In particular, three key points are stressed throughout the volume: the embedding of
Benedictinism in secular politics; the institutional and societal development of Benectinism, together with issues of monastic leadership and autonomy; and the roots of the Cluniac reforms in longstanding institutional processes seeking a restoration of associations with highly placed patrons, particularly the counts of Flanders.
Polding's decision to bring the Australian Church within the Benedictine Rule was unique, as Suttor notes: 'English
Benedictinism since the Protestant period provided no precedent for what he was going to do'.
Benedictinism was initially successful because it offered a safe, well-ordered, nurturing environment that proved a countercultural alternative to the late Roman Empire, which was in its death throes, and the Germanic Barbarians, who were roughly assuming political power.
English Caroline Script and Monastic History: Studies in
Benedictinism, A.D.
They are danger-daring prods, cautions, lures, inducements, challenges, barbs, warnings and reassurances from a man who found nature first, and through nature God, and through God Catholicism, and through Catholicism
Benedictinism, and through the monastic life, Eastern mysticism.
In
Benedictinism, for example, discussion of the canonical vows and core values of obedience, stability, and conversatio morum, to name some of the most obvious, are absent.
For the purposes of this essay, I am assuming first, that Vitellius E.xviii was indeed written at Winchester since, in the words of Rosier, "there appears to be no reason to doubt" (xvi) that it was; and, second, that together Winchester's monastic houses may safely be viewed as an expanded community of reformed
Benedictinism (see note 7 below), a view that renders the narrower question of whether the manuscript was written at Nunnaminster, New Minster, or Old Minster immaterial to my study.
However, we cannot see a wholly monastic tradition, least of all in the case of St-Gallen, which, after all, was `lord and neighbour' to the lay world around it.(65) Monastic rules saw
Benedictinism as a retreat from the world, but in a Carolingian royal monastery retreat was necessarily compromised and partial; in fact, the tension between royal needs and the ideal of retreat stands at the heart of contemporary monastic practice.(66) The intimacy of the interaction between the monastery and the world beyond its walls is illustrated by Notker's inclusion of stories about the Devil and demons.
In fact, the focus of this book is the dialogue as to the function and practice of monasticism which, as historians have been aware since the pioneering work of Josef Semmler, took place before the triumph of an universal `Anianische'
Benedictinism in 816-17.
Dumville, English Caroline Script and Monastic History: Studies in
Benedictinism, A.D.
We feel we have something precious to give in terms of charism, the gift of
Benedictinism."
"The monasticism for which Cassian wrote in Gaul was not a welcome retirement for him from the fray of church politics in which he spent the middle part of his career," Stewart writes, "In its relations with the local church, this monasticism of Southern Gaul was not unlike the missionary
Benedictinism of the major American monastic congregations.