The title of Dr. Hittinger’s lecture:“What St. Benedict Taught the Dark Ages — Then and Now.”
When Benedict of Nursia began writing The Rule of St. Benedict in the 6th century, Rome had fallen. The barbarians had breached the gate and ruled over the cities and the countryside. What was left of Western civilization was becoming engulfed in darkness. The darkness of illiteracy. The darkness of ignorance. The darkness of violence.
Benedict’s little book of instructions written for his fellow monks was the candle that lit the bonfire of Benedictine holiness and scholarship that illuminated the Middle Ages. The Rule may seem simple to “sophisticated moderns,” but Benedict adjures us—as he did his brother monks—to “Listen with the ears of your heart for the voice of God.” He urged them and he urges us to practice habits of humility and obedience and moderation. He advises that his monks seek a daily balance of work, prayer, reading and rest. He advises them and all of us to bear one another’s infirmities with patience.
This guidance, contained in St. Benedict’s “little Rule for beginners,” helped Benedictine monks to live the kind of life that made them and their monasteries beacons in a world beset with ignorance and violence. Benedictine monks fostered literacy, promoted the classics, copied and disseminated the Bible, and helped to create the liberal arts curriculum that has lasted for more than a millennium. Benedict’s monks laid the foundations for the great universities, and re-ignited the lights of Western civilization when they had nearly gone out.
How might St. Benedict’s Rule help us today? Could it help to rejuvenate our civilization, to dispel the ignorance, vulgarity, violence, and callousness which often characterize our Modern Age ?
Those are the questions with which this year’s Cuthbert Allen lecturer will grapple.
Entitled “What St. Benedict Taught the Dark Ages—Then and Now,” the lecture will be delivered by internationally recognized scholar and writer Dr. F. Russell Hittinger on Thursday, March 18 at 8:00 p.m. in the Haid Theatre at Belmont Abbey College. Admission is free to the public. Seating is limited (less than 200 seats are available), so please reserve your seat online today by CLICKING HERE. If you have any questions, please contact Jillian Maisano at JillianMaisano@bac.edu.
