Learned Monks

The next section of the study of monastic culture, guided by Jean Leclercq's book called L'Amour des lettres et le désir de Dieu or in English, Love of Learning and the Desire for God.   The link takes you to the page where I'm organizing the posts on the topic -- it's a work in progress.  

The section is called The Rule of Benedict Supposes Learned Monks which begins on page 12 in my edition.    Leclercq briefly addresses the question of how learned St Benedict himself was, which has been much discussed throughout monastic history, but is of only passing importance to his main theme, so a paragraph is enough to deal with it and move on. 

Basically, he restates the common understanding that Benedict did not try to be original in his Rule for Monks.   The influence of other early rules, such as Cassian's, is quite evident in his work.  As Leclercq says:

"To cast light on St Benedict's culture, one could search for the sources of his Rule.  But since he often quotes at second hand, using earlier rules, this criterion does not reveal very much.  To sum up, the author of the Rule is distinguished less by the breadth of his knowledge than by the intelligence with which he uses it, by his understanding of the monastic life, and by the characteristics he impressed upon it."

More to the point of the study Leclercq is making, on the role of learning in the lives of the monks, is the other question he brings up:

What culture does St Benedict expect or demand of the monk?  

On this point again -- that is to say, on St Benedict's attitude toward learning and toward study -- varying judgments have been expressed.

He proposes to treat it first by reference to the Rule itself -- what it says of study and learning -- and then by comparison with the method of Cassiodorus, who was a contemporary of Benedict's, another Roman from a good family.   

So first, the Rule itself.     We see the same elements that distinguish St Benedict's Life.   Literary and liberal studies are undertaken, then left, for the sake of the search for God.   But though the priority is clear -- that learning is not an end in itself --  still, learning and study retain their importance as a means to reach the end, to seek and know God.

"The fundamental fact that stands out in this domain is that one of the principal occupations of the monk is the lectio divina, which includes meditation:  meditari aut legere.   Consequently one must, in the monastery, possess books, know how to write them and read them, and, therefore, if it be necessary, learn how to read."

Meditari aut legere -- to meditate or to read.   The link goes to the written version of a lecture by Fr Joseph Koterski SJ (there's an audio version too), given at the New England campus of Thomas Aquinas College.   Fr Koterski weaves together Thomistic theology principles with reflections on Leclercq's book. He calls to mind the monastic culture that formed Aquinas in his youth before he joined the Order of Preachers.  

Thomas Aquinas, to be sure, was not a monk but a mendicant friar. His education, however, began in the great Benedictine abbey of Monte Cassino, where he was an oblate from about age seven to about age twelve. The wars then ravaging the region led his parents to bring him home. A bit later he was sent to the newly founded university in Naples. There he met the Order of Preachers and decided to join their ranks. ... What he had learned of the trivium from the Benedictines proved to be of abiding value to his life as a Dominican friar and to all his subsequent theological work.

Though Aquinas became a Dominican, and continued and developed the quaestio method of the Scholastics, Fr Koterski's point is that he did not desert the primary monastic goal of seeking God -- quaerare Deum.  

On meditari aut legere:

I draw the title for this lecture from a book that I hope you will someday read: The Love of Learning and the Desire for God by Jean Leclercq, O.S.B.1 The author is a Benedictine monk, whose aim is to provide an understanding of the heart of monasticism by introducing his readers to a rich array of medieval authors. His method is to show the profound interconnection that these authors saw between – of all things! – grammar and spirituality.

For the proper study of revelation as it is found in the scriptures, the monks needed to be able to read, to comprehend what they were reading, and to read what was deeply nourishing. Leclercq traces his theme as it appears in such well-known figures as Benedict and Gregory the Great and Bernard of Clairvaux, as well as in a vast range of lesser lights, all of whom were committed to living out the Benedictine motto: ora et labora (work and pray).

The writers under study in this volume composed learned commentaries on the Bible. But not all those who entered monasteries had yet mastered the art of reading anything, and so they also composed countless grammars and other aids useful for advancing in the monastic practice of lectio divina. To use a phrase found frequently in their grammar books, their goal was to help individuals with what they needed in order to pray: meditari aut legere (to meditate or to read). In the spirit of Leclercq’s focus on the connection between grammar and spirituality, I will return in due to time to a consideration of the interesting conjunction used in the phrase meditari aut legere – the word aut (or) is more significant than one might at first think.

I will save the consideration of the conjunction "aut" for another post!   

And also, Fr Koterski's sketch of Thomas Aquinas's core theological principles.