Benedict was a Roman nobleman who lived in the last years of the Roman imperial rule. He was born in about AD 480 and died about 70 years later, shortly after Rome was sacked and destroyed by the Gothic king Totila (546). He lived at the beginning of what used to be called the “dark ages” and what can still be called fairly, the collapse of a particular society. As a young man he had left Rome, shocked by its depravity and licentiousness. At first he lived as a hermit, but gradually his reputation for sanctity and plain good sense spread, and he was asked to become the leader of a number of small communities, who had withdrawn from the world. He eventually withdrew again from the Roman countryside and settled on the top of a steep mountain in the hills south of Rome: Mount Cassino. Here Benedict gathered a community of like-minded men around him, and he drew up a rule of life for them, which came to be known as “The Rule of St Benedict”, the foundational document for the most influential monastic order in Europe: the Benedictines.

Benedict’s character, like the character of the Benedictines themselves:

must be discovered from his Rule, and the impression given there is of a wise and mature sanctity, authoritative but fatherly, and firm but loving. It is that of a spiritual master, fitted and accustomed to rule and guide others, having himself found his peace in the acceptance of Christ.¹

The order spread swiftly throughout Europe, and soon arrived in England. The first Benedictine abbeys were founded by Wilfrid of York at Ripon and Hexham at the end of the 7th cent. The order spread rapidly. As time passed the great cathedrals of England came to be run by a chapter of Benedictine monks: the English clergy (monastic and parochial) were steeped in the ethos of Benedictinism, and even though Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell destroyed the monasteries, the ethos remained.

Rowan Williams has pointed out three key characteristics of Benedict’s ethos²: “(i) what the Rule has to say about the use and the meaning of time, (ii)what the Rule has to say about obedience, and (iii) what the Rule has to say about participation.”

Time is to be carefully structured in community, balanced between work, prayer, community time and rest. The purpose of the monastery is not to produce and neither is it to consume. The monastery is to be sustained, but that sustaining has to be, as it were, sustainable not just on economic grounds, but also to do with humanity and spirituality. We are more than our work.

Second, the monk is to live under a rule of obedience, and this is obedience for a purpose: “being ready to suspend a purely individual will or perception for the sake of discovering God’s will in the common life of the community.” We are better together.

Third, one of the abbot’s responsibilities was to make sure that everyone in the monastery worked in a way that was appropriate to their abilities and to the needs of the community. No one was to be excused boots, just because of their wishes or status: everyone had a contribution to make. We are all responsible for the health of our community.

The Rule of Benedict as lived in monasteries then and now has been called simply “Anglicanism with a structure.” Traits thought to be quintessentially Anglican, such as balance, thorough scholarship, hospitality, and an emphasis on practice rather than abstract theory, all have their origins in the Rule of St Benedict.

Anglicans are living proof that you don’t have to be a monk to be Benedictine.

1. Michael David Knowles, O.S.B. “Benedict of Nursia, Saint” Encyclopædia Britannica Online 2008. [↩]
2. Rowan Williams, ‘Benedict and the Future of Europe’ : Speech at St Anselmo in Rome, Tuesday 21 November 2006. Available online from here. [↩]