Probably written sometime in the 540s, The Rule of Saint Benedict was decisive for the preservation of Western civilization. Much of the history of western Europe has hinged on finding a way to order society after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. At the time Benedict (c.480-c.550) wrote his Rule, the Western imperial court had just been formally dissolved. Italy came to be ruled by Germanic kings (who were Arian Christians): war all around; urban order collapsing; material culture regressing. Civilization was gasping in the long post-imperial tidal recession. Humanistic learning survived in the monasteries, and those monasteries largely came to be ordered by this Rule, which presents a model of life centered on prayer, dignifying manual labor, involving consultative self-governance, and exemplifying the value of a written constitution and the rule of law.