The Cistercian Conception of Community: An Aspect of Twelfth-Century Spirituality

Abstract

In 1919, Cuthbert Butler, abbot of Downside abbey and one of the major figures in Roman Catholic intellectual life in England in the early years of this century, published an interpretation of Benedictine history which stressed the cenobitical spirit of the Benedictine Rule. Butler felt that Benedict avoided the excesses of physical asceticism and lonely competition found in earlier, more eremitical forms of monasticism and emphasized instead a life of obedience and stability within the monastic family. This interpretation has so dominated more recent scholarship on medieval monasticism that few students of the Benedictine Rule have noticed how little discussion of community it actually contains.