Monasticism and Its Rise in England
Christian Monasticism is a devotional practice by individuals living ascetically and, usually, cloistered lives. The first Christian monks were solitaries (the Greek monos means ‘alone’) who lived apart from the society of the Roman Empire in the Egyptian desert. Their basic goal was to follow Jesus’ words in the Gospel of Matthew 19:21, “If any man would be perfect, let him sell everything that he has”. It was felt that this could be done more easily by living apart from the world.

Thus, they renounced marriage, meat and wine, good clothes and physical comforts; and devoted themselves to meditation, to prayers for the living and the souls of the departed, to works of charity and to mortifying the flesh. St. Anthony was a pioneer of this way of life in the 3rd century. During the growth of the movement in this time many moved from living as hermits to living in monasteries. There is even evidence of a nunnery for women in Egypt.

Even though there were other rules by which the various monastics lived, e.g. St. Basil and St. Augustine, for our purposes and guidance, we will discuss the Rule of St. Benedict (d. 543). Benedict who was born about 60 years after the fall of the Roman Empire became the founder of the Benedictine Order which was to offer, through the Rule, guidance to virtually all of monks in the Roman Church for four centuries after his death.

The Rule emphasized the recitation of the seven canonical Hours or services of the liturgy (Opus Dei, or work of God). The timing depended on the length of the day and the night. At the March and September equinoxes, when both the day and the night were twelve hours, the monks rose at two o’clock, from a seven-hour sleep, and the Hours were:

2 a.m. Vigils (the night watch office) – Meditation
At first light: Lauds (praises)
6 a.m. Prime at sunrise
9 a.m. Terce, at the end of the third hour
12:00 p.m. Nones
4:30 p.m. Vespers (the evening service; Vesper is the evening star)
6 p.m. Compline, at dusk (to complete the Hours)

The Benedictine Rule saw the monk not as a solitary, self-punishing ascetic visionary, but as a brother in a family or school, devoted, under the authority of the abbot, to the service of God. A monk took vows of lifelong personal poverty, chastity, obedience to the abbot and the Rule, and a vow of stability. The vow of stability committed him to stay until death in the monastic family which had admitted him. His work under the Rule could take him outside the walls of the convent, but he would always be required to return.

Much of England, until about 600, was under the influence of the Celtic monastics. These monastics were either people living in solitude or gathered in small groups around a special holy leader. They made vows similar to those of Benedict but did not place the emphasis on the daily Hours of prayer and the stability of community.

Benedict taught that through the reading and praying of the Psalms, the Holy Scripture and prayer, the Grace of a gracious God would fill us with courage, with faith and with love in order to become as Christ was among us in community.

Benedict wrote the Rule for his community of Monte Cassino in Italy, but by 700, it had spread across Europe to England affecting even the Celtic monastic houses themselves. Benedict’s Rule was so popular that the eighth to eleventh centuries have been termed the “Benedictine Centuries.”

Canterbury and Lindisfarne became two of the significant centers for the early influence of the Rule on the people of Britain.