Silence, Solitariness, and Gregorian Chant

The cold brilliance of a waxing moon was all that illuminated the night’s various hues of black, smudged at points with hints of blue and green. Under that canopy 1,200 acres of fields and hills embraced by woods were enfolded in a peacefulness that only such rural isolation can foster. At one edge of that natural endowment rested a low-lying building that any “outside” wayfarer could readily sense is the center of simple comfort, though certainly not what that same outsider would call simple ease. It is the main building of the Abbey of the Genesee, home to thirty Trappist monks who like their confreres elsewhere have committed themselves to a life of silence—silence that St. John of the Cross called “God’s first language.” On the night here recalled, the small handful of visitors—I being one of six—instinctively surrendered to the hush as we arrived to be tacitly participating witnesses at the monks’ singing of Compline.

Even a not-fully-attentive reader of this recounting has to be aware of the seeming contradictions it contains: isolation and accessibility to visitors; silence and singing; participants and witnesses. To reconcile such supposed distinctions, however, we must introduce another set of competing concepts, this-world and a-world-apart, and look at selective historical contexts that can aid our understanding. The essential intermingling of these various elements precludes a singular linear examination of each one, so we shall shift our attention from one to the other as the need for clarity demands details of enlightenment from whichever aspect offers illustration.

The historic fact of monastic isolation in the Western Church is probably best represented by Carthusian life in the Charterhouse nestled in the upper reaches of the French Alps at La Grande Chartreuse. In that massif in 1048 the German monk St. Bruno with six companions founded the monastery just north of Grenoble that over the centuries has become the principal seat of the Carthusians. Several times the monastery was destroyed but it was always rebuilt. The present Charterhouse at that legendary location dates largely from the seventeenth century and is an enclosure that differs markedly from a Benedictine Abbey. (I will make clear the significance of the Benedictine comparison in just a bit.) The architectural uniqueness just referred to is the result of the central premise of Carthusian life, a nearly complete eremitical existence that cultivates largely unbroken contemplation. Such a life of voluntary seclusion is the commonplace of asceticism, that is, the person isolates himself until he is for all intents a hermit, thus the term eremitical. The monastic life featuring seclusion in common, not individually, is designated cenobitic, the Benedictine model. So at La Grande Chartreuse where the chief function is to approach as nearly as possible total contemplation, each monk has a private cell and personal garden and scarcely meets others. That individual existence is also conducted in complete silence, save for those moments when the monks speak to one another during their weekly chapter and on their weekly walks. A select number of Carthusians, principally drawn from the lay brothers, interact with a segment of the unenclosed world to sell the world-famous Chartreuse liqueur that the Order created to be their primary source of revenue for physical existence. “After centuries of production that liqueur—Green Chartreuse, about 57% alcohol and the sweeter yellow variety with about 43% alcohol—still is crafted from a secret recipe and is labeled Liqueur des Peres Chartreuse.” ¹

Even though most of us are anchored to a work-a-day existence with a familiar, obligatory, and frequently all-controlling schedule, it is still not easy to grasp the restraint of the Carthusian ritual of Night Office, nearly as striking as the habits of silence and isolation. Every night the monks of the Grande Chartreuse leave their cells at 12:15 a.m. to assemble in the next-to-totally dark church to sing psalms, intone orations and lectures, and wait in deep silence for a period that can extend for as long as three and a half hours. Later...