Order of Saint Benedict

This article is about the Roman Catholic Order of Saint Benedict.

See also Benedictine Confederation and Benedictine for other articles.

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St Benedict of Nursia (c. 480-543), detail from a fresco by Fra Angelico, San Marco, Florence (c. 1400-1455).

The Order of Saint Benedict — full Latin name: Ordo Sancti Benedicti , initials: OSB — is a monastic order within the Roman Catholic Church, sometimes referred to as the Benedictine Order, where the Rule of St Benedict is observed, supplemented by later constitutions and modern customaries. It is fundamentally different from other Western religious orders: there is no legal entity within the Church called the "Order of St Benedict", run on similar lines with other Roman Catholic religious orders with their Generalates and Superiors General. Rather, the various autonomous Houses (that is, communities) have formed themselves loosely into Congregations (for example, Cassinese, English, Solesmes, Subiaco, Camaldolese, Sylvestrines) that in turn are represented in the Benedictine Confederation.

The Order of Saint Benedict does not include Benedictines who are not Roman Catholic.

Benedictine monks (nowadays also referred to as monastic men) and nuns (monastic women) profess the three Benedictine Vows of Stability (to remain in the monastery), of Conversion of Manners, and of Obedience (to the superior) in accordance with ch. 58.17 of the Rule of Saint Benedict of Nursia. Benedictines who are not members of the Consecrated Life (i.e., Oblates) nevertheless endeavour to embrace the spirit of the Benedictine Vows in their own life in the world.

Within the Order of Saint Benedict, other orders that use the Rule of Saint Benedict and are generally considered to be of the Benedictine tradition are the Cistercians, Bernardines, and Benedictine Sisters of Grace and Compassion, although these are not part of the Benedictine Confederation.

The Benedictine motto is: pax (Latin: "peace"), traditionally also ora et labora (Latin: "pray and work").

Contents

1 Common Benedictine history

2 Aspects of the Benedictine life

3 See also

4 Further reading

5 Benedictines in popular culture and fiction

6 External links

Common Benedictine history

Saint Benedict of Nursia (c. 480 – 543) is often called the founder of the Benedictine Order. This is not correct; Benedict himself founded only the monastic community of Subiaco and later the abbey at Monte Cassino, for which he wrote his Rule. It is not until the Middle Ages, around the time of the "Black Monks", that we first hear mention of an Order of Saint Benedict.

There is reason for holding that it was the third Abbot of Monte Cassino who began to spread a knowledge of the Rule beyond the circle of St Benedict's own foundations. It is at least certain that when Monte Cassino was sacked by the Lombards about the year 580, the monks fled to Rome, where they were housed by Pope Pelagius II in a monastery adjoining the Lateran Basilica. There, in the very centre of the ecclesiastical world, they remained for upwards of a hundred and forty years; and it seems highly probable that this residence in so prominent a position constituted an important factor in the diffusion of a knowledge of Benedictine monasticism. It is generally agreed also that when Gregory the Great embraced the monastic life and converted his family palace on Apostle, it was the Benedictine form of monasticism that he adopted there.

In subsequent centuries, the Rule became the leading guide for monastic communities, eventually worldwide. Benedict of Nursia is therefore rightly regarded as the father of Western monasticism.

Aspects of the Benedictine life

The original Latin of the Rule addresses monks exclusively. However, apart from a few precepts concerning priests, it has proven equally suitable for communities of women. Benedict's [twin?] sister, Saint Scholastica, may have been the first to adopt her brother's Rule for women, since she is credited with founding a community of her own, although there is no evidence for a community of Benedictine women until about a century later. In the Roman Catholic Church they are called Benedictine Nuns if subject to Papal Enclosure, Benedictine Sisters if not; but today this distinction tends to be played down.

Benedict, chosen as abbot by men that he unwittingly drew to himself by his zeal for personal holiness, developed for them a plan of life that he seems to have adapted from the Rule of Saint Basil and arguably those of other Rule givers (cf. Rule ch. 73), e.g. the Rule of the Master. Its aim that has made it lastingly serviceable and successful is balance and moderation: regular hours for prayer in community, sleep, manual labour, private prayer, and lectio divina (i.e. spiritual reading).

The model for monastic living under Benedict was the family, with the abbot as father and all the monks as brothers. In women's communities the structure is the same, with the abbess as mother and the nuns as sisters. A newcomer to a community – having experienced its life first hand and become thoroughly acquainted with it – before being formally admitted into the community takes a public vow, promising "stability [in the monastic community], conversion of manners and obedience [to the superior]" (Suscipiendus autem in oratorio coram omnibus promittat de stabilitate sua et conversatione morum suorum et oboedientia, cf. Rule ch. 58.17). This may be likended to the three Evangelical Counsels of Perfection, namely chastity, poverty and obedience, professed by members of religious orders that are not Benedictines. The Benedictine vow – required to be a free will decision on the part of the candidate – is binding in Church Law. It changes the state of life, meaning that the person is no longer free to marry, nor to leave the community, without Papal dispensation from the vow.

Despite the Rule's cenobitic focus, many Benedictines have been serving God and the Church also as priests, bishops, and popes.

Over the centuries, a number of spirited Benedictines, both male and female, have been leaders in movements to reform the Benedictine life (e.g. St Bernard of Clairvaux) and the Catholic Church.

For a time Benedictine communities had Lay Brothers/Sisters. This arrangement may have been useful, if not necessary, out of practical considerations but effectively created a two-tier system; and today it has all but disappeared.

Many Benedictine Houses have a greater or smaller number of laypeople called Oblates (secular). These are individually affiliated in prayer with a House of their choice where they have made a formal private promise (annually renewable) to follow the Rule of St Benedict in their private life as closely as their individual circumstances and prior commitments permit.

Benedictines in popular culture and fiction

A stage play based on a book by Hugh Whitemore, The Best of Friends, provides a window on the friendships of Dame Laurentia McLachlan, OSB (late Abbess of Stanbrook) with Sir Sydney Cockerell and George Bernard Shaw through adaptations from their letters and writings.
The film "In This House of Brede" (1975, TV), with Dame Diana Rigg in the lead role, presents a portrayal of the progress of a fictitious postulant. The film was inspired by the 1969 novel of the same name written by Rumer Godden.
Perhaps the most famous Benedictine monk in all fictiondom is Brother Cadfael. (Friar Tuck does not qualify for this distinction, as he was a Franciscan.) Edith Pargeter, writing under the pen name Ellis Peters, created the character of Brother Cadfael as the detective hero of her series of medieval murder mysteries known as The Cadfael Chronicles.
Although the narrator and the protagonist are both Franciscans, the Umberto Eco novel The Name of the Rose is set in a fictional Benedictine monastery in Italy.
Samples of chanting Benedictine monks were used in the song Touched by V.A.S.T., from their album Visual Audio Sensory Theater.