Carolingian Monastic Reform and the Plan of St. Gall: Part I, The Reform

These synods and the reform movement itself produced one of the most important architectural documents of the Middle Ages: the Plan of St. Gall. This Plan will concern us in the second part of this series of articles.

NOTES
1 - Timothy Fry, OSB, RB 1980, (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1981), p.123. This unity was (and is) characteristic of both Eastern and Western monasticism and is due largely to the important role of spiritual "masters" in the movement's development. This, combined with the Greco-Roman respect for tradition, made it possible to transmit often very primitive forms and concepts of monasticism even to modern times.

2 - Chapters 2, 27, 49, 56, and the prologue (to name a few) grant the elected abbot authority over virtually every aspect of the community's life, even that of determining proper individual observance of Lent. In the Chapter on the kinds of monks (de Generibus monachorum [ch. 2]), the abbot is essentially given equal status with the rule. "The cenobites . . . serve under a rule and an abbot" (militans sub regula vel abbate.) almost every available commentary on the rule devotes attention to this principle. Fry, RB 1980, Dom Paul Delatte, OSB, A Commentary on the Holy Rule of St. Benedict, trans. Dom Justin McCann, OSB, (London : Burns Oates, 1950).

3 - The complexity of the issues involved in this move toward uniformity of observance has been well documented. Fry, RB 1980, John William Bernhardt, Itinerant Kingship and Royal Monasteries in Early Medieval Germany, (New York : Cambridge U. Press, 1993), C. H. Lawrence, Medieval Monasticism, (London : Longman, 1989). In many ways monasticism is like the proverbial eel - the tighter you grip it, the faster it slips through your fingers.

4 - Fry, RB 1980, Lawrence, Medieval Monasticism, ch. 5, p. 69-85, Bernhardt, Itinerant Kingship and Royal Monasteries, p.27-35, ch. 2, esp. see p. 127 et al. Bernhardt makes the extremely interesting point that "lay" or secular abbacy originated as a means of protecting and preserving monastic life (p. 87-92). During Viking incursions in the seventh and eighth centuries, monasteries which were not well connected politically could not expect military assistance, whether to ward off raiders or other local warlords. Also, he notes that by the late Carolingian and Ottonian period, secular rulers collaborated with monastic communities to limit the control these abbots had over the internal assets of a community. The abbot became, therefore, primarily

Go To Page: 1 2 3 4 5

Articles in this Topic    Discussions in this Topic