Order Out of Chaos

Volatility in the West during the ninth and tenth centuries drove Europeans to strive for a more stable way of life. The institution of feudalism and St. Benedict’s monastic Rule arose in response to this problem and provided what the scattered kingdoms of the old Roman Empire were struggling to achieve.

The death of Charlemagne, the succession of power to his son, Louis, and the signing of the Treaty of Verdun began the collapse of the strong and united Europe that had formerly been in place. Soon after the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire the West started to face a myriad of problems. “The renewed invasions of the Vikings, Magyars, and Muslims and the disintegration of the Carolingian Empire led to the emergence of a new type of relationship between free individuals” (Spielvogel 163). The decline in government authority and protection forced peasants, who made up the majority of the medieval population, to depend on land-owning lords and barons that acquired their properties as sovereign power decentralized. This relationship based on the context of the subjection of a subordinate to a superior became known as feudalism. Coinciding with the breakdown of government was a transformation of the Church through the way members of the religious community lived, worked, and worshiped. Monasticism, such as that developed by St. Benedict, formed as an answer to problems within the Church and a need for structure in religious life. St. Benedict’s Rule and feudalism are leading examples of how there was a resolute search for stability in medieval Europe.

“With the breakdown of governments, powerful nobles took control of large areas of land. They needed men to fight for them, so the practice arose of giving grants of land to vass...

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... time when much of the barbarian west was only nominally Christian, Benedict’s Rule kept alive the spirit of pursuing a life of gospel perfection” (Reid 50). “Benedict’s rule, which was a synthesis of several rules, could be applied to any number of monasteries and locations” (Vidmar 79). This universality of his rule helped to stabilize not only monasticism and the church, but also rub off on the common people and nobility that the monastics encountered.

Feudalism and St. Benedict’s monastic rule both exemplify the search for stability in the medieval western world. Together they steadied the chaos caused by the disintegration of the Carolingian Empire and the destructive invasions of the ninth century by correcting the military, political and religious status quo. This put the West on the road to advancement, expansion, and dominance in the centuries to come.