Scholarship is, at its best, about the preservation, dissemination, and advancement of knowledge. At its most basic level, taking the Latin root of this English word seriously, it is simply that which is done in a scola or school. The Benedictine tradition of scholarship—in which the abbey of St. Gregory the Great and its school at Portsmouth stand—is one of the most famed and productive in the world. But it is also one of the most contested.
Benedict of Nursia (+ ca. 547) wrote in the prologue to his Rule, the founding document of the Benedictine order, that he intended a monastic community to be a “school of the Lord’s service.” He instructed his monks to divide their time carefully among three basic activities: prayer, manual labor, and reading. Books were so important that private reading was to occupy three to four hours of a monk’s day, not to mention the public readings during the liturgy and meals. Benedict assumed that a monastery would have a library from which the monks could take their reading. Thus Benedict laid down both in general spirit and in specific letter guidelines which gave a central place to the book and all sorts of activity associated with it—copying, reading, writing, interpreting, teaching. Benedict, however, had a very specific type of book in mind, that is the books of the bible. Reading was not divided from, but seamlessly integrated with, prayer and work. What the monk read would serve as a focus for meditation throughout the day while chanting in the church or working in the field. What we might identify as scholarship was for Benedict lectio divina, a term rich in meaning which points to the divine inspiration both of the text which is read and the process by which it is interpreted.
As an educated Roman, Benedict had certain preconceptions as to the intellectual preparation necessary for the interpretation of any text. In regards to the bible, he was no literalist or fundamentalist: the text of scripture had to be read with engagement and imagination according to the methods set down by learned Christian scholars. In the last chapter of the Rule, Benedict brands those who are not attentive to reading such authors as the “holy fathers” John Cassian (+ ca. 435) and Basil of Caesarea (+ 379) as “slothful” and “careless.” At the same time, according to the testimony of Gregory the Great (+ 604), Benedict had consciously abandoned following his traditional Roman education to its conclusion from spiritual concerns. Benedict implied the necessity of reconciling the Greco-Roman liberal arts with the study of Christian scripture, and he most certainly emphasized the importance of prayerful meditation in that process, but he also left significant room for interpretation.
For many centuries Benedict’s Rule was one of many used by monastic communities in western Christendom. In the ninth century, under the authority provided by Carolingian emperors, Benedict of Aniane (+ 821) enforced monastic reforms which made the Rule of Benedict of Nursia the standard for monasteries throughout the west. The prevailing interpretation of the Rule was one which encouraged monasteries to maintain scriptoria which copied the works of the Greco-Roman classics in addition to those of Christian scriptures and fathers, as well as schools which educated children not promised to the monastic life. In short the sort of environment which we know well from Portsmouth was established. During the following centuries, Benedictine monasteries were essential to what we call the “saving of western civilization,” but the “western civilization” which they preserved was an extremely specific one, made of texts designed to aid in the interpretation of and reflection on Christian scripture.
A creative tension came into being between those who understood Benedict in ways which stressed, on the one hand, the speculative and, on the other, the spiritual. Let us take examples from two particularly productive periods of west European learning.
The first is the twelfth century which witnessed a self-conscious rebirth of classical styles towards Christian ends. Abbot Suger of Saint-Denis (+ 1151) used his quest to understand divine illumination as the foundation for developing an entirely new mode of church architecture. This style, which came to be called the “Gothic,” opened up the walls of church sanctuaries to allow more light to flood into their space, often screened through stained-glass windows, as so expressively occurs on sunlit days in the church at Portsmouth. Abbess Hildegard of Bingen (+ 1179) took her visions as a reason to explore the scientific traditions of Greco-Roman medicine in order to better comprehend the workings of God. She went on to make those visions public in beautiful illuminated manuscripts and liturgical chants. The exquisite building, painting, and music of the high middle ages was indelibly influenced by them both. And both saw themselves and their communities as faithful sons and daughters of St. Benedict. Yet their contemporary Bernard of Clairvaux (+ 1153), the most important writer in the Cistercian reform of Benedictine monasticism, vociferously criticized their aesthetic and scholarly program, pointedly asking at one point “what is gold doing in the sanctuary?”
In the “enlightenment” of the later seventeenth and early eighteenth century, the Benedictine congregation of Saint-Maure, headquartered in Paris, contained many of the leading historical and philological scholars of Europe. Their efforts led to the publication of major collections on the history of monasticism and of France, of pioneering editions of the works church fathers and medieval monastic theologians, as well as numerous aids to scholarship such as dictionaries and chronologies. The leader among the monks of Saint-Maure was Jean Mabillon (+1707). Among his varied accomplishments was the composition of the De Re Diplomatica, the first systematic guide to the scientific study of the documentary evidence for governmental and economic history. The principals laid down by Mabillon are still those which guide historians in their determination of the authenticity of certain types of ancient documents. Yet the Maurists also had their critics, not in the world of secular savants who hailed their accomplishments, but in the person of Armand de Rancé, founder of the Trappist reform of Benedictine monasticism. He complained to Mabillon, “St. Benedict and the whole of antiquity is on my side . . . and what is called study has only been established at a period of relaxation.”
From physics to philology, the members of the monastic community of Portsmouth—and the school which they inform with their teaching—continue the distinguished Benedictine tradition of scholarship. The dynamic tension between inquisitive enquiry and meditative reflection remain, as for Benedict and Hildegard and others before us, at the heart of a Christian life.
Thomas Head
Professor of History
Hunter College and the Graduate Center, CUNY
Note: For readers interested
in pursuing the theme of this essay, three books by great twentieth-century
Benedictine scholars stand out: David Knowles, Christian Monasticism
(London, 1969 and reprints); Jean Leclercq, The Love of Learning and
the Desire For God: a Study of Monastic Culture (New York, 1961, and
reprints); Adalbert de Vog?é, The Rule of Saint Benedict: A Doctrinal
and Spiritual Commentary (Kalamazoo, MI, 1983). The order of
St. Benedict maintains a very useful website at www.osb.org; the web savvy
may also want to consult the On-Line Reference Book for Medieval Studies
at orb.Rhodes.edu.