Page:Bury J B The Cambridge Medieval History Vol 1 1911.djvu/615

Rh primary and essential work is what St Benedict calls the “Work of God”—Opus Dei—the daily chanting of the canonical Office in the choir. To this work he says nothing is to be preferred, and this principle has been the keynote of Benedictine life throughout the ages. The daily “course” of psalmody ordinarily consisted of 40 psalms with certain canticles, hymns, responses, prayers, and lections from Scripture and the fathers. It was divided into the eight canonical hours, the Vigils or night office being considerably the longest. It i£ probable that this daily common prayer took some 4 to 4^£ hours, being chanted throughout, and not merely recited in a monotone. Mass was celebrated only on Sundays and holy-days. Private prayer was taken for granted, and was provided for, but not legislated for, being left to personal devotion.

The abbot governed the monastery with full patriarchal authority. He was elected by the monks, and held office for life. All the officials of the monastery were appointed by him, and were removable at his will. He should take counsel with his monks — in matters of moment with the whole community, in lesser matters with a few seniors. He was bound to listen to what each had to say ; but at the end, it rested with him to decide what was to be done, and all had to obey. The great — in a sense it might be said, the only — restraining influence upon the abbot to which St Benedict appeals, was that of religion — the abiding sense, impressed on him again and again by St Benedict, that he was directly and personally responsible, and would have to answer before the judgment seat of God for all his actions, for all his judgments, nay, even for the soul of each one of his monks as well as for his own. But his government must be according to the Rule, and not at his own mere will and pleasure, as had been the case in the earlier forms of monachism; and he is warned not to overburden his monks, or overdrive them, but to be considerate always and give no one cause for just complaint. The chapters specially written for the abbot (2, 3, 27, 64) are the most characteristic in the Rule, and form a body of wise counsel, not easily to be surpassed, for anyone in office or authority of any kind. This formation of a regular order of life according to rule, this provision for the disciplined working of a large establishment, was St Benedict’s great contribution to Western monachism, and also to Western civilisation. For as Benedictine abbeys came gradually to be established more and more thickly in the midst of the wild Teutonic populations that were settling throughout Western Europe, they became object-lessons in disciplined and well-ordered life, in organised work, in all the arts of peace, that* could not but impress powerfully the minds of the surround- ing barbarians, and bring home to them ideals of peace and order and work, no less than of religion.

Another point of far-reaching consequence was that St Benedict laid upon the monk the obligation of abiding till death, not only in the