Harley, this is a good example of why someone cannot simply take a text from Catholic history (or for that matter from 16th-century Protestant history) and assume that he knows how to interpret it. I have spent 30 years studying monastic history.
You consider this cycle of prayer onerous. Yet Benedict begins his Rule by stating that his guiding principle is "nothing harsh, nothing burdensome." Compared to previous monastic regimens, Benedict's was moderate.
Benedictine monks would have spent perhaps 5 or 6 hours a day praying, mostly together, depending on the day of the year, perhaps three hours working manually, an hour or two in meditation (the line between meditation and private prayer is fluid). At the height of the Cluniac reform in the 900s and 1000s, they might have spent 8 or more hours in prayer and less in manual labor. Prayer was to be their life. For that they had given up other responsibliities. They simply tried to live out Paul's admonition to pray without ceasing and Jesus' admonition to be vigilant for his coming. Is there anything wrong with that?
They lived this life in a world where a peasant spent up to 16 hours a day at hard manual labor in the fields during the summer, scratching out bare subsistence. Monks fasted a lot but they at least could be fairly well assured of the meals their rule permitted. They were very vulnerable to Muslim and Viking raiders, yes, so their fairly settled and even affluent way of life compared to peasants could be upset at any moment, but that was true for the peasants as well. Monks lived a much harder life than nobles, yes, but even the luxuries of nobles would be considered a hardscrabble life by the poorest Americans today.
Why do you simply assume that monks lived a burdensome, horrible life? Have you ever plotted out what the schedule or prayers you excerpted adds up to? Have you ever tried to follow the regular cycle of seven hours of prayer each day? You Protestants claim that we Catholics don't read our Bibles, don't take our faith seriously enough yet you decry the onerousness of our consecrated men and women.
As to the punishments for making mistakes in choir--the point was that the monk was not just supposed to go through the motions. He was expected to have memorized the Psalms and to put his mind and body (chanting takes energy--far more than you might realize if you've never tried it for three hours in an unheated church) into it. This was his life, he was expected to live up to the vow he took, and there were consequences if he did not. But that was true of all of medieval and traditional society: external rules and punishments were part of the way people assumed one learned, trained oneself.
The only people who still live that way today are athletes and soldiers. No pain, no gain. They recognize that an external regimen, or rule, is essential if one is to make real progress in training. Their goal is important enough to make the suffering during training worth it. Monks believed that we are all on a pathway that can lead to heaven or hell. They chose to give up a lot of things in order to train rigorously for heaven. The Rule was their training regimen set forth in advance; the abbot who enforced the Rule was their personal trainer or drill sergeant. Olympic-level athletes know that they can't train on their own--they cannot by sheer self-discipline hold themselves to a schedule that will get them to their goal. They voluntarily choose to surrender to the authority of a trainer and, having done so, obey him because if they start second-guessing him, they'll never get where they want to go.
"Forced to endure"--they chose to submit themselves to the Rule of Benedict and their life seems onerous only if one knows nothing about monastic life or the life of a medieval peasant.
I do not assume monks lived a burdensome, horrible life. If someone today wanted to spend 8 hours of their day in freverent prayer I would not say that was either burdensome or horrible. I'd say have at it.
OTOH, if someone today told me that
2) they needed to spend 8 hours of their day in freverent prayer so they could draw closer to God,
In one of the articles the author states that he believes Luther was the first post-modernalist because of this change of thinking. I would agree to some extent except that Luther simply went back to simplier times when you didn't have to work out your forgiveness for sin or your holiness before God. In either case this is the reason our Lord Jesus came.