St. Benedict Research Paper

1051 Words3 Pages

Jeff Oskierko
Hist 300
10/20/2015

St. Benedict’s rule

St. Benedict’s rules required a very strict way of life for the monks. His rules if followed lead to a very minimalistic type of life, one that could fully focus on god. His rules require one to be completely humble, since one who is completely humble will never think of oneself but fully focus on living a life devoted to god.
According to St. Benedict there are four kinds of monks. The cenobites are the first kind of monk; that is, those living in a monastery, serving under a rule or an abbot. St. Benedict respects these monks the most since they are the most minimalistic and follow the rules he made the strictest. “With the aid of God, to lay down a rule for the best kind of monks, the cenobites. “ Second, there are the anchorites or hermits, who have come through the test of living in a monastery for a long time, and have passed beyond the first fervor of monastic life. Third, there …show more content…

Two or three meals are allowed each day, with two cooked dishes at each. Each monk is allowed a pound of bread and about half a pint of wine each day and only the flesh of four-footed animals is prohibited except for the sick and the weak. There is a very big emphasis on the evils of gluttony “Take heed to yourselves, lest perhaps your hearts be overcharged with self-indulgence and drunkenness." Also of course it is stated that being drunk is a very bad thing since the mind is not clear when one is drunk. Here St, Benedict while probably wanting total absence of alcohol from his monks kind of breaks and lets them have it anyways, but with a limit. “We read that wine is not suitable for monks at all. But because, in our day, it is not possible to persuade the monks of this, let us agree at least to the fact that we should not drink until we are sated, but sparingly. For wine can make even the wise to go astray.”(St. Benedict rule

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