Chapter 59
and wore the "small habit" and those who were called the "perfect ones," who wore the wide-sleeved garment. The Eastern rituals had a separate ceremony for each, the "large" and the "small." The monks who were still making pro gress on the way to perfection constituted the majority, while the "perfect ones" soon turned to the eremitical way of life.
The Orient combined profession and the official blessing in one impress ive rite. But we know of no real monastic blessing before the time of the Areopagite. The bestowal of the habit upon a new monk by an abbot or mo nastic father was not considered an official consecration by the Church.
St. Augustine says nothing about an official Church blessing of a monk. In view of his prodigious activity with the pen, this silence on the part of the African Father is eloquent. We may also look for it in vain in the works of Cassian. Nor is it mentioned in the monastic ordinances of St. Caesarius. St.
Benedict did not provide for the participation of a priest at the profession of his monks; he rather precludes any thought of it. Nor do we have any con clusive proof or conjecture that his silence presupposes the existence of such a blessing. Could not, perhaps, such an official dedication have been looked upon as an encroachment upon one's personal efforts to arrive at a state of perfect virtue?
Later centuries undoubtedly knew and accepted this idea of monastic con secration by the Church. Nevertheless, one can hardly maintain that it was a universal and unintermittent practice. That, of course, was not much of an obstacle to the supplementing of profession with an official consecration, nor to combining the two in one ceremony. Still, it would hardly be justified, from an historical point of view, to consider the idea of profession secondary to that of its official blessing or even to deduce something of the kind from the Rule itself.
FIFTY-NINTH CHAPTER
Noblemen or the Poor who offer their Sons in the Cloister Should, perhaps, some nobleman wish to make an offering of his son in the monastery, the lad being still rather young, let the parents draw up a written petition similar to the one that we have spoken of above.1 Then they should wrap the document together with the hand of the boy as well as their oblation in the cloth of the altar and thus offer him to God.2
' Cf. reference in chapter lviii.
2 Cf. chapter xxxvii, comment l.~The thought of very young boys living in the monastery as actual monks was a familiar and accepted idea in early monasticism.
The rule of St. Pachomius had already manifested a solicitude for them. The superior had to take their weaknesses into consideration (Foreword). He was not
As to their property, the parents themselves should promise under oath and explicitly in the aforesaid document that they will never, either of themselves or through a third person or in any other manner, give him anything or offer him an occasion for possessing anything; at least if they do not wish to do this but should want on their own part to make an offering of alms to the monastery for their own benefit (that is, for the future good of their souls), let them draw up a deed of gift, specifying therein the things they wish to leave the cloister, reserving the usufruct therefrom if they so desire. Let everything be arranged in this way, in order that no possible occasion remains whereby the boy may be misled, which heaven forbid, and, as we have learned from experience, be brought to eternal ruin.
Let the poor (parents) arrange matters in a similar manner.
Those who have no alms at all to offer should simply draw up their deed of oblation and bring it in the presence of witnesses permitted to laugh or jest with them (chap. clix). and every familiarity with them was strictly forbidden (chap, clxvi). Superiors had to be on the watch lest they gave themselves up to frivolity and idleness (chap, lxxii). Christian antiquity saw nothing strange or odd in the fact that some parents wanted their sons to become monks and made that decision for them. In fact, it considered a profession thus made by the parents binding upon the children. St. Basil, however, took a position in the matter that was unusual at the time. He provided that when these youngsters came to maturity, they were to be free, indeed, they would be.induced before wit nesses, voluntarily of course, to declare whether they wanted to make their monas tic profession or go back to the world (Longer Rules xv, 4). Whereas in St. Bene dict's cloister these boys, or oblates (oblati) as they were called, lived in accordance with the monastic routine along with the other monks; St. Basil provided a special apartment for them, separated from the actual cloister of the monks. It was in this place that they were instructed and trained. They took part in the common prayers of the community, but otherwise they had their own order of the day. (One might compare them in many respects with the "scholastics" in our monasteries. The translator) One of the senior monks was appointed their superior. What St.
Basil had to say about the training of these children has a decidedly modern ring
(loc. cit. xv, 1-4). St. Pachomius fitted these youngsters into the body of the com munity in the same way as did St. Benedict. On a visitation at one of his 'houses,' the Saint sat down "to help in the weaving of mats with the rest of the brethren.
Presently along came a boy, who was one of the weekly servers. Observing the old man at work, he said to him: 'You do not weave the selvedge in that way; you do it poorly. Father Theodore (favorite disciple of Pachomius) weaves it in an other way.' Pachomius thereupon stood up and said to the boy: 'Teach me that pattern, son' " (Second Life lxxix).
According to the Church's regulations governing the constitutions of religious orders and congregations at the present time, novices are not permitted to make vows before the age of twenty-one. Nor do the Church's canons of today recogn ize the binding force or permanency of any religious promises made by minors,