Monastic Rules (Fourth to Ninth Century)

This chapter describes the emergence and transformations of regular observance between the period of the desert fathers and Carolingian monastic reforms. We argue that the concept of monastic life as vita regularis has largely been shaped by Benedict of Aniane as part of his attempt to turn the Rule of Benedict into the guiding norm of monastic life. Regular observance is by no means a stable feature of late antique early medieval monasticism but it manifests itself in various forms and has a long and complicated history. Aside from providing an outline of this history we make suggestions how to approach the corpus of rightly thirty preserved monastic rules beyond a purely normative understanding.