§ 4.
Meanwhile, a new development of the
principle arose. St Benedict, a native of Norcia near
Spoleto, retired about the beginning of the sixth
century to a hermitage at Subiaco. Here he attracted
a number of followers, and several monasteries arose
in the neighbourhood under his direction. It was for
the monastery of Monte Cassino, which he ruled for
some thirty years, that he composed the rule which
became the law of the monastic life of western
Europe. The success and the general adoption of
the rule of Monte Cassino in the west were due to
the statesmanship with which its injunctions were
adapted to climate and physical capacity. The Benedictine
monk entered upon a life of work and prayer,
which needed the habitual exercise of self-control;
but his bodily health ran no risk of being ruined by
pious excess. Isolated devotion was superseded by
religious life in a common church and cloister. This
was the end to which Pachomius and Basil had contributed;
but the mystical temperament of the east
fostered a contemplative and ascetic tendency which
modified the conception of a common life of uniform
duty. The early monasteries of Gaul, such as that of
St Martin at Tours, followed the model of the
laura
rather than the
coenobium; and the separate cell
and the practice of self-imposed austerities seem to
have been general in early Celtic monasteries. The
voluntary hardships of St Cuthbert in his cell on
the Farne islands, the prayers and visions of the
Saxon Guthlac at Croyland, were western survivals
of the ideals of St Anthony and St Simeon Stylites.
St Benedict, on the contrary, while casting no reflexions
on a life which he himself had at first
adopted, recommended to the aspirant for salvation
no heroic tasks of prayer and fasting. His aim was
the growth in grace of a brotherhood, living under
a common rule in obedience to an abbot to whom
considerable discretion was given. The natural
tendency of the solitary life was to produce an
emulation in religious endeavour; and monasteries
which were little more than collections of anchorites
were liable to the decay consequent upon the rivalry
of their inmates. St Benedict enjoined emulation in
good works among his monks; but their emulation
had its root in humility and obedience, and its
outward sign was a mutual deference far removed
from spiritual pride. There can be little wonder
that a rule, difficult but possible to follow, and
allowing for individual weakness, spread far outside
the community for which it was made, and that the
Benedictine order by the end of the seventh century
supplanted all other forms of monasticism in western
Europe.
