Klöster im Hochmittelalter

34 | Jacques Dalarun
between two contrasting images: the gaunt monk, enemy of his body; and the fat
and sated monk, sensual and profiteer. The first image may be more resistant, but
it is not exact.
The monastic body in the Benedictine Rule
According to St. Benedict’s Rule, the enemy of the monk is not the body, but “one’s
own will”. Body can become the instrument of his salvation. Monastic life is a discipline
more than expiation. It implicates the domestication of the body. The goal is
to incorporate each individual into the body of the community. It is not the poverty
of the Benedictine habit that matters, but its uniformity. The monk does not suffer
from hunger: This is the collective aspect of the meals which is important. In order
to constitute the collective monastic body, each monk must be cut off from the social
body. The structure of the “monastic body” evokes the military organization,
but in the Rule of Benedict, the industrial metaphor prevails: The monastery is a
“workshop” and the monk “a worker” of Lord. The whole organization of monastic
life stems indeed from the Opus Dei, which justifies, and structures it, creating
the unanimity of the “monastic body”. Most striking is the strict adherence to the
timetable. One feels that the most delicate moment is that of awakening for the
night office. This is the critical moment when Ralph Glaber is repeatedly attacked
by a demon.
Monastic regime and modernity
Medieval monasteries are laboratories of social life: The totalitarian hold of the
community on the individual, body and soul, creates a densification of social links
and a new definition of the subject. Modern school, hospital or prison bear the
mark of the cloister. Body treatment prescribed by Benedict does not aim for ascetic
feats, but is a “regime” (a diet and a rule): The monk must lighten and harden his
body by abstinence, fasting, bloodletting, chastity, and sleep deprivation. He must
repress any form of distraction that could divert him for a while from the common
work, and could set the asperity of his individual body against the collective body
in which he must be dissolved. But Benedict never wished to lead the monks to
exhaustion because in the workshop of the monastery, they are workers dedicated
to the Opus Dei. The Rule does not aim achievements, but efficiency. The medieval
monasticism certainly did not plan to prepare the industrial revolution, but
the mental and physical structure of the western monastery as “monastic body”
offered a remarkable model of efficiency for any rational organization of labor. In
the catalog of the harshness of the monastic life, one rarely stops to consider sleep
deprivation. Yet it is a daily constraint, often badly resented by the monks. It fits
against an external world which lived according to the rhythm of daylight. More