Order of Saint Benedict (Orthodox) - History

History

The Benedictine monastic tradition began with St Benedict of Nursia himself, who was a Christian monk in the 6th century. Influenced by the writings of Saints Basil the Great and John Cassian, he composed a monastic rule for the ordering of the life of monastic communities in the West, rather than adopting one of the many rules that existed at the time but which had been composed for monks in a very different climate, with different foods available, and so forth. The liturgical traditions he enumerated conformed to the Roman Rite of the local church; which was neither as elaborate or as legislated as it later became.

Most of the Benedictine communities existed in the West under what was geographically the jurisdiction of the Pope of Rome.

After some centuries of increasing distance between Rome and the Eastern ancient Patriarchates (due to doctrinal, linguistic, and cultural differences, and the development of different schools of theology), the Eastern branch of the Church separated from the Apostolic See, with the Catholic Church taking with it most of the Benedictine monastic communities that had come to flourish in the West since the time of St Benedict.

However, there were some Benedictines outside of the jurisdiction of Rome who remained Orthodox, not the least of whom were the monks of the Amalfion Monastery, which was a community of Benedictine monks from Italy who had come to reside on Mount Athos in the late 10th century, where they remained until near the end of the 13th century.