The idea that a monk could also be a missionary was a novel one, at least for most of the contemporaries of Father Andreas Amrhein, O.S.B. (1844 - 1927).
The Origins of the Missionary Benedictines
The idea that a monk could also be a missionary was a novel one, at least for most of the contemporaries of Father Andreas Amrhein, O.S.B. (1844 - 1927).
It was he who dreamt, while still a Benedictine monk at Beuron, Germany, of a community of monks who were also missionaries. Nothing like that existed at the time. Benedictine monasticism, virtually snuffed out in Europe as a consequence of Laws of Secularization, had developed primarily as a cloistered life of prayer and work, along with the activities of teaching, scholarship, and pastoral care.
The ancient tradition of missionary monks such as Saints Boniface, Willibrord, Augustine of Canterbury, and Ansgar, to whom Europe's conversion to Christianity is profoundly indebted, seemed to have fallen into oblivion. It was as a student of theology, attending lectures in church history, that Andreas Amrhein encountered that important epoch in Benedictine monasticism, and it touched him deeply.
After long negotiations with his superiors he obtained permission to engage in missionary work, and he set out with zeal to realize his plan to found a mission house based on the Rule and tradition of St. Benedict. In 1884, at Reichenbach in the Upper Palatinate, he started work, and in the winter of 1886/1887, at Emming in Upper Bavaria, they came upon the site for his monastery: St. Ottilien. Today the Missionary Benedictine Congregation of St. Ottilien consists of over one thousand Benedictine monks around the world. Our monastery near Schuyler is a Simple Priory, belonging to the Benedictine Abbey of Muensterschwarzach / Germany.
For more information about the Benedictines, visit www.osb.org.
For more information about Missionary Benedictines, visit www.inkamana.org/ohio/history.htm.