How do these selections from the Benedictine Rule illustrate the roles of abbots and monks in the monastic community?

The Benedictine Rule is strict—its main theme being absolute obedience to the Abbot. Most people used to the freedoms and luxuries of life in the modern West would find it too demanding but in its historical context, it would not have been seen that way. Life in medieval Europe was incomparably poorer and more restricted than it is today: the life Benedict describes would be a step up for the poorest people and not much of a step down for the rest. Secondly, since St Antony’s time monks had subjected themselves to increasingly incredible ordeals in their attempts to subdue the flesh. Benedict’s emphasis on obedience to a supervisor is intended on the one hand to stop monks from excesses, and on the other to spur on the less enthusiastic. And lastly, the monastery was envisaged not as a prison camp to punish offenders, but as a loving community where people come together to help each other in their chosen path, to submit their entire lives to the will of God.

Benedict created the rule at a time when the Roman Empire had collapsed in the West, and Europe was being overrun by barbarian tribes, most of them pagans. It looked like Christianity in Europe was finished. Benedictine monasteries, more than anything else, kept the faith alive, and their short, simple but comprehensive rulebook allowed them to clone themselves unstoppably. Later, the monasteries were encouraged by Charlemagne, and spread like wildfire. And since Benedict required monks to spend time in reading, they kept theology and culture alive through centuries when almost the entire continent was illiterate.

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