knew, as did the apostles, that we need a different kind of awareness – an attentiveness to the grace of God, the light of Christ and the peculiar sort of fellowship that only the Holy Spirit makes possible. All of those details that we encounter in the Rule produce this awareness of the triune God in action, and the results are quite astounding. Each member of the community becomes more attuned to the needs of others, more pliable in each of their wills and more discerning of God’s presence and activity. There is a fresh sense of perspective here – of the order of things and the relation of parts to wholes. Some call this wisdom, and it is a hallmark of Benedictine life to this day.6
Little wonder that it was one of Benedict’s greatest admirers, Pope Gregory the Great, who sent Augustine, himself a monk formed in the Benedictine way, on that great rescue mission to southern England. Little wonder, too, that in today’s conflicted and confusing world, so many weary souls find a peaceful sense of order and spiritual truth in the cloisters of monastic communities. This was yet another ‘fresh expression of the church’ that incarnated the gospel with transformational, disciple-making vigour in an intensely relational atmosphere of divine love.
Benedictine monasteries, by design, are a cloistered form of Christian community. Yet, they are famous for attracting attention on such a scale that they became missionary extensions of traditional ecclesial structures. William of Saint-Thierry’s (d.1148) description of the famous abbey at Clairvaux, France reminds us how the contemplative life ‘spoke of the simplicity and humility of the poor of Christ who lived there’. As a distinct community with a conspicuous purpose of prayer and the praise of God, it ‘engendered a sense of reverence even among lay people’.7 On this basis, Clairvaux and other monasteries joining in its renewal movement became important centres of witness and mission to the wider world. They not only attracted, but also sent out people, including preachers like Saint Bernard.
For example, during a period of extensive church reform associated with Pope Gregory VII (1073–85), the apostolic ideal inspired Benedictine communities to preach the Gospel and evangelize under-served or unreached regions of Europe. Out of this, new forms of organized religious life emerged with a conscious outward focus, ranging from the Norbertines to the Augustinian canon regulars in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Ultimately, the thirteenth-century mendicant movements – Franciscans and Dominicans – saw evangelization as essential aspects of their ministry, and this included planting and serving new churches. Many parish churches today owe their founding to this long history of monastic and mendicant church planting.
Benedictine monasteries
emphasized Christian formation within a communal rhythm of life;
lived by a different ‘story’ to the one dominating the world around;
practised ‘go’ forms of mission by sending out some of their members to start new communities and plant churches in under-evangelized parts of Europe;
had a strong attractional dynamic as people came to join these communities.
The Beguines on the edge
Just outside the walls of many northern European towns in the high