Benedictine brotherhood” “” “

“St. Benedict, with his monks, created a genuine web that safeguarded and diffused the literary heritage. He saved it from dying and disappearing, together with his sons, who patiently wove a web of parchment, of codices, of miniatures”: so wrote Cristiana Dobner in a recent number of SirEurope. The web that united Europe during the Middle Ages by means of the Benedictine monasteries is documented in the exhibition “Nonantola, Europe” now being held in Modena (Italy) until the end of February 2004 as part of the celebrations of the 12th centenary of the death of the founder and first abbot of the Benedictine abbey of St. Anselm. Acceptance of the “spiritual brotherhood” of Reichenau gave rise to a flourishing spiritual and cultural exchange. An invisible bond between the monasteries of Europe.“The movement developed around the year 830, beginning from the abbey of St. Gallen in Switzerland which enjoyed a kind of twinning with the abbey of Reichenau, a little island in lake Constance. It was fairly common at the time for there to be an exchange of monks between Switzerland and southern Germany for purposes of study. From these contacts was born the idea of an ‘institutionalized’ link by means of reciprocal prayer, not only at the level of the community, but also of the individual monks that belonged to it, through the exchange of lists that each monastery inserted in its own Liber vitae or fraternitatis. At first reciprocal prayer concerned intercession for the dead, but was then extended to living monks”: that’s how Giovanni Spinelli, of the Benedictine monastery of Pontida (Italy), explains the “spiritual brotherhood” of Reichenau that involved many monasteries in central and northern Europe in the early middle ages, including that of San Silvestro at Nonantola (Modena, Italy). One index attests the link between 56 monasteries scattered between the Seine and the area of Paris (such as the abbey of Flavigny) to the west, the area of Salzburg with the abbey of St. Peter and the region of Bavaria with the monasteries of Metten and Altaich to the east, and the Swiss monasteries of Pfäfers, Disentis and Müstair to the south. To these, others were later added, especially those belonging to the middle Rhone valley and northern Germany. “Each time that a monastery entered into brotherhood with another – adds dom Spinelli –, it sent it a copy of its own liber vitae and very long lists of monks that were to be included in the prayer intentions. In that of Reichenau there are some 40,000 names”. The laity too drew on this culture. “This spiritual brotherhood – explains dom Spinelli – also had practical consequences; when a monk set out on pilgrimage, he took with him a letter of recommendation from his own abbot and on his journey was given a warm welcome in the monasteries united by brotherhood. He frequently took with him gifts, such as relics or a manuscript book composed in the scriptorium of his own monastery, and it was often the case that he brought home with him, and introduced to his own monastery, liturgies or chants from the monastery in which he had been given hospitality: in this way an area of cultural exchange was created that produced a unity more extensive than the existing one in Europe”. “Moreover, if we consider that culture at that time was the monopoly of the monasteries, from which the laity also drew, and that the first universities were founded in the middle ages following the transformation of the schools of theology annexed to the great cathedrals, often headed by a monk, we can readily understand that the web of cultural relations was not just confined to the ecclesial world but interested the whole of society at the time. Unfortunately the whole culture developed in the middle ages, which is essentially a Christian culture, still suffers – as demonstrated by the process of drafting the European Constitution – from the prejudice of the Enlightenment. The drawing up of lists of monks in a monastery’s Liber vitae continued down to the twelfth century. Later, when someone died in a monastery, a messenger was sent to the other monasteries with a long parchment scroll in which each abbot visited wrote that he would commemorate the deceased on the day of his death each year. These parchment scrolls too are very interesting documents”.