Books
are part of the very fabric of monastic life: they
are necessary for the Liturgy; they are read aloud
while monks eat their meals in silence; a great portion
of the monk’s day is assigned by St Benedict to lectio
divina and spiritual reading. During Lent St Benedict
says a monk should be given a book to read carefully
from cover to cover during that particularly holy
season of the year. It was a sign of the priorities
a monk was taught to set for himself throughout the
year.
As a result, a Library
is generally one of the major architectural features
of a monastic complex. There is a Latin tag which
puts it as follows:
Claustrum sine armentario est sicut castrum sine
armamentario.
(A monastery without a book cupboard is like a camp
without an armoury.)
The link that Benedictine
monks made between the love of learning and the desire
for God led to the part they were to play from the
Eighth Century in the revival of education in the
new Europe of the Middle Ages. The same sense of
purpose inspires our engagement with culture today.
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