Community, Authority, Rule: Re-Thinking Normative Texts in Early Western Monasticism

Focusing on concepts of community, authority and rule, this study re-thinks the traditional chronology and understanding of early western monastic rules. Beginning with the monastic programmes offered by early writers (Basil in Rufinus’ translation, Augustine, Jerome and Cassian), it questions the idea that the first western monastic rules emerged in the fifth century. It places the emergence of rules in the sixth century, highlighting the radical difference between their ideas of authority and community and those of the earlier texts whose words they often used, above all in the ‘abbatial turn’ that begins with the Rule of Benedict. Texts conventionally classified as early western rules for communal monasteries are re-identified as rules compiled in the seventh century for monasteries and satellite dependencies. Some are also interpreted as providing validation for the newer style of ‘Benedictine–Columbanian’ monasticism and use of the Rule of Benedict by means of a spurious early monastic provenance.