On the Ruin of Britain

This little known sixth century classic is one which deserves much greater readership, particularly in today's apostate West. There are print copies available, but alas, they do not include the full work named above. It can be downloaded free of charge, thanks to Project Gutenberg, at http://www.gutenberg.org/author/Gildas .

"For what can there either be, or be committed, more disgraceful or more unrighteous in human affairs, than to refuse to show fear to God or affection to one's own countrymen, and (without detriment to one's faith) to refuse due honor to those of higher dignity, to cast off all regard to reason, human and divine, and, in contempt of heaven and earth, to be guided by one's own sensual inventions?"

So wrote St. Gildas in his De Excidio Britanniae, as the book is known in Latin.

I will not quote at length from this work, because it merits reading on its own and is short enough and so readily obtainable that to do more than recommend the book to you is to do both you and the book a disservice. Suffice it to say that this long-neglected classic is another that will have a place of honor on the shelves of Leibowitz Abbey. As readers of this and the website From the Catacombs (soon to be renamed as To the Catacombs) know, St. Gildas is the avatar used by the author of these web sites, which should convey the esteem in which he is held.

Ora et Labora: The Rule of Saint Benedict

The three word motto is that of the Benedictines, a monastic order founded in the Sixth Century; the Latin translates as "Pray and Work." And The Rule of St. Benedict is without question one of the foundational documents of post-Greco-Roman Western Civilization, of Christendom. No home, whether Christian or not, should be without a copy of this work, which so greatly influenced the development of the civilization which we now see disintegrating around us.

The first word of St. Benedict's rule is "Listen."

Sound (forgive the pun!) advice. But then all of St. Benedict's advice is sound.

The monastery was an oasis of sanity in a desert of societal desperation, ignorance and chaos. Were it not for the monasteries, Western civilization might never have been restored to grow into the glory of the world; nowhere else was the knowledge of the past preserved, nowhere else was there intellectual pursuit. St. Benedict's sound advice was meant to restore order to the person, then to the community, and by doing so, would by extension bring order to the world.

St. Benedict viewed the monastery as a school for spirituality, a school in which simplicity and routine, labor and obediance, and most of all prayer, aid in helping the person obtain self-mastery and self-control, humility and tranquility in a community setting, and so grow closer to God.

The Benedictine Order, abbreviated as OSB, has undertgone various reforms during its long history. The Cistercians, for example, place a considerable emphasis on manual labor and adhere to a nearly literal interpretation of The Rule of St. Benedict. They were the principal agents of technological development in Medieaval Europe, though agriculture has always been their principle activity; self-sufficiency is the result.

Regular random perusal of this work will prove beneficial to anyone who undertakes it. One begins to see how far we have strayed from sound spiritual ideas. The present day Benedictines, greatly influenced by the subjective and modernist Novus Ordo "Catholic" Church, have gone far astray from the principles of their founder, but monasteries still exist that maintain the purity of the Rule and of the intention of the author of this marvelous little book, read by countless seekers over the course of the centuries.

The Rule of Saint Benedict has a place of honor on the shelves of the library at Leibowitz Abbey.