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“In Pillars of Community, Terrence Kardong Serves As A “In Pillars of Community, Terrence Kardong serves as a knowledgeable friend who walks with us through the lives and rules of those who were the first pillars of the cenobitic way of life. Thanks to his deft comments that don’t shy away from appreciating ancient texts in the light of modern situations, the curious customs, strong personalities, and situations of common life that we meet are recognizable, even across the centuries. “Kardong wants us to read the sources squarely in context, sometimes of contention, e.g. Basil against the hyper-ascetic Eustathians. Especially appeal- ing is his recounting of the life of Pachomius and the rules he formulated for his koinonia. As far-removed as Egyptians of the 4th century are from us of the 21st, one is startled at how familiar much of the legislation sounds. Both they and we have to contend with members who are tardy, surly, immature, and careless, and with situations that are tedious, unexpected, tricky, or irremediable. Kardong’s scholarship is true to the sources, and his lively style makes this book a pleasure to read.” Br. Andrew Thornton, OSB Saint Anselm Abbey Manchester, New Hampshire “This very interesting and important book is based on over twenty-five years of scholarly research spanning almost every aspect of cenobitic monasticism plus fifty years of lived monastic experience. As a scholar Terrence Kardong is famous for addressing significant topics and issues that other scholars tend to ignore. He always seeks to ask the better question and never settles for the easy answer no matter where the result leads. Pillars of Community is vintage Kardong making accessible in a creative and fresh way the very foundations of cenobitic monasticism. This book fills a gap in monastic history that has gone largely unnoticed for years.” Eugene Hensell, OSB Saint Meinrad Archabbey Saint Meinrad, Indiana Pillars of Community Four Rules of Pre-Benedictine Monastic Life Terrence G. Kardong, OSB LITURGICAL PRESS Collegeville, Minnesota www.litpress.org Cover design by David Manahan, OSB. Fresco from Agia Triada, Crete, Greece. Photo © Paul Cowan/istockphoto.com. Scripture texts in this work are taken from the New American Bible with Revised New Testament and Revised Psalms © 1991, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Chris- tian Doctrine, Washington, DC, and are used by permission of the copyright owner. All Rights Reserved. No part of the New American Bible may be repro- duced in any form without permission in writing from the copyright owner. © 2010 by Order of Saint Benedict, Collegeville, Minnesota. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, microfilm, micro- fiche, mechanical recording, photocopying, translation, or by any other means, known or yet unknown, for any purpose except brief quotations in reviews, without the previous written permission of Liturgical Press, Saint John’s Abbey, PO Box 7500, Collegeville, Minnesota 56321-7500. Printed in the United States of America. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kardong, Terrence G. Pillars of community : four rules of pre-Benedictine monastic life / Terrence Kardong. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 978-0-8146-3315-1 — ISBN 978-0-8146-3921-4 (e-book) 1. Monasticism and religious orders—Rules—History. I. Title. BX2436.K37 2010 255.009'015—dc22 2009045713 Contents Preface vii Introduction xi Chapter One: The Life of Basil 1 Chapter Two: The Rule of Basil: I (Long Rules Prologue and 1–7) 15 Chapter Three: The Rule of Basil: II (Themes from Long Rules 8–55) 45 Chapter Four: The Life of Pachomius 61 Chapter Five: The Rule of Pachomius: I (Precepts 1–57) 87 Chapter Six: The Rule of Pachomius: II (Precepts 58–97) 107 Chapter Seven: The Rule of Pachomius: III (Precepts 98–144) 125 Chapter Eight: Monastic Issues in The Life of Augustine by His Disciple Possidius 147 Chapter Nine: Praeceptum: The Rule of Augustine 167 Chapter Ten: The Rule of the Four Fathers 191 Chapter Eleven: The Second Rule of the Fathers 225 Select Bibliography 243 Index of Scripture References 249 Index of Rule of Benedict References 250 Index of Names and Terms 251 v Preface I might begin this book by answering the question of what prompted it. The main reason is highly personal: I like cenobitism. That is as it should be, since I myself am a cenobite. I professed vows as a Benedic- tine monk in 1957, so I have now been a member of my community (Assumption Abbey, Richardton, ND) for half a century. Therefore it is not unusual for me to write a book about the founders of the communal form of monastic life. It might surprise some readers to note that St. Benedict is not among them. In fact, according to the genealogy established by Adalbert de Vogüé,1 Benedict’s Rule is actually in the fifth monastic generation! In his ordering of the Rules, Vogüé lists the Rules of Basil, Pachomius, and Augustine as the first generation, with the Rule of the Four Fathers situ- ated in the second generation because it shows slight influences from the three Rules of the first generation. Even though some of the texts I deal with in this volume have been well known throughout monastic history, for some reason the cenobitic legislators have not ranked among the favorite writers of most monastic readers. That pride of place seems to belong to the anchorites, or at least those who wrote (and write) about the solitary monastic life. Just mentioning a few of the primary anchoritic writers—Evagrius, John Cassian, Bernard of Clairvaux, and Thomas Merton—should prove this point. Even though the last three lived in community, it seems to me they wrote mostly about the monk alone with God. Of course, it can also be said that they did not write monastic Rules, but treatises couched in literary genres that are generally more attractive 1. “Cenobitic Rules of the West,” Cistercian Studies (1977): 175–83. vii viii Pillars of Community reading: essays, sermons, dialogues, and so forth. Granted, some of the monastic Rules are fairly readable, but some of them are dry as dust. In this volume I hope to inject some life into the rather jejune texts of Pachomius and the two French Rules by means of commentary. At any rate, I believe that these cenobitic writers deserve to be better known and this book is my way of bringing that about. A second reason that moved me to publish such a book is more practical, namely, I woke up one morning and discovered that I had ac- cumulated enough research on this subject to warrant a book. Though I had been working on these authors for about twenty-five years, this realization came to me only gradually. About half of the material in this volume has appeared in the form of articles in monastic periodicals. Some of the chapters were written as lectures, mainly for the Junior Institute held in American Benedictine abbeys of men every summer. None of that material has appeared in print before now. Finally, I wrote some of the material precisely for this book. When I say that this book presents my own research from the past two decades I do not mean to imply that I did all the primary work. As a matter of fact, in most cases I made use of the excellent work of spe- cialists that is now available to us. Indeed, we have witnessed a recent explosion of first-class scientific research on all the authors and Rules included in this book. Anyone who is interested in digging into these ancient writings can now rely on magnificent, detailed commentaries by a variety of patristics scholars. Although I used the work of dozens of scholars in my research, I would like to acknowledge at least the chief of them. In studying Basil I was able to consult the monumental new transla- tion and commentary on the Great Asketikon by the Australian historian Anna Silvas. Not only has she given us a comprehensive introduction to Basil’s monastic life and thought, but she has also done a new transla- tion of both the Long and Short Rules. Since the English of the Short Rules has been out of print since the 1920s, this translation was long overdue. I should also credit two other scholars whose commentaries on the Long Rules were of great help to me: Lisa Cremaschi of the Bose Community in Italy and Augustine Holmes, OSB, of Pluscarden Abbey, Scotland. The Pachomian Rule (Praecepta) has been less known than that of Basil. The Cistercian scholar and abbot of Scourmont (Belgium), Ar- mand Veilleux, put an end to that sad situation in 1980–1982 with the appearance of his Pachomian Koinonia I–III. Not only did he translate the Pachomian Rule in those three volumes, but he also gave us two Preface ix versions of the Life of Pachomius, plus some of his sermons and other Pachomian materials. Since the Lives were written in Coptic and Greek, these translations have been very helpful to students in the West. In addition to Veilleux, I must credit Heinrich Bacht, SJ, whose meticulous commentary on the Praecepta I found of great use. Further, I got good help from Lisa Cremaschi in her notes on the Rule of Pachomius. The Rule of Augustine (Praeceptum) was better known in the West than any monastic Rule except for that of Benedict, but as with the other Rules studied here, in-depth research on the little document has been fairly recent. Because so many Western religious Orders claim that Rule as their own, there probably has been more serious study than I am aware of.
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