The Age of Monks and Empires · c. 500-604 · Italy

Early Benedictine / Italian Monasticism

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Era

The Age of Monks and Empires

Time Period

c. 500-604

Region

Italy

Status

Not yet available

About This Movement

Benedict of Nursia left Rome for a cave at Subiaco and ended up, around 529, founding a monastery on the hill of Monte Cassino, in an Italy being torn apart first by the Gothic wars and then by the Lombard invasions. What he left behind was a rule. Seventy-three short chapters on prayer, work, sleep, food, guests, discipline and the election of an abbot, much of it adapted from an older and harsher text but shortened, moderated, and written with an eye for what ordinary people could actually sustain. A generation later Gregory the Great, a monk before he was a pope, wrote the only account we have of Benedict's life, and governed the Italian church through a correspondence of more than 850 letters that shows the same world from the other side — famine, plague, refugees, Lombard armies, and the daily management of a church trying to hold itself together.

In Its Own Record

Formed From

Desert Monasticism — John Cassian carried the desert's teaching to Gaul; Benedict's Rule commends his Conferences by name.
Gallic Monastic-Ascetic Christianity — Benedict's Rule commends Cassian's Conferences by name and prescribes them as daily reading.

Formed or Influenced

The Roman Church in the Age of Gregory the Great — Gregory was a monk of his own foundation on the Caelian before he was bishop, and wrote the only life of Benedict there is.

Sources

The Rule of St Benedict (RB 1980, ed. Timothy Fry) (primary) — The movement's constitutive text; RB 1980 gives Latin, English, and commentary and is the standard study edition; countless cheap translations also exist.
The Rule of the Master (trans. Luke Eberle, 1977) (primary) — The longer rule Benedict abbreviated and humanized - essential comparison text for what is distinctive in RB; Cistercian Studies 6.
Gregory the Great, Dialogues, Book II (Life of Benedict) (trans. O. Zimmerman, FOTC 39) (primary) — The only narrative of Benedict's life, written c.593; hagiographic, so it needs careful, critical reading (plus the Francis Clark authorship debate, now mostly rejected but worth noting).
Gregory the Great, Letters (trans. John R. C. Martyn, 3 vols, 2004) (primary) — The 850+ surviving letters - day-to-day governance of the Italian church 590-604; complete English translation (PIMS); expensive but in research libraries.
R. A. Markus, Gregory the Great and His World (1997) (secondary) — Standard modern portrait of Gregory's Italy - the world early Benedictine monasticism inhabited; Cambridge UP paperback.
Cambridge History of Christianity, vol. 2, ch. 28, 'Asceticism and monasticism, II: Western' (Marilyn Dunn) (reference) — Reference-tradition chapter for western monasticism incl. Benedict and the Master.