Chapter 42
FORTY-SECOND CHAPTER
No one should speak after Compline The monks should endeavor to observe silence at all times, but above all at night;1 in a word, at all times, whether it be a fast day or a day with two meals. If it be a day with a second meal, as soon as the brethren have risen from the supper table, let them all sit down together and one of them read from the "Conferences,"2 from the "Lives of the Fathers,"3 or from something else calculated to edify the listeners. Not, however, from the (first) seven books of the Bible or from Kings, for it would not be salutary for (certain) weak dispositions to listen to these parts of Scripture at that hour; but they should be read at other times. 4
As we have said, however, if it be a day of fast, after a short interval following Vespers, let them proceed to the reading of the "Conferences." Of these four or five pages should be read, or as many as fhe time will permit. While this reading lasts, all should (gradually,) assemble in one place in case one or the other has been busy at some assigned task.
But once all the brethren have come together, let them chant 1 In case the abbot should make an objectively bad regulation, the monks may have actual grounds for murmuring, but never any real justification (cf. chap, xxxiv, comment 2). (And yet St. Benedict here uses the words, absque justa murmuratione. The translator)
5 For reasons of economy and discipline, but actually also to safeguard the still ness of the night and the private slumbers of the monks (cf. chap, xlvii). t Cf. chap vi.—St. Benedict took particular care to guard the mystery of the night hours. In the pious thinking of the monastic fathers, the night was symbolic of sin, of death, and of demonic machinations. But the night was also a time of great revelations, both in the Old and New Testaments, as witness the events that took place on Christmas eve and in the night of the Resurection. In the night, also, the early Christians awaited the second coming of the Lord. The monks sancti fied the night with the longest of their periods of prayer, namely the night-watches, the Vigilia, which constituted the crowning feature of their daily stint of service and prayer.
2 Abbot John Cassian of Marseilles (f c. 430).
3 An extensive collection of brief biographies of holy men, which embraced ten books. Books five to seven were called Verba Seniorum (German — VaterSpruche; English — Maxims of the Fathers). In their present form, they origin ated in the sixth century but were patterned after much older versions.
4 These books contain anecdotes that describe rather minutely certain human vices. (It must not be forgotten that St. Benedict's cloister housed many a pious but rude and unlettered soul.)