Triglav Circle Zoom Session 2
January 18, 2025
Father John Fortin
Over the course of several years in the 530’s and 540’s, Saint Benedict composed and revised a rule for the monks of the monastery of Monte Cassino. The community, which may have numbered up to one hundred, was comprised of Christian laymen like himself, seeking God according to a monastic manner of life.[1] It was an agrarian society and required hard labor in working the land to provide sustenance for a predominantly self-sustaining community. That being the case, just how much learning and education was really necessary for the monks ?In the Prologue, for example, Benedict wrote, “we intend to establish a school for the Lord’s service” (v. 45), but this is the only time in the Rule that he uses the term schola, school. He does not refer to a curriculum or program of instruction, to a pedagogy or method of teaching.[2]
Yet although he does not directly write about the education of his monks, the need for them to be educated is clearly implicit in what Benedict expects of all of the monks. Foremost is the need for literacy. This is the case, first, with regard to the communal recitation of the Divine Office, the Opus Dei, which took up four or more hours of the day, beginning with the celebration of Vigils around 3 AM and then continued seven other times during the course of the day. During the Opus Dei, the monks chanted the psalms. Thus, they needed to understand the psalms so that they could enter deeply into prayer. As Benedict insists in chapter 19, “let us stand to sing the psalms in such a way that our minds are in harmony with our voices” (v. 7). The monks also listened to readings from the Scriptures and from commentaries on Scripture from various monastic and patristic authors. Thus, there was a need for the monks not only to be able to understand what they heard,but also to be able to read out loud to others in a manner, as Benedict wrote, that would benefit the hearers. We should note, too, that public reading took place not only at the several hours of the Divine Office, but also during the two daily common meals.
Second, literacy is necessary for that central monastic practice, sacred reading or lectio divina. According the daily schedule laid out in chapter 48 of the Rule, each monk was to spend about three hours or so a day and most of Sunday in the exercise of lectio divina. This reading is a serious, meditative pondering of the texts of Scripture and of patristic and monastic authors. Lectio divina is for formation, not information, and so is not akin to theological and biblical studies as we know them today. To do lectiowell and in a manner that would truly benefit himself, the monk had to be proficient in the art of reading andhad to develop the ability to understand and interpret the text so that he could grow in holiness of life.
Besides literacy, other skills requiring learning and education were necessary for the proper operation of the monastery. The abbot appointed numerous officials to assist him in this stewardship of the abbey. The cellarer, a position we today would call the CFO or treasurer, was responsible for all the temporal goods of the monastery. He kept the accounts and balanced the books. He oversaw those in charge of the farms, whoneeded to know about crops and livestock, land management, and the proper use of the labor force of the monks. The infirmarian needed the requisite skills and training to tend to the sick, not only of the community.[3]A guestmaster was responsible for receiving all visitors to monastery and to welcoming as Christ, as Benedict instructs in chapter 53. Guests might be rich or poor; they might be members of the faith or not. There were artisans, discussed by Benedict in chapter 57, whose craftswere sold in the local area. There were musicians who led the chants and trained others in its intricacies. There were the monks in charge of the formation of the young, who provided the education needed for a full monastic life. There was a need for carpenters, tailors, masons, cooks, cobblers, copyists, vintners, coopers and practitioners of the other trades.
All this was necessary because, for Benedict, it was important that the monastery be as self-sufficient and self-sustaining as possible. As he writes in chapter 66, “The monastery should, if possible, be so constructed that within it all necessities, such as water, mill and garden are contained, and the various crafts are practiced” (v. 6). This was essential in order to preserve the integrity of the monks’ life in their daily rhythm of prayer and work and to avoid, as much as possible, anything that would interrupt or interfere with that rhythm.
Ultimately, all this learning, all this education and all these skills were understood to come under one central and overriding rubric, which gave the monastic life its ultimate meaning and purpose: a communal life of balance, harmony and genuine piety in the search for God.
It is no surprise, then, that 1,500 years later in our day, most Benedictine communities are populated by monks who are very well educated and who are engaged in educational apostolates. My community, for example, consists of 30 monks: all have undergraduate degrees, most have one or more master’s degrees and eleven have doctoral degrees. All the monks, whether priests or brothers, have a minimum of two years of formal theological training after undergraduate studies. Our community operates a co-ed college preparatory school for 450 students in California and a college offering a variety of bachelors’ and masters’ degrees for 2000 students in New Hampshire.
Though not explicitly explained or illustrated in his Rule, education for Benedict was absolutely necessary if a monk were to be able to observe the Rule in its fullness and to become a vir Dei, a man of God, and to contribute to the well-being and growth of the community. Benedict would see the value of both the humanities and the sciences for the good of the communal life and for the good of each individual monk. In his monastery, education was never engaged infor its own sake, but for the common goal of seeking God. His view of education and learning could help contemporary society to appreciate each of the arts and sciences, to value them for what they can do to improve the human condition, to avoid playing one against the other, to recognize the limits of each and to use them to promote the common good. His Rule is, in its own way, as a product of and a promoter of good education.
[1] Almost all of the monks were laymen, as was Benedict. There was a small handful of priests in the community, but Benedict is clear in c. 62 that their role was limited to saying the Sunday Mass and give blessings, but otherwise they were to follow the Rule like everyone else. It was not until later centuries that a distinction was made between choir monks (educated priests and clerics) and lay brothers (manual laborers), a distinction ultimately dissolved at the time of the Second Vatican Council.
[2]It should not be inferred from this that Benedict himself had no experience of formal education. When he was a young man in the mid-490s, his parents sent him to Rome precisely for formal education in the trivium and quadrivium. Although Benedict willingly entered into his studies, he found the behavior and lifestyles of his classmates, focused on drinking, carousing and playing games, detracted from the search for truth and understanding, and, ultimately for him, the search for God. He soon left Rome to begin life as a hermit.
[3]One might think here of Bro. Cadfael, the infirmarian at Shrewsbury Abbey in the series created by Ellis Peters, though I doubt too many monastic infirmarians were actually involved in solving murders.