Playing by the Rule: Examining Sports Metaphors in the Rule of Saint Benedict

For more than fifteen centuries, The Rule of Saint Benedict (Latin: Regulae Benedicti) has been a seminal classic within Western spirituality. Religious studies scholars have distilled from its contents a plethora of applicable practical, accessible, and transferable insights, skills, and adjuvants. To date, the ever-expanding field which examines valuable intersections between, sports, spirituality, and religion has seldom, if at all, explored this text. Surprisingly, The Rule of Saint Benedict contains several explicit references to various sporting activities including running, climbing, and training. Also present within its pages are other, yet more implicit, references to various activities which can rightly be associated with the popular cultural phenomena of sports such as manual labor, importance of a dedicated regimen, dietary habits, etc. In this paper, these apparently overlooked sporting references from The Rule of Saint Benedict are interdisciplinarily identified, analyzed, and explained for deeper consideration through lenses at the intersection of sports, spirituality, and religion in the Christian tradition.