The entry in the Common Worship calendar for 11 July reads ‘Benedict of Nursia, Abbot of Monte Cassino, Father of Western monasticism, c. 550’. Given the importance of monasticism in Christian history, the key part it played in spearheading the conversion of western Europe, its central role in scholarship and manuscript production, and its significance in the development of spiritual practices, it’s worth looking at what lies behind this calendar entry.

The earliest monks lived, not in communities, but alone. They were called ‘monks’ precisely for this reason: the word comes from the Greek for ‘alone’, ‘solitary’. The first person we know of to live in this way was St Antony of Egypt. In c. 269 he gave away his possessions and began to live a life of self-denial. Then, in c. 285, he went a step further, retiring into the desert. Others followed his example. Soon there were colonies or groups of monks in the desert; they sometimes came together for special services, and by degrees they formed more recognisable communities, which of course needed Rules to govern their organisation.

By the fourth century this way of life was being imitated in the western church. At first the Rules used were those brought from the east, or newly written Rules which followed eastern models, but quite quickly western monks began to live out their dedicated lives in much more defined, cohesive and stable communities, which needed a rather different kind of Rule. The norm in this stage of the development of monasticism was for each abbot to devise the Rule for his own monastery. Benedict Biscop, for example, who founded the monasteries of Monkwearmouth and Jarrow, where Bede lived and worked, drew upon the practices of seventeen monasteries that he had visited on his travels to and from Rome. Of these many Rules, only a few survive, with the Rule written by Benedict being one of them. Inevitably they are similar to one another to varying degrees, but Benedict’s stands out for its clarity, wisdom, practicality, evident concern for the well-being of the monks and its prudent avoidance of excessive austerity. By the eight century this had become the monastic Rule in Western Christendom, and has remained the dominant Rule ever since.

We know relatively little about Benedict himself. He was born in Nursia (modern Norcia) in central Italy and then went to Rome to be educated, where the excesses of worldly life prompted him to withdraw to a cave in Subiaco, where he lived as a hermit. A community gradually grew up around him, and he established twelve monasteries, each with twelve monks, ruled by an abbot appointed by Benedict.  But in c. 525, when local tensions forced him to leave Subiaco, he and a small band of monks moved to Monte Cassino, where he became abbot of a new community and wrote his Rule.

Benedict was not ordained and he did not see himself as founding an Order for priests, although it later became increasingly common for professed monks to be ordained. He died, c. 550, at Monte Cassino on 21 March, which at first was his feast-day. But the monks of Fleury-sure-Loire, which was to become a very influential monastery, claimed to have translated (moved) his body to Fleury soon after its founding in 640, an event that they celebrated on the claimed anniversary date of 11 July, a more convenient date liturgically than 21 March, which is always in Lent and, given an early Easter, can even be in Holy Week.

Joyce Hill