After talking about that notion of the monk is the one who is concerned with the center, remember, from Panikov, then we began very quickly to go through the different critical stages of the history of monasticism and Christianity. We talked about, we picked up with the rule of Saint Benedict last time and summarized it good, and then we went on to the movement of Cluny in the 9th, 10th century, where a kind of monastic empire came into being, because they ran out of gas in one tank last time Let me read a summary to you about Cluny, about that kind of monasticism. It wasn't limited to that big abbey, but it was a kind of model, a kind of type.

[01:04]

This is from the R.B. 1980, page 126. Characteristic of this form of Benedictine monasticism was a certain centralization and uniformity of observance, because they all depended on one big mother house, an enormous development of ritual. So the liturgy became very heavy. Now you find this at times both in the East and in the West, but they used to caricature the Cluniac monasticism as monks who spent their whole day in the choir, because they'd add office onto office. You know, you'd have the regular divine office as in the room, and then you'd have the office of the dead, and then you'd have extra psalms and prayers, and maybe even a little office of Our Lady, the Cistercians had that later. A refined monastic culture based upon intensive study of the Bible and the Fathers, a genuinely contemplative orientation, a far-reaching charitable activity, serious though limited work. Now, manual work tended to disappear in this kind of monasticism, and also the monks tended

[02:06]

to become priests. They tended to become priests, and they tended to become more studious, and also they tended to become more wealthy. Now, I'll come back to that. This is the R.B. 1980 introduction. This is a convenient summary of the Cluniac monasticism. The value of Verhul there is that he gives you the whole shape of the evolution, of not only of monasticism but also of religious life. Of course he's got an axe to grind as you can see, he's got a theory about it, about the meaning of it, the structure of it, and we'll get to that. Whereas this is a summary of that period, which is useful because it brings out some elements that are important for us. A genuinely contemplative orientation. So here you have a contemplative synovatism which is centred around the liturgy, and centred also around Lectio, around the reading of the Scriptures and the Fathers. And it tends to become somewhat intellectual, somewhat cultured.

[03:07]

Serious though limited work, especially that of the Scriptorium. The Scriptorium was where they copied manuscripts and they made books. And the discrete practice of the hermetical life, alongside and subject to the synovium. So the hermetical life had not really come into its own, but there could be hermits alongside the monastery, either ones that came out of the monastery or ones that were sort of adopted by the monastery and taken under its wing. Now this happens again today, you see. That's not a bad form either. Its most impressive realisation was that of Cluny, which grew into a monastic empire of almost incredible proportions, and yet for more than two centuries under a series of abbots whose sanctity was equal to their discretion and administrative authority, maintained a disciplined and fruitful monastic life that constituted the most powerful reforming influence in the Church. So at a certain point that was the spiritual centre of Western Christianity, of Catholicism, Cluny. And monasticism was still a very potent influence in the Church, and certainly got itself together in that way. Then here's a summary, right after that, of the situation in the 11th century, that is,

[04:20]

when the Cluniac movement is beginning to fall apart a bit, or at least when a lot of dissatisfaction is appearing there. In the 11th century and well into the 12th, while these monasteries were still prosperous and fervent, a reaction was nevertheless developing. They had become the establishment. They had not changed with the times where society was beginning to undergo profound transformations. I can't say too much about those transformations because I don't know the historical background well enough. There's quite a valuable book that we have, though, that does go into that background, in fact the title of it is the 11th century background of Citeaux. Now, Citeaux is the first Cistercian foundation, and he is a Cistercian, he's a Cistercian, a regular Cistercian, not a Trappist, Lachnac, the Lachnac. And so he writes about all that's going on in the 11th century, and out of which rises the foundation of Citeaux, a little after 1100.

[05:21]

And among those movements is Camargue, so we're getting into the area of the foundation of our own congregation. So here we have an established monasticism, and notice how Benedictine monasticism tends to stay that way, okay? It tends to become an establishment, and then you have to have another monasticism to grow up alongside of it, to remind it that it's monasticism, see, it can become so built into. As the church tends to become built into the cultural or the social or the political or the economic establishment, so the monastic life tends to be built into that establishment, you see? And then it's no longer fully monasticism, or it's no longer monasticism in its keenest form, its most pure, authentic form, and so another form of monasticism tends to develop. And that new form of monasticism is going to emphasize a couple of things every time. Solitude and poverty, solitude and poverty, and usually a return to the original sources of monasticism. So it's a process sort of of moving out and of growth, and then of a return to the sources,

[06:30]

a return to simplicity. Solitude and poverty are both forms of simplicity. For this reason, there developed a fervent and widespread desire for a life that would be more simple. Remember how Fanucar makes simplicity the keynote of monasticism. If the monk is concerned with the center, then the way to relate to the center is by simplicity of life. So every time you have a return to the essence of monasticism, you have a movement towards a more simple life. Less institutionalized, smaller communities in general, and a less formal structure. In other words, fewer borrowings, for one thing, from secular society. More solitary, less involved in the political and economic fabric of society. In short, a return to monastic origins. It is not surprising, then, that it often led to a reintroduction of aramidical life. This movement, which sprang up spontaneously all over Europe, brought about a revolution

[07:32]

in the monastic world and produced a whole variety of new orders and observances alongside the established houses. Though it was often chaotic and sometimes deviated into excess and heresy, under the direction of its most worthy representatives, it produced remarkable fruits of holiness in the Church and enriched monasticism with forms of life that, in many cases, endure to the present day. So some of those forms of life are the commandolis, the valambrosians, both of which are very small, the carthusians, which are also pretty small, and the cistercians, who are more numerous. And then, a little further along in the wake of this monastic world, is the origin of the religious orders as such. First the Franciscans, and then the Dominicans, and then the Carmelites, and so on. So the eleventh century, then, is a real break, a real turning of the corner in the history of the Church. Now, according to Bayeux, this is the turning point. In the whole two thousand years, he finds this as being the turning point in the evolution

[08:36]

of the religious life. If you want to look at his summary there, you've probably run across it already. It's at the end of his paper, about the last three pages of his paper. Let's see, I don't have the reference right in front of me. And we'll see what he has to say about that. I think it's very interesting. It's kind of important to get a sense of this history. To get a sense of the two poles between which we move. The pole of, call it, authenticity, and the pole where we move further away from our center, further away from the religion, the monastic world. The risk would be to think, okay, the more poverty, the better a monk you are, or the more solitude, the better a monk you are. The more simplicity, simply, the better a monk you are. But that's not necessarily true either. And the fact is that in some of these more highly developed and established forms of monasticism, you have both some beautiful communities and some beautiful people.

[09:39]

I mean, you know, everyone's holy people, saints. So we have to be careful about generalizing too rashly. And then we can draw rash practical conclusions too. Now, you'll notice that St. Romuald fits right into the crooks, as it were, of the EU scheme of the evolution of the religious life. Because he's right at the source of that Gregorian reform of the 11th century. So when we think back as to his role in the history of the Church, and when we think about the role, possible role, of the Catholics today in the history of the Church, we have a line to draw, sort of, between those two points. We've got to be careful of a kind of triumphalism, a kind of easy inflation about that. Okay, you've pointed out the comparison, the similarity between the 11th century and our own time. It is the depth to which monastic life is called to really know it.

[10:41]

Mr. Lackner refers to something, he's got a whole chapter on this. He gives a long treatment of each of these topics, although he doesn't go so much over the audience. He's got a whole chapter on the crisis of synovitism, and that's what historians say occurred in the 11th century. The crisis of the traditional, the established synovitical monasticism typified by Cournot. Traditional monasticism, monarchism, experienced a serious crisis in the 11th century, a crisis which began around 1050 A.D. and lasted roughly for 100 years. A lot of things are happening in those years. You know, the Eastern and Western Churches split just about 1050 into Bishop, and there's a lot going on between the Empire, the Holy Roman Empire, the German Empire actually, and the Popes in that time. There's a kind of struggle for power between the two. And at one time, the Emperor seems to be running the Church, and at another point,

[11:48]

the Pope is getting the upper hand over the Empire. So it's quite a dramatic turn. And at the same time, as the Church becomes drawn more into a kind of, you call it, symbiosis with the Western Empire at that time, the Church splits from the Church in the East and from the Byzantine Empire. And you've got a mixture of political events in the Church and religious events going on. 1054 was the year of the split, as I remember, but that had been forming long before. Germaine Morin called it a crisis of synovitism. According to Jean Leclerc, it was basically a crisis brought on by material wealth. This was undoubtedly true, but not exclusively so, for there were other factors contributing to the difficulties. It would therefore be better to say that the crux of the problem was the insufficiency of the Benedictine and Cluniac formula to satisfy generous souls already on the lookout

[12:52]

for new solutions. In other words, if Benedictine and Cluniac monasticism had become too lax, would become too fibrous. This is Lackner, 11th century background, of Cito. Okay, let's look at Knowles for a bit. Pardon me for skipping from book to book, but I have to do that because I don't have all this historical stuff. Here's Knowles giving you a general look at the situation of the 11th century and what is happening in the 11th century. Now this is a kind of synthetic image that he has, which is very helpful to me. I don't know how this feels. The great religious revival of the 11th century is perhaps the most widespread and the most

[13:55]

spiritual of all the mysterious religious revivals of the West. Compared with earlier renovations, it had two distinctive features. This is page 16, Knowles from Proconius Ignatius. In common with all medieval movements, it claimed to be a return to past excellence, but whereas previously the Golden Age had been situated in the 6th century, reformers were now seeking their models in earlier ages. And monastic reformers were demanding a return to the desert cradle of monarchism. Now this is true of St. Romuald, for instance, because all the writers nowadays say that he was acquainted with the Greek monasticism and the early monasticism, the monasticism of the desert fathers. So he sort of pulls away from the rule of St. Benedict and returns to that earlier, more solitary and more austere form of monasticism. The reform of the 11th century was distinguished also by the spirit of the age. The new capacity of adolescent Europe to rationalize problems and organize on a wide scale was brought to bear upon the needs of the religious life.

[14:56]

And the constitutional framework was gradually evolved and was capable of application to all kinds of vocation. So here you don't have that simple pluralism of the Eastern Church, where basically you've got monasticism and then the monks do all kinds of things. But it's typical in the West that we organize, that we make some kind of a structure for things. And that's what happens. It becomes a very diversified structure, but at the same time it becomes a rigid structure. In other words, you've got things that are really compartmented and separated one from the other. And each is for a particular type of vocation. So that we even begin to think of vocation in a different way. You think of your vocation as being to a particular institution, to a particular congregation or community. You think of them in those terms, rather than basically having a monastic vocation. And so much the more specific for the other religious orders, the active religious orders. In other words, you've got a vocation to be a Jesuit or a Dominican, you've got a vocation to teach or to preach and so on. It becomes very specific. And often the center, the monastic center, becomes forgotten.

[16:00]

And nowadays we see the other religious orders separating themselves very much from that monastic core, which almost all of them originally had. And the monastic type of formation that they often had in religion. In the event, reformers split the single traditional version of the monastic life into 20 different divisions, as it were the colors of the spectrum. Okay, that's the image. So, here we've got Benedictine monasticism and the rest coming along like this. This is a beam of light. And this is the 11th century panoply. It's spreading through all these different colors of the spectrum. Which are the different religious orders. Okay. Each into 20 different divisions, as it were the colors of the spectrum,

[17:01]

each realizing a potentiality implicit in the monastic life, but neglected by most contemporary manifestations. And thus meeting a need in the more complex and articulated society of the later Middle Ages. It was here that the history of Western monasticism separated from that of the Orthodox Church, where the single ray of light was never fully broken down into its component colors. Now, Verhul will talk about the same thing in other language. And then he talks about the two fields in which this happens. One of them is in Italy, south of the Alps. And the other is in Northern Europe. The new orders in Italy sprang from settlements made by men who had left the old monastic way of life in search of great simplicity, austerity and solitude. The best known were the hermit groups of Fonte Avalana and Camaldoli in the communities of Valambrosa. All of which were related. The two first owed their existence to St. Romualdo of Ravenna,

[18:05]

the third to St. John Gualbert of Florence. Both saints had begun their religious lives as pluniacs. And both had gone forth to become hermits. Even though their foundations ultimately take different directions. There's an account of the foundation of Camaldoli, of the hermitage and the monastery of Camaldoli, in that Rule of Blessed Rudolf. In the shorter rule, which is in the back. On page 29 to 31. I don't know what later historians have to say about the accuracy of that account. I'll leave part of it. Now he's talking about the hermitage of Camaldoli. The Sacroeroma, as it's called. We declare to you then, dearest brethren, that the Camaldoli's hermitage mentioned above, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and at the request of the most reverend Teobald Teodal,

[19:08]

this Bishop of Arezzo, was constructed by her Holy Father Romuald Hermit together with a basilica which the same Bishop consecrated in honor of the Holy Savior in the year of the Incarnation, 1027. Having built five cells there, he placed in them five religious brethren, that is Peter, another Peter, Benedict, Gizo and Tuzo. One of these, Peter de Nino, a prudent and holy man, he appointed as superior of the other four and enjoined on them the rule of fasting, of keeping silence and of remaining in the cell. Having done this, he found another place lower down called Ponte Bono, that means good fountain, a good supply of water down there, which they still tap, where he constructed a house. There he placed a monk with three lay brothers that is conversing. That was just at the beginning of the institution of reverence. To receive guests, to offer them a sweet welcome and a charitable refection so that the hermitage might remain always more hidden and withdrawn from the noise of the world.

[20:08]

Then, later on, he talks about those who went to the hermitage straight from the world. Certain of these, not only from among the common people, but even from the nobility, still a feudal class, inspired by the Holy Spirit and despising all worldly interests, received from the above mentioned prior the monastic abbot, endowed the hermitage with their hereditary possession and began to lead a strict life. That's one of the ways in which monasteries become rich. Some of them carried upon the wings of divine contemplation to the love of the heavenly fatherland, fixed the eyes of their mind on the light of God and began to taste something of his ineffable sweetness. It's a very colorful language. Shedding themselves one by one in their cells, they remained therein unto death, fighting with the ancient enemy under the protection of divine grace. And so on. And then, it talks about how some of them fell. In other words, they couldn't make it

[21:13]

in that very austere hermitage. Revolving these and similar thoughts in their mind, several laymen of our own time cast the world behind them and fled to this hermitage as to a secure haven. Renouncing their own will, they received the monastic haven and began to climb toward the pinnacle of the hermitical life. Before striking root, as the saying goes, they tried to fly to the heights and therefore some of them quickly fell back and failed completely with much pain and sorrow. For this reason, we met together and after much discussion arrived at a program which we judged would be beneficial for those brethren who should take up this way of life in the future. It was decided that the above-mentioned hospice of Pantabono should be maintained in the regular order and discipline established by St. Benedict by some brethren well trained in the holy rule so that in that place these masters might instruct those who flee to us from the world in the life, the order and the regular discipline. In other words, they made the hospice into a monastery in order to be a place of formation,

[22:14]

a place of novitiate, as it were, for the hermitage and also to be a guest house and also to be a kind of infirmary for those who had need to come down from the rigors of the hermitage. Of course, the hermitage of Konawe is something special because of the climate up here. It's always been hard to live with the cold. So, there we have the establishment of two kinds of community under the same under the same institution. This is what Noel says about it. Kamaldoli has a twofold significance in the history of religious orders. First, it was the first institution in which rules were drawn up for a group of hermits in the West. The first attempt to standardize and control what had hitherto been essentially free and unconfined. It was thus the prototype of a multitude of similar ventures of which the larger and more celebrated desert

[23:16]

of La Chartreuse was the most notable member. That's the Carthusian majority. So, you get the picture. Now, once again, this is typical of the West. You have rule made for every form of religious life and yet it is you would say legislated more than it's true and used. It becomes institutionalized. A rule is drawn up for the hermits and the hermits are put into a particular place and their life is pretty thoroughly structured. Yes, I mean the orthodox. Where the hermetic life tends to be freer. The monasteries are quite thoroughly structured and every minute is accounted for but in the hermitage it's quite a bit free. It's felt that they need a different kind of treatment and so the spiritual product is in touch with what you're doing. Secondly, it was the first religious institute embracing two kinds of life

[24:17]

that is the hermetical life and the cenobitical life. Now, you have another thing that comes up here and that's the the choir monk and the laborer that comes up almost in the same time and that's not peculiar to Malibu but they have it too. And one of the reasons why they have it is in the hermitage. If they want to be real hermits then they can't do all the work so somebody else has to live a different kind of life as it were, stay outside. He says a word about the Carthusians a little later on even though we're skipping back and forth a bit I'll read now. He talks about St. Bruno settling with some companions in the desolate uplands of the Grand Chartreuse he formed in 1084 a colony like that of Karmaldolid which he may have imitated as he may also have imitated Balambrosa with his accompanying group of converses at his lay brother's lower down the mountain. The lay brother thing seems to have started about the same time as Karmaldolid

[25:20]

early 11th century. The hermits of the Chartreuse attracted good recruits and had a succession of able priors they owed their permanent success to their resolute refusal in early days as in late to lower their standards and to tamper with their rule in order to follow and fit the fashions of the day they remained throughout the middle ages and remain to this day a spiritual elite uncompromising and therefore few in number but never degenerate and never extinct and like a lot of the older of the disorders they have particular problems today of course because of the lack of changes in society and in the church. Their constitutional significance that is the Carthusians he's trying to look at each order and say what its effect, what its importance was in this history of forms or of constitutions or of structures that he's writing their constitutional significance was to carry the work of Romeo that commandly a stage further, to domesticate the hermitic life without destroying it

[26:20]

and the Easterners all smiled at that point how can you domesticate it without destroying it but that point is really thoroughly domesticated because a person goes into that monastery and never comes out for the rest of his life and his life pattern is one day very much like the other it's quite carefully scheduled structurally, even though after a certain point according to Fr. Dennis there's quite a bit of freedom in the monk's life as he spends his time The Carthusians however were not destined to alter the face of monastic Europe that was the work of a small group of men in the forest of Burgundy some 15 years later and he's talking about Ceto, he's talking about the Cistercians, the cenobitical miserably cenobitical foundation of the Cistercians a little something from Lackner about the tonalities he's talking about the rise

[27:40]

of the aromatical life in Europe its revival in the 11th century, 10th and 11th century Though it did not become a part of the Benedictine world aromatism stayed alive even after the victory of the Cassanese Code that is the rulers of Benedict although we saw that there were hermits living in connection with monasteries, but it was not a general thing it was highly exceptional it grew especially strong during the 10th century when in view of the social and clerical decadence of northern Italy preachers of penance and solitary life men like Nihilus, Romuald, Simeon, Dominic of Follinia, Benarius and others began to appear in public they recalled the spiritual legacy of the East and urged their audience to embrace a solitary penitential life from Italy the movement spread all over Western Europe, a lot of things have started in Italy undoubtedly because conditions

[28:45]

had been favorable for its reception commerce and changes in society the result of all this was that the West turned once more to the works of the 4th century fathers especially to Cassian and the Vitae Patron studied the life of Moses, Elijah and John the Baptist with renewed interest remember how all of them appear in the constitutions of Europe and restored the cult of the ancient hermits particularly that of St. Anthony of the Desert he talks at some length about Romuald and the foundation of St. Peter Damian and the foundation of the reform and regime of Ponte Vallone in the process the one great body of traditional monarchism was divided into a number of new institutions that's Knowles' prism

[29:45]

the spectrum, like Camaldoli, Ponte Vallone, Vallumbrosa, Grandmont and the Grand Chartreuse, all indebted to Benedictinism but also introducing new constitutional frameworks in which the rule of St. Benedict served more as a point of departure, see that's true for Camaldoli, it's true for any hermits because the rule of Benedict is not written for the hermits and yet that was such a solid and deep foundation that they could never really renounce it the only ones that I know of that did were the Carthusians because they have another rule which they don't connect themselves with St. Benedict even though they're indebted to him the renewal in Italy began around the year 1000 with the influx of eastern refugees the presence of Greek monks in Calabria and a greater interest in the Desert Fathers they tended to move away from the traditional cenobitic way of life toward hermitic monasticism its greatest champions, St. Ronald of Ravenna the founder of Camaldoli and St. Peter Damian the reformer of Ponte Vallone will always be prominent in monastic history

[30:46]

for their role in this monastic revival so this is the start then of a kind of avalanche in the 11th century, St. Ronald is right at the beginning of this avalanche, it's like he's the first stone and then there it goes and it really sets Europe on fire first with hermitical monasticism and then later with new forms of communal monasticism too, and especially Cito, which becomes the most powerful of all and I mean the Cistercians, Cito and Cistercians are synonyms ok, a word about the Cistercians this again from the RB 1980 excuse me for reading so much to you it's the only way to do this the most successful of the new orders was that of Cito founded in a Burgundian swamp in 1098 I don't know what a Burgundian swamp is is it full of Burgundy or full of water

[31:47]

by Robert of Molheim and 21 companions Robert himself had founded Molheim and observed the traditional monastery, but the Cistercian pioneers wanted greater solitude and poverty and the literal observance of the rule of St. Benedict you find a lot of, in these reforms often they want to go right back and observe the rule to the letter, which is very praiseworthy but at the same time very risky, ok, because you can get into a kind of legalism and you can start doing something that just doesn't work for you in another time or in another place but he founded people who want to do that today to be the faculty in 1112 St. Bernard arrived at Cito with 30 companions, he had quite a few inaugurating a deluge of vocations that continued for a century and filled all Europe with Cistercian from Scandinavia to the Balkans and from Ireland to the Holy Land quite an amazing thing when Stephen died in 1134

[32:53]

there were 19 monasteries at Bernard's death in 1153 there were 343 at the end of the 12th century there were 525 Cistercian monasteries so it's a real mushroom and these are contemplative monasteries while there was a strict uniformity of observance the rigid centralization of authority characteristic of Cuny was abandoned in favor of a looser structure defined in Stephen Harding's Carta Caritatis that means the Charter of Charity each abbey was autonomous but was subject to some control by the annual general chapter and by visitations from the abbot of its mother house so you've got a pyramid structure but the pyramid is much looser with much more independence for the individual stones than it was with Cuny where there was only in a sense one abbot this is not an empire in the same way so it goes back closer to the original Benedictine form of the autonomous house Citeaux's phenomenal success

[33:54]

soon brought it prominence, wealth, power and the very involvement in temporal affairs that the first white monks had sought to escape in other words the same shaft that Cuny fell into the Cistercians fell in right afterwards so they had I guess a couple of good centuries and then settled into Cuny white monks are the Cistercians Citeaux, see the others were black monks so-called, they wore black hat many talks about the changes that happened in Benedictine life during the middle ages we've already seen some of them a lot of it has to do with clericalism the fact that all the choir monks became priests the fact also that they were using the Latin language whereas the lay brother institute class comes up and they don't know the Latin language so you really get a pre-class society and then in lots of monasteries they let go of the manual work now the Cistercians made a determined return to manual labor for everybody these Latin choirs these Latin monastics

[34:54]

hmm I don't know that was really something yeah see at a certain point Latin was the language but then the vernacular languages seemed to take over at a certain time I think everybody was talking Latin only the it depends on your country Italy is one thing Aramaic yeah that's right so you're already a couple of languages so now the liturgy was in Latin all the way up to 1962 yeah I don't know

[35:59]

and it's a very various thing because realize we're talking about Italy and France or Ireland at the same breath and in some of those countries certainly they had a vernacular language that was the common language and other of those countries in Italy I suspect a lot of the people spoke Latin pretty long so at that point I realized what a gap of ignorance I had in that kind of situation good historian what kind of language they were talking but the common languages in these countries don't come into prominence until quite late like there isn't any Italian language as such up until the time of Dante just a moment and I don't think there is an English language as such up until about the time of Chaucer and so on it's broken up into many dialects and the first one doesn't come up until quite late often and until then the cultured language

[37:01]

would be Latin and then you'd have all these dialects probably around and whatever roots and origins they may have it could be very various is there any relation between the separation when these monasteries split up in different forms between the development of the society then becoming more complex yes definitely in fact monasticism probably follows along in general in the development of society in many ways when you're in an imperial society then monasticism begins to take on that kind of personality too when you get it in action and also in this way it's becoming more differentiated and it becomes built into the feudal patterns of society too that is inhabit becomes like a lord like a baron or something like that and then the

[38:03]

break up into the orders later on the real differentiated distinct religious order like Franciscans and Dominicans that clearly follows this differentiation of society and the breaking of the feudal mold of that set set pattern let me see if I can find something in Knowles about Cito he's useful because he's so analytical he puts it in a nutshell here we are page 27 the body thus established he's talking about the Cistercian order now was in a true sense and for the first time in Europe a religious order now Cuny was not a religious order as such I'll tell you why a body of religious houses scattered in different regions linked together by legislation and disciplinary control and based upon a focal point the first mother Cito

[39:03]

it differed from the feudal monarchical family of Cuny in two important respects feudal monarchical family first it had no personal head unaccountable to any body or code like the abbot of Cuny who was the real emperor the whole pyramid Cito was the meeting place of the abbots each year because she was the beloved mother but the abbot of Cito had no more power and only a little more prestige than any other abbot so they had a kind of democratic chapter general chapter secondly there was no relationship of subordination of any abbot or abbey to Cito or any other house the autonomy of the individual abbey and the stability of the individual monk were complete now they did have a visitation thing they did have daughter houses and mother houses however they retained their autonomy so the visitation was not actually a complete subordination but I guess the visiting abbot comes and he makes a report in the house

[40:06]

but I don't think he has the authority to change everything or make suggestions I don't know how that works but it's nothing like Cuny where the abbot of the superior house would simply have authority over all the monks the other point is the stability of the individual monk in other words there is no superior outside of his monastery who can transfer him from his house to another house that's an important feature because if somebody has that power they can change the whole order the Kamalvis had that for a long while but we don't have it anymore it's quite precisely fixed in the constitutions under what conditions a person can be transferred and in general he can't be transferred against his own will nevertheless Sito was not a fully developed religious order for two reasons first it had no head to represent or direct it no head to represent the whole order you got the abbot of Sito but he represents his own his own abbot secondly it had no regional divisions the line of affiliation

[41:08]

ran across the Pyrenees, the Channel and Russia you don't have any provinces you just have these lines between mother house and daughter house three it was not strictly speaking supranational for no superior had any power to move a monk out of the abbey of his profession it was in fact a halfway house between the Kuniak body and the international order it was a stopping place between the two the Kuniak body of the family he called it before it was a federated body of equal and autonomous houses now that kind of thing still exists it can work pretty well and it's about as far as you get before you get the other religious orders and we see the problems that come up then these specialized religious orders tend to get separated from their own core from their own starting point ok let's look at the you in order to wind this up today starting on page 18

[42:10]

he's been talking about Kuni and then down to the bottom of 18 during the 11th century these feudal structures attained the apogee of their development and within the new Athonian empire the empire of Otto the German king church and state tended more and more to fuse, it was Otto the second Otto the third and Henry the fourth I'm not sure of the order St. Ronald was friendly with a couple of them it was at this moment that a vast movement began to manifest itself within the church a movement of radical reform which was to establish Christianity on new foundations that's putting it in very strong terms does this remind you of something when he says that the church tended to fuse more and more with the new empire remember the beginning of monasticism in the 4th century what was happening there that was when the church was accepted by the Roman empire wasn't it

[43:17]

and then monasticism sort of opts right out of that whole scene when the church is somehow being accepted in the world, the church is becoming a powerful establishment in the world monasticism sort of gets born and here we have monasticism being reborn in the west when the church is once more becoming accepted into the world in an analogous way by this alliance with the empire that may be a little oversimplified but that's what seems to happen monasticism reacts with a rebirth almost moving out the back door when the church and the empire begin to join hands okay but there's a notice however that there's a renewal of life it's one thing to be left behind as you were at 40 watts and it's another thing to be glowing at 200 watts so something is happening here which is an explosion of the Holy Spirit

[44:22]

or a great wave of the Holy Spirit which outweighs the fact the mere effects that are produced in monasticism but from what's happening outside of it we don't know where to put the cause and where to put the effect but what's happening is pretty evident it's an enormous flower that's happening yes you'd have to be a pretty good historian to be able to see this thing deeply and to understand what's going on how it all fits together but you can see a couple of things that are together and remember those three factors that I mentioned the other time they keep recurring together so monasticism

[45:22]

monasticism church and fire I shouldn't have come over that I should have not once again this is very crude but these are like two vectors, two forces that tend to pull the church in opposite directions they tend to pull against one another and if you see empire pulling the church in one direction perhaps monasticism will respond by reasserting itself in the other direction see that's what happens here you had a kind of establishment monasticism a kind of imperial monasticism and then the empire and the church itself begin to sort of fuse more and define monasticism reasserting its own peculiar values reasserting its own essence let me make another figure

[46:34]

which I just neglected think of three elements in the church one element is solitude interiority solitude solitude another one is community another one is the world and it's as if every one of these three directions and in successive times in the history of the church you find monastic life or religious life moving in those three directions remember the first movement of monasticism was over here the way we usually conceive the history of monasticism in St. Anthony he doesn't call it solitude solitude, poverty, the simplest

[47:36]

possible life the center and nothing else and that means the interior sort of pure monasticism then you have the monastic communities bringing up and some of them are very quick on the heels of this solitude then you get two kinds of monastic life you've got a kind which is focused in the heart of the individual in the interior of the individual and which accents solitude and you've got another kind which puts the accent on the community so you've got a whole between these two it can be very complementary but can also be tension and then you've got a third possibility and a third angle and that's when monks begin to become interested in the world because they preach the gospel because they have to take care of the sick because they have to work for the poor any involvement or because the abbot has to go and talk to the archbishop or something like that so you've got this other course moving up here

[48:38]

and you can see groups of monasticism which locate themselves very clearly according to these three elements the desert fathers over here Benedictine monasticism tends to be over here and the religious orders the modern religious orders tend to find themselves up here see a lot of the modern religious orders have also pulled a bit away from that community focus the Jesuits for example find themselves up here you've got others who keep on a hold of this you've got very few that keep all three of them it's very hard to do that if you've just got one you can really be in trouble in other words the others are very low to have a full life in some way, I think if you have a lot of people in a community

[49:39]

in some way you've got to be open to all of this you may not be able to do it in one place and that's why you've got a hermitage in Zenobia to come out of like in our area you've got a hermitage in Zenobia and you've got a house in Rome for instance open to the world of various people anyhow now I do this because it sheds a little further light on how this pattern reproduces itself within monasticism itself we don't have to think of an empire as being entirely sinister as being a kind of demonic world of things that's pulling monasticism out of shape but these are elements in the church and around the church that are pulling different directions now if you see you see this right here it's three circles and this is kind of risky because it tends to be divided by monasticism

[50:39]

but consider that monasticism itself is concerned with the center so if you put monasticism there the church here the second ring and the world here now once again it's very crude you can see the way monasticism tends to pull the church inward and the world tends to pull it outward and so when you have a renewal in the church you tend to have a renewal in monasticism and return monasticism to its own its own essence and the pull away from the world, what does that mean? it doesn't necessarily mean that the church doesn't bother itself with the world, it can mean that it doesn't take on the values the standards of the world in other words we're moving between two different senses of the world, one of which is sinister because it adulterates the church and the other which is the world of people or the world that the church has to serve the church is inseparable it's there

[51:51]

but it's not so clear and the reason why it's not so clear I think is because, first of all eastern monasticism keeps a more traditional form, it doesn't move as much you'll find in the history of religious life in the west, you can trace a pattern like this you find moving from solitude to community and then out to the world so some borders actually follow that pattern or some will move over here and then they have these two poles of the world in the east it tends always to be centered here, where at the most these two tend not to open up very much in this way I shouldn't be too extreme on that you can find everything especially in Russia you can find pyramids that are both in the world and we're living inside the community so I don't want to generalize too much the other thing is, in the east it doesn't set in juridical forms so you'll have a kind of monasticism

[52:53]

which is pretty fluid and it moves between these three poles without setting itself in a legal structure in any one of those whereas in the west you get a model which is defined with respect to the world defined with respect to community pyramids are defined with respect to solitude it's much more compartmentalized but if you know that monasticism, for example in the early centuries tended to the world and if you compare it right now excuse me what did you say wasn't so strong? the direction the thrust towards the world no, it was the thrust out of the world so and if you look for example the development of of our society and the development now of the so-called developed countries probably there is a relationship

[53:54]

between the two in history see the church itself is turning towards the world the vatican too, the church turns towards the world whereas before it was very much concerned with itself I think and sort of demanded the world come and accept its terms come and sort of submit and it didn't see itself so much as a servant of the world only the servant of that world which has already become christian, catholic and which is inside of it, okay but now with vatican too it's a radical change because the church turns outward and sees itself in a way as existing for the world and even for the world which is outside of itself as a servant of the world in a way, even the way that the folks talk you know, like when they talk to the other religions all kinds of people talk to atheists it's a different tone and monasticism too has to in some way accompany that without losing itself into the world, so it's a crisis for monasticism vatican too

[54:56]

okay, let's just say something about this Gregorian reform from Bayeux and then leave it there for this week a movement of radical reform which was to establish christianity on new foundations that's a really radical statement it first became apparent in the quarrel of investitures in the struggle against see here you've got this wrestling between the church and the empire it depends on who nominates the bishops who installs the bishops, who decides who they're going to be is it the local monarch, is it the emperor or is it going to be the pope that kind of thing and at a certain point the church comes out on top with Gregory VII at least for a little while and that accompanies this great reform one part of which of this whole boundary, this whole wave of reform being monasticism, it's a key part because some of the popes then were monks and they were close to the monks in those days they were friends of monks like Peter Damian writing to the pope to straighten them out and so on, it's going on all the time

[56:04]

it reached its apex during the pontificate of Gregory VII now those years are just after the death of Peter Damian, about 50 years after the death of Saint Robert 1027 so it's quite properly spoken of as the Gregorian reform, and he talks about the three golden centuries that follow, that is the 11th, the 12th and the 13th the separation from Byzantium, from the eastern church at the same time and the outrageous crusaders against the eastern the need for renewal of monastic life, the movement towards poverty, solitude, and the ideal of the life of brotherhood, and then the list of the early foundations, they always get the same list the Gregorian reform

[57:08]

this is 19, stands out as a significant turning point in the history of religious life indeed with the Carolingian reform in the 9th century, Charlemagne, remember around 800 and something there had come about a thorough leveling of the religious life, okay, it was all compressed into one form, you had to get into a benedictine monastery and live according to that one rule if you wanted to be a monk, if you wanted to be a religious remember he's talking about the religious life not just about monastic life so it's a broader context here beginning with the Gregorian reform and the numerous foundations at occasion, we witness however, even up to our own time a sort of reconquest gradually the various forms of living the evangelical councils regain their right of citizenship so you had a uniformity and now you have a pluralism opening up again the charismatic character of monasticism spontaneity and creativity blossoms in every shape and variety okay, so we'll put something on this kind of

[58:23]

a rise of enormous pluralism and then you get this tendency towards compression until you get this kind of struggle benedict of Antioch and then with the Gregorian reform you get the beginning of a slow expansion once you get but if we drew that accurately it would put a lot of variations in the times these are the times when there's nothing but the rules and the attitudes and when there aren't any other religions, there isn't room for them maybe there were some canons around clerics and so on and then it begins to open up again

[59:24]

so you see the enormous effect of the Benedictine rule and monasticism on western culture at that point on the western church it's like everything had to pass through it and even western culture and civilization passed through in a certain way not in this way exactly when a lot of the western civilization just disappeared barbarian invasions perhaps the emperor then we're between two empires by the time then with the second empire we get this standardization okay that's enough we'll go on from there we'll go on maybe at a more rapid rate I wanted to spend more time on this 11th century renewal because it's so important and also because our own roots are there glory be to the father and to the son unto the holy spirit as it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be world without end Amen

[60:23]

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