pre-benedictine

Updated: May 1, 2025

There have been many schools and periods in which one half of this dual life of man has been unduly emphasized to the detriment of the other. Often in the East and often too in the first, pre-Benedictine phase of Christian monasticism there has been an unbalanced cultivation of the contemplative life, resulting in a narrow, abnormal, imperfectly vitalized a-social type of spirituality.

Evelyn Underhill - The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day