The Abbot and the Community

The human and spiritual government of the monastery as the Rule designs it: the abbot as father (abba) and “physician of souls,” who holds the place of Christ in the community yet is bound by the Rule and accountable to God for every soul (RB 2, 64); the twelve steps of humility that form the spiritual ladder at the heart of the Rule (RB 7); the calling of all the brethren, even the youngest, to counsel (RB 3); the cellarer and the deans who share the burden; and the great law of hospitality, by which “all guests who arrive are to be received as Christ” (RB 53). This is the Rule as a charter of community — the framework within which the daily round of the horarium becomes a school of charity.

Tradition: Pre-Schism Western (Latin) / Orthodox reception

The Abbot as Father

The word abbot comes from abba, “father,” and the Rule means it with full weight. The abbot is the spiritual father of the community, and the Rule’s portrait of him (chiefly RB 2 and RB 64) is one of its most carefully drawn and most demanding passages. “The abbot who is worthy to rule over a monastery,” it begins, “ought always to remember what he is called, and correspond to his name of superior by his deeds” — for in the monastery “he is believed to hold the place of Christ, since he is called by His name” (RB 2.1–2; ed. de Vogüé, SC 181; trans. after Fry, RB 1980). This is the foundation of the abbot’s authority: he stands, for his monks, in the place of Christ, and the obedience they owe him (see Stability, Obedience, Conversion) is, through him, owed to Christ.

But the same authority is hedged with a sobering accountability. The abbot must know that “he has undertaken the charge of souls, for which he will have to give an account” — an account at the dread judgment for every brother in his keeping, so that, examining himself, he will be made careful of others (RB 2.34–38). He must adapt himself to each: “let him so accommodate and suit himself to the character and intelligence of each, that he may not only suffer no loss in the flock committed to him, but may even rejoice in their increase” (RB 2.31–32). The Rule’s most luminous image for the office is medical: the abbot is to act “as a wise physician,” carrying “the medicine he has at hand” to each wound, applying “the ointment of encouragement, the medicine of the Holy Scriptures,” and only at the last, when all else fails, “the knife of amputation” (RB 27–28). He is to “study rather to be loved than feared” (RB 64.15), and to “so temper all things that the strong may have something to strive after, and the weak may not be dismayed” (RB 64.19). Above all comes the great warning of moderation: in correcting faults he is to be prudent and not extreme, “lest, being too zealous in removing the rust, he break the vessel” (RB 64.12–13). The abbot of the Rule is no tyrant but a father and a physician, whose power exists wholly for the healing of souls.

All Called to Counsel

For all the abbot’s authority, the Rule is strikingly un-autocratic in one respect: it requires him to consult the community. “As often as any important business has to be done in the monastery,” the Rule directs, “let the abbot call together the whole community, and himself declare what is in question; and, having heard the counsel of the brethren, let him take thought within himself, and then do what he shall judge most expedient” (RB 3.1–2; trans. after Fry). The reason given is famous and humane: “we have said that all should be called to council, because it is often to the younger that the Lord reveals what is best” (RB 3.3). The youngest monk may be the one through whom God speaks; the abbot must therefore listen, even where he is not bound to follow. The final decision remains his, but it is a decision taken in council, not in isolation — a balance of authority and consultation that has marked Benedictine governance ever since, and that even shaped, by long influence, the deliberative habits of Western institutional life.

The burden of government is also shared: the Rule provides for deans (decani) set over groups of the brethren (RB 21), for a prior where needed (RB 65, treated cautiously, for Benedict had seen the office breed rivalry), and above all for the cellarer — the monastery’s steward — whose portrait (RB 31) is a small masterpiece. The cellarer is to be “wise, of mature character, temperate, not a great eater, not haughty, not headstrong”; he is to “regard all the vessels and goods of the monastery as if they were the consecrated vessels of the altar”; and if he has nothing else to give a brother who asks unreasonably, he is to “give him a kind word in answer, for it is written, A good word is above the best gift” (RB 31; trans. after Fry). The whole administrative apparatus of the Rule is shot through with this conviction that the material life of the monastery is itself a spiritual matter.

The Ladder of Humility

The spiritual core of the Rule — its single longest and most important chapter — is RB 7, on humility. Benedict takes the image of Jacob’s ladder, set up from earth to heaven (Genesis 28), and turns it into the ladder of the monastic life: “the ladder is our life in the world, which, if the heart be humbled, is lifted up by the Lord to heaven” (RB 7.8; trans. after Fry). The two sides of the ladder are body and soul, and its rungs are twelve degrees of humility, which the monk climbs one by one until he reaches the top:

The fear of God ever before one’s eyes.
Loving not one’s own will, but doing the will of God.
Submitting in obedience to a superior, for the love of God.
Holding fast to patience even amid hard and contrary things, and unjust treatment.
Concealing nothing from one’s abbot, but confessing one’s evil thoughts.
Being content with the meanest and worst of everything.
Believing and declaring oneself lower and of less account than all others.
Doing nothing but what the common rule and the example of the elders commend.
Keeping silence until asked.
Not being given to ready and easy laughter.
Speaking gently, briefly, and humbly when one speaks.
Showing humility in the very bearing of the body — eyes cast down, ever mindful of one’s sins as before the judgment of God.

The chapter ends with the great promise that gives the whole ladder its meaning: having climbed all twelve degrees, the monk “will presently come to that perfect love of God which casts out fear” (1 John 4:18), and will begin to keep, “no longer through fear of hell, but through love of Christ and through good habit and delight in virtue,” all that he once kept with dread — the Lord, “by the Holy Spirit, deigning to manifest this in His workman now cleansed from vice and sin” (RB 7.67–70; trans. after Fry). The whole ascent, in other words, is a movement from fear to love — the same arc the Prologue announced (see The Regula Benedicti). This Benedictine ladder of humility is the Western counterpart to the great Eastern ladder of his near-contemporary St John Climacus, abbot of Sinai, whose Ladder of Divine Ascent charts the same ascent in thirty steps (see St. John Climacus); the two are the twin monuments of the monastic theology of humility in the sixth- and seventh-century Church, East and West.

All Guests as Christ

Among the most beloved chapters of the Rule is the law of hospitality, RB 53, and its opening sentence is one of the most quoted lines Benedict ever wrote: “Let all guests who arrive be received as Christ, for He will say, I was a stranger and you took me in” (RB 53.1; trans. after Fry, citing Matthew 25:35). The monastery is to keep its door open to the world even as the monks keep their stability within; every traveller, every poor man, every stranger who comes is to be met as though he were the Lord Himself. The Rule legislates the courtesy in detail: the abbot and brethren are to meet the guest “with every mark of charity,” to pray with him, to bow the head or prostrate before him “adoring in them Christ, whom indeed they receive,” to wash his feet, to set aside the abbot’s own fast to eat with him, to lodge him in a guest-house with attentive brethren in charge (RB 53; RB 56). And it adds a characteristically discerning note: “in the reception of the poor and of pilgrims the greatest care and solicitude is to be shown, because in them Christ is more truly received; for the fear which the rich inspire is enough of itself to secure them honor” (RB 53.15; trans. after Fry). The poor man is to be honored above the rich, precisely because the world honors the rich already.

This hospitality, made law in the Rule, became one of the great civilizing functions of the Benedictine monastery across the Middle Ages — the monastery as guest-house, hospital, and refuge along the roads of a dangerous world. It is the outward face of the same charity the Rule cultivates within: the “good zeal which monks ought to have,” which the Rule near its end describes as bearing “most patiently with one another’s infirmities, whether of body or of character,” and preferring nothing whatever to Christ, “who together may bring us all alike to life everlasting” (RB 72; trans. after Fry).

References

The Rule of St Benedict. Ed. de Vogüé, SC 181–182; trans. Fry, RB 1980 (Collegeville, 1981). (RB 2, the abbot in the place of Christ and accountable for souls; RB 3, all called to counsel; RB 7, the twelve steps of humility; RB 21, the deans; RB 27–28, the abbot as physician; RB 31, the cellarer; RB 53, “all guests as Christ”; RB 64, the election and discretion of the abbot, “break not the vessel”; RB 65, the prior; RB 72, good zeal.)
Kardong, Terrence G. Benedict’s Rule: A Translation and Commentary. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1996. (Commentary on RB 2, 7, 31, 53, 64.)
RB 1980, ed. Timothy Fry. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1981. (The abbatial office; the twelve steps of humility; the theology of hospitality.)
Gregory the Great. Dialogues II.2, 36 (Benedict as abbot and the Rule as his self-portrait). Ed. de Vogüé, SC 260.