Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
Fall 2003
Abstract
In the first half of the sixth century, an Italian monk, Benedict of Nursia, provided a framework for Christian monastic life. In the last half of the nineteenth century, his descendants arrived in the Great Plains, part of the westward movement of Christian missionaries in North America. What could this ancient way of life offer to a new land of Native tribes and immigrant farmers, traders, and soldiers? And what might this new land contribute to the shaping of a uniquely American form of monastic life?
These Benedictine men and women brought with them centuries of experience as learners and teachers, and they shared their educative way of life, as well as their schools, with Native peoples and European immigrants alike.1 In turn, the land and peoples of the Great Plains have contributed to the evolution of Benedictine monastic life in North America to this day.
In the first part of this article I sketch three major characteristics of Benedictine education: an attitude of listening, a habit of discretion, and a holistic methodology. In the second section I explore the interaction of Benedictine education and its new prairie milieu. Here it becomes evident that, on the one hand, these monastic men and women brought their particular character to educational institutions on the Great Plains; on the other hand, the peoples and environment of this new land also promoted the shaping of a singular form of Benedictine life.
Comments
Published in Great Plains Quarterly 23 (Fall 2003), pp. 231-244. Copyright © 2003 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln.