How do these selections from the Benedictine Rule illustrate the roles of abbots and monks in the monastic community?

The Benedictine Rule is strict—its main theme being absolute obedience to the Abbot. Most people used to the freedoms and luxuries of life in the modern West would find it too demanding but in its historical context, it would not have been seen that way. Life in medieval Europe was incomparably poorer and more restricted than it is today: the life Benedict describes would be a step up for the poorest people and not much of a step down for the rest. Secondly, since St Antony’s time monks had subjected themselves to increasingly incredible ordeals in their attempts to subdue the flesh. Benedict’s emphasis on obedience to a supervisor is intended on the one hand to stop monks from excesses, and on the other to spur on the less enthusiastic. And lastly, the monastery was envisaged not as a prison camp to punish offenders, but as a loving community where people come together to help each other in their chosen path, to submit their entire lives to the will of God.

Benedict created the rule at a time when the Roman Empire had collapsed in the West, and Europe was being overrun by barbarian tribes, most of them pagans. It looked like Christianity in Europe was finished. Benedictine monasteries, more than anything else, kept the faith alive, and their short, simple but comprehensive rulebook allowed them to clone themselves unstoppably. Later, the monasteries were encouraged by Charlemagne, and spread like wildfire. And since Benedict required monks to spend time in reading, they kept theology and culture alive through centuries when almost the entire continent was illiterate.

Explanation:

among the numerous advantages promised by a well constructed union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction. the friend of popular governments never finds himself so much alarmed for their character and fate, as when he contemplates their propensity to this dangerous vice. he will not fail, therefore, to set a due value on any plan which, without violating the principles to which he is attached, provides a proper cure for it. the instability, injustice, and confusion introduced into the public councils, have, in truth, been the mortal diseases under which popular governments have everywhere perished; as they continue to be the favorite and fruitful topics from which the adversaries to liberty derive their most specious declamations. the valuable improvements made by the american constitutions on the popular models, both ancient and modern, cannot certainly be too much admired; but it would be an unwarrantable partiality, to contend that they have as effectually obviated the danger on this side, as was wished and expected. complaints are everywhere heard from our most considerate and virtuous citizens, equally the friends of public and private faith, and of public and personal liberty, that our governments are too unstable, that the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties, and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority. however anxiously we may wish that these complaints had no foundation, the evidence, of known facts will not permit us to deny that they are in some degree true. it will be found, indeed, on a candid review of our situation, that some of the distresses under which we labor have been erroneously charged on the operation of our governments; but it will be found, at the same time, that other causes will not alone account for many of our heaviest misfortunes; and, particularly, for that prevailing and increasing distrust of public engagements, and alarm for private rights, which are echoed from one end of the continent to the other. these must be chiefly, if not wholly, effects of the unsteadiness and injustice with which a factious spirit has tainted our public administrations.

explanation: the latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man; and we see them everywhere brought into different degrees of activity, according to the different circumstances of civil society. a zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government, and many other points, as well of speculation as of practice; an attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for pre-eminence and power; or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have, in turn, divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good. so strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts. but the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society. those who are creditors, and those who are debtors, fall under a like discrimination. a landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser interests, grow up of necessity in civilized nations, and divide them into different classes, actuated by different sentiments and views. the regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the principal task of modern legislation, and involves the spirit of party and faction in the necessary and ordinary operations of the governmen