BENEDICTINE
446
BENEDICTINE
1
A Benedictine Abbot
for mutual dependence diminished, but when St.
Benedict Biscop came to England with Archbishop
Theodore in 669, it fell to liiin to foster a spirit of
uniformity amongst the various Benedictine monas-
teries then existing. In the tenth century St.
Dunstan set himself to reform the English monastic
houses on the model
of Fleury and of
what he had seen
successfully carried
out at Ghent during
his exile in Flanders.
With his co-opera-
tion St. Ethel wold
brought out his
"Concordia Regu-
laris". which is in-
teresting as an early
attempt to procure a
imiform observance
in all the monasteries
of a nation. A cen-
tury later Lanfranc
continued the same
idea by issuing a
series of statutes
regulating the hfe of
the English Bene-
dictines. It should
be noted here that
these several at-
tempts were directed
only towards secur-
ing outward uniform-
ity, and that as yet
there was apparently
no idea of a congregation , properly so called, with a
central source of all legislative authority. In France
the abbeys of Fleury, Marmoutier, St. Benignus
(Dijon), St. Denis, Chaise-Dieu (Auvergne), St. Victor
(Marseilles), St. Claude, Lerins, Sauve-Majour, Tiron,
and Val-des-Choux, were all centres of larger or smaller
groups of houses, in each of which there was uniform-
ity of rule as well as more or less dependence upon the
cliief house. Fleury adopted the Cluniac reform, as did
also St. Benignus of Dijon, though without subjection
to that organization; and all were eventually absorbed
by the congregation of St. Maur in the seventeenth
century, excepting St. Claude, which preserved its
independence until the Revolution, Val-des-Choux,
which became Cistercian, and Lerins, which in 150.5
joined the ItaHan congregation of St. Justina of
Padua. In Italy the cliief groups had their centres
at Cluse in Piedmont, at Fonte Avellana, which was
united to the Camaldolese congregation in 1569,
La Cava, which joined the congregation of St. Justina
in the fifteenth centurj'. and Sasso-\"ivo, which was
suppressed as a separate federation in the same
century and its forty houses united to other congre-
gations of the Benedictine family. The monasteries
of Germany were divided chiefly between Fulda and
Hirschau, both of which eventually joined the
Bursfeld Union. (See Bursfeld.) In Austria there
were two groups of monasteries, the abbeys of Melk
(Molck or Melek) and Salzburg being the chief
houses. They continued thus until well into the
seventeenth century, when systematic congregations
were organized in compliance with the Tridentine
decrees, as will be described in due course. Other
free unions, for purposes of mutual help and similarity
of discipline, were to be found also in Scotland,
Scandina\ia, Poland, Hungary, and elsewhere, in
which the same idea was carried out, viz., not so
much a congregation in its later sense, with a cen-
tralized form of government, as a mere banding
together of houses for the better maintenance of
rule and policy.
Notwithstanding all these reform movements
and unions of monasteries, a large number of Bene-
dictine abbeys in different comitries retained to the
end of the twelfth century, and even later, their
original independence, and this state of things was
only terminated by the regulations of the Fourth
Lateran Council, in 1215, which were to change
materially the whole trend of Benedictine poUty
and history. By the twelfth canon of this council it
was decreed that all the monasteries of each ecclesias-
tical province were to unite into a congregation.
The abbots of each province or congregation were to
meet in chapter every third year, with power to pass
laws binding on all, and to appoint from amongst
their own number "■i'isitors" who were to make
canonical visitations of the monasteries and to report
upon their condition to the ensuing chapter. In
each congregation one of the abbots was to be elected
president, and the one so chosen presided over the
triennial chapter and exerci-sed a certain limited
and well-defined authority over the houses of his
congregation, in such a way as not to interfere with
the independent authority of each abbot in liis own
monastery. England was the first and for some
time the only country to give this new arrangement a
fair trial. It was not imtil after the issue of the Bull
"Benedictina" by Benedict XII, in 1336, that other
countries, somewhat tardily, organized their national
congregations in conformity with the designs of the
Lateran Council. Some of these have continued to
the present day, and this congregational system is
now, with very few e.xceptions and some slight
variations in matters of detail, the normal form of
government thoughout the order.
Progress of the Order. — At the time of this im- portant change in the constitution of the order, the black monks of St. Benedict were to be found in almost every country of Western Europe, including Iceland, where they had two abbeys, founded in the twelfth century, and from which missionaries had penetrated even into Greenland and the lands of the Eskimo. At the beginning of the fourteenth cen- tury the order is estimated to have comprised the enormous number of 37,000 monasteries. It had up to that time given to the Church no less than 24
Copes, 200 cardinals, 7,000 archbishops, 15,000 ishops. and over 1,500 canonized saints. It had enrolled among its members 20 emperors, 10 em-
Eresses, 47 kings, and 50 queens. And these num- ers continued to increase by reason of the additional strength wiiich accrued to the order from its con- solidation under the new system. In the sixteenth century the Reformation and the religious wars spread havoc amongst its monasteries and reduced their number to about 5,000. In Denmark, Iceland, and Sweden, where several houses had joined the German (Bursfeld) Union, the order was entirely obHterated by the Lutherans about 1551 and its property confiscated by the crown. The arbitrary rule of Joseph II of Austria (1765-90) and the French Revolution and its consequences completed the work of destruction, so that in the early part of the nineteenth century the order numbered scarcely more than fifty monasteries all told. The last seventy years, however, have witnessed a remark- able series of revivals and an accession of missionary enterprise, mth the result that there are now over one hundred and fifty monasteries of black monks, or, including affiUated congregations and convents of nuns, a total of nearly seven hundred. These re- vivals and examples of expansion will now be treated in detail under the headings of the various congre- gations, which will bring the history of the order down to the present day.
(] ) The English Congregation. — The EngUsh were the first to put into practice the decrees of the Lateran Council. Some time was necessarily spent
