allAfrica.com: Botswana: Book Review (Page 1 of 2)

For the Sake of Silence is the story of the Trappist monasteries and missions in South Africa, from their beginnings at Sunday Rivers in the Eastern Cape in 1880 to their amazing expansion and then demise in Natal through to 1922. The tale begins in Europe in 1863, with the arrival of a Wendelin Pfanner at Mariawald, a monastery in Germany, who later was to advance in South Africa to become Abbot Francis Pfanner of Mariannhill near Pinetown outside Durban-it became the largest monastery in the world. He came from Langen, near Lake Constance. He had elected to join the Trappists. He became known simply as Franz. Franz was first posted to serve a community of nuns in Croatia and then allowed to establish a monastery among Muslims in Bosnia. He was a religious leader with a knack for enthralling some and alienating others, a man who nearly always had to have the last word. His story is told by a Moravian, Josef Eduard Biegner, who became an accountant in Vienna and then Father Joseph Cuppertino. He joined the Trappist seeking a contemplative life, but then he became Franz's friend and scribe.

They arrived at Port Elizabeth on July 28,1880, having left Europe to take up an offer of an Irish bishop based in Grahamstown to plant the Trappist seed along the Sundays River at Dunbrody, an infertile and arid place that resisted all their dedication and efforts to transform it. Through complicated Catholic Church politics they were able to escape to Natal. It is difficult when reading most of this book to realise that it is first and foremost a work of fiction, embedded in the history of the Trappists in South Africa.

"The words He utters are words full of silence, they are the bait to draw us into silence ...". The origin of the Trappists goes back to one man a thousand years ago, Saint Benedict, who established the Rule, the strict order of observance and progression, the balance and harmony of monastic life, the penances and a life devoted to meditation, prayer, singing, chanting and labour. Trappist wore the simplest of garments (suitable to Europe, but not to Africa) and followed a strict vegetarian diet-"to avoid promoting carnal thoughts". Benedictine monasteries spread throughout Europe. In their successes were engrained the seeds of their failures whenever dispensations led to the loss of the Rule. Then came the Cistercian revival, the White Monks, and soon there were 300 monasteries-by the end of the Middle Ages they were spread across Europe and the Middle East. It began at a French monastery founded in 1098 at Citeaux (Cistercium). When the fire of contemplation subsided they too went into decline. Then in 1622 the reforms of the Constitutions of de Rance at Notre Dame de la Trappe led to a new revival and they became known as Trappists. The contradictions that were to pull them apart in Africa had not been resolved.

The Trappist life is known for its commitment to silence. Monks never speak, especially at night during the Great Silence. Their lives are guided by the regulations of St Benedict, all 1,802 paragraphs. This guide, written a 1,000 years ago, governed all aspects, each moment, hour, day, week, month and year, "Every prayer, recitation, response, reading, action, preparation-everything, including silence itself-was prescribed for every possible occurrence in the life of a monk".

A chapter of the Rule was read daily in the Chapter Room in monasteries. It was very rigorous, the "fixed routine of Trappist life". They worked four hours a day in winter and five in summer as work was a form of prayer. They woke at two a.m. and gathered in Choir (thus the term Choir Monk) the start of Devine Services that encompassed seven hours of each day.

They never spoke, but lived in silence. When required they used an ancient sign language. Only the Prior or the Abbot could speak. Meals were consistently light and strictly vegetarian. All they needed was produced by their own hands during the limited time allowed for labour. Their total circumstances were designed to leave them free to focus on their religious inner life. There was a ladder on which men who were dedicated to the Rule could advance. Lay people and sisters could associate with the Monastery. Those following the Common Observance could teach and work in communities and lived outside the monasteries. Those following the Strict Observance lived secluded lives within. According to the Rule one day's travel was allowed, but then monks must sleep in a Trappist place.

When the outreach began from Mariannhill Monastery, the first trips by ox-cart took six days. Dispensations were forced that contradicted the Rule from the beginning. The hours of work, if new edifices were to be erected, had also to be varied. Eventually, there were in Natal three dozen day stations and missions with 200 monks at the zenith. Many more sisters and lay catechists, brothers and priests who were not monks were all involved. The classic tensions between centralisation and decentralisation occurred.

Working in Africa required the use of many languages: English, Afrikaans, German, French, Latin, Croate and Zulu for outreach, conversion and incorporation. There were contradictions in the willingness to accept Africans into full membership, with the first who wanted to become monks being rejected, and then those who made the grade being educated at Rome and returning to a difficult life. The Trappist believed that they convert by example, but as soon as the mission activity began this approach was negated. This led to conflicts between personalities and rivalries: silence versus outreach-mission versus silence. There was also a dichotomy between those who worked with their hands and those with their heads.

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