Love of Learning

Medieval stained-glass (Monastery library)

The Current’s monthly feature entitled “Love of Learning” draws on the firm monastic connection with education. We find much in the Rule of Saint Benedict, as in its historical embodiments, to reaffirm this link. Within the “workshop” of the monastery, monks are directed to undertake extensive Lectio Divina, in which Benedict directs his reader to “the Conferences of the Fathers, their Institutes and their Lives, there is also the rule of our holy father Basil,” as being well worth the effort of “observant and obedient monks,” through which they will find “tools for the cultivation of virtues.” (RB 73) And yet more basically, the emblematic and much referenced initial admonition of the Rule, “Obsculta” (“Listen”), itself expresses the principal posture of the attentive student. It also requires a Teacher.

The phrase “Love of Learning” is derived from the collection of conferences given in the 1950’s in Milan and Rome by the French Benedictine Jean Leclercq, O.S.B., who offered it as a kind of hermeneutical key to frame centuries of medieval monastic practice. Whether engaged in “Monastic Theology” or “Scholastic Theology” – for Leclercq a basic distinction in the approach to theological study as centered in the monastery or in the academy – the “Desire for God” is inextricably linked to study and learning. The English translation of the collection supplied the subtitle, “A Study of Monastic Culture.” We seem to discover here much more than curriculum or canon, more than spirituality or personal practice, but also community and “culture.” The culture of the monastery is for Leclercq both cenobitic and contemplative. And it is, in effect, a “learning community,” which the Rule famously christens a “school of the Lord’s service.”

This series will look into the significance of “school.” Many monasteries, such as our own, have indeed established schools serving all age levels. There has been at these institutions much reflection on the characteristics of an education framed as Benedictine. We can highlight a few such efforts. Writing for the Benedictine Institute of Saint John's, Fr. Hilary Thimmesh, O.S.B., wrote of the “Foundations of Benedictine Education” as “the broad underlying structure of ideas and attitudes that supply both the foundation and the motive for Benedictine involvement in education: the underlying way of thinking, the underlying way of looking at life, the way of living, historically and now, that is characteristically Benedictine.” A 2017 doctoral dissertation at Dusquesne University by Sr. M. Christine Lauzon Pinto, O.S.B., addresses the “Core Values of a Benedictine Education.” One can find a notable development of the theme in the Cluny edition, A Benedictine Education, edited by Mr. Chris Fisher of our own Portsmouth Institute, which includes two essays of John Henry Newman and an interpretive essay by Abbot Thomas Frerking, O.S.B. Clarifying what is distinctively “Benedictine” has proven a challenge, particularly the effort to settle on some objective framework here. In an article in the St. Louis “Priory Magazine” (Spring 2022), Headmaster Cuthbert Elliott notes the difficulty: “‘There’s no concise, easy-to-digest “brand promise” for Benedictine education,’ (Father Cuthbert) acknowledges, using the contemporary marketing term for a short phrase that describes the essence of a brand’s benefits. Benedictine, he says, ‘is pointing to something that you don’t define easily - you just live it out.’”

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Nevertheless, in an effort to provide a guiding framework for that lived experience, the American Benedictine Colleges and Universities produced a comprehensive listing of “Hallmarks” in 2005 to outline key structural elements of Benedictine education. Their vision is found echoed in a similar discussion of secondary school educators in 2012, in a document drafted by Abbot Gregory Morhmann of St. Louis Abbey, now found in a pamphlet available on the Priory School’s website. At the risk of oversimplifying these discussions, we present a simple table of themes, noting the close correlation between these topics:

These hallmarks, one can deduce, should also be present in the “culture” of the monastery itself. We direct our readers to those two sources themselves for their further articulation of these hallmarks. Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas, distills much of this discussion into a profile to be cultivated by each of its “Ravens”: “All members of the Benedictine College community are Ravens. As Ravens, we embrace our mission to educate within a community of faith and scholarship. To fulfill our mission, Ravens embody these characteristics which exemplify the key elements of the Benedictine College Mission and Values: Above all, a Raven is Christ-Centered; Community: A Raven is collaborative, hospitable, and engaged; Faith: A Raven is faithful, steadfast, and joyful; Scholarship: A Raven is thoughtful, competent, and committed to greatness.” Our own school, like many Benedictine schools, has also selected the Raven as its mascot. And rooted in the same Benedictine tradition, it seeks to cultivate similar qualities in its own Ravens.

In this series of articles in The Current, we hope to further this discussion. Specifically, we will hear reflections from some of our monastic community on their own educational experiences, both as student and as teacher. As members of a monastery which has established a school, we hope to explore their sense of how the School is an expression of monastic work. We will seek to understand how their own education has served to shape their monastic life. All the monks of Portsmouth, whether entering at Portsmouth or arriving here from Saint Louis, have joined monastic communities deeply involved in secondary education. In their reflection and commentary, we may thus see emerging the meaning of some of the “hallmarks” of education they share with other Benedictines. All of this, we hope, will shed light on the meaning of the “Love of Learning” at this particular Benedictine house.