BARONIUS thinks that his monastery of Saint Andrew's followed the rule
of St. Equitius, because its first abbots were drawn out of his
province, Valeria. On another side, Dom Ma-billon (t. 1. Actor. Sanct. &
t. 2, Analect. and Annal. Bened. l, 6,) maintains that it followed the
rule of St. Benedict, which St. Gregory often commends and prefers to all
other rules. His colleagues, in their life of St. Gregory, Natalis
Alexander, in his Church History, and others, have written to support
the same opinion: who all, with Mabillon, borrow all their arguments
from the learned English Benedictin, Clemens Reynerus, in his
Apostolatus Benedictinorum in Anglia. Others object that St. Gregory in
his epistles ordains many things contrary to the rule of St. Benedict,
and think he who has written so much concerning St. Benedict, would have
mentioned by some epithet the circumstance of being his disciple, and
would have called the rule of that patriarch his own. These antiquaries
judge it most probable that the monastery of St. Andrew had its own rule
prescribed by the first founders, and borrowed from different places:
for this was the ordinary method of most monasteries in the west, till
afterwards the rule of St. Benedict was universally received for better
uniformity and discipline: to which the just commendations of St.
Gregory doubtless contributed.
F. Clement Reyner, in the above-mentioned book, printed at Doway, in
folio, in 1626, displays much erudition in endeavoring to prove that St.
Austin, and the other monks sent by Saint Gregory to convert the
English, professed the order of St. Benedict. Mabillon borrows his
arguments on this subject in his preface to the Acts of the Benedictins,
against the celebrated Sir John Marsham, who, in his long preface to the
Monasticon, sets himself to show that the first English monks followed
rules instituted by their own abbots, often gleaned out of many. Dr.
Hickes confirms this assertion against Mabillon with great erudition,
(Diss. pp. 67, 68,) which is espoused by Dr. Tanner, bishop of St.
Asaph's, in his preface to nis exact Notitia Monastica, by the author of
Biographia Britannica, in the life of Bede, t. 1, p. 656, and by the
judicious William Thomas, in his additions to the new edition of
Dugdale's Antiquities of Warwickshire, (t. 1, p. 157.) These authors
think that the rule of St. Benedict was not generally received by the
English monks before the regulations of St. Dunstan; nor perfectly till
after the Norman conquest. For pope Constantine, in 709, in the bull
wherein he establishes the rule of St. Benedict to be followed in the
abbey of Evesham, says of it: "Which does not prevail in those parts."
"Quae minus in illis partibus habetur." In 747, Cuthbert archbishop of
Canterbury, in a synod held in presence of Ethelbaid, king of the
Mercians, at Cloveshove, (which town some place in Kent, others more
probably in Mercia, about Reading,) published Monastic Constitutions,
which were {581} followed by the English monks till the time of St.
Dunstan. In these we find no mention of the rule of Saint Benedict; nor
in Bede. The charter of king Ethelbald which mentions the Black monks,
is a manifest forgery. Even that name was not known before the
institution of the Camaldulenses, in 1020, and the Carthusians, who
distinguished themselves by white habits. Dom Mege, in his commentary on
the rule of St. Benedict, shows that the first Benedictins wore white,
not black. John of Glastenbury, and others, published by Hearne, who
call the apostles of the English Black Monks, are too modern, unless
they produce some ancient vouchers. The monastery of Evesham adopted the
rule of Saint Benedict, in 709. St. Bennet Biscop and St. Wilfrid both
improved the monastic order in the houses which they founded, from the
rule of St. Benedict, at least borrowing some constitutions from it. The
devastations of the Danes scarce left a convent of monks standing in
England, except those of Glastenbury and Abingdon, which was their state
in the days of king Alfred, as Leland observes. St. Dunstan, St. Oswald,
and St. Ethelwold, restored the monasteries, and propagated exceedingly
the monastic state. St. Oswald had professed the order of Saint Benedict
in France, in the monastery of Fleury; and, together with the aforesaid
two bishops, he established the same in a great measure in England. St.
Dunstan published a uniform rule for the monasteries of this nation,
entitled, Regularis Concordiae Anglicae Nationis, extant in Reyner, and
Spelman, (in Spicilegio ad Eadmerum, p. 145,) in which he adopts, in a
great measure, the rule of St. Benedict, joining with it many ancient
monastic customs. Even after the Norman conquest, the synod of London,
under Lanfranc, in 1075, says the regulations of monks were drawn from
the rule of St. Bennet and the ancient custom of regular places, as
Baronius takes notice, which seems to imply former distinct institutes.
From that time down to the dissolution, all the cathedral priories,
except that of Carlisle, and most of the rich abbeys in England, were
held by monks of the Benedictin order. See Dr. Brown Willis, in his
separate histories of Cathedral Priories, Mitred Abbeys, &c.