The Rule of St. Benedict and the Prayer of St. Francis Essay

The Rule of St. Benedict and the Prayer of St. Francis - Essay Example The monastic tradition, through the history of the Church, has gone through drastic changes and the religious rules of the monastic people were formulated by the monastic traditions of each period. The Rule of St. Benedict was the most prominent religious rule in the sixth century which was formulated according to the demands of the time. There was drastic change in the way the religious rules of monasticism were formulated and the views regarding such rules changed from one monastic tradition to another. A comparative analysis of the selection of readings from the Rule of St. Benedict and the Prayer of St. Francis drawn from the Christian Monastic tradition in the textbook explicitly suggests the different contexts of the monastic tradition. It is most essential to consider that both of these texts, despite their apparent differences, make sense in the context of the monastic traditions as they reveal the characteristics of the religious rules concerning monasticism in the various p eriods of Church history. The selection from the Rule of St. Benedict which belongs to the first half of the sixth century tells about the rules concerning excommunication for faults and it hints the severity of the religious rules of the period. The Rule of St.