The profile of the Benedictines in economic and social life was matched by their cultural power. From early times the Black Monks cultivated a commitment to learning not only in the clerical fields of scripture and theology but also in the secular arts which they, together with the courts of Charlemagne and Otto, were responsible for recovering from the ruins of antiquity. In the formative centuries of medieval Christendom it was principally Benedictine scholars that set the pattern not only for the exposition and transmission of Christian doctrine but also for the use of language, the practice of reading (ruminatively, silently) and writing (miniscule, cursive) itself. Their writings on history, literature and the physical sciences determined the development of these disciplines and genres at least until the spread of secular schools and universities in the twelfth century. The culture of the Benedictines, moreover, was not narrowly an intellectual culture. In their precincts the applied arts also flourished; in the absence of a settled urban existence the secure infrastructure of the Black Monks offered to craftsmen both the prospect of patronage and a constantly expanding creative canvas. These practical occupations passed into the monastery itself, and at times, perhaps especially in the early Middle Ages, the Benedictines were widely acclaimed for their skill as miniaturists and metalworkers. The later Middle Ages saw the economic and social position of the monasteries subject to increasing challenges, but there was no corresponding shift in their cultural significance. The size, wealth and accumulated resources of the Black Monks assured their continued presence alongside an increasingly complex cluster of intersecting cultural communities; the largest of them proved not only resilient but also receptive in the face of current trends and remained vigorous enough to play a role in the transmission of the artistic and scholarly Renaissance.

The flowering of Benedictine culture in these diverse forms had not been envisaged in the RB. Benedict's cenobium represented a cultural community in so far as it enshrined the principal mores and values of Roman patrician society. It was also, at least by implication, an educated environment since it was presented as an opportunity for the literate layman who, like the founder himself, had been schooled in the traditions of Latin antiquity. Yet the cultivation of a cultural life, of learning, or, indeed, of art or craftwork, was not the objective of Benedict's brethren.