Rules of life such as Benedict's represented a noble aspiration, and we know that some early monasteries followed Benedict's rule. But many monasteries were governed by a mixture of traditions, and monks were not always clearly distinguished from canons (priests who lived in community and sang the office in choir, but were not under a rule of life like monks). Certainly, the idea of all who followed the rule of Saint Benedict having a collective identity as ‘Benedictines’ did not exist before the tenth century.
Odo of Cluny
The man who changed this was Odo of Cluny (ca. 878–942) who, in 927, became abbot of the great French abbey of Cluny and immediately embarked on a far-reaching programme of reform. Odo enforced the wearing of the monastic habit, required monks to stay within the monastery unless they had a special dispensation to leave, and insisted on obedience to the Rule of Saint Benedict.
The monks’ first duty was the : the round of liturgical offices that monks sang in choir – rather than pastoral care of
