Iberian Fathers, Volume 2

General Rule for Monasteries

GENERAL RULE FOR MONASTERIES (Regula Monastica Communis) CONTENTS Chapter Page That none shall presume to create monasteries of their own accord, unless they have consulted the congregation in common and the bishop has given confirmation in accordance with the Canons >and the Rule ................................... 177 2 That secular priests shall not construct monasteries through the countryside without the permission of a bishop who lives by the Rule or a council of the holy fathers .......................... 180 3 What sort of man should be elected abbot in a monastery .................................. 181 4 What kind of monks are to be received in the monastery .................................. 182 5 To what extent monks should be subject to their abbot ...................................... 184 6 How men ought to live with their wives and chilciren without danger in a monastery .......... 185 7 How the ill are to be treated in the monastery 187 8 How the old men should be governed in the monastery 187 176 GENERAL RULE FOR MONASTERIES 177 Chapter Page 9 How the monks in charge of the monastery's livestock should live ............................ 189 10 What abbots must observe .... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 190 II What priors must observe in the monastery 12 What deans (senior monks) should observe 13 On what days the brothers are to assemble in the 193 194 chapter ..................................... 195 14 How abbots should take care of the excommunicated 197 15 How the monasteries of men and women should be ruled ................................... 198 16 What brothers should live with the sisters in one monastery .................................. ·200 17 What should be the customary greeting in the men's and women's monasteries .................... 200 18 That only those may be received in a monastery who have completely disposed of their possessions 202 19 How those who have committed serious crimes in the world should conduct themselves in a monastery ...................................... 203 20 What must be done with monks who wrongly run away from their own monastery .............. 205 Chapter 1 Some are accustomed for fear of Gehenna to found monasteries within their own homes, and to join in common under the terms of an oath with their wives and children and 178 FRUCTUOSUS OF BRAGA slaves and neighbors, and, as we have said, to consecrate for themselves churches on their own estates, name these after the martyrs, and falsely to call such establishments monasteries . We consider these not monasteries, but the perdition of souls and the subversion of the Church. From such have arisen heresy and schism and great controversy throughout the monasteries. Heresy [Greek "choice"] is so named because each one chooses what he prefers to do; his choice he considers sacred and he defends it with lying words. When you find any such, you should consider them hypocrites and heretics rather than monks. We hope and most earnestly beseech your holy reverence that you will not hold converse with such, nor imitate them. Because they live by their own rules, they want to be subject to none of the elders and they donate none of their own possessions to the poor. On the contrary, they try to seize from others so that, with their wives and children, they may make greater profit than when they were in the world. In so doing, they show no concern for the perdition of their souls, so that they reap the advantages, not of their souls, but of their bodies, and that even more so than men of the world. They grieve for their precious possessions like wolves, and from day to day they sorrow over wrongs unavenged. Scandalously they pant with passion for gain and care not for future punishment, being too keenly preoccupied with feeding their wives and children. In the heat of grievous quarrels and disagreements they break off with those neighbors to whom they had previously been bound by oaths, and they attempt to seize from each other the property that previously they had pooled and managed in fictitious charity. If they detect any weakness in some of the community, they seek the aid of the relatives they left in the world, with their swords and clubs and threats, and at the very beginning of their life in religion plot to upset everything around them. Since they are vulgar and ignorant, they want their abbot to be the same, so that wherever they desire to tum, they may GENERAL RULE FOR MONASTERIES 179 perform all their own wishes with his blessing, and may say anything they want to say, and may...