BUTLER, CUTHBERT. - Benedictine abbot, learned historian of monasticism, b. in Dublin on 6 May 1858, d. on 1 April 1933 at Ealing (London). After his humanistic studies at the college attached to the Benedictine monastery of Downside (southern England, 1869-75), he entered the Order (1876) and was ordained a priest in 1884. From 1896 to 1904 he was Superior of the Benedictine house of studies at Cambridge, from 1906 to 1922 abbot of Downside, and from 1911 to 1921 also president of the English Benedictine Congregation. In the face of the almost missionary character that this Congregation had preserved, he favored, ever since he was a young monk, the movement toward a return to the ancient tradition that saw its ideal in a greater intensity of life in the individual abbeys, in liturgical splendor and in studies. Under the impulse of Edmund Bishop he devoted himself to the study of monasticism and to ancient ecclesiastical literature. To this end he also undertook journeys to Italy and Germany.
His principal works are: an edition of the Greek text of Palladius' Historia Lausiaca (2 vols., Cambridge University Press, 1898-1904); S. Benedicti Regula Monasteriorum (Freiburg im Breisgau 1912, 2nd ed. ibid. 1927), with the sources and parallel passages; Benedictine Monachism (London 1919, 2nd ed. ibid. 1924); Western Mysticism (ibid. 1922, 2nd ed. ibid. 1924); The Life and Times of Archbishop Ullathorne, (2 vols., ibid. 1926). He contributed to many journals, especially to The Downside Review, and to various encyclopedias.
Bibliography
Livario Oliger