The theme of the whole conference is the Common Life of Christians; the theme of this paper is the Monastic Ideal of the Common Life. The monastic life exists in two forms, the eremitical and the cenobitical. It would be interesting to show how the common life of Christians is realised also in the eremitical monastic life, but for several reasons this paper will consider only the Christian common life as it is envisaged in cenobitical monasticism. And in the West, the Rule of St Benedict remains the norm of cenobitical monastic life, so that the monastic ideal described will be that of the Rule of St Benedict.

Even with this limitation of scope, the subject is not an easy one to treat. During the 1,400 years of Benedictine history, and also in contemporary monastic life, the ideal of the Rule has been realised in a great variety of ways.