Writing Habits: Historicism, Philosophy, and English Benedictine Convents, 1600–1800

By Jaime Goodrich

The first in-depth examination of the texts produced in English Benedictine convents between 1600 and 1800
 
After Catholicism became illegal in England during the sixteenth century, Englishwomen established more than twenty convents on the Continent that attracted thousands of nuns and served as vital centers of Catholic piety until the French Revolution. Today more than 1,000 manuscripts and books produced by, and for, the Benedictine convents are extant in European archives. Writing Habits: Historicism, Philosophy, and English Benedictine Convents, 1600–1800 provides the first substantive analysis of these works in order to examine how members of one religious order used textual production to address a major dilemma experienced by every English convent on the Continent: How could English nuns cultivate a cloistered identity when the Protestant Reformation had swept away nearly all vestiges of English monasticism?
 
Drawing on an innovative blend of methodologies, Jaime Goodrich contends that the Benedictines instilled a collective sense of spirituality through writings that created multiple overlapping communities, ranging from the earthly society of the convent to the transhistorical network of the Catholic Church. Because God resides at the heart of these communities, Goodrich draws on the works of Martin Buber, a twentieth-century Jewish philosopher who theorized that human community forms a circle, with each member acting as a radius leading toward the common center of God. Buber’s thought, especially his conception of the I-You framework for personal and spiritual relationships, illuminates a fourfold set of affiliations central to Benedictine textual production: between the nuns themselves, between the individual nun and God, between the convent and God, and between the convent and the Catholic public sphere. By evoking these relationships, the major genres of convent writing—administrative texts, spiritual works, history and life writing, and controversial tracts—functioned as tools for creating community and approaching God.

Through this Buberian reading of the cloister, Writing Habits recovers the works of Benedictine nuns and establishes their broader relevance to literary history and critical theory.
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: University Alabama Press
• Release date: Oct 12, 2021
• ISBN: 9780817393724

Book preview

Writing Habits

STRODE STUDIES IN EARLY MODERN LITERATURE AND CULTURE

Michelle M. Dowd, series editor

EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD

Dennis Austin Britton

Bradin Cormack

Mario DiGangi

Holly Dugan

Barbara Fuchs

Enrique García Santo-Tomás

Jessica Goethals

Karen Raber

Jyotsna G. Singh

Wendy Wall

Writing Habits

HISTORICISM, PHILOSOPHY, AND ENGLISH BENEDICTINE CONVENTS, 1600–1800

JAIME GOODRICH

The University of Alabama Press

Tuscaloosa

The University of Alabama Press

Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487-0380

uapress.ua.edu

Copyright © 2021 by the University of Alabama Press

All rights reserved.

Inquiries about reproducing material from this work should be addressed to the University of Alabama Press.

Typeface: Alegreya

Cover image: A seventeenth-century engraving of Gertrude More by Jacob Neefs, frontispiece to The Inner Life and Writings of Dame Gertrude More, edited by Dom Benedict Weld-Blundell (London: R. T. Washburn, 1911)

Cover design: Lori Lynch

Cataloging-in-Publication data is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN: 978-0-8173-2103-1

E-ISBN: 978-0-8173-9372-4

Contents

List of Tables

Acknowledgments

Note on Names, Quotations, and Terminology

Introduction. Buber and the Benedictines

Chapter 1. Cloistered Gemeinschaft: Administrative Writing and Communal Formation

Chapter 2. Religious Communion: Spiritual Texts and Liturgical Rites

Chapter 3. Monastic Imagined Communities: Histories, Life Writing, and the Divine Call

Chapter 4. From the Convent to the Counterpublic: Controversial Works and Rival Spiritual Communities

Afterword. Thinking with the Dead: Notes toward a Feminist Philosophical Turn

Appendix: Provisional Bibliography of English Benedictine Writings

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Tables

1. Comparison of opening chapters in Benedictine statutes

2. Extant chapter speeches

3. Extant death notices

Acknowledgments

This book was made possible by generous research support from the US-UK Fulbright Commission (a Fulbright Scholar Award at the University of Sheffield); Wayne State University (a Career Development Chair, a Graduate Research Assistant Award, a Research Enhancement Program grant, a sabbatical leave); and the Wayne State Humanities Center (a Marilyn Williamson Fellowship, a Faculty Fellowship).

In completing the research for this project, I relied heavily on the kindness of archivists and librarians at many different repositories across the world: the Archives of the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, the Archdiocesan Archives of Mechelen-Brussels, the Archives Départementales du Nord, the Archives Départementales du Val d’Oise, the Beinecke Library, the Bodleian Library, the British Library, Durham University Library, the National Archives in Kew, the Newberry Library, the Rijksarchief in Ghent, the Vatican Library, and the Westminster Diocesan Archives.

I am particularly indebted to the Benedictine nuns and monks who welcomed me into their communities and freely shared their archival holdings: at Colwich Abbey, Prioress Davina Sharp and Dame Benedict Rowell; at Douai Abbey, Abbot Geoffrey Scott; at Downside Abbey, Abbot Aidan Bellenger, Dom David Foster, Dom Philip Jebb, and Simon Johnson; at Oulton Abbey, Abbess Benedicta Scott and Dame Peter Smith; and at Stanbrook Abbey, Abbess Andrea Savage and Dame Scholastica Jacob. Exemplifying the Benedictine virtue of hospitality, many of these monasteries fed and housed me while I worked with their papers. My conversations with modern Benedictines and my experiences in their chapels deepened my understanding of cloistered life in countless ways.

My work on Benedictine nuns has also benefited from the support of historians and literary scholars working on early modern English nuns, a few of whom deserve special thanks. Like everyone else in this field, I am much beholden to Caroline Bowden, whose pioneering research has opened so many doors for the rest of us. Caroline cheerfully shared images of manuscripts, gave shrewd advice, and helped arrange visits to monasteries. Meanwhile, the late J. T. Rhodes shared her top-notch bibliographical research and helped me gain entrance to several monastic archives. I enjoyed a very profitable week in Mechelen with Laurence Lux-Sterritt, benefiting greatly from both her excellent company and her deep knowledge of early modern Benedictine life. Similarly, Bobby Anderson and I spent a memorable few days working together at Downside Abbey, which were enlivened by her camaraderie and enriched by her familiarity with the Haslemere materials. Last but certainly not least, Nicky Hallett invited me to apply for a Fulbright grant so that we could collaborate at the University of Sheffield, which allowed me the dedicated time to complete the research for this project. Frankly speaking, this book simply would not exist without the Fulbright award. While I was in England, Nicky and her partner, Rosie Valerio, made sure that everything went smoothly for me and my spouse in terms of both logistics and scholarship. I am grateful for their friendship and kindness, past and present.

I am also extremely appreciative of the support that I have received for this project from the academic community at Wayne State. When Arthur Marotti and Ken Jackson served on the Appointments Committee that hired me back in 2008, none of us anticipated that I would write a book engaging so deeply with their work on the turn to religion. I am very grateful for their advice over the years on my career, research, and the profession. Arthur in particular deserves special thanks for reading early drafts of this project and helping me to avoid missteps. Simone Chess and I were part of a cluster hire, and I have come to appreciate and rely on her wisdom in both personal and professional matters. May our multiplier effect continue for many years! Meanwhile, Julie Klein and Lissy Sklar have been key sources of friendly encouragement, and their help with logistics during the term of the Fulbright grant was invaluable and much appreciated. I also have a deep appreciation for the camaraderie and support of a number of other colleagues: Caroline Maun (particularly in her role as department chair), Michael Scrivener, Lisa Maruca, renée hoogland, Chera Kee, Michael Giordano, and Ellen Barton. A series of research assistants helped me catalog archival material for this book: Ruth Haller, Bosik Kim, Kimberly Majeske, and Ginny Owens. Meanwhile, my conversations with former students about the project have helped me find clarity in expressing my ideas: Matthew Jewell, Connor Newton, and Ginny Owens.

Over the years, I have received much advice and encouragement from the larger scholarly community. I presented early versions of several chapters at the New Orleans meeting of the Renaissance Society of America and in talks at Seton Hall University, University of Arkansas, University College London, and University of Sheffield. In addition, three scholars in particular have served as sources of ongoing inspiration and support: Pat Phillippy, Paula McQuade, and Micheline White.

It has been a true pleasure to work with the University of Alabama Press. I am especially grateful to Michelle Dowd, Hudson Strode Professor of English and series editor of Strode Studies in Early Modern Literature and Culture, and Dan Waterman, editor in chief at the press, for believing in this project from the start and providing sage advice as I navigated the editorial and peer review processes.

My parents, Lee and Christine Goodrich, and my brother, Jared, have supported this project in numerous ways, particularly during the term of my Fulbright grant. Jared deserves special thanks for taking in our elderly dachshund, Eli, for ten months. My daughter Marian has good-naturedly jockeyed with the English Benedictine nuns for my attention, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. My son Nathaniel was born after the submission of the finalized manuscript, and he happily kept me company as I reviewed the copyedited version. Meanwhile, this book would never have been completed without the wholehearted assistance and support of Katherine Goodrich, who accompanied me during the Fulbright grant, joined me in numerous archives, photographed thousands of manuscript pages, and listened patiently over the years as I developed the core ideas of this project. My gratitude for her many personal and professional sacrifices is unending.

When I was in elementary school, my maternal grandmother, Jean Myer, gave me my first Bible, and a decade later I received my first King James Bible from her daughter, Janice Myer. These gifts ultimately influenced the course of my scholarly career by laying the groundwork for my ongoing interest in the ways that religious texts can serve as conduits of female community, kinship, and spirituality. This book is for them.

Note on Names, Quotations, and Terminology

When discussing English Benedictine nuns, I use their name in religion and provide their birth name in parentheses at the first mention.

In citing early modern manuscripts or printed texts, I have maintained original punctuation, capitalization, and emphasis. In keeping with Chicago style, I have converted all underlining to italics and italicized all non-English words. I have modernized usage of i/j, u/v, and the long s, while otherwise preserving original spelling. I have silently expanded all abbreviations and contractions. All translations from French and Latin are my own, with one exception: I cite the Douai-Rheims translation of the Bible throughout (http://drbo.org).

Martin Buber’s Ich-Du paradigm is generally translated into English as I-Thou. In order to avoid confusion, I follow Walter Kaufmann, the most recent translator of Buber’s Ich und Du, in using I-You instead of I-Thou.

Introduction

Buber and the Benedictines

I’m not a woman

I’m not a man

I am something that you’ll never understand

—PRINCE, I WOULD DIE 4 U (1984)

I finde myselfe most drawen and moved to that prayer which tends to an unitie with out adhearing to any particuler image or crature, but seeking only for that one thing which our saviour said to be necessary, and which containes all things itselfe, according to that saying. Unum sit mihi totum, id est, omnia in omnibus . . . Lett one thinge bee thee sole thinge which I seeke after, and all in all.

—CATHERINE GASCOIGNE, DEFENSE OF HER PRAYER (C. 1632)

The late, great artist Prince may seem to have little in common with Catherine Gascoigne (professed 1625, d. 1676), a Benedictine abbess and staunch defender of contemplative mysticism. However, the two express a similar attitude toward God: that the divine is incomprehensible, beyond woman or man, image or crature. Read together, the epigraphs to this chapter illustrate an essential crux within the Judeo-Christian tradition: the inscrutability of God, who is unknowable and thus the ultimate Other. As Pope Francis has recently observed of this tradition in his apostolic constitution on contemplative women, Seeking the face of God has always been part of our human history.¹ Although Gascoigne is little known today in comparison with Prince, I open with this potentially startling juxtaposition to suggest that the writings of early modern Benedictine nuns hold great relevance for our understanding of how believers, whether past or present, seek to access God.

This claim may be all the more provocative given the apparently marginal status of these women in their own time. Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English Benedictines opted to withdraw from mainstream society and join convents on the Continent, where they could pursue a cloistered life that was unavailable to them in their native country. Nevertheless, a growing body of interdisciplinary scholarship has established the cultural, historical, and literary importance of these seemingly peripheral institutions.² James Kelly and Claire Walker have sketched the history of the English convents abroad, respectively emphasizing the nuns’ internationalism and gender politics.³ Other scholars have focused on recovering lived experience within these spaces. While Nicky Hallett has considered the role of the senses in Carmelite houses, Laurence Lux-Sterritt has analyzed the interplay between emotions and spirituality in Benedictine convents.⁴ Literary critics, meanwhile, have explored the cloister as a site of textual circulation and production. Nancy Bradley Warren’s work on the reception of medieval spirituality among English Benedictines has been followed in recent years by Jenna Lay’s study of nuns’ relationships to the literary canon and Victoria Van Hyning’s scholarship on autobiography and Augustinian convents.⁵ This subfield is likely to become even more dynamic thanks to a surge in editions of monastic texts, as well as the online publication of the prosopographical database Who Were the Nuns?, overseen by Caroline Bowden.⁶

The present book participates in this lively critical conversation by using the lenses of historicism and philosophy to analyze textual production in six Benedictine communities between 1600 and 1800. All too often, previous scholarship has overlooked the nuns’ spiritual lives or interpreted monastic piety as an expression of gender or politics. This study redresses such tendencies by turning to the works of Martin Buber, a twentieth-century Jewish philosopher, in order to understand God’s role at the heart of these cloistered communities. Buber theorized that human community forms a circle, with each member acting as a radius leading toward the common center of God. By virtue of its focus on God, the monastery is an excellent site for exploring the implications of Buberian philosophy, and the English Benedictine convents abroad offer especially fruitful examples of God-centered communities. A Buberian analysis of Benedictine life can shed light on monasticism in general, since the Rule of St. Benedict supplied a template for many subsequent religious orders in Europe. More particularly, the religious houses founded abroad by English exiles in the seventeenth century were highly invested in communal formation because the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII had eradicated centuries of monastic identity and tradition. Among these institutions, the Benedictines stand out for two reasons: not only did they found more convents than any other order, but they also produced a multitude of writings, more than one thousand of which are extant in manuscript or print. While a historicist analysis of this corpus allows for a reconstruction of the various ways that English Benedictine nuns sought to access and interact with God, philosophical inquiry permits an evaluation of the larger existential implications of these communal strategies. Identifying the monastery as a space of profound alterity, this book attends to the textual traces of collective religious experience in order to recover how English Benedictine nuns created God-centered communities and thus fulfilled the essential purpose of cloistered life itself: to enter into communion with a divine being beyond all human comprehension.

By combining rigorous archival research with philosophical inquiry, this study pursues a larger aim: to respond to and intervene in the current debate among early modern scholars over the relative merits of historicism and presentism. I do not mean to create an overly simplistic distinction between these two modes, especially since historicist methods may be shaped by presentist concerns. As Margaret Ezell has influentially observed, for example, the first decade of scholarship on early modern women writers was dominated by a critical search for proto-feminist foremothers.⁷ Nevertheless, there is a stark divide between those who seek to approach the past on its own terms (however imperfectly they may be able to do so) and those who approach the past through contemporary lenses (however much those lenses may owe to early modern practices). One of the most obvious examples of this rift is a debate among scholars of early modern sexuality over temporality and teleology that has played out during the last decade in the pages of PMLA.⁸ The much-heralded turn to religion in early modern literary studies offers another excellent illustration of the scholarly binary that has arisen from the clash of historicism and presentism. Although religion was of central importance to the culture, literature, and politics of early modern England, the dominance of modes such as New Historicism and cultural studies led scholars to downplay the topic during the 1980s and 1990s. As an increasing body of scholarship on religion emerged around the turn of the millennium, Ken Jackson and Arthur F. Marotti published an influential article that called for a turn to religion.⁹ Rejecting New Historicist readings of devotion, Jackson and Marotti argue that scholars must recognize the otherness of early modern religion rather than collapsing religious discourse into familiar paradigms, such as politics or feminism. In doing so, Jackson and Marotti offer not one way forward, but two. The first half of their article surveys scholarship rooted in various historicist and materialist methodologies, recommending an approach to the subject that is based on the actualities of lived experience.¹⁰ The second part turns to Continental philosophy, most notably Emmanuel Levinas’s views on alterity, in order to contend that the New Historicist obsession with otherness is informed by the ethical encounter between the ego and the other (most notably the absolute Other of the divine). From the moment the term turn to religion was coined, then, the field that it designated was bifurcated.

Since 2004, the turn to religion has continued to develop along these two parallel tracks of historicism and philosophy. In their 2011 collection Shakespeare and Religion, Jackson and Marotti supply a valuable thumbnail sketch of how these divergent approaches had progressed up to that point, while explaining their decision to divide their volume into two parts:

We have chosen to arrange the essays in this collection not by the rough chronological order of the Shakespeare canon but rather in two sections corresponding to their emphases—the first on historical analyses of the religious material in the plays, the second on postmodern theological, ethical, and philosophical interpretation of the dramas. Those scholars who attempt to situate Shakespeare’s plays within their immediate historical contexts usually attempt to use the religious and philosophical vocabularies of the time, even as they bring modern critical methods to bear in their interpretations. Those who use modern philosophy and postmodern theology to interpret Shakespeare attempt to use Shakespearean texts to think through issues that have contemporary urgency, thus, in a sense, assuming that it is possible to see Shakespeare as addressing perennial theological and philosophical problems that unite his time with ours.¹¹

Although Jackson and Marotti quickly emphasize that both camps often come to similar conclusions about Shakespeare, their differences are all the more striking outside of the common ground of Shakespeare studies.¹² As exemplified by Marotti’s 2005 study, Religious Ideology and Cultural Fantasy: Catholic and Anti-Catholic Discourses in Early Modern England, scholars who employ historicist, materialist methodologies often turn to nondramatic and noncanonical texts, such as devotional treatises, martyrologies, polemics, or translations.¹³ The ReFormations series at the University of Notre Dame Press has supplied a much-needed home for work of this kind. Meanwhile, early modern drama has proved fertile ground for scholars interested in philosophy, phenomenology, and political theology, as illustrated most notably by Jackson’s 2015 study, Shakespeare and Abraham, and the work of Julia Reinhard Lupton.¹⁴ A cursory survey of recent scholarship on early modern women’s religious writings offers further evidence of this critical disconnect.¹⁵ Historicist and materialist methodologies dominate this subfield, while philosophical approaches have yet to make any discernible mark. Despite their shared interest in the topic of early modern religion, these two schools of criticism are rarely in conversation with one another.

Writing Habits bridges this scholarly gap in the turn to religion by analyzing the textual production of early modern English Benedictine cloisters on the Continent from both a historicist and a philosophical perspective. In doing so, it embraces a strategic presentism, a methodology originating in Victorian studies that foregrounds a conscious recognition of the links between the past and present: Strategic presentism requires that we think of the past as something other than an object of knowledge that is sealed off, separated from the present by the onrush of sequential time.¹⁶ Taking a stance that is self-consciously grounded in strategic presentism, this study demonstrates the benefit of approaching nondramatic and noncanonical material through philosophy, a methodological lens that has yet to be applied to the religious works of women writers. At the same time, it counterbalances the previous scholarly emphasis on Levinas within the philosophical component of the turn to religion by drawing on the work of Martin Buber, a key influence on Levinas.¹⁷ As Lupton has argued, the ‘religious turn’ in Renaissance studies represents the chance for a return to theory, yet the philosophical turn to religion has been markedly Derridean and Levinasian.¹⁸ The following chapters offer a new paradigm by exploring the communal nature of monastic life through the lens of Buber’s theory of the I-Thou relationship (or I-You, as the phrase is rendered by Buber’s most recent translator), which is discussed at length in his important book I and Thou (1923).¹⁹

In drawing on Buber rather than Levinas, Writing Habits advances a philosophical model of community that complements the previous focus on ethics in the turn to religion. For Levinas, an ethics based on alterity precedes both ontology and epistemology: The strangeness of the Other, his irreducibility to the I, to my thoughts and my possessions, is precisely accomplished as a calling into question of my spontaneity, as ethics.²⁰ In other words, our perception of ourselves as beings endowed with existence and knowledge depends upon an initial recognition of the difference of the Other. Levinas argues that we can access the transcendental Other through face-to-face encounters with other humans: The dimension of the divine opens forth from the human face. A relation with the Transcendent free from all captivation by the Transcendent is a social relation. It is here that the Transcendent, infinitely other, solicits us and appeals to us. The proximity of the Other, the proximity of the neighbor, is in being an ineluctable moment of the revelation of an absolute presence (that is, disengaged from every relation), which expresses itself. His very epiphany consists in soliciting us by his destitution in the face of the Stranger, the widow, and the orphan.²¹ Demanding an ethical response (or, in Levinasian terms, a recognition of alterity), the Other calls to us from the human face of our neighbor or the Stranger, the widow, and the orphan. Indeed, such destitution is key to the operation of Levinasian alterity, which requires generosity on the part of the person addressed by the Other: To recognize the Other is to give. But it is to give to the master, to the lord, to him whom one approaches as ‘You’ in a dimension of height.²² While Levinas views the Transcendent as a social relation, his theorization of the face-to-face encounter privileges one-to-one relationships among human beings. The early modern era is known for its preoccupation with selfhood, and the individual basis of Levinasian ethics thus provides a useful model for analyzing religious experience in this period.²³

Yet by focusing on Levinas and the ethics of alterity, the turn to religion has overlooked the communitarian nature of much religious experience, both past and present. In its attention to communal dynamics, the Buberian model can extend the turn to religion even as it furthers scholarly understandings of early modern religious communities more generally. Social relations are central to Buber’s paradigm, although he, like Levinas, theorizes that we can reach transcendence only through interactions with others. Buber contends that when we take an I-It (or I-He or I-She) perspective toward a particular being or object, we focus primarily on utilitarian experience. As a result, we naturally view both people and things as objects that are of service to us. The I-You perspective, however, is based on the world of relation rather than experience.²⁴ An I-You dynamic requires a moment of encounter in which the individual recognizes the fundamental otherness of something or someone else, viewing the other on a purely subjective level rather than an objective one. As Buber puts it, When I confront a human being as my You and speak the basic word I-You to him, then he is no thing among things nor does he consist of things. He is no longer He or She, limited by other Hes and Shes, a dot in the world grid of space and time, nor a condition that can be experienced and described, a loose bundle of named qualities. Neighborless and seamless, he is You and fills the firmament.²⁵ While these glimpses of the other as a You are necessarily fleeting because every You must inevitably become an It at some point, such transitory moments allow access to the divine: through everything that becomes present to us, we gaze toward the train of the eternal You; in each we perceive a breath of it; in every You we address the eternal You.²⁶ For Buber, then, the existential nature of life is bound up in dialogic relations between human beings that point toward God.

This understanding of interpersonal relations serves as the foundation for Buber’s views of community, which in turn offer philosophical insight into the nature of monastic life. For Buber, community and collectivity must be distinguished from one another. As he explains, "Collectivity is not a binding but a bundling together: individuals packed together, armed and equipped in common, with only as much life from man to man as will inflame the marching step. But community, growing community . . . is the being no longer side by side but with one another of a multitude of persons. And this multitude, though it also moves towards one goal, yet experiences everywhere a turning to, a dynamic facing of, the other, a flowing from I to Thou."²⁷ Through this allusion to the I-You dynamic, Buber suggests that community can only happen when people are brought into relation with one another through their connection with God: True community does not come into being because people have feelings for each other . . . but rather on two accounts: all of them have to stand in a living, reciprocal relationship to a single living center, and they have to stand in a living reciprocal relationship to one another . . . A community is built upon a living, reciprocal relationship, but the builder is the living, active center.²⁸ This view of God as the builder of community entails one final aspect of Buberian community, that the communal is derived primarily from each person’s relation with God rather than their relation with others: men’s relations to their true You, being radii that lead from all I-points to the center, create a circle. Not the periphery, not the community comes first, but the radii, the common relation to the center.²⁹ Thus, for Buber, community is essentially a religious phenomenon, as it must always start from the individual’s personal relationship with God.

Buberian ideas of community translate easily to the monastery, which is by its very nature a space centered on God. While Buber’s writings may be grounded in a fundamentally Jewish perspective, striking parallels can be found in Christian theories of community, particularly Gabriel Marcel’s exploration of the I-You perspective from a Christian existentialist viewpoint and Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Christocentric theology.³⁰ More recently, Pope Francis has defined faith as our response to a word which engages us personally, to a ‘Thou’ who calls us by name, further observing that God’s own love . . . is not only a relationship between the Father and the Son, between an ‘I’ and a ‘Thou,’ but is also, in the Spirit, a ‘We,’ a communion of persons.³¹ Speaking more particularly about the communion found in the cloister, Francis has noted that contemplative monastic institutions are characterized by their orientation toward God: They are so centred on Christ that they can say with the Apostle: ‘For to me, to live is Christ!’ (Ph 1:21). In this way, they express the all-encompassing character at the heart of a vocation to the contemplative life.³² Such formulations of God-centered community may be said to go back to Christ’s own pronouncement in Matthew 18:20: For where there are two or three gathered together in my name, there I am in the midst of them. Buber himself identifies Christian monasticism as one example of genuine community: The early Christians were not satisfied with the communes that were next to or above the world, and they went into the desert so as to have no community except that with God and no more disturbing world. But it was shown to them that God does not will that man be alone with him, and above the holy impotence of solitude grew the brotherly order. Finally, overstepping the realm of Benedict, Francis established the bond with the creatures.³³ As representatives of the realm of Benedict, early modern English Benedictine nuns offer a thought-provoking case study for identifying how Buberian ideas play out within the actual, lived experiences of religious communities.

Writings within the Benedictine tradition—ranging from St. Benedict’s Rule to the works of modern English Benedictines—represent the monastery as a God-centered space where human relations facilitate divine communion. As the English Benedictine Congregation explains in its recent publication To Prefer Nothing to Christ (2015), In its essence, monastic life is an encounter with Jesus Christ.³⁴ This encounter is initiated when God invites a person to take up a monastic vocation, as described in the prologue to the Benedictine Rule: let us with astonished eares heare what the divine voice daily cryeing out, admonisheth us sayeing. This day if you shall heare his voyce, harden not your harts. And againe: He that hath eares let him heare what the spirit saith to the Churches: and what saith it? Come children, heare mee; I will teach you the feare of our Lord.³⁵ In its explication of this prologue, the English Benedictine Congregation observes that God’s call may occur through the voice of another: The voice in which the divine call is initially heard by a monk or a nun may be that of anyone who has mediated to us a sense of Jesus’s summons to life.³⁶ As in the Buberian paradigm, the Rule indicates that the monk or nun encounters God through a profound interaction with another person, and this first contact leads to their entry into a human community predicated on the individual’s relationship with God. Indeed,