One of the ways in which Christian thinkers attempted to create the sense of an integrated self was by means of ascetic practices in which mind and body could be brought into a harmonious relationship. My purpose in Chapters 1 and 2 of this book is to discuss one of these practices, namely sacred reading, and its relationship to questions of selfhood. In this chapter, I briefly review the principles of sacred reading (lectio divina) in the writings of John Cassian and Benedict of Nursia. In Chapter 2, I outline the way Augustine utilizes this style of reading as a framework for bringing together the contemplative dimension of literary experience and the notion of the creative imagination.
In Augustine’s mature writings, ascetic practices are traced to biblical sources,1 whereas in his early works they are chiefly associated with Platonism and Pythagoreanism. There is a reminder of the second of these philosophical connections at the end of De Ordine, written in the winter of 386–387, when his young friend Alypius expresses his admiration for the introduction to the classical sources of asceticism that their master has given to the group assembled at Cassiciacum. Among the steps in the direction of the contemplative life that Augustine has recommended is the traditional renunciation of wealth, honors, and the pleasures of the senses.
His inspiration for this advice, Alypius notes, is “the venerable and virtually divine teaching . . . attributed to Pythagoras,” who, searching for “the shrines of truth,” united a set of rules for living an ethical life with the knowledge of how such a life should be lived (uitae regulas et scientiae). As often in the Augustinian dialogues, the student echoes the master’s own thinking. Augustine was convinced that Pythagoreans, Platonists, and Neoplatonists had all advocated ascetic programs in which worldly pleasures were to be abandoned, on the assumption that the soul, in thus purifying itself, would subsequently ascend to unity with higher principles or with God.2
Although he does not draw attention to the techniques of sacred reading in De Ordine or in other philosophical writings in this period, Augustine was by that time aware that Christian ascetics had found a pathway to detachment from the world through concentrated study and reflection on biblical texts.3 After his ordination in 391, it is sacred reading that becomes the major meditative and contemplative discipline in his writings, complementing and in some sense replacing the comparable methods associated with Platonism and Pythagoreanism. Along with the adoption of monastic practices at Hippo, this type of reading assumes an ever increasing role in his implementation of the Christian ascetic life.4
Two acknowledged sources of this method of sacred reading in late antiquity are John Cassian and Benedict of Nursia. Taken together, they provide a helpful framework within which to examine Augustine’s highly personal style of lectio divina. Cassian was his near contemporary, and Benedict, who used Cassian’s Conferences as a source in writing the Rule, presented a more detailed and systematic account of the uses to which such reading could be put.
In the Conferences, reading is not isolated in the pursuit of the ascetic life; it is discussed alongside other devotional practices, including prayer, the chanting of psalms, and the divine office. By contrast, in the Rule, sacred reading has a coordinating function in the setup and practice of monasticism.5
Both authors speak of the necessity of the monk’s renunciation of an autonomous or independent self. In the prologue to the Rule, Benedict specifically invites a person who is desirous of entering the monastic life to be prepared to give up the willfulness that is associated with the satisfaction of one’s own desires (abrenuntians propriis voluntatibus). In his view, community life consists in a suppression of particular initiatives concerning the self in favor of shared values, which are based on the teachings of the gospels, the church fathers, and the lives of the saints, in particular St. Antony. The desert fathers and early coenobitic communities, such as those that Augustine observed on the outskirts of Milan in 384–385, were emphatic on linking the configuration of the self to the ascetic process of self-denial. The Milanese monks made a deep and lasting impression on him at the very moment when he was attempting to sort out the philosophical and biblical influences on his thinking about the self. As a preface to a discussion of Augustine’s views in Chapter 2, therefore, it may be useful to review the interrelated descriptions of lectio divina that are found in the writings of John Cassian and Benedict.
John Cassian’s dates are roughly 365–435. His Collationes Patrum in Scetica Eremo, in which his reflections on reading are chiefly found, was edited and published around 426. This work records a series of interviews touching on the topics of prayer, reading, and other aspects of the ascetic life that took place sometime after 399 between himself, his traveling companion Germanus, and some fifteen Christian ascetics, otherwise unknown, who were living in different localities in the desert near Alexandria. In his characterization of these remote communities, Cuthbert Butler notes,
every man was left very much to himself and his own discretion: “they have different practices, each as he is able and as he wishes” (Palladius). There was no rule of life. The elders exercised an authority; but it was mainly personal . . . The society appears to have been a sort of spiritual democracy, guided by the personal influence of the leading ascetics . . . The monks used to visit one another frequently and discourse, two or three or more together, on Holy Scripture or the spiritual life.6
It is within this style of life that Cassian speaks of the uses of reading and prayer by individuals and groups of ascetics. The themes touched upon in the conversations include the specific topics found in the biblical texts under scrutiny as well as the spiritual principles they are thought to entail. The latter are occasionally expanded into more general statements on questions relating to the interior life. The view among infrequent visitors such as Cassian to the region’s scattered monastic enclaves was that “the holy men were believed to have merited a peculiar indwelling of the Holy Spirit which guided their moral perception and lent authority to their words.”7
In interpreting their statements on the power of reading and prayer, John attempted to create an image of an ideal Christian community in which monks were living in accord with the norms of the apostolic life. As portrayed in the Conferences, this style of life was based on a simple, uncluttered faith in Christ and was maintained, as far as possible, without possessions, even without books, which were frequently looked on with suspicion. In order to present a convincing picture of the pursuit of these ideals in the desert communities he visited, Cassian selected, modified, and interpreted much of the material he and Germanus recorded. The result was a distinctive literary genre among the writings of early Christian thinkers, namely the collatio, in a period that saw the appearance of diverse reflections on monastic experience. These included the Historia Monachorum, the Lausiac History of Palladius, the Dialogues of Sulpicius Severus, and the Cassiciacum dialogues of Augustine.
Like Augustine, Cassian’s writings on this theme are the product of training in rhetoric and philosophy. To the student of ancient traditions in these fields, the work’s title would seem to echo, if not the notion of a philosophical banquet, as in the Symposium, at least one of those many spontaneous occasions for dining and serious conversation that are made familiar to ancient and modern readers by narrators between Petronius and Augustine. An acquaintance with philosophy is likewise suggested by the background of Cassian’s thinking, which consists in a generalized Platonic view of the soul’s upward movement toward the One, in whose unity and perfection is thought to reside the world’s permanent foundation.
His interpretation of this principle is chiefly grounded in the teachings of Origen of Alexandria, whose commentaries were instrumental in bringing Plato’s theory of forms into the orbit of Christian theology, despite this writer’s troubled status in traditional theological circles after 399. Cassian was deaconin Constantinople between 400 and 403 and is thought to have been favorable to the Origenist viewpoint. This may have been the reason for his apparently involuntary departure from the city in 405. He was also influenced by the idealistic spiritual writings of Evagrius Ponticus. Here, as in Cassian, emphasis is placed on an ascetic life based on faith and charity and characterized philosophically by the absence of passion (apatheia). Silent prayer is conceived meditatively as a way of emptying the mind and preparing for the individual’s spiritual ascent. In both Evagrius and Cassian, this is looked upon as a process of mental purification set in motion by the combined activities of reading and prayer, even though its ultimate source is thought to be divine.8
The view of the self that is implied in the theology of Evagrius and Cassian is one in which a person’s inner forces are constantly in battle. It is an epic and heroic struggle. Decisive victory can only be brought about by an effort of will. Thus, while the monk renounces one type of willfulness, which is a source of pride and potential individualism, he engages another, more exacting, in search of his soul’s purification. The view of the ascetic life in Evagrius and Cassian is rigorous and uncompromising. Surrender to a single vice is considered to be the equivalent of surrender to them all. Negative behavior must be abandoned in all its forms; only afterward can the contemplative experience a type of gnosis and hope for eventual enlightenment. In Cassian’s view, his most powerful enemy is his personal indifference to his fate. For, when he is not battling against vice, he is most vulnerable to giving in to temptation. In such moments he may be under the illusion that his mind is at rest, but in reality it is besieged by evil forces arising from the outside and from within the mind itself.
Yet this war between flesh and spirit, while potentially destructive of self, lays the foundation for a structured and integrated self. No miracles or divine interventions are needed; no natural forces acting from the outside. As Socrates and ancient Stoics taught, it is only necessary to believe that one can win victory over oneself. The desert monks are convinced that self-conquest cannot be imposed from above, even though, in the final analysis, it is conceived as a gift of God. The battle must be waged in open combat, day by day. The struggle is continuous. The only weapons at the monk’s disposal are ascetic exercises, such as fasting, self-vigilance, and mortification. Chief among these techniques is prayer, which includes both liturgical devotions and sacred reading, for it is during prayer that the warring elements of flesh and spirit are most easily reconciled, proceeding toward equilibrium in stages, by means of meditation. This involves both mental and physical exertion, since prayer and reading take place through the voice as well as the eyes and ears. The road upward is steep: advance is slow, and proceeds step by step. The making of a self-perfected self may take years, even a lifetime.
As noted, in his reflections on these issues, it is not easy to separate what Cassian is reporting from his conversations with the desert monks from the moral and ethical ideas he himself wishes to implant into the Conferences (especially in conference 13, where he attacks Augustine’s teaching on grace and helps to set in motion the debate on semi-Pelagianism, which erupted in 426–427). However, we can be reasonably sure that he is faithfully reporting the manner in which the desert fathers carried on meditative reading and prayer. In analyzing this type of ascetic activity we must remember that
lectio divina . . . begins in the state of mind of the reader, who prepares himself for the Word of God, to read and to savour it, to pray, and to engage it in practice. It is not a question of exegesis, even monastic, nor hermeneutics, nor of the theological or pastoral utilization of Scripture, but simply of a type of reading that is free and peaceful, but which nonetheless requires an effort of reflection, meditatio, issuing in prayer, oratio, in which the monks always liked to converse.9
It follows that there can be no single formula for describing all versions of this type of experience, since it differs in minor ways from one devoted person to another. On occasion Cassian records statements by the desert monks with whom he conversed in which reading appears to be a quasiindependent form of ascetic practice. This is the impression created, for example, at conference 14.10, where abbot Nestoros tells Cassian and Germanus:
If you wish to arrive at true knowledge of scripture you must first make haste to establish an unmovable humility of heart. . . . However, take care that, in your eagerness for reading (per studium lectionis) . . . you do not find instruments of perdition (instrumenta perditionis) rather than the light of knowledge (scientiae lumen). . . . When all earthly cares and thoughts have been put aside, devote yourself constantly to sacred reading (sacrae lectioni) in order that continuous meditation (continua meditatio) may fill your mind.
The principles involved in this type of prayer are summed up by abbot Isaac in conferences 9 and 10, the one outlining general principles of prayer and the other providing illustrations of these principles from the life of Christ and the lives of saints. Cassian’s thinking is well illustrated by conference 9, in which the subject is the frequently reiterated theme of an enduring spiritual “edifice” in the mind of each monk.10 The most important element in this construction is continual and uninterrupted prayer: in Isaac’s view, this is the source and final objective of the perfecting of the heart.11 It is a labor of both mind and body, whose combined efforts are ultimately directed toward maintaining an immobile tranquility of soul (ad immobilem tranquillitatem mentis).
The training may only proceed as it should if the monk’s personal health and constitution permit, since it is necessary for him to keep his body as well as his mind in a permanent state of purity (perpetuam . . . puritatem, 9.2). The ascetic life, as thus conceived, consists in a combination of physical labor and untiring contrition of the spirit or heart (tam laborem corporis quam contritionem spiritus indefesse quaeritur, 9.2). These elements are united in a “reciprocal and indissoluble relationship,”12 preparing the way for the mental and physical edifice that they subsequently represent.13 This is a process of both thought and action, in which the monks attempt to rid themselves of habitual vices as well as the accumulated debris of their negative emotions. Only then, in Isaac’s view, will they be able to lay a foundation for their spiritual lives on the solid ground of the heart, which, freed from outside influences, can become a source of ongoing simplicity and humility.
The plan that Isaac puts forward is an intentional design, inasmuch as the necessary elements have to be in place before mental and physical construction begins. How this comes about is the second topic of conference 9, and it is here that reading, or one should say, pre-reading, plays a central role. This phase begins with the liberation of the mind from a number of potential distractions, such as the needs of the body, the problems of everyday life, and unnecessary conversation. Also, as noted, involuntary emotions are to be kept under control, especially those expressing anger, anxiety, or depression. And, needless to say, there is no place for sexual or monetary concerns. Thus isolated from malevolent influences, the mind may show less inclination to wander from its chosen path.
However, there is one formidable impediment to the individual’s spiritual progress, even if these preventive measures are in place. This consists in the memories of abandoned pleasures, which, Isaac is convinced, cannot be eradicated permanently or completely, no matter what precautions are taken in advance. The abbot reminds his visitors that
we have to guard above all against our memories. Whatever we have conceived in our minds before the time of prayer is carried with us into the moment when we pray, since by necessity it has been incorporated into our mental records. Therefore, as we would wish ourselves to be during prayer, so we must endeavour to be before we pray, for the disposition of the mind during prayer depends on its state preceding prayer.
Negative thoughts, for example, those involving fear, sadness, or forms of personal indisposition, can be reintroduced involuntarily and effortlessly into our minds by means of a combination of memory and imagination. As mental events, these thoughts appear to us with clarity and vividness, as if they were taking place at that very moment rather than being recalled from a previous time.14 In coming to life in this manner, they are difficult to resist and can easily prevent us from attaining the level of concentration that is required for genuine prayer. Such troubling images may redirect our thoughts to worldly matters that have been put aside and forgotten during the process in which the disciplines of the contemplative life are taking hold. It is because of such potentially destructive forces that Paul recommends to those pursuing a life of faith a series of uninterrupted devotions, admitting, as far as possible, no extraneous or unnecessary thoughts.15 For the soul, Isaac observes, is like a downy and weightless feather, which can easily be blown about on the random and directionless winds of our cares and anxieties.16 Like Dostoyevsky centuries later, he is convinced that this is one of the legitimate form in which we may speak of the devil’s work in the world.17
But what is the nature of this prayer, which Isaac never tires of telling his visitors is the highest achievement of the monk’s spiritual life? The question is asked by Germanus, to whom the abbot gives a practical if elusive reply. While there may be purity of the heart and soul in all those who pray with sincerity, it is impossible to distinguish one type of prayer from another, since all benefit from illumination on the part of the Holy Spirit. In his opinion, there may be as many kinds of prayer as there are states and conditions (status . . . qualitatesque) of the soul. Their variety is too great for accurate description, even by someone like himself, who is reasonably well acquainted with their different forms. Each person prays individually, and, in a sense, autonomously. As a consequence, the only way to judge the value and nature of a specific prayer is “in relation to the measure of its purity, in which an individual soul progresses on its own, with respect to its own state and condition, either influenced by forces from the outside or renewed from within by its own industry.”18 We pray differently if we are happy or sad, if satisfied with what we have or beset with temptation. Our attitude varies, depending on whether we are actively seeking virtue or grace or merely averting vice; whether we are thinking about the life of the blessed or hell and the last judgment, whether we sense that we are in peril and react defensively, or have security, and benefit from tranquility. In short, our point of view changes, chiefly in consideration of whether our minds are turned upward or remain below, entangled in worldly concerns.19 In this context, Isaac suggests, an act of devotion is essentially a promise made to God20 and a statement of intentions, which can take one of four forms: prayer itself, or a supplication, plea, or blessing.21
At conference 9.26, the visitors are given a brief but moving description of one of these styles of prayer, namely the reading of psalms. The lesson is delivered by Isaac, who prefaces his account by asking if there is anyone who might have the experience necessary to analyze the different forms of compunction that arise during prayer and therefore be able to give an account of their respective sources. Who, he asks, among the monks, can speak authoritatively of the means by which the soul is “inflamed” and “uplifted” in fervent devotion? Requesting the Lord’s help, he recalls (reminisci) occasions when he himself has undergone this type of mental elevation. His words can be rendered in this way:
I chant a psalm. A verse of the psalm inflames my heart. And when I listen to the music in the voice of one of my brethren, chanting a psalm, our souls are moved together. They arise, as if from sleep, and ascend, united in ardent prayer. I know, as well, that the singularity and seriousness of someone chanting the psalms can inspire great fervor in the minds of the bystanders, who are only listening.22
It is difficult not to be impressed by the sincerity of this description. However, it is necessary to note that this account differs from more intimate types of prayer that are outlined in conference 9. In contrast to the recitation of the psalms, the latter are intended to be frequent and brief.23 Also, as prayers they are entirely internal, silent, and secret. For, following the Lord’s instructions in the Sermon on the Mount, one should, so to speak, in preparing to pray, first go into one’s room and shut the door.24 In Isaac’s interpretation of this statement, “to pray in our room” means to withdraw from the tumult of our thoughts and anxieties and to pray secretly (secreto) and intimately (familiariter) whenever, as individuals, we offer our prayers to the Lord (9.35). Not only are we to perform these duties in physical privacy: by “shutting the door” it is also suggested that we should pray entirely within ourselves, without opening our mouths or uttering a sound. Our inner silence will thereby offer a real and symbolic contrast to the potential disturbances coming from the outside world. In this state of perfect noiselessness we present our prayers and petitions to God, who has, of course, no need of our words, since he is able to look directly into our hearts.25 Thus we are alone but not alone. Although we hear no voice but our own,26 we are in silent dialogue with our Maker.
Similar principles hold for collective prayer, which is frequently mentioned in the conferences. These are discussed in a summary passage at Institutes 2.10–11, where the emphasis is again on the primary role of attention. When the monks celebrate their daily services, Cassian notes,
everyone is silent, even though many brethren have come together. One would easily believe that no one was present except the person who rises to chant the psalm in their midst. . . . There is no spitting, clearing of throats, loud coughing, or tired yawning from wide-open, gaping mouths. There are no sighs, groans, or unnecessary noises, which might disturb those in attendance. No voice is heard other than that of the priest (who leads the prayer).
This is to restate in graphic and experiential terms the already mentioned directive of Isaac and other monks concerning their prayers, namely, in order for them to be efficacious, they must be undertaken in the right frame of mind. There is no place in periods of devotion for boredom, fatigue, or unwanted noise, which can only lead to inattentive prayer in others. No shift in mood is to be tolerated, which might interrupt the monks’ focus on their entreaties to God:
It is for this reason that the monks do not attempt to perform the Psalms (in the service) on their own, individually, but chant them together, continuously, as a part of the assembled congregation. In this manner each psalm is divided into two or three segments, and the recitation of these verses is interspersed with prayers. For what pleases the brethren is not the number of verses, however great they may be, but the intelligence or understanding with which they are grasped in the mind (non enim multitudine uersuum sed mentis intelligentia delectantur). It is this that they are after: “I shall sing with the spirit, and I shall sing with the mind.” (1 Cor.14:15)27
At Conference 10.8, Germanus attempts to summarize Isaac’s statements on the principles involved in the different sorts of daily meditations and to put them in order. In any art or discipline (ars seu disciplina), he observes, the beginnings are very simple. One is taught first what is easiest to learn, usually by means of a method that is gentle and encouraging. Later, nourished by reason, the mind addresses more lofty considerations, passing, so to speak, through “the portals” of a chosen profession and penetrating its inner regions. The transition from this primary form of education to the perfecting of one’s skills is compared to learning to read and write. Germanus asks:
How can a child pronounce those simple unions of syllables (that make up words) unless beforehand he has diligently acquired the knowledge of the marks or signs that represent the letters? And how will he learn to read with fluency if he has not first acquired the ability to unite these short and narrowly construed depictions of words? Further, how can a person who is ignorant of grammar hope to achieve facility in rhetoric or the knowledge of philosophy? The same holds for the supreme discipline, which unites us with God. (10.8)
Two thing are necessary if we wish to focus our thoughts on God through meditative reading.28 First, we must keep our minds still and motionless (inmobiliter custodire). If our thoughts slip away for any reason, we must bring them back, preferably without having to go through the elaborate and wasteful process of relocating them in their proper places. In order to make this type of search unnecessary, we must retain them, so to speak, before our eyes (prae oculis retentantes), so that we have something to return to, quickly and without undue effort, whenever our attention has shifted, as it does from time to time, without our being aware of the cause, purpose, or direction.
To these classical instructions in meditative technique, common to both early Christianity and other meditative religions, such as Buddhism, Germanus adds a second concern, namely that of self-care. He asks how the self is to be managed and maintained within the different spiritual constitutions of individual persons. The answer is an extension of contemplative practice. If our minds wander from spiritual considerations (de theoriis spiritualibus) and we make use of a meditative discipline in finding our way back to their demands, we will have given ourselves the impression that we are returning to our former reflections as if we were coming back to our very selves after a time of absence. It is as if we had undergone a period of deathly sleep (ad nosmet ipsos velut de letali sopore conuertimur); and, like people waking from such unhealthy slumbers we naturally search at once for something that will reignite our minds (expergefacti materiam quaerimus) and, through memory, bring us back to the mental and spiritual state in which we were beforehand. In Germanus’s view, it is the tendency of the mind to peregrinations, if uncontrolled, which is the chief obstacle to achieving and maintaining the meditative state of mind that is the precondition of prayer (10.8). This wandering has the effect of separating us from our inner selves, which are gradually revealed to us again in the process of prayer, as our mental energies are regathered together and concentrated.
This theory, Isaac notes, is well summed up in the directive of Psalm 69:2, by which we are told to keep God always in the forefront of our thoughts. An interpretation of this statement is attempted at conference 10.10 and 10.11, in which the abbot’s source is the admonition of Moses at Deuteronomy 6:4 to love God with all one’s heart. This, he says, is to be reflected upon “when either sitting at home or when passing on the way” so that love is written
on the threshold and gateway of your mouth and on the walls of your house and in the inner regions of your heart in such a way that it will become a continuous prayer, an endless refrain, either when you bow down on your knees or rise up to perform the necessary tasks of everyday life.
This level of concentration requires a type of memory that differs from that of memorizing a text. This is a singular act, whereas what Isaac has in mind more closely resembles a repetitive or reiterative activity (as in the rosary). For in Isaac’s view it is necessary for the soul to grasp the meaning of the biblical statement, not only in the mind, as writing that is read visually and so understood, but also, and primarily, in the heart, after it is said over and over again. The text has to be ceaselessly meditated upon, to the point that the subject acquires the strength of purpose to refuse any alternatives in interpretation, especially, Isaac notes, those that are richer and more ample in purview.29 These are to be looked upon as temptations to be resisted.
Here we encounter again the theme of renunciation, this time in the form of a deliberate narrowing and impoverishing of the range of thought. (One might suggest, with some reservations, a comparison with the “emptying” of the mind, as in some forms of Buddhist meditation.) In Isaac’s view, this is a move toward a desired state of simplicity and humility, whose features have been well summed up by Owen Chadwick:
This study is not precisely intellectual. It has perhaps an intellectual issue or aspect, for the fathers of the Conferences frequently explain texts hard to be understood. But the process is a continued meditation which forms the soul. . . . The word of God, stored within the mind, begins to present to the soul new meanings and to deepen its understanding. It is to be memorized, so that the texts spring to mind almost unbidden. Its thoughts drive out the wandering thoughts or prevent the entry of demonic thoughts.30
Moses’s statement, Isaac argues, is a version of the first of the apostolic beatitudes, namely “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Mt. 5:3). It is the person who excels in this type of intellectual impoverishment who best fulfills the prophet’s command to love God with all one’s heart, no matter where he happens to be.31 For what poverty, he asks, can be greater and more admirable than that of a person who recognizes the limitations of his strength and defenses; who is not immune to changes in circumstances but accommodates them; and who thus understands that at every moment his life and being (uitam suam atque substantiam) are maintained through divine assistance? It is a path that leads from sacred reading, as a discipline involving the body, to the monk’s progressive embodiment of the virtue of humility in interaction with the mind.
A series of metaphors provides illustrations of these statements, for example, Psalm 103:18, in which it is said, “The mountain tops are for deer, while the rocks are for hedgehogs.” A person who persists in a life of simplicity and innocence is a danger to no one: he merely wishes to be protected from his enemies, like a hedgehog hiding under a stone. The monk is similarly protected by the Lord’s passion and, in meditating on this truth, encounters both the deer and the hedgehog in himself. Confirmation of this inner discovery is found by Isaac in Proverbs, where it is written: “Hedgehogs are a weak race and make their dwelling-places among the rocks” (Prov. 30:26). In interpreting such biblical statements, Isaac argues that no one is weaker (inualidius) in his spiritual health than a Christian seeking contemplative norms and values; no one is more infirm (infirmius) than a monk, who realizes that he lacks the means to avenge the wrongs against him and consequently does not dare to feel the lightest emotion at their injustice, even if it arises silently within himself.
Such a person, if his progress is to continue, must not only attain simplicity, humility, and a state of newly found innocence, as proposed in a number of the conferences. He must also exhibit the sort of discretion in his life choices that will insure that satanic influences are kept at bay. To extend the biblical metaphor, he must no longer think of himself as a lowly hedgehog but take on the image of a deer, as he feeds on the mountain tops of prophetic and apostolic thought. It is in this frame of mind that he will penetrate the deep emotions and dispositions of the Psalms, to take them to himself and, so to speak, for himself. He will chant them, not only envisaging them as composed by the prophets, but also, and more pertinently, as if he himself had written them—as if, in a sense, they were his own private and intimately composed prayers, uttered within the innermost regions of his heart. This message on the nature of compunction recalls the figure of the prophet, as a distant model for pious behavior, while being fulfilled in the daily activity of the monk’s life.32
It is here that Isaac makes a second connection between prayer and sacred reading, supplementing his recollection of chanting a psalm at 9.6. At the point at which we perceive that the psalms were composed both for the prophets and for us, he proposes, scripture reveals its message more clearly than ever, so to speak, through its “veins and marrow.” For the meaning of the texts comes to us, not by way of an exposition (expositionem) but through the example (documentum) that we have made of it ourselves. Filled with the sentiments that were felt when the psalm was sung or composed, we become, so to speak, its authors (auctores). We anticipate rather than follow its meaning: it is for us a set of intentions to be fulfilled in action. Its sacred words stir up the mental record (notitiam) of the attacks we have endured and are enduring daily, owing to negligence or misplaced fervor. We recall the good things that Providence has allowed us, as well as the memories of the things that we have, with our human subtlety and insidiousness, simply forgotten to do. We think of the blemishes on our character that have been left by our many personal weaknesses. We regret what has befallen us though improvidence and ignorance.
As we chant or sing, Isaac notes, we are reminded of all this (decantantes reminscamur). We discover the range of sentiments expressed in the psalm. We understand what is being said to us, and to us alone, as if we were looking at ourselves in a mirror of the utmost clarity (in speculo purissimo). As we are instructed through what we feel (adfectibus eruditi), these are things that we learn, not, so to speak, from having heard them (audita) but from having had them in view and felt them ourselves (perspecta palpemus). As a consequence, they are not like the sorts of messages that we send off to our memories for storage until they are needed by the mind; instead, we produce them spontaneously from the springs of emotion in our hearts (interno cordis . . . adfectu), as if they were sentiments that are found within us naturally and form a part of our being. We do not penetrate their meaning through the sense of the text that we have read (eorum sensus non textu lectionis) but through our preceding experience (experientia praecedente). This sort of prayer, in the spiritual purity to which it ascends by interior routes, requires no images or words (quae non solum nullius imaginis occupatur intuitu sed etiam nulla vocis). It consists in a fiery outburst in the mind’s intentions and in an inexpressible moment of the heart’s elevation (ignito uero mentis intentione per ineffabilem cordis excessum . . . profertur). It is a tiny bit of time in which the soul is able to pour itself out directly to God (10.11).
It would appear, then, for Isaac, as well as for his brethren in the desert, that prayer and sacred reading form a single continuous experience of mental and spiritual ascent. It is not reading that is the critical element in the process but the upward movement of the heart, in which is lodged the force of pure prayer. The mind must be kept focused during the devotional experience, and this is brought about by three ascetic activities, namely vigils, meditation, and prayer.33 Acting in concert, these give strength and stability to the soul from the inside; and this continuity, Isaac notes, is best maintained within the normal routines of daily life rather than by conditions imposed from outside, such as might be dictated by desires or ambitions. The force that moves us upward, and prevents us from falling back, is continual prayer. Yet the condition of the soul during prayer is largely dependent on its condition before prayer begins. This implies that pre-reading has taken place, as a form of intentional devotion. The soul will only rise or fall in relation to where it was at its point of departure. And no one is hindered from working toward perfection because of an inability to read alone: this is just a means of attaining purity of heart and soul.34
Cassian’s views form the basis of some of the important statements on sacred reading that are found in the Rule of Benedict of Nursia, written around 540. I now turn to these, after which I would like to say something about the type of self-transformation that is implied in this aspect of the program for the ascetic life.
Despite the important role that reading plays in cenobitic monasticism, Benedict devotes only one chapter of his Rule expressly to this subject (c. 38); this deals with reader of the week, that is, the person who reads scripture during meals and during prayers after mass and communion. Nonetheless, there are references to various sorts of reading in the Rule in which lectio normally refers to the reading aloud of a religious text by an individual before a group of monks,35 even though, as I suggest below, other terms and expressions are sometimes used to indicate that reading is taking place, even if the term lectio is not expressly mentioned.
Reading also takes place privately, both aloud and in silence. When Benedict speaks of these types of reading, he qualifies lectio or legere, for instance in the phrase legere sibi, to read for oneself (48.5). It is assumed that the monks are aware of the type of reading that is being referred to. There is no general description of the reading process in chapter 38 or elsewhere in the Rule. We know that Benedict is normally referring to oral reading, since in this chapter as in others discussing reading he states that during such lectiones silence is to be maintained. It is important, therefore, to distinguish in the Rule between the rare and occasioned references to silent reading, by oneself, and the majority of references to reading, which refer to reading aloud. Also, the admonition concerning silence is not usually accompanied by suggestions of inner spiritual reflection; in chapter 38 it chiefly expresses Benedict’s desire that there should be no unnecessary noise to distract the monks from the content of the texts being read or to prevent them from hearing the reader’s words. Echoing Cassian’s Institutes, he states that when the reading is taking place, there is to be no muttering or chattering; and if anything is needed, it should be requested, not by the voice, but by a sign.36
Other passages in the Rule confirm the sense of lectio as oral reading, either individually, for oneself, or publicly, before the congregated monks. At 4.35, Benedict admonishes his brethren to listen freely and willingly to the sacred readings (lectiones sanctas libenter audire). Reading aloud is thereby given equal status with oral prayer (4.55). In the Rule this type of reading and/or prayer occasionally has formal and even ceremonial associations, as at 14.1–2, where Benedict speaks of a procedure or method (modus) by which, on saints’ days or other solemn festivals, there is a mixture of readings, psalms, refrains, and passages of scripture. As in Cassian, reading aloud is interdependent with psalmody (18.10; 18.18). The phrase lectioni vacare (to devote oneself to reading) usually refers to the reading or chanting of psalms, or to a combination of both (e.g., 48.10).
While Benedict does not always specify the presence of a text, it can usually be assumed that it is the oral reading of physical texts to which lectio refers rather than to the recitation of passages of scripture from memory. This is clearly the case in the more extensive periods of reading during the monastic year, such as the times reserved for lectio from the first of October to the beginning of Lent (48.10). Still another type of oral and formal reading consists in the reading of the Rule itself. Benedict states that the Rule is to be read to novices after two months (58.9), and that more generally the legislation is to be read and referred to whenever the monks are together (saepius . . . in congregatione legi), lest anyone claim ignorance of important details. Unlike Pachomius, who makes allowance for guests in his community to meditate on scripture in solitude, Benedict sets down that the “divine law” is to be read aloud before each newcomer for his instruction and edification (Legatur coram hospite lex divina ut aedificetur, 53.9).37
It should be noted that these readings are not intended by Benedict to be simply an oral recitation of the text. Lectio means reading with understanding. This is suggested by the way in which group readings take place; for instance, during the night office, after psalmody, a verse is read and the abbot offers a blessing; then, when everyone is seated, the brethren read three selections from the book on the lectern in turn (Legantur vicissim a fratribus in codice super analogium tres lectiones, 9.5). The reading of such texts is thereby distinguished from the psalms and prayers which precede and the responsories which follow (9.5–6), as contrasted with statements on the theme elsewhere in the Rule, where these types of reading sometimes overlap. Some thought goes into the choice of these texts, since Benedict adds that among readings appropriate for these occasions are selections from the Old and New Testaments along with passages of the church fathers. Another sign of the need for comprehension and reflection on the texts that are read is found in Benedict’s recommendation that, after Compline, suitable readings may include the Conferences of Cassian or the Lives of the desert fathers, “but not the Heptateuch or the book of Kings, since it will not be useful for those of weak intellect to hear these writings at this hour.” Reading is thus related to the monks’ capacity for mental attention and understanding.
The sensorial and conceptual vocabulary employed by Benedict confirms these initial impressions concerning the nature of the reading that takes place in the monastic community. Audire in this context means to hear words spoken as they are read aloud. In the emphasis on hearing, it is tempting to see a frequently evoked Old Testament theme,38 and this is surely echoed in Benedict’s admonition to the assembled monks to “listen with care to the precepts of the master (Christ or abbot), and to pay attention to them with the ear of your heart.”39 Confirmation of this view is likewise found in the Prologue, where Benedict unites a number of scriptural passages by means of the sense of hearing; these refer either to the voice of heaven, of the Spirit, or of the word of God.40 There are occasions when audire means hearing without implying that reading is taking place, as when the abbot assembles the community and explains certain matters, listening afterward to the advice of the brethren (3.1–2). But even here lectiones sanctae are in the background, since he is conceived as speaking for Christ (Lk. 10:16; cf. Reg. 5:6; 5:15). In this context, hearing scripture read aloud may provide the brethren with an interval in which difficulties in the texts can be thought about and perhaps overcome. In all cases this type of reading is a community event: Lauds and Vespers must never pass, Benedict states, without the superior’s recitation at the end of the Lord’s Prayer for all to hear (omnibus audientibus, 13.12). He likewise observes that reading in order or rank is less important than the quality of the reader and his ability to instruct his listeners (3.12; 47.2). These readings are likewise a way of limiting speech. Benedict states that monks should not relate by word of mouth anything they have seen outside the monastery (67.5). They are to resist hearsay, idle gossip, and needless grumbling.
As noted, there are connections between the various words for designating reading, whether these refer to reading from the page or to listening to someone else reading aloud. In these contexts the noun lectio is found 39 times in the Rule and legere 26, while there are 112 texts which contain the related terms psallere (11), psalmodia (3), and psalmus (98). Typical of the implied links between these various words for reading is the statement in chapter 13, where the subject is how Matins are to be performed on ordinary days. Here one finds reading mentioned in the contexts of singing, reciting, praying, or following along, as a text is read. It is assumed that the monks are either literate or illiterate but under instruction, and that the texts being read are comprehended without great difficulty; as a consequence, most of chapter 13 is devoted to technical considerations. For example, there is to be a recitation (dicere) of Psalms 66, 50, and, depending on the day, 5 and 35 (Monday), 42 and 56 (Tuesday), 63 and 64 (Wednesday), 87 and 89 (Thursday), and 75 and 91 (Friday). On all days this is to be followed by Psalms 148 to 150, by one reading from the Apostle Paul from memory, a responsory, an Ambrosian hymn, a versicle, the Gospel canticle, a litany, and a conclusion (13.2–11). To reiterate, in these instructions no mention is made of different styles of reading; it is simply taken for granted that they are variants on a single method. A similar set of interrelations exists for the terms repetere (18.10) and recitare (9.10, 17.4, 17.8, and 24.4).
There is recognition within the Rule of the subjective and objective elements in the reading process, although this is not emphasized or made a topic of comment. Codex normally refers to the book as an objective entity, quite apart from the reader’s reconstruction, oral or mental, of the text that it contains (9.5; 9.8; 10.2). Lectio, the subjective element, refers to one’s own reading or to that of the appointed reader. In both the objective and subjective dimensions of the reading process there is an implied connection between reading and interpretation as well as between reading and behavior. It is the second of these aspects of reading that is frequently on Benedict’s mind in talking about reading as an aspect of the ascetic life, and here the subjective element plays a large role. For, while the book, in an objective sense, is the locus of authority (e.g., 9.8: codices . . . divinae auctoritatis), within the group it is the individual reader’s reconstruction of the text that is the source of shared norms of conduct.
A comparable set of relations holds for Benedict’s use of the substantive, scriptum, and the derivatives of the verb, scribere, which is frequently used as a past participle in the sense of a text, as the product of the act of writing (e.g., 2.28, 2.35, 3.13, 6.4, 7.59, 7.61, 31.4, 33.6, 34.1, 58.20, 60.3, 61.14, 63.17, 70.7). It is more difficult to define the range of meaning of another derivative, namely scriptura, which can refer to any transcribed text as well as to a passage of scripture; in the second sense scriptura is a synonym for sacra pagina, which, depending on its context, can mean both the text of scripture and its oral reading and commentary. It is in the setting of these multiple meanings that we must understand Benedict’s words to the monks in the Prologue of the Rule, in which he urges them to awaken from their slumbers, since they have been roused to action by the words of scripture (Prol., 8; cf. 7.1), that is, by hearing the text read as well as by the message it contains. In this way scripture is said to turn the monks from their desires (7.19) to cause fear and dread (7.21), to admonish virtuous actions (7.25), and to bring about healing through its divinely inspired “medicine” (28.3). Within these different meanings for scripture, there are likewise allusions to a variety of relationships between the oral and the visual. Private reading, as noted, is presumably oral in large part, and is mentioned as an exercise for Lent, when the monks may each take a single codex from the library (48.14) and read for themselves (48.17). Here legere and meditor are viewed as a single continuous activity (48.23). Private reading (legere sibi) is permitted after Sext, provided that others are not disturbed by the sound of the reader’s voice. In the time remaining after Vigils, those who need instruction from the psalter are advised to engage in lectio et meditatio. These types of reading are presumably visual and silent.
One of the important links between the objective and subjective elements in the reading process is provided by memory. In the Rule this relationship is more complicated than that described by Cassian for the desert fathers, in which the experience of scripture is largely one of performative memory. Perhaps as an expression of nostalgia for the monks of the desert, this type of reading is sometimes mentioned in the Rule within an oral and commemorative context. But the uses for memory in Benedict go beyond this and encompass a number of different functions, most related to textual experience and to what is nowadays called episodic memory, that is, to memory within personal narratives. One of the purposes of reading the Rule to the newcomer, literate, semi-literate, or illiterate, is to have it mentally recorded (58.9). As noted, there are frequent readings of the various chapters of the Rule for the whole community, in which ignorance consists in failure of recall (66.8). In these contexts one of the functions of lectio is the imprinting of precepts on the mind; recitation is largely a way of reinforcing their permanence and of testing the monks on how much they have learned. Hence reading and recitation are often alternated (10.2; 13.11: memoriter recitanda).
The abbot must be aware of his position in relation to the text of the Rule and act accordingly, without regard for the specific situation in which he finds himself (2.1; 2.30; 2.35). While he has to distrust his own memory, because of its potential weaknesses, he must bear in mind that his monks are likewise forgetful. He must not be too harsh in his judgments of the brethren’s memories, and, when asking them to commit passages of scripture or the Rule to memory, he must take care, as it is said, not to “crush the bruised reed” (64.13, quoting Isa. 42:3). He has to be aware that the monks are continually engaged in memorization of one sort or another, and that this is a time-consuming and wearying activity for most. In addition to the Rule, the texts in question include passages from the psalter (8.3) and from other books of the Bible, as well as pertinent sayings of the church fathers. In directing them to their labors and maintaining their attention, meditation is mentioned frequently as an aid to memory. But the major role is played by oral and commemorative reading, which takes place formally in the divine office and less formally in the collective reading of texts in support of the practice of virtue (73.9); even, occasionally, in the recollection of ancient monastic practices (67.2). Of course, all the forms of the divine office are dependent on memory, including Lauds and Vespers (13.12).
Memory is thus conceived in parallel with the sacred page, sacra pagina (e.g., 12.1). The bridge between the two is the human heart. In the Rule the heart is conceived as both the repository of living precepts and the source of action that is based on them: it is therefore the principal link, through memory, between thought and action. The single mention of intentionality in the Rule is connected to prayer and the heart (52.4: oret . . . in . . . intentione cordis). The phrase ex corde throughout the Rule refers to knowing a precept or text by heart, i.e., through memory. However, in the context of scripture, ex corde is contrasted with ex codice, as during the summer months, when Benedict notes that books are not always used in readings and passages of scripture are recited instead from memory (memoriter). The heart is conceived as a treasure-chest in which this textual material is sorted, abstracted, and stored. This is not quite an archive but is well on the way to being a repository of factual memory with precise contents. Benedict makes frequent references to phrases like “the ear of the heart” (Prol., 1), “in the will of the heart” (3.8), “evil thoughts . . . in the heart” (4.50), “murmurs in the heart” (5.17), “speaking to oneself in the heart” (7.51), and so forth, and what is often meant is a variant of the idea of lectio ex corde recitanda.
Memory also works by means of signs (signa). The term is not employed in the sense of a verbal or textual sign, as in Augustine’s De Doctrina Christiana books 2 and 3. In the Rule the sign refers to a level of meaning that falls below that of signification by means of language but nonetheless incorporates a role for memory. Thus, signum is any type of “signal” punctuating the phases of the monastic routine, for example, the sound of the bell in the middle of the night announcing the office (22.6), or, more simply, the gesture by the prior to rise for prayers (20.5). Signum likewise refers to the audible sign one is allowed to make during mealtime readings, even though, as noted, inaudible signs are preferred. As such, it is a sound that has a precise meaning, but one that does not interfere with the linguistic mode in which the message of scripture is conveyed (38.7). Finally, Benedict uses signum to indicate the mark which the unlettered novice makes in place of signing his name on the document committing him to obedience within the community (58.20).
Another indication of the connection between reading, speaking, and memory arises from Benedict’s notion of error. In the context of the Rule, an error is definable as a mistake in the reading aloud of a written text and occurs when a reader mispronounces a word, say, from a psalm, responsory, or refrain (44.1). We must therefore understand literalism in the Rule as referring both to fidelity to the written text and to the manner in which it is pronounced. The punishment for errors in reading is severe, except in the case of children (infantes, 44.3) and adolescents (adulescentes; e.g., 30.2; cf., 22.7 and 63.8). In adults, competence in reading is related both to correct pronunciation and to levels of spiritual progress, in both the Prologue and the Rule’s final chapters. Benedict notes that there are other writings from which the willing student can receive spiritual direction, including, as noted, the Bible, the lives of the desert fathers, and the conferences of John Cassian. What page (pagina), he asks, from these writings, what speech (sermo) in scripture, resting on divine authority, is not a righteous guide for human life (rectissima norma vitae humanae, 73.4)?
The terms pagina, sermo, and liber here are rough synonyms, all referring to the link between words and lives, and within those lives, between reading and conduct. However, if we examine Benedict’s vocabulary for these operations, it clear that they allow for considerable latitude. I take as an example of this his use of the terms cogitare and cogitatio, which are independent of the sacred reading process from which spiritual guidance is derived. In the Rule, cogitare means to have or keep something in the mind, in the sense of being aware of one’s duties toward others (2.34) or bearing in mind the potential judgment of God (55.27), since the good monk must constantly reflect on how to give God an account of his decisions and actions (63.3; cf. 64.7; 65.22). Cogitatio refers to the self-reliant thinking that makes possible the individual’s resistance to vice (1.5). Benedict also speaks of cogitationes malae (4.50) and of the sins and vices of both tongue and thought (7.12). However, these thoughts, good or evil, are always present to God, without intermediaries (7.4; cf., Ps. 94:11, 139:3). This is one of the many ideas that are taken over from the statements of the desert fathers in John Cassian and from passages of the Bible.
Another indication that it is life rather than a perceptual or cognitive experience that Benedict has in mind can be derived from the positive valuation that is placed on custom. The monk, he says, ascends by steps of humility, as these are developed in practice. In this process, the love of God, which he once expressed out of fear, is now expressed without effort, as though naturally and from habit (velut naturaliter ex consuetudine, 7.68). Virtue thereby becomes habit as well (7.69). Custom likewise indicates what is to be done in various stages of the divine office (13.3). Fasts too are customary (53.11). The visiting monk may remain with Benedict’s community, provided that he is satisfied with the consuetudo loci (61.2). It is incorrect to think of these activities as dimensions of texts rather than lives. In reality, they are a combination of the two, in which the overall emphasis is on the conversatio, that is, on the monastic life as it is lived (1.3; 1.12; 21.1; 22.2; 58.1; 58.17; 63.1, etc.).
Again, doctrina, the source of discipline, means doctrine as it is embodied in the abbot, not in the text. It is lived out and publicly observable (Prol., 50). In the image of the ancient spiritual guide, Benedict is convinced that everything that the abbot teaches should somehow permeate his disciples’ minds, since it is not chiefly his instruction but their obedience that will eventually be subjected to divine scrutiny (2.5–6). The best sort of abbot is one who teaches more by example than by words (2.11). Deans are to be chosen according to the merit of their lives and the wisdom of their doctrine (secundum vitae meritum et sapientiae doctrina, 21.4). Similarly, goodness in life and in teaching are the qualities that recommend the election of an abbot (64.2). Even the teachings of the church fathers are viewed as being directed chiefly toward observance and not uniquely toward the accumulation of doctrinal facts, as the monk proceeds on the road to perfection (73.2), ascending by steps to the summits of teaching and virtue (doctrina virtutumque culmina, 73.9). The reader of an informed text seeking spiritual progress is never isolated with the text alone, as he is envisaged in later periods, say the twelfth century or, more radically, the fifteenth and sixteenth. As soon as erroneous and sinful thoughts enter your heart, Benedict says, the individual monk must break them to pieces on the rock of Christ under the guidance of his spiritual father (4.50).
The combination of orality, custom, and lived experience pervades other notable concepts in the Rule. These are all kept at a relatively low level of abstraction. The adjective rationalis refers chiefly to verbal argument and the rationale derived from it (e.g., positively, 7.60; 31.7; negatively, 61.4; 65.14). Exempla are not written rules but, as noted, the examples provided by one’s superiors (7.55), the Good Shepherd (27.8), and one’s own acts of humility (60.5; 61.9). Lex means law in the sense of rules that are validated or invalidated by experience. Law is not simply what one wishes to do, as in some communities (1.8): it is the very symbol of the monastery, the text that is first read to visitors (53.9). It is the first thing that is told to potential brethren when they are admitted to the house. If they can keep the law, they can remain (58.10). The abbot, too, has to reflect constantly on the law, in order to be able to show the other monks “what is new and what is old” (64.9, quoting Mt. 13:52). Factum refers less to fact than to act, as in phrases such as factum implere (2.1), in suis factis indicet (2.12), and praecepta Dei factis cotidie adimplere (4.63).
Finally, let us observe that many of the features of Benedict’s discussion of reading are found in his descriptions of the functions of writing. The abbot is to provide all things necessary for the monk’s existence: cowl, tunic, sandals, shoes, belt, knife, stylus, needle, handkerchief, and writing tablets (55.19). It is recognized that the possession of writing instruments and reading materials is one of the clearest signs of the potential evil of private ownership, and through this, the sin of pride. As a consequence, it is recommended that there be no individual harboring of books, writing tablets, or pens (55.3). The role of writing as a potentially individualizing activity is deemphasized in other ways, for example, in the stress on its role as physical work within monastic routines. The only occasion when writing is given a precise function in Benedict’s conception of the ascetic life is when the novice is first received into the community, and even then it is clear from the terms of the description that the act of writing is subordinate to the oral and ritual act of submission taken “before all.” The newcomer must make this profession of faith by means of a verbal statement based on a document that has been drawn up in the name of saints whose relics are present as witnesses and in the name of the abbot, who is likewise present (58.19). The novice is normally required to write out the text of this document for himself; however, if he is illiterate, another can do it for him and he has only to add his mark (58.20). A comparable reluctance to grant autonomy to writing is found in chapter 73, where Benedict briefly sums up the purpose of the Rule and makes reference, as noted, to other Christian texts on the subject of spiritual perfection. In short, here as in the accounts of reading, the objective is the following of the monastic life. Reading and writing have only the status of viventium . . . instrumenta (73.6).
Benedict’s statements on the role of reading in the monastic life represent a development, transformation, and systematization of the views on the subject that are expressed more occasionally and episodically in John Cassian’s Conferences. Taken together, these statements tell us a good deal about the relationship between sacred reading and self-direction in early Western monasticism. As a conclusion to this chapter, and before turning to applications of sacred reading in the Confessions, I would like to attempt to summarize the main features of this relationship under two headings: mind and body and the place of reading in the ascetic life.
As mentioned, the Conferences, as well, perhaps, as the Rule, were conceived within a background of Alexandrian Christian Platonism. Within that scheme, there is generally understood to be a division between the mind, as the governing instrument in human life and activity, and the body, which receives instructions from the mind and operates according to the dictates of the will. However, when an examination is made of relations between reading and self-direction within the Conferences and the Rule, the self appears to be conceived by both writers as a single entity involving both mind and body. The view of relations between the two can be described as holistic or integrative, since, at every stage of physical and psychological engagement in the ascetic life, the mental and physical appear to be operating in concert. Moreover, it is not a part of the mind or a part of the body which is implicated in this joint action: in every movement of mind and body, it is both mind and body that are equally involved. Also, there are not “higher” and “lower” operations, as in Plato’s conception of reason and emotion; instead, every aspect of the person’s self-organized activity is viewed as a willing collaboration between heart, mind or soul, and body.
Reading and meditation provide the overall framework as well as the rationale for these interdependent relations. This aspect of monastic culture has been given a classic statement by Jean Leclercq, who drew attention to the prevalence of literate modes of thought among the early Benedictine monks and to Benedict’s own predilection for viewing monastic houses as individual communities organized around the written word:
If then it is necessary (for the monks) to know how to read, it is primarily in order to be able to participate in the lectio divina. What does this consist of? How is this reading done? To understand this, one must recall the meaning that the words legere et meditari have for St. Benedict, and which they are to keep throughout the whole of the Middle Ages. . . . Most frequently, when legere and lectio are used . . . , they mean an activity which, like chanting or writing, requires the participation of the whole body and the whole mind.
A similar sort of integration is applied to the notion of meditation:
In secular usage, meditari means, in a general way, to think, to reflect . . . , but more than these, it often implies an affinity with the practical or even moral order. It implies thinking of a thing with the intent to do it. . . . The word is also applied to physical exercises and sports, to those of the military life, of the school world, to rhetoric, poetry, music, and, finally, to moral practices. To practice a thing by thinking of it is to fix it in the memory, to learn it. All these shades of meaning are encountered in the language of the Christians: but they generally use the word in referring to a text.41
Reading and meditation, therefore, are viewed as coordinated aspects of the ascetic life, whose purpose is to lead the individual toward a state of inner perfection and tranquility. The framework for this transformation is the concept of work, which appears in the Conferences both as a reality and as a metaphor for the assimilation of the body into the spiritual life. Abbot Moses echoes the words of Socrates in reminding Cassian that every art or discipline has its purpose.42 In this respect the ascetic is no different from the farmer or the soldier, each of whom is trained in the skills necessary for his profession. The farmer, Moses notes, braves summer’s heat and winter’s ice, subduing the earth with his plow, just as the monk subdues his body with fasts, vigils, reading, and meditation. The monk accepts these bodily exertions “tirelessly and gratefully.” He has no need of worldly goods. He has no fear of “the vast solitude,” of the desert. His spirit is prepared in advance.43
The ascetic life nonetheless presents a structured view of mind and body in which certain activities play a special role. Their number includes reading, meditation, psalmody, and the chanting of the divine office. These differ from the other chief type of work, namely manual labor, in one respect, namely in their relationship to time. In the case of physical work, it is present labor that offers the possibility of future rewards, for example, to use Moses’s metaphors, a profitable crop or a battle won. In the case of reading and related activities, the important temporal relations are between the present and the past on the one hand, and the present and the future on the other. Like physical labor, reading is a step in the direction of eventual salvation. However, readings, and their derivatives, although they take place in the present, have an important relationship to the past. They look back to an earlier age of the Christian religious life and to its practices, in which they are historically and theologically grounded. Through them, the individual monk sees himself as the member of a community that is composed not only of his fellow brethren but of communities in the past of his order, who are present and living with him through the continuity in monastic institutions. In this way, reading is a link between the communities of the living and the dead.
This experience can be described as a ritualization of memory. By this is meant that reading within the community is the actualization of emotionally charged moments from the past; these are memories of texts read within the religious house and more generally texts regarding scriptural history and principles. These moments of reading are brought to life and recharged with their original emotional qualities by means of the words of the sacred texts that are read aloud and by means of the other ascetic activities of which they form a part. As abbot Moses understands this phenomenon in Cassian’s Conferences, reading and meditation thus create the occasion for a type of spiritual reminiscence (spiritualis memoriae . . . occasio). Their objective is to maintain a continuing state of compunction based on authoritative moments in the individual monk’s previous experience and to integrate these moments from the past into the present, while at the same time directing them to a designated but temporally undefined goal in the future. Within this scheme for interrelating past, present, and future, the vigils, fasts, and prayers associated with commemorative readings contribute to the refinement and purification of the soul, interrelating mind and body, and look forward to potential salvation at the end of the penitential journey.44
We have then a hierarchical and Platonic scheme as a frame of reference, in which the body is in theory abandoned as the soul rises; however, in apparent contradiction, the self, which is a dimension of the soul, is viewed as an integrated entity containing both physical and psychological elements, which work together in this upward ascent and, in principle, in eventual salvation. Abbot Moses gets around the definitional problem by viewing this as an exercise of the heart, which means both learning by heart, so that lessons are remembered, and the activation of the heart, by which the words read are coordinated and given significance. In the passage from which I have already quoted, Jean Leclercq traces this connection to the Hebrew haga,
which means, fundamentally, to learn the Torah and the words of the Sages, while pronouncing them usually in a low tone, in reciting them to oneself, in murmuring them with the mouth. . . . In certain texts (in the Western Latin tradition) that will mean only a “murmur” reduced to the minimum, an inner murmur, purely spiritual. But always the original meaning is at least intended: the audible reading and the exercise of memory and reflection . . . are involved. To speak, to think, to remember, are the three necessary phases of the same activity.45
Abbot Moses compares this type of meditation to the movement that takes place in a mill when water from the canal, falling into it, causes a circular motion in the wheel. As long as the water is in motion, there is “ceaseless labor,” since it is the water’s force that brings about all movement. Nonetheless, it is the owner of the mill who orders the milling of the wheat. The mill only grinds what is put into it, just as the monks live in obedience to the implicit command of God, who has enjoined upon them the ascetic life. The souls of the monks are surrounded by temptations that fall all around them, like the torrents of an uncontrolled stream entering the mill. In these conditions the individual soul is said to float continually in a mass of bubbling thoughts. Yet, even in this perilous and unstable state, in which it is capable of admitting good or tolerating evil, it has the free choice of taking to itself, and for itself, what it consciously desires. In Moses’s view, sacred reading works in this manner. If we engage in meditation, our mind will operate like a mill that is incessantly nourished by flowing water, whose passage can be compared to the flow of thought from past to future. In the past is the recollection of the spiritual benefits that our souls once enjoyed, as memorialized in scripture. The flow of liquid through the mill and the milling process represent those that we will enjoy again,46 when we re-ascend to God.
As abbot Serenus notes, nothing in the ascetic life is achieved without effort.47 The human soul is in a state of perpetual flux.48 In this condition it can remain inactive, if it wishes (potest otiose consistere, 7.4), or choose an active course. If there is no subject prepared in advance to which this ceaseless motion may be applied and with which it may afterward be occupied, the natural tendency of the soul is toward directionless wandering. It will fly hither and thither over everything it comes upon but not remain long in touch with anything. It is only after long practice on well-chosen themes that the soul trains the memory in the methods for attaining stability.49 For the soul’s inherent mobility is not due to God or nature but to our own inertia and imprudence (desidiae uel imprudentiae).50 The figure Serenus employs to describe this struggle against random motion in the soul is that of embattled warrior, whose eventual victory is spiritual.51 This is the source and rationale of the monk’s efforts; it is a theology of spiritual engagement and perpetual labor,52 which together curb the soul’s unguided peregrinations (euagationes) while encouraging it and thereby preventing it from being overcome by fatigue, as it pursues the ascetic life. Both need and plenty spring from hard work: “He who cultivates his land will have bread in abundance but he who pursues inactivity (otium) will overflow with poverty.”53
The self, as noted, is thus visualized as engaging in a continual struggle with itself and possibly against itself.54 The only way to measure its progress is by means of planned and ordered work. This means that physical labor is not only a stage in the achievement of the spiritual way of life but also a means for the planning of that life. Just as the farmer is at work in the fields, the ascetic, as noted, attends to his chosen tasks by means of reading, meditation, and continual prayer. These exercises do not constitute perfection in themselves, even when they are performed assiduously and without deviation from accepted norms: they are merely the means to an end.55 Just as the farmer chooses the tools appropriate to the kind of soil he wishes to cultivate, so the monk chooses among different exercises at his disposal in the perfecting of the ascetic life. The highest form of this spiritual labor is prayer, which aims at purifying the heart and achieving a total commitment.56 In Serenus’s words, the entire purpose of the monk’s life can be described as perfection of the heart, or rather the perfecting of the heart, which consists in uninterrupted and continuing prayer. It is in this way that the monk strives for immobility and tranquility of soul, “on behalf of which he seeks and constantly enforces both the labor of the body and the contrition of the spirit.”57 In the Conferences, body and mind are united through this activity by an indissoluble and reciprocal bond (et est inter alterutrum reciproca quaedam inseparabilisque coniunctio, 9.2).
In sum, for John Cassian, as, by implication, for Benedict, it is the soul’s potential mobility that is the source of ethical difficulties. In its ideal state, virtually never attained on earth, the soul is in theory in complete rest. In order to achieve this state or mind or soul, or at least to work toward it, a certain type of education is necessary. Like the farmer and the soldier, the individual seeking this inner tranquility must take up a form of training that leads to this goal. And, just as the farmer and soldier are taught certain skills, which make it possible for them to engage competently in their respective professions, namely to plow and to do battle, so the ascetic must acquire techniques of mind and body that enable him to achieve the objective of his own emotional and intellectual perfection, which, as Cassian sees it, is the highest form of the monastic life. It is a Socratic method of self-correction, but adapted to the Christian view.
The most important of these skills are related to the experience of reading; these consist in prayer, psalmody, recitation of passages of scripture, and the observance of the divine office. It is through such textual concerns that the other aspects of the monastic life are organized, informally in Cassian and formally in Benedict. In both this is a process of self-transformation; it is also a process of self-realization, since, once superficialities are stripped away, a person may recognize what is essential about the self—what belongs to one person, and to one person alone, as created in God’s image and likeness.
Cassian and Benedict have much in common in the way in which this process is envisaged; nonetheless there is an important difference in their approaches. In Cassian’s Conferences, reading leads, inevitably, if not directly, to the creation of an autonomous subject. This can be illustrated by recalling one of the features of meditative reading as described by Isaac, namely the bridging of the gap between readership and authorship. There is no comparable experience in the Benedictine Rule, in which, so to speak, the reader is so moved to mystical heights that he has the illusion that he has written the text he is reading and that, as a consequence, he and the text occupy an isolated capsule of time. By contrast, the emphasis in the Rule is on another aspect of the reading process, one which is equally powerful and possibly even in a limited sense revolutionary. This is the notion that reading, by creating a living “textual community,” can influence the group rather than the individual in a collective pursuit of virtue and eventual happiness.