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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. |
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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.
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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.
This tradition had been expressed most clearly
in the work of Dom Augustine Baker. Butler did
much to promote this tradition of prayer at Downside.
Abbot John Chapman (our fourth abbot), is another
well-known writer on prayer, whose Spiritual
Letters are still in print, and Abbot Christopher
Butler (seventh Abbot), another prolific scholar,
who was abbot at the time of the Second Vatican
Council, also did much by his teaching to encourage
a love of contemplative prayer.
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