'The Light that Makes Us Like God'—RB Prol 9

An expression in the Prologue of St Benedict’s Rule struck me as interesting today. I had looked for my usual reading copy—Abbot Justin McCann’s bilingual edition—but not finding it and being in a hurry this morning, I brought along my little pocket-sized edition of Leonard Doyle’s translation. There I read a translation of RB Prologue 9 that I don’t believe I’d seen before: 

Let us open our eyes to the deifying light, let us hear with attentive ears the warning which the divine voice cries daily to us... [1] 

I had never before noticed the use of the word ‘deifying’ in any translation of this passage that I recalled, and of course, as an Orthodox Christian I immediately took notice. At school I found McCann’s edition, and looked up the passage in question. In the Latin, I saw that the passage read: 

Et apertis oculis nostris ad deificum lumen, attonitis auribus audiamus divina cotidie clamans quid nos admonet vox... [2] 

It certainly seemed to me, a rank amateur I admit, that deificum warranted the translation as ‘deifying’. But McCann had rendered the same words: 

Let us open our eyes to the divine light, and let us hear with attentive ears the warning that the divine voice crieth daily to us... [3] 

Furthermore, McCann had already defended his translation in an endnote on the passage in question. Of the words deificum and attonitis, he wrote: 

It is characteristic of Late Latin that strong words have less than their full value. Thus these words are equivalennt respectively to divinus and attentus, and we must resist the temptation to translate ‘divinizing’ and ‘astonished’, or ‘deifying’ and ‘astounded’. We might find a parallel in our own language in the colloquial depreciation of such words as ‘awful’ and ‘terrible’. [4] 

But an Internet search for the phrase deificum lumen yielded an argument opposed to McCann’s. Abbot Patrick Barry, formerly of the famous Ampleforth Abbey in Yorkshire, UK, has written in the introduction to his own translation of the RB: 

St Benedict wrote ‘apertis oculis nostris ad deificum lumen.’ Most modern scholars play down the meaning of deificum lumen as though the dramatic word deificum means for St Benedict no more than ‘divine’, and so they translate the phrase as ‘with our eyes open to the divine light.’ Others give it a more literal meaning, ‘the light that makes us like God.’ I think the latter translation is right. It may shock us into perceiving the astonishing, exhilarating meaning of our baptism into Christ. 

The ‘shock value’, however, is not the only reason Barry advocates the more literal translation: 

If we remember how through lectio St Benedict’s mind was saturated with Scripture, it is evident that he was referring to a passage from 2 Corinthians: ‘All of us, with our unveiled faces like mirrors reflecting the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the image that we reflect in brighter and brighter glory; this is the working of the Lord who is in the Spirit.’ Then a little later Paul sums up in this way: ‘It is God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness” that has shone into our hearts to enlighten them with the knowledge of God’s glory, the glory on the face of Christ.’ (II Corinthians 3:18 and 4:6) [5] 

Accordingly, Barry renders the passage in question, giving a citation of II Cor. 3:18 in a footnote to suggest the allusion: 

Let us open our eyes to the light that can change us into the likeness of God. Let our ears be alert to the stirring call of his voice crying to us every day... [6] 

Unfortunately, consulting the other commentaries I possess does little to help either way. The infallible Adalbert de Vogüé does not seem to mention it in his magisterial Doctrinal & Spiritual Commentary, [7] and in his Reflections on the Rule written for novices, he identifies the deificum lumen with Scripture in a very brief reference: ‘Scripture thus enters the stage both explicitly and massively. Its importance is paramount in the monk’s life. It is both “light from God” and “voice from heaven”—one and the same element through which the Lord touches all our spiritual senses.’ [8] While shedding no light on whether the light is ‘deifying’ or merely ‘divine’, Dom Paul Delatte makes the same identification in his commentary but then goes further: 

We must open our eyes; for it is thus that one begins to shake off sleep and recover consciousness. We must open them to ‘the deifying light’, which phrase may be understood of the Scriptures, ‘Thy word is a lamp to my feet, and a light to my paths’ (Ps. cxviii. 105), or of faith, or better of Our Lord Himself, the true Light who walks before us and guides us: ‘He that followeth me shall not walk in darkness but shall have the light of life’ (John viii. 12). [9] 

Note, however, the translation of the phrase. Surprisingly, the English translation of Dom Delatte's commentary was made by Abbot Justin McCann! While I do not know what French phrase Delatte himself used, however, ‘deifying’ here is the rendering of a much younger Justin McCann than the one who later (1951) translated the RB himself and gave us ‘divine light’ with such insistence. According to McCann’s preface to the Delatte commentary, the translation was made in 1920 at St Benet’s Hall, Oxford. [10] At that time, it seems, McCann was largely content to rely for the translation of the RB itself on the authority of what he calls ‘the excellent Rule of St Benedict of Abbot Hunter-Blair’, [11] the latter being Dom Oswald Hunter-Blair of Fort Augustus Abbey, Scotland, who published his translation in 1886. Dom Hunter-Blair renders our passage: 

And our eyes being open to the deifying light, let us hear with wondering ears what the Divine Voice admonisheth us, daily crying out... [12] 

I for one find Barry’s defence of the more ‘shocking’ translation by means of the comparison with II Corinthians rather persuasive. Certainly, it strikes me as a valid move to note that the ‘divine light’ is spoken of by St Paul as transforming us ‘into the image that we reflect’, and the use of the stronger word deificum rather than merely divinum seems to me to suggest that St Benedict wanted to at least hint at this fuller understanding of God’s light. 

[1] Leonard J. Doyle, tr., St Benedict’s Rule for Monasteries (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, 1948), pp. 1-2. 

[2] Abbot Justin McCann, OSB, tr. & ed., The Rule of Saint Benedict in English & Latin (Ft Collins, CO: Roman Catholic, n.d.), p. 6. 

[3] Ibid., p. 7. 

[4] Ibid., 165, n. 3. I do not know firsthand whether this generalisation about Late Latin is correct, but C.S. Lewis has suggested that it is a common occurrence in language generally. He calls it ‘inflation’, and considers it ‘one of the commonest’ species of ‘verbicide’—‘those who taught us to say awfully for “very”, tremendous for “great”, sadism for “cruelty”, and unthinkable for “undesirable” were verbicides’ (Studies in Words, 2nd ed. [Cambridge: Cambridge U, 2002], p. 7). Vizzini’s ‘inconceivable’ is of course a particularly famous example.

[5] Patrick Barry, OSB, Saint Benedict’s Rule, 2nd ed. (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 2004), p. 15. 

Barry refers to St Benedict’s mind being ‘saturated’ in lectio divina. The latter is a subject I have addressed a limited way on one or two occasions, but I would like to say more at some point in the near future. In the meantime, I highly recommend the transcription of Armand Veilleux’s talk, ‘Lectio Divina as a school of prayer among the Fathers of the Desert’, here. 

[6] Ibid., p. 46. 

[7] See the chapter on the Prologue in Adalbert de Vogüé, OSB, The Rule of Saint Benedict: A Doctrinal & Spiritual Commentary, tr. John Baptist Hasbrouck (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian, 1983), pp. 9-43. 

[8] Adalbert de Vogüé, OSB, Reading Saint Benedict: Reflections on the Rule, tr. Colette Friedlander, OCSO (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian, 1994), p. 25. 

Sr Friedlander’s translation of this commentary uses the RB 1980 translation prepared by a committee of Benedictines, where the phrase in question is ‘the light that comes from God’—a choice seemingly reflected in her rendering of Pere Adalbert’s comments. See RB 1980: The Rule of St Benedict in English, ed. Timothy Fry, OSB, et al. (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, 1982), p. 16. 

[9] Dom Paul Delatte, OSB, A Commentary on the Holy Rule of St Benedict, tr. & ed. Dom Justin McCann, OSB (Latrobe, PA: The Archabbey Press, 1959), p. 8. 

[10] Ibid., p. vii. 

[11] Ibid., p. vii. 

[12] See the complete text here.

RB 4, the 'Unexpected' Chapter

My friend, the infamous dissident blogger known as ‘the Ochlophobist’, posted the following comment on Facebook a few weeks ago: ‘I've pretty much decided that chapter 4 of the Rule of St Benedict [see some texts and translations here] is the best and most accessible summation of the Christian life to be found.’ There’s certainly something to this. As Bossuet has written, the Rule itself is ‘...an epitome of Christianity, a learned and mysterious abridgement of all the doctrines of the Gospel, all the institutions of the Fathers, and all the counsels of perfection’. [1] What is true of the Rule as a whole is certainly, in this instance, true of the part. Anyway, the comment made me want to post something on this chapter, preferably to coincide with the Orthodox feast of the great monastic legislator on Wednesday of this last week. The last was not to be, but better late than never, right?

Part of the interest of Chapter IV is that the infallible Adalbert de Vogüé (writing in the year of my birth, 1977) called it ‘without doubt the most unexpected part of the Rule’. Père Adalbert explains:

At first glance it astonishes the reader by its unusual make-up—a list of maxims—and by its lack of connection with the surrounding treatises. Upon further examination the reader is disappointed to find in this succession of little phrases little or no order. Moreover, if it is a program of good works to accomplish with an eye to eternal life, one would expect a different choice. Why is the important side by side with the secondary; ‘To love God and the neighbor’ with’Not to love laughter’; the solemn commandments of the decalogue with ‘Not to be a great eater’ or ‘Not to be sleepy’? A list of seventy-four maxims is either too many or too few. Why not an infinity of others, neither more nor less useful? Finally, this collection of maxims astonishes us by its indecisive coloring, its uncertain relationship with monastic reality. To whom and of what is the author speaking? To seculars who are married and exposed ‘to committing adultery’, or to monks who have made a vow ‘to obey their abbot’? [2]

Last December I finally acquired a lovely old hardcover copy of Dom Justin McCann’s [3] translation of Dom Paul Delatte’s Commentary on the Holy Rule of St Benedict (the commentary recommended to me during a school trip by one of the senior monks at the Benedictine abbey, Our Lady of Clear Creek, in eastern Oklahoma). [4] Although Dom Delatte confesses his uncertainty about what precisely instrumenta bonorum operum means, he doesn’t seem the least bit perplexed by the chapter itself. From his perspective the chapter seems to fit right into the overall structure of the Rule unproblematically:

We remember with what insistence our Holy Father declared in the Prologue that progress in the Christian life is effected by the practice of good works and the constant exercise of all the virtues; he now describes this well-regulated activity. This chapter gives a long list of the principal forms in which it is displayed; immediately after come separate chapters devoted to the fundamental dispositions of the soul, to obedience, recollection, and humility. [5]

For Dom Delatte, the chapter is merely St Benedict’s own foray into the genre of gnomic literature:

A word on the sources of this fourth chapter. Almost the entire series of instruments is to be found in the second part of the first Decretal Epistle of St Clement; but it has long been recognized that this second part is spurious and the work of Isidorus Mercator. There are certainly analogies between St Benedict’s chapter and the beginning of the Teaching of the Apostles (reproduced in the seventh book of the Apostolic Constitutions); both, for example, commence with the statement of the twofold precept of charity; Dom Butler, however, holds that it is impossible to give certain proof of borrowing. One may also compare the passage of the Holy Rule with the forty-nine sentences published by Cardinal Pitra under the title: Doctrina Hosii episcopi (+ AD 397); or with the Monita of Porcarius, Abbot of Lerins (at the end of the fifth century); or again with the Doctrina of a certain Bishop Severinus, who has not been identified yet so far as I know. We find analogous collections of sentences in the pagan philosophers themselves; see, for example, the Sentences attributed to the Seven Sages of Greece, the prose Sentences which precede the Disticha Catonis, and the Sentences of Sextus, a fragment of which St Benedict cites in Chapter VII. All civilizations have left us with specimens of this gnomic literature; the Books of Proverbs and Ecclesiasticus belong to this class. We are naturally led to express our morality in mottoes, to embody it in practical axioms; it seems to us to make virtue much easier when we achieve a short, pity, and well-turned phrase, which in its very perfection has a gracious charm. The old monastic rules were generally composed in this short, sententious style. And it is from them, from Holy Scripture, and to some degree from all sources, that our Holy Father seems to have gleaned his seventy-two instruments of good works; it is not yet proved that he has only copied, with greater or lesser modifications, one or several previous collections. [6]

Of course, in Père Adalbert’s view, addressing the unexpectedness of Chapter IV in the context of the RB is not unconnected with this question of whether St Benedict has ‘copied, with greater or lesser modifications, one or several previous collections’. He takes it for granted—and I am not sufficiently acquainted with scholarship on the question to explain on what grounds—that St Benedict’s is later than, and largely a reworking of, the so-called ‘Rule of the Master’ (RM), a text of which Dom Delatte in 1913 makes no mention at all with regard to Chapter IV. Dom McCann, writing around 1950 or 1951, treats the RM briefly in the preface to his translation of the RB, giving his opinion that the latter is the prior work but leaving the question open. [7]

But while Père Adalbert too draws the connections to other parts of the RB that Dom Delatte does, it is first and foremost the relationship of the RB to the RM that enables Père Adalbert to resolve the problem of Chapter IV’s place in the former. Thus:

The literary genre of these maxims seems much less unusual [in context] when we have read in the Master such various sections as the mysterious parable of the spring, the commentary on the Lord’s prayer in the form of a sermon, the picturesque satire on gyrovagues, and the majestic presentation of the doctors. The reader who has become used to changes of scenery discovers this new stage setting without astonishment. [77.]

I would like to do at least one or two more posts on RB4, perhaps before Pascha, continuing to compare the commentaries of Père Adalbert and Dom Delatte and hopefully drawing other connections as well. But for now, I will let this suffice.

[1] I’m not yet sure of the original source of the quote, used famously in the old Catholic Encyclopedia. Sabine Baring Gould gives the following sentence as well: ‘Here prudence and simplicity, humility and courage, severity and gentleness, freedom and dependence, eminently appear’ [here].

[2] Adalbert de Vogüé, The Rule of St Benedict: A Doctrinal & Spiritual Commentary, tr. John Baptist Hasbrouck, OSB (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian, 1983), p. 77.

[3] Himself a translator and editor of a fine bilingual edition of the Rule—Abbot Justin McCann, OSB, tr. & ed., The Rule of Saint Benedict in English & Latin, (Ft Collins, CO: Roman Catholic Books, n.d.).

[4] I can’t remember which monk it was, but he said that Dom Delatte’s commentary was the one that the Clear Creek monks themselves read, in part because as the former abbot of Solesmes, the author was part of the same Benedictine congregation and tradition that Clear Creek belongs to. Paperback reprints were available in the monastery giftshop, and I would have bought one immediately but for the cover price. As it turned out, it was a wise decision—I later found a used hardcover edition of 1959, highly reminiscent of an old Faber publication, for less than the new pb’s at the monastery.

Incidentally, and I know this will stretch the reader’s credulity to the limit, the monk did not know immediately who the infallible Adalbert de Vogüé was! Well, what can one expect of papists?

[5] Dom Paul Delatte, OSB, A Commentary on the Holy Rule of St Benedict, tr. & ed. Dom Justin McCann, OSB (Latrobe, PA: The Archabbey Press, 1959), p. 61.

[6] Ibid., pp. 61-2.

[7] McCann, pp. xix-xxi.

'A School for the Lord's Service': St Benedict's Rule & Classical Education

This was an article I wrote for our school newsletter, Remarkable Providences. I have corrected a passage which got seriously distorted in the print edition thanks to my own hasty perusal of the proofs, and also added notes and links.

In his profound critique of modern ethics, After Virtue, University of Notre Dame philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre famously wrote, ‘We are waiting, not for a Godot, but for another—doubtless very different—St Benedict.’ [1] The reason for these words is that St Benedict, traditionally known as the ‘Father of Western monasticism’, was responsible for the formation of small communities committed to the cultivation and teaching of virtue even as the world around them lost all cohesion. They are communities to which we would do well to look for inspiration today.

Indeed, civilisation as a whole owes a very great debt to these monks. Benedictine monasticism, that is, monasteries which were organised and lived according to St Benedict’s Rule, were the ark in which all of the classical culture of the Latin world was preserved from the flood of barbarism and the seedbed in which germinated many of the great monuments of mediæval culture. In the words of Dom Jean Leclercq, ‘education’ in the sense of instruction in grammar, of reading and writing, ‘is not separated from spiritual effort’ in the Benedictine vision. [2] The mediæval Western theologian par excellence, Thomas Aquinas, was raised and educated in St Benedict's own monastery of Monte Cassino, [3] and in his Divine Comedy, the greatest poet of the Middle Ages, Dante Alighieri, has an important exchange with St Benedict in the heavenly sphere of the contemplatives. [4] But to produce Aquinas and Dante, Latin-speaking Christendom had to begin from the ruins of Roman civilisation. John Henry Newman emphasises the gradual nature of the great Abbot’s achievement:

St Benedict found the world, physical and social, in ruins, and his mission was to restore it in the way not of science, but of nature, not as if setting about to do it, not professing to do it by any set time, or by any rare specific, or by any series of strokes, but so quietly, patiently, gradually, that often till the work was done, it was not known to be doing. It was a restoration rather than a visitation, correction or conversion. The new work which he helped to create was a growth rather than a structure. Silent men were observed about the country, or discovered in the forest, digging, clearing and building; and other silent men, not seen, were sitting in the cold cloister, tiring their eyes and keeping their attention on the stretch, while they painfully copied and recopied the manuscripts which they had saved. There was no one who contended or cried out, or drew attention to what was going on, but by degrees the woody swamp became a hermitage, a religious house, a farm, an abbey, a village, a seminary, a school of learning and city. [5]

St Benedict’s Rule was a powerful agent in the civilisation of Europe, a project which, for the Rule’s author as well as its followers through the centuries, was explicitly educational. In his Prologue to the Rule, St Benedict quotes extensively from the Scriptures on the importance of holy living and concludes, ‘Therefore we intend to establish a school for the Lord's service [dominici schola servitii].’ [6] This reference to the monastery as a ‘school’ should not of course surprise us, however, since already in the opening words of the Rule, St Benedict has addressed his readers, ‘Listen, my son, to the lessons [praecepta] of the teacher [magistri].’ [7] Indeed, the Rule assumes throughout that the monks are discipuli, or ‘students’, and that the abbot is their magister, or ‘teacher’. In the words of the late Dom Adalbert de Vogüé, ‘the task of the monastic school is to educate us in the life of perfection according to the Gospel.’ [8]

But to this end, the monastic ‘school’ has need of a handbook, curriculum, and curriculum objectives, which are contained primarily in the Holy Scriptures, but also in the Rule itself and in the various writings of the Church Fathers which it recommends ‘for anyone hastening on to the perfection of the monastic life’. [9] In the Rule St Benedict lays out in painstaking detail how the ‘school’ is to be organised, even down to the exact daily schedule and arrangement of the services to be carried out and Psalms to be chanted in the church. The times for prayer, work, and individual study of Scripture, all summarised in the famous motto Ora et labora (‘Pray & work’), [9] are delineated. There are exact prescriptions of punishment for various offenses. The way in which meals are to be taken is described at length, with allowance for the different fasts of the Christian year.

This strict organisation of life as a ‘school for the Lord's service’ suggests obvious parallels to the efforts of those of us involved in classical Christian education today. In the opening lines of the Prologue, we find a beautiful distillation of what classical Christian education must assume at the outset. The late John Senior, one of the founders of the renowned [and sadly long defunct] Integrated Humanities Program at the University of Kansas, has taken each of the four imperative verbs of these opening sentences in the Latin text and shown clearly how relevant and challenging they are for both students and faculty.

The very first word, ausculta, means ‘listen’. Senior points out that this reminds us that education begins with quietly listening, for—

it is only to the just, gazing in rapt silence like a lover on his beloved at the art or thing, it is only to the patient, silent receptive listener, that the meaning of the poem, or the mystery of the number, star, chemical, plant—whatever subject the science sits at the feet of—is revealed... [10]

The next imperative is inclina—‘attend with' or ‘incline the ear of your heart’. Perhaps the most foreign concept to modern education, according to Senior:

This means students must love their teachers and teachers must be worthy of such love. Learning is a motion of the heart and not a mercenary contract in the ‘marketplace of ideas’ where the natural desires of youth to reach the stars are distracted from their aim by catalogues, orientation sessions and academic advising impelling them to marketable skills and government grants. [11]

The third imperative is excipe, that is, ‘accept’ or ‘welcome the admonition of a loving father freely’. In other words, the student must freely accept—

not just the precepts and the counsels but accept the correction and rebuke of the teacher who stands in loco parentis as the strong, gentle, pious father. Humility is a necessary condition of learning. The relationship of student to teacher is not one of equality, nor even of quantitative inequality as between those advanced and less advanced on the same plane; it is the relationship of disciple to master in which docility is an analogue of the love of man and God, from Whom all paternity in Heaven and on earth derives. [12]

Finally, the last of the four imperatives is efficaciter comple—‘faithfully put it into practice’. According to Senior, ‘The student must not only receive the knowledge, counsel and correction of the teacher, he must fulfill them . . .’ [13] To do this, the student must ultimately move beyond merely parroting or complying to truly understand what he is taught, ‘and by learning, become assimilated to the spiritual, intellectual and moral model of the teacher. . . . [Faculty and students] according to this rule should be better than the rest of the community, not only in intelligence but in manners, morals and taste as well.’ [14]

We at Providence Hall would do well to heed the teaching of St Benedict's Rule if we too wish to be ‘a school for the Lord's service’.

[1] Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, 2nd ed. (Notre Dame, IN: U of Notre Dame, 1984), p. 263. I have written a post on MacIntyre's reference to St Benedict called ‘Waiting for St Benedict: MacIntyre, Monasticism, & the New Dark Ages’.

[2] Dom Jean Leclercq, OSB, The Love of Learning & the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture, tr. Catharine Misrahi (NY: Fordham, 1961), p. 24.

[3] This was first called to my attention by James Taylor in Poetic Knowledge: The Recovery of Education (Albany, NY: SUNY, 1998), pp. 39-40: ‘It was, then, into a society, a culture, built on centuries of slow Benedictine influence so eloquently described by Newman [see above], that Aquinas was born in the thirteenth century. . . . Certainly to be considered is the fact that Thomas was placed with the Benedictines of Monte Cassino at an early age.’ But I later discovered that Taylor's teacher, John Senior, emphasises the point much more strongly: ‘St Benedict, Patron of Europe, founded Monte Cassino in 529. St Thomas as a little boy of five entered there to go to school around 1229—seven hundred years in the womb of Benedictine work and prayer and then you have St Thomas! The seedbed of theology is the Benedictine life, without which no one has the prerequisites’ (The Restoration of Christian Culture [Norfolk, VA: IHS, 2008], p. 87).

[4] Paradiso XXII. Dante’s choice of words in l. 98 to describe St Benedict rejoining the other contemplatives—Cosi mi disse, e indi si raccolse / al suo collegio, e ’l collegio si strinse (‘Thus he concluded and the voice was stilled. / Collegiate to collegium withdrew’)—seems to highlight in a fortuitous way the connection between St Benedict and education. The Italian I’ve taken from Dante, Paradise, tr. & ed. Anthony Esolen, illust. Gustave Dore (NY: Modern Library, 2007), p. 240; the translation is Dorothy L. Sayers & Barbara Reynolds, The Divine Comedy 3: Paradise (London: Penguin, 1962), p. 252.

[5] John Henry Newman, ‘The Mission of St Benedict’, {410}.

[6] Here I quote RB1980, but throughout the article I have in some cases given my own translation to emphasise the point I want to make, or I have offered alternatives from various translators. For the Latin text, I have used Abbot Justin McCann, OSB, tr. & ed., The Rule of Saint Benedict in English & Latin (Fort Collins, CO: Roman Catholic Books, n.d.).

[7] My own translation.

[8] Adalbert de Vogüé, OSB, Reading St Benedict: Reflections on the Rule, tr. Colette Friedlander, OCSO (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian, 1994), p. 34.

[9] I have written on this motto in the post, ‘Ora et Labora?’

[10] Senior, p. 93.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Ibid., p. 94.

[13] Ibid., p. 95.

[14] Ibid.

More on St Benedict & Lent

In yesterday’s post on St Scholastica (here), I linked to a letter (here) that I had reposted from the blog of the RC priest, Mark Kirby, supposedly written by the Saint herself to another nun. The bulk of that letter’s content is taken up with an exposition of the teaching on the observance of Lent in the famous Rule of her brother, St Benedict of Nursia.

It is a helpful reminder to those of us with a particular devotion to St Benedict that his Rule does indeed contain such teaching, and we can profit immensely from paying close attention to it. Quoting RB 49:1—Licet omni tempore vita monachi Quadragesimae debet observationem habere, ‘The life of a monk ought at all times to be lenten in its character’ [1]—Victor-Antoine d’Avila-Latourrette, OSB, notes how seriously ‘St Benedict takes the Lenten observance . . . that he bids his monks to see it as a program and model for all of their monastic life.’ [2] I have commented on this before (here), pointing out that according to St John Cassian, Lent was originally instituted for Christians in the world and only became necessary for monks when their primitive strictness began to wane. I have also commented on St Benedict’s apparent ‘negligence’ of almsgiving in the Lenten regime when compared with St Leo the Great’s homilies on Lent (here), and, here, on the strict reading schedule prescribed during Lent in RB 48. In this post I would like to delve a bit more into RB 49.

D’Avila-Latourrette refers to five ‘principles’ that St Benedict emphasises as part of Lenten observance in RB 49:4:

2 . . . [I]n these days of Lent the brethren should lead lives of great purity, 3 and should also in this sacred season expiate the negligences of other times. 4 This will be worthily done if we refrain from all sin and apply ourselves to prayer with tears, to reading, to compunction of heart, and to abstinence. [3]

D’Avila-Latourrette notes that the first principle, ‘refrain from all sin’, ‘should be an obvious one’, [4] but points out that the increased interiority of the Lenten journey can allow us to pay special attention to the seemingly ‘smaller’ sins that we rarely think of in confession.

The second principle, applying ourselves ‘to prayer with tears’, is obviously a major component of patristic spiritual teaching. St John Climacus goes so far as to say, in Ladder 7:6, ‘Greater than baptism itself is the fountain of tears after baptism, even though it is somewhat audacious to say so. For baptism is the washing away of evils that were in us before, but sins committed after baptism are washed away by tears.’ [5] D’Avila-Latourrette mentions the prayer of the Publican as exemplifying what St Benedict means here. [6] The infallible Adalbert de Vogüé, OSB, calls such prayer a ‘concomitant’ of the fourth principle—‘compunction of heart’, which d’Avila-Latourrette equates with ‘repentance’. De Vogüé writes:

Tears are not an unimportant accessory of prayer, but rather a substantial enrichment, which endow it with an incomparable quality. Anyone who has experienced this transformation wonders whether they are not the normal sign of all true prayer: can a heart which speaks to God do so without the deep stirring that leads to tears? Thus it is hardly surprising that Benedict prescirbes or suggests praying with tears, as though this was something to which every worshipper can and should aspire. Tears are no doubt a gift and a grace, but asking for them and working towards them is also a signal way of beginning to pray. [7]

I shall skip the third principle, holy reading, since I have written about it at length here. But, as d’Avila-Latourrette notes, ‘The last principle mentioned by St Benedict, abstinence from food, [is] long associated with Lent . . . .’ [8] He reminds us that fasting is primarily a spiritual activity, and not merely a physical one, and that it is ‘never disconnected from prayer and concentration on God’. [9] While not neglecting this ‘vertical’ dimension to Lenten fasting, however, de Vogüé also broadens the horizontal dimension:

As for abstinence, it does not consist merely in cutting down on food and drink . . . . It also has to do with sleep, talkativeness, and joking. . . . There is something all-embracing about the benedictine notion of abstinence, as there is to continence in the writings of Basil (Reg. 9): all disorderly behavior is subject to cutbacks. [10]

But there is another item which should be included under this rubric for those of us who are not celibate monastics: fasting ‘from the flesh’, that is, abstaining from marital relations. St Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain writes, ‘We must also note the following, that just as there must be a fast from food on Wednesday, Friday, and Great Lent, there must also be a fast from pleasures of the flesh.’ [11] Passing on to us a common tradition of the Church, St Nicodemus and—in a similar passage—Elder Cleopa of Sihâstria [12]—quote the opinion of Patriarch Theodore Balsamon of Antioch (12th c.):

If we are taught not to eat fish, nor to relax the fast during all of holy Lent, how much more are spouses obliged to abstain from carnal affection. Therefore, spouses who transgress in this regard, turning to satanic incontinence from fasting and deliverance from fleshly desires through saving repentance (as if the course of the whole year was enough to satisfy their carnal desires), are to be found unworthy of the divine and holy communion during the feast of the holy and great Pascha, but also let them be corrected through penances. [13]

In this way during Lent the Church exhorts us to follow St Paul’s advice in giving ourselves more fully to fasting and prayer (I Cor. 7:5).

But in St Benedict’s view, the result of all this is joy. In RB 49:7, we are to ‘look forward with the joy of spiritual longing to the holy feast of Easter.’ [14] De Vogüé writes:

This spiritual longing which brings overwhelming joy has already been mentioned by Benedict among the tools for good works (4:46). There the focus was on its ultimate object, everlasting life. Now it is the Easter resurrection, which heralds and inaugurates an eternity of bliss. The chief fruits of the Spirit, who is the source of that longing, are love and joy (Gal. 5:17-22).

Joy of the Holy Spirit, joy of spiritual longing: whatever it is called, in Benedict’s Rule joy penetrates to the very heart of Lent. It is like the ‘unspeakable delight’ he promised the postulant at the end of the Prologue (Prol 49). In both cases, spiritual exultation bursts into a period dedicated to painful effort. [15]

Of course, d’Avila-Latourrette comments sadly on the state of Lent among heterodox Christians in the West in modern times, where it can scarcely be called ‘a period dedicated to painful effort’:

St Benedict would not understand what Lent has become for many Christians today, trivialized to a time when we give up candy, cut down on television, or make a yearly confession. I find it sad to see that Lent has become reduced to such a poor shadow of the great significance it had during the first Christian centuries. [16]

[1] St Benedict of Nursia, The Rule of St Benedict in Latin & English, tr. Abbot Justin McCann, OSB (Fort Collins, CO: Roman Catholic, n.d.), pp.114, 115.

[2] Victor-Antoine d’Avila-Latourrette, OSB, A Monastic Year: Reflections from a Monastery (Dallas: Taylor, 1996), p. 70.

[3] St Benedict, p. 115.

[4] D’Avila-Latourrette, p. 70.

[5] St John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, rev. ed., tr. Archim. Lazarus (Moore) (Boston: HTM, 1991), p. 71.

[6] D’Avila-Latourrette, p. 71.

[7] Adalbert de Vogüé, Reading St Benedict: Reflections on the Rule, tr. Colette Friedlander, OCSO (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian, 1994), p. 244.

[8] D’Avila-Latourrette, p. 72.

[9] Ibid., p. 73.

[10] De Vogüé, pp. 244-5.

[11] St Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain, Exomologetarion: A Manual of Confession, tr. Fr George Dokos (Thessaloniki: Uncut Mountain, 2006), p. 272.

[12] Elder Cleopa of Sihâstria, The Truth of Our Faith, Vol. 2: On the Christian Mysteries, tr. Fr Peter Alban Heers & Francie Wilson (Thessaloniki: Uncut Mountain, 2006), p. 118.

[13] My translation from PG 138:997B-997C.

[14] St Benedict, p. 115.

[15] De Vogüé, p. 245.

[16] D’Avila-Latourrette, p. 70.

Some Lenten Encouragement from the Ancients

A quick glance at this blog should be enough to demonstrate that I’m not big on the modern age. I certainly try not to idealise the past, but it can be awfully hard. When C.S. Lewis remarked in his introduction to St Athanasius’s On the Incarnation, ‘People were no cleverer then they are now; they made as many mistakes as we. But not the same mistakes’, [1] I would strongly like to add that their mistakes were less radical than ours. Certainly, they did not make the mistake that Lewis is addressing in that very piece—that of supposing that they didn’t need the wisdom of the past. Unlike most of us moderns, they kept ‘the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing’ through their minds. [2]

It is particularly difficult within the Orthodox Church. I for one almost find it discouraging to contemplate what separates us from the Fathers. I can scarcely imagine the possibility of someone in our day attaining to their lofty heights. But over the years, I’ve occasionally stumbled across some encouraging comments on this problem in the Fathers themselves. You see, even in the later part of the fourth century, the wise were already lamenting how far they had fallen from their predecessors, and fortunately for us, they commented on this phenomenon. Here are three perhaps somewhat encouraging passages that address this issue.

The first, and briefest, is from the sayings of St Anthony the Great found in the Gerontikon, also known as the Apophthegmata Patrum: ‘23. He also said, “God does not allow the same warfare and temptations to this generation as he did formerly, for men are weaker now and cannot bear so much.”’ [3]

The second is from the Paralipomena of St Pachomius the Great, that is, the series of anecdotes ‘leftover’ or omitted from the various Lives of the Saint. In one of these anecdotes, St Pachomius is in despair because of a vision he has of the future of his monasteries:

But he saw also a numberless multitude of brothers journeying along a deep, parched valley. Many of them wanted to come up out of the valley, but were unable. Many came face to face with each other because of the great darkness that shrouded them, but did not recognize each other. Many fell down through exhaustion, and others cried out with a pitiful voice. A few of them were able with much labor to force their way out of that valley; as soon as they came up they gave thanks to God heartily. Then did the Blessed Man know what was going to happen to the brothers in the end, what negligence there would be in those times, the great hardening and error, and the failing of the shepherds which was going to affect them. [4]

In the midst of his despair, St Pachomius cries out to God, and is granted a vision of Christ Himself, as ‘a young man whose face was ineffable and whose aspect was inexpressible’. [5] Our Lord says to him:

Take courage, for the root of your seed shall not fail for ever, and your seed shall be preserved upon the earth until the end of time. [6] And the few who are going to be saved from the abundant darkness in these times shall be found above those who practise a very great ascesis now. For they have you as a lamp before their eyes and they practice ascesis, counting on your light; but if those who shall come after them and shall dwell in a parched place run out of the darkness and pursue righteousness in good mind and on their own accord, with no one to guide them to the truth, verily I say to you that they shall be found with those who now practice ascesis greatly and blamelessly, enjoying the same salvation. [7]

Finally, the last passage is also from Gerontikon, from the single apophthegm attributed to the otherwise unknown (to me) Abba Ischyrion:

The holy Fathers were making predictions about the last generation. They said, ‘What have we ourselves done?’ One of them, the great Abba Ischyrion replied, ‘We ourselves have fulfilled the commandments of God.’ The others replied, ‘And those who come after us, what will they do?’ He said, ‘They will struggle to achieve half our works.’ They said, ‘And to those who come after them, what will happen?’ He said, ‘The men of that generation will not accomplish any works at all and temptation will come upon them; and those who will be approved in that day will be greater than either us or our fathers.’ [8]

[1] C.S. Lewis, ‘Introduction’, On the Incarnation, by St Athanasius the Great, new rev. ed., tr. & ed. A Religious of CSMV (Crestwood, NY: SVS, 1996), p. 5.

[2] Ibid., p. 5.

[3] Benedicta Ward, The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection, rev. ed. (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian, 1984), p. 6.

[4] Armand Veilleux, OCSO, tr., Pachomian Koinonia, Vol. 2: Pachomian Chronicles & Rules (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian, 1981), p. 39.

[5] Ibid., p. 40.

[6] One might well wonder at how to interpret our Lord’s words here, since as William Harmless notes, the only significant survival of the Pachomian Koinonia, apart from the few documents extant, is the columns of the ruined 5th-c. basilica at Pbow (Desert Christians: An Introduction to the Literature of Early Monasticism [Oxford: Oxford U, 2004], p. 141). Fortunately, in his ‘Foreword’ to Veilleux’s translation of Pachomiana (‘Foreword’, Pachomian Koinonia, Vol. 1: The Life of St Pachomius, tr. Armand Veilleux [Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian, 1980], pp. vii-xxiii), the infallible Adalbert de Vogüé has already wondered at this and offered the best answer I can imagine:

Were these first cenobites of Upper Egypt deceiving themselves as to the Koinonia’s chances of survival and of death? Along with his distressing forebodings, we are told that their Father Pachomius had received promises of perpetuity for his work. These divine promises, like so many others, were realized in a mysterious and unexpected manner. The rules and traditions, organization and hierarchy, monasteries and congregation all disappeared, and the faith literary or institutional traces of Pachomianism left to the monastic world—particularly in the latin West—would of themselves constitute only a pitiable survival. But in truth, the Koinonia of the sons of Pachomius has not ceased to exist. It is found wherever brothers gather together in the love of Christ to live in total sharing, perfect charity, and the renunciation of self-will ‘under a rule and a father’. (p. xxiii)

[7] Veilleux, Koinonia Vol. 2, p. 41.

[8] Ward, p. 111.

St Basil the Monk

In his characteristically Williamsian history of the Church, The Descent of the Dove, Charles Williams observes:

Egypt had yielded another kind of corn than that which of old had reached the Roman markets. The living ears of that growth had spread over the East, and Basil the Great there made a Rule for their future which, it is said, before he died in 379 had been accepted by eighty thousand monks. [1]

It is a striking reminder. Owing, one supposes, to the preoccupation in the West with St Basil’s controversial and dogmatic writings, and perhaps his usual depiction in iconography as a vested hierarch, even Orthodox seem sometimes to forget that he was an important monastic legislator who wrote with an almost Philokalic depth on the ascetic life. But it seems we are not alone. According to an old post by the much-missed Sr Macrina, St Basil’s ascetic spirituality has been generally neglected in the whole vogue for monastic spirituality of recent decades. She quotes Augustine Holmes, OSB, of Pluscarden Abbey:

A plethora of books have been produced, most notably perhaps those by Esther de Waal, to enable non-monastics to appropriate the spiritual riches of the rule of St Benedict. A similar phenomenon attends the pithy and down-to-earth sayings of the Egyptian Desert Fathers and also, more ambiguously, the strong monastic Celtic spirituality. This is part of a general return to the sources in contemporary Christianity and is a recognition both of the normative nature of sacred tradition and of the essential unity of Christian spirituality. The inadequacy of both modern liberal Christianity and the forms of piety of recent centuries has caused many to seek authentic spiritual teaching in the monastic tradition.…

Parallel to this academic work there is no popular interest in ‘Basilian Spirituality’. This is both strange and regrettable as Basil’s teaching is scriptural, practical and avoids the ascetic extremism of the Egyptians and Syrians. It also has a strong social and community dimension which should appeal to modern concerns. [2]

It is a shame. As Olivier Clément writes, ‘[H]is spiritual texts, beneath a Stoic dress, are deeply evangelical and Pauline’, and ‘all the ascesis has as its magnetic attraction the beauty of Christ’. [3] But it is a particularly odd oversight for those of us who are students of St Benedict, for as I pointed out in last year’s post on St Basil, he is the only patristic author mentioned by name in the Rule (RB 73.5), and St Benedict recommends the Cappadocian’s Asceticon as a tool ‘of virtue for good-living and obedient monks’ (bene viventium et obedientium monachorum). [4] On this recommendation, the infallible Adalbert de Vogüé writes:

This reading list [in RB 73.5], which reflects an open cenobitism, ends with the Rule of Saint Basil, called like the heroes of the apophthegms, ‘our holy Father’ (18:25). [5] By what he said earlier, Benedict does not seem to have adopted the condemnation of solitary life formulated by the great cappadocian legislator in the third Question of his Rule (Reg.3 = LR 7). He nonetheless recommends this distinguished work, from which he borrowed just as he did from Cassian. Rather than being eclectic, his attitude is one of unreserved openness to all of monastic tradition. [6]

Having quoted de Vogüé on St Benedict’s reference to St Basil, it seems fitting that I cite, as an example of the latter’s ascetic writing, a passage on the subject of praying without ceasing. The great French monastic scholar has been accused by his coreligionists of interpreting ‘Pray without ceasing’ in a ‘hesychast’ manner. [7] I am pleased to note, however, that he is just as ‘hesychast’ as St Basil:

For prayer and psalmody, however, as also, indeed, for some other duties, every hour is suitable, that, while our hands are busy at their tasks, we may praise God sometimes with the tongue (when this is possible or, rather, when it is conducive to edification); or, if not, with the heart, at least, in psalms, hymns and spiritual canticles, as it is written [Col. 3:16]. Thus, in the midst of our work can we fulfill the duty of prayer, giving thanks to Him who has granted strength to our hands for performing our tasks and cleverness to our minds for acquiring knowledge, and for having provided the materials, both that which is in the instruments we use and that which forms the matter of the arts in which we may be engaged, praying that the work of our hands may be directed toward its goal, the good pleasure of God.

Thus we acquire a recollected spirit—when in every action we beg from God the success of our labors and satisfy our debt of gratitude to Him who gave us the power to do the work, and when, as has been said, we keep before our minds the aim of pleasing Him. If this is not the case, how can there be consistency in the words of the Apostle bidding us to ‘pray without ceasing’ [I Thess. 5:17], with those others, ‘we worked night and day’ [2 Thess. 3:8]. [8]

But to better illustrate Clément’s words, and as a tribute to some of Sr Macrina’s particular concerns in studying St Basil’s ascetic spirituality, here is one of the passages the latter once posted:

Speak to us first then of love towards God. For we have heard that one ought to love, but we seek to learn how this may successfully be done.

Love of God cannot be taught. For we have neither learnt from another person to rejoice in the light and to cling to life, nor did anyone else teach us to love our parents or those who brought us up. In the same way, or much more so, the learning of the divine loving desire (pothos) does not come from outside; but when the creature was made, I mean man, a certain seminal word (logos spermatikos) was implanted in us, having within itself the beginnings of the inclination to love. The pupils in the school of God’s commandments having received this word are by God’s grace enabled to exercise it with care, to nourish it with knowledge, and to bring it to perfection. Therefore we also, welcoming your zeal (spoudê) as necessary for attaining our end (skopos), by God’s gift and your assistance of us with your prayers will strive (spoudazô) to stir up the spark of divine loving desire (pothos) hidden within you according to the power given us by the Spirit. You must know that this virtue, though only one, yet as regards power accomplishes and comprehends every commandment. For, ‘the one loving me,’ the Lord says, ‘will keep my commandments’ and again, ‘on these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets’. [9]

I close with a few verses illustrative of his monastic life from the Canon for St Basil composed by St John of Damascus:

From Ode 1

You disciplined the passionate surging of the tyrannous flesh by your love of the philosophic life; and so you dwell in undefiled palaces, Father Basil.

You walked the rough way of the virtues and so you attained the smooth and undisturbed floor of heaven, and have been revealed, Basil, as a model for all.

Effectively you circumcised the passions of both the soul and body with the sword of the Spirit; while you offered yourself as a sacrifice to the Master.

From Ode 3

When you had become filled with all learning, no only that which is below and well-worn, but even more that which better, you were revealed, Basil, as a light for the world.

Grounded in the fear of the Lord; for this is the beginning of wisdom; you were given wings by the love of the better wisdom, O Basil.

Basil you wisely you took the path of practice and showed practice to the path to more divine contemplation, and you were clearly initiated into the knowledge of things that are.

Your commemoration, Father, coincided and shone out together with the Christ’s nativity; the ineffable mystery of which you made manifest by your teachings. [10]

[1] Charles Williams, The Descent of the Dove: A Short History of the Holy Spirit in the Church (Vancouver: Regent College, 2002), p. 90.

[2] Augustine Holmes, OSB, A Life Pleasing to God: The Spirituality of the Rules of St Basil (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian, 2000), pp. xvi-xvii.

[3] Olivier Clément, The Roots of Christian Mysticism: Text & Commentary, 3rd ed., trans. Theodore Berkeley, OCSO, rev. Jeremy Hummerstone (London: New City, 1995), p. 316.

[4] The Rule of Saint Benedict in English & Latin, trans. Abbot Justin McCann, OSB (Ft Collins, CO: Roman Catholic Books, n.d.), p. 161, Latin text on p.160.

[5] De Vogüé’s particular attention to this phrase—a common one in Orthodoxy—calls to mind one occasion on which I was rather viciously chastised by a Roman Catholic for referring to the Fathers of the Church as ‘Holy Fathers’—‘There is only one “Holy Father”: the Pope of Rome!’ It is vindicating to see an acknowledgement here that it is a patristic phrase, and one used, no less, by the ‘Father of Western monasticism’!

[6] Adalbert de Vogüé, Reading Saint Benedict: Reflections on the Rule, trans. Colette Friedlander, OCSO (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian, 1994), p. 336.

[7] Adalbert de Vogüé, The Rule of Saint Benedict: A Doctrinal & Spiritual Commentary, trans. John Baptist Hasbrouck (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian, 1983), p. 150.

[8] St Basil the Great, Ascetical Works, trans. Sr M. Monica Wagner, CSC, Vol. 9 of The Fathers of the Church: A New Translation (NY: Fathers of the Church, 1950), p. 308.

[9] St Basil, Longer Rule 2, as quoted in Holmes, p. 68.

[10] From the translation by Archimandrite Ephrem (Lash), here.

Literary Tradition & the 'Organisation of Responses'

At the monthly meeting of our local C.S. Lewis & Inklings Society last night, one of the works we discussed was Lewis’s short lyric, ‘The Nativity’. Indeed, it is brief enough that it is worth reproducing in full:

Among the oxen (like an ox I’m slow)
I see a glory in the stable grow
Which, with the ox’s dullness might at length
Give me an ox’s strength.

Among the asses (stubborn I as they)
I see my Saviour where I looked for hay;
So may my beastlike folly learn at least
The patience of a beast.

Among the sheep (I like a sheep have strayed)
I watch the manger where my Lord is laid;
Oh that my baa-ing nature would win thence
Some wooly innocence! [1]

One lady commented on the parenthetical asides, asking whether such self-deprecation was typical of Lewis. I remarked that it seemed to me that it was, and another fellow began to speak of Lewis’s humility (it occurred to me however that his was an acquired rather than innate humility). But there was another comment I wanted to make about those asides, and I was afraid some of my less literary interlocutors might misunderstand. Addressing the lady who had originally asked the question, I said, ‘This is not to say that Lewis’s humility or self-deprecation here is not genuine, but . . .’, and then I pointed out how very seventeenth-century I found these lines. Specifically, I thought, they reminded me of George Herbert. While a brief look through Herbert this morning yielded little material for obvious comparison, I did find in the humble English parson’s own lyrics on Christmas the following lines (15-8):

The shepherds sing; and shall I silent be?
My God, no hymn for thee?
My soul’s a shepherd too; a flock it feeds
Of thoughts, and words, and deeds,
. . . [2]

Extending Lewis’s indebtedness back even further, one Jenny Sawyer at the C.S. Lewis Foundation blog has offered an illuminating comparison of Lewis’s poem with ‘The Friendly Beasts’, an old French carol of around the 12th century. But the point of this post is not so much to draw out specific comparisons, but to explain my little disclaimer. I have touched on this issue before (here) in regards to Milton’s Lycidas, but it seems clear to me that there is a notion abroad that literary art, particularly if it is traditional and formal, is inimical to ‘genuine’ feeling, and not only this, but to strict veracity as well. In other words, this notion would tell us, if Lewis’s lyrical self-deprecation is inspired by, or worse, in imitation of some older poet, then it is a ‘mere device’ and not ‘true’. As I pointed out in the post on Lycidas, this is what Lewis himself has called a ‘confusion (arising from the fact that both are voluntary) between the organization of a response and the pretence of a response’, as well as being surely akin to his ‘Romantic Primitivism . . . which prefers the merely natural to the elaborated, the un-willed to the willed’. [3]

Tolkien too has made an effort to dispel such ideas. In a passage I have quoted here, Tolkien refers to the Anglo-Saxon poetic fragment, ‘The Battle of Maldon’:

Near the end of the surviving fragment an old retainer, Beorhtwold, as he prepares to die in the last desperate stand, utters the famous words, a summing up of the heroic code, . . . :

Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre,
mod sceal þe mare þe ure mægen lytlað.

‘Will shall be the sterner, heart the bolder, spirit the greater as our strength lessens.’

It is here [in Tolkien’s play based on ‘Maldon’] implied, as is indeed probable, that these words were not ‘original’, but an ancient and honoured expression of heroic will; Beorhtwold is all the more, not the less, likely for that reason actually to have used them in his last hour. [4]

Certainly, there is a difference between the culture of Beorhtwold, which was presumably still quite oral, and that of Lewis, who is a man par excellence of the written word. But both have a similar relation to their cultural tradition, which they have internalised. Indeed, in the post on ‘Maldon’, I pointed out that Lewis alludes to these lines in his sci-fi novel, Perelandra, when he writes, ‘Once he was actually astride the enemy’s chest, squeezing its throat with both hands and—he found to his surprise—shouting a line out of The Battle of Maldon: but it tore his arms so with its nails and so pounded his back with its knees that he was thrown off.’ [5]

It did not occur to me at the time, but it strikes me now that Lewis may well have been intentionally proving the truth of Tolkien’s observation that a man who has so internalised ‘ancient and honoured expression[s]’ of the great virtues is likely to find them coming to him even, or especially, at moments of the most extreme and therefore, presumably, ‘genuine’ emotion.

This line of thought seems to me to have direct bearing on another of my perennial interests: hagiography. I do not have the book in front of me, but I seem to recall Garry Wills defending the historical veracity of St Augustine’s conversion in the Confessions in the face of charges that it is a ‘mere literary device’. But this is a very common charge made against the Lives of Saints. If a story or claim serves some literary purpose, or seems to have been modeled on an earlier work, it is dismissed as ‘unhistorical’ or ‘legendary’. Fortunately, voices of reason occasionally appear. Speaking of Book II of the Dialogues of St Gregory the Great, the infallible Adlabert de Vogüé writes:

How then does one explain the constant and often troubling similarities between the accounts of Gregory and the miracles of Holy Scripture or of earlier hagiography? Let us remember first the role of the human condition which causes the same situations, the same needs, and the same distresses to occur over and over again. Further, the Christian saints and narrators are all steeped in the same spiritual milieu impregnated by the Bible. Scripture inspires the hopes, prayers and gestures of the wonder-workers themselves. In their turn, their disciples and admirers are always ready to recognize these scriptural models of their heroes, and even to discover new ones which the saints themselves had not thought of, which nevertheless will influence their reports unconsciously. Finally, the hagiographer plays a part, spontaneous or calculated, in this biblical coloring of the event. The same stylizing process flows from the models of the hagiographic tradition. [6]

Thus it seems to me that a greater understanding of tradition is called for in the humanities, and I am happy to point out that Fr Andrew Louth for one has already called for it. [7]

[1] C.S. Lewis, Poems, ed. Walter Hooper (San Diego: Harcourt, 1992), p. 122.

[2] George Herbert, The Complete English Works, ed. Ann Pasternak Slater (NY: Everyman’s Library, 1995), p. 78.

[3] C.S. Lewis, A Preface to ‘Paradise Lost’ (NY: Oxford U, 1965), p. 55.

[4] J.R.R. Tolkien, ‘The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son’, The Tolkien Reader (NY: Ballantine, 1966), p. 5.

[5] C.S. Lewis, Perelandra (NY: Scribner, 1996), p. 132.

[6] Adlabert de Vogüé, Foreword, The Life of Saint Benedict, by St Gregory the Great, comm. Adlabert de Vogüé, trans. Hilary Costello & Eoin de Bhaldraithe (Petersham, MA: St Bede’s, 1993), p. vii.

[7] Fr Andrew Louth, Discerning the Mystery: An Essay on the Nature of Theology (Wichita, KS: Eighth Day, 2007).

'The Great Luminary of Gaul'—St Martin of Tours

Today, 11 November on the Church’s calendar, we celebrate the memory of St Martin of Tours (316-397), according to Orthodox America ‘the first to be called Saint without having been martyred’ (here). Alban Butler called him ‘the glory of Gaul and a light to the Western church in the fourth century’ (qtd. here), and Thomas Owen Clancy and Gilbert Márkus call him ‘a key figure in the growth of the ascetic movement in Gaul’ (Iona: The Earliest Poetry of a Celtic Monastery [Edinburgh: Edinburgh U, 1995], p. 215). In his wonderful article, ‘A Prologue of the Orthodox Saints of the West’, in Vita Patrum: The Life of the Fathers, by St Gregory of Tours, trans. Hieromonk Seraphim (Rose) (Platina, CA: St Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1988), Fr Seraphim writes:

And then, even as the news of the phenomenon of Egyptian monasticism was still spreading through the West, the West produced its own ascetic miracle: St Martin of Tours. Even before his death in 397, his manuscript Life was being circulated in Gaul, Spain, Italy, and elsewhere in the West, revealing him as a monastic Father and wonderworker in no way inferior to the desert Fathers in the East. (pp. 18-9)

Here is the account of St Martin’s life in The Great Horologion, trans. HTM (Boston: HTM, 1997), p. 308:

Saint Martin, the great luminary of Gaul, was the son of pagan parents. When he was still quite young he became a catechumen; at the age of twenty-two he received Holy Baptism. Then he undertook the labours of a monk, and was afterwards consecrated Bishop of Tours, renowned as an ascetic and wonderworker, a faithful shepherd of Christ’s flock. He converted many both from paganism and heresy, cast out demons and raised the dead, and while undertaking all the apostolic burdens of a bishop, he never ceased to be a simple monk and man of prayer. His monastery became a center of monasticism not only for Gaul, but for all of Western Europe. A widely celebrated incident of his life took place when he was still a catechumen, fulfilling his military service. Seeing an ill-clad beggar asking alms at the gate of the city of Amiens and being overlooked by passersby, Saint Martin, having nothing else to give, rent his military cloak in two with his sword and gave half to the beggar, so that he might cover himself in the cold. That night, the Lord Jesus Christ appeared to him, clothed with the half of the cloak he had given to the beggar. Saint Martin’s cloak—capella in Latin—was kept in a sanctuary which came to be called capella, from which the word ‘chapel’ is derived; and they under whose care it was kept were called cappellani, from which ‘chaplain’ is derived. Saint Martin reposed in peace in the year 397.

St Martin’s hagiographer, Sulpicius Severus, points out that ‘no account could ever provide a full description of his inner life, his daily behaviour and his soul which was always focused on heaven’ (Vita Martini XXVI.2; Carolinne White, trans., Early Christian Lives [London: Penguin, 1998], p. 158). But there are rich suggestions of his endeavours to follow the Apostle Paul’s injunction to ‘pray without ceasing’:

XXVI.3 . . . . Never did any hour or moment pass when he was not absorbed in prayer or concentrating on reading, although he never allowed his mind to relax from prayer, even during his periods of reading or if he happened to be doing something else. (4) Without doubt, just as in the case of blacksmiths who strike their anvil during the break in their work as a kind of relaxation from their hard work, so Martin always prayed even while he seemed to be doing something else. . . . XXVII.1 . . . There was never anything on his lips except Christ, (2) never anything in his heart except devotion, peace and forgiveness. (White, pp. 158-9)

Thus, the infallible Adalbert de Vogüé has written that ‘the last days of Martin were an unceasing prayer’ (The Life of St Benedict, by St Gregory the Great, commentary by Adalbert de Vogüé, trans. Hilary Costello and Eoin de Bhaldraithe [Petersham, MA: St Bede’s, 1993], p. 179), and St Gregory of Tours writes in his Historiae Francorum I.48 (The History of the Franks, trans. Lewis Thorpe [Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1985], p. 97):

In the second year of the rule of Arcadius and Honorius, Saint Martin, Bishop of Tours, who had done so many good deeds for the sick, who was so holy and had performed so many miracles, died at Candes, a village in his own diocese, in the eighty-first year of his age and the twenty-sixth year of his episcopate, and so went happily to meet Christ. He died at midnight on a Sunday, during the consulship of Atticus and Caesarius. As he passed away, many heard a chanting of psalms in the sky, which I have described at greater length in the first books of his Miracles [indeed, Fr Seraphim notes, ‘Being especially under the influence of St Martin, his own predecessor in the See of Tours, from whom he received miraculous healings, he devoted four of the eight books of this work to The Miracles (or rather, Virtues) of Blessed Martin the Bishop’, p. 25].

In his wonderful Gifford Lectures at Edinburgh (1948-1949), published as Religion and the Rise of Western Culture (Garden City, NY: Image, 1958), Christopher Dawson has insightfully observed:

In the Dark Ages the saints were not merely patterns of moral perfection, whose prayers were invoked by the Church. They were supernatural powers who inhabited their sanctuaries and continued to watch over the welfare of their land and their people. Such were St Julian of Brioude, St Caesarius of Arles, St Germanus of Auxerre—such, above all, was St Martin, whose shrine at Tours was a fountain of grace and miraculous healing, to which the sick resorted from all parts of Gaul; an asylum where all the oppressed—the fugitive slave, the escaped criminal and even those on whom the vengeance of the king had fallen—could find refuge and supernatural protection. (p. 33)

Unfortunately, St Martin’s shrine, which was once ‘perhaps the most striking monument of Christian Gaul, being, outside of Rome, the chief center of Christian pilgrimage in the West’ (Fr Seraphim, p. 63), was destroyed. First burned by the Protestant Huguenots in 1562, then, in 1793, ‘in the midst of the most ferocious anti-Christian revolution’ before the 20th c., ‘leveled to the ground . . . in a deliberate attempt to blot out the memory of the saints’ (p. 66). Thanks to God, ‘in a commendable spirit of repentance for the revolutionary sacrilege . . . some devout Roman Catholics’ located the sepulcher and some fragments of St Martin’s relics, and the cathedral was rebuilt (p. 66).

But of course, St Martin’s veneration had spread elsewhere over the centuries. Fr Mark at Vultus Christi tells us that St Benedict dedicated a chapel to St Martin at Monte Cassino. According to the Venerable Bede’s Ecclesiastical History I.26, an old British Church of St Martin was among the earliest used by Anglo-Saxon Christians (The Ecclesiastical History of the English People, trans. Bertram Colgrave, ed. Judith McClure and Roger Collins [Oxford: Oxford U, 1994], p. 41; a later, London Church, St Martin-in-the-fields, serves as the home of the wonderful ensemble, the Academy of St Martin-in-the-fields). St Martin’s mercy to the beggar seems to have made him a patron Saint of the hospitality industry, and one can thus find a depiction of this incident behind the counter at many Mexican restaurants. He is also the patron Saint of the US Army Quartermaster Corps, which awards an ‘Order of St Martin’ medallion (see here).

Speaking of the celebration of St Martin’s feast in his monastery, the endearing Brother Victor-Antoine d’Avila-Latourrette writes, ‘It is an intimate monastic feast, for St Martin, especially in France, is very much loved by monks and nuns’ (A Monastic Year: Reflections from a Monastery [Dallas: Taylor, 1996], p. 161). According to the Fish-Eaters site (here):

St Martin’s Feast is considered the first day of Winter for practical purposes, so, alluding to the snows of that season, the Germans say that ‘St Martin comes riding on a white horse’. Of course, it might not feel like Winter if one is experiencing a ‘St Martin’s Summer’—the equivalent of an ‘Indian Summer’. It is said, too, that one can predict what sort of Winter one will have by the conditions of St Martin’s Day: ‘If the geese at Martin’s Day stand on ice, they will walk in mud at Christmas.’

The Feast coincides not only with the Octave of All Souls, but with harvest time, the time when newly-produced wine is ready for drinking, and the end of winter preparations, including the butchering of animals (an old English saying is ‘His Martinmas will come as it does to every hog’, meaning ‘he will get his comeuppance’ or ‘everyone must die’). Because of this, St Martin’s Feast is much like the American Thanksgiving (celebrated on the 4th Thursday in November)—a celebration of the earth’s bounty. Because it also comes before the penitential season of Advent, it is seen as a mini ‘carnivale’ with all the feasting and bonfires. As at Michaelmas on 29 September, goose is eaten in most places (the goose is a symbol for St Martin himself. It is said that as he was hiding from the people who wanted to make him Bishop, a honking goose gave away his hiding spot), but unlike most Catholics, those of Britain and Ireland prefer pork or beef on this day.

Interestingly, it seems that even in the West at one time a fast was kept during Advent which, beginning after Martinmas, was known as Quadragesima Sancti Martini. Perhaps more serious Catholics will begin to return to this holy practice, still observed in the Orthodox Church (though not by that name), since as one blogger says, 'Nevertheless at times such as these with so much profanation of the season I think a penitential Advent is needed now more than ever before.' A good way to get into the spirit, for Orthodox or for Catholics who wish to return to their roots, would be to read Sulpicius's Vita of the Saint, available in full here. In conclusion, here are the Troparion and Kontakion for St Martin, from the Horologion (p. 309):

Dismissal Hymn of Saint Martin. Fourth Tone
Be quick to anticipate

In signs and in miracles thou wast renowned throughout Gaul; * by grace and adoption now thou art a light for the world, O Martin, most blest of God. * Almsdeeds and compassion filled thy life with their splendour; * teaching and wise counsel were thy riches and treasures, * which thou dost dispense freely unto all them that honour thee.

Kontakion of Saint Martin. Plagal of Fourth Tone
As first-fruits of our nature

As a devoted man of God, thou didst proclaim His mysteries. * And as a seer of the Trinity, thou didst shed thy blessings on the Occident. * By thy prayers and entreaties, * O adornment of Tours and glory of all the Church, * preserve us, O Saint Martin, and save all who praise thy memory.

De Vogüé on St Benedict on Idle Speech & Laughter

If one follows the Church’s calendar, the appointed reading from St Benedict’s Rule for today (RB 6), concludes with the following statement: ‘As for idle jesting and empty chatter and talk leading to laughter, we sentence them to perpetual imprisonment in all places, and we do not permit a disciple to open his mouth in order to engage in words of that kind’ (Reading Saint Benedict: Reflections on the Rule, by Adalbert de Vogüé, trans. Colette Friedlander, OCSO [Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian, 1994], p. 72).

In keeping with his wonderful remarks in the prefatory note (see this post), the comment on this passage by the infallible Adalbert de Vogüé is a striking example of a humble approach to the teachings of the Holy Fathers. It is a model for my approach here at Logismoi:

The final sentence, borrowed almost verbatim from the Master, absolutely condemns idle speech (Mt 12:36) and anything inducing laughter (Lk 6:25), whether words or gestures. This double prohibition, which we have already come across in the preceding chapter, may appear stringent. In the eyes of the monks of old, it simply followed from the Gospel. This is one of the points on which our way of thinking as modern Christians and monks finds it most difficult to concur with that of our Fathers—most difficult, but also most profitable. (p. 74)

Waiting for St Benedict—MacIntyre, Monasticism, & the New Dark Ages

Judging by the fruits of a Google search, the last sentence of Alisdair MacIntyre’s already classic work on moral philosophy, After Virtue, is extremely well known and often quoted. In fact, I may be wrong about this, but I would venture to say it is the most famous part of the book. For those who don’t know, MacIntyre writes, ‘We are waiting not for a Godot, but for another—doubtless very different—St Benedict’ (After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, 2nd ed. [Notre Dame, IN: U of Notre Dame, 1984], p. 263).

Now, two thoughts frequently pop into my mind, unbidden, whenever I think about this statement, one having more to do with wording of the statement itself, and the other having more to do with its context. First of all, whenever I stop to think about this, without fail the idea occurs to me, ‘Why would our new St Benedict have to be “very different” from the first one?’ I’ve never come to a conclusion about this, but I do have a thought that first reared its head today which I will share a bit further down, after I have offered a bit more of the context of MacIntyre’s statement.

Because in order properly to convey the second thought, it strikes me as best to quote the entire final paragraph of the book. It’s a long one, but this is something that I think bears doing anyway, just because that last line, or at least the last couple of sentences, are so often quoted by themselves. So here goes:

It is always dangerous to draw too precise parallels between one historical period and another; and among the most misleading of such parallels are those which have been drawn between our own age in Europe and North America and the epoch in which the Roman empire eclined into the Dark Ages [incidentally, I vividly recall this parallel being drawn by Jello Biafra in a bit-too-clever take on the ‘Pledge of Allegiance’ during a live performance with Ministry about 20 years ago]. Nonetheless certain parallels there are. A crucial turning point in that earlier history occurred when men and women of good will turned aside from the task of shoring up the Roman imperium and ceased to identify the continuation of civility and moral community with the maintenance of that imperium. What they set themselves to achieve instead often not recognizing fully what they were doing—was the construction of new forms of community within which the moral life could be sustained so that both morality and civility might survive the coming ages of barbarism and darkness. If my account of our moral condition is correct, we ought also to conclude that for some time now we too have reached that turning point. What matters at this stage is the construction of local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained through the new dark ages which are already upon us. And if the tradition of the virtues was able to survive the horrors of the last dark ages, we are not entirely without grounds for hope. This time however the barbarians are not waiting beyond the frontiers; they have already been governing us for quite some time. And it is our lack of consciousness of this that constitutes part of our predicament. We are waiting not for a Godot, but for another—doubtless very different—St Benedict. (p. 263)

The funny thing is, whenever I read this, and especially when I read the last line or two in isolation, I have to remind myself that in context MacIntyre is speaking first and foremost of the decline of the virtues and the rôle of Benedictine monasticism precisely in preventing that decline. At some point, although I’ve long known better, I had gotten used to thinking of Benedictine monasteries as engaged primarily in the business of preserving the ancient culture of the arts and sciences, the learning and literature of the ancient world, in the face of their decline in the cities. In his fascinating published Gifford Lectures (typeset by Edward Gorey!), Christopher Dawson even quotes a passage from Newman that might give one this impression, but for a slight caveat. First, Dawson himself writes, ‘It was the disciplined and tireless labour of the monks which turned the tide of barbarism in Western Europe and brought back into cultivation the lands which had been deserted and depopulated in the age of the invasions’ (Religion and the Rise of Western Culture: Gifford Lectures Delivered in the University of Edinburgh 1948-1949 [Garden City, NY: Image, 1958], p. 53). Then the Newman quote:

St Benedict found the world, physical and social, in ruins, and his mission was to restore it in the way not of science, but of nature, not as if setting about to do it [the caveat], not professing to do it by any set time, or by any rare specific, or by any series of strokes, but so quietly, patiently, gradually, that often till the work was done, it was not known to be doing. It was a restoration rather than a visitation, correction or conversion. The new work which he helped to create was a growth rather than a structure. Silent men were observed about the country, or discovered in the forest, digging, clearing and building; and other silent men, not seen, were sitting in the cold cloister, tiring their eyes and keeping their attention on the stretch, while they painfully copied and recopied the manuscripts which they had saved. There was no one who contended or cried out, or drew attention to what was going on, but by degrees the woody swamp became a hermitage, a religious house, a farm, an abbey, a village, a seminary, a school of learning and a city. (pp. 53-4)

I do not say that there is anything wrong with this. Indeed, in my more apocalyptic moments (to which, as a ‘Romantic Orthodox’, I am terribly prone), I am sometimes overcome by a temptation toward hubristic self-justification in which I see my own ongoing acquisition of books and the learning that goes with them, as playing a somewhat analogous rôle to that of the Benedictines, as the night of traditional Western culture falls and barbarism—in the form of fashion magazines and video games—begins to claim all.

Furthermore, while Archimandrite Cyprian (Kern) laments the stress on agriculture in the Orthodox monasteries he knew, and the apparent absence of ‘a quiet monastery environment of a Benedictine monastery, with its library, with its scholars and intelligent priors, and with its own journal, a seminary within the same monastery, visits by intelligent and scholarly prelates, abbots, and so on’ (‘On Metropolitan Anthony [Khrapovitsky]’, trans. Fr Alexander Lisenko, Divine Ascent [No. 9, 2004], p. 152), historically speaking there is actually a great analogy here between Russian monasticism and Benedictinism as described by Newman. Thus, James Billington, while acknowledging that most of the Russian monastic founders of the 15th c. ‘were strongly influenced by Hesychasm’,—Billington’s description of which I thought quite poor—adds, ‘they were also, like the Cistercians [strict Benedictines, after all] of the medieval West, hard-working pioneers opening up new and forbidding lands for cultivation and colonization’ (The Icon and the Axe: An Interpretive History of Russian Culture [NY: Vintage, 1970], p. 52). Of course, Billington goes on to note the stimulus provided by monasticism in the visual arts and literary culture, and in this way the picture of the monastery as a preserver of ‘culture’ in the midst of barbarism is rounded out a bit.

So what is the difference? Why did Fr Cyprian not find the sort of monastery in Orthodoxy that would appeal to him? Surely today, especially, our Orthodox monasteries are not filled exclusively with rude peasants who know more about shoeing a horse than using a lexicon? I would venture to suggest that Orthodox monasteries, more than Benedictine ones as they developed later in the West, have preserved the emphasis on hesychasm that was originally the raison d’être of both. Although the Benedictines have preserved their founder’s well-known saying in RB 43, Ergo nihil operi Dei praeponatur, ‘Let nothing, therefore, be put before the Work of God’ (The Rule of St Benedict in English and Latin, trans. Justin McCann, OSB [Fort Collins, CO: Roman Catholic Books, n.d.], pp. 102, 103), they seem largely to have forgotten that, as the infallible Adalbert de Vogüé points out, the purpose of the ‘Work of God’, i.e., the Prayer of the Hours, was to ‘encourage and entertain’ ‘the personal striving to pray without ceasing’: ‘Like the piles of a brige, the hours of common prayer punctuate the course of time. It is up to each monk to connect them by the causeway of his unceasing prayer, so as to answer the Lord’s call’ (Reading St Benedict: Reflections on the Rule, trans. Colette Friedlander, OCSO [Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian, 1994], pp. 127-8).

I think all of this is to say that it seems a step in the right direction, a good thing, that MacIntyre reminds us that at their inception, it was the practice of the virtues (of which prayer without ceasing is surely one of the greatest) in community that Benedictine monasteries sought to preserve, and not the outward trappings of culture, whether ‘ecclesiastical’ or ‘secular’, whether agricultural or intellectual.

But this brings me back to my first point, the question which I’ve delayed answering. If what we are really hoping to preserve in the coming of barbarism is virtues like unceasing prayer, why must our new St Benedict by ‘very different’? In fact, it seems to me that another St Benedict very much like the old one would be the perfect project coordinator for such a thing.

While I may be giving him too much credit, here I think MacIntyre is thinking primarily in terms of his own call for all of those who value the old virtue morality to turn ‘aside from the task of shoring up the [modern] imperium’ and cease ‘to identify the continuation of civility and moral community with the maintenance of that imperium’, whereas St Benedict, and monasticism in general, is traditionally perceived as a special calling to certain persons within the Church. One wonders if he is not looking for a non-‘monastic’ St Benedict who does not require celibacy and absolute obedience, perhaps something like the ‘new monasticism’ (on which see this great triple review by Alan Jacobs). But again, while there is certainly a delicate balance that must be maintained in the Church between the very real obligation of all Christians to carry out the Gospel, including St Paul’s command to ‘pray without ceasing’, and the special calling of traditional monasticism, a balance that Orthodoxy has never perfectly encapsulated in an institution or formula, I can’t help but think that ‘new monasticism’, and insofar as he is advocating something like it, MacIntyre, are reinventing the wheel. Even if authentic Church life might have to take on slightly new forms—as evidenced by Fr Vladimir Vorobeyov’s fascinating article, ‘Russian Orthodox Pastoral Ministry in the 20th Century’ (Divine Ascent [No. 7, Presentation of the Theotokos, November 2001], pp. 15-40)—in our ever more anti-Christian milieu, it seems to me that our Saints have remained almost exactly the same for the last two thousand years, and will likely continue to do so.