Monkish Musings

Last week I wrote about my inspiration for Aethelreda. This week I am writing about my inspiration for Paulos.

I have had the privilege of knowing many men of the cloth in my life, including a few monks. I admire people who take vows and live according to them, usually outside of the way most people live. I have visited several monasteries and worshipped with the monks in each place. The monastic life holds such an attraction for me that my husband and I annually visit the Trappist monastery at Gethsemane, near Bardstown in Kentucky, and stop at Brother Louis’s (Thomas Merton’s) grave. We attend midday services, and we walk the grounds – out into the woods and past Merton’s tiny hermitage. The steady rhythm of monastic life offers calm and peace, even to visitors like us.

Monasticism as we know it today, traces its beginnings to the sixth century with the community founded by St Benedict. However, there have always been groups of people who drew apart and lived their lives as followers of Jesus.

The little book “The Rule of Saint Benedict” sets out the contract for brothers who lived together in community in Nursia, Italy during the 6^th Century. It was a surprisingly gentle rule offering a balance of spirituality and physicality.  The core principle was “Ora et Labora” or “pray and work”. Brothers in Benedict’s communities all worked to make the monastery self-sufficient and punctuated the day with communal prayer.  

There were originally eight different times of prayer, beginning with the order of Matins at midnight, followed by Lauds at 3:00am, then Prime at 6:00am, Terce at 9:00am, Sext at noon, None at 3:00pm, Vespers at 6:00pm, and Compline at 9:00pm. In between all of these services there was time for meals, contemplation, scripture reading, a celebration of the Mass, working on the farm, and sleep, but not the customary eight hours that I need!

I found myself wondering how they kept regular prayer times throughout the night? It seems that monasteries were some of the earliest time keepers, using a sun dial during the day and some kind of water clock at night, then progressing to the invention of mechanical bells to be rung at regular intervals, day and night, by the Middle Ages.

 I think you will agree that the rhythm of life for a 6^th century monk was very different from how we live today, but the Benedictines have followed Benedict’s rule for 1,500 years.    

The Basilica of San Giovanni Evangelista in Ravenna was built in the early fifth century, and the Basilica of San Francesco was founded in 450 AD, hence it is not too much of a stretch to have placed Fra Paulos there. I pictured him in a more remote location than Rome even though for most of the fifth century Ravenna operated as the capital of the Roman Empire, Due to its good port and surrounding marshes which made it easy to defend. Both the Emperor and the Pope were located there, intermittently, after the fall of Rome in 410AD.

Paulos is the antithesis of the Roman soldier, and of the Celtic warrior. He is the calm voice of reason when others are losing their heads. Yet he loses his heart to Aethelreda and spends his whole life dreaming about her and imagining how things would have been if circumstances had been different.