Monastic Counter-Culture and Its Medieval Origins

Abstract

Monastic life presents a contrast to many aspects of modern existence (the rule of ideology, consumerism, various forms of negativity, dominance of the virtual, forgetfulness). The following essay explores this contrast and its presence throughout the long history of monasticism, with a focus on early Northern and Western monasticism on the one hand, and the modern Benedictine tradition on the other. The counter-cultural dimensions of monastic life range from special landscapes and sacred space to the function of time, and from the transcendental role of prayer to the earthy nature of hard work. Not only do the traditions of monastic scholarship and the books gathered in monastic libraries help preserve the memory and reinforce the special counter-culture of monasteries, but the monasteries remain to this day places of healing and sources of hope. The poem “Pilgrimage” composed in 1929 by Austin Clarke captures the character of monastic life not only as something contrary, but as an essential way of life, which has survived from the founding of medieval Clonmacnoise up until today.

1. Culture and Counter-Culture

“…Rainfall Was quiet as the turning of books In the holy schools at dawn.”                                                  from Pilgrimage, by Austin Clarke (Clarke 1974).

To many observers, the modern monastery seems to be an anachronism, a kind of medieval relic. In spite of standing apart by reason of the monks’ religious devotion, their manner of dress, and other seeming oddities, monasteries remain contemporary, “tuned in” and fully aware of the world that surrounds them.1 Rather than a living anachronism, monastic life can be understood as a counter-culture, a way of life that deliberately departs from many of the norms of contemporary existence, its consumerism, materialism, the dominance of the virtual—and the social power of conformism. Contemplation is developed in place of these. Moreover, an examination of ancient and medieval monastic life reveals that monasteries pretty much always stood apart from the norms of daily life. In what follows I will outline some of the dimensions of modern life which have led to the unfamiliar conclusion drawn here, that monastic life is a counter-culture.

2. Ideology and Technology

The first theme I wish to introduce is one of contemporary urgency: the problem of ideology. In the modern world, monks have tended to remain free from the negative influences of technology, and from the counterpart of technology in the world of ideas, the role of ideology in modern politics and society. In everyday life and in industrial society we can certainly see the pervasive presence of technology as a set of useful tools, but increasingly computer technologies have developed a darker side—the observation, tracking and even the control of users by unknown persons or by non-human entities (Morgan Music 2024). Thus technology reveals a daemonic ambition to assert control over human lives. Certainly, the dangers inherent in technology have troubled thinkers from Plato to Heidegger and Gadamer. Perhaps now, with the development of artificial intelligence, there is a danger that a “total technocracy” might arrive, as Gadamer warned.2

In this regard, monasteries have the appearance of oases of calm against the backdrop of the turbulent ocean of information. Computers, and the internet, are put to use in most monasteries, but monks have seemingly found ways to use the instrument without being used by it, without giving in to the obsessive dimension of computer use. In contrast to the relentless flood of images streaming over the internet, the monastery is set apart by a way of life in solidarity with the invisible Divine. This they do through their lives of prayer, meditation, and the practice of silence.3

Paul Ricoeur once spoke about this transcendental dimension of monastic life when he expressed his admiration for the monastery of Taizé. Taizé is situated in Burgundy about six miles from the original location of the monastery of Cluny (only one tower of that formerly-proud monastery still stands). Ricoeur said that in Taizé the essential goodness of religion was made present. Taizé invites an encounter with a meaningful, immersive reality to the thousands of young people who visit there, in contrast to the dematerialized world of technology which captivates so many, and which tends to elevate the copy or the fake above the real. Sometimes we see that museum-goers race through a collection, photographing the paintings rather than stopping to look at them. The pace of time, and the stillness in monasteries, allow for a different approach. In Ricoeur’s view, the liturgy has the capacity to preserve and to radiate the goodness that lies at the heart of religion. He emphasized this contrast between the monastery and the world surrounding it:

We are overwhelmed by a flood of words, by polemics, by the assault of the virtual, which today create a kind of opaque zone. But goodness is deeper than the deepest evil. We have to liberate that certainty, give it a language. And the language given here in Taizé is not the language of philosophy, not even of theology, but the language of the liturgy. And for me, the liturgy is not simply action; it is a form of thought. There is a hidden, discreet theology in the liturgy that can be summed up in the idea that “the law of prayer is the law of faith.”

(Ricoeur 2005)

The monks stand fast against the assault of the virtual, the unnatural and inauthentic. Through a strict adherence to reality and the expressions of the liturgy, the monks of Taizé allow us to see a foundational real world that is often submerged in the tide of falsehood and the sensibility of “virtual reality.” Online, virtual crowds are numbered in millions and billions of likes. The beauty of the Burgundian landscape surrounding Taizé is the result of something quite different: centuries of hands-on connections to reality and a natural aesthetics on the part of Cluniac monks and farmers: woods, vineyards and meadows are spread out in their loveliness as if the landscape had been a collaborative artwork. The landscape is the record of an older way of life, and preserves traces of a sacred overlay. Over the centuries, monasteries transformed their natural setting for reasons of agricultural practicality and a variety of religious impulses (Coutinho Figuinha 2019). A modern example, Münsterschwarzach, a Benedictine abbey in Germany, is surrounded by fields and enclosures for horses, woodland and workshops, barns and equipment for generating all of the monastery’s needed electricity. In a sense, Münsterschwarzach has achieved an economic independence similar to that desired by medieval monasteries. The continuation of such activities provides the monasteries with a standpoint characterized by an existential stance in the presence of being, esse, in contrast to the virtual.

Modern technology is connected to the rise of ideology. As long ago as the late-nineteenth century, the surge of technological advance was accompanied by the appearance of secular dogmas or ideologies, among them Bolshevism, Anarchism, the Extreme Right and National Socialism (The Age of Ideology: The Nineteenth Century Philosophers 1956). Some of these ideologies are still with us, and some are gaining new energy from the internet, particularly the Extreme Right. Since the time of Joseph de Maistre (1753–1851), this ideology has been characterised by its violent rhetoric, its tone of resentment and its aggressive intolerance.4 Philosophers and theologians pondered these phenomena as they emerged in political life. In 1950, Romano Guardini argued that the Enlightenment and positive feelings about history, had come to an end, exhausted by the trauma of two world wars.5 In one of his Letters from Lake Como, Romano Guardini noted the connection between the rise of technology and the development of a mass society, the loss of connection to nature, the tendency toward extremes (Guardini 1994, pp. 51–63). Hans-Georg Gadamer later argued similarly about the rise of the technological age, that “the full outbreak of this age was the technological slaughter of the First World War,” following which “bourgeois cultural idealism” fell by the wayside (Gadamer 1998a, p. 27). In the analysis of Hannah Arendt, ideologies were a feature of the modern world, reaching their fullest political might during the period of World War Two and afterward. Ideologies claimed to explain everything, and on that basis made extensive claims to social control. (Arendt 1973, p. 468) Monasteries have often provided a shelter from these ideological currents in their peaceful connection to nature, and the practice of contemplative stillness.

3. Solitude Versus Loneliness

In the view of Hannah Arendt, writing after World War Two, many people suffered a loss of value and meaning, a lack of connection to human history and to nature. By and large Arendt’s analysis of ideology is followed here. According to Arendt, the pervasive loss of meaning was a condition best epitomised as radical world-alienation, a mental state which propelled people in the direction of ideology, setting the stage for totalitarianism. “This two-fold loss of the world—the loss of nature and the loss of human artifice in the widest sense, which would include all history—has left behind it a society of men who, without a common world to connect them, either live in lonely separation or are pressed together into a mass.” (Arendt 1968, pp. 89–90). Loneliness provides an atmosphere in which ideology and governmental terror flourish. Recently ideology is staging a come-back, with a resurgence of loneliness and negativity intensified by internet anonymity and social media (Bahrampour 2021). This sounds like a contradiction: do not monks avidly seek out loneliness?

The very word monk, monachus, signifies one who lives alone, although life in a community has generally been the most common form of monastic life (Lewis and Short 1879, p. 1160). Side by side, Seite an Seite, the monks live together as a family and pursue the common goals of prayer, peace, holy leisure and brotherhood, which animate the Rule of St. Benedict (Reepen 2013, p. 20). Monastic life makes room for personal solitude, so that one may always be ready—ganz gottoffen und gottbezogen zu werden—to be open to God and drawn to God (Reepen 2013, pp. 62–63). Entering the monastery, one vows to adhere to the way of life, and the inner discipline, which Benedict developed for the Italian communities known to him, although his Rule was intended to be applicable to all European monks. The Rule was published c.526. Benedict himself died in about 547, at the age of 67. In a Benedictine monastery, the steady rounds of prayer, manual work and divine reading give each day its structure. The role of strict devotion to the Rule and to the fatherly rule of the abbot is another aspect of life that sets the monastery apart from the individuation, the absence of restraint or barriers to the will, which dominate the outer world.6

We have to distinguish solitude from loneliness, for the solitude enjoyed by monks is not like the isolation and sense of desolation so often experienced in modern societies. In a classic essay, “Isolation as a Symptom of Self-Alienation,” the philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer distinguished isolation from solitude, seeing the former as a state of suffering imposed by old age, social abandonment or illness, while the latter is a condition purposefully chosen for its spiritual benefits. Unfortunately, as many observers have noted, the condition of isolation is now spreading among youth as well as the elderly. In contrast to isolation or loneliness, solitude makes contemplation possible. Walking alone in nature, like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, is not isolation but a form of solitude that might amount to “the search for the innocence of nature amid the corruption of morals.” (Gadamer 1998a, p. 103). See also (Rousseau 2011). Loneliness is sometimes described as an epidemic in the age of the smart phone, as young people spend most of each day swiping or scrolling on their devices, seemingly hypnotized by the manifold of images and impressions. They are overwhelmed by “virtual reality,” which is not real, and “social media” which often is not social. Addressing these young persons directly, Pope Francis seems to understand the pressures they face: “Many of our friends and peers suffer from spiritual poverty, loneliness and silent despair, even if they are surrounded by great material prosperity. God seems to be absent from the picture. It is as if a spiritual desert were slowly spreading through our world.” (Pope Francis 2024, p. 81). Over the centuries monasteries have demonstrated the potential to encourage among their members and visitors a true spirit of solitude. Modern monasteries (Münsterschwarzach is one that I know well) offer the lessons of monastic life as school teachers and by leading retreats and courses for visitors. The sense of brotherhood and inner quiet are thus shared with a wider community.

An exploration of earlier forms of monastic life can help us understand the origins and inspiration of monastic counter-culture. Monasteries of late antique and early medieval Europe may seem quite distant, cloud-hidden, as it were, and yet the traditions established in those monasteries are very much alive today.

It has always been possible to enjoy solitude independently as well. In fourth century Rome, Saint Jerome served as spiritual counsellor to a group of independent aristocratic ladies, among them Paula, Marcella and Eustochium, who led quiet lives in their grand houses in Rome, but without adopting a specific rule. In fact the word monasterium was used to refer to such households of widows and daughters leading contemplative lives. It should be mentioned, however, that Jerome’s emotional preference for extreme asceticism may have harmed some of his followers (Kelly 1998, pp. 98–99).

Centuries later Madame de Sévigné, in one of the elegant letters she wrote to her daughter, joked that her quiet existence living alone (albeit with her servants and occasional visitors) was becoming a monastic solitude, une petite la Trappe. Life in the Chateau des Rochers must have been a comfortable solitude for a woman given to contemplation and writing!

Solitude has become something quite rare. It is opposed by powerful forces, including various ideologies. Ideology arises as a coherent body of ideas—a complete Weltanschauung or world-view—which pushes followers toward political or social action, and often violence. Ideology is a specifically modern experience. Those who accept an ideology enter it as if passing through a magic door into a parallel universe. Afterward they can no longer listen to those who do not share their views. They are alienated and distant from those outside their ideological boundaries, including family members or former friends. Monasteries have generally been able to protect their members from falling into the abyss of ideological thought and crowd behavior. The life of solitude, and the disciplined practices of reading, prayer and contemplation, within an atmosphere of peace, opens a different horizon. This is also due to the role of tradition in monastic life. Ideology aims at revolutionary change followed by stasis, while tradition maintains a living flow of well-tempered ideas and seeks connection to the past.

4. Monastic Tradition

The lectures composed by Thomas Merton as he prepared to instruct novitiates are examples of the bridges that extend between modern times and the distant past, in a monastic setting. Merton was fully aware of himself as a modern man, alert to changes and turmoil out in the world, such as the Vietnam War. He was a friend of Joan Baez and like her, was opposed to the war. Nevertheless, Merton’s teaching program of lectures on pre-Benedictine monasticism was an effort to preserve the connections between modern monastic life and ancient spirituality, reaching from Cassian (c.360–433) to the present (Merton 2005, 2006). Young monks at the outset of their vocations were invited to reflect on the earliest forms of European monastic culture, as models for today.

Memoria, memory of the past, and the persistent relevance of ancient literary works are among the pillars of monastic tradition. In fact, St. Benedict himself already looked back to monastic tradition and cited earlier authorities such as Basil of Caesarea and John Cassian (Laistner 1957, pp. 93–94).

Because it involves a philosophy of life, arising as a basic form of the Christian religion, and because it is a complete Lebensstil, the attention of monks is turned toward the venerable traditions of monasticism. Monastic tradition thus has little room for the creeping influence of ideology. These traditions are about how to live, usually in a community, and under authority. Some of these traditions reach back to the sponteneity and inventive liberty of the earliest monks, and their “rather old-fashioned and unorganised approach to monasticism.” (Charles-Edwards 2000, p. 225).

When monasticism first emerged as a form of the religious life in early Christianity, it already had some of the qualities of a counter-culture. The monastic way of life departed from the norms of urban society in the later Roman Empire and at times was a total rejection of the materialism, religion and clubbiness of the imperial aristocracy. Some early monks, like John Cassian, thought of their monasteries as refuges from the secular world and they turned against the huge importance of Homer and Vergil, looking instead to the Bible and other Christian sources. Others, like the learned Cassiodorus, reveled in the vast library he assembled in his monastery at Vivarium and he encouraged his monks to undertake a wide-ranging style of scholarship both in the classics of ancient Greece and Rome, and the classics of early Christian writing. The Christian modes of scholarship, as inculcated in monasteries around the Mediterranean, were centered on knowledge of the Bible, on biblical commentary, Church history and saints’ lives, and departed from the rhetorical education represented by Cicero, Tacitus or Pliny the Younger. The monastic style of learning was an intellectual counter-culture, since its purposes, as Jean Leclercq demonstrated, were focused less on personal cultivation, scholarly glory, or entertainment, and more on the need for holy leisure and the search for salvation.

In the late fourth century, when Jerome and his friend Paula established their monastery in Bethlehem, the quietude of the site, and the sparse population there, were part of the attraction. The holiness of the village and its environs had been firmly established by the time Emperor Constantine built a church on the site of the birthplace of Jesus. The wooded landscape around Bethlehem, and the peaceful agricultural life which surrounded this holy site offered a way of life and a pleasant solitude which attracted many contemporaries, whether as pilgrims passing through, or as monks longing to live there. Jerome continued his Bible study and translations in a setting much rougher than the comfortable, dark-panelled scholar’s studio portrayed by painters of the Northern Renaissance! John Cassian was drawn to Bethlehem, where he had his first experience of monastic life. Later he sought further training with the monks of Egypt. He took that knowledge with him to the monastery he founded near Marseille (Farmer 1987, p. 76; Kelly 1998, pp. 129–30). For the instruction of his monks, he composed his Institutions and his Collations (John Cassian 1955–1959; John Cassian 1965). The monastic instructions of John Cassian were known and relied upon in the early monasteries of Ireland (Bhreathnach 2014, p. 166; Charles-Edwards 2000, p. 227; Ryan 1931, pp. 328–29). These works have remained classics of monastic literature up until today.

If we trace the paths of monastic tradition back to the early period, we can observe how in monasteries, where the literary legacy of Western literature was preserved and copied during periods of great disruption, the monastic tradition remained something fully alive, made richer and deeper by its awareness of all sorts of literature. Jacques Le Goff once wrote that “in the history of civilizations, as in the history of individuals, the childhood is decisive”: dans l’histoire des civilisations comme dans celle des individus, l’enfance est decisive (Le Goff 1965, p. 147). The childhood in question here was the movement from antiquity to the early Middle Ages namely the early fifth and sixth centuries AD, which saw the establishment of the structures of medieval mentalities and sensibilities. The Mediterranean was a special berceau of this infancy, and so was Northern Europe—Britain and Ireland in particular. But it is true that the wealth of origins can only be paid out in the coin of tradition. Tradition alone ensures that the past remains alive and continues to gurgle along like a nourishing river.

Reflecting on his extensive research into the history of Platonism, Raymond Klibansky once asked himself the following: “In all this research, the question arises, to what extent did the traditions reflect their creative sources?” That is the ultimate question for any tradition, be it Platonic or monastic (Klibansky 1998, p. 203). How true to the origins? And in regard to modern monasticism, we can ask, how present is the past?

An important instance is Saint Patrick (c.390–c.461), who encouraged many of his early followers, both men and women but especially women, into some form of monastic life (the details are scarce), while as a wandering bishop he neither entered a monastic community nor wrote a rule for those who would enter a monastery. He may have wished to do so, but could not, given his travels and responsibilities (Charles-Edwards 2000, pp. 223–26). The earliest monasteries in Ireland, established after Patrick’s death but still before the time of Saint Benedict, were small and quite isolated, sometimes a mere rock in the ocean. Then in the sixth-century came the dramatic rise of many great monasteries including Clonmacnois, Bangor, and Iona. These monasteries were centers of culture, of book learning and the arts. The Irish monks were incredibly well-supplied with the crucial literature of the western tradition, from Vergil to Isidore of Seville. Another factor to consider is the dynamic between seclusion and connection. Clonmacnoise was positioned along the River Shannon, a major waterway which saw lots of trade and traffic. Like many another well-connected monastery it was rich in meadows and woods, sheep (vital for making books), and was home to a large community of monks.

5. Monastic Islands

Iona was isolated on a small island off the coast of Scotland, but this was a fortunate situation given the complex, well-travelled waterways there, which offered easy connections to important lands and the royal dynasties of Ireland and Scotland. The place became a great center of learning, and of book-culture. In about AD 800, the Book of Kells was probably created at Iona. This famous Gospel book illustrates the connection between the art of writing and the broader realm of learning. This can be seen especially in the book’s beautiful, and eminently readable, insular script (Charles-Edwards 2000, p. 333; Ryan 1931; Bhreathnach 2014). Many of the splendid paintings in the Book of Kells show angels or evangelists holding up books as if to display them, demonstrating the symbolic and spiritual importance of books for the tradition. The culture and learning of Iona spread all around the Scottish coast, Ireland and Northumbria, where monasteries such as Lindisfarne were soon infused with Irish learned culture and book arts. The influence of Iona was so great that for a time, the kings of Northumbria adopted its erudite culture as their own. Some of those kings were educated on Iona and even learned to speak Irish. By adhering to monastic tradition, therefore, monasteries maintained a counter-culture lasting centuries, and exerted tremendous influence on the non-monastic world. Those who wanted to participate had to learn Latin, and learn how to read, and how to write, in the scriptorium of a monastery. In ancient Ireland, a well-educated individual was called a scriba.

I focus here on early monasteries rather than the later, and much larger Carolingian abbeys such as Corbie, Fulda or Reichenau, in order to highlight the significance of origins, the definitive potency of sources, foundations, of significant beginnings: and the manner in which cultural essences can be carried forward through time, by the purposeful maintenance of tradition, sometimes for centuries.

One further example, which deserves to be included in any discussion of monastic origins, is the island monastery of Lérins. The founding date of this monastery (AD 410) has always seemed significant to me, since in that same year King Alaric and his Visigoths sacked the City of Rome (Wickham 2009, pp. 79–80). The Goths violently destroyed what they could not understand or assimilate. By the year 410, Rome had suffered a series of military and economic set-backs, and witnessed a number of invasions by peoples from outside the territories of the Roman Empire. The City of Rome was sometimes held to be, not only the political center of the Mediterranean oikumene, but the very center of the cosmos. The monastery of Lérins, however, would provide a very different kind of spiritual center than the ancient city of Rome.

The island monastery of Lérins, the Paradisus Lerinensis, was situated off the coast of the French Riviera, on the little island of St. Honorat. Here the monks and their abbots were well-educated aristocrats, cultural scions of the Mediterranean shore, of the Rhone River and the cities of Arles and Avignon. Like Iona to the North, Lérins was isolated, yet well-connected to centers of power and to mainland bishops and political authorities. It provided education for generations of bishops who then fanned out to govern various cities across southern Gaul. Soon Lérins had close fraternal ties to many such bishops.

The very fact of being on an island had its own cachét. An island was thought of as a desert, desertus, in its original meaning of an uninhabited, remote place (Heijmans and Pietri 2009, pp. 35–61). The counter-cultural aspect of Lérins began with the decision of the monks to live in a place unwanted by others, and to take up an ascetic lifestyle, including voluntary poverty, an attitude very unusual for an aristocrat of the late Roman Empire. And islands were holy, absorbing some of the reflected sanctity of Patmos (Dessi and Lauwers 2009, pp. 231–79). Lérins became known as a major source of monastic tradition, books, and Christian knowledge. There were however some terrible set-backs. In 732, all the monks of Lérins were killed by invading Saracens.

Today, Lérins is home to a modern community of Cistercians. Each year when the rich and great gather for the Cannes film festival, their enormous yachts surround the island like an invading flotilla. Drawing on the background of more than 1725 years of monasticism, in spite of obstacles, modern monks have been able to steer a distinct path in history. While in constant awareness of, and connection to the modern world, the monks have been distinguished by their dedication to a tradition. To a significant extent, this predilection has allowed the monks to maintain a certain distance and liberty vis-à-vis modern culture.

6. Libraries and Reading

The influence of monastic tradition can be seen in the writings of the historian and monk Jean Leclercq, who in many of his scholarly publications made clear the function of tradition as a pillar of monastic culture. In an essay on the traditional methods of reading and meditation on the Bible, for example, Leclerq emphasizes tradition on every page. As a man living under “monastic obedience” he considered it his special duty as an historian to study patristic and medieval tradition and to preserve the memory of those traditions.7 He was doing his part to preserve the monastic way of life. Exploring the practices of prayer, a fundamental topic for monks, Leclerq emphasized that there was a three-fold method of reading as practiced in monasteries, known as divine reading, lectio divina.

The practice of lectio divina called for an original act of reading (lectio), followed by meditation on the words that have been read (meditatio) and finally by prayer (oratio), asking God for understanding of the reading, and to obtain spiritual good from it (Leclercq 2023, p. 58). Leclercq’s famous book The Love of Learning and the Desire for God showed that the desire for salvation guided monastic scholars and their interest in books (Leclercq 1982). In the correspondance between Jean Leclercq and Thomas Merton, one observes how the two men were perplexed by the impact of modern conditions on monastic life. The Vietnam War created a sense of crisis and gloom, while various signs of monastic decline compounded their worries (Merton and Leclercq 2002). Leclercq’s duties forced him to travel constantly around the globe. Nevertheless continuity with the patristic and medieval legacy can be seen in their letters. Leclercq believed that modern-day monasticism could best be strengthened by turning toward the monastic past: “tradition can help us to vivify modern practices and methods.” (Leclercq 2023, p. 60).

The strong connection of monastic life to patristic and medieval tradition, and the ramifications for preserving monastic life within the context of modern thought is embodied in monastic libraries. This is evident already in certain Carolingian monasteries, for instance Reichenau and St Gall, both of which had exceptionally rich libraries, holding nearly 500 volumes each (Ghellinck 1938, p. 7). The great Carolingian bibliothecae looked back to the early Christian libraries in Alexandria and Caesarea, where Eusebius and Jerome had done their research, and to the remarkable library of Cassiodorus at Vivarium. What value did such large collections have for cloistered monks? They offered the possibility of learning, realms for the imagination, and manifold beauties to explore, sharpening knowledge and intelligence, in addition to preserving the fundamentals of the monastic tradition, the necessary gathering of holy texts, commentaries and saints’ lives. The monasteries were refuges in which the cultural legacy of Western Europe was conserved. Nearly all the literature we have from the ancient world was saved by medieval scribes and librarians.

Monastic learning was fundamental to the broader life of monasteries. In the tenth century, a terrible reversal occurred, when Viking and Magyar raids destroyed monastic libraries across Europe, and caused an almost total collapse of monastic culture. There followed an eclipse of monastic life in general. John Howe has recently reviewed the debates about this period of invasions and regional violence. Leaving aside the exaggerated and apocalyptic accounts of the horrified monks of the time, he points to the unavoidable reality of looting and destruction of property, attacks on church personnel, archival and cultural destruction, and psychological trauma, leading to monastic decline (Howe 2016, pp. 30–49).

In spite of such periods, one can point to the assured sense of life in Bobbio, with its fine library, and the epochal surge of Benedictine life at Cluny. Intensive education is rare in any age, and counts as another dimension of monastic counter-culture. Books are the oxygen of monastic life and thought. This is true today just as it was for medieval monks. A modern foundation, the 19th century Abbaye de Maredsous is a major center of monastic studies. The abbey possesses a vast research library of 400,000 volumes, and is the home of the important scholarly journal, La Revue Bénédictine. At Maria Laach, founded in 1093, there is a beautiful library with curved wooden balconies, spiral iron staircases and bookshelves housing 260,000 volumes. Maria Laach is a special case, since it is a great center of liturgical study and was a pioneer of the twentieth century liturgical renaissance. Similarly the library of the Archabbey of St Ottilien contains more than 200,000 books of theology, works of Christian philosophy and spirituality in an elegant modern facility. In this context one can also mention the enormous libraries of 17th and 18th century monasteries such as Melk, S.Gallen, Admont, Wiblingen, built up at a time when it was important for monasteries to prove their relevance, by serving the kingdom as major centers of learning. Saint-Germain-des-Prés essentially became a research center in the time of Luc d’Achery and Jean Mabillon.8 The great size of these collections, and their pretty gold and pink baroque architecture, helped to demonstrate their cultural prominence and religious authority (Garberson 1998). But the studies of Jean Leclercq are still relevant to these old show-case libraries. Monastic reading—in depth and extent—allows for expansive minds, ever more lively and alert, able to accomodate to new ideas, while still perserving the tradition and understanding the past. Reading is a basic part of the Benedictine way of life. Meanwhile in the outside world, the practice of reading has lost much of its cachet.

Monasteries tend to stand apart from other aspects of the contemporary world, revealing the continued influence of the Rule of Saint Benedict. Consumerism of the kind we see in the shopping culture, especially online shopping, is hardly possible for a monk living under the Rule. Benedict emphasized the brotherly nature of a monastic community, and wanted to restrict private property to such an extent that social differences were effaced and the desire for wealth put aside. The monks were required to wear the same clothing.9

7. To Sanctify Time and Space

The contemporary intellectual and spiritual life of monasticism is not a case of reaction and refusal of the modern world, but rather an authentic counter-culture. Many aspects of this culture are based, of course, on the Rule of Saint Benedict. Other fascinating dimensions of monastic life and the precepts of Saint Benedict could be mentioned here. The type of work carried on in Benedictine monasteries relieves the monks from the search for status and higher salaries as in the outer world. Instead, an array of crafts and useful occupations in woodworking or agriculture are undertaken. As was mentioned, retreats and teaching are also basic forms of work. And any visitor to a monastery will be struck by the special monastic use of time. The hours of prayer govern everything, and the sound of the bell is the signal to lay down tools and walk toward the chapel to pray. So bells were used already in the monasteries of Bede’s time, establishing, along with the prayers of the daily office, the sanctification of time.10

Benedict’s detailed instructions for prayer show the centrality of prayer in his monastic schema, both in the canonical hours of the day and in the liturgical calendar of the year.11 Silent reading, and lectio divina are activities that take place alongside some sort of useful manual labor. Benedict asserted that this combination is in “the best monastic tradition.”12 The teeter-totter of work and prayer provide the structure of a way of life unlike that of the world outside, where time pressures often lead to feelings of inadequacy and burnout.

Max Weber pointed to the disenchantment of the modern world, meaning that a utilitarian understanding of nature has replaced the sense of the sacredness of nature and the consciousness of the holy. The philosopher Charles Taylor has expanded this theme.13 A disenchanted world was a world without a God. The love of nature and its beauty, and concern for the health of the environment can provide a kind of transcendence in spite of this disenchantment. The early monasteries were deliberately and ritually enchanted. Sacred spaces were established around the monasteries with the help of liturgical ritual, and the monastic presence on the land became a source for the christianization of entire landscapes (Bhreathnach 2014, pp. 159–62). With care, monasteries were settled in ideal places, preferably by a river, surrounded by forest, possessing a sense of economic completeness and solitude (Eliade 1959, p. 153). The arrangement of buildings, cemeteries, workshops and gardens was carefully laid out (Foot 2006, pp. 35–37). The creation of sacred space brought about an intense feeling of place, in certain regards contrasting with the surrounding world. Sacred space expressed the ideal of the desertum, since the earliest times.14 The Latin term desertum became disert in Old Irish, meaning a hermitage, a place of retreat (Bhreathnach 2014, p. 224). Sacred space established a “tranquil place” for the pursuit of religion (Ripart 2021, p. 48). The Venerable Bede tells the story of Cedd, a monk and bishop of Northumbria who was educated in the Irish tradition in the monastery of Lindisfarne. Later he was given land on which to locate a new monastery (Lastingham). He discovered a forbidding wilderness, “amid some steep and remote hills which seemed better fitted for the haunts of robbers and the dens of wild beasts than for human habitation” and probably a lair for dragons. The desertum was thought of as remote from the world, although very often monasteries had close connections to centers of royal or aristocratic power (Foot 2006, pp. 77–82). Cedd set out to sanctify the space for a new minster. In order to christianize the wild landscape he spent nearly the entire season of Lent in the forest, praying and leading a harsh, ascetic existence. Not long afterward he died during a plague. In the course of time a stone church was built there, and Cedd’s body was reburied next to the altar (St. Mary’s Church, Lastingham) (Bede 1994, III.23, pp. 148–49).

8. Memoria

Thus, coming to the end of this exploration of monastic counter-culture, contra-cultura, we arrive at the theme of care for the dead. This has always been an important feature of monastic life, from the “pre-Benedictine” monasteries up until today. The graves of the monks are a prominent feature of the enclosure, set out in somber rows and marked with similar stones. Processing through the cemetary, the monks pray for those who have died recently, and for those who died in centuries past. An example of this from Münsterschwarzach is cited by Abbot Michael Reepen, when on a recent day the monks prayed for their recently departed friends, and then for “Brother Paul who died in 1216.” (Reepen 2013, pp. 32–33).

Prayer for the dead gives form to the monastic experience of death, which becomes a renewal and a liturgical expression asserting the goodness of the world. The monastic approach to death is distinctive, as Von Balthasar explains: “The monks voluntarily placed themselves from the outset at that final point to which men in the world are gradually and remorselessly driven, to the point where they are exposed in all their nakedness before God.” (Balthasar 1998, p. 205). This is the ultimate counter-cultural act, turning away from the fear of death that saturates the anxiety and anguish of contemporary society, and which drives the desire to forget.

Carolingian monks prayed for the souls of those whose names were recorded in libri memoriales, or memory-books. The memory-books that survive are a rich historical resource for understanding the history of the monasteries and their connections to noble families or royal dynasties. These books of memory sometimes contain hundreds and even thousands of personal names, connecting those who died long-ago to the souls of the living (Butz and Zettler 2013, pp. 79–92).

And so we arrive again at the question of memory, the cherishing of human memoria in a world that tends toward forgetfulness. The memoria of death implies the practice of remembering one’s own death, and thus remembering how to live. The approach of modern monks toward death is perhaps the “ultimate” counter-cultural turn.