Chapter 46
go a more severe punishment unless he then and there makes satisfation by humbling himself before all, since he would not: repair through humility what he failed to do correctly through negligence. Boys, however, should be whipped for such trans gressions.1
FORTY-SIXTH CHAPTER
Those who offend in any other Matter Should one be at fault in any way, at any task, whether it is in the kitchen, in the store-room, in the refectory,2 in the bakery, or in the garden, let him go at once before the abbot and com munity, voluntarily offer to do penance for it and proclaim his fault. The same procedure should be followed by one who breaks or spoils anything at all while working at some manual chore or becomes careless at anything somewhere else. If these monks do not come immediately before the brotherhood and the abbot in the prescribed manner, let them undergo a more severe punishmnet should their fault become known through another.3 (The foregoing sentences, which formed a single sentence in the original German, had to be rendered in this way, else the more literal translation would have entailed a rather involved sentence structure. The translator)
If, however, the matter is secret and personal, that is, a sin on the soul, let the monk reveal it to the abbot alone or to (one of) the spiritual fathers, who should know how to heal their own spiritual wounds as well as those of others without making them public or revealing them to anyone.1
' Not for the mistakes they make in chanting, but for neglecting to make the pre scribed voluntary satisfaction. (As in the previous chapter, this punishment could not have been very severe. The translator.)
2 The author here uses the word Anrichte, that is, the side-room or side-board -consequently, the place or room where the weekly servers carried on the specific duties of their service (cf. chap, xxxv.) (Tr.)
3 In St. Benedict's monastery, there was really no secluded place or private apart ment. Thus an apparently minor but known carelessness was an offense against the community as a whole. Both Pachomius (Rule 125 and 131) and Abbot Cassian (Institutes iv, 16) were of the same opinion.