The Benedictines in the Middle Ages

A comprehensive survey of the origins, development, and influence of the most important monastic order in the middle ages. The men and women that followed the sixth-century customs of Benedict of Nursia (c.480-c.547) formed the most enduring, influential, numerous and widespread religious order of the Latin middle ages. Their liturgical practice, andtheir acquired taste for learning, served as a model for the medieval church as a whole: while new orders arose, they took some of their customs, an