"The gates are drawn apart"

 This year, this year, as all these flowers foretell,

We shall escape the circle and undo the spell.

Often deceived, yet open once again your heart,

Quick, quick, quick, quick!—the gates are drawn apart.  -- CS Lewis

 

 “Therefore it is the paradox of history that each generation is converted by the saint who contradicts it most.” GK Chesterton 

 Dom Leclercq turns in Chapter 1 to the angusto initio of the beginnings of cenobitic monasticism, focusing on the conversion of St Benedict of Nursia.   He was born a little after the Fall of Rome,  probably around 480 AD, and sent to Rome to be educated.   St Gregory the Great tells the story:  

 There was a man of venerable life, Benedict by name and grace, who, from the time of his very childhood, carried the heart of an old man. His demeanor indeed exceeded his age; he gave himself no discontent or pleasure, but living here upon earth, he despised the world with all its glory, at such a time as he might have most freely enjoyed it. He was born in the province of Nursia of honorable parentage and sent to Rome to study the liberal sciences. But when he saw there were many through the uneven paths of vice running headlong to their own ruin, he drew back his foot, but new-set in the world, lest, in the search of human knowledge, he might also fall into the same dangerous precipice. Contemning therefore learning and studying and abandoning his father’s house and goods, he desired only to please God in a virtuous life. Therefore, he departed skillfully ignorant and wisely unlearned. I have not attained unto all this man did, but the few things which I here set down were related to me by four of his disciples...Life of St Benedict

 There is a bit more about his life and legacy here:  The Patron Saint of Europe 

Dom Leclercq says that this flight from uneven paths, epitomized by St Gregory as  departing skillfully ignorant and wisely unlearned, has become a sort of symbol, both a literal and figurative reordering of priorities from worldly to heavenly.

St Benedict first entered the eremetic life, but then was persuaded by some monks of the time to found a monastery.    Eventually he founded a dozen more monasteries, including the one at Montecassino which he repurposed from an existing pagan acropolis,   He wrote his Rule for Monks, which drew on other rules extant at the time but became the standard for its moderation and common sense.   He saw it as a "little rule", for beginners on the way.    The first chapter describes the four basic kinds of monks (the word from which monk derives meant solitary or alone and could be used for both men and women).  He makes a distinction between cenobites and hermits which is useful:

 2 First, there are the cenobites,that is to say, those who belong to a monastery, where they serve under a rule and an abbot.

3 Second, there are the anchorites or hermits, who have come through the test of living in a monastery for a long time, and have passed beyond the first fervor of monastic life. 4 Thanks to the help and guidance of many, they are now trained to fight against the devil. 5 They have built up their strength and go from the battle line in the ranks of their brothers to the single combat of the desert. Self-reliant now, without the support of another, they are ready with God’s help to grapple single-handed with the vices of body and mind.

Though this distinction preserves the legitimate charism of the early Desert Fathers and solitaries (Vatican II made provision for modern-day eremeticism, and it was codified in canon law) it opens up a cenobitic path that is more suited to the non-hero, the ordinary Christian who has heard the call to something more.   As he says, this rule is only a beginning:  

1 The reason we have written this rule is that, by observing it in monasteries, we can show that we have some degree of virtue and the beginnings of monastic life. 

After mentioning some other sources for the more advanced, with primacy of place to Scripture and the Church fathers, he concludes:

 8 Are you hastening toward your heavenly home? Then with Christ’s help, keep this little rule that we have written for beginners. 9 After that, you can set out for the loftier summits of the teaching and virtues we mentioned above, and under God’s protection you will reach them.  Amen

Prior Peter Funk  at Holy Cross Monastery in Chicago writes in a reflection on Love of Learning and the Desire for God: 

 The culture that the ‘monastic centuries’ cultivated inside the cloister became, in large part, the culture of medieval Europe. This is why Saint Benedict is the patron of Europe. If the Christian center of Europe has been fracturing over the centuries, it is, I believe, in part because the liturgy has informed culture less and less, and culture has instead begun to form (deform?) the liturgy. For this reason again, Benedictine withdrawal and liturgical practice and study is not at all at disengagement from culture, but a way to point the culture back to its roots, as much of it is redeemable.

In Leclercq's book, he is going on to talk about how "the Rule of Benedict presupposes learned monks" and sketch out the characteristics of monastic learning.   Here, he wants to make it clear that when the kingdom of God is sought first, all else needed will be added; that he who loses his life will find it:

"All Benedictine tradition was to be made in the image of St Benedict's life:  scienter nescius et sapienter indoctus.   It was to embrace the teaching of learned ignorance, to be nurtured by it and to transmit, recall and keep it alive face to face with the cultural activity of the Church, as an inevitable paradox."