Lectio Divina as Foreign Language Study

Lectio Divina As Foreign Language Study* by Patrick O. Moore** ________ *

© 2014, Patrick O. Moore. A version of this paper was presented at the North American Patristics Society annual meeting, Loyola University, Chicago, IL, 2-4 June 2005.

** 2008 Arlington Avenue, Columbus, OH 43212-1070; 614-488-1321; .

Abstract Lectio divina is today understood as the reading of scripture as a devotional practice. It is cultivated by monastic and lay devotees, especially in the Benedictine tradition. The technique can be either a preparation for prayer or itself a kind of prayer. The text read is a passage from the Bible or some other holy text--for example, liturgy or a passage by an apostolic father. In ancient and medieval times, biblical and patristic texts used for lectio divina were written in Greek or Latin by monks whose first language was likely to be a celtic, a protean Romance, or a Germanic language such as Gothic or Frankish. Scholastic practitioners of lectio divina since the twelfth century have identified several phases in lectio divina. First is the reading itself, a recitation aloud by the monk who may not at first understand fully what he is saying. Then comes a phase of rumination, in which the monk mulls over the meaning of what he has just read aloud. This practice of lectio divina would have been familiar to a classical pedagogue such as Eusebius or Cassiodorus. These phases are what happens when any student is learning to read a foreign language. Several strange aspects of lectio divina become clear in this light--why the reading is supposed to be slow and why repetition is recommended. Both reading and prayer were oral activities and were typically performed aloud. Recent studies of the oral culture of ancient and medieval times suggest ways that the pedagogical function made the experience of lectio divina for ancient and medieval readers and listeners different from the experience for modern, literate practitioners who use only, say, a Bible in English. Background Lectio divina is today understood as the reading of scripture as a devotional practice. It was prescribed in the sixth century by Benedict of Nursia and is cultivated today by monastic and lay devotees. The technique can be either a preparation for prayer or itself a kind of prayer. The text read is a passage from the Bible or some other holy text--for example, liturgy or a passage by an apostolic father. Benedict was from Nursia, a province northeast of Rome. He was born C.E. 480 and ______________________________________________________________________________________ draft 12/22/14 “Lectio Divina,” page 1

died C.E. 543 at his monastery, Monte Cassino. The Rule he wrote, a set of instructions to guide the conduct of monks, was copied and widely distributed in Europe, notably by his disciple Pope Gregory (the Great) about 50 years after Benedict’s death and again by the Carolingians during a monastic reform in the eighth century. The Rule contains guidelines for the conduct and daily life of the monks. Details about reading and scripture are tantalizingly rare amid administrative details about discipline and observance of the hours. The same is true for the Rule’s analogues from the late classical age: the Institutes of John Cassian (ca. C.E. 500) and another rule in Latin, the Regula Magistri, widely circulated and identical to Benedict’s in many passages. The Institutes of Benedict’s contemporary, Cassiodorus, describe at length the book collection at the latter’s monastery, Vivarium, but say nothing explicit about the devotional or public reading of scripture. The reading aloud or recitation of holy scripture in liturgy is described at length by Harry Gamble (203-231). The practice of public reading, probably during worship, is alluded to briefly by Paul and John in several places in the New Testament. The practice can also be inferred from passages in the Didache and Justin Martyr. The Ancient Practice Many books on prayer and devotion are in print today, and some modern practitioners are proud to claim that their modern practice of lectio divina is the same thing as done by Benedict. There is continuity of tradition going back 1500 years, but modern practice is diverse and may be very different from ancient practice (Casey, Hall, Masini, Pennington). Some promoters of lectio divina advise reading aloud; others, silently. For some, it is private; for others, a group activity. The most obvious difference is choice of language. Modern practitioners of lectio divina in the United States are most likely reading scripture in their native language, probably English. For a thousand years after Benedict, however, reading the holy scriptures typically meant learning a foreign language. For monks in the sixth century, the Latin Bible already sounded archaic, as Shakespeare does to our ears. Linguists call it Modern English but those who teach Shakespeare to modern college students have heard them refer to it as “Old English.” Newcomers to Shakespeare report having to go through a period of adjustment before they can follow the dialogue as they hear it. Outside central Italy in the fragmenting empire, the native language of monks would have been Gothic or Frankish or Irish. And in the East, both the Old and New Testament were in everybody’s second language, Greek. Merely learning to read in one’s native language requires years of study and practice; to do so in a second language is even more challenging. With the passage of centuries, the Latin of the scriptures was to become more foreign to the monks. In the West, becoming literate entailed learning Latin, and learning Latin entailed ______________________________________________________________________________________ draft 12/22/14 “Lectio Divina,” page 2

becoming literate. To read meant to read Latin and to read it aloud. In the Confessions (3.6), Augustine reports the remarkable spectacle of St. Ambrose reading silently: “... cum legebat, oculi ducebantur per paginas et cor intellectum rimabatur, vox autem et lingua quiescebant [As he read, his eyes were led through the leaves and his heart absorbed the meaning, but his voice and tongue were silent].” Ambrose was unusual in that he read silently. The Four Phases Today, practitioners of lectio divina sometimes claim that their practice goes back to the sixth century. Practitioners since the twelfth century have identified several phases, or steps, in lectio divina. 1. Lectio. First is the reading itself, a recitation aloud by the monk, sounding out the words while looking at the letters. (I reserve the full term lectio divina for the whole process and lectio alone for this phase.) 2. Meditatio. In this phase of rumination, the monk mulls over the meaning of what he has just read aloud and repeats phrases in order to internalize them. 3. Oratio. This phase is described variously in some of today’s contemplative literature as lifting one’s heart to God. In Latin, the word oratio simply means “prayer.” 4. Contemplatio. Resting in God’s presence. In the middle of the twelfth century, these four steps were set forth by Guigo II, a Carthusian monk, in a treatise on the life of prayer and contemplation, in the form of a letter addressed to a Brother Gervase: Cum die quadam corporali manuum labore occupatus de spirituali hominis exercitio cogitare cœpissem, quatuor spiritales gradus animo cogitanti se subito obtulerunt: lectio scilicet, meditatio, oratio, contemplatio. Hæc est scala claustralium qua de terra in cœlum sublevantur, gradibus quidem distincta paucis, immensæ tamen et incredibilis magnitudinis, cujus extrema pars terræ innixa est, superior vero nubes penetrat et cœlorum secreta rimatur. [As I was doing my chores, I had begun to think about spiritual exercises when the four spiritual steps came to mind--reading (of course), meditation, prayer and contemplation. This is the monks’ ladder, by which they are raised to heaven. The steps though few are unbelievably great, the low step being planted in the ground and the higher piercing the clouds and revealing heavenly secrets.] (section 2)

The treatise continues for several thousand words describing these steps and contemplative practice. After eight centuries, this exposition of the four steps of lectio ______________________________________________________________________________________ draft 12/22/14 “Lectio Divina,” page 3

divina remains lucid and helpful to the modern practitioner. A web search engine will reveal Guigo’s treatise on a dozen sites, in English and the original Latin, and will reveal also that that there are many variations in the four phases. Some modern experts make a distinction between monastic and scholastic lectio divina, the sequence of four phases being scholastic (twelfth century) in that they reflect the academic method that divides a process and analyzes cause and effect (Leclercq 72). Reading Was Aloud In ancient and medieval times, biblical and patristic texts used for lectio divina were written in Latin (or in the East, Greek) by monks whose native language was likely to be a celtic, Romance, or Germanic language such as Gothic or Frankish with an infusion of Latinate words. For early Benedictines, the reading of scripture and praying and the singing of psalms took place continually, several times a day, every day. Reading was preceded and followed with prayer. In Benedict’s time as for more than a thousand years thereafter, prayer was primarily an oral exercise. The illustrations of this fact are many. The word “to pray,” orare, means “to pray aloud,” that is, with the mouth, ora. The word for prayer is oratio. The room for prayer was the oratorio. When Jesus told his followers how to pray, he told them to go into a closet so they would not be heard. Acoustic insulation was necessary because, of course, people prayed aloud. This practice needs to be stated today because people are used to silent prayer. In an oral society, however, to say something silently is not to say anything at all. Like prayer, reading was an oral activity and was typically performed aloud (Havelock 47). Marshall McLuhan (92) points out that monks required separate cells for praying so they would not disturb each other with their muttering--as Benedict says: Oratorium hoc sit quod dicitur, nec ibi quicquam aliud geratur aut condatur. Expleto opere Dei, omnes cum summo silentio exeant, et habeatur reverentia Deo, ut frater qui forte sibi peculiariter vult orare, non inpediatur alterius inprobitate. Sed et si aliter vult sibi forte secretius orare, simpliciter intret et oret, non in clamosa voce, sed in lacrimis et intentione cordis. [The oratory should be what it is called and nothing else should be done or stored there. After God’s work is done, everyone with complete silence should leave and let reverence for God be shown, so that a brother who greatly wishes for himself to pray more secretly may just enter and pray, not in a clamorous voice but in tears and with a sincere heart.] (RB section 52)

Benedict was warning the brothers to speak softly so as not to disturb others because prayer was typically aloud. The skill to be learned was murmuring, that is, muttering or mouthing the prayer. Errors in pronunciation in singing psalms or in reading could be punished ______________________________________________________________________________________ draft 12/22/14 “Lectio Divina,” page 4

corporally: Si quis dum pronuntiat psalmum, responsorium, antefanam vel lectionem fallitus fuerit, nisi satisfactione ibi coram omnibus humiliatus fuerit, maiori vindictæ subiaceat, quippe qui noluit humilitate corrigere quod neglegentia deliquit. Infantes autem pro tali culpa vapulent. [If anyone makes a mistake while pronouncing a psalm, response, refrain, or reading, unless he was humbled satisfactorily there before everyone, he will undergo a greater punishment. . . . But children will be beaten for such a fault.] (RB 45)

This provision seems less harsh when we remember that the monastery was in the business of training young boys, who may at times have been reluctant learners. The threat of punishment may have been necessary to prevent clowning in the performance of sacred rituals. Learning to Read a Foreign Language The present discussion of lectio divina originated last year after I decided to learn Biblical Greek in my spare time. I engaged a tutor and fell into the routine of translation, familiar from the study of Latin and other languages. The process is, I think, common in the study of foreign languages. First I read the sentence aloud, concentrating on the pronunciation. Then I read aloud again, noting the meanings of words and attempting to construe the unfamiliar ones. This phase for the language learner is the lectio, also called “grammar” in ancient and medieval pedagogy and encompassing phonetics, orthography, and vocabulary. In the sixth century, when more than 90 percent of the populace was illiterate, monasteries were necessarily schools that taught how to read. The monk may not at first understand what he is saying; indeed, as a new monk learning to read for the first time, he certainly would not (Reynolds 8-10). One obstacle to describing or discussing early pedagogy or religion is that some common words that we seem to share with ancient times have in fact changed in meaning. Examples are the words grammar and meditation. Lectio, “reading,” was in ancient times and remains to this day an exercise in phonetics, that is, recognition of letters. Hence, following Priscian and Isidore, Pseudo-Donatus defines grammatica as as “scientia recte loquendi et fundamentum literarum [the art of correct pronunciation and the foundation of the liberal arts],” arts here meaning the written disciplines of the trivium and quadrivium. This core skill was in ancient times considered the province of grammar. Our word grammar comes from the Greek grafh√, “written mark” or “letter.” Hence, Peter and John were described as agra√mmatoi√ [agrammatoi]--that is, “unlettered” or “illiterate” (Acts 4:13). ______________________________________________________________________________________ draft 12/22/14 “Lectio Divina,” page 5

Rumination Another word whose meaning is different is meditatio. Returning again to the example of my Greek lesson, after the literal meaning of the sentence is clear, I would repeat the sentence again to internalize it. This second phase, meditatio, consists of mulling over what the words mean and attempting to put them together into larger units of meaning. This step involves mouthing the words to oneself in an effort to internalize or even memorize them. As Jack Goody points out, “’knowing’ a text often means memorizing it word for word; internalizing the meaning with the words means that those words become part of you, integral to your consciousness, and may be helpful in organizing your experience” (35). Memory as a component of classical rhetoric--an oral, declamatory art and part of the curriculum in schools from the Lyceum until the nineteenth century--would reward further attention in another study. Rumination means “chewing the cud” and suggests an image where a bit of scripture, imperfectly remembered like a bolus of half-digested silage, is regurgitated in moments of reflection to be worked on by a moving mouth. Some authorities take the word to be a dead metaphor, ruminate as “ponder,” and disregard the oral implication. Guigo II, in his discussion of the lectio phase, extended the metaphor by referring to meditation as part of a digestive process: “meditatio masticat et frangit [meditation chews and breaks]” (section 2). Repeated muscle actions enlist kinesthesia in the process of learning and remembering. Meditatio engages one’s memory (Leclercq 16-17). Any singer or actor committing words to memory for subsequent delivery will train the lips, tongue, jaw, and larynx in rumination, in repetition, in murmuring—in meditation. This is how everyone learns a foreign language and perhaps how children learn their first language, too. The goal is to think in the new language. John Cassian, in his first conference with Abbot Isaac, reports one definition of a “perfecta oratio, in qua se monachus uel hoc ipsum quod orat intellegit [complete prayer, wherein a monk understands himself and the words that he prays]” (XXXI). When in ritual a word or phrase is repeated until it loses its meaning, the result is a mantra as found in eastern religions. Can people be deeply moved by listening to words they do not understand? Would Gregorian chant inspire New Age listeners if the singers were mouthing gibberish, like scat singing? This question involves an issue larger than it may first appear. Jack Goody, who spent years in West Africa, studying its preliterate culture, has pointed out (34) that, ”in non-Arabic speaking countries, the Qur’an continues to be read and learned in the original language” and that many readers “may simply know the sound of the text by heart without knowing Arabic or how to read it.” The same may be true of practitioners of lectio divina in an early stage of foreign language study. But the intention of Benedict and Cassian was clearly that the monks would understand the text they read and heard, and that is also the goal of ______________________________________________________________________________________ draft 12/22/14 “Lectio Divina,” page 6

foreign language instruction. Guigo’s first two phases, lectio and meditatio, would have seemed very routine to a late classical pedagogue such as Eusebius or Cassiodorus. The phases are what happens when any student reads a foreign language. Several aspects of lectio divina that seem most strange in modern devotional instructions become clear when viewed in this light--for example, why the reading is supposed to be slow and why repetition is recommended (for example, in Casey 8-9, 24-25). It is in the remaining phases, oratio and contemplatio, that modern interpretation becomes most diverse. For some authorities on lectio divina, they are the higher purpose toward which lectio aims; other discussions omit them entirely as belonging to a different subject. To repeat, for most of the last 1500 years, reading the Bible has meant learning a foreign language (Reynolds 8). And by the same token, in Europe, reading the Bible and literacy itself were coextensive. Reading Insights can be obtained by the study and consideration of oral and manuscript cultures as described by Walter Ong, Jack Goody, and Werner Kelber. When the assumptions and biases of print culture are recognized, then texts from the patristic age can yield surprises. In the paradigm of oral versus typographic cultures as described by H. Marshall McLuhan and Walter Ong, the cheirographic or manuscript culture is intermediate, showing characteristics of each. Both the Old and New Testaments can be considered to be products of oral cultures. The Bible is oral in its composition, in that the manuscripts are records of spoken messages, and oral in its transmission, in that most people through the centuries who came to know it, came to know it through hearing it read aloud. Textual studies that focus on variations between manuscripts, and hermeneutics that use printed books, can easily overlook the profound effects of oral culture. The theological implications are discussed in detail by Hill, Kelber, and Ong. In the manuscript culture of the ancient and medieval centuries, the boy learning to read first had to master the alphabet, as indeed young students do in today’s typographic culture. Adducing John of Salisbury and other sources, Suzanne Reynolds (8) says that “the puer first learns the alphabet, that is to say, he learns to recognize letter forms visually and to raise the correct noise to go with them.” Reading was typically also aloud. In a way, the term lectio divina is a misnomer. The term could be not divine reading but divine listening. At the moment of reading, there is only one reader but we may suppose several listeners—and at meals, dozens of listeners. One could participate either by reading or by listening: as it says in Revelation 1:3, “Makavrioß oJ ajnaginwvskwn kai; oiJ ajkouvonteß tou;ß lovgouß th:ß profhteivaß [Blessed is the one who reads and who hears the words of the prophecy].” ______________________________________________________________________________________ draft 12/22/14 “Lectio Divina,” page 7

As Gamble says, “even among the literate, it was as common to be read to as to read for oneself, and the illiterate were as capable as the literate of hearing books read” (205). For early monks, there was no sharp distinction between praying, chanting, and reading, that is, recitation. Gamble points out that the chant “was the way the public reading of scripture was done in the early church, and it served primarily the hermeneutical purpose of making the semantic structure and substance of the text accessible to the hearer” (228). Divine reading was to have a salutary effect, so monks listened “lectiones sanctas libenter audire [in order to listen to readings freely]” (RB, 4). When monks were not working, they were to be engaged in lectio divina: “Otiositas inimica est animæ, et ideo certis temporibus occupari debent fratres in labore manuum, certis iterum horis in lectione divina [Sloth is the enemy of the soul—just as at certain times the brothers should be occupied in working with their hands, at other hours of the day in sacred reading]” (RB 48). In Orality and Literacy, Walter Ong describes many significant aspects of oral delivery that we in a print culture often overlook. One is the communal aspect of reading aloud. When one person is speaking or reading aloud, everybody in the room is engaged in the shared experience. But when a teacher asks students to read silently, everybody retreats into a private place in the mind, and the communal spell is broken. Public oaths in the courtroom or elsewhere must be aloud. Oaths, speech making, theatre, and reading aloud all invite the communal, physical participation of the listeners as witnesses. For the monks, listening was an “active activity.” We may suppose that listeners’ lips and vocal cords moved involuntarily. In an interview in the 1970s, I remember film director Woody Allen described something he noticed at a screening of Casablanca. The lips of many audience members were moving as Humphrey Bogart delivered his lines. Children also mouthe words silently as they listen to a favorite story for the hundredth time. We would not be surprised if the brothers listened as actively to familiar passages (Leclercq 15). In reading aloud, the whole person participates, not just the eyes and mind. Sound penetrates the entire body. Reading aloud engages the spirit of the reader. The word spirit (Greek pneu:ma, Latin spiritus) means “breath.” Breath comes from the human body. Word with spirit is an acoustic event. Sound penetrates the body and engages the self in a corporeal way. There is a sense in which confessing your sins silently is not confessing them at all. Further Considerations The practice of lectio divina as foreign language instruction has implications that would reward further study beyond the scope of the present discussion. ______________________________________________________________________________________ draft 12/22/14 “Lectio Divina,” page 8

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Lectio divina was introduced and practiced in a cheirographic and still largely oral culture as described by Marshall McLuhan, Walter Ong, Werner Kelber, Eric Havelock, and others. The cultivation of memory as a way of absorbing texts provided the practitioners of lectio divina with a means of internalizing scripture. Our understanding of memory, a branch of ancient rhetoric, has been enriched by the research of Mary Carruthers, Suzanne Reynolds, and others. In the study of education, specifically language learning, it is interesting to consider the cognitive process of reading, particularly of construing meaning in a foreign text. What skills and practices help one to acquire a foreign language, and how exactly does each contribute? Beryl Smalley, Jean Leclerq, and Harry Gamble have helped to address such questions. Such questions have implications for psycholinguistics: what exactly happens to the brain during verbal activity, and how does oral delivery differ from silent reading? And how is that related to meditative states and reported religious experiences? Lectio divina as a specifically oral activity is important to our understanding of devotional practices, in particular the interplay of verbal activity with religious states of mind and being. How do singing or praying aloud contribute to religious feelings?

Modern lay devotees who make devotional use of scripture reading, of course, must not imagine their practice is somehow diminished by its differences from the lectio divina of St. Benedict. On the other hand, modern devotees who know the Bible only in English should not underestimate the power of reading scripture in a foreign language. Learning to think in a foreign language is, I believe, a way of rewiring the brain. In Bible study, each clause offers an epiphany of sorts as the meaning emerges in the reading. And for the monks of the West, reading was in their second language, the language of their faith, of their heritage, of antiquity, of scripture.

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References Augustine [, Aurelius]. Confessions. William Watts, ed. and trans. [English on facing pages]. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1912. Cassian, Jean. “Conlatio Abbatis Isaac Prima: De Oratio.” Conférences VIII-XVI: Introduction, Texte Latin. E. Pichery, trans. [French on facing pages]. Sources Chrétiennes vol. 163. Paris: Les Éditions du CERF, 1958. Casey, Michael. Sacred Reading: The Ancient Art of Lectio Divina, 1st US edition. Liguori, MO: Liguori Publications, 1996. Cassiodorus. Institutions of Divine and Secular Learning and On the Soul. James A. Halporn, trans. Liverpool, UK: Liverpool University Press, 2004. Fry, Timothy, ed. The Rule of St. Benedict: In Latin and English with Notes [RB] Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1980. Gamble, Harry Y. Books and Readers in the Early Church: A History of Early Christian Texts. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995. Goody, Jack. The Power of the Written Tradition. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2000. Guigo II [Guigues II le Chartreux]. “Epistola de Vita Contemplativa (Scala Claustralium).” Edmund Colledge and James Walsh, eds. Sources Chrétiennes vol. 163. Paris: Les Éditions du CERF, 1970. Hall, Thelma. Too Deep for Words: Rediscovering Lectio Divina. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1988. Havelock, Eric A. The Muse Learns to Write: Reflections on Orality and Literacy from Antiquity to the Present. New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 1986. Hill, Robert C. “From Good News to the Holy Writ: The Share of the Text in the Saving Purpose of the Word.” Estudios Biblicos 5:2 (1993). 145-162. Kelber, Werner H. The Oral and the Written Gospels: The Hermeneutics of Speaking and Writing in the Synoptic Tradition, Mark, Paul, and Q. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1983, 1997. Leclercq, Jean. The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture, third edition. Misrahi, Catherine, trans. New York: Fordham University Press, 1982. McLuhan, Herbert Marshall. The Gutenberg Gallaxy: The Making of Typographic Man. Toronto, ON: Toronto UP, 1962. Masini, Mario. Lectio Divina: An Ancient Prayer That Is Ever New. Edmund C. Lane, trans. Staten Island: Alba House, 1998. Ong, Walter J. Orality and Literacy. New York: Routledge, 1984. Pennington, M. Basil. Lectio Divina: Renewing the Ancient Practice of Praying the Scriptures. New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 1998. ______________________________________________________________________________________ draft 12/22/14 “Lectio Divina,” page 10

Reynolds, Suzanne. Medieval Reading: Grammar, Rhetoric and the Classical Text. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996. Sandor, Monica. “Lectio Divina and the Monastic Spirituality of Reading.” American Benedictine Review 40:1 (March 1989). 82-114. Smalley, Beryl. The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages. South Bend: University of Notre Dame Press, 1978.

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