The English Black Monks of St. Benedict (Volume 1); A Sketch of Their History from the Coming of St. Augustine to the Present Day (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III THE BENEDICTINE CONSTITUTION There are no such things, properly speaking, as benedictine constitutions in the sense the word is used in other orders. The benedictines do not form one large body with a general at their head; for St . Benedict did not legislate for a world-wide corporation but for a state of life. Such a form of government as obtains, for instance, in the francis- can or dominican orders would be entirely foreign to the spirit of the holy Rule. Each of the modern orders has some special work in view, to which all their life is directed. They have to find their salvation through the various works of charity for which they were formed, or which they have taken up as an integral portion of their work. Not so with the benedictine. He has no external work peculiar to his order. St. Benedict's ideal is that of the common Christian life of the Counsels practised to a higher degree than can be in the world. It is simply the Gospel put into practice. The vows, for instance, of Poverty and Chastity are not explicit as to other orders; for when the Christian life is drawn out to its perfection on the plain, broad Gospel lines, the spirit of poverty must be cultivated and the body kept in subjection. The vows the benedictine makes are three in number: Stability, that is, to remain attached to his monastery and not wander at will; Conversion of life, that is, until death to labour after attaining the perfection of the state to which he is called; and lastly, Obedience to the abbat. The first two vows concern mainly his interior life, the last his external relation to his superiors. Obedience understood, then, by a benedictine does away with the necessity of laying down minute laws and tracing carefully the lines in which a superior and a subject r...