Questions On Monasticism

Chapter 4

3. What were Benedict’s motives—as far as we know—for entering a life of monasticism? For writing the Rule?

Benedict of Nursia (Italy) gave the most decisive and most beneficial, shape to monasticism. Regulating a zealous spirit that had often bordered on fanaticism; for curbing a practice of asceticism that easily slid over into Gnosticism, Docetism, or worse, for preserving the centrality of Scripture in a movement that made much of inner spiritual illumination; for recalling prayer to the heart of the Christian life; for linking exalted religious experience with the basic realities of work, study, eating, and sleeping; and, not least, for providing an idea of monastic life in which reformers have found inspiration and encouragement for fifteen hundred years. He wrote a rule: life of monks for many years (so they wont get lazy, but also how

Discuss the impact that monasticism’s “inner motivations” had on the church at large.

The most important and most enduring inner motive of the monks: Commitment to the Scriptures and monks kept everything together. There were some 'memory-work' requirements of early monasticism, for example twenty psalms, two epistles, or a biblical passage of comparable length.

There are several people in the development of monasticism. Antony: left his family's farm in Egypt to go out by himself to the edge of the desert in order to find God. Pachomius: established the first cenobitic monastery under the guidance of a "rule" for a life of prayer. Basil of Caesarea: wrote a rule for the monasteries that serves to this day as the basic guide for monastic life in the Orthodox Church. (Father of eastern Monasticism). Athanasius: is a key figure in the rise of monasticism because his documentary (huge for popularizing Monasticism). Martin of Tours: founded the first monastery (France) and began the momentous career of monasticism as the primary bearer of Christianity into northern Europe. John Cassian: wrote an influential