THE CAMBRIDGE MEDIEVAL HISTORY I 273
St. Basil’s Monastic Legislation
18.5. St. Basil’s Monastic Legislation
St Basil's construction of the monastic life was fully cenobitical, in this respect advancing beyond that of St Pachomius. In the Pachomian system the monks dwelt in different houses within the monastery precincts; the meals were at different hours; and all assembled in the church only for the greater services. But St Basil established a common roof, a common table, a common prayer always; so that we meet here for the first time in Christian monastic legislation the idea of the cenobium, and common life properly so called. Again, St Basil declared against even the theoretical superiority of the eremitical life over the cenobitical. He asserted the principle that monks should endeavour to do good to their fellow men; and in order to bring works of charity within reach of his monks, orphanages were established, separate from the monasteries but close at hand and under the care of the monks, in which apparently children of both sexes were received.
Boys also were taken into the monasteries to be educated, and not with the view of their becoming monks. Another new feature in St Basil's conception of the monastic life was his discouragement of excessive asceticism; he enunciated the principle that work is of greater value than austerities, and drew the conclusion that fasting should not be practised to such an extent as to be detrimental to work. All this represents a new range of ideas.
The following is an outline of the actual daily life in St Basil's monasteries. A period of novitiate or probation, of indeterminate length, had to be passed, at the end of which a profession of virginity was made, but no monastic vows were taken: Palladius, writing in 420, says in the Prologue to the Lausiac History, that it is better to practise the monastic life freely, without the constraint of a vow. But though there were no vows, St Basil's monks were considered to be under a strict obligation of persevering in the monastic life, and of abiding in their own monastery. Their time was divided between prayer, work, and the reading of Holy Scripture. They rose for the common psalmody while it was still night and chanted the divine praises till the dawn; six times each day did they assemble in the church for prayer. Their work was field labour and farming — St Gregory Nazianzen speaks of the ploughing and vine-dressing, the wood-drawing and stone-hewing, the planting and draining. The food and clothing, too, the housing and all the conditions of life, he describes as being coarse and rough and austere.
The monastic virtues of obedience to the superior, of personal poverty, of self-denial, and the cultivation of the spiritual life and of personal religion, are insisted on.
The Basilian form of monachism was the one that spread in the adjacent provinces of Asia Minor and in Armenia; and under the influence of the Council of Chalcedon, which passed several canons regulating the monastic life, and of the civil law, it gradually made its way and became recognised throughout the Greek portion of the Empire as the official form of monastic life. But the Eastern tendency towards the practice of extreme austerity and the eremitical life has always struggled to find expression, and to this day there are hermits on Mount Athos and at other monastic centres of the Orthodox Church.
In the fifth century the Holy Land became the head centre of Greek monachism, and monasteries of two kinds arose in considerable numbers. There were the cenobia, or monasteries proper, where the life was according to the lines laid down by St Basil; and there were the lauras, wherein a semi-eremitical life was followed, the monks living in separate huts within the enclosure. St Sabas, a Cappadocian, was the great organiser of this manner of life — he founded no fewer than seven lauras in Palestine, and drew up a Typicon or code of rules for their guidance.
Sabas was appointed Exarch of all the lauras of Palestine, while his compatriot and contemporary Theodosius became Archimandrite of all the cenobia of Palestine. Under the stress of the Origenistic controversy and of the Arab invasion Palestinian monachism waned, and in the seventh century the centre of gravity of Greek monasticism shifted to Constantinople, where in the early years of the ninth century it underwent a reorganisation at the hands of Theodore, abbot of the monastery of the Studium. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries the centre of gravity again shifted, this time to Mount Athos, where it has ever since remained.
Since the time of Theodore the Studite Greek and Slavonic monachism has undergone little change: it is still St Basil's monachism, but the elements of hard labour and of works of charity have been almost wholly eliminated from the life, and intellectual work has not, as in the West, taken their place on any large scale — indeed, it has usually been discouraged; so that for the past thousand years Greek and Slavonic monks have been almost wholly given up, in theory at any rate, and in great measure in practice too, to a life of purely devotional contemplation. They do not call themselves Basilians, but simply Monks, and St Basil's Rules scarcely hold a leading place in the code of monastic legislation that regulates their life.
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