Chapter 39
reading or about anything else, lest an occasion be given (for talk), unless perhaps, the superior should wish to say something briefly for their edification.
Let the brother who discharges the weekly duty of reading receive a mixture of wine before he begins to read, both on ac count of the Holy Communion1 and that he may not find it hard to endure the fast.
Nor, as a general rule, should the brethren read or sing in their turn, but only such as are able to edify their listeners.
THIRTY-NINTH CHAPTER
The Measure Food We believe that for daily sustenance, whether it be taken at the sixth or at the ninth hour, consideration, of course, being had for the weaker brethren, two cooked dishes should be suf ficient for everyone at each meal, so that one who cannot per haps partake of one dish will be able to satisfy his hunger with the other. Let two cooked dishes, therefore suffice for all the brethren. And if it be possible to procure fruit or fresh vege tables, a third (cooked) dish may be added.
A generous pound of bread should be adequate for each day, whether there be only one meal or a meal both at midday and in the evening.2 In case there should be also a refection in the evening, let the cellarer withhold a third part of the pound for the second meal.
But if the manual labor happens to be more strenuous than usual, let it be at the discretion and free disposition of the abbot, should he think it expedient, to allow a little more, so long as all surfeiting is avoided and that the monks never become victims of indigestion;* for, as the Lord intimated, there is nothing so ill becoming a Christian as gluttony. "Take heed to yourselves,
1 On Sundays and feast days, the meal followed immediately after the celebration of the Eucharistic Sacrifice. The mixture of wine and water (German — Mischwein) served as a stimulant after the Eucharistic fast, also as an offset to any possible irreverence towards the Eucharistic species.
2 We no longer have any idea today of how many grams, or ounces avoirdupois
lest your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting" (Luke xxi, 34).5
Let not the same measure, however, be served to boys of tender years but a smaller amount than to their elders, frugality serving as a norm in everything. With the exception of the sick, let everyone abstain completely from the flesh of four-footed animals.2
Excursus.
The Meals.—St. Benedict's food allowance appears rather middle class, even sumptuous, alongside the austere regimen of the desert fathers. Abbot Sisoes was often unable to remember whether he had eaten or not. Abbot Poir ate while walking to and fro; eating was a thing of minor importance, at which one did not sit down. "Who is so strong as the lion?" he asked. "And yet for his belly's sake he ties himself up in a knot, and all his strength is brought low."
The ascetic wanted to achieve the very extreme in abstinence. Many monks, anchorites in particular, ate only bread and salt. "So dedicated were their lives to the work of the Lord," that is, to the practices of asceticism, that they did all these things voluntarily, without having been directed or advised to do so.
Flesh meat was by all means avoided. Indeed, many a monk was completely unacquainted with the taste of it. Archbishop Theophilus of Alexandria
(f 412) once invited a number of monks to his table. He set before them a plate of veal. They ate of it, because they thought it was a kind of garden pro duce. The most austere hermits dispensed also with the use of oil. A certain
St. Benedict's pound contained. In the days of Imperial Rome, the pound (libra) contained somewhat more than 300 grams, or from 10 to 12 ounces avoirdupois.
From his use of the word propensa (weighing more, or generous), we may gather that he had in mind a larger weight, say a kilogram, that is somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 ounces, customary among the country folk.
* (I have here used the word "indigestion" as being more precise than the word "surfeiting." Indigenes is clearly the negative of digeries, which on the authority of Freund, means first of all "digestion," and as such is used by Pliny and Quint ilian and occurs often in the Code of Theodosius II (t 450). Of course, indi gestion is frequently, if not always, a consequence of surfeiting. When St. Bene dict definitely meant surfeiting, he ordinarily used the word crapula. In classical
Latin this latter word was used to describe drunkenness or overindulgence in wine.
In the time of St. Benedict, however, it came to be used for surfeiting in general
(cf. A. Souter's "Glossary of Later Latin, to 600 A.D., Oxford University Press,
1949). The Rule (chap, xl) used the words satietas and ebrietas, meaning overindulgence in wine or drunkenness. The translator).
* The first of the eight chief vices was gluttony, to which Abbot Cassian devoted the sixth book of his Institutes. The 14th rung of the so-called "Ladder of Para dise" dealt with this love of eating. All vices followed in its wake. At his pro fession the monk renounces the "world" and everything earthly altogether, but in the vice of gluttony his goes back to it again.
2 The flesh of feathered animals (bipeds) and fish was therefore permitted, But abstinence from the flesh of four-footed animals was a most ancient monastic practice (cf. chap, xl, comment #2).