The Institutes 0.1–1.11

The history of the Old Testament relates that the most wise Solomon, after he had received from God wisdom and very great prudence and breadth of heart like the countless sand of the sea — so that by the Lord's testimony it is said that none like him had arisen in times past nor would rise after him — when he wished to build that magnificent temple to the Lord, asked for the help of a foreign king, the king of Tyre. When Hiram, the son of a widow, was sent to him, whatever splendid work he undertook in the temple of the Lord or in the sacred vessels at the prompting of divine wisdom he accomplished by Hiram's service and arrangement.

If, then, that sovereignty higher than all the kingdoms of the earth, that noblest and most excellent offspring of the race of Israel, and that wisdom inspired by God, which surpassed the learning and institutions of all the peoples of the East and of the Egyptians, by no means disdained the counsel of a poor foreign man, you too, most blessed father Castor, rightly taught by these examples, are planning to build a true and rational temple to God, not of senseless stones but of a congregation of holy men, not temporal and corruptible but eternal and impregnable; and you wish to consecrate to the Lord most precious vessels, not cast from the dumb metal of gold or silver, which a Babylonian king might afterwards capture and assign to the pleasure of his concubines and princes, but holy souls, which, shining with the integrity of innocence, justice, and chastity, carry within themselves Christ the King dwelling in them. And so you deign to summon me, needy and poor in every respect, to share in so great a work.

For you wish to establish in your province the institutions of the coenobia of the East, and especially of the Egyptians. Although you yourself are perfect in all virtues and knowledge, and so filled with all spiritual riches that not only your words but your life alone is sufficient and more than sufficient as an example to those who seek perfection, you nevertheless ask and command me too, tongue-tied and poor in speech and knowledge, to contribute something from the poverty of my understanding to the fulfilment of your desire: to set out, though in an unskilled style, the institutions of the monasteries which we saw observed throughout Egypt and Palestine, as they were handed down to us there by the fathers. You are not looking for charm of style, in which you yourself are exceptionally learned, but wish the simple life of the saints to be explained in simple language to the brothers in your new monastery.

The more the holy ardour of your desire urges me to obey this, the more a great surge of difficulties deters me, though I wish to comply. First, because the merits of my life are not such that I can trust myself to grasp worthily in heart and mind matters so arduous, so obscure, so holy. Second, because what we attempted to do, or learned, or saw with our own eyes from our boyhood, when we lived among these men and were spurred on by their daily exhortations and examples, we can by no means now retain entire, having been separated for the course of so many years from their company and from imitating their way of life; especially since the principle of these things can by no means be handed on, understood, or kept in memory by idle meditation and verbal teaching.

For the whole of it consists in experience and practice alone; and just as these things cannot be handed on except by one who has experienced them, so they cannot even be grasped or understood except by one who has laboured to lay hold of them with equal zeal and sweat. And unless they are frequently examined and polished by constant conference with spiritual men, they quickly slip away again through carelessness of mind. Third, because even what we can remember in some fashion — not as the subject deserves, but as present circumstances allow — our rather unskilled speech cannot fittingly explain. Besides this, men distinguished in life and eminent in speech and knowledge have already laboured over many works on this subject: I mean Saint Basil and Jerome, and some others. The former of these, when the brothers questioned him about various institutions and questions, answered in an abundant discourse that was not only eloquent but also rich in testimonies from the divine Scriptures; the other not only published books worked out by his own talent, but also translated into Latin works composed in the Greek language.

After such overflowing rivers of their eloquence I might not undeservedly be charged with presumption if I tried to add this trickle of mine, were I not encouraged by trust in your holiness and by your promise that these trifles, such as they are, would be acceptable to you, or that you would assign them only to the community of brothers living in your new monastery. If anything perhaps has been set forth by us less carefully, let them read it again with piety and bear with it with more indulgent pardon, looking for the faithfulness of my account rather than for elegance of style.

Therefore, most blessed father, unique pattern of religion and humility, encouraged by your prayers I shall undertake the work you enjoin, according to the powers of my ability, and I shall make known, as to an untrained monastery and to men who thirst for the truth, those things which have been left entirely untouched by our predecessors, since they attempted to describe what they had heard rather than what they had experienced. Nor shall I try to weave together an account of God's wonders and signs. Although we have not only heard of many and incredible things from our elders but have also seen them accomplished before our very eyes, I shall pass over all these, since they contribute nothing more to readers than astonishment, nothing to instruction in the perfect life. I shall strive only to explain faithfully, as far as I can with the Lord's help, their institutions and the rules of the monasteries, and especially the origins, causes, and cures of the principal vices, which they reckon to be eight, according to their traditions.

For my purpose is to discuss a few things, not about the wonders of God, but about the correction of our morals and the consummation of the perfect life, according to what we have received from our elders. In this too I shall try to satisfy your instructions: if I find in these regions anything not founded on the pattern of the elders by very ancient ordinance, but reduced or added at the discretion of each person founding a monastery, I shall faithfully add or cut away according to the rule of the monasteries which we saw founded of old throughout Egypt and Palestine. For I by no means believe that a new foundation in the western parts of Gaul could have found anything more reasonable or more perfect than those institutions in which the monasteries founded by holy and spiritual fathers from the beginning of the apostolic preaching have lasted down to our own day.

I shall certainly venture to include in this little work one moderation: where I find that things in the rule of the Egyptians are impossible, or hard, or arduous in these regions, whether because of the severity of the climate or because of the difficulty and difference of customs, I shall temper them somewhat by the institutions of the monasteries found in Palestine or Mesopotamia; for if a reasonable measure of what is possible is kept, the perfection of observance is the same even where the ability is unequal.

Since we are going to speak of the institutions and rules of the monasteries, where could we more fittingly begin, by God's gift, than with the very dress of the monks? We shall then be able to set out their inner adornment in due order once we have pictured their outward appearance before the eyes. A monk, then, as a soldier of Christ always ready for battle, must always go about with his loins girded. For the authority of the divine Scriptures shows that those who laid the foundations of this profession in the Old Testament, namely Elijah and Elisha, went about in this dress; and we know that afterwards the leaders and founders of the New Testament, John, Peter, and Paul, and the other men of the same order, walked in this way. The first of them, who already in the Old Testament foreshadowed the flowers of virginity and the examples of chastity and continence, was sent by the Lord to rebuke the messengers of Ahaziah, the sacrilegious king of Israel, because, hindered by illness, he had resolved to consult Beelzebub, the god of Ekron, about his recovery; and when the prophet met them and denied the king a descent from the bed on which he had fallen, the king as he lay there recognized him from the description of his clothing. For when the messengers had returned and reported the prophet's sentence, he asked what was the appearance and dress of the man who had met them and spoken such words. "A hairy man," they said, "with a girdle of skin about his loins." From this dress the king at once recognized the man of God and said, "It is Elijah the Tishbite": he recognized the man of God without doubt by the sign of the girdle and by the appearance of his rough and unkempt body, because, living among so many thousands of the people of Israel, this manner of dress clung to him always as a kind of special mark impressed on him. Of John too, who stood as a most sacred boundary, the end of the Old Testament and the beginning of the New, we learn as the evangelist relates: "And John himself had a garment of camel's hair and a girdle of skin about his loins." When Peter had been thrust into prison by Herod and was to be brought out to death the next day, the angel standing by commanded him: "Gird yourself and put on your sandals." The angel of God would never have told him to do this had he not seen that Peter, to refresh his weary limbs with a night's rest, had for a little while loosened them from the usual binding of the girdle. And when Paul was going up to Jerusalem and was soon to be put in chains by the Jews, the prophet Agabus met him at Caesarea, took his girdle, bound his own hands and feet with it, to foreshadow by this bodily gesture the injuries of his sufferings, and said: "Thus says the Holy Spirit: So will the Jews bind in Jerusalem the man whose girdle this is, and deliver him into the hands of the Gentiles." This could certainly not have been said by the prophet, "the man whose girdle this is," unless Paul had been accustomed to wear it constantly about his loins.

Let a monk's clothing also be such as only covers the body, keeps off the shame of nakedness, and wards off the harm of cold, not such as nourishes the seeds of vanity or pride, as the same apostle teaches: "Having food and covering, let us be content with these." He says "covering," not "clothing" as some Latin copies inaccurately have it: that is, what only covers the body, not what flatters by the glory of dress. Let it be so plain that it is not distinguished among the other men of this profession by any novelty of colour or style; so far from studied elegance that it is not, on the other hand, discoloured by affected dirt through neglect; in short, so separated from the finery of this world that it remains in every respect common to the dress of the servants of God. For whatever is presumed among the servants of God by one or a few, and is not held universally by the whole body of the brotherhood, must be judged either superfluous or proud, and therefore harmful, displaying a sign of vanity rather than of virtue. Therefore it will be right for us too to cut away as superfluous and useless those things which we do not see handed down as examples either by the ancient saints who laid the foundations of this profession or by the fathers of our own time who by succession keep their institutions to this day. So they entirely avoided a garment of haircloth, as conspicuous and noticeable to everyone, and for that very reason not only unable to bring any benefit to the spirit, but even apt to breed the vanity of pride, and also unsuitable and unfit for the practice of necessary work, in which a monk ought always to go about active and unencumbered. And if we have heard that some who wore this dress were men of good repute, the rule of the monasteries is not to be established on that account, nor are the ancient decrees of the holy fathers to be overthrown, because a few, relying on the privilege of their other virtues, are thought not to deserve blame even in those things which they have taken up contrary to the universal rule. For the opinion of a few ought not to be set above or to prejudge the general ordinance of all. We ought to give unquestioning faith and unhesitating obedience in all things to those institutions and rules which, not the will of a few, but the antiquity of so many ages and the countless number of holy fathers have handed down to posterity by unanimous decision. Nor, certainly, should it weigh with us as an example for daily life that Joram, the sacrilegious king of Israel, when surrounded by hosts of enemies, is said to have been found wearing sackcloth underneath when he tore his garment, or that the Ninevites, to soften God's sentence pronounced against them by the prophet, were covered with rough sackcloth. For he is shown to have worn it secretly underneath, so that no one at all could have known of it had his outer garment not been torn; and they wore the covering of sackcloth at a time when all were mourning over the imminent destruction of the city and all were clothed in the same dress, so that no one could be charged by anyone with ostentation. For unless difference is unusual, uniformity gives no offence.

There are, besides, certain things in the dress of the Egyptians that are suited not so much to the care of the body as to the shaping of character, so that the observance of simplicity and innocence may be kept even in the kind of clothing. For day and night they constantly wear very small hoods, reaching down only to the base of the neck and the shoulders and covering only the head, so that by the very imitation of this covering they may be continually reminded to keep the innocence and simplicity of little children. Having returned to childhood for Christ, they sing at all hours with feeling and power: "Lord, my heart is not exalted, nor are my eyes lifted up; nor have I walked in great things, nor in wonders above me. If I was not humbly minded, but exalted my soul, as a weaned child upon its mother."

They are also dressed in linen colobia, which barely reach to the elbows, and they go about with their arms otherwise bare, so that the cutting off of the sleeves may suggest that they have cut off the deeds and works of this world, and the garment of linen may teach that they are dead to all earthly conduct; and through it they may hear the apostle saying to them every day: "Put to death your members which are upon the earth," the very dress also declaring: "For you are dead, and your life is hidden with Christ in God," and: "I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me," and "the world is crucified to me, and I to the world."

They also wear double cords woven of woollen thread, which the Greeks call analaboi, and which we may call girdles or bands, or more properly arm-braces. These come down over the top of the neck, divide at the sides of the neck, go round the folds of both armpits, and gird them on either side, so that by drawing in the width of the garment they bring it close and fasten it to the body; and so, with their arms bound up, they are made active and unencumbered for every work, striving with all their strength to fulfil the apostle's precept: "For these hands have ministered not only to me but also to those who are with me"; "nor did we eat anyone's bread for nothing, but with labour and toil, working night and day, so as not to burden any of you"; and: "If anyone will not work, neither let him eat."

Next they cover their neck and shoulders with a narrow cape, aiming at humility of dress as well as cheapness and economy; this is called a mafors both in our language and in theirs. And so they avoid both the cost and the display of cloaks and capes.

The last item of their dress is a goatskin, which is called a melota or pera, and a staff. They wear these in imitation of those who foreshadowed the lines of this profession already in the Old Testament, of whom the apostle says: "They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, needy, distressed, afflicted, of whom the world was not worthy, wandering in deserts and mountains and caves and holes of the earth." This dress of goatskin signifies that, all the wantonness of carnal passions having been put to death, they ought to stand firm in the utmost seriousness of virtue, and that nothing wanton or hot of youth and of their former fickleness should remain in their body.

That these same men carried a staff is also shown by Elisha, who was one of them, when he says to his servant Gehazi, sending him to raise the woman's son: "Take my staff and go running; put it on the boy's face, and he will live." The prophet would certainly not have given it to him to carry if he had not been accustomed always to carry it in his own hand. Spiritually, carrying it warns them never to go unarmed among so many barking dogs of the vices and invisible beasts of spiritual wickedness — from which blessed David, asking to be delivered, says: "Do not deliver to the beasts, O Lord, the soul that confesses you" — but to beat them back when they rush on them with the sign of the cross and drive them far away, and to extinguish them when they rage against them by the constant remembrance of the Lord's passion and by imitation of his mortification.

Shoes, however, they refuse, as forbidden by the gospel precept; but when bodily weakness, or the cold of a winter morning, or the burning heat of noon requires it, they protect their feet only with sandals. They interpret the use of these, and the Lord's permission, as meaning that, if while we remain in this world we cannot be entirely stripped of the care and concern of this flesh, nor wholly freed from it, we should at least meet the needs of the body with slight attention and little entanglement; and that we should not allow the feet of our soul — which ought always to be ready and unencumbered for the spiritual race and for preaching the gospel of peace, with which we run after the fragrance of Christ's ointments, and of which David says, "I ran in thirst," and Jeremiah, "But I have not laboured in following you" — to be entangled in the deadly cares of this world, thinking about things that serve, not to supply the needs of nature, but superfluous and harmful pleasure. We shall fulfil this if, according to the apostle, we make no provision for the flesh in its desires. Yet although they use these sandals lawfully, as allowed by the Lord's command, they by no means allow them to stay on their feet when they approach to celebrate or receive the most holy mysteries, thinking that what was said to Moses and to Joshua son of Nun ought to be kept even according to the letter: "Loose the strap of your shoe, for the place on which you stand is holy ground."

Let this be said so that we may not seem to have left out anything about the dress of the Egyptians. But we should keep only those things which the situation of the place or the custom of the province allows. For the severity of the winter does not allow us to be content with sandals or colobia or a single tunic, and the covering of a very small hood or the wearing of a goatskin would bring ridicule rather than any edification to those who saw it. Therefore we think that we too should adopt only those things we mentioned above that suit both the humility of our profession and the nature of the climate, so that the whole of our clothing may consist, not in a novelty of dress that might give offence to the people of this world, but in decent plainness.

So the soldier of Christ, clothed in these garments, should know first that he is fortified by the binding of the girdle so that he may go about always ready, not only in mind but also in his very dress, for all the uses and works of the monastery. For he will be proved the more fervent in spiritual progress and in the knowledge of divine things through purity of heart, the more devoted he has been to the pursuit of obedience and work. Second, he should know that in the very wearing of the girdle there is no small mystery that is required of him. For the girding of the loins and the encircling with a dead skin signify that he bears about the mortification of those members in which the seeds of lust and wantonness are contained, understanding that the gospel command, "Let your loins be girded," is always pressed on him by the apostle's interpretation: "Put to death your members which are upon the earth: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desire." And so we read in the holy Scriptures that only those were girded with a girdle in whom the seeds of intercourse are found to be extinguished, and who sing in deed and in power that saying of blessed David: "For I have become like a wineskin in the frost," because, the flesh of the vices having been scraped away to the marrow, they stretch the dead skin of the outer man by the power of the spirit. And therefore he significantly added "in the frost," because they were by no means content with mortification of the heart alone, but also had the movements of the outer man and the incitements of nature itself frozen by the frost of continence applied from without, no longer allowing, according to the apostle, any reign of sin in their mortal body, nor carrying a flesh that fights against the spirit.