A weave of rules for livin

Rumer Godden reviews a tapestry of Benedictine life and a history of monasticism in Europe
Benedictine Tapestry by Dame Felicitas Corrigan OSB (Darton, Longman & Todd, 1:13.95) Burner Godden
THIS "tapestry", as with all woven tapestries, has a warp and a weft; the warp with its strong and enduring strings is the long history of the monks and nuns who have lived under the Rule of St Benedict since he wrote it in the sixth century and still do.
The weft tomes crosswise. shuttles of diverse and many coloured threads that weave through the strings to make the pattern. The whole makes a book as fascinating as it is unusual and —Imemorable; many of us, people "outside", will be moved by it and, I can guess, will read it again and again.
The history's main thread is that of St Gregory the Great, elected Pope in 590. Few of us realise how truly great he was and what a visionary; England. as Dame Felicitas Corrigan tells us, is the only country in the whole history of the Christian church to have a pope as an apostle.
It was Gregory who sent Augustine (not of Hippo but Canterbury) and his 40 monks to England in 597: with them they brought the Rule, and within 100 years England was established as a Benedictine stronghold, the first in Europe with monasteries in every part of the country, women to the fore.
St Benedict himself had been, as had many young men of his time, a student in Rome. But disgusted with the decadence of the city, he had fled to Subiaco, where after a time of hermit solitude, disciples irresistibly gathered round him.
It is salutary to remember that St Benedict, who died circa 580, was faced with the same challenges we have to meet today "a highly complex society developing into chaos," as Dame Felicitas puts it. His answer was "to sit down and write his practicable and workable code to control and inspire his disciples". "In doing so he saved monasticism and moulded not only Europe's religion but her culture and civilisation." The Rule in its clarity and simplicity is still used and worldwide.
The names of his followers are so many, so interbound, that the average reader may become bewildered. But no matter: it is enough to know they were like "sparks among the stubble keeping alight the torch they handed on to one another". Benedictine monks, through all the persecutions, have an unbroken line back to their founder.
The nuns broke only once, when they were banished in the Reformation; the Stanbrook nuns, Dame Felicitas's own, came back to England from Cambial in 1795, penniless and homeless to establish their "house" again.
Dame Felicitas has a talent for making the past live, and gives small touches that are endearing: St Jerome would not be parted from his sheepskin coat, in Jerusalem's winter saint as he was, he minded the cold: St Francis de Sales writing to his protegee and disciple, Jane Frances Chantal wrote, "Wear clothes that fit!" St Teresa of Avila complained to God, "No wonder you have so few friends if you treat them like this!"
Besides the warp, Dame Felicitas makes the weft an even more compelling part of the book; of particular interest to women is the chapter, "What is a Nun?" because it brings a new aspect of ferninism.
It may come as a surprise for instance, to learn that it is nothing new; in the fourth century, "women cut their hair, wore men's clothes and began to penetrate the worlds of law and medicine and that the church itself had, and still has, the highest form of feminism, one of unmitigated good".
There were the "double monasteries", one for monks, one for nuns often ruled over by an abbess. St Hilda of Whitby trained her monks to become bishops, abbots and scholars of renown. Double monasteries are coming back in present time.
Often women's influence took the role of an elder sister; St Benedict had a sister, St Scholastica not, as supposed, his twin hut older than he. She could over-ride even her eminent brother and show him how to obey.
Many of the great Benedictines had their women counterparts; St Jerome and Paula, St Ambrose and his sister Marcellina, Francis de Sales and Jane Frances Chantal, and the hook goes on to tell of Heloise and Abelard, that famous pair of lovers, in their later life when she too became an abbess, an aspect little known to the world.
Outstanding is the story of Si Hildegard, "who would never seek a crown of victory by obedience to any man. Her sole master was the living light of the godhead." She became a bright star of twelfth century history.
These are of the weft, and the rest of the book shows how the
shuttles have taken the pattern into our own century.
Dame Felicitas is a contemplative nun of the Benedictines of the English congregation, vowed to the house of Stanbrook Abbey. She is also a born writer as can be seen from this book; her life of Helen Waddell won the James Tait memorial prize for literature; another book, The Nun, the Infidel and the Superman, telling of the friendships of her late Abbess Laurentia McClachan with Sydney Cockerel', bibliophile and director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, and Bernard Shaw, was the basis of Hugh Whitmore's play The Best of Friends which, after a successful season in London with Sir John Gielgud in the part of Sydney Cockerel' has gone to Europe, America and Australia. This Christmas it was shown on TV's Channel Four.
None of this does she ever mention, nor that she is a musician, an organist of the first rank and an expert on plainsong, the Gregorian chant St Gregory again of which she says, "it seems to me that a single line of plainsong expresses more of the numinous than all the rest put together".
She recently conducted 13 choirs in plainsong at St Chad's Cathedral in Birminghamthough strictly enclosed, the nuns of Stanbrook Abbey on occasions come out into the world for apostolic work.
She is by no means the only one: Dame Hildelith Cummings produced the prestigious exhibition of Stanbrook printing at London's Victoria and Albert Museum. Dame Maria Boulding was the first contemplative nun to appear on television and went on tour lecturing throughout Australia.
And remember, they have accomplished all this while leading the full monastic life in which the first purpose is prayer, private prayer and the divine office, four hours at least every day beginning with Vigils once Matins at 6 arn, going onto the prayer Lauds, then Mass, mid-day prayer, Vespers in the evening
preceded by a procession and the beautiful night office of Compline. Lady Abbess once allowed me to follow the nuns' liturgical day; I was exhausted.
Also at Stanbrook, there is a line of parlours where the nuns can meet visitors from outside an endless stream. Some are relatives or friends, some come on business but many ask for help, counselling, steadying. "Parlour" comes from the French parler to speak: though the nuns chiefly listen it all takes time.
Dame Felicitas does not tell of the life directly but it comes through in glimpses, particularly in the letters she quotes and the portrait of a contemporary, the stalwart Dame Scholastica Hebgin, whom I knew and revered. The nun's concern with the happenings outside is shown too in the chapter "Leading Captivity Captive", a saga of the imprisonment and torture of monks and nuns in Korea. The letters come from men and women all over the world.
Abbess Laurentia told her nuns, "You may be enclosed but that is no reason to have enclosed minds." It is quite usual to find Buddhist monks staying at Stanbrook. Even this in Benedictine history is not new. Peter the Venerable who died in 1115 spent his life translating the Qu 'ran.
Benedictine Tapestry has been written in the twentieth century by a contemplative nun rooted in eternity. As a result the fabric becomes numinous and luminous; faith shines through it, warp and weft. Dame Felicitas has a word "mindsight" which exactly describes the way she can evoke the greatness of God and his creation, often in little things. "We were peacefully reciting the psalms in office when came a whirr of wings and a pair of martlets swept in through the open window and proceeded to give a wonderful display of aeronautics".
Next day was a feast day on which the Blessed Sacrament was exposed in a golden monstrance on the altar lit by candles banked by flowers. The nuns took tums two by two to watch and pray. Dame Felicitas came in the very early morning.
As she knelt the martlets came back "hurtling themselves through the open window in an ecstasy of joy at the dawn of another day. It somehow seemed exactly right," she writes,"at the court of the Lord that this early hour should consist of tongues of flame, glowing pink poppies, two black singing birds with flashes of blue and two nuns kneeling in adoration." Can one get closer to God than that?