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The Benedictine Rule. St. Benedict's treatise for his monks is concerned with three things: labor, prayer and self-denial. Work is the first step toward holiness. Monks are to be "wearied with labors for God's sake." Prayer should be brief "and with purity of heart, except it be perchance prolonged by the inspiration of divine grace." The whole Psalter must be recited each week, "for we read that our holy Fathers were strenuous enough to fulfil in a single day this task which I pray that we lukewarm folk may complete in the whole week." St. Benedict does not demand strict fasting but recommends that food and drink be cut to a healthy minimum.
St. Benedict also set an ideal for himself and future abbots: "It beseemeth the abbot to be ever doing some good for his brethren rather than to be presiding over them. He must, therefore, be learned in the law of God, that he may know whence to bring forth things new and old; he must be chaste, sober, and merciful, ever preferring mercy to justice, that he himself may obtain mercy.
"Let him hate sin and love the brethren. And even in his corrections, let him act with prudence, and not go too far, lest while he seeketh too eagerly to scrape off the rust, the vessel be broken. Let him keep his own frailty ever before his eyes. . . . And by this we do not mean that he should suffer vices to grow up; but that prudently and with charity he should cut them off, in the way he shall see best for each, as we have already said; and let him study rather to be loved than feared."
*The old Roman faith lingered longest in the countryside. Hence the word pagan, from the Latin pagani (country people).