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By the end of the Nineteenth
Century the old system for the Benedictine missions
needed to be reorganised to meet the changing needs
of the Church in this country. At the same time in
the monasteries themselves, and particularly at Downside,
there was a strong desire to strengthen the spiritual
life by intensifying the liturgical and contemplative
elements of monastic observance.
New constitutions were
introduced in the wake of the Papal Decree
Religiosus Ordo (1890), which saw the complete replacement of
the systems of government for English Benedictine
monasteries and their monks that had existed from
the Seventeenth Century and the parishes were placed
under the jurisdiction of the monasteries of the
monks who were responsible for them. The Bull, Diu
Quidem (1899), established monasteries as autonomous
Abbeys. It was effectively a return to more traditionally
Benedictine patterns of government. At Downside there
followed a gradual but notable reduction in parish
commitments away from Downside in order to focus
the life of the community on the monastery itself.
There was internal renewal
too. At Downside, under the leadership of Prior Aidan
Gasquet, and Abbots Edmund Ford and Cuthbert Butler
(our first two abbots) there was a strong movement
calling for a return to fuller monastic observance.
This was associated with a major expansion of the
school under Dom Leander Ramsay, who succeeded Butler
as Abbot.
Butler also encouraged
the development of a tradition of scholarship as
well as of liturgical prayer. He is perhaps best
known for two works, Benedictine
Monachism and Western
Mysticism. He was also profoundly interested
in the contemplative tradition of prayer that had
been characteristic of the earliest years of the
English Congregation, and which stemmed from the
English Mystical writers. |
