Angusto Initio

 "Two series of texts have exercised a decisive, constant, and universal influence on the origin and development of medieval monastic culture in the West, and they contain in germ and two essential components of this culture:  grammar and spirituality.   These two groups of texts are those connected with St Benedict, and those of a Doctor of the Church who was very close to him in all respects, St Gregory the Great.   These texts must be examined in succession and they will afford an opportunity to define terms and to recall ideas which are essential to an understanding of all that follows.  We begin to follow the sublime path pointed out by St Bernard in a humble and austere fashion:  angusto initio." The Love of Learning and the Desire for God

 This is the beginning of Chapter 1 of the book and bridges from the Introduction where Leclercq talked about scholastic and monastic theology in the 12th century.  Now we are tracing monasticism back to the 6th century, when Rome was sliding into chaos.

Do you see the Latin phrase, angusto initio?   Perhaps you already know it is from the Prologue of the Rule for Monks attributed to St Benedict of Nursia.    I'll quote it in context with the relevant part bolded:  

Therefore we intend to establish a school for the Lord’s service. 46 In drawing up its regulations, we hope to set down nothing harsh, nothing burdensome. 47 The good of all concerned, however, may prompt us to a little strictness in order to amend faults and to safeguard love. 48 Do not be daunted immediately by fear and run away from the road that leads to salvation. It is bound to be narrow at the outset. 49 But as we progress in this way of life and in faith, we shall run on the path of God’s commandments, our hearts overflowing with the inexpressible delight of love. 50 Never swerving from his instructions, then, but faithfully observing his teaching in the monastery until death, we shall through patience share in the sufferings of Christ that we may deserve also to share in his kingdom. Amen.

A couple of posts ago I talked about shibboleths and here I want to talk about a way to use words that is almost the opposite of that.     Whereas shibboleths are words or expressions used as a test, to exclude those who don't belong, words can also be used as a way to carry meaning that would be difficult to unfold in the current context.

One example might be family words.  Almost every close family has a few words, not infrequently toddler-generated ones, that have a whole import to the family.   Scholars often also have a kind of shorthand-language for their field.... words and phrases that have significance for people in that field.   Sure, some of that can be shibbolethic, intending to exclude those who don't belong, but some of it is almost indispensable so that you don't have to explain the same things over and over again.   

Mortimer Adler teaches that almost every philosophical book has some of these words, that it is to your benefit to dig into if you want to understand the argument of the book.    

In most if not all Benedictine monasteries, the Rule is read daily, a bit at a time.  It can be read completely through 3 times in a year; many editions of the Rule are arranged by date.   So every monk has heard about the angusto initio regularly.  ... maybe close to two hundred times if he is elderly.   

In the Rule, St Benedict doesn't want the prospective monk (and by extension, the sincere Christian trying to live out the call to holiness) to get discouraged by things that sound difficult.   He doesn't promise it will be easy, but he points out that it is worthwhile, and that everything worthwhile will have a "narrow" beginning.   

This basically starts with birth.   The baby goes from swimming effortlessly to being drawn into literally the most narrow and constrictive of gates, and then has to deal with using lungs to breathe air, etc.    The mother, as well, has a kind of beginning.     Jesus and Nicodemus engage in a memorable dialogue about the necessity of spiritual rebirth, and this fits in with what Benedict is saying in the Rule.

As for how Leclercq is using the term -- it is evidently not in a spiritual sense per se.  

He is saying, it appears, that to understand the flowering of monastic theology, we must go back to its first seedling, and that this is primarily the Rule, and the Life of Benedict that St Gregory wrote, which is the whole of the information we have about St Benedict besides what comes out of reading the Rule itself.

By using this term in this context, in a lecture addressed to monks, Dom Leclercq wants the familial and spiritual connotations to be present along with the more scholarly, historical ones that he describes in terms of "examining", "defining" "recalling" that might sound more scholastic, and less monastic.   At least, that is what I would get out of it.

In turn, I am dwelling on the question of signification -- which seems important to the topic of this blog.   That word might seem like a Latinate and jargony complication of the word "meaning".   But I want to use it to include something besides what people commonly mean by meaning. ... a kind of density or richness of significance.  

In this way, the idea of "angusto initio" or the narrow outset can be understood of key words or phrases, themselves; they start off as obscure and difficult but can potentially open up to understanding.    Augustine says in On Christian Doctrine (talking about interpreting Scripture, but also in general about human psychology):

Nobody, however, has any doubt about the facts, both that it is pleasanter in some cases to have knowledge communicated through figures, and that what is attended with difficulty in the seeking gives greater pleasure in the finding.-- For those who seek but do not find suffer from hunger. Those, again, who do not seek at all because they have what they require just beside them often grow languid from satiety. Now weakness from either of these causes is to be avoided. Accordingly the Holy Spirit has, with admirable wisdom and care for our welfare, so arranged the Holy Scriptures as by the plainer passages to satisfy our hunger, and by the more obscure to stimulate our appetite.