BENEDICTINES, or Black Monks, monks living according to the Rule of St
Benedict of Nursia. Subiaco in the Abruzzi was the cradle of the
Benedictines, and in that neighbourhood St Benedict established twelve
monasteries. Afterwards giving up the direction of these, he migrated to
Monte Cassino and there established the monastery which became the
centre whence his Rule and institute spread. From Monte Cassino he
founded a monastery at Terracina. These fourteen are the only
monasteries of which we have any knowledge as being founded before St
Benedict's death; for the mission of St Placidus to Sicily must
certainly be regarded as mere romance, nor does there seem to be any
solid reason for viewing more favourably the mission of St Maurus to
Gaul. There is some ground for believing that it was the third-abbot of
Monte Cassino who began to spread a knowledge of the Rule beyond the
circle of St Benedict's own foundations. About 580-590 Monte Cassino was
sacked by the Lombards, and the community came to Rome and was
established in a monastery attached to the Lateran Basilica, in the
centre of the ecclesiastical world. It is now commonly recognized by
scholars that when Gregory the Great became a monk and turned his palace
on the Caelian Hill into a monastery, the monastic life there carried
out was fundamentally based on the Benedictine Rule (see F. H. Dudden,
Gregory the Great, i. 108). From this monastery went forth St
Augustine and his companions on their mission to England in 596 ,
carrying their monachism with them; thus England was the first country
out of Italy in which Benedictine life was firmly planted. In the course
of the 7th century Benedictine life was gradually introduced in Gaul, and
in the 8th it was carried into the Germanic lands from England. It is
doubtful whether in Spain there were Benedictine monasteries, properly
so called, until a later period. In many parts the Benedictine Rule met
the much stricter Irish Rule of Columbanus, introduced by the Irish
missionaries on the continent, and after brief periods, first of
conflict and then of fusion, it gradually absorbed and supplanted it;
thus during the 8th century it became, out of Ireland and other purely
Celtic lands, the only rule and form of monastic life throughout western
Europe, - so completely that Charlemagne once asked if there ever had
been any other monastic rule.
What may be called the inner side of Benedictine life and history is
treated in the article Monasticism; here it is possible to deal only
with the broad facts of the external history. The chief external works
achieved for western Europe by the Benedictines during the early middle
ages may be summed up under the following heads.
1. The Conversion of the Teutonic Races
2. The Civilization of north-western Europe
3. Education
4. Letters and Learning
Authorities
1. The Conversion
of the Teutonic Races
The tendency of modern historical
scholarship justifies the maintenance of the tradition that St Augustine
and his forty companions were the first great Benedictine apostles and
missioners. Through their efforts Christianity was firmly planted in
various parts of England; and after the conversion of the country it was
English. Benedictines - Wilfrid, Willibrord, Swithbert, Willehad - who
evangelized Friesland and Holland; and another, Winfrid or Boniface,
who, with his fellow-monks Willibald and others,. evangelized the
greater part of central Germany and founded and organized the German
church. It was Anschar, a monk of Corbie, who first preached to the
Scandinavians, and other Benedictines were apostles to Poles, Prussians
and other Slavonic peoples.. The conversion of the Teutonic races may
properly be called the. work of the Benedictines.
2. The Civilization of north-western Europe
As the result of
their missionary enterprises the Benedictines penetrated into all these
lands and established monasteries, so that by the loth or 11th century
Benedictine houses existed in great numbers throughout the whole of
Latin Christendom except Ireland. These monasteries became centres of
civilizing influences by the method of presenting object-lessons in
organized work, in agriculture, in farming, in the arts and trades, and
also in well-ordered life. The unconscious method by which such
great: results were brought about has been well described by J. S.
Brewer (Preface to Works of Giraldus Cambrensis, Rolls Series,
iv.) and F. A. Gasquet.
Continued on page two.
This article is from the 1911 edition of an encyclopedia,
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