Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

monasticism 777
demanded in the Rule – the oratory for prayers, the refectory for common
meals, a kitchen, and a hospice for strangers. 129 More important, however,
is Benedict’s constant attention to the foundations of community life. The
abbot was master, but one above all who cared for the weak and was
answerable to authorities beyond himself. He presided over a distinct and
protected society, whose members varied in their strengths and abilities,
although they were not thereby divided according to secular categories and
expectations. This community prayed briefly and intensely, and dedicated
itself otherwise to work and to service, remaining open always to requests
and visitations. It saw itself as making no more than a start in religious
devotion, and acknowledged the rich tradition from which it sprang. 130
The simplicity and earnestness of the Benedictine Rule demands of us,
as it demanded of the monk himself, an answer to the question: what was
the purpose of those institutional experiments? The hesitancy of Benedict
himself, the wealth of Gregory’s Dialogues, the evident variety of ascetic
practice, even at the end of the sixth century, all point to an enduring polarity,
a cautious attempt to balance contrasting but compatible ambitions.
On the one hand, one sought guidance in the development of insight and
self-mastery, and preserved a sense of loyalty to ascetic masters and to
fellow devotees. On the other hand, one sympathized with the weak and
the needy, gave them what help one could, and worked to give more.
Obscured at times by demonic fears and eccentric exaggerations, those
motives remain evident in the anecdotal sources that provide so much of
our information about the east. An attachment to discipleship, mutual
encouragement and service was no less evident in western practice. The
proliferation of regulæ and the textual problems that beset our understanding
of their development, coupled with our knowledge that the Rule of
Benedict did eventually gain paramount authority over an extensive and
highly organized system of communities, can blind us to the similarity of
practice and attitude that bound all ascetics together. And that consistency
of motive and principle does most to remind us how asceticism was linked
with and contributed to wider late Roman debates about authority, education
and tradition.
There was, indeed, a theory of the ascetic life, widely known and constantly
appealed to. Its embodiment in practical discipline was developed
in the writings of Evagrius of Pontus (died 399), but the tradition was
rooted in the works of Origen, and was extended in other ways by the contemporaries
of Evagrius, Basil of Caesarea and the two Gregorys of
129 Dial. ii.22.1; to which add ii.8.5, 9 and 10; iii.15.2.
130 Abbot: Regula Benedicti iii.1f.; xxvii.6; lxiv.3f.; lxv. Seclusion: i and lxi. Categories of person:
ii.12; but compare xlviii.23 with Regula magistri l, and see Regula Benedicti ii.18; xxi.4; lix.3. See
Gregory’s account in Dial. ii.20.Prayer:xx.3f. Work: preface, 14, 45. External relations: iv; liii.16;but
lxvi.6f. is more aligned to the Regula magistri.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008