I want to start with a poem again, if you will bear with me. This is another poem, a short one, by George Rivers, the same man whose poetry I read last night. It's part of a set of poems that he wrote on Easter. I read the first one last night. This one is called The Call. Come, my way, my truth, my life, such a way and give us Such a truth that ends all strife. Such a light that kills death. Come, my light, my beast, my strength. Such a light as soothes a beast. Such a beast as mends in length. Such a strength as makes his guest. Come, my joy, my love, my heart. Such a joy as none can move, such a love as none can part, such a heart as joy in love.

[01:03]

The studying of by Rosalind Williams is absolutely scrumptious. These are the truths of the Bible. Listen to it if you've never heard it before. It's absolutely stunning. Tonight I'm going to talk about the man of the spirit in the monastic tradition. another one of those tiny, small topics like God and the Spirit and the Bible and things like that. And to put the control of the vast amount of information that we would need to look at, if we were even going to get a clue about the size and shape of this tradition, I have once again provided two lists of notes that you can blur clean on the back side again. I'll try to follow that format fairly closely. Occasionally, I'll depart from it a little bit and make comments and stuff of that sort. But at least it will give you a kind of formal outline, and then we'll at least know the direction we're headed. I want to begin by talking a little bit about some theories about monastic origins. I suppose that you are all party to a discussion of that topic at one point or another.

[02:08]

Maybe you've put it out more than you care to hear. So I'll try to make that brief. As you may recall, for a long time, most people who wrote about the origins of monasticism did a kind of old Egyptian hypothesis, which was comprised of two elements that I've commented on here in the note that I passed out. It was based on the assumption that monasticism begins in Egypt. Nowhere else it begins in Egypt. That was the first assumption. And the second assumption that that old hypothesis was based on was the notion that monasticism begins as an aramidical movement, as a movement to the shelter. It begins with Paul and Anthony and the great heroes of the desert, and then only later on, when men become weak and can no longer withstand the single-handed time out of the desert, who began to band together for mutual support and assistance. That hypothesis, which for a long time was the first chapter of every book written about monks, is no longer widely held by scholars.

[03:14]

And I'm going to give you a duplicate of the reasons why scholars today no longer hold that hypothesis. One of the men who had done a very significant work that challenged that whole business was Jean Grivemont, who I think used to be dependent on someone, I don't know whether he still does or not. I've never been dependent on someone, so I have no idea, but I know him only by literature. Grivemont had pointed out that monasticism, something like the biblical text that we were looking at last evening in our discussion this afternoon, Monasticism is a very diversified phenomenon that begins in a variety of different geographical locales. It doesn't all begin in Egypt. It begins in a variety of places. In fact, there are three important early strands of monastic development that Gregoire and others have pointed out. Let me just identify for you what they are. One strand of development we could identify as East Syrian, That would be the church around the Dessa and Nizibetan churches, potentially associated with figures like Ephraim the Deacon, the famous early Christian poet.

[04:25]

It's associated with figures like Aphrat, the Persian sage, whose works you always read about in handbooks of psychology and stuff like that. I knew I wasn't going to do that. It's a very offbeat kind of Christianity in many respects. It probably has its origins not so much from Greek species or Hellenistic Christianity, but from Aramaic and Palestinian Christianity. A second strand of monastic development is what is familiar to all of us in Egypt. But as Griebenwand and other scholars have pointed out, this Egyptian monasticism was not all one piece of cloth, it was like a patchwork quilt. There were all kinds of varieties of monastic experience in Egypt, some of them eruditical, some of them sunabitic, some of them toxic. and kind of nativist and folkloristic in orientation, and some of them Greek-speaking, some of it desert, some of it urban, some of it emphasizing master-disciple relationships according to the old desert tradition, some of it emphasizing urban life and urban environment in middle Europe and monastic external.

[05:39]

So, the Egyptian strand of development is extremely thick and complicated, it's not all one piece of cloth. it embraces a whole variety of, I've used the word experiment, in monastic life, even early on in the late 2nd, rather late 3rd and early 4th centuries. And the third major standard development is that associated with the region of Asia Minor, the area of Cappadocia, for example. Here we would have to list the monastic experiment of Basel, Basil of Caesarea, and his brother, who I believe was Gregory of Myrtha, and his good friend who was Gregory of Nantheans, and all those 4th century figures that were working in Aestheticism, about whom I will have some comments to offer later, because they have some important things to tell us, both about history and spirituality. That whole movement took place in the part of the world that we would identify as Asia Minor, Cappadocia and so on.

[06:40]

Well, my hope here is simply to show you that people like Grievenloh have challenged seriously the notion that all monasticism derives from Egypt, of something like Caesar's counter-angelic wars, and all God was provided in the three parts, all monasticism began in Egypt. That thesis was pretty well exploded today. Not only has Grievenloh worked on this problem, but also the evidence by Mr. Sealy, our long-dearer, has also done a fair amount of work in the importance particularly not only of the complexity of monastic beginnings among Christians but of the pre-Christian background for asceticism and monastic art. Remember Christians didn't invent monasticism any more than they invented washing or eating or drinking or smearing people with oil and things of that sort. There are important pre-Christian monastic ascetic type groups The Kulan community is probably one example of such a group, a kind of separatist group of persons.

[07:45]

Poseidorean asceticism in the ancient Greek world, the Jewish fraternities known as the Kabbalah, all of them were examples of people banding together for what can be identified as an ascetic purpose even before Christianity appeared on the scene. Isaiah has also had, as you may know, a running argument with the commentaries of Alberto Bode on the rule of the master and the rule of Benedict. I won't go into that whole Roman controversy, because this is a nice group of people on blood and guts and things like that, and I focus on something even. If you want to get into that at all, or read a little bit about it, I put on the table up here, and I'll leave them on here for the next few days, an important article that I know that you wrote about 10 years ago and was published in Monastic Studies on, it's called the concept of the evasual author in monastic life, but really what he does is not only talk about the abbot, but also the whole mystery and origins of the monastic phenomenon.

[08:49]

It's in English. I also have up here an article by Grima Law which describes his hypothesis and his studies and research into the origins of monasticism. I'm going to give you a chance to brush up on the other languages, okay? So if you're interested and would like to take a look at those things, please feel free to use them. Take them back to your room and look at them. Throw darts at it. Use it for, you know, wallpaper or something, whatever you'd like to do. But they're available to you. I thought I would just bring you a copy because I didn't want them to be available to you elsewise if you want to do a little study on your own. The final comment I want to make about monastic origins deals with a kind of unnoticed aspect of early Christian monasticism, and that's what I've identified here as the East Syrian strand of monastic development. The man who has done a great deal of work on that is a Lutheran scholar by the name of Arthur Dreyfus. You have to put your mouth on a machine, you know, one of those machines like they have at Gehrlig on my PRT here, just close your lips out like this,

[09:57]

I don't know how you pronounce two umlauts in a row, I thought I would know, but I don't know for sure. Anyhow, he's president of, guess what, the Estonian Theological Society in exile, and is a very good scholar. Dervis has done a great deal of research on the uniqueness of the monastic phenomenon in Assyria. It wasn't like Greek-speaking monasticism in Egypt, for example, or even Coptic monasticism in Egypt. It was a very, very generous kind of development, a very strange and bizarre development. The early descriptions of these Assyrian monks sound a little bit like Kate Ashbery in the 1960s. You have strange features running around. As a matter of fact, people who saw them couldn't tell the difference between a monk and a bird. They looked so similar. They apparently were beaded and feathered, and there are also descriptions of the lament the parents, whose children ran off to Japan in these aesthetics.

[10:58]

This sounds a little bit like the lament of parents in the 1960s and 1970s. They just can't understand why our boy has gone off and done this terrible thing with these ridiculous people. But the type of aestheticism that developed in Syria was influenced by certain We would call them today's heterodox movements in Christian doctrine. One of them is associated with the work of a man by the name of Titian. who he talked about in schools of theology only long enough to indicate why he was condemned. Haitian was responsible, in the late 2nd and early 3rd century, for an important gospel harmony called the Diatetaron. What was interesting about it was that Haitians, in the Syriac translation of the gospel message, tend to asceticize the gospel. Whenever it's possible, for example, to emphasize a certain kind of ascetic practice, he will get that emphasis worked into the translation of the scriptures, so that, for example, his reading, his translation of the institution narratives of the Eucharist and the Gospels are deemed in such a way that the mention of wine, for example, which, as our holy father says, is certainly not a drink for monks, is almost obliterated.

[12:23]

Any time that he got a chance to make a case for the value of celibacy in reference to marriage, that influences the translation. And indeed, Breivik has contended that in some quarters of Eastern Christianity, a citizenship was so strong, not just as a monastic movement, but as a Christian movement, that celibacy was a requirement in some churches for baptism. That's a little extravagant. Jason was not himself responsible for that movement, but that gives you a little bit of the flavor of the kind of Christianity we're dealing with in Etheria. Another person who seems to have had some conduct with that church was Martian. Once again, I figure his name was often mentioned in the history of theology just simply long enough to indicate that we shouldn't believe what he believed, or we would refer to him when in the uncomplimentary terms that Tertullian used. Tertullian was the one who called Martians a pontiff's mouth. It's one of the hilarious passages of patristic literature.

[13:27]

In any case, the Martians further that same kind of aesthetical approach to Christian life. And in fact, some of the people who accepted the Martianite program of Christian faith, and also Tatian, became very reluctant to have anything to do with the rest of the Christian community. So that, for example, there are cases where aesthetics refused to receive the Eucharist from the hands of a priest, because many priests in that period, of course, were married men. It was felt somehow that that was inappropriate, so they would refuse the sacramental ministrations of the clergy. It became, in other words, a very divisive kind of fringe movement after a while, pushed very much to the edges. of Christianity, and yet it had a strong influence in that part of the world. Eventually people like Ephraim attempt, as Basil did in Cappadocia, to bring the aesthetic movement back more to the heart of the church, and we'll be seeing a little bit of that later on when we look at the Brazilian experiment in the fourth century.

[14:31]

So much by way of a kind of introduction and brief outline of some theories of origins about monasticism, I'd like to move now to Roman numeral 2 on the outline and talk a little bit about the desert tradition, since very frequently in our perceptions of monastic life, that's where the whole history begins. I suggested to you this evening that that isn't where it begins. But it's one important source that we can look at, especially for Christian spirituality. I'm going to begin this section by reading you a little passage from the sayings of the Fathers. This is a famous little translation of Paula Wandel, which I'm sure most of you have seen at one time or another, because it illustrates very much the kind of piety and spirituality that the Deseret Fathers were familiar with. It's also a charming story. They tell that once a certain brother brought a bunch of grapes to the holy Makarion. But he who for love's sake thought not on his own things but on the things of others, carried it to another brother who seemed more feeble.

[15:39]

And the sick man gave thanks to God for the kindness of his brother Macarius, but he too, thinking more of his neighbor than of himself, brought it still another month, and he again to another. And though that same bunch of grapes was carried around all the fells, gathered as they were far over the desert, and no one knowing the first who had sent it, it was brought at last back to the first giver. But the holy Macarius gave thanks that he had seen in the brethren such abstinence and such lovingkindness, and he did himself reach after still sterner discipline of life, and the Spirit. That's a very typical, and also a very famous story. I suspect most of you have heard it before, the bunch of Greeks that I mentioned. They were probably raised and by the time they got back to Mycenae, but that story doesn't tell us that, but one can assume that. But it's a typical example.

[16:41]

Notice for example that one of the things that we often associate with desert monasticism, namely a very rigorous kind of forbidding asceticism that made people hostile and unkind is not at all present in this story. This is really a story about hospitality and about the responsibility of providing food and nourishment for other people. It's really a beautiful demonstration of a theme that is also very strong in the rule of Benedict. Not only the the nightless of hospitality, but indeed the Christian responsibility for it. I'd just like to read you another story, a short one which also gives a little bit of the spirit of the Desert Fathers, just so you get a little taste of it in your mouth when we begin to talk about that. The Advent Anthony said, whoever sits in solitude and is quiet has escaped from three wars, speaking, feeling, and yet against one thing he shall continually battle, that is, his own heart.

[17:53]

Note the military image there, too. That, by the way, is an extremely prominent and frequent image. It's a metaphor commonly used in desert monasticism to describe the whole impulse of monastic and ascetic discipline. It's also used, by the way, very frequently in the Aetherian form of Christian monasticism that I discussed a little bit earlier. What I'd like to do then, having given you just a little bit of a flavor, and I hope whetted your appetite a little bit for the desert tradition, is to just outline some of the common themes that are found in the spirituality of the desert, and offer some comments on each one of them. The first of these I call on the outline on page one, the theme of continually remembering God in solitude. That little story that I just read to you, whoever sits in a cell has fought a war against three things, against hearing, against seeing, against speaking. That notion of sitting in a cell and finding solitude there is an extremely common theme throughout the faith of the Fathers, of which there are several traditions.

[19:02]

It is closely associated with the theme of watchfulness. That's why, in the desert tradition, many of the stories deal with the hermit or the monk who stays up all the time, and they apparently never slept. You know, like, you wonder if there was an early Comanex factory, you know, and skied or something, because they apparently never, ever slept. I mean, they're always talking about prayer, vigil, fasting. And I've also, maybe you've asked yourself, you know, like, well, why? Why would anybody want to do that? In the theme of the Desert Fathers, sleep is always a metaphor for egocentrism. It's not that they're not trying to encourage you that there's some great physical or even moral virtue in not sleeping. It's the notion that the theme of sleeplessness and the contrary theme of sleeping are really a struggle between egocentricity and generosity. So that to sleep is exactly for the Desert Fathers to forget

[20:06]

to forget the continual remembrance of God. That's why even in the Rule of Benedict you have that little thing that's so strange when you read it. Therefore shunning all forgetfulness the monk will blah blah blah. That's very much a typical desert theme. Sleep equals egocentrism. You avoid sleep Not so much because it has physical or even ethical power, but because you want to shun forgetfulness. The monk is one who lives alone, not forgetting. The monk is the man, above all, who remembers. Who remembers God in solitude. A second theme that I've identified here is the notion that the ascetic effort, the monastic life, is both active and contemplative. It's not a question of either-or, and it has nothing to do with much later discussions, which have even occurred in the 50s and stuff. They reemerge once again. Which is better, the active life or the contemplative life?

[21:08]

It has nothing to do with that. For the early desert tradition, Monacos is one who is both active and contemplative. He's active because he does psalmody. Psalmody is one of the works of the active life in the desert tradition. He's also active because he does work, that is, he has to labor, he has to earn a living. But he is also contemplative because throughout threaded throughout his work and threaded throughout his psalmody is that silent liturgy of the heart, the continual remembrance of God in prayer, which leads eventually, in the desert understanding, to theopoiesis, to becoming God-like, to divinization. And the third theme that we see in that tradition, I've identified here by the problematic term of the Angelicus Bios, the angelic life. Every time that term is mentioned, it absolutely sets people crazy, because we think of angelic life, well, that means they didn't have bathrooms, little cells, you know, and they didn't wash, and stuff like that.

[22:14]

Once again, angelic life in the desert tradition has nothing to do with despising the flesh, or cutting up the body, or letting yourself get crusty for God, or something like that. It's really nothing to do with that. Angelicus Deus is, again, a metaphor for the freedom of the monk. The monk in the desert tradition is precisely a free man because he has absolutely nothing to gain or to lose from ordinary society. He's not in competition with ordinary society. He doesn't have to listen to a Buddhist monk. He doesn't have to pay attention to what toothpaste he uses, or whether he's deodorized properly under the arms, or anything like that. He's simply out of that whole bag. He's a free man. He doesn't have to contest with that. He is precisely, as Killian used to say in his afternoon, a liminal person, a marginal person, a person who exists on the fringes and the edges of society, and consequently has nothing to gain or to lose.

[23:16]

He is therefore quite free. We'll see that theme emerge once again when we talk a little bit about the concept of the holy man, the pneumatic concept, in the late Christian, or late antique world, that same theme will re-emerge. The monk is above all a person who is free, he is free and unencumbered from the regular rat race of cultural fashion, and consequently he is a man of extraordinary power. He is not indebted, he is free of debt. If he wants to sit on a pole, as Simeon Sallius did for 30 years, he can do that. He's free to do that. If he wants to adjudicate both ecclesiastical and civil cases, as Simeon and other ascetics did, he can do that. He has nothing to lose. He's a man beyond rhyme. He's a man beyond game. That's a very strong theme. It's also closely connected, by the way, with the theme of social protest.

[24:17]

in early monasticism, which we'll also see in a second. The four of these desert themes that I've tried to identify here, I call the life of prophecy. There was, in early aesthetic movements and all these strands that I identified on the board here, a strong impulse against institutionalization. Monasticism has been an extremely difficult experiment to domesticate. It has been, from time to time, thoroughly domesticated, and harmless. But in its origin, it was extremely difficult to domesticate. Now, it is somewhat, I mean, like, perfectly okay to be a monk. It was not always so. we don't resist that kind of institutionalization quite so much. The early desert fathers did. Not only did they resist the institutions of society, but also the institutions of the church.

[25:18]

Remember when Saint Jerome was into his monastic phase, and it turned out to be relatively unsuccessful. He was one of those people every community always gets them to where They will always forever be interested in monasticism. They will love to come and watch Franciscan vespers and things like that, but they will never really be able to get into it. And I somehow have the feeling that St. Jerome was pardoned to the Lord through his patron and stuff like that. But we're trying to figure it that way. He found it very difficult to accept that kind of discipline. But one of his Lord's was to bring in St. Jude for Bishop. Well, it was really a very powerful motive in Jerome's life. It is quoted in Jerome, although it's probable that he didn't say it, that there are two things a monk should avoid, bishops and women. Probably in that order. Actually, some of Jerome's closest friends happened to have been women. He was very, very broken up when some of them died.

[26:19]

He wasn't as much of a woman either, but he was a bishop here, and especially the Bishop of Rome, with whom he never did get along. So Jerome is a good example of that kind of impulse, that resistance. against institutionalization, even in the church. The first thing I try to identify here is what I call the via apostolica, the apostolic man, or the apostolic life. And this might be just a moment of explanation. In ancient Christian monastic terminology, the apostolic life and the apostolic man were not people who did parish work in the first instance. That term originally applied in a way to a charismatic, a spirit-filled person whose holiness is manifest in signs and wonders. It doesn't refer, therefore, in the first instance to pastoral ministry. Later on, it does. Later on, for instance, the term also gets applied to the life of canons, that is, canons where you are not boom-boom.

[27:20]

And also, even much later than that, applied to mendicants, so that, for example, you remember the famous description of Francis of Assisi in the Vita of him as vir apostolicus, as totus catolicus, you know, an apostolic man and altogether Catholic. That became a typical way to talk about actually the spiritual person. The sixth thing that I've identified is a familiar one, I'll just mention it and move on, and that's the connection between martyrdom and baptism, that connection with Brother Edwin Malone that I've talked about before. It's a somewhat problematic identification because I would, I think for myself, prefer to think that in the early desert terminology, it's not so much that the monk is looked upon as a martyr, he's looked upon as an athlete. It's a wrestling metaphor that you're dealing with there. It's a person who's been oiled up and swept, and who's in good shape, and who knows how to struggle, even with the devil, even with the demons.

[28:23]

So I'd really prefer, I guess, to talk about point six in terms of the athleticism of early desert monasticism, being in good shape, being able to run a mile without panting and puffing, as I would not be able to do, unfortunately. It is a deepening and an intensification of the baptismal life, but more in terms of athletic than in terms of martyrdom, at least in its later sense. The seventh point that I mention on page two deals with monastic life of the Mysterion. This is particularly true in the East. Eventually, remember Mysterion, eventually translated into Latin as sacramentum, and that term gets transformed eventually into what we think of as sacrament in the sense of the Southern fold system we're familiar with today. But in some quarters of Eastern monasticism, especially in the Celtic tradition, becoming a monk was equivalent in its power and influence to baptism itself, it was placed on a par with baptism, with Eucharist, with reconciliation and so on, so that its sacramental character was in fact unquestioned in many places in the East for a long time.

[29:36]

And that was even true in the West. For example, if you look at the liturgical history of the rituals of monastic profession, for the longest time whenever they wanted to talk about how a monk becomes a monk liturgically, they would title the things either ad faciem de monicum, or the making of a monk, or in ordinatione monicae. And it's also the right for blessing an advocate in ordinatione. What is it about this? Okay? So there is a very strong sense, well into the Middle Ages, into the early Middle Ages, that monastic life itself constitutes a mysterion, a sacramentum. much like baptism, euclidus, and reconciliation do. Okay, so much for the devil of tradition, which we polished off in a few minutes. I would like to turn now to, we're gradually getting up to Benedict, that's why we want to move. I'd like to turn now to a couple of important 10th century monastic experiments, which I think have a great deal to teach us about monastic spirituality, at least the major themes of it.

[30:45]

The two examples that I'm thinking of are obviously Pachomius and the monastic institutions of the Fabiad in Egypt, and secondly, Basil and the attempts that Basil made in Cappadocia to bring monasticism back to the heart of the church's life. I want to offer just some comments about each one of those. The history of Pachomius' own life is extraordinarily complicated. I think that's how all scholars begin all books. This is a very complicated issue, period, and then they start telling me about the complexity. Well, it's true of Pacomius too. There's a great deal of debate about the sources for his life, partly because there are so many lives that have been written, some of them in Syriac, some of them in various dialects of Coptic, some in Greek, some in Latin translation, and also the legislation, the so-called Pacomian legislation, the so-called rule of Pacomius. is also a very debated topic. I will not bore you with all the details of that discussion tonight.

[31:48]

Suffice it to say that even though Popomius is often identified as the father of Cenobitic monasticism, that designation is not quite accurate. He does found an important cenobitic movement in 4th century Egypt, one which attained excessive notoriety, and one which later, according at least to Albert de Gaulle, influenced men like Cassius, although we'll see some problems with that in a few minutes. Now, Bukhomian monasticism was interesting because, as Armando Yurlitz pointed out, the chief image that he uses to describe the experiment is the biblical one. It is the notion of the koinonia, which is exactly, of course, the root of the eventual word konobion, and then shenobium in Latin. The phlebotite itself is a term derived from a biblical word. It is a word, for instance, that appears in the first letter of John.

[32:52]

Remember when John would say, I write to you, my dear children, so that you may have fellowship, koinonia, communion. with the father in the song. Now, Petromius' monasticism is strongly founded on a biblical metaphor for life and community, and it emphasizes for that reason the extreme value of paternal communion as the way that goes to God. Not only that, but Petromius' monasticism was an extremely Not only that, but the COVID-19 disaster group was an extremely successful social and economic venture. Those people made money. They were successful farmers, and they were also successful because they had an enormous wheat operation, and they made good use of the river they were in to shipping. That's why, for example, the Bukomian structure, there were a couple of times in a year when you brought in all the Bukomian settlements that were kind of scattered all over the society, and you brought them back like at Easter and what would be roughly equivalent to Christmas time, partly to get them together to talk about common monastic opportunities and problems, like a kind of general pastor meeting, but also because that was a good time to handle community finances and economic affairs.

[34:11]

The Tacoma Experiment was not something stratospheric. It was not one man's idea that we're going to get together and we're just going to love each other and live in a beautiful community or a beautiful corner near a public shelter, but we won't do much. They were hard workers. They were skilled laborers. They were good class workers. And Petronius apparently was not hesitant at all about making use of that kind of a workforce that he had available to him. He made very good use of it. But there's a third thing about Petronian monasticism, too, which is important. And that is a certain strain of anti-clerical feeling in Petronian monasticism. Petronius himself is credited with having said, the beginning of pride is ordination to the Presbyterian. Now, that seems harsh and cruel to us, since we're all sitting here as that, but it is nonetheless an extremely important theme.

[35:13]

Plutonian synergism is a lay movement, a self-consciously, a proudly consciously lay movement. We will see that one of the departures that the rule of Benedict makes vis-à-vis an earlier monastic tradition is that Benedict actually allows provision for, as I mentioned this afternoon, ordination of persons in the minor state to the diaconate or to the presbyterate for service in the community. That was really a rather significant departure. Even the rule of a master did not allow that. But Benedict does. It certainly is a departure from the kind of anti-clerical stand down of some aspects of Potomianism. There's a great deal that could be said. In fact, I'm going to give an entire book about the liturgy in Pacomian monasteries. I don't want to treat that of your theater this evening, because it requires an enormous amount of detail. What I will do, I've heard about it since yesterday, or if you, you know, just have 15 minutes, you want to wait, going to church, or going to club or something, they're in here.

[36:19]

I'll put a sheet of notes on the table, and those of you who are interested and want to look at that, want to look at the coming info below, you're welcome to do that. But again, it's just something available to you if you want to make the selection. I'm obviously in no position to require you to read it. All right. I'd like to move on then to talk a little bit about Basilian monasticism, because Basil's life is fascinating and also it's important. You remember that Basil is one of the monastic heroes that is mentioned explicitly by Benedict on the Rule. First of all, just to comment about some documents that tell us about Basilian monasticism. Most of us grew up probably thinking about Basil in terms of like the longer rules and the shorter rules. Nowadays, when scholars write about Basil and the documents that tell us about his random monasticism, they are more likely to refer to the great asceticon

[37:22]

and the little of Cetacon and Basil are two different works which are mainly collections of notes or commentaries or perhaps contents notes on scriptural passages and another document known as the Moral Rules, which are teachings about Christian charity and common life, once again, based on passages from the Bible. So, the sources for Bavarian monasticism, in other words, are three, the Moral Rules, what I'm calling MR here, which are just like little brief notes on charity and life in common, almost all of them, like a katina, a scripture quotation. Then the Great Aestheticon, what I'm going to call GA here, and the lesser, or little, asceticon, which we used to call the longer and shorter rules. When you see references to that sort of material in contemporary scholarship about Basil, that's what they're referring to, as a matter of fact. Gregoiron is the one who has done a great deal of work on that. It's produced a critical edition of those documents.

[38:24]

Enough said about documents. What I want to talk about a little bit is what Basil did, and how it relates especially to the topic that we're thinking about these few days. Basil's own contact with lunatic life came about through a heterodox movement of the 4th century associated with a man by the name of Eustachius of Sabath. Sorry, none of these people had easy names. you don't have to remember his name, just remember that people like these Fabius were extremely charismatic in orientation. It was a very strong, monastic movement, very close in some respects to the East Syrian asceticism that I talked about earlier. A great deal of emphasis on absolute poverty, absolute dispossession of goods, no drinking wine,

[39:30]

no possessions, no marriage, complete celibacy, and all that kind of thing. It was an enthusiastic movement, in Ronald Knox's sense of enthusiasm. Okay? An extremely extravagant, vigorous kind of asceticism. Basil had contact with that movement. In fact, he seems even to have been influenced somewhat by that movement. Certainly he had a sympathy toward some of the elements of Eustasius' teaching. But what began to worry Basil was, how are we going to keep the monks down on the farm, basically? In other words, how are we going to keep the monks at the heart of the local church? If they're faced with that kind of extreme enthusiasm, extravagant kind of charismatic phenomenon, How can we really bring asceticism back to the life of the local community, the local church community? How are we going to do that? That began to worry Basil a great deal. And a great deal of what we call Basilian monasticism represents an effort to bring the ascetic back.

[40:39]

For example, Basil does not emphasize so much the distinctiveness of the monastic effort as he does its commonality with the rest of Christian believers. That's one reason for the kind of anti-monarch feeling that one sometimes gathers from reading the writings of Basil. And that's one of the reasons for Basil's insistence that the ascetic lives really at the heart, at the center of the local Christian community. It's also one reason why Basil tends to avoid a purely monastic vocabulary in his writings, unlike, for example, part of the desert tradition, even when talking about things like prayer. Basil himself was skilled to do what he did with monasticism because he had himself gone on a kind of fact-finding mission in the areas of Mesopotamia and Egypt and so on, and looked firsthand, apparently. at what aesthetics we're doing, came home and decided it's a good movement, the aesthetic experiment is valuable, but we've got to get it back centered into the life of the local community.

[41:49]

That's what Basil is particularly concerned to do, and he does that in two moves, in two important emphases in his spirituality. The first of them is a kind of pragmatical emphasis. Basil looks at the monastic experiment very much in terms of baptism and eucalyptus, the classic initiating pragmatism of the Christian community. So that rather than looking at the cynicism as a kind of offbeat fringe, liminal group of folks that have relatively little to do with the great church, Basil looks at them as intensifiers of a commitment already begun in baptism and reaffirmed and confirmed in the Christian experience of the Eucharist. Secondly, Basil, a little bit along the lines of Pecronius, uses the Biblical image of the koinonia, of the fellowship, of the communion, as a way to talk about the relationship of ascetics to one another, so that asceticism is not so much an eccentric, versatile effort,

[42:58]

on the part of single individuals, as it is an effort of commonality. The language, the metaphoric language used in Basil's writing is the language of conversion, of coming together, rather than a language of eccentric, ascetic effort, as it frequently was, for example, in the desert tradition. That takes care of Basil. I just have one more comment before we take a little bit of a look at the Will of Benedict itself. And that deals with the rise of the Holy Man during the centuries after Pecolaus and Basil, and is a kind of prelude to the appearance in the West of things like the rule of the Master and the rule of Benedict in the early 5th century. An important English scholar by the name of Peter Brown, he wrote a fabulous book on Augustine called Augustine et Tipo about ten years ago, has written an essay that was published in the Journal of Roman Studies called The Rise of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity.

[44:03]

It's a fascinating essay because what he tries to do, and what I will be doing following him, is to give a social interpretation of the aesthetic movement. in early Christianity, one that I think is quite valuable. Peter Brown argues, for example, that the early athletics actually functioned very much like that desert motif that we've already seen as free agents, in a society where free agents were extremely rare. Let me just give you a few details about that. Brown argues that one of the great values of the aesthetic person, of the pneumatikos, of the man of the spirit, was precisely that he had become a stranger. Indeed, the whole effort of asceticism for the holy man was the effort to become a stranger in society.

[45:09]

In other words, to become a person, as I suggested when we talked about the desert motif, who has no indebtedness to society, nothing to lose from society. He is a marginal person. Indeed, he can protest the injustice, the oppression, and the fatuity of a great deal of social life precisely because he had nothing either to gain or to lose from it. He's a venge-man. He's somebody who lives on the fungi. That's why, for example, when you read the life stories of many of these important athletics, one of the images used to describe their life is that of exorcism. Just as it is in the Gospels, for example, to describe Jesus, especially in the Gospel of Mark, where that scene is prominent. Why exorcism? That's not very popular today, except in the movies, and there it's not very insightful. to view the holy man as an exorcist was exactly to view him as a person who has extraordinary power, an extraordinary power that is controlled and released not by the society.

[46:18]

In other words, the holy man as an exorcist derives its power elsewhere. He wasn't appealing to the king, or to the duke, or to the noble court king, at least not many of them. He wasn't appealing to the bigwigs of the social order, or even the bigwigs of the ecclesiastical order so much. He was a man free of that. A man who was not indebted, therefore, who had no bills to pay, no political debts to render. For that reason, as I suggested when we talked about the deluge motif, this man was a stranger to all of that kind of effort that keeps people distracted, unhappy. The ascetic was on his way to becoming a total stranger. Very frequently, even the life description, the vitae of these ascetics, is a long ritualistic description of gradual disassociation from the social milieu.

[47:20]

The interesting thing is, though, by pulling away from that kind of indebtedness, the monk was able to return to it. As an absolutely free person, I didn't return to it, but the fact that many of these ascetics became the kind of person everybody went out to see and to speak to and dissect. That's one reason why, for example, early monks were frequently thought out as confessors, whether they were ordained to be a confederate or not. If they were free, if they had no political wills to pay, no debts to cash in on, these people could be counted on for sound advice. They were strangers to the environment, and because of that, they were able to go right back to the very private environment. You see, it's becoming a paradoxical move. By becoming a man of the spirit, by becoming a stranger, by becoming free, one who lives the Angelicus Bios, This man could go back to society precisely because he didn't know anything to society.

[48:24]

He could return and be fruitful precisely because he didn't have any debts to pay that way. He was really a free agent in the society. In fact, Peter Brown points out that often these monks de facto acted as judges. both in ecclesiastical and civil cases, once again because they could be counted on as being absolutely beyond bribery. They had nothing to lose. They were strangers to that enterprise. So that, at one and the same time, the holy man was a spiritual man who left society, and at the very point of leaving it, returned to the very heart of it. Paradoxically, too, he was a man who seemed to be losing a grip on his identity, and at that very same time, through those elaborate rituals of disassociation from the sexual culture, he was able to achieve a very strong identity.

[49:26]

And one of the things about the Desert Fathers' literature is, we call those people by name. Abba Moses says this, Abba Quammen says this, Abba Anthony says this. These people have achieved, strangely enough, a remarkable degree of identity, very unique identity. So there are really two paradoxes in the tradition of the holy man, in the great antique world. One of them is that paradox of moving away from society, and strangely find yourself right in the middle of it all. And the second paradox is that a parent would move away from any kind of uniqueness and identity only to find out that she would achieve an extremely vigorous identity as a person. Keep those things in mind, because all of that feeds into the document that we're about to spend a little bit of time on in conclusion this evening, and that is one you all know, the rule of Benedict.

[50:30]

When I began to prepare for these lectures, I did some research on the use of words like spirit in the Rule of Benedict, and I was just enormously disappointed. Either that or I was relieved. I found out that my notes could be much less shorter because the word doesn't appear very often. The term Holy Spirit, for example, is not a frequent word in the rule of Benedict, and even the term Spiritus, without adjectival modifier, is not frequent in the rule either. I've listed the instances where it does occur in these notes, in case you ever want to look them up, or in case you're doing something with a novice, and there's something like that, and you want to talk about the Spirit rule, that gives you a little bit of information to go on. You won't have to dig through the same book that I just did so much about. I would like, however, to make an intro comment before I do talk about the spirit in the rule of Benedict. One of the comments I've already alluded to, and that is that I will be assuming here that the rule of the master is an earlier document by a decade or two than the rule of Benedict, and that the relationship of dependency goes rule of Benedict dependent on the rule of the master, not vice versa.

[51:44]

I guess I'll be assuming that in the comments that follow. I'd like to point out, as I do on the bottom of page two of these notes, form a few ways in which the Rule of Benedict is a distinctive document, especially in comparison to the Rule of the Master. One of them is that the first notion that I talked about here, the role of fraternal communion and love in the Rule of Benedict, there is a kind of echoing, a kind of resonance of what we saw in the Pacomian and Basilian experiments in the Rule of Benedict. Remember I said in each case There is a use of the biblical image of the koinonia, the fellowship, the communion, as a way to describe how the aesthetics relate to one another. In Basil's case, that theme was emphasized in order to keep aestheticism from kind of spinning off the edges of Christianity and becoming not only authentic, but heterodox. In Coen's case, there was probably a reaction against some of the desert eccentricities that he may have had contact with.

[52:49]

Benedict seems to rely on that tradition and seems to emphasize the role of paternal communion. Secondly, Benedict seems to be extraordinarily interested, much more so anyway than the rule of masters, on the how of monasticism. It's not just so much that there are details and legislations about how to do this, how many bowls to have at this committee, or how many psalms to say at this office. But he seems to be interested with how things are done, with the quality of things that are done, almost with the stewardship of the spirit, as well as with the stewardship of practical things, thus that famous quotation that all of us know from the Rule of Benedict about handling the tools of the monastery as though they were the very vessels of the altar, that sense of utter respect and almost reverence. or material, whether the material is physical material like brick and mortar, or whether it's that spiritual and fensate material that all of us use for our own lives and bodies and spirits. Thirdly, there is a definite move in the role of Benedict, a definite move away from the extraordinary emphasis that the role of the master places on the role of the abbot as a kind of quasi-bishop.

[54:06]

I mentioned that this afternoon in our discussion. The rule of Benedict does not look at the abbot as a quasi-bishop. The rule of the master tends to use that kind of assimilated image. Well, enough said about that. If you want to ask a question about it, okay. The other thing that I mentioned at the bottom of page two, concerning the divine office, concerning the sensitivity to individual persons, the fact of the rule of Benedict Pinstripe, streets are closed, larger communities, and the two points that I make on the top of page three, I take it you can read for yourself. I'd like then to conclude by making some comments about the notion of the man of the spirit and the rule. I've indicated already that there aren't a lot of references to spirit in the rule of law. There are references. Frequently, they are nothing more than biblical allusion. They're simply quotes or allusions to the scriptures that are not original to the author of the rule. I've listed them here on page three.

[55:08]

What I do think, however, happens is that spiritual man becomes, in the rule of Benedict, most classically the man of prayer. So I'd like to conclude by making some comments about the point that I listed on pages 3 and 4 here. De Beaulieu, and here I would tend to follow his teachings, although I don't follow his extreme acceptance of John Cashin's work, I would agree with Armand Degas' pseudotheism that Cashin was not a reliable witness. That is to say, not, that is to say, no, not a reliable witness to monasticism in Egypt. He did not even see the Ptolemy and Thutmose in Egypt. And it's frightening to me that de Broglie makes so much an emphasis on the Latin translations of the Ptolemy material, because those are also quite unreliable. In any case, that's a debate that can carry on in articles and learned journals. I don't accept, therefore, the background of Taschen in quite the way that de Gaulle gave it, and Bill Gere wouldn't either.

[56:15]

Nonetheless, I think de Gaulle is quite correct when he emphasizes the theme of continual prayer. in the rule of Benedict. That theme is not explicitly announced, but it was almost like part of the atmosphere in the ascetic tradition. You couldn't really move in the ascetic tradition, in the monastic tradition, without infilling that principle. You'd snarkle up from the atmosphere, simply present. And in fact, of course, at its origins, the theme of continual prayer was not a decisively monastic or ascetic move. The notion of constant prayer was understood limitedly as an ordinary Christian obligation. All folks, all Christians, were required to pray always and never give up. all Christians were called to unseeking prayer. I think Benedict moves in that spirit even when he doesn't explicitly allude to its sources.

[57:16]

The second point I'd like to make is that there are in the rule of Benedict some methods, if you will, of supporting that motion of continual prayer. The methods are familiar to all of you. I've just simply identified them once again here. One of them is, of course, the work of God. And once again, I'm following de Gaulle's condition here. De Gaulle suggests that in the rule of Benedict, the work of God, the Opus Dei, is not there so much for the sake of exaggerated liturgical grandeur and celebration, as it later became principal in the community, the canons. Rather, the work of God is written for the sake of punctuating and supporting, giving a kind of groundwork or the emphasis on continuing prayer of the heart. In other words, the work of monks is not to do the divine office. Later on, Benedictines, we frequently prided ourselves on that. You know, that's what Benedictine monasteries were for. That was the place where you could go and see them do the office, and maybe even do it well.

[58:21]

I'm not suggesting that we ought to do it in a sloppily way, but that's really not its primary weight, I think, in the rule of Benedict. It's there subordinated to the more primary work of the monks, which is that continual search. You have to think of a monk as kind of like a claw, or a person. I'm not thinking of a mythological exactly, but it's like you're Remember God is a mountain and also a consuming fire, and both those things are dangerous because of fall and because of flame. And we want to think back to that kind of person that is kind of clawing his way up the mountain, a vigorous, strenuous person, an athlete in the desert tradition. And there's the thought that when one occasionally stops and gasps and touches the breath and the work of God in the Liturgy of the Hours as a way to kind of give you support. That's why, by the way, in some monastic traditions, and Cassian is an example of it, there was a great resistance against the Liturgy of the Hours.

[59:27]

The passion of the devil plays them down in his tactics is because he felt if monks are doing what they're supposed to be doing, that is, praying always in the heart, why do they need the liturgy of the hours for? And as a matter of fact, there are stories, too, in saying to the Desert Fathers, where somebody comes sneaking up to the Desert Fathers' cave, you know, to visit the hermit, you know, see this holy man, oh, wow, ooh, and they would come up, and the holy man would have been chanting the Psalms, and then immediately stop. And in order to, not because he had something against the Psalms at that point, but because he didn't want to indicate to a weak visitor that he might have to stop occasionally and do swallowing instead of doing silent liturgy of the heart all the time. So the work of God is a supportive measure to support the care of the heart continually. It's like one of those methods, I've identified them as soundless prayer, which is a kind of dumb phrase in English.

[60:31]

uh... it's the part of the world or your or what's the only frequent or include the rate well that three actually refers to a common practical but it doesn't help prostration or prayer It literally means, that phrase literally means in the rule, to throw oneself down flat on the ground in prayer. And in the Eastern tradition, that's still very common. The Metanate and so forth are very common in the Islamic discipline in the East, where, you know, like you'll read the works of an Eastern Bible, and they'll say, that day, you know, a hundred Metanates, you know, a hundred throwing oneself down flat on the ground in prayer and stuff of that sort. That tradition is represented in the rule of Benedict. That's what that actually means. For example, in chapter 4, the Institute of Good Works, that pleaseful prayer is really that kind of prostration prayer. Clearly, there is the whole question of meditatio, a difficult word in the rule of Benedict, but one that seems to mean more like the exercise of repetition, the actual chewing over the word, even by verbal repetition of it.

[61:38]

Remember how Well, we still have an example of it in the Jesus prayer, in the Eastern tradition. It's becoming well-known in the West, too, where one is encouraged frequently and in a rhythmic way, in a calm and hurried way, to say more Jewish words, like, And that tendency to chew over a biblical text in the desert father that was always day of predatory men and then they don't really have a demand to make obscene which became of course the classic open line office for us that that's what you were doing you actually were gradually memorizing the text of the Bible by chewing them by ruminating you had to take the monkets cow in other words chewing the good of the word And fourthly, the important method that Benedict uses to support this work of the man in the Spiritless Man of Prayer is Lectio Divina. Here, I'd just like to refer to you to one point which I think has some interest since we're in its season of Lent.

[62:38]

Now, another thing in the rule in chapter 48 about letting books for reading, nowadays, with the result of investigations by people like Alex Garlando, and the same thing in St. Peter's Bible, It seems that those books were actually various parts of the codices of the Bible, which, remember, was not printed handily as it is today in one little suitcase volume that you can put in your suitcase and stuff, but rather was printed in several different codices, like with the Metateuch, the Heptateuch, and so on. There is a strong argument, therefore, in favor of the notion that what Benedict is encouraging In chapter 48 of the rule is that each monk receive one kibbutz of the biblical library. for Lent, which he uses to study, because of course eventually the goal is to memorize the entire Bible. So that that can become part of one's metataxio, it's chewing at the word, so that that in turn can become part of the Opus Dei, so that that in turn can support the principle of continual, and that's the prayer of the heart, the final liturgy of the heart.

[63:54]

Now I think we're about out of time for this evening. I hope I've given you maybe just some ideas to work with, maybe some meditatio stuff, some chewing stuff, some good stuff that you can chew on a little bit and reflect upon. I'd just like to close with one last little tiny story from The Desert Fathers, which I kind of think is a good one. I had it here and now I just lost the place. Maybe I won't give it to you after all. In Kletika, a holy memory said, Thor is the toil and the struggle of the unrighteous when they turn to God. And afterwards, their joy is ineffable.

[64:59]

For even with those who would candle a fire, they first are beset with smoke, and from the pain of the smoke they weep, and so they come at what they desire. Even so, it is written, Our God is a consuming fire, and these must weep candle the divine fire enough with travail and with tears. Thank you.

[65:32]

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