CHAPTER 64
The Rule, Chapter 64 119 are worthy of being advanced, you will be. The abbot, for "some overriding consideration," will make a promotion. That will happen in your case too.
CHAPTER 64
The Election of an Abbot Chapter 2 of the Rule is concerned with "The Qualities of an Abbot." In chapter 64, St. Benedict again refers to certain qualities an abbot should possess. But this latter chapter is addressed also to the monks who elect an abbot.
In choosing an abbot, the guiding principle should always be that the man placed in office be the one selected either by the whole community acting unanimously in the fear of God, or by some part of the community, no matter how small, which possesses sounder judgment. Goodness of life and wisdom in teaching must be the criteria for choosing the one to be made abbot, even if he is the last in community rank.
St. Benedict further says, "May God forbid that a whole community should conspire to elect a man who goes along with its own evil ways." He had been the head of the community at Vicovaro, which had wanted an abbot like that. "Their abbot had recently died, and they wanted the man of God to be their new superior. For some time he tried to discourage them by refusing their request, warning them that his way of life would never harmonize with theirs. But they kept insisting until in the end he gave his consent." The monks of Vicovaro regretted having asked St. Benedict to be their abbot. After they had tried poisoning him, he told them that he'd had enough of their wicked ways. "Did I not tell you at the outset that my way of life would never harmonize with yours?"
120 The Rule, Chapter 64 When a community attempts to elect an abbot who lacks "goodness of life and wisdom in teaching/' St. Benedict says,
'If the bishop of the diocese or the abbots or Christians in the area come to know of these evil ways to any extent, they must block the success of this wicked conspiracy, and set a worthy steward in charge of God's house." It would be sinful of them,
St. Benedict says, not to prevent the wrong kind of man from ruling.
In the later Middle Ages, it became common for the secular ruler or a bishop to appoint an abbot. And in some instances, an abbot named his own successor. All of this was contrary to the Rule of St. Benedict, which emphatically states an abbot must be elected by the monks of the monastery in which there is an abbatial vacancy. Abbot St. Benedict Biscop, on his deathbed in 689, pleaded with his monks to keep the monastery out of his brother's hands. Within Anglo-Saxon law, inheritance might be claimed for a monastery ruled by one's relative. Benedict Biscop said:
I tell you in all sincerity that as a choice of evils I would far rather have this whole place where I have built the monastery revert forever, should God so decide, to the wilderness it once was, rather than have my brother in the flesh, who has not entered upon the way of truth, succeed me as abbot.
Take the greatest care, brothers, never to appoint a man as father over you because of his birth; and always appoint from among yourselves, never from outside the monastery. According to the rule of the great St. Benedict, our founder, and according to the decretals of privileges of this house, you are to meet as a body and take common counsel to discover who has proved himself fittest and most worthy by the probity of his life and the wisdom of his teaching to carry out the duties of this office. You must choose as abbot him whom after kindly scrutiny you all acknowledged to be the best. Then you are to summon the bishop and ask him to confirm the candidate in office with the customary blessing.1