The Mission of Vox Benedictina: 1984-1994 by Dewey Weiss Kramer DeKalb College, Decatur GA Vox Benedictina, the journal with the programmatic title, appeared on the scene at a pivotal time in North American intellectual history, and during its ten-year presence it has seen “outrageous” or “esoteric” topics become commonplace. Indeed, it is possible that VB has helped the outrageous and esoteric toward such acceptance. The content of the present volume speaks for itself: readers find here articles on women, their activities, insights, spiritual journeys within and beyond patristic and patriarchal structures; specific individuals and groups; mediaeval and modern; alone and in interaction with other women, men, and with their worlds. The famous – Hildegard, Gertrude, Mechthild – dwell beside lesser known beguines and twentieth-century orthodox nuns. Reading it provides an overview of a tremendous amount of womanly accomplishment spanning the whole Christian era. Thus this distillation of ten years of VB is also a distillation of some two thousand years of women striving to flourish as whole and integrated persons. What is not self-evident in these pages is the greater whole out of which the volumes have been distilled, a context which must be considered if one is to assess at all adequately the achievement of Vox Benedictina. Consideration of this greater context, then, is the focus of this editorial comment, with special attention paid to the following aspects: VB in its historical context as participant in the feminine spiritual movement; VB as a journal of engaged, cutting-edge scholarship; and VB as builder of a community, in which the prophetic force of the choice of a name plays a seminal role.   Vox Benedictina in Historical Perspective The year is 1984. The United States and Canada are in the first phase of an awareness destined within the next decade to become one of the major movements of the late twentieth century – the feminist Christian movement. [i] When the first issue of VB appeared in February of that year, it did so, wittingly or not, [ii] both as response to that ferment and as participant in its on-going development. The demure blue cover of the first volume with its subtitle, “A Journal of Translations from Monastic Sources,” gave scant hint of the direction the series would ultimately take. But when Volume 1, no. 2 appeared in a gutsier olive green, with no. 3 splashing forth in vivid canary, and no. 4’s bright orange rounding out the first year’s volume a perceptive reader might have suspected the course VB was destined to take. (Lest readers fault me for reading too much into colour, let me remind them that we are dealing with persons and topics who exist within a sacramental, hence symbolic, world view!) This quarterly journal would serve as an active participant in the consciousness-raising going on in the intellectual context of feminist spirituality, constituting a forum for inquiry into persons, ideas, institutions, pursuing a hermeneutics of suspicion, [iii] revealing the hard facts where it had been assumed nothing existed. The article on Marcellina which appeared in the opening issue of VB demonstrates the sleuthing procedure well: Like most women of antiquity, Marcellina does not speak to us directly. None of the letters she wrote to her famous brother, St. Ambrose are extant, but in his writings to her one can discern the lineaments of a remarkable woman.[iv] During the next decade, VB readers would have increased access to the “lineaments” dug out of supposedly non-existent sources, would read the actual words of many a “remarkable woman” previously hidden or considered unimportant for centuries and brought out of the shadow cast by their more famous “brothers.” [v] Scholarship on the Cutting Edge This 1994 volume cannot adequately convey the pioneering nature of VB’s first decade. Ambrose’s sister remains, perhaps, little known. But Hildegard, Gertrud, and the beguines are now widely known, if not exactly household names; Hildegard’s music is readily available on the latest CDs; Gertrud’s Exercises serve as basis for days of recollection; the idea of addressing God as mother elicits few gasps in the year following the publication of Elizabeth Johnson’s magisterial She Who Is. But this was not the case in l984 and the year immediately following. Consider the editorial of Volume 1, no. 2 in which the editor announced a new series from Peregrina Publishing Co., an “embryonic collection of the lives and writings of our spiritual foremothers”: the startled gasps and burst of laughter that this idea [i.e. the title Matrologia Latina] elicited from our clerical friends convinced us that this, indeed, is what its name shall be. [vi] Had Margot been a radical Christian feminist, she might have added that precisely the gasps of clerical friends legitimised the importance, even the obligation, of the journal’s existence. In fact, what Sandra Schneiders has written about the responsibility of feminists within the catholic Christian tradition seems applicable to VB’s underlying motivation. There are persons (of either gender), notes Schneiders whose attachment to the church as community of believers is too central to their identity to be surrendered even in the face of ecclesiastical patriarchy. While they struggle to grow toward spiritual wholeness, including the integration of the existential anger that arises in the face of sexual apartheid in the Church, they channel their energy into transformational involvement in ecclesial life. They continue to hope for the conversion of the institutional Church, and that hope sustains them in membership and commitment. [vii] This statement circumscribes an important aspect of what VB has been about: helping to further the awareness of women’s presence and achievements within the Judaeo-Christian religious tradition. The volumes of VB have brought to light instance after instance of spiritual wholeness actually attained, most often in the past but in the present era as well. Such hard-and-fast data has served a three-fold function: first, it has discredited assumptions of feminine inadequacy, which in turn serves to expose the myth of masculine ecclesial superiority. Second, it has provided mentors for contemporary seekers be they church-oriented or not. Third, the models and mentors which have resulted from such data-recovery replicates, or intuits, a method absolutely foundational to the whole women’s movement – story-telling, the sharing of personal spiritual journeys. Perhaps it is for this reason that the beguine movement has become so well-known in general and is relatively well-presented in this volume. For the beguines have been discovered as women in the world (i.e. not monastics) who achieved a high measure of independence, both spiritual and secular, within a milieu unfriendly to such independence. As such, they speak rather easily to modern readers, a point to which Margot once alluded when she said that “their experience spoke to their contemporaries as it also can speak to us.” [viii] The concept of “story-telling” was never articulated as a major component of the journal. But it is interesting to note that already in the first issue the editor deviated from one of the stated components in order to make room for such stories. [ix] And the editorials of each issue were, in fact, journey-sharings on the part of the editor with the readers.   The willingness to deviate from a pattern for good reason is a fundamental Benedictine trait (cf. the oft-cited flexibility of the Rule of St. Benedict which made this rule perdure while others died out), and it is here a further instance of Margot’s “thinking with Benedict.”   Her gift of intuiting a need and responding to it correctly probably accounted for the evolution of VB’s sub-titles. “A Journal of Translations from Monastic Sources” (1984 and 1985) defined the original task: acquiring firm data, recovering a vast resource which could document the impressive scope of women’s influence and abilities within the monastic tradition. The change to “Women and Monastic Spirituality” (1986 and 1987) recognises the need to sharpen the journal’s attention specifically to the roles and contributions of women, The current sub-title, “A Journal of Feminine and Monastic Spirituality” (not “feminist”) continues to suggest great confidence in woman’s spiritual stature, accepting as a given that their achievements, precisely in the realm of spirituality, are as weighty as those of the institution. But there is a new highlighting of the receptive feminine principle wherever, and in whomever, it chooses to appear.   “Nomen est Omen” – Vox Benedictina’s Direction toward a “School of the Lord’s Service” The journal had been some two years in the planning before the first issue appeared in February 1984. Did Margot foresee where her choice of title would lead? Though a logical choice for a journal conceived of with the collaboration of monk friends of the Benedictine tradition and devoted to translations from monastic (i.e. Benedictine) sources, Margot has occasionally been heard to express uneasiness about the title. The journal had, for most of its existence, no formal ties to Benedictines, and was hence not a “Benedictine voice” in the sense that it spoke for, or as, Benedictine. Yet the direction the journal took was so strikingly in the spirit of Benedict and Benedictine monasticism that I can only view the name as Spirit-given, a guide on the way it could and would go. Part of the groundswell of a new feminist Christian spiritual awareness (consciously or not), Margot’s decision to place her nascent journal under the aegis of Benedict predetermined the direction it would go. First, she placed it squarely in the context of the sole ecclesiastical institution that has withstood the patriarchal denigration of the female person and offered women space for the full development of their abilities. The journal would celebrate such space. Second, the “Benedictine voice” that Margot might have interpreted originally as merely adjectivally descriptive – i.e. concerning monastic subject matter – became that of the master himself: to form a community capable of leading its members to wholeness (if not holiness!); to teach the practice of lectio by taking the text utterly seriously, by taking it to heart (engaged scholarship); to forge from diverse individuals a sense of common service to the cause of reclaiming lost voices; to provide a structure open to adaptation as circumstances demanded (expansion of the journal and related publishing endeavours).   The VB Community Although the present volume gives little evidence of it, this creation of a “VB community” is perhaps VB’s most notable and enduring achievement, The first editorial presupposed a community of editor and readers. [x] But that “community,” guided by the genius of Benedict’s “school,” soon assumed far wider dimensions, to include finally the community of VB readers; of participants in the VB sessions at Kalamazoo; and the scholar- contributors to the journal and related publishing ventures. The bond between editor and readers was forged to a large extent by the editorials, actually letters to the VB community. Breathlessly enthusiastic about the articles, infectiously optimistic about the wealth of material to work on, [xi] reacting to events in the church, the country, the family, they were a critical element of the VB charism. Secondly, one must mention the VB community as the International Congress on Medieval Studies held each year at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo. The gatherings there have been directly related to the journal because the session papers were often published there. More importantly, though, the heady atmosphere of the sessions sponsored by Vox Benedictina and the gatherings around the VB table (selling Peregrina books and T-shirts) constituted a locus not unlike the schola of Benedict’s monastery, where friends old and new gathered, talked, learned and grew. Starting with an attendance of twenty or twenty-five, in the ensuing years the sessions came to attract crowds of seventy-five to a hundred – and, once, at a session on the beguines, over two hundred! – drawn by the increasingly recognised relevance of topics which only a few years earlier might have seemed marginal or esoteric. The VB Community as Realisation of Benedict’s “School” Noting that the “school of the Lord’s service” is probably the main idea of the Prologue, [xii] the editors of the American critical edition of The Rule of St. Benedict point out that the late Latin term schola implied much more than its modern cognate “school.” In Benedict’s day, the term denoted not only the place or institution where instruction was received, nor primarily the group of persons receiving instruction. In fact, there is no nuance of “formal education” in Benedict’s usage. It means rather a group of people to have come together for the common purpose specified by the Rule … In the schola, which is both a place, i.e., an institution, and a human grouping, we learn how to do these things, to follow the “way of life.” The process can perhaps be more fittingly compared to an apprenticeship by which a person learns a skill from another through long association with him than to a school in the modern sense. [xiii]   The reference to “apprenticeship” applies to the community recruited and nourished by VB, both journal and as ‘Zoo sponsor. As Benedictine monks learn the life by living with their fellow monks, the juniors emulating the seniors, the seniors encouraging and caring for the juniors, so too with the experienced scholars and the neophytes during the VB years. [xiv] Genuine exchange characterised the place; persons unaware of the riches of certain areas were invited in to share and taste; and beginners in the area of the desert mothers and mediaeval women’s studies functioned as equals beside established scholars.   Reference here to my own part in VB can illustrate this aspect of the VB community. I was new to the world of mediaeval spiritual heroines when I first encountered the Vox Benedictina “schola.” Invited to the Congress with my husband (subsequently also a convert to the VB schola) because of our interest in contemporary monastic spirituality, I attended the Mystics Quarterly and Vox Benedictina sessions, was intrigued by the subject of the beguines, and was drawn warmly into the circle of VB friends. So enlivening was the sense of community (both personal and scholarly) that I literally con-verted. That is, I determined to shift my research interests from modern German literature to mediaeval for the sake of the VB/MQ community. And as Benedict would have his “school” function, Margot suggested a topic for further study, introduced me to persons who could guide and support my investigation where needed, and the conversio was firmly in process. It was a move that has enriched me personally and professionally beyond measure. It has also led to some modest recovery of lost feminine voices, [xv] so that the VB common purpose has also been served.   My experience within the context of the accomplishment of Vox Benedictina can serve as a paradigm for countless other persons who have been able through it to combine personal growth and service to the dual task of recovering a lost heritage and of consciousness-raising for lay and ecclesial institutions alike.   The Circle Completed It was eminently fitting, indeed richly symbolic, that one of the final VB-sponsored sessions at the 1994 Kalamazoo Congress closed the circle begun in February 1984. Entitled “Voces Benedictinae,” the session provided close textual analysis of feminised versions of the Rule of St. Benedict. Thus participants heard Benedict speaking to his daughters in their language; they heard the voice of the master adapting itself to the needs of fourteenth-century women. What clearer illustration of the “engaged” nature of VB’s task might one have asked for – to recover lost voices so that they might join in and guide our contemporary dialogue.   [i] Sandra Schneiders in The New Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality, ed. Michael Downey (Collegeville MN: Liturgical Press, l993), pp. 394ff and Time issue on “Women and God” (Spring, 1994). See also the overview of feminist writings and extensive bibliography in Lewis’ “God’s Femininity” reprinted in this volume. [ii] Editor Margot King would probably not call herself a feminist, or at least not a radical feminist. Her involvement in this movement is rather an instance of the Zeitgeist at work. Zeitgeist is Wilhelm Dilthey’s invaluable word for the “spirit of the times,” i.e., the intellectual and moral climate of an era and the general artistic style which seems to erupt spontaneously and cross-culturally to express that spirit, as in the exuberant movement characteristic of all genres of baroque art. [Editor’s comment: If pressed, I would describe myself as “radical-middle-of-the-road.”] Though not a card-carrying feminist, the editor’s stance is clear, as the editorial of Vol. 3, no. 2 makes clear: “The editorial policy of VB is based on a belief that feminine spirituality has something of great importance to offer that has been conspicuously lacking in our male dominated Church but we are neither ‘radical’ nor ‘conservative’” (p. 99). See also the mission statement of Peregrina Publishing Co. in 6/4 (1989): 339 and in this volume, n. 3, p. 16. [iii] Cf. the term used by Elisabeth Schlüssler Fiorenza in In Memory of Her (1983; rpt. New York: Crossroad, 1990) and elsewhere, and now generally accepted by biblical scholars. [iv] Vox Benedictina 1/1 (1984): 11. [v] Cf. the biblical exegesis carried out by Elisabeth Schlüssler Fiorenza in In Memory of Her, or the methodology of Clarissa Pinola Estes in her examination of fairy tales and myths: “From the form and shape of the places and parts [of tampered-with versions of tales], we can determine with good accuracy what has been lost from the story and those missing pieces can be redrawn accurately (Women Who Run with the Wolves [New York: Ballantine, 1992], p. 17). [vi] Vox Benedictina 1/2 (1985): 51. [vii] Schneiders, Dictionary, pp. 403ff. [viii] Vox Benedictina 2/2 (1985): 82 [ix] Cf. Vox Benedictina 1/2 (1985): 2f. “… we have tried to provide a representative selection of the lives of the Mothers, but at the cost of not being able to include a regular feature of our journal, Vocabula Benedictina, the brain-child of Father Martinus Cawley”. [x] Vox Benedictina 1/1 (1984): 3. [xi] “I’ve located about sixty manuscripts which contain the lives of Christina, Marie, Alice and the three Idas and I know there are many more. It’s just a question of locating them. There are twenty-nine for Marie alone!” (Vox Benedictina 2/2 (1985): 82). [xii] RB 1980, p. 165, note to Prol. 45. [xiii] RB 1980, p. 365. [xiv] This is the place to acknowledge Mystics Quarterly, the brain child of Ritamary Bradley and Valerie Lagorio, as the fairy god-journal, and Ritamary and Valerie as the fairy godmothers of this community and to express the VB community’s undying thanks and appreciation. The two groups worked together closely. MQ is still going strong under the editorship of Elizabeth Psakis Armstrong. [xv] Editor’s note: Dewey is currently working on the fourteenth-century Dominican convent chronicles and their translations into Middle High German, as well as editing a feminised version in Middle High German of the Rule of St. Benedict to be published in the new Peregrina series Voces Benedictinae, under the general editorship of John E. Crean, jr.
	Peregrina’s Progressive Pickle: The Story of Vox Benedictina
	The Mission of Vox Benedictina: 1984-1994 by Dewey Weiss Kramer, DeKalb College, Decatur GA
	Seventy-Five Years of Vox Benedictina by Elspeth Durie, Varenna, Italy

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