Benedictine Order

Benedictine Order. St Benedict of Nursia founded monasteries and wrote a Rule (see BENEDICT, RULE OF ST), but he did not found an order. His Rule was one among several which a monastery might adopt, but in the 7th and 8th cents. it came to be widely followed. In 816–17 Louis the Pious, assisted by St Benedict of Aniane, imposed on all monasteries within the Frankish domain a uniform observance based upon this Rule; monks and nuns in the W. became conscious that they all belonged to the family, or Order, of St Benedict.

In the Middle Ages liturgical observance became more prolonged and manual work less important; monasteries became wealthy and abuses crept in. The fact that each house was autonomous (i.e. had no superior above its own abbot), made reform difficult. Cluny (founded in 909) was one of the centres of reform. Several Popes tried to promote reform by establishing general chapters and visitations on the Cistercian model. In the 15th cent. there were unions of independent monasteries (e.g. the Bursfeld Union in Germany, 1446) and some monastic congregations were founded in which the autonomy of individual houses was virtually abolished. In the 16th cent. the Reformation ended monastic life in N. Europe and England. The Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and the anticlerical legislation of the 19th cent. led to the suppression of nearly all Benedictine monasteries, but in the mid-19th cent. there was a revival, with the foundation of Solesmes (1833) and Beuron (1883). In 1893 Leo XIII united all the Benedictine congregations of monks into the Benedictine Confederation, with an Abbot Primate in Rome. This has since been joined by smaller orders following the Benedictine Rule (Vallombrosians, Olivetans, Camaldolese, Sylvestrines), but not the Cistercians.

Communities of nuns following the Rule of St Benedict date from at least the 7th cent. The Council of Trent in 1563 imposed on all nuns stricter enclosure than communities of Benedictines had previously practised. Benedictine sisters, who are not nuns and have less strict rules of enclosure, engage in charitable work (including education) and missionary activity. Most of these communities were founded in the 19th and 20 cents.; they are most common in the USA but there are increasing numbers in Africa.