Benedictine Objectivism

In chapter one of the Rule, Benedict discusses four kinds of monks. At one level, Benedict is simply distinguishing proper and improper following of a rule. Two types of monks, the cenobites and anchorites, follow a rule properly; and two types, the sarabaites and gyrovagues, follow improperly. The cenobites commit themselves to a rule and an abbot. The anchorite has moved beyond the need for communal assistance in following a rule and has gone out to “the single combat of the desert.” In contrast, Benedict has much scorn for the second pair of monks. But what exactly are the sarabaites and gyrovagues doing wrong? A close reading suggests the central issue concerns the nature of truth.

Modern thought distinguishes between subjective and objective truth, but Benedict would have had very different understandings of these concepts. At the risk of oversimplifying the modern distinction, the truth of a claim is subjective if a person, or subject, is the ground of that truth. When I say, “I like vanilla ice cream,” the truth of that claim is based on my tastes. The truth of a claim is objective if the ground of that truth is an object independent of a subject. “The earth is round,” is an objective truth because the shape of the earth makes this claim true regardless of what any person believes. For Benedict, an objective truth would have been grounded in an object of thought, and a subjective truth would have been related to a focus of study and ultimately to the concept of substance. In medieval thought, an objective truth would have related to the content of one’s mind and a subjective truth to facts about the world beyond the thought of the inquirer. How these terms came to have almost the opposite meanings from their ancient and medieval usages is beyond this present discussion. But knowing how Benedict would have understood these terms clarifies his disdain for sarabaites and gyrovagues.

Benedict’s Rule seeks to lay out the truths of proper living: how to live out the gospel before God. The focus is the very substance of a spiritual life. In modern terms, Benedict’s Rule conveys objective truths about the Christian life. In contrast, Benedict says of the sarabaites, “The craving of their appetites is the law for them” (1:8). The sarabaites do not submit themselves to an independent rule or an external authority. The gyrovagues are constantly “wandering through various provinces... They are ever on the move and never stable.” (1:10-11). While the sarabaites manipulate their rule to fulfill their desires, the gyrovagues are, “Slaves to their own will and the delights of the palate” (1:11). This suggests the sarabaites have some control over their desires while the gyrovagues lack even that level of self-regulation. Benedict concludes with a call to put aside these groundlessly subjective approaches and move toward, “arranging a way of life” with an external, objective, independent Rule that will guide a
monk into the substance of communal monastic life.