A Subiaco Saturday

Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Looking at his hooded black robe-the daily dress of a Benedictine monk-I knew immediately that this was my tour guide.

“Father Hugh?” I asked early that Saturday afternoon as I entered the Coury House at Subiaco Abbey.

“You must be Mr. Nelson,” Father Hugh Assenmacher said quietly.

Since 1963, the Coury House has served as the abbey’s retreat center. A modern conference center was added later. With 36 overnight rooms, the facility stays busy as people come to this rural setting in Logan County to pray, reflect and learn.

Father Hugh has seen a lot of people come and go at Subiaco since he entered school as a ninth-grade student in the fall of 1947. He was born Gerald Anthony Assenmacher in Billings, Mo. He graduated from high school in 1951, took one year of college courses at Subiaco, entered the abbey as a novice in the fall of 1952 and said his vows in September 1953, receiving the name Hugh. Seminary courses were conducted at Subiaco at the time,and Father Hugh was ordained to the priesthood in May 1958. He taught at Subiaco Academy until the fall of 1960, when he enrolled at St. Louis University to earn a master’s degree in history. When he returned to Subiaco, he taught religion, history, sociology and music. He also served as the abbey’s organist and was, from time to time, the band director and choral master for the academy.

In 1977, the Rose Publishing Co. of Little Rock published Father Hugh’s book, A Placed Called Subiaco: A History of the Benedictine Monks in Arkansas. Father Hugh, who will turn 81 on Feb. 16, now serves as abbey historian and archivist. No one knows more about the history of the Arkansas landmark, which began as St. Benedict’s Colony in 1877.

Subiaco Academy and Subiaco Abbey were founded in 1891 in this area of rolling Arkansas River Valley farmland near the base of Mount Magazine. The railroads were building lines through the area in those years.The railroads focused on attracting German Catholic immigrants due to their reputation for being industrious and thrifty. Farmland was offered at attractive prices, and the towns of Scranton, Subiaco and Ratcliff were established. The railroad through Subiaco ceased operations in 1949, two years after Father Hugh arrived, but the abbey and academy lived on.

It’s quiet on this Saturday as we leave the retreat center and begin our tour of the grounds. Father Hugh explains that the resident students at the academy-which now serves boys from the seventh through the 12th grades-like to spend their Saturdays sleeping and reading in their rooms. There are almost 200 students at the academy, though several dozenof them are area students who don’t live at Subiaco. There are more than 30 international students in residence. Meanwhile, the abbey is the home to more than 40 monks from diverse backgrounds.

In 1877, Abbot Martin Marty of St. Meinrad’s Abbey in southern Indiana heard about the large number of German Catholics settling in western Arkansas and contacted the Little Rock & Fort Smith Railroad to see if he could obtain land. In December of that year, Father Isidor Hobi of St. Meinrad’s found the site of what’s now Subiaco. The first recorded Mass was celebrated in March 1878. By 1879, 150 Catholic families were calling St. Benedict’s Colony home. Additional funds and monks were supplied by the Abbey Maria-Einsiedeln in Switzerland. In the summer of 1891, Pope Leo XIII raised the status of St. Benedict’s Priory to that of an abbey. The name Subiaco Abbey was born for what was now an independent monastery ruled by an abbot.

The first monastery was destroyed by a massive fire in December 1901. The new monastery was built at its present hilltop location. Seminarians have trained at Subiaco since 1891. A high school for boys was added in 1902, meaning that Subiaco was no longer just a seminary. Another fire struck in 1927. With finances tight during the Great Depression, Subiaco did not fully recover until the 1950s. The building destroyed by fire in 1927 was where St. Benedict Church now stands.

We enter the church with Father Hugh. The Saturday Mass won’t begin until 6 p.m. so the church is empty. A soft light comes through the 182 stained-glass windows, which were designed by the Franz Mayer Co. of Germany. The columns of what’s known as the high altar are 18 feet high. A canopy and cross of carved wood are covered with gold leaf. There are 52 tons of marble in the sanctuary. The white marble came from Italy, and the red marble came from Spain. Behind the altar are the pews where the monks gather several times each day.

A typical day for the monks includes morning prayer at 5:45 a.m., Mass at 6:35 a.m., breakfast at 7:15 a.m., noon prayer, lunch immediately following, readings at 5:30 p.m., supper at 6 p.m. and vespers at 7:05 p.m. The Benedictines believe in a life of “prayer, community and work.” In addition to his teaching duties, Father Hugh spent thousands of hours through the decades working on the immaculate grounds-cutting grass, trimming shrubs, raking leaves. He proudly notes that the monks wash their own dishes.

I go into the gift shop at Coury House and buy a bottle of Monk Sauce, the brand name for the pepper sauce the monks bottle and sell commercially. Father Hugh walks me to the parking lot and then turns and heads slowly back to the place he has called home since 1947, a special place known as Subiaco.

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Freelance columnist Rex Nelson is the president of Arkansas’ Independent Colleges and Universities. He’s also the author of the Southern Fried blog at rexnelsonsouthernfried.com.

Editorial, Pages 17 on 02/05/2014