An Tard, 12, 2005 11, 2004, p.

An Tard, MONASTICISM
BUILDING WORLDS APART WALLS AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF COMMUNAL 357 à 357
371

BUILDING WORLDS APART.

WALLS AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF COMMUNAL MONASTICISM
FROM AUGUSTINE THROUGH BENEDICT *

HENDRICK DEY

La création de mondes séparés : murs périphériques et construction du monachisme cénobitique

de saint Augustin à saint Benoît

Cet article cherche à explorer les origines et le développement de l’enceinte monastique, de l’Afri-
que d’Augustin à l’Italie de Benoît, en rapprochant les données textuelles et les maigres traces ar-
chéologiques. Alors que les monastères envisagés par Augustin étaient des structures plus ou moins
ouvertes au monde extérieur, les monastères en Italie, à l’époque de Benoît, sont devenus des espaces
circonscrits dans une enceinte imperméable. L’expérience de la vie communautaire menée dans une
clôture diffère fondamentalement de celle d’une communauté physiquement ouverte sur l’extérieur.
Ainsi la présence ou l’absence de murs périphériques autour des monastères a pu exercer une forte
influence sur la conception et la réalité quotidienne de la vie conduite à l’intérieur. Dans la dernière
partie de l’article, l’auteur suggère que la pensée “semi-pélagienne» et en particulier les écrits de
Jean Cassien ont influencé la théologie monastique et propose d’interpréter l’apparition de murs
autour des monastères en Italie au VIe siècle comme la représentation architectonique d’un nouveau
paradigme de la vie cénobitique. [Auteur]

The story of the origins and development of coenobitic
monasticism in the Latin-speaking West during Late
Antiquity and the early Middle Ages has long been a topic
of scholarly interest1. The ancient protagonists are well-
* My warmest thanks are due to Professor Sabine MacCormack,
without whose encouragement and wise counsel this paper likely
would never have seen the light of day.
1. For recent studies (by no means an exhaustive list) on the
development of western monasticism, with further bibliographical
listings of prior works, v. D. Caner, Wandering, begging monks:
spiritual authority and the promotion of monasticism in late
antiquity, Berkeley, 2002; A. Grote, Anachorese und Zönobium:
der Rekurs des frühen westlichen Mönchtums auf monastische
Konzepte des Ostens, Stuttgart, 2001; M. Dunn, The Emergence
of monasticism: from the Desert Fathers to the early Middle Ages,
Oxford, 2000; A. de Vogüé, Regards sur le monachisme des pre-
miers siècles. Recueil d’articles, Rome, 2000 (Studia Anselmiana,
130); id., Histoire littéraire du mouvement monastique dans l’an-
tiquité, Paris, 1991-; C. Leyser, Authority and Asceticism from
Augustine to Gregory the Great, Oxford, 2000; G. Jenal, Italia
ascetica atque monastica: das Asketen- und Mönchtum in Italien
von den Anfängen bis zur Zeit der Langobarden (ca. 150/250-
604), Stuttgart, 1995; and J. Driscoll and M. Sheridan (ed.),
known, and they have all, to varying degrees, been subject
to close scrutiny. If Augustine has outstripped the rest,
nonetheless Ambrose, John Cassian, Benedict, Gregory I,
and Eugippius, as well as such shadowy figures as the “Four
Fathers” and “The Master”, have all been extensively queried
for their bearing on the intellectual and institutional
development of Latin monasticism2. The result is a rich and
Spiritual progress: studies in the spirituality of late antiquity
and early monasticism: papers of the symposium of the Monastic
Institute, Rome, Pontificio Ateneo S. Anselmo, 14-15 May 1992,
Rome, 1994. Older but still fundamental is F. Prinz, Frühes
Mönchtum im Frankenreich: kultur und Gesellschaft in Gallien,
den Rheinländern und Bayern am Beispeil der monastischen
Entwicklung (4. bis 8. Jahrhundert), 2nd ed., Munich, 1988. The
more general study of R. Markus, The End of Ancient
Christianity, Cambridge, 1990, is also useful.
2. In addition to the works cited in n. 1, above, and the critical
editions introduced below, noteworthy publications include:
C. Stewart, Cassian the Monk, New York, 1998; A. de Vogüé,
Reading Saint Benedict: reflections on the Rule (trans.
C. Friedlander), Kalamazoo, MI, 1994; id., Le Maître, Eugippe
et saint Benoît. Recueil d’articles, Hildesheim, 1984 (RBS
Supplementa, 17); R. Markus, Saeculum: History and Society in
358 HENDRICK DEY
varied tradition of scholarship on the textual sources, and a
complex and not infrequently contradictory picture of what
writers in the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries thought about
the theory and practice of communal religious life.
As it is really only in the recent past, however, that serious
attempts have been made to examine early monastic
communities from an archaeological perspective, we have
been much slower to come to grips with monasteries as pla-
ces; as defined and bounded spaces which literally shaped
the daily rounds of work, contemplation and prayer that
together comprised the essentials of monastic life3. Even now,
after some three decades of growing archaeological interest
in late antiquity and the early middle ages, the data relevant
to monastic foundations in Italy, Gaul, and Africa, the
“cradles” of early monasticism in the west, are depressingly
exiguous. Still, some new evidence has appeared, and more
will surely come to light; in the interim, the copious textual
evidence remains to be examined for what it can reveal about
space and place in the monastic milieu of figures from Augus-
tine to Benedict and beyond. Of course, any attempt at a
“literary topography” of early monasteries is bound to create
the Theology of St Augustine, 2 nd ed., Cambridge, 1988;
P. Rousseau, Ascetics, authority, and the church in the age of
Jerome and Cassian, Oxford, 1978; O. Chadwick, John Cassian,
2nd ed., Cambridge, 1968; and P. Brown, Augustine of Hippo.
A biography, London, 1967. This already partial listing does not,
however, account for the eastern monastic tradition that so
profoundly influenced the early history of Latin monasticism,
which will appear here only through the lens of the Latin authors
who introduced it to the West. The classic study on eastern
monasticism remains that of D. Chitty, The desert a city: an in-
troduction to the study of Egyptian and Palestinian monasticism,
Oxford, 1966; on eastern influence in the West, see most recently
Grote, Anachorese und Zönobium, cit. (n. 1).
3. The work most directly relevant to the theme of the present study
is P. Bonnerue, Éléments de topographie historique dans les rè-
gles monastiques occidentales, in Studia Monastica, 37, 1995,
p. 57-77. Other recent steps in a similar direction include
S. McNally (ed.), Shaping community: the art and archaeology
of monasticism: papers from a symposium held at the Frederick
R. Weisman Museum, University of Minnesota, March 10-12,
2000, Oxford, 2001 (BAR International Series, 941); and
M. Aston, G. Keevill and T. Hall (ed.), Monastic archaeology:
papers on the study of medieval monasteries, Oxford, 2001. The
more general recent study edited by M. de Jong and F. Theuws,
Topographies of power in the early Middle Ages, Leiden and
Boston, 2001, also contains stimulating work on “monastic to-
pographies”, albeit primarily for the Carolingian period; on the
subject of monastic space and its separation from the secular
realm, see especially M. de Jong, Monastic prisoners or opting
out? Political coercion and honour in the Frankish kingdoms
(p. 291-328). Peter Fergusson’s somewhat older study remains a
stimulating example of a survey of monastic architecture
conducted within more restricted geographical and chronological
parameters; v. Architecture of solitude: Cistercian abbeys in
twelfth-century England, Princeton, 1984.
An Tard, 12, 2005
at least as many questions as it answers, but it remains an
effort worth making. If nothing else, a dedicated effort to
assess “monastic space” in the light of texts can at least en-
courage archaeologists and historians to ask more, better
questions of the physical remains as they come to light. What
follows is one such attempt, albeit on a strictly limited scale.
When possible, the results of excavations have been adduced
in relation to the primary sources: in the tenuous nexus which
occasionally result lies an intimation of richer prospects.
This paper is about walls, and their role in the formation,
definition, and regulation of coenobitic monastic identity.
My particular concern is with the Rule of Benedict and the
Regula Magistri, and the implications of these texts for the
existence of perimeter walls around monasteries in pre-
Carolingian Italy; this order can just as well be reversed,
however, in which case the issue at hand is equally well
construed as an analysis of the influence of “walls”,
conceptual and physical, on the model of monastic
spirituality developed in these documents. To put it another
way, I want to consider the Rules not only as a prescription
for future practice, but as a description of existing condi-
tions, as a means of coming to some understanding of the
manner in which walls came to define the physical,
intellectual and spiritual parameters within which Early
Medieval monks were supposed to live and work.
The undertaking will involve the study of walls in the
literal sense, but also in the extended conceptual,
metaphorical and symbolic aspects of the term. It is not,
however, anything approaching a comprehensive survey of
monastic identity, which would of course be a far longer
and more daunting project, even within the relatively
confined geographical and chronological parameters of Early
Medieval Italy. I have chosen walls as a lens through which
to approach monastic identity for two reasons in particular.
First, because it is now a commonplace of anthropological
theory that identity, whether in an ethnic, cultural, or
vocational milieu, is most often defined not so much by
reference to what a given “insider” group is, but rather to
what it is not – what “we” are typically becomes a function
of what “others” are (or are not)4. Walls, then, immediately
present themselves as a vehicle par excellence for the esta-
blishment of such exclusionary formulations of group
identity5. The second reason is more pragmatic. While the
4. Much recent work on such exclusionary constructions of identity
in Late Antique and Early Medieval Italy, primarily on the subject
of “barbarian” identity, has been done by Walter Pohl: v. W. Pohl
(ed.), Kingdoms of the empire: the integration of barbarians in
late antiquity, Leiden and New York, 1997; W. Pohl and
H. Reimitz, Strategies of distinction: the construction of ethnic
communities, 300-800, Leiden and Boston, 1998; and W. Pohl,
H. Reimitz and I. Wood (ed.), The Transformation of frontiers
from late antiquity to the Carolingians, Leiden and Boston, 2001.
5. Though of course, walls can define interactions and identity in a
multiplicity of ways. The comments of a contemporary practicing
An Tard, 12, 2005 BUILDING WORLDS APART WALLS AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF COMMUNAL MONASTICISM
past two decades have witnessed an explosion of archaeolo-
gical inquiry into Early Medieval monasteries, the vast
majority of the extant remains date to the Carolingian period
or later. Material evidence for the crucial formative period
spanning the later fourth century through the seventh is much
harder to come by. Even when the locations of early
monasteries are known with some certainty, their physical
traces are often concealed beneath later structures. Walls,
located as they were on the periphery of monasteries, seem
a priori more likely to preserve some traces of their original
configurations than structures located closer to the center of
monastic compounds, where architectural modifications
tended to be frequent and extensive. And if the current state
of archaeological research is insufficient to present anything
like a comprehensive picture, there is some evidence for
walls in this early period; moreover, the potential for future
discoveries is excellent: at some point in the not-too-distant
future, it should be possible to draw reasonably definite con-
clusions about whether the major monastic foundations of
the Early Middle Ages in Italy and elsewhere were provided
with walls or not, even if their precise configurations remain
unknown.
While the Rule of Benedict’s (hereafter RB) ultimate
predominance in the Western tradition has often resulted in
its treatment as an entity unto itself, particularly in discus-
sions of the subsequent development of medieval
monasticism6, it was at the time of its composition merely
another in a long sequence of co-existing rules, all of which
drew heavily upon a range of preceding works relevant to
monastic theory and practice7. In sixth- and seventh-century
architect are illuminating in this respect: “The way architectural
space is articulated and modulated is fundamental, if not critical,
to how it supports its purpose and achieves its effects. In dense-
and diverse-use settings like monasteries, space making and the
integrity of boundaries and transitions are crucial. It is ultimately
the walls and their configurations that conceal and reveal space
and activities. The clarity or subtlety, the immediacy or delay,
the scale and frequency with which they do so, means everything.
What is protected from whom; how and where something is
introduced; and whether and how something is shared: all these
are articulated by the character, incidence and magnitude of walls”
(G. Rockcastle, Shaping Community, in McNally (ed.), Shaping
Community, cit. [n. 3], p. 181).
6. Cf. the remarks of E. Franceschini, Questioni della regola di S.
Benedetto, in Il monachesimo nell’alto medioevo e la formazione
della civiltà occidentale, Spoleto, 1957 (Settimane CISAM, 4),
p. 222: “Il suo testo (the RB) appariva, nella sostanza, come un
alto monte isolato, dal quale ogni altro testo medievale di
legislazione monastica aveva tratto origine; era il codice fonda-
mentale del monachesimo in Occidente, documento essenziale
per la storia della civiltà europea.” This volume is still extremely
useful for the study of Early Medieval monasticism in general.
7. In the past century, much scholarly debate has arisen concerning
the existence of Benedict as a historical figure, and, assuming he
did exist, about whether he was in fact the author of the docu-
ment we now know as the Rule. This is not the place to investigate
359
Italy, the RB was not the dominant influence it became in
the Carolingian period, though it does seem already to have
circulated widely8. Hence, for its relevance to broader
currents in the development of monasticism, it is best
assessed in the light of the other seminal texts then current,
many of which had directly inspired its composition in the
first place. The RB relies most heavily on the Regula Magistri
(hereafter RM), a rule written somewhere south of Rome,
perhaps in the vicinity of Subiaco, in the first decades of the
sixth century, by an unknown author or authors9. Amongst
other similarities, the arrangement of chapters is strikingly
similar, and the RB preserves verbatim numerous passages
from the earlier rule, many of considerable length10. Yet after
the RM, the text(s) which seem most to have influenced the
RB are the two short rules, traditionally attributed to Augus-
tine and transmitted together as the Regula Sancti Augustini,
now generally known as the Praeceptum and the Ordo
Monasterii, according to Luc Verheijen’s usage11. In addi-
in detail the various arguments adduced on both sides of the ques-
tion; for present purposes, I will confine myself to saying that I
am largely convinced by the comments made by Adalbert de
Vogüé, in his monumental edition of the RB in the Sources chré-
tiennes series, to the effect that the Rule was in fact composed by
a figure recognizably similar to the Benedict depicted in the Dia-
logues: v. de Vogüé, La Règle de saint Benoît, Paris, 1972 (SC,
181-187), vol. 1, p. 149 f. Among the works relevant to monastic
practice which are not rules per se, the Institutiones and
Conlationes of John Cassian probably had the greatest impact
on the western monastic tradition in the fifth and sixth centuries;
v. Stewart, Cassian the Monk, cit. (n. 2).
8. See de Vogüé, La Règle de saint Benoît, p. 163 f.; cf. P. Schmitz,
L’influence de Saint Benoit d’Aniane dans l’histoire de l’ordre
de Saint-Benoit, in Il monachesimo nell’italia medioevo, cit.
(n. 8), p. 401-415.
9. On the historical background of the RM, v. A. de Vogüé, La
Règle du Maître, Paris, 1964 (SC, 105-107), vol. 1, p. 221 f.
10. Ibid., p. 29 f. The RM is itself the intellectual and spiritual heir
of 5th century Gallic monasticism, chiefly as embodied in the
Institutes and Conlationes of John Cassian; cf. Leyser, Authority
and Asceticism, cit. (n. 1), p. 107. The ramifications of Cassian’s
particular influence on these sixth-century rules are discussed
further below.
11. The definitive critical edition of Augustine’s Rules is Luc
Verheijen, La Règle de Saint Augustin, Paris, 1967. More recently,
Verheijen’s text has been reprinted, with additional comments in
English, in G. Lawless, Augustine of Hippo and his Monastic
Rule, Oxford, 1987. While the question of the authorship of these
texts has been the subject of much contention, it is now generally
accepted, following Verheijen, that Augustine himself wrote the
Praeceptum, and that the Ordo Monasterii was written by a close
associate, perhaps Alypius. For a resume of previous scholarly
positions on the matter, and a summary of his own conclusions,
v. L. Verheijen, La Règle de Saint Augustin: l’état actuel des
questions (début 1975), in Augustiniana, 35, 1985, p. 250 f.; cf.
Leyser, Authority and Asceticism, cit. (n. 1), p. 16; and de Vogüé,
Regards sur la monachisme, cit. (n. 1), p. 276, both of whom
also accept Verheijen’s dates of 395 for the Ordo and 397 for the
360 HENDRICK DEY
tion to its having been composed at a significant geographical
and chronological remove from the RM, Augustine’s Rule is
markedly different in its tenor, and indeed in many of its
most basic prescriptions for the conduct of communal
monastic life12. In its reliance on the rules of Augustine and
“The Master”, the RB came to assimilate two markedly
different traditions, both of which must be accounted for in
a reckoning of the significance that walls came to assume in
Benedict’s thinking.
Augustine’s prescriptions for monastic conduct include a
number of references which suggest that he envisioned
relatively little physical separation between monks and the
laity, at least in terms of the sort of quotidian interactions he
thought permissible. Monks are allowed to leave the
monastery when the need arises, on the sole condition that
nobody go alone, but rather with at least one companion,
chosen by the superior: “Let not fewer than two or three go
to the baths, or wherever there is need of going13.” Such
Praeceptum. Whatever the circumstances surrounding their com-
position, the two rules agree closely in content, and were widely
accepted perhaps as early as Augustine’s death as complementary
parts of a unified code of monastic conduct penned by Augustine
himself (v. Verheijen, La Règle de Saint Augustin: l’état actuel,
cit., p. 256); hence, I have chosen to consider them together,
though preference is generally given to readings from the
Praeceptum. On the wide diffusion of the Regula Sancti Augustini
in Italy and Gaul by the early sixth century, when it was clearly
known to Eugippius and Caesarius, v. Verheijen, loc. cit. On
Augustine’s influence in the RB, v. de Vogüé, La Règle de saint
Benoît, cit. (n. 7), p. 33 f.
12. In the preface to his edition of the Rule of Eugippius, another
Italian monastic rule of the first half of the sixth century which
also drew heavily on Augustine and “The Master”, de Vogüé
neatly summarized the opposing currents of the two traditions as
they appear in this text: E quorum numero praecipue ab Augustino
et Magistro hausit Eugippius, ita ut duas doctrinas aliquatenus
diversas in sua Regula connecteret, illam scilicet Augustinianam,
quae praesertim vitam communem caritatemque fraternam
commendat, et istam Magistri, ab Aegipto tramite Cassiano
deductam, quae potius in munus hierarchiae cenobiticae
oboedientiamque superioribus praebendam insistit; v. F. Villegas
and A. de Vogüé (ed.), Regula Eugippi, Vienna, 1996 (CSEL,
87), p. xv. De Vogüé further noted the evident similarity between
the sources and composition of Eugippius’ rule and the RB (loc.
cit.).
13. Praeceptum, l. 281-283: Nec eant ad balneas, sive quocumque
ire necesse fuerit, minus quam duo vel tres. Cf. Ordo, l. 45-47:
Si opus fuerit, ad aliquam necessitatem monasterii mitti, duo
eant. On the Praeceptum passage in general, v. L. Verheijen,
Éléments d’un commentaire de la Règle de saint Augustin, in
Augustiniana, 32, 1982, p. 255 f. Verheijen notes that the
injunction is best interpreted less as a statement about bathing in
particular, and more as a general precept (sive quocumque ire
necesse fuerit). While this is likely true, some attention might
nonetheless profitably be devoted to the question of why Augus-
tine chose to mention baths specifically.
An Tard, 12, 2005
openness to monks going about in secular society is
noteworthy in itself, and it suggests in addition that Augus-
tine had no particular ideas about monasteries as entirely
self-sufficient entities, as Benedict and “The Master” clearly
did14. There were affairs to conduct outside the monastery,
to which monks were expected to attend. This likely explains
also why monks had occasion to see women, a fact that
Augustine recognized with apparent equanimity: “Your eyes,
even if they glance upon one woman or another, should fix
on no-one. You are not forbidden to see women when you
go out, but to seek after them, or to wish to be sought after
by them, is incriminating15.” Encounters with women were
evidently nothing uncommon, even if they were not features
of everyday monastic life; nor does Augustine suggest that
monks are to refrain from the sorts of casual interactions
with the opposite sex that would have been unavoidable in
the bustling world outside the monasteries16.
And for Augustine, the world outside was indeed bustling:
his monastery in Hippo was an urban foundation, surrounded
by teeming secular spaces. While the archaeological
evidence for urban monasteries in North Africa is almost
nonexistent, it is clear from Augustine’s own writings that
his monastery was located near the cathedral of Hippo, and
thus well within the confines of the city17. Likewise, his
mention in the Praeceptum of what are surely public baths
testifies to the proximity of the monastery to characteristically
urban amenities18. Yet if the secular life of the city forms the
backdrop for Augustine’s monasticism, this is by no means
to say that the monastery and monastic life were not
envisioned as a world apart. On the contrary, Augustine is
intent on creating a community unto itself, whose members
constantly distinguish themselves from those on the “outside”
14. RM 95, 17 f.; RB 66, 6 f. These passages are discussed further
below.
15. Praeceptum, l. 84-86: Oculi vestri, et si iaciuntur in aliquam
feminarum, figantur in nemine. Neque enim, quando proceditis,
feminas videre prohibemini, sed adpetere, aut ab ipsis adpeti
velle, criminosum est.
16. The interaction of monks with the laity may be further
adumbrated in Augustine’s remarks on the importance of
maintaining a decorous bearing at all times; while such etiquette
doubtless applied within the monastery proper, there is perhaps
a hint of a secular audience as well, before whom monks must
take care to comport themselves with appropriate dignitas:
Quando proceditis, simul ambulate; cum veneritis quo itis, simul
state. In incessu, in statu, in omnibus motibus vestris nihil fiant
quod cuiusquam offendat aspectum, sed quod vestram decet
sanctitatem (Praeceptum, l. 124 f.). In this context, proceditis
seems at least as likely to refer to movement outside the monastery
as within.
17. On the location of the monastery, in a garden on church property
in Hippo, v. Serm. 355, 2; and Possidius, Vita Augustini, 5; cf.
Lawless, Augustine of Hippo, cit. (n. 11), p. 58-59.
18. Supra n. 13.
An Tard, 12, 2005 BUILDING WORLDS APART WALLS AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF COMMUNAL MONASTICISM
by their conduct and their spirituality, the “discipline of the
monastery” (disciplina monasterii). Monks are never to take
meals outside the monastery, except on the express permis-
sion of the superior19. All possessions are to be held in
common, with no thought of personal property, whether one
had been rich or poor in the saeculum20. In this second
context, Augustine makes explicit the contrast between the
monastery on the one hand, and secular world on the other:
“Those who used to have anything in the secular world (in
saeculo), when they have entered the monastery, let them
freely desire it to be held in common. As for those who did
not have anything, they should not seek in the monastery
what they could not have outside21.” Here, the saeculum and
the monasterium are presented as places definitively
sundered by the moral imperatives governing the conduct
of monastic life – what goes on in monasterio is entirely
distinct from everything foris22. Thus, two competing realms
are narrowly juxtaposed in Augustine’s conception of the
relationship between monks and their secular surroundings.
He took it for granted that monks would, on occasion, come
face to face with the saeculum, the virtual antithesis of the
conditions prevailing within the monastery, in the normal
and necessary course of things23. It was therefore up to the
monks to set themselves apart, to maintain their distinct
identity, even when physically immersed in the profane
sphere. Ultimately, monks had to face the distractions and
temptations of the life everywhere unfolding outside the
monastery on the strength of their own spiritual and
19. Cf. Ordo, l. 48-50: Nemo extra monasterium sine praecepto
manducet neque bibat, non enim hoc ad disciplinam pertinet
monasterii.
20. Praeceptum, l. 6 f.
21. Praeceptum, l. 16-21: Qui aliquid habebant in saeculo, quando
ingressi sunt monasterium, libenter illud velint esse commune.
Qui autem non habebant, non ea quaerant in monasterio quae
nec foris habere potuerunt.
22. Although in this case, Augustine was actually admonishing
poor monks not to expect more in the way of material amenities
inside the monastery than they had previously been used to, the
sharp conceptual “in-out” distinction nonetheless comes through
clearly; on the literal significance of the passage, v. Leyser,
Authority and Asceticism, cit. (n. 1), p. 16-17.
23. Conrad Leyser has recently reached similar conclusions about
Augustine’s desire to integrate monastic communities closely with
their secular surroundings. Leyser suggests that the complete
separation of monastic life from the lives of ordinary Christians,
often advocated in contemporary ascetic circles, threatened to
create a sense of spiritual elitism, which could in turn lead to a
hierarchical ordering of the faithful, a concept wholly unwelcome
to Augustine (Authority and Asceticism, p. 3-32, esp. p. 11 f.).
R. Markus has also stressed the essentially urban character of
Augustine’s monastic vision, conceived in opposition to the
ascetic ideal of separation in rural fastnesses: v. The End of Ancient
Christianity, cit. (n. 1), p. 160 f.
361
intellectual resources, free to stand or, if they so chose, to
fall24.
And just as Augustine’s rules are largely lacking in
prescribed ideological or doctrinal “barriers” between monks
and everyone else, so too we should expect his monastery,
in reality and in conception, to have been a space free from
impermeable barriers of stone and brick (though it has never
been archaeologically identified). There is no reason, that
is, to expect that any particular effort was made to close it
off from its surroundings, or to restrict access to an extent
beyond what was permitted by the layout of an unfortified
urban dwelling. For monasteries located in the environs of
major towns and cities, then, the textual indications all point
to these structures having been closely integrated into the
surrounding late-antique urban fabric25. The archaeological
evidence is admittedly minimal, but certainly, there are as
yet no indications of the existence of walled monastic
“compounds” in North Africa in Augustine’s day26. Physically
24. The number of studies on “free will” and the related concept
of grace in Augustinian theology is substantial. For one
particularly lucid account, with extensive bibliographical
references, v. N. W. Den Bok, Freedom of the will. A systematic
and biographical sounding of Augustine’s thoughts on human
willing, in Augustiniana, 44, 1994, p. 237-270.
25. It should be noted here that my insistence on specifying “urban”
monasteries is almost otiose, as there is very little evidence for
the existence of rural coenobitic monasteries in North Africa as
early as Augustine’s lifetime. The rather vague and rhetorical
reference in Augustine’s De Vera Religione, 3, 5 does not, to my
mind, constitute convincing evidence for coenobitic foundations
in remote rural contexts, though it probably does reflect the
presence of scattered groups of ascetics: si tam innumerabiles
aggrediuntur hanc viam, ut desertis divitiis et honoribus huius
mundi ex omni hominum genere uni deo summo totam vitam
dicare volentium desertae quondam insulae ac multarum
terrarum solitudo compleatur. In Italy as well, monasticism
developed primarily, in the late fourth century, in an urban mi-
lieu, though again there are scattered references to solitary ascetics
in remote locations from an early date; still, there is no evidence
for rural coenobia in Italy in the fourth or early fifth centuries;
cf. G. Wataghin, Christianisation et organisation ecclésiastique
des campagnes: l’Italie du Nord aux IVe-VIII e siècles, in
G. P. Brogiolo, N. Christie and N. Gauthier (ed.), Towns and their
Territories between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages,
Leiden and Boston, 2000, esp. p. 229; for a partial survey of
texts relevant to insular communities in the Tyrrhenian Sea and
elsewhere in the western Mediterranean (which have, however,
yet to produce significant archaeological traces), v. J. Biarne, Le
monachisme dans les îles de la Méditerranée nord-occidentale,
in RAC, 76, 2000, p. 351-374, esp. p. 352-360.
26. The best treatment of the archaeology and architecture of North
African monasteries remains the aging and little-known work of
J. Gavigan, De vita monastica in Africa septentrionali inde a
temporibus S. Augustini usque ad invasiones Arabum, Turin,
1962; a perusal of W. H. C. Frend’s more recent survey of the
history of Christian archaeology testifies to the continuing paucity
362 HENDRICK DEY
as well as spiritually, then, Augustine’s monastic horizon
appears to have been largely free from walls. The same
cannot be said for the world of sixth-century Italy, as it
appears through the medium of the monastic rules which it
produced. It is to these rules that we must now turn.
The citations from the RM and the RB relevant to “walls”
can be broadly divided into three categories, albeit with much
mutual overlap27. First, there are passages that more or less
directly allude to the presence of actual, physical walls or
barriers separating the monastery from the outside world.
The second category includes what I have chosen to call
“conceptual walls”, which is to say references to monasteries
as places perceived as definitively separate, in a spiritual,
intellectual and ideological sense, from the “outside”. Finally,
walls also appear as metaphorical constructs employed in
the definition of individual spirituality in such a way that,
while they do not relate directly to the physical or theoretical
construction of monastic space, they do nonetheless indicate
that the Christian monk was perceived as a being with “walls”
of his own. Walls, that is, were in this sense conceived as a
useful tool to “think with” when describing the manner in
which individual monks were to live, work and think in re-
lation to others, within their communities and without.
In relation to the passages from the two Rules containing
what can be construed as references to “real” walls around
the periphery of a monastery, it should first be noted that the
word “murus” appears only five times in the RM, and then
of archaeological evidence for North African monasteries (The
Archaeology of Early Christianity. A History, London, 1996).
While numerous excavations of monasteries in Turkey, the Le-
vant, Egypt, and continental Europe are discussed, there is no
mention of a single monastic site in North Africa west of Egypt.
27. A third monastic rule of some importance, that of Eugippius,
was composed in Italy, probably around 530-535 (and hence after
the RM and before the RB). On the dating and provenance of the
text, v. de Vogüé and Villegas (ed.), Regulae Eugippi, cit. (n. 12),
p. xvi-xvii. As it lacks explicit “wall” references, however, it will
not figure prominently into my discussion. It should also be noted
that in much of what follows, the RM and RB will be considered
together, as texts belonging to a recognizably similar cultural
milieu. Without question there are important differences: in very
general terms, it might be said that the RB is less severe in its
prescriptions, less austerely disciplinarian, than the RM; here the
mitigating influence of Augustine, with its emphasis on commu-
nal values over discipline and hierarchy, has been perceived as
paramount (v. supra n. 11). Nonetheless, the RB does depend
directly, for the majority of its content, on the RM (see, inter
alia, de Vogüé, La Règle de saint Benoît, cit. [n. 7], p. 173-314,
a lengthy discussion entirely devoted to “Le problème littéraire.
Benoît et le Maître”). It is my impression that the sense of
monastic topography imparted by both rules is likewise
sufficiently similar to warrant their joint treatment, even if the
RM tends, in keeping with its generally “austere” nature, to be a
bit more assiduous in its regimentation and “enclosing” of space.
The theological implications of this subtle but definite shift in
tone are discussed further below.
An Tard, 12, 2005
always in a symbolic or metaphorical sense; neither “murus”
nor any close equivalent ever occurs in the RB28. Nonetheless,
there are passages in both texts which are highly suggestive.
In reference to the observances properly attending the
departure of monks from a monastery, or their return, the
RM employs remarkably precise language in its description
of the outer limits of the monastic precinct: “Whenever a
brother is to have entered or exited the outer threshold of
the outermost gate of the monastery, he should ask always
to be prayed for, though not in verse29.” The phrase limen
forense ultimae regiae monasterii, which I have translated
as “the outer threshold of the outermost gate of the
monastery”, would be an odd usage indeed if the physical
configuration of the monastery here envisioned did not
include some sort of tangible partition between the
monasterium proper and the outside. That the same words
appear verbatim in the next chapter of the Rule only
strengthens the impression that the author had a specific
(physical) construct in mind when describing the limen
forense30.
In a slightly different context, the RB again seems to
construe the monastery as an enclosed space. In his discus-
sion of the punishments to which monks were to be subjected
who went outside their monastery without the permission of
the abbot, Benedict writes: “…if anyone so presumes, let
him be subject to the usual punishment. Let it also be so
with one who presumes to go outside the claustra of the
monastery, or to go anywhere or do anything, however small,
without the command of the abbot31.” The key phrase here
is the claustra monasterii, a usage which has been subject
to a variety of past interpretations. In his recent commentary
on the RB, Salvatore Pricoco rather laconically states that
claustra is not a reference to a cloister in the later medieval
sense of the term, but rather a generic term for the “whole
28. The first explicit description of a monastery wall appeared only
in the early seventh century, in the Rule of Isidore of Seville (RI
1, 2-3). Several of the subsequently-cited passages from the RM
and RB relevant to monastic enceintes have recently been
discussed by P. Bonnerue, Éléments de topographie, cit. (n. 3),
58-61.
29. RM 66, 7: …vel quotienscumque limen forense ultimae regiae
monasterii egressus ingressusque fuerit frater, sine versu tamen,
petat pro se orari semper.
30. RM 67, 3-4: ... universos petant (monachi redeuntes) pro se
orari debere, ut videantur de ingresso limine forensi exterioris
regiae monasterii in petenda oratione regulam adinplere. Both
passages are examined in K. Frank’s article, Der klosteranlage
nach der Regula Magistri, in Regulae Benedicti Studia, 6/7, 1977-
78 (1981), p. 29 f. Frank likewise imagines that they indicate the
presence of encircling walls, in which the regia, which he calls a
Vorhalle, was the sole point of access.
31. RB 67, 7: …quod si quis praesumpserit, vindictae regulari
subiaceat. Similiter et qui praesumpserit claustra monasterii
egredi vel quocumque ire vel quippiam quamvis paruum sine
iussione abbatis facere.
An Tard, 12, 2005 BUILDING WORLDS APART WALLS AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF COMMUNAL MONASTICISM
area” occupied by the buildings of a monastery32. In an arti-
cle on the Early Medieval abbey of SS. Pietro e Andrea di
Novalesa in Piedmont, Gisella Wataghin also alludes to these
passages in the RB, but while the literal construal of claus-
tra as a walled space is not ruled out entirely, she prefers a
purely metaphorical interpretation33.
Yet to my mind, a literal reading of claustra as a term
denoting a physically defined entity makes much the best
sense of the passage, on the basis of both internal and external
factors34. Internally, the issue in question is not necessarily
32. S. Pricoco, La Regola di San Benedetto e Le Regole dei Padri,
Milan, 1995, p. 379: “claustra monasterii: non il chiostro, ma
l’intero spazio nel quale si estende il monastero e che costituisce,
come è stato detto all’inizio della Regola con la medesima
espressione, l’‘officina’ nella quale solamente il monaco trova ‘gli
strumenti dell’arte spirituale’.” While it is surely true that the phrase
does not describe a cloister per se, Pricoco’s remarks here stop
short of providing any insight into what he thinks the “enclosed”
space actually was, in architectonic terms. On the basis of a
subsequent article, it appears that he is in fact willing to consider
sixth-century monasteries in Italy as physically enclosed entities,
though he does not explicitly posit the presence of peripheral walls;
v. S. Pricoco, Le trasformazioni del monachesimo occidentale fra
tarda antichità e alto medio evo, in Morfologie sociali e culturali
in Europa fra tarda antichità e alto medioevo, Spoleto, 1998
(Settimane CISAM, 45), esp. p. 785 f. Of course, walls were not
the only means of removing monks from the secular sphere. In a
recent article on the origins of insular monasticism in the west,
Jacques Biarne has integrated topographical observations with
textual evidence to explore the physical separation realized in fifth-
century communities like Lérins. Inspired by the vivid image of
eastern monks in the desert, the ascetic members of these
monasteries removed themselves from the world by inhabiting
geographically remote enclaves, rendered still more inaccessible
and forbidding by natural obstacles like water, forests and
mountains; v. Le monachisme, cit. (n. 25), p. 371 f.
33. See G. Cantino Wataghin, Monasteri in Piemonte dalla tarda
antichità al medioevo, in L. Mercando and E. Micheletto (ed.),
Archeologia in Piemonte. Il medioevo, Turin, 1998, p. 174. On
the basis of the evidence cited for this monastery itself, this view
seems to me untenable; the point is discussed further below, in
relation to the archaeology of the abbey.
34. Again, this is not to say that Benedict was referring to a structure
recognizably similar to a “cloister” in the later, technical sense of
the term, as a defined architectural unity with a central porticoed
space, etc. However, the later meaning of the term certainly does
nothing to contradict the proposition that claustra in the sixth
century were already envisioned as walled units. Several previous
scholars have in fact seen these early claustra as enclosed spaces,
without, however, examining the textual evidence in much detail.
See e.g. Jenal, Italia ascetica atque monastica, cit. (n. 1), p. 261-
262, where the author presumes that the monastic enclosure of the
RB was provided with a Mauer; cf. A. de Vogüé, La communauté
et l’abbé dans la Règle de saint Benoît, Paris, 1961, p. 457 f.
P. Bonnerue has made the strongest case to date for the existence
of enceintes in the topographical milieu of the RM and RB: v. Élé-
ments de topographie, cit. (n. 3), p. 58-61.
363
one of a monk actually making a journey per se unbidden
(vel quocumque ire), but only of his going anywhere beyond
the immediate confines of the monastery (claustra monasterii
egredi), which thus seems likely to have been a narrowly-
defined space, physically as well as conceptually. Otherwise,
the prohibition would have lost much of its force, as the
monks whose movements were being regulated as much in
feet as in miles would have needed some finite perimeter
were they not to risk transgressing, unwittingly or otherwise,
their appointed boundaries even in the course of daily
activities35. From external sources, it is likewise clear that in
the sixth century, claustra denoted a physically enclosed
space. According to Isidore, the term referred literally to the
two leaves of folding doors, so called because the doors
could be drawn to and shut (on the implied etymological
derivation from the verb claudo)36. Yet the term had already
acquired the extended meaning of an enclosed space, or one
accessible only through the passages afforded by the claus-
tra-gates, well before the time of Isidore. This usage was
well-established already among classical Latin authors,
particularly in military contexts, where it had come to signify
a fortified enclosure37.
Further support for the existence of walls can be adduced
from the chapters, identically titled in both Rules, devoted
to the selection and duties of gate-keepers (De ostiariis
monasterii: RM 95; RB 66). Each Rule mandates the cons-
truction of a room near the entrance of the monastery where
35. The term claustra appears once more in the RB, this time in a
more general discussion of the instrumenta operum bonorum to
which monks were to devote themselves: Officina vero ubi haec
omnia (generally speaking, the opus dei) diligenter operemur
claustra sunt monasterii et stabilitas in congregatione (RB 4,
78). In this case, there is nothing in particular to suggest that the
claustra presupposes the presence of walls, but neither is there
anything to mitigate against this interpretation; cf. Pricoco, su-
pra n. 32.
36. Etym. 15, 7, 5; v. P. Meyvaert, The Medieval Monastic
Claustrum, in Gesta, 12, 1973, p. 53. Meyvaert’s discussion of
the term is pellucid, and as the RB figures prominently in his
treatment, it deserves to be reproduced here: “For these writers
(sc. Bede and Gregory) and for their contemporaries the word
does not have a specifically monastic meaning. When they use
the word it is still with the connotations it had in classical or
early Christian literature. In this literature, its primary meaning
is that of a bolt, bar or key that secured the gate or door – a
barrier. In a transferred way, it then comes to designate the place
thus secured, a confined space, the rampart or wall that surrounds
a camp or city...” (loc. cit.). With regard to the passage from the
RB discussed above, Meyvaert concludes that “the classical sense
of barrier or boundary is the one involved here”.
37. Cf. Tacitus, Ann. 4, 49, describing the siege conducted by the
general Sabinus against Thracian barbari: obsidium coepit (Sa-
binus) per praesidia, quae opportune iam muniebat; dein fossa
loricam contexens quattuor milia passuum ambitu amplexus est;
tum paulatim, ut aquam pabulum eriperet, contrahere claustra
artaque circumdare.
364 HENDRICK DEY
one or two porters were to be stationed, and where they were
to remain on constant duty38. At the risk of stating the obvious,
this is an extremely compelling argument for a sixth century
conception of monastic claustra as, literally, walled enclo-
sures. While neither the RM nor the RB mention walls per
se, their respective insistence on the need for constantly vi-
gilant gatekeepers would be ridiculous if the gates “kept”
by these ostiarii were not located within an otherwise
impermeable circuit of walls.
The same logic applies to the RM’s painstaking descrip-
tion of the sort of doorknocker appropriate for the outer door
of the monastery: “The gate of the monastery should have
on the outside an iron ring in a socket, which, when struck
by someone arriving, indicates the coming of whoever it is
on the inside39.” There is indisputably a touch of the otiose
in the care taken to explain that the knocker was provided
for those approaching from the outside, in order that, by
knocking, they might alert the inhabitants inside of their
arrival; still, there is a point to the specificity, or at least an
understandable motive at its root. The monastery was not a
space that could be entered without the express knowledge,
and consent, of its denizens; neither was it their task to be
on the watch for “outsiders” – such visitors were apparently
not expected to be seen upon their approach, nor was the
exterior aspect of the monastery such that it invited a simple
verbal salute: those approaching needed to bang an iron
knocker loudly to announce their presence. Again, a walled
compound is evidently assumed by the author of the RM.
The chapters identically entitled De ostiariis monasterii
in the two rules mandate considerably more than the
appointment of gatekeepers, and they do so in strikingly
similar terms. In particular, there is an insistence on the need
for monasteries to be as self-sufficient as possible, by
containing all the necessary facilities for the sustenance and
gainful occupation of their inhabitants: “All necessary things
should be inside the gates, i.e. an oven, tools, wash-room, a
garden, and everything necessary, so that there is not frequent
occasion for brothers to go outside, mingled with secular
folk (saeculares)40” and “The monastery, if possible, should
38. RM 95, 1-3: Duobus fratribus aetate decrepitis cella intra regias
monasterii prope construatur. Qui primum deputati ibi et claudant
monasterium omni hora post exeuntes et aperiant ingredientibus
et advenientes nuntient abbati; RB 66, 2: Qui portarius cellam
debebit habere iuxta portam, ut venientes semper praesentem
inveniant a quo responsum accipiant. Cf. de Vogüé, La commu-
nauté, cit. (n. 34), p. 457 f.
39. RM 95, 24: Quae regia monasterii a foris circellum habeat
ferreum in fimella, quo ab adveniente concusso cuiuslibet
supervenientis intus indicetur adventus; cf. Bonnerue, Éléments
de topographie, cit. (n. 3), p. 60.
40. RM 95, 17-18: Omnia vero necessaria intus intra regias esse
oportet, id est furnus, macinae, refrigerium, hortus vel omnia
necessaria, ut non sit frequens occasio, propter quam fratres
multotiens foras egressi, saecularibus mixti.
An Tard, 12, 2005
be arranged so that all necessities, water, a mill, a garden,
different workshops, can all be accessed inside the monastery,
so that monks do not need to wander outside, which is in no
wise good for their souls41.” The stipulation that all amenities,
such as garden plots and water sources, be located literally
inside (intra) the monastery is noteworthy. The principal
reason for this, expressed in two nearly identical purpose
clauses (ut non sit frequens occasio…foras egressi [RM]; ut
non sit necessitas…vagandi foris [RB]), was that monks were
supposed to be entirely sequestered from the saeculares,
the lay people of the saeculum which prevailed everywhere
outside the monasterium42. Surely there was no practical
reason why e.g. a well situated on the “outer” side of a
dormitory or refectory could not have been accessed just as
easily by monks as one on the “inner” side, save that the
outside was deeply tinged with an aura of secular pollution.
Still, this conception of the outside world was evidently
sufficient to necessitate a structural configuration at once
exclusionary and centripetal – the image is not one of a
cluster of buildings surrounded by gardens, workshops, etc.,
but rather the reverse – the facilities and working spaces are
surrounded by the buildings themselves.
The RM is still more explicit in its reference to tangible
elements of an enclosure. Just a few lines after the phrase
cited above, the point is reiterated in even stronger language:
“When all these things have been established inside, let the
gate of the monastery always be shut, so that the brothers
inside are closed off from the saeculum, already, as it were,
amongst celestial things in the service of God43.” The
injunction that the gates (regia) of the monastery be always
closed is surely to be taken literally, while the repetition of
the verb claudo (clausa…clausi) further reinforces the great
importance of a physical enceinte, both to keep the
saeculares out and equally, perhaps, to keep those in
caelestibus separati in44.
41. RB 66, 6-7: Monasterium autem, si possit fieri, ita debet
constitui ut omnia necessaria, id est aqua, molendinum, hortum,
vel artes diversas intra monasterium exerceantur, ut non sit
necessitas monachis vagandi foris, quia omnino non expedit
animabus eorum.
42. Cf. Pricoco, Le trasformazioni del monachesimo, cit. (n. 32),
p. 785-786: “(la voluntà di rendere più difficile l’accesso al
cenobio)...tende a strutturarsi in modo da aprirsi all’esterno il
meno possibile e a fare di sé un cosmo autosufficiente, da cui
non sia necessario uscire per nessuna ragione e dove si sia
realizzata una società funzionale e autonoma”; cf. also Jenal, Italia
ascetica atque monastica, cit. (n. 1), p. 261-262.
43. RM 95, 22-3: Cum ergo haec omnia intus fuerint constituta,
clausa sit semper monasterii regia, ut intus clausi cum Domino
fratres veluti a saeculo sint iam causa Dei in caelestibus separati.
44. In this context, it might further be noted that the RM’s repeated
use of claudo to refer literally to outer gates (regiae) further sup-
ports, if circumstantially, the contention that the claustra of the
RB denote a real “enclosure”; cf. supra n. 32, 36.
An Tard, 12, 2005 BUILDING WORLDS APART WALLS AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF COMMUNAL MONASTICISM
On the subject of “conceptual walls”, the amount of
potentially relevant material is immense, as the presentation
of monks as a category of people definitively removed from
the rest of the world is one of the prime concerns of the RM
and the RB45; moreover, a number of the passages already
cited blur considerably the distinction between the tangible
and the conceptual. Certainly the opposition between the
saeculares and those in caelestibus separati involves an
element of separation imbued with a force entirely
independent of physical boundaries. From a much larger pool
of alternatives, I have chosen to focus on several themes
which between them encompass elements of both cognitive
and spatial sequestration.
The spatial dimension is notably present in Benedict’s
admonition that monks returning from journeys refrain from
recounting any of their experiences on the outside. The
conceptual divide posited between monastic and secular life
is present here in no uncertain terms: “Let nobody tell another
what he has seen or heard outside the monastery, for this is
certain destruction46.” While Augustine made a similar
theoretical distinction between the inside of the monasterium
and the outside (foris), his intent was never to place the sights,
sounds and encounters of the exterior world wholly off-limits.
Indeed, as noted above, he took it for granted that monks
would be in contact with the saeculum, and tailored a number
of his precepts accordingly47. In contrast, Benedict’s stricture
would have had the effect of “blocking” the one avenue via
which the influence of the saeculum could otherwise have
transgressed any physical boundaries a monastery might have
had. If the ostiarii served dutifully, no hint of external affairs
could have entered a monastery, save from the mouths of
monks who had themselves been outside; assuming such
travelers were faithful to the Rule, this clause would have
closed off the last chink in the monastic claustra, bolstering
spatial separation with an additional fastness of intellectual
and cognitive autonomy.
Separation is further promoted in the chapter of the RM
devoted to the buildings of the monastery (De casis
monasterii; RM 86). Contrary to what one might expect from
the title of the chapter alone, there is no detailed description
of monastic architecture, but rather a discussion couched in
general terms about the need for the buildings of the
monastery to be entirely disengaged from the doings of the
saeculum, albeit without any explicit mention of walls or
the like: “Therefore the buildings of the monastery should
be located in such a way that a secular manager can look
after secular affairs; as for us, to whom the priest says: ‘let
your heart be on high’, and we promise in response: ‘we
45. Cf. Pricoco, loc. cit.
46. RB 67, 5: Nec praesumat quisquam referre alio quaecumque
foris monasterium viderit aut audierit, quia plurimum destructio
est.
47. Cf. supra.
365
hold it in the Lord’, we will not then set it wandering amongst
terrestrial thoughts48.” There is an unmistakable dialectic
between the terrestrial (terrenis…cogitationibus) and the
celestial (sursum cor…habemus ad dominum), between the
monastic life and everything else. This spatial separation of
the buildings of the monastery serves to re-enforce the divide
between monks and saeculares in matters of deportment,
behavior and intellect. While the practitioners of a monastic
life distinguish themselves from everyone else as much by
what they think and do as by their physical sequestration,
there is an additional element lacking in Augustine: here,
spatial autonomy becomes a tool for the enhancement of
monastic discipline – proper behavior and deportment is now
architecturally prescribed49.
In the RM, walls also take on a metaphorical incarnation
largely lacking in the RB. The body of the monk, or parts
thereof, is in several instances likened to a fortified enclo-
sure. The importance of keeping hostile thoughts to oneself
is expressed thus: “It occurs that, when a sin comes forth
from the root of the heart and discovers that it cannot get out
of the enclosure (clausura) of the external wall, which is to
say of the mouth and teeth, turning finally back to the root
of the heart, it there perishes...50.” When stressing the
necessity of remaining internally pure, without harboring
latent sin beneath a pleasing façade, walls again appear:
“Certainly defensive works cannot be secure, when the
enemy is inside them. Likewise a closed door is its own cap-
tive, when walls do not repel the enemy, but keep it enclosed
within51.”
The recurrence of claudo, discussed above in relation to
walls and gates, is noteworthy. Here we see, with a clarity
absent from the passages devoted to the configuration of
monasteries, the close association between the concept of
clausura and walls. In the former passage, the clausura muri
is a closely integrated phrase, while in the latter, the porta
48. RM 86, 14-17: Ergo monasterii casas ideo oportet esse locatas,
ut in saecularibus rebus saeculi operarius occupetur, nobis vero,
quibus a sacerdote clamatur: sursum cor, et nos ei responsione
promittimus: Habemus ad dominum, in terrenis ergo eum
cogitationibus non migremus.
49. The nature of the secular affairs from which monks are to set
themselves apart is further specified at the beginning of the
chapter: v. RM 86, 1-3: Casas monasterii oportet esse locatas,
ut omnem agrorum laborem, casae sollicitudinem, inquilinorum
clamores, vicinorum lites conductor saecularis sustineat, qui
nescit de sola anima cogitare, sed praesentis vitae omnem
sollicitudinem in huius saeculi amore expendit.
50. RM 8, 22: Id est ut, cum promoverit a cordis radice aliquod
peccatum et senserit se exterioris muri clausura, id est oris et
dentium, sibi exitum denegari, revertens denuo ad radicem cordis,
ibi pereat...
51. RM 15, 4-5: Non enim secura possunt esse fossata, ubi intus
est hostis. Simul et porta clusura (sic) sua captiva est, ubi muri
non repellunt, sed inclusum continent inimicum.
366 HENDRICK DEY
clusura is, very naturally, conceived as an integral feature
of a walled circuit52. It is not a great stretch, then, to imagine
that the notion of the body itself as a walled precinct could
have been extended to the monastery as a whole. It may
even be that existing walls were the inspiration for their
metaphorical extension to the body; certainly the references
in the RM would have had a particular resonance for monks
of the time if they had the daily experience of living in a
walled community53.
In sum, then, short of a specific statement to the effect
that monasteries were to be walled entities, all the textual
evidence from the RM and the RB nonetheless points firmly
in this direction. Indeed, the absence of any explicit men-
tion of “muri” in the RB is probably better construed as a
function of walls having been taken largely for granted than
as a testament to their absence. Yet if this is indeed the
explanation for Benedict’s rather casual use of claustra, the
same cannot be said for the RM. Here, there is a more pointed
focus on specific elements of enclosure, in the form of the
clausura and the regiae. If my interpretation of these terms
is correct, their use is likely tantamount, at least in a
metonymical sense, to an explicit insistence on the impor-
tance of walls in the architectural configuration of
monasteries. While Benedict was evidently content to accept
an enclosed perimeter as an established and necessary
component of monastic life, and to leave it more or less at
that, “The Master” felt compelled to present walls as a quasi-
active agent in the development of moral and spiritual recti-
tude. If this divergence is, as I think, a reflection of a deeper
theological rift, its essence very possibly lies in the differing
views on the relative importance of “good works” and grace
which de Vogüé, amongst others, has seen as a general
distinguishing trait in the two rules. De Vogüé perceives in
the RB “un couple d’instruments des bonnes oeuvres où la
nature humaine est abaissée et la grâce exaltée”, a
phenomenon he explains thus: “Ces maximes empruntées à
l’ars sancta du Maître ont visiblement été corrigées en un
sens augustinien. Rien de plus naturel après 529, date où le
‘semi-Pélagianisme’ fut condamné à Orange et à Rome”54.
52. Once again, Benedict’s claustra comes to mind: given his great
reliance on the RM in the composition of the RB, it is difficult to
believe that he would have used the term without some
consciousness of its (apparently) overtly physical connotations
in the earlier Rule.
53. Though of course, the metaphorical application of walls to the
body in Christian thought reaches back to the New Testament,
where it occurs at Michaeas 7, 5: custodi claustra oris tui; cf.
Meyvaert, The Medieval Monastic Claustrum, cit. (n. 36), p. 53.
54. De Vogüé, La Règle de saint Benoît, cit. (n. 7), vol. 1, p. 63-
64. Cf. the article, cited by de Vogüé, by C. Vaggagini, La
posizione di S. Benedetto nella questione semipelagiana, in Studia
Benedictina, Rome, 1947, p. 17-84. John Cassian likely lies at
the root of the RM’s emphasis on “bonnes œuvres”; and a
connection has been suggested explicitly by de Vogüé (La Règle
An Tard, 12, 2005
This view would do much to explain Benedict’s relative
reluctance to portray walls as an impetus to good works;
and given the negligible place accorded to walls in
Augustine’s rules, the “sens augustinien” would certainly
have furnished an admirable exemplar for the “correction”
of the “Semi-Pelagian” inclinations of the RM in this re-
gard.
This said, I would still argue that similar walled enclosu-
res were envisioned by the authors of both rules, and that in
the RB as well as the RM, walls were conceived of as a
practical necessity independent of the purely defensive
function naturally imputed to them. Never is there any men-
tion of the need to maintain fortifications against a threat
posed by external enemies; rather, claustra are seen as
essential guarantors of spiritual well-being and the purity of
du Maître, cit. [n. 9], vol. 1, p. 219). An excellent summary of
Cassian’s views on Grace and his legacy in the development of
“Semi-Pelagianism” is provided in a recent article by D. Ogliari,
The conciliation of Grace and free will. Cassian’s Conlatio 13
revisited, in Augustiniana, 50, 2000, p. 141-173; a more exten-
sive account is R. Weaver, Divine Grace and Human Agency. A
Study of the Semi-Pelagian Controversy, Macon, GA, 1996. It
should be noted, however, that some recent scholars have been
increasingly inclined to stress Cassian’s orthodoxy, and to see
his association with Semi-Pelagianism, and indeed the whole
notion of a “Semi-Pelagian Controversy”, as an external imposi-
tion, promoted by contemporary supporters of Augustine and
Reformation-era scholars alike; v. Leyser, Authority and
Asceticism, cit. (n. 1), p. 40; id., “This Sainted Isle”: Panegyric,
Nostalgia and the Invention of Lerinian Monasticism, in
W. Klingshirn and M. Vessey (ed.), The Limits of Ancient
Christianity, Ann Arbor, 1999, p. 192-193; Markus, The End of
Ancient Christianity, cit. (n. 1), p. 167-168; and R. Mathisen,
Ecclesiastical Factionalism and Religious Controversy in Fifth-
Century Gaul, Washington DC, 1989, esp. p. 122-131.
Nonetheless, Cassian did object to fundamental elements of
Augustine’s anti-Pelagian doctrinal formulations, whether or not
Conlatio 13 was written specifically to counter Augustine’s
controversial views on grace and predestination as they were
formulated in the De correptione et gratia (one of the key points
of contention between the traditional and “reformed” views of
Cassian; Ogliari’s recent affirmative on this question [loc. cit.,
p. 150 f.] actually supports the older tradition). Moreover, he
was subsequently, however unjustly, branded with a (Semi-)
Pelagian stigma, due in large part to the accusations of Augustine’s
Gallic partisan, Prosper of Aquitaine (cf. Mathisen, loc. cit.,
p. 129, on “the absurdity of Prosper’s charge, that the Gallic anti-
Pelagians were themselves guilty of Pelagianism”). Thus, in the
years around 530, when Semi-Pelagianism was again subject to
official censure, Cassian’s failure to accept grace as the sole
guarantor of salvation and his insistence on the importance of
works strained the limits of contemporary orthodoxy. On this
basis, and also because his name was early associated with the
Semi-Pelagian camp, I have been content to retain the term “Semi-
Pelagianism” in relation to Cassian’s legacy, albeit only as a
convenient shorthand notation for a more complex theological
reality.
An Tard, 12, 2005 BUILDING WORLDS APART WALLS AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF COMMUNAL MONASTICISM
monastic life, intended to keep monks “in” as much as
corrupting influences “out”55. Hence, I submit, we should
expect to find walls in common use amongst monasteries in
Italy regardless of prevailing social and political conditions,
and to expect their presence a priori in future archaeological
explorations56.
55. It is noteworthy that the RM, though written during the relatively
tranquil years before the outbreak of the Gothic wars, emphasizes
the importance of walls more than the RB, even though the latter
was composed during the upheavals that followed the Byzantine
invasion of Italy, a period when “outside” threats were manifestly
on the rise. On the straitened circumstances of the RB’s compo-
sition, v. de Vogüé, La Règle de saint Benoît, cit. (n. 7), vol. 1,
p. 47-48; cf. de Vogüé, Regards sur la monachisme, cit. (n. 1),
p. 287-288. It is only later, in the Carolingian period and after,
that monasteries are described as places in need of defense against
hostes: the eleventh-century Chronicon Farfensis, which
preserves the epitaph of Sichardus, abbot of the abbey of Farfa
from 830 to 842, provides an early example of this changed
mentality: Hec loca prudenti construxit et ordine miro,
commissumque truci cavit ab hoste gregem (Chronicon Farfensis
1, 20). The Chronicon Farfensis likewise contains explicit
references to the walls that surrounded the monastery in the ninth
century; v. Chronicon Farfensis 1, 30-31. The fact that urban
monasteries often seem to have been provided with relatively
impermeable perimeter walls, even in cities with well-maintained
and functioning defensive circuits, again suggests the importance
of factors beyond defensive expediency. Such is the case in Bres-
cia, with the eighth-century intramural monastery of S. Salvatore;
v. G. P. Brogiolo, Brescia altomedievale: urbanistica ed edilizia
dal IV al IX secolo, Mantua, 1993, esp. fig. 72. Likewise, in the
account given in the Liber Pontificalis of the monastery founded
by Pope Paul I (757-761) in his ancestral domus in Rome,
reference is made to an ecclesiam mirae pulchritudinis, which
was located infra claustra; v. L. Duchesne (ed.), Le Liber
Pontificalis, Texte, Introduction et commentaire (3 vols., with
additions by C. Vogel), Paris, 1955-1957, vol. 1, p. 464-465; cf.
L. Pani Ermini, Testimonianze archeologiche di monasteri a
Roma, in Archivio della Società Romana di Storia Patria, 104,
1981, p. 35. In his prescriptions for his intramural women’s
monastery at Arles, Caesarius was likewise explicit about the
importance of “a strictly regulated cloister”, which the nuns were
never permitted to leave, and only a select few allowed to enter;
this must also have been a solidly circumscribed space
(unfortunately, the complex has yet to be located); v.
W. Klingshirn, Caesarius of Arles. The Making of a Christian
Community in Late Antique Gaul, Cambridge, 1994, esp. p. 119-
120.
56. By way of preface to the following account of the archaeological
evidence, it must be acknowledged that in relation to the sixth-
century monasteries of Italy, in the absence of explicit textual
evidence, it is nearly impossible to say which Rule or Rules were
in effect at a given place at any given time. It is, however, possi-
ble to say that all of the rules discussed to this point were widely
current in Italy within a generation or two (at the most) following
their composition. On the diffusion of Augustine’s Rules, v.
Verheijen, La Règle de saint Augustin, cit. (n. 11), vol. 2, p. 213
f.; cf. id., La Règle de Saint Augustin: l’état actuel, cit. (n. 11),
367
To date, however, plausible remains of sixth/seventh
century peripheral walls have been identified at only two
Italian monasteries, as far as I know57. The earlier of the two
is Cassiodorus’ foundation of Vivarium. The site, located
on a rocky promontory on the Adriatic coast, in the modern
province of Calabria (ancient Bruttium), was inaugurated
shortly after the year 555. It was excavated by a French team
in the 1980s, whose work focused primarily on the monastic
church and the rooms immediately adjacent58. Four primary
building phases have been identified, two of which date to
the sixth century or before. The remains of the first phase
(A1) are limited to a triconch constructed of mortared
masonry, which on the basis of comparative evidence (in
the absence of any means of absolute dating), is thought to
have belonged to a late Roman villa, most probably that of
Cassiodorus himself59. In its second phase (A2), the walls of
the triconch were extended to the west to form the nave of
p. 256. The almost immediate renown of the RM is indicated by
its availability, only a few years after its composition, to
Eugippius, who relied upon it heavily in the composition of his
own Rule; cf. de Vogüé and Villegas (ed.), Eugippi Regula, cit.
(n. 12), p. xiv-xv. Benedict’s Rule was apparently known to Gre-
gory, if the reference at Dialogues 2, 36, scripsit (Benedictus)
monachorum regulam discretione praecipuam, sermone
luculentam, does indeed refer, as seems entirely probable, to the
RB. At the beginning of the seventh century, Columbanus also
drew on the RB in the composition of his Rule for his new
monastery at Bobbio; the connection, previously little remarked,
was made explicitly by de Vogüé, La Règle de saint Benoît, cit.
(n. 7), vol. 1, p. 163-164. Thus, a strong argument can be made
that the essentials of all or most of these texts would have been
known, relatively soon after their initial appearance, to the
founders and/or superiors of monasteries in Italy and indeed
beyond.
57. Lisa Fentress now informs me that the sixth-century monastery
of San Sebastiano, in Campania, seems also to have had a
perimeter wall from the beginning, which she dates to ca. 520; I
owe the following reference to her kindness, as the interim re-
port on the site was not yet available to me at the time of writing:
E. Fentress and C. J. Goodson, Patricians, Monks and Nuns: the
Abbey of S. Sebastiano, Alatri, during the Middle Ages, in
Archeologia Medievale, 30, 2003, p. 77 and fig. 3. Here, then, is
an early fruit of the “future” archaeological inquiry I have
envisioned, and perhaps the most relevant evidence yet turned
up. If the proposed dating is correct, this would be the earliest
monastic enceinte known in Italy, built in fact at precisely the
time when the RM was composed, in the same region of Italy,
during a period of relative peace and prosperity (when “outside”
threats were likely at a low ebb).
58. The primary publications of the excavations are F. Bougard
and G. Noyé, Squillace (Prov. de Catanzaro), in Mélanges de
l’École française. Moyen Age-Temps Modernes, 98, 1986,
p. 1195-1212; and G. Noyé, Les recherches archéologiques de
l’École française de Rome sur la Calabre Médiévale, in CRAI,
1997, p. 1069-1105.
59. Bougard and Noyé, Squillace, cit. (n. 58), p. 1200.
368 HENDRICK DEY
an oriented building measuring approximately 5 x 15 meters.
Also during this phase, a wall was built parallel to the south
wall of the nave, thus forming a second elongated room. For
present purposes, the crucial development in this phase was
the extension of two additional walls, which met at a slightly
obtuse angle some five meters to the southeast of the apse,
both on an orientation distinct from that of the church. The
excavators suggest that this feature may represent a clôture
du monastère60. If this is the case, it would seem to be an
early precursor of later cloisters, structural configurations
in which the external walls of a central cluster of buildings
created a closed circuit, admitting only of controlled access
at a limited number of points; it is an arrangement that
became increasingly common from the eighth century on61.
The second pre-Carolingian monastery with extant
remains plausibly interpreted as walled circuit is
unfortunately rather late. This is the abbey of Novalesa in
Piedmont, founded in by Abbonus, a “Gallo-Roman
aristocrat”62. The complex has been extensively excavated
60. Ibid., p. 1202: “…l’orientation sensiblement différente de celle
des murs du reste de l’église semble d’ailleurs indiquer qu’il
appartenait à l’origine à une structure indépendante. Peut-être
représente-t-il une clôture du monastère à l’intérieur de laquelle
l’espace est peu à peu aménagé”; cf. also Noyé, Les recherches
archéologiques, cit. (n. 58), p. 1078: “L’ensemble, dont les di-
mensions (15 x 5 m) sont proches de celles de l’église des ab-
bayes de Saint-Vincent-au-Volturne et du Mont-Cassin à la même
époque, est isolé avec au moins un autre bâtiment voisin, à l’in-
térieur d’une clôture.”
61. For the early phases of Squillace, the excavators prudently use
clôture, a term that corresponds closely with claustra in its sixth-
century sense, denoting generally an enclosure wall, rather than
the more specific cloître (cloister), derived from the later use of
claustra, or the singular claustrum, in a quasi-technical sense.
On the distinction between the conception of claustra in the sixth
century and its subsequent employment, in the Carolingian period
and after, as a designation for a centrally integrated assemblage
of monastic buildings, v. Meyvaert, The Medieval Monastic
Claustrum, cit. (n. 36). The important (and thoroughly excavated)
abbey of San Vincenzo al Volturno is an important example of
this later configuration. By the ninth century, it featured a central
complex including a refectory, dormitory, and church, all
conjoined in a self-contained unit with solid outer walls and a
single entrance; v. R. Hodges (ed.), San Vincenzo al Volturno, 1,
2, London, 1993-5. The excavators have also created a website
with impressive 3-D reconstructions of the central complex (“il
grande refettorio”) that demonstrate its fully “closed-off” form:
http://space.tin.it/io/davmonac/sanvin/. The famous St. Gall
monastery plan also deserves mention here, if more for its
relevance to what Carolingian planners thought monasteries
should ideally look like than to the remains of any particular site.
This document envisions a centrally planned and monumental
architectural layout with strictly limited routes of access;
v. E. Born and W. Horn, The plan of St. Gall: a study of the
architecture and economy of, and life in a paradigmatic
Carolingian monastery, Berkeley, 1979.
62. Cantino Wataghin, Monasteri in Piemonte, cit. (n. 33), p. 173 f.
An Tard, 12, 2005
in the last twenty years, and the original configuration of its
principal buildings has been greatly clarified. In the first
half of the eighth century, there was a central church with
adjacent cloister, three chapels in close proximity a short
way to the south, and another chapel some distance to the
north by the road leading to the monastery, resulting in “uno
schema frammentato dal punto di vista spaziale”63. The pro-
bable remains of a wall, or rather the traces of a foundation,
appear to encircle the main buildings of the monastery,
incorporating the rear wall of the outlying chapel of Santa
Maria in its circuit64.
If the remains at Novalesa are identified as the foundations
of a perimeter wall, it is a discovery of potentially great
significance for our understanding of monasteries as they
appeared in the sixth and seventh centuries 65 . The
“fragmented” arrangement of Novalesa in the eighth century,
with its loose grouping of small, freestanding structures, very
probably reflects older building traditions. On the basis of
the (limited) available evidence, it is generally thought that
the earliest monasteries in Italy were not integrated
“compounds” of the sort that occur at San Vincenzo al
Volturno, Bobbio, Farfa, and the other great Carolingian
monasteries, but rather precisely the sort of diffuse collec-
tions of buildings present at Novalesa in its initial phases66.
In these looser agglomerations, the exterior walls of the struc-
tures alone would clearly have been insufficient to form any
sort of viable enclosure of the kind postulated for Vivarium.
Rather, a freestanding wall would have been necessary, either
to span the gaps between individual buildings, or to encircle
them entirely. This decentralized configuration also accords
much better with the stipulations of the RM and RB that
monasteries should contain the horti, aqua, etc. necessary
to support the entire community within their claustra – for
obvious reasons, the enclosed spaces of Carolingian cloisters
were not suited to accommodate such amenities, particularly
insofar as the cultivation of agricultural produce was
concerned67. If, then, Novalesa in the eighth century was
recognizably similar to the monasteries envisioned by
63. Ibid., p. 174.
64. Ibid., p. 175: “…una traccia ad andamento curvilineo che
racchiude gli edifici, avendo al suo limite esterno la cappella di
Santa Maria”.
65. While Cantino Wataghin is reluctant to postulate the existence
of a wall per se, no alternative identification of this “traccia ad
andamento curvilineo” is offered. It is during her discussion of
this feature that the possibility of a purely metaphorical
interpretation of Benedict’s claustra is raised; v. supra n. 33.
66. Such, at least, is the conclusion Wataghin reaches in her brief
summary of the state of current research on Early Medieval
monasteries in Italy: v. G. Cantino Wataghin, Archeologia dei
monasteri. L’altomedioevo, in S. Gelichi (ed.), I Congresso
Nazionale di Archeologia Medievale, Florence, 1997, p. 265-
267.
67. On the relevant passages in the rules, v. supra.
An Tard, 12, 2005 BUILDING WORLDS APART WALLS AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF COMMUNAL MONASTICISM
Benedict and the author of the RM, the traces of a perimeter
wall are exactly what we should expect to find upon a literal
interpretation of their “claustra”. Further, it seems reasonable
to suppose – at the risk of making a nearly circular argu-
ment – that earlier monastic foundations configured along
similar lines would have been walled in like fashion. It is at
least safe to say that if an enclosed perimeter was desired,
the buildings of the monastery alone would have been
unlikely to provide it.
One final point should be made in relation to Novalesa.
It too underwent a major reconstruction in the ninth century,
in the course of which the original church was leveled, and
replaced by the typical Carolingian integrated and monu-
mental complex, complete with cloister, refectory, and
dormitory axially aligned with, and attached to, a new and
larger church68. This was a layout capable of defining its
own interior space, and apparently one sufficient to ensure
controlled intercourse with its exterior environs. It may, then,
at least be permitted to wonder whether it was not at this
period that the original enceinte, of which so little now
remains, was either dismantled or allowed to fall into ruin.
In this case, the inhabitants of Novalesa in its later phases
would have been compelled to leave their walled precincts
on a more regular basis, presumably, than their predecessors:
more outdoor labor could surely have been accomplished
within an open-air claustra formed by a freestanding
peripheral wall than within the interior confines of the later
cloister. If this chronological progression from a more dif-
fuse to a more centralized layout does indeed hold true for
other monasteries, potentially interesting implications ensue
with regard to the (changing) dynamics of the interaction
between monasteries and their immediate hinterlands in early
Medieval Italy69. This, however, is a subject deserving of its
own treatment, which it cannot receive here.
In the end, the archaeological component of the inquiry
into the significance of walls in the monasteries of pre-
Carolingian Italy must await the publication of more exca-
vation reports before it can achieve anything more than
hypothetical conclusions. Moreover, if future excavations
and surveys of monasteries are to provide a statistically valid
corpus of data on perimeter walls (as opposed to anecdotal
accounts of their sighting), they will have to be sufficiently
comprehensive, primarily in terms of the physical extent of
68. Wataghin, Monasteri in Piemonte, cit. (n. 33), p. 179 f.
69. Such monumental reconstructions apparently did occur at, for
example, San Vincenzo al Volturno (v. Hodges, San Vincenzo al
Volturno, cit. [n. 65]); Farfa (v. C. McClendon, The imperial
abbey of Farfa: architectural currents of the early Middle Ages,
New Haven, 1987); and Bobbio (v. V. Polonio, Il monastero di
San Colombano di Bobbio dalla fondazione all’epoca carolingia,
Genoa, 1962). Due precisely to the size and solidity of the later
structures, however, it is often difficult to ascertain what lay
beneath.
369
their coverage, to detect walls lying beyond the central area
of habitation. Fieldwork focused on churches and living
quarters, which has been the norm even up to the present,
will do little to elucidate features of the (crucial) liminal
zone between the claustra and the saeculum70.
The prospect of subsequent research conducted along the
lines suggested is an entirely feasible one. For those
interested generally in the potential of historical approaches
integrating archaeology and texts, as well as for scholars of
Early Medieval monasticism, the effort is well worth making.
The literary evidence of the RM and the RB reveals an in-
tense interest in defining monastic identity on an exclusionary
basis. Monks were conceived as beings definitively sundered
from the world as a whole; and an element of physical
separation was viewed as an integral element in the cons-
truction of this “cloistered” identity. However, the full spa-
tial and epistemological ramifications of the monastic rules
can never be grasped without a firm sense of whether
monasteries were physically cut off from the outside or not
– of whether or not they had relatively impermeable
perimeter walls. A world enclosed by walls is after all a space
fundamentally distinct from one that is not. If the RM and
RB do indeed presume the necessity of keeping monks
enclosed, and do so to protect them spiritually as much as
physically, then the very concept of monasticism they intend
is radically different from what it would be if they envisioned
spaces only symbolically sequestered. In the latter case,
monks would have had to choose freely whether to persevere
or sin, as did those in Augustine’s monastery in Hippo, who
were more intimately connected with their surroundings and
thus free to bow before the looming presence of the
saeculum. In the former, proper spirituality is a thing to be
coerced as much as organically, and autonomously,
developed. As much as their spirituality and voluntary sa-
crifice sets monks apart, the resolve of minds and hearts is
thought to require buttressing with hard stone.
These two alternatives are distinctly mirrored in the
broader theological streams to which their various authors
ascribed. For Augustine, while human free will did exist even
in the face of God’s overweening providence, grace was the
essential guarantor of salvation, and it came entirely from
70. Of course, wider coverage of monastic peripheries, conducted
with modern field-survey techniques, would allow for far more
than the identification of walls. The dynamics of settlement pat-
terns, both inside monasteries and in their hinterlands; produc-
tion (i.e. pottery kilns); animal husbandry, etc. will never be
adequately elucidated by architectural survey and excavation of
standing remains alone. Gillian Clark’s recent study of “monastic
economies” in early Medieval Italy, based on statistical analysis
of faunal remains, is a prime example of the results attainable
through non-traditional, or “non-architectural”, methodologies:
v. G. Clark, Monastic Economies? Aspects of Production and
Consumption in Early Medieval Central Italy, in Archeologia
Medievale, 24, 1997, p. 31-54.
370 HENDRICK DEY
God71. The RM is, by contrast, the theological heir of Gallic
monasticism of the fifth century, represented most notably
in the writings of John Cassian72. Cassian firmly maintained
that good works undertaken on individual initiative could
augment the workings of grace: in this “Semi-Pelagian”
epistemology, monks could actively “work” to achieve their
salvation in a way that Augustine’s followers could not73.
Thus, for Augustine, the route to salvation was an internal
one, established through the workings of God in the
individual spirits of his faithful; the irresistibility of grace
was simultaneously too monumental and too visceral to be
influenced by the nature of one’s everyday living spaces.
The monastic communities Augustine envisioned could be
anywhere, as they required for their functioning only the
voluntary submission of their members to the communal ideal
first manifest in the Jerusalem of the Apostles, a commitment
to become “one mind and one heart in God74.” This
commitment was no more profound, or indeed likely to occur,
in the midst of a desert than in a city – “place is immaterial
in Augustine’s view75.” For Cassian, however, place did
matter. In terms of spatial separation and geographical
remove, he is explicit: monastic spirituality is best cultivated
in remote and unforgiving regions far-removed from the
world at large; where deserts were lacking in the West, islands
were particularly good equivalents76.
The importance of space in the regulation of monastic
life gained new impetus in the RM, where the implications
of Cassian’s thought were further developed: if natural
topography could exercise a salubrious influence on monks’
hearts and minds, why not the (architectural) works of man?
Cassian’s pragmatic view of monastic conformity ensured
71. Among the countless treatments of this topic, Den Bok,
Freedom of the Will, cit. (n. 24), stands out for its concision and
lucidity; cf. also A. Pang, Augustine on divine foreknowledge
and human free will, in RÉAug, 40, 1994, p. 417-431, for a sense
of the continuing theological debate on the finer points of
Augustine’s attempted reconciliation of grace, divine
predestination and human free will.
72. The most recent survey on Cassian and his place in the history
of Gallic monasticism is Stewart, Cassian the Monk, cit. (n. 2);
cf. also Chadwick, John Cassian, cit. (n. 2).
73. v. Chadwick, John Cassian, cit. (n. 2), p. 117 f; and Weaver,
Divine Grace and Human Agency, cit. (n. 54), esp. p. 106 f.
74. One of Augustine’s favorite scriptural quotations, from Acts 4,
32; it is the first and most fundamental “precept” in the
Praeceptum (1, 2): Primum, propter quod in unum estis
congregati, ut unanimes habitetis in domo et sit vobis anima
una et cor unum in deum.
75. Markus, The End of Ancient Christianity, cit. (n. 1), p. 162; cf.
p. 67-88; cf. also Weaver, Divine Grace and Human Agency, cit.
(n. 54), p. 106-107.
76. This is a primary theme of Conlatio 18; cf. Leyser, Authority
and Asceticism, cit. (n. 1), p. 45-46; on the “desert” inspiration
of the insular monastic milieu of Cassian and his contemporaries,
v. Biarne, Le monachisme, cit. (n. 25), p. 371 f.
An Tard, 12, 2005
that it did not so much matter whence the impulse to the
occupatio mentis befitting a monk sprang, as long as it
resulted in proper physical and intellectual deportment77. He
countenanced with equanimity the idea that imposition of
the will of a superior could compel behavior conducive to
salvation78; and the prescriptions of the RM evince a similar
cast of mind. “The Master” insisted on the regimentation of
every moment of the day, and mandated that monks be always
within sight of a designated superior whose task it was to
ensure their conformity to the teachings of the Rule79. From
here, it is but a small leap to the idea that the active inter-
vention required of the abbot and his praepositi to guide
their wards on the path to spiritual rectitude could be
materially enhanced with the aid of walls, “guards” that
neither slept nor erred80. Implicit in the thinking of both
Cassian and the Master is the notion that if God’s grace could
be helped along in its workings by “proactive” endeavors
on the part of individual monks, then so too could the incli-
nations of monks be aided by a physical barrier against the
corrupting influences of the saeculum – a “proactive
measure” par excellence. Cassian’s description of monastic
devotion in terms redolent of prison is particularly striking
in this regard: the spiritual freedom and understanding
required for unstinting devotion to the monastic ideal were
possible only in a state of “captivity” circumscribed by a
pale of unwavering obedience, “for that man truly becomes
free who begins to be your (Christ’s) captive81.” Hence, the
77. For Cassian, occupatio mentis was the intellectual discipline
involved in absorbing and adhering to the edifying principles
contained in religious texts; its opposite was evagatio mentis,
intellectual torpor that led inevitably to misguided and dissipated
living; v. Leyser, Authority and Asceticism, cit. (n. 1), p. 119-
120.
78. v. Weaver, Divine Grace and Human Agency, cit. (n. 54), p. 107-
108; and Markus, The End of Ancient Christianity, cit. (n. 1),
p. 163-164.
79. Cf. Leyser, Authority and Asceticism, cit. (n. 1), p. 124: “Placing
confidence, like Caesarius of Arles, in the control of detail, the
Master aspired to an exhaustive accuracy of moral prescription
and surveillance.”
80. The RM prescribes the division of the congregation into groups
of ten monks, each falling under the supervision of senior
praepositi appointed by the abbot (RM 11, 4). Each “decade”
had two praepositi, so that if some of its members had to work
separately from the others, constant supervision might still be
maintained; v. RM 11, 35-6: Ideo enim duo diximus uni decadae
praepositos ordinari, ut si forte aliqui fratres ex eadem decada
ab abbate in alio sequestrato laboris opere deputentur, uno
comitentur praeposito, sequestratis a se fratribus alium
reliquentes. These praepositi were far more than moral exemplars
– they were charged with actively extirpating sin wherever they
found it, ad purganda vitia vel peccata fratrum… (RM 11, 14).
81. Contra Nestorium 7, 2: …ut captivemus omnem intellectum in
oboedientia tua, quia ille vere liber fit qui coeperit tibi esse
captivus. The idea that true freedom is attained only through
Christian servitude is far older than Cassian, and may even in
An Tard, 12, 2005 BUILDING WORLDS APART WALLS AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF COMMUNAL MONASTICISM
walls envisioned in the RM can be seen both as a poignant
symbol of the ascetic “prison” of the monastery, and a very
practical supplement to the efforts made by abbot and
praepositi to ensure its proper functioning.
In comparison to the author of the RM, Benedict is neither
so precise in his discussion of physical separation, nor so
exacting in his insistence on the rigidity of the liminal
threshold of the monastery; neither does he extend the con-
cept of enclosures and walls metaphorically to the spiritual
condition of monks. This is hardly surprising, given the RB’s
integration of Augustinian and Gallic strains of monastic
theology, and Benedict’s effort to mitigate the dictates of
the RM’s “vertical” model of community, with its emphasis
on “obedience, silence, attention to God, and humility”, with
a renewed focus on Augustine’s “horizontal”, community-
based approach82. In the end, however, Benedict’s claustra
have much more in common with the enclosed precincts
adumbrated in the RM than with the “open”, urban
monasteries envisioned by Augustine.
Close analysis of the RM and RB has suggested that this
“enclosed” paradigm, which unquestionably predominated
from the later eighth century on, was already established by
the first half of the sixth. The archaeological data tentatively
support this conclusion, though much work remains to
determine with any certainty whether walled enclosures were
already regular features of the monastic landscape during or
prior to the period when the Italian Rules were composed.
The value of these texts as descriptions of contemporary
material reality, then, is as yet difficult to establish. As
testimonia to prevailing intellectual and doctrinal currents,
however, their message is less ambiguous: conceptions of
monastic space had diverged markedly from Augustine’s
vision. I believe the change should be attributed, at least in
part have come to him via the thought of Augustine (v. Chad-
wick, John Cassian, cit. (n. 2), p. 114); where Cassian differs
markedly from Augustine, however, is in the element of compul-
sion he introduces – Augustine would never have described monks
as in any sense “captive” in their obedience to any earthly regimen,
however inspired; humans are by necessity captive only to the
inscrutable workings of God’s grace. Hence Augustine’s words
near the end of the Praeceptum (8, 1): Donet dominus, ut
observetis haec omnia cum dilectione, tamquam spiritalis
pulchritudinis amatores et bono Christi odore de bona
conversatione flagrantes, non sicut servi sub lege, sed sicut liberi
sub gratia constituti.
82. « ...l’obéissance, le silence, l’attention à Dieu, l’humilité… »
(de Vogüé, La Règle de saint Benoît, cit. (n. 7), vol. 1, p. 38);
this account (p. 33-38) remains the best brief treatment of the
distinct influences of Augustine and the RM on Benedict.
371
part, to Cassian’s anti-Augustinian views on grace and free
will. Augustine’s formulation of communal life, in other
words, was considerably encroached upon by a tincture of
“Semi-Pelagianism” in the canonical and subsequently
immensely influential RB, via the influence, however toned-
down it became, of the RM. Hence, monastic architecture
was adapted, consciously or otherwise, to a view of the world
in which the active cultivation of an elevated spiritual status,
and a conscious, even self-conscious, inclination toward
“good works”, were as essential for the pursuit of sanctity
and salvation as the workings of grace. If I am not mistaken
in my interpretation of this phenomenon, the enclosed worlds
of Benedict’s claustra, and the later cloisters of Western
Europe and beyond, are the product of a pervasive re-for-
mulation of Augustine’s understanding of grace, “good
works”, and free will.
And if the Rule of Benedict captures a moment in the
evolving legacy of Augustine’s thought, as it stood after a
century and a half in dialogue with many of his staunchest
critics, so too may archaeology provide a further series of
“snapshots” of individual monastic communities, frozen at
finite points in their evolution. If enough of these vignettes
are captured, it may one day be possible to assemble them
in a sort of moving picture of their own, to compare against
the received narrative of the textual sources, and to be
incorporated within it. Space and place, then, may become
as crucial in advancing our understanding of the theological
underpinnings and the practice of Latin monasticism as the
written word. Surely, future discourse stands only to benefit
from the combined efforts of textual scholars and
archaeologists.
University of Michigan