The Holy Rule Of Saint Benedict
THE HOLY RULE OF SAINT BENEDICT
CHAPTER ONE
On the Kinds or the Life of Monks
IT IS CLEAR that there are four kinds of monks. The first kind is the Cenobite, that is, the monastic, who serves under a rule and an Abbot.
The second kind are the Ancorites, or Hermits, that is, those who, no longer in the first fervor of their conversion, but tested by long monastic practice and helped by the experience of many brethren, have already learned to fight against the devil. Going forth from the battle line of the brethren having been well-trained for hand-to-hand combat in the desert, they are now able—by the strength of their own hand and arm and with the assistance of God—to cope without the support of others against the vices of the flesh and evil thoughts.
A third and most vile class of monks is that of Sarabaites, who have been tried by no rule nor the mastery of experience, as gold is tried in the fire (cf. Prov. 27:21), but are as soft as lead. And in their actions they still keep faith with the world, while their tonsure exposes them as liars before God. Living in twos and threes, or even singly, without a shepherd, enclosed, not in the Lord’s sheepfold, but in their own, they make the gratification of their desires their law. What they wish to do, they call holy, but what they dislike, they consider unlawful.
The fourth class of monks are those called Gyrovagues, who spend their whole lives wandering from one province to another, staying three or four days at a time in different monastic cells as guests. Always roving and never stable, they indulge their own passions and the cravings of gluttony, and they are in every way worse than the Sarabaites. It is better to pass all these over in silence than to speak of their most wretched life.
Therefore, passing these over, let us go on with the help of God to set out the guidelines for those most valiant kind of monks, the Cenobites.