Love of Learning

The refectory copy of the Rule of St. Benedict

This week, we return to the Benedictine practice of mealtime reading, having explored the topic of “The Weekly Reader” in The Current two years ago this week (March 8-14, 2020). We pulled back the curtain then, for those unfamiliar with the practice, on the monastic weekly reading at meals, and on some of the community’s reading list. Those unfamiliar with the Rule should note Chapter 38: “Reading will always accompany the meals of the brothers. The reader should not be the one who just happens to pick up the book, but someone who will read for a whole week, beginning on Sunday. ...Let there be complete silence. No whispering, no speaking – only the reader’s voice should be heard there...” Portsmouth, as every Benedictine community, steadily follows this practice. We would like to offer here a glimpse back into a few of the texts, a kind of time capsule, a “core sample” of some readings past. The opportunity to do so has been provided in the binder of readings back to 1957 complied by Dom Damian Kearney, a bibliographical treasure still held in the monastery library. Our retrospective will mark some significant anniversaries which will serve not only as historical markers, but as indicators of the thematic scope this practice offers and the “Love of Learning” it exemplifies and enhances. 

 

 

Death mask of Mere Angelique

60 years ago (1962): The Nuns of Port Royal. A first historical anecdote I stumbled upon here in compiling these notes: the great Ash Wednesday Storm of 1962, which merits its own Wikipedia page (if that be a measure of merit) - the article tells us the highest gust (84 mph) was measured at Block Island, and that a maximum of nearly 24 inches of snow fell (somewhere), with most snow falling south of New England, which experienced wind and coastal flooding in what was largely a “dry nor’easter.” While the wind blew, the monks of Portsmouth sat silently listening to Mary E. Lowndes 1909 account of 17^th-century Jansenism: The Nuns of Port Royal: As Seen in Their Own Narratives. The book traces much of the extraordinary life of Mere Angelique, named abbess of Port Royal at “the age of only ten years and ten months,” through the manipulations (and deceptions) of her extensive family, the family Arnauld, the youngest of its twenty children being the philosopher-theologian and Jansenist apologist Antoine Arnauld. Port Royal became deeply engaged in the battles over free will and grace, Jesuits at war with Jansenists, each demanding the annihilation of the other. Its nuns were engaged in still other sorts of intrigue, with Mere Angelique often in the center. It was of this community that the Archbishop of Paris said: "These sisters are as pure as angels, but as proud as devils" (see article). Lowndes, in the book’s Preface (1909), writes: “The narratives of the nuns of Port Royal introduce us to a world of women, and of women not merely set aside, by disability of sex, from the purposeful activities of man, but deprived also, by their own deliberate choice, of the peculiar dower of womanhood. Such a world might well seem remote from modern sympathies. ...Nevertheless, despite radical difference of you and him, feminine human nature would seem to have been very much then what it is now.” 

 

 

Von Pastor’s work, now all online

50 years ago (1972): The History of the Popes (Pius VI). A historical note for this anniversary, of a personal nature, is that while in my old age I am able to say I was alive at the time of the 1962 Ash Wednesday Storm, it somehow hurt more to consider that March 1972 was a half-century ago. The monks sat at that time to listen to selections from The History of the Popes from the Close of the Middle Ages, by Ludwig, Freiherr von Pastor. This History was apparently somewhat of a favorite, or perhaps a Lenten penance, as the community was turning again in March to Ludwig von Pastor’s account of Pius VI, after a fourteen-year hiatus. Its March 1958 reading, one of the earliest recorded in the monastery list, had been his Volume I (or “Book I”) on Pius VI, and in 1972 the community read Book II. The work is actually Volume XXXIX of his massive series documenting the history of popes, part of an opus making Ludwig von Pastor (1854-1928) a leading church historian of his time. While Pius VI may not come to mind as a well-known pope, his reign of nearly a quarter-century gives him the fifth-longest tenure of any pope, though that reign ended just after the French Revolution with the rise of Napoleon, and with Pius being taken prisoner rather than renounce his temporal power. Von Pastor’s treatment of the popes was known as sincere, well-researched, and not overly apologetic. 
 

Monks in a boat, Carhan, Ireland (Photo credit)

40 years ago (1982): The Brendan Voyage. In March 1982, the community found in Tim Severin’s The Brendan Voyage an intriguing and monastically-connected work. Severin wrote several books recreating famous journeys of history and literature: Marco Polo, Sinbad, Jason, Ulysses, and more. Inspired by the medieval text, Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis (The Voyage of St Brendan the Abbot), his “Brendan Voyage” is perhaps his best known. We see obvious connections to Portsmouth, notably our own seaside location and history, and our monastic heritage. The book cover summarizes: “Could an Irish monk in the sixth century really have sailed all the way across the Atlantic in a small open boat, thus beating Columbus to the New World by almost a thousand years? Relying on the medieval text of St. Brendan, award-winning adventure writer Tim Severin painstakingly researched and built a boat identical to the leather curragh that carried Brendan on his epic voyage. ...his courage and resourcefulness were truly tested on the open seas, including one heart-pounding episode when he and his crew repaired a dangerous tear in the leather hull by hanging over the side - their heads sometimes submerged under the freezing waves - to restitch the leather. A modern classic in the tradition of Kon-Tiki, The Brendan Voyage seamlessly blends high adventure and historical relevance.” A fascinating documentary film, which includes footage of the construction of the vessel as well as from their journey, is available YouTube (Brendan Voyage (PartI), Brendan Voyage (Part II)).

 

 

Payne’s study

25 years ago (1997): The Holy Fire. A quarter-century ago, the monks turned to Robert Payne’s The Holy Fire: The Story of the Early Centuries of the Christian Church in the Near East. Its description: “This powerful overview of the theological and spiritual development of the Eastern Christian Church renders the church fathers as flesh and blood servants of Jesus Christ, engaged with the all-consuming fire of grace. Robert Payne explores the lives and writings of ten monumental personages through whose hands passed the spiritual and temporal reins of their world: Clement of Alexandria, Athanasius, Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory Nazianzen, John Chrysostom, Dionysius the Areopagite, John Damascene, Gregory Palamas, and even Origen-a prolific, influential teacher, though denied a place among the ‘Fathers’ by the Eastern Church.” Payne (1911-1983) was author of numerous historical biographies, including Hitler, Stalin, Marx, and Mao. This particular volume finds a different sort of inspiration, its Christian focus joining a small subset of Payne’s extensive opus.   

 

 

This week’s reading

March 2022: The Great Discovery. At present, the community is reading The Great Discovery: Our Journey to the Catholic Church, the story of the conversion of Ulf and Birgitta Ekman. The couple had been active in Christian ministry, founding the “Word of Life,” an evangelical Protestant mega-ministry, which had earned Ekman the monniker “The Billy Graham of Sweden.” Ekman announced his conversion to Catholicism in 2014. Their account traces their spiritual and theological path, echoing a similar narrative told by Scott and Kimberly Hahn in Rome Sweet Home (1983). The Ekmans, of Lutheran and Methodist backgrounds, write extensively of their visit to Jerusalem, express their developing awareness of the history of faith, and trace their growth into a deeper understanding and appreciation of Catholic theology and practice. Ulf Ekman writes: “I had now gradually begun to realize how little I knew about Pope John Paul II, despite the fact that he had been pope for more than 25 years. In 1989, I had publicly criticized his visit to Sweden in some negative articles I had written, but I knew nothing about his life and ministry. This made me feel ashamed, and I realized that I must do something about it. I got some books about him and devoured George Weigel’s great biography, Witness to Hope. It was incredibly fascinating to read about his life. I realize more and more with the spiritual giant this man was. I also realized with a huge gap there had been between my smaller spiritual world and the great spiritual world in which John Paul II had lived and worked” (page 87). 

So, we trace our own journey and discovery here through some of the Portsmouth community’s reading: from the ancient Eastern church to the battles of Port Royal to the papacy of the French Revolution. We join seafaring Irish monks of the early centuries and Protestants returning home to the church. All in the silence broken only by the solitary voice of the weekly reader. In this practice so striking to the visitor, and as refreshing to the monk as the meal itself, Benedict’s Chapter 38, it seems, was on to something.