Chapter 60
V together with their son and his offering.1
SIXTIETH CHAPTER
Priests who wish to reside in the Cloister Should a member of the priesthood beg to be admitted to the Cloister, let his wish not be granted too readily.1 If he should nevertheless persist in his request, let him know that he must
(also) observe the entire discipline of the Rule. Nor let any dis pensation be granted him, so that it may always be true as it was written: "Friend, whereto art thou come" (Matt, xxvi, 50)?2
However, let the following privileges be granted him: that he may hold the rank next to the abbot, that he may intone the prayers of the blessing, and that he inay conduct the concluding prayers, but only if the abbot calls upon him to do so. But let him not presume to do anything else, knowing that he, too, is subject to the discipline of the Rule; let him all the more be an example of humility to everyone.
And should it at any time be a question of appointment to an office, or of any other kind of business whatever, let him hold the order of rank that is his by right of his entrance into the cloister, not the one that has come to him out of reverence for the priesthood.3
Should any other member of the clergy (that is, in one of the lower orders) have the same desire to affiliate himself with the community, let him be assigned to a middle rank; but only after he has also made a promise of lasting stability and professed his willingness to observe the Rule.4
1 The parents of children in that era, in offering what they considered most precious to them, evidently did so in the conviction that by their action they were making sure that the future happiness of their offspring, both here and hereafter, would be adequately provided for. Psychologically speaking, only on this basis can that oblation (the offering of children in the cloister by their parents) be rightly in terpreted. It also reveals the strong Christian faith and fervent religious life of the laity at that time, such as are seldom met with in our days (Abbot Herwegen).
Add to that the unlimited authority of the Pater familias, which was still universally acknowledged in non-Grecian antiquity.
1 Cf. chapter lxii.
2 This was the question which Jesus put to the traitor Judas in the Garden of Olives. The indispensable sincerity of the motives that induced a candidate to