De Statu et Ruina Monastici Ordinis

The Mournful Book of Johannes of Trittenheim, abbot of Sponheim, of the Order of Saint Benedict, of the Bursfeld Observance, on the condition and ruin of the monastic order, no less useful than pleasing to religious and devout men.

To the venerable and most beloved father, lord Blasius, abbot of the monastery of Hirsau: brother Johannes, called abbot in Sponheim, sends greeting and charity.

Although your request and that of your brothers, dearest father, far exceeds the powers of my talent, nevertheless I have preferred to undertake the arduous burden rather than fail, as far as I can, to satisfy your charity. For love of God, zeal for the order, and fervor for discipline make you worthy that I should deny you nothing when you ask for the honor of God. You asked me, when I was present, with words; when absent, with frequent letters; and in a certain way you compelled me by the authority of your presidency to write something to you about the calamity of our order, so that you might stir the fathers, to be assembled with you in chapter, to compassion for it.

The request is holy, but the difficulty of obedience is great. I know I shall be torn by the teeth of the envious, who will judge me presumptuous, and [unclear] the things that lie open to the eyes of all. If they do not wish these things to be written, let them grieve that they were even done. In this work only charm of speech is lacking; and for this I do not fear being blamed among religious men. By whom? Is truth therefore despised because it is not clothed in the ornament of eloquence? Far from it. Better is plain and true speech than ornate and false speech. But these matters are nothing to the point. I therefore submit this little work to your examination, so that, if you judge it worthy, it may be read to the brothers; but if unworthy, it may flee the eyes of the lords. Farewell. In the year of the Lord 1493, on the eleventh day before the Kalends of May.

Here begins the mournful book of lord Johannes, abbot of Sponheim, on the ruin of the order of our holy father Benedict.

When I call back to mind the former beauty of our order, I grieve vehemently over the deformity which it now suffers, so that I would rather shed tears than compose a mournful discourse. For who would not weep over its ruin, if he weighs its ancient glory? O, if only we would at some time recall to memory the once golden ages of this most sacred order, when, like a river of paradise in doctrine and holiness, it watered the whole Church throughout the world, we would easily perceive that its present condition is nothing. Indeed our observance, which we call regular, when compared with the institutions of the ancients, is found not only lesser, but in many respects more lax. How the gold has grown dim; how the finest color has changed! The splendor of extraordinary holiness, once gleaming, has been darkened by desire for earthly things; the rule of honor has yielded to the enticements of pleasures. Therefore let my eyes bring forth tears by day and by night, and let them not be silent, because the religion of my people has been crushed with a great crushing, with a very grievous wound. If I go out to the fields, behold the idle and vain; if I enter the monasteries, behold those wasted by pleasures. For I find many professors of the rule of father Benedict; I discern few walking according to his tradition. “You have multiplied the nation,” says the prophet to the Lord, “you have not increased the joy,” because, since the holy exercises of monks fail in many, corrupt hearts do not admit the true joy that is born of virtue. If only we would awaken, even late at last, after the destruction of so many souls, which, despising the yoke of regular observance, have descended into the abyss of damnation. If only we feared the sentence of Benedict our lawgiver, who so often [unclear] God

[unclear]: he strikes at the madness of a harsh abbot. Now therefore my discourse must be directed to you, most reverend fathers: you who, by apostolic authority, celebrate the order; you who receive the power of compelling rebels to discipline; you who have zeal for our order according to knowledge. You, therefore, I address; to you I shall try, according to my powers, to persuade that you come to the aid of an order almost falling; and I most earnestly exhort you to do this.

Consider, fathers, the miserable condition of our religion, and, so far as you are able, come to the aid of its calamity, if indeed you wish to endure to the end. The wickedness of many is not hidden from you: in order that they may be able to escape the discipline of the order, they labor to dismember themselves from it. Their rashness must be firmly opposed, lest the unpunished malice of a few give many the boldness to offend. And the wickedness of a few, when deferred, always increases. Although the public good ought not to be corrupted by the evil of one person, nevertheless the ignorant crowd blames all for the fault of a few. Therefore, those evil men who by their own deformity cloud the reputation of the good are strengthened by superiors who do not punish them.

It therefore belongs to you, fathers, to correct deformed monks as far as possible; it is the duty of your office to preserve the order in its vigor. And because a fool is not corrected by speech, what our hierophant set down against the incorrigible, as it were monastically, should generally be referred to [unclear]. Rise up now, fathers, for it is time. Arm yourselves with zeal for regular discipline. I beg you, defend the inheritance of the blessed father Benedict. Drive out the proud; correct the rebellious; rebuke the hard. Fight bravely for the preservation of our order. Arm yourselves with the armor of God and with love of the order, about to fight not so much by your own labors as by the help of Christ. His grace will furnish you aid, if with purity of heart you pour out devout prayers to him.

Why then do you dissemble? Why do you not defend the portion of Saint Benedict? How long will the efforts of the wicked prevail against the holy order? Truly, fathers, truly, the great necessity of the order demands a swift remedy. Consider the conduct of irregular abbots and monks, and weigh how wickedly they kick against the discipline of the order. Apart from the habit, and that itself in many cases dissolute, they show nothing honorable or religious. But reserving these things for their appointed places, let us hasten to what we have intended.

On the Most Holy Primitive State of Our Order. Chapter 2.

I somewhat doubt whether I shall do a thing pleasing to all if I commend in a few words the former state of our order, since I judge that by the praises of the ancients I have paid little regard to the monks of our own time. For there are some who think themselves either the best monks, or dare to compare themselves with those best fathers who preceded us. However they measure themselves, let them not be angry with me if I do not dare to equate our observance with that of the ancients. For if we contemplate their life by a right light, we shall scarcely be able to compare the best among us, in habit, with a good monk of that time.

Indeed, their holy way of life, bright with virtues, approved by signs, and illustrious through instruction in all the Scriptures, won favor with God and with men. For hearing the voice of the Lord saying, “If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me,” they flew to monasteries, despising the world; and, placing their necks under the yoke of the rule, they humbly took up the norm of obedience. Loving God with their whole heart, they sought nothing worldly in this life; but, all perishable things despised, and tested in the furnace of poverty, they happily arrived at the heavenly kingdom.

They were mature men, zealous, and most learned: firm in faith, strengthened in hope, shining with twofold charity; pure in mind, outstanding in devotion, and adorned with the honor of every virtue. They had no care for earthly things, no enticement of pleasures was in them; but, turned toward God with all their powers, they conquered the world with its vanities. Hence kings and princes of this age, devout men and dear to God, because of the most holy way of life of the monks, became lovers of the order, and magnificently exalted it with gifts and largesses.

[unclear]. They rejoiced that in their times the holy pursuits of monks were being enlarged and extended with glory even to the remotest regions of the world. For the holy monks, the more they loved God, the more they were also loved by men. And the less they sought earthly things, the more, by God’s providence, they abounded in what was necessary for the body. For to those who love God, the whole world is riches.

O how comely is the face of your youth, holy religion of Benedict; how fair your aspect, how adorned your majesty with the splendor of all virtues. Who could suffice to weigh you worthily? You offer the way of three days to the people of God, freed in the desert from the servitude of Pharaoh, when you persuade men, taken out of the darkness of the world, to come by the three substantial vows of religion to the desert of cenobitic life for the love of God. Blessed are the professors who, withdrawing from the Egypt of this world, pant with all their desires along this way of three days toward the land of the eternal promise.

This is the threefold cord of holy religion, which is not easily broken, which is adorned with the brightness of obedience, chastity, and poverty; which calls back its lovers to the heavenly homeland; which presents its cultivators joyful to the supreme emperor, Christ Jesus. For although many things are necessary for regular observance, yet I would dare to say that whoever has kept these three inviolate stands secure in the order, like a threefold cord. For all the statutes of the order were made for the preservation of these substantial things.

The holy monks of old, attentively considering this, observed this way of the three substantial things with the greatest zeal: poor in spirit through contempt of all worldly things; continent through chastity of mind and body; obedient through humble subjection; and rich in every virtue. They shone forth most renowned in learning and holiness, and by word as well as by example converted many from injustice. Hence, as their merits advanced, many of them were promoted to the governments of churches; and the higher they had been placed, the more renowned they became in virtues. What church would not seek a priest from the order of Benedict? What people devoted to the Christian name would not desire a teacher from the college of monks? For to many

[unclear] in the order of the holy father Benedict, men most excellent in every kind of learning and holiness, were illustrious, as almost all who wrote ancient histories testify. And indeed, to speak without envy, the holy religious order of Benedict easily surpasses all, if you wish to consider dignity, if its broad dominion throughout the world, if men distinguished for learning and holiness, if finally their multitude. For this venerable plant brought forth [unclear]; archprelates, one thousand six hundred; bishops, three thousand five hundred. But if anyone calls this total of illustrious prelates too great and casts doubt upon it, let him turn over the chronicles and deeds of the ancients, and he will find that few have been named out of many. But let no one think that the former splendor of the order should be measured by the present, since there is no equal comparison of our men with it, when in our times monks do not shine, as formerly, either in knowledge of the Scriptures or in holiness of morals. Perhaps even now you will find devout monks, though few, but simple. But for the rule of souls in this time devotion does not suffice, if knowledge of the Scriptures is lacking. But if our monks are neither devout nor learned, they are rightly judged unworthy for the rule of churches. Many subjects, indeed, walk well, who, if they have been raised to the governance of others, have never remained in the tranquillity of their former life. And, to say briefly what I think: neither are monks worthy of churches, nor churches of monks, at this time. The cause is not hidden from the prudent; it is to be brought into the light hereafter, in its own time. Now, if it please, let us inquire briefly what the present state of our order is.

On the Present Lamentable State of Our Order. Chapter iii.

My eyes have failed from weeping; my inward parts are truly troubled; my liver has been poured out upon the earth, over

[unclear] of my order: when the humble little one [unclear] in it; when, cast down and without honor, it lies open to the hands of the enemy. Let no one despise me as I mourn; let no one blame my grief. I do not seek earthly honors; I do not aspire to ecclesiastical dignities, but I groan that learning and holiness have fallen away from my order. What have we to do with empty honors, we who seek life in heaven? Alas, the crown of our head has fallen; monastic devotion has grown lukewarm; charity has grown cold; the honor of regular discipline has for the most part failed. Where now in our order, and in its most holy men, is the devotion once so abundant? Where, in every variety of writings, is venerable learning? Where is the solicitude of abbots for the care of the Lord’s flock? We see many monasteries founded according to the Rule of Saint Benedict, in which, apart from the name and the habit, we see no trace of regular discipline. Over this, O fathers, take up lamentation; deplore the ruin of our most holy order, if perhaps God may turn to mercy and leave a blessing behind him. And you transgressors, who are the cause of these tears, return, even late at last, to your heart; return, and fear the indignation of your blessed lawgiver. Consider the desolation of the order which you bring in to your own harm; fear the wrath of the Almighty, which you provoke by your crimes. Woe to us. The city of our religion is being destroyed by enemies all around us; the house of discipline is being reduced to nothing, and no one is found who resists, no one who sets himself like a wall before the house of God. We all seek the things that are our own; we all conceal the common necessity of the order, until little by little we too shall fail. Our inheritance has been turned over to strangers, our houses to outsiders. Monasteries that were consecrated as dwellings for monks are now becoming stables for clerics and strongholds of fighting soldiers. What shall I say? I am ashamed to utter what men without conscience are not ashamed to commit in the cloisters of monks: they disturb the seclusion of religious men; they change houses of prayer into dwellings of merchants. I suffer with your calamities, O venerable religion of Benedict; I groan that you are exposed to plunder by everyone who passes by. There is none to console you from among all your dear ones, because those who could help you are unwilling, and those who wish to assist you cannot.

O with what beautiful comeliness you once flourished in the Church of God, when you brought forth men distinguished by every holiness and knowledge, and, like a youth strong and steadfast, you were accustomed to drive away from yourself every dishonorable manner of life. But now, as if worn out by old age and the long oppression of days, you have failed, and the strength of your youth has been taken away, because your beauty is no longer in you. Where now is your zeal? Where is the beauty of your face? Where is your honor? Where is the power once widespread throughout the whole world? Where are your sons around your table, learned and most holy men? Where is the study of letters, venerable to God and the angels, whose ardor once made you exalted above all orders? They have already failed, and you have been reduced almost to nothing; you have lost the beauty of your youth, and the strength of your adolescence has been scattered. To what shall I compare you, or to what shall I liken you, secluded daughter? To what shall I equal you, and console you, mother of monks? Great as the sea is your contrition; who will heal you? O if you had foreseen this ruin in any way and guarded against it, how blessed all nations would call you. But you said in your abundance: I shall not be moved forever. Plenty has made you poor, and the abundance of temporal things has stripped you of all your adornment. You have begotten perverse sons, disobedient, rebellious against holy institutions, who, hiding under the honorable cloak of your [unclear], have stripped you bare of all your beauty. Alas, mother and virgin, you have grown old in a foreign land; you have been counted with the dead; there is no appearance of your beauty. Arise now, O Benedict, most holy prince of monks, and see your order, which you founded, and your inheritance, which you planted. Look upon the monks who have forgotten your profession, immersed in earthly things, given over to pleasure, all full of the springs of vices. You once gave them the best precepts for living; you commanded them to be free from the cares of secular business; you ordered their hearts to be stretched out to the love of God alone. Rise, I say, O most blessed father, and see the desolation of your order, which is confounded within by its own sons and scattered without by enemies. The monks despise the institutions of your piety; foreign men seize the monasteries of your order. There is no one to defend the honor of your name; no [unclear].

there is one who may protect the honor of your most sacred order. Rise up also, O great Pope Gregory, you who forbade, under anathema, places sacred to God belonging to monks to be transferred to secular uses; and see monks driven from monasteries, and worldly clerics thrust in. You, once the prince of all churches, used to devote the greatest care to monastic honor, taking pains with immense solicitude that nothing should be presumed in the sacred order outside the Rule of Benedict. Behold now the manner of life of monks, O most reverend prelate, stripped of all honor, full of all foulness. See how monasteries dedicated to your order are handed over into the hands of clerics, and those which once could be compared to angelic choirs now become brothels of harlots.

Rise up, most glorious emperor and unconquered defender of the Christian faith, Charles, glory of the Germans, and see the calamity of the monks: you who once made the order of Father Benedict glorious, and by your zeal spread it through almost the whole world. See now the monasteries which you once founded, all exposed to the plundering of enemies. You who once revered the monastic order as the camp of God, now have compassion, O holy prince, on it as despised by all and stripped bare of its goods. You were once accustomed, with immense care, to bring lukewarm abbots and monks back to the observance of regular discipline, and, once reformed, to defend them with immense solicitude from every harassment by your own people or by any others.

Rise up also, Berno, abbot of the monastery of Cluny, together with your successors, you who in ancient times magnificently restored the holy order when it was collapsing, and brought it back wholly to its former beauty. Rise, I say, now, and see how the iniquity of monks abounds; rage rules; crime overflows; pleasure makes almost all men go mad. The beauty of reformation has been taken away. Discipline has collapsed. Zeal for holy conduct has perished; humility has breathed its last.

Rise up, William, abbot of the monastery of Hirsau, most reverend father, you who restored the Cluniac renewal in Germany after its fall; you who provided abundant institutes for monastic conduct; you who by your prayers strengthened the limbs of the sick; you who illuminated the German nation with doctrine and holiness like a most brilliant star. Rise also, you most excellent fathers, authors of various reformations, and see that your labors have now perished: constitutions neglected, exhortations spurned, the solemn warnings of solicitude despised. By life and doctrine you made the monastic order glorious, beloved by God, venerable to angels, holy to yourselves, reverend to men.

Where now are those merits? Where now are those prayers of the saints? Alas, venerable mother Religion, to what great calamity you have come. Those who once glorified you now despise you; those who honored you now scorn you. You have abandoned the commandments of your lawgiver; you have cast aside the study of the Scriptures; therefore you have become contemptible. The sons whom you bore have done this evil to you. For as soon as monks began to savor earthly things, to neglect sacred readings, to put inward things after outward ones, your best color was changed into foulness. But what of it? He who falls often resolves to rise again; but you, once fallen, never rose again altogether.

What could Cluniac, what could Specuensian, what could [Ycalian?], what could Melk, what could the very recent Bursfelde reform, and any other reforms besides these, accomplish for the whole order, spread throughout the entire world? For although the Cluniac reform poured forth the light of its honor in all provinces of the world, nevertheless it left many monasteries in different kingdoms in their former deformity. For from that time when our religion first fell, there has never been any general reformation. O how easy is the descent to Avernus; how ready the will to sin; how very great, after a fall, is the difficulty of rising again to uprightness. All, so to speak, have fallen; few have risen from their deformity; many are rotting away in their pleasures.

I grieve over you, O flower of monastic beauty; I grieve, and indeed vehemently, and if I cannot aid you otherwise, I pour out tears both hot and most bitter for your contrition. But you also, O fathers most worthy of reverence, who love the honor of your order, who grieve over the idle crushing of our mystical Joseph, who desire to come to the inheritance [unclear], consider the state of our religion; look upon its desolation; think of a remedy. Behold, the wealthy monasteries are being snatched all around from the hands of Saint Benedict; behold The cloisters of monks become dwellings of clerics, and from evil pursuits monks are transferred to the worst. You err, O wisdom of the world; power of the age, you are deceived: never from a bad monk will you be able to make a good canon. But you also, transgressors, take heed; apostates from the order, listen. What madness drives you, that you destroy for Saint Benedict monasteries which you did not build? Or do you think yourselves free from damnation if, after casting off the monastic garb, you sin as clerics? In the strict examination, will a presumptuous license to sin save you? Perhaps in another habit you will be unknown to [unclear]? We shall see whether God approves your transfer, when in that dread judgment, where no rank but perpetual horror dwells. For what other dwelling he is to receive, having become a worse canon from a bad monk, I do not sufficiently understand. Senseless men, and enemies to yourselves, who will teach you to flee from the wrath to come? Who will be able, or will dare, to defend your unjust cause against Saint Benedict in that dread examination? Whom will you have as advocate for your rashness? Saint Benedict, prince of monks, will stand as witness against you; he will accuse you and condemn you: who will excuse you? Do not flatter yourself, wicked contemner of the regular vow; do not soothe your conscience. If you have Benedict as your adversary, you will find none of the saints your friend. For he who offends one citizen of the heavenly fatherland [unclear]. Where there is the highest and blessed tranquility, there also will be the indivisible unity of souls. Who, then, will be able to deliver you from the hand of the Lord, if all the saints have stood against you? Call upon those who now deceive you, who take from you the habit of the order, who lead you away with flattering speeches, who stand as collaborators in your apostasy, that they may defend you from the tribulation that is at hand. For if the righteous will scarcely be saved, where will the apostate and destroyer of the holy order appear? The justice of the saint will not deliver the wicked man on that day, nor will he bring aid to himself or another. Rather, those whom you now win over to yourself with gifts and presents as such great collaborators in your presumption, then you will have as witnesses and companions of your wickedness.

There will be no defender there for a corrupt action, no advocate of iniquity, since where all things will be laid bare, there the accusing conscience will be enough for each one unto damnation. There the army of saints will stand against those who have wickedly profaned the dwellings of monks, who have impiously destroyed the order of the holy fathers. But the authors of these things, which I seem to myself justly to have called unjust, strive to excuse their deed in this way, saying: The irregularity of monks, driving monasteries to extreme poverty, cannot be corrected and amended unless it is transferred into another state, on account of the contrived reasons which they invent for themselves; these also, God granting, we shall show in what follows to be empty. They say, then: To correct bad monks by transfer is not only without sin, but is also a great part of justice and piety. But where can these things be discerned? In what manner will you teach as true the things you say? To convert bad monks to goodness is praiseworthy and holy; but to make them canons is not to amend monks, but to have corrupted them. A bad monk will never be a good canon; but a good one will not strip off the order that is his, but will cherish, honor, and love it. I do not now wish to contend in words; I do not wish to be too vehement for the hearing; I do not wish to depict the effect of this transfer, which I do not doubt will gradually come to light. If you wished to make bad monks into canons, why did you not put good men in their place? There is no change without transgression of the vow, when it is presumptuously changed for the worse. Woe to you deserters, who, so that satisfaction may be made to your pleasures, despise the order, deny the vow, and confound the rule of equity. We shall all stand before the tribunal of Christ, says the Apostle, so that each one may receive according as he has done in his body. What will the destroyers of monasteries receive there, who show no deference to the honor of the Almighty, who violate the covenant, who nullify the wills of saints, who despise the decrees of law? If it is good to found monasteries, it is evil, let no one doubt, to destroy them. A contrary action will receive no reward except a contrary one. Finally, if no one dares to break the last will of a dead man in legacies made to any man whatsoever, why do lovers of the world presume to usurp for themselves things offered to God and the saints

[unclear]? If one who violates a man’s testament is guilty of a crime, what punishment does he deserve who unjustly diverts to alien uses the foundations of monasteries made by holy bishops and princes? For kings, princes, and prelates, and the rest of the faithful who founded them to the honor of God and of the monastery, are proven to have wished this above all: that the foundations of this institution should obtain an inviolable effect. If they had wished to have canons in the monasteries, they would not have placed monks there. But the blind ambition of men has grown so strong that it thinks of nothing less than future things, and loves nothing more than perishable things. O every late condition of human frailty, O ever damnable forgetfulness of the commandments of God. Rights consented to sins, and what is public began to be more lawful. Offenses blaze everywhere, and here and there, through wicked minds, by manifold kinds of sin, [unclear] works harmful deceits and frauds. This man confounds the order; that man utterly destroys it. This man withdraws the will of the saints; that man writes false allegations of dismemberment. Here monks are shut out from monasteries; there the goods of the order are given to others. The enemy assails those who stand firm; the slanderer attacks; the false witness defames. Already, among the guilty, to be innocent is a crime. What love of honor could there be there, what integrity could exist in minds, where the profession of the order is deserted, where the vow made to God is revoked? What sense of shame for things remains there, what virtue could subsist, where divine right is violated, where there is no fear of the laws, no dread of the judge? What can be said more inhuman, what more cruel, than to wish to usurp divine right for oneself, to confound right and wrong, to break a vow, to withhold the worship due to God?

O that day, dreadful and horrifying to all mortals, on which, after long tolerating these evils of the monks, the wrath of God will be vindicated, on which apostates will feel the punishment owed them, because the adversaries of the holy order will pay the penalty for their rashness. What good will it then do you to have trafficked in the vow made to God, to have extinguished the sacred order, to have had a brief, shameful pleasure for a time in the flesh? When the Lord begins to count his worshippers, to give true monks the promised rewards, to separate the good from the evil, to divide the truthful from the false, what place will you receive, what success will you have, you who deny the holy profession of religion, who break vows, who despise the order, who violate faith?

Would that you considered the brevity of this life; would that you feared the examination of future recompense; would that, pierced by salutary teachings, you attended with repentance to the voice of the Lord, saying: I do not desire the death of the one who dies, but that he return and live. And through the prophet: Return to the Lord your God, because he is merciful and kind, patient and of great compassion, who may revoke the sentence, if you are willing to wash away your fault with tears. But you do not fear the judgment of God; you despise his clemency; you contemn his patience and long-suffering. Therefore the Apostle says to each of you: Do you not know that the patience of God leads you to repentance? But you, by your hardness and impenitent heart, store up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath and of the revelation of the just judgment of God, who will render to each according to his works. He said that the judgment of God is just because it is late, because it is long and greatly deferred, so that God’s long patience may provide for you unto life. But how will you do penance, you who do not acknowledge your fault? You will grieve, but too late, when there will now be no place for repentance, but the repayment of vengeance. Then, therefore, punishment will repay the impious man and the sinner, when repentance for sin can no longer profit.

O what guilty men they will then remain, what wretches, what unhappy men, who, for the sake of this briefest time, did the will of the devil, so that they must be tormented with him in inextinguishable fire. Would that these things clung to the hearts of those men; would that they thought on these things, who desert their order, who break their vow, who so boldly lie both to God and to his saints. But we strive in vain; our words do not receive them, who contemn the words of God and of the Church and of Saint Benedict. Therefore this cause of the order must be carried on not with words, but with deeds. Let us therefore be armed, fathers, with all our strength, and let us prepare ourselves for the contest with incorrupt mind, devoted virtue, firm constancy, against those who desire to destroy our order, who strip off the monk, who take away monasteries, who desert the rule, who are rebellious against their visitors. Let us be armed, I beseech you, fathers, with zeal for regular discipline and with the honor of the order, sparing no labors, no expenses, lest the destructive plague, through our silence, [unclear].

successively infects the order. Never has so great a necessity lain upon our order; never has it been enveloped in so many evils. See, monks cast off the habit; monasteries are turned into dwellings of clerics; and while we attend to private advantages, while we flee labors, while we spare expenses, while we serve our own avarice, the order perishes, religion passes away, the worship of God vanishes. Many monasteries have already, through the wickedness of the times, not to say our own sloth, been transferred away from the order; and unless we keep watch otherwise, the rashness of wicked men threatens that greater losses must be inflicted upon us. Certainly, where the audacity of fools is not at once repressed, an occasion for attempting similar things is offered to the rest. What shall I say of the monks whom we still have in the order by habit and tonsure alone? And, lest we put the members before the head, what is more wretched in this unhappy time than deformed abbots? They care for nothing less than the Rule; they pursue nothing more zealously than lust, avarice, pleasure, pride, and the vanity of the world. Thus, when the head is infected, all the members of the body are corrupted. Now in monasteries where the Rule is despised, where discipline is not observed, what else is seen than a certain spring of all vices? No obedience, no poverty, no chastity is held among them out of love of virtue; among them, to live without crime is a crime. These are corrupt men, perverse monks, craftsmen of deceit, authors of fraud, ministers of iniquity, friends of wickedness; they flee discipline, now despise observance, destroy the order, confound unity. And truly, fathers, unless you quickly provide remedies for these evils, in a short time you will see the order diminished, and you will grieve for it. But perhaps you say: vigilance has never been lacking; our diligence has never ceased; we have always opposed the rashness of evil men; we have always tried to prevent the dismemberment of monasteries, and we have never accomplished anything. What do our labor, our efforts, our heavy expenses accomplish, when princes and rectors of churches oppose themselves so powerfully? I know, fathers, that what you say is true; I know the deeds, I know they have been continued. But I beg you not to take my words in a bad sense, if I dare to answer these objections. Your vigilance in the causes of the order is known to me; your labors are evident; the magnitude of the expenses is proven; perseverance in these matters has always been applied.

But I should like you to remember, O fathers, two verses of Horace in which he says: There is measure in things, and finally there are fixed limits, beyond and short of which what is right cannot stand. We have many and different adversaries; one must not fight against all in one manner, but in different ways, in varied ways, with discretion. We are monks, professors of humility; the battle must be begun by us with prayers, entreaties, and supplications; high Jupiter must not be provoked by ferocity; a headlong sentence must not be brought against the gods. Divine powers are placated by prayers, not by threats. But enough of this. For I believe, fathers, that you understand what I mean. Nor are these things to be explained indiscriminately to everyone, but only to those who have zeal for the order and the power to carry it out.

Against those who transfer themselves from the order, or have already long since transferred themselves. Chapter 3.

Whether I am justly moved enough against those who try to dismember themselves from our order, I do not sufficiently know; and if I did know, I would hardly dare to say, since the patience of the Almighty tolerates them so long and lashes them so late. But when I look upon the end of those who have already long since dismembered themselves from the order, I consider this long-suffering of God’s patience sufficiently avenged by strict chastisement. For, as we have learned from the report of those who knew many of them, few of those who cast off the monk died a good death. Rather, called suddenly from this life without signs of penitence and without the ecclesiastical sacraments, they gave a manifest indication of their own unhappiness. What, then, shall we say to these things? Shall we rejoice in the destruction of the dying? Far be it. It is the Lord who long tolerates sinners here so that they may be converted; it is he who condemns more harshly those who are not converted. But we, with the prophet, fear his sentence, saying: You are just, O Lord, and your judgment is right. But the just man, by whatever death he has been overtaken, will be in refreshment. Concerning the impious, however, the prophet says: The death of sinners is most evil. We, however, bring back to mind the ruin of the wicked for this reason: that at least by fear the rest—

[unclear] back from the evil undertaking. But how will they receive our words, who mock those above and those below? Unless deeds are added to words, exhortations accomplish nothing among malicious minds. Still the stiff-necked people murmurs in the desert; still the impious nation blasphemes its lawgiver; still the wicked nation resolves to return into Egypt. They fear lest they die in the wilderness, when they ought to have feared this alone: lest they die outside the wilderness.

O hard mind of men, O ruinous freedom of monks, how long does your cruelty rage, which does not know how to spare even those whom it has as authors and friends? He who is worthless to himself, to whom will he be good? O unheard-of zeal of monks, O monstrous crime: to mock God, to deny him what was promised, to break faith, to withdraw the service owed. What is more cruel than this impiety, what more wicked than this sacrilege? O perverse monk, O unjust apostate, O most wicked perjurer, how long do you set yourself against the kindness of God, how long do you mock the mercy of the Almighty? You are a monk; as a monk too you will be judged, even if you have put off the skin together with the habit. Why do you depart from the holy order? Why do you lie to God? Believe me: the Almighty will not give his honor to another; he will not forgive you forever what he once solemnly accepted as an offering. Before you made your promise to God you were free and of your own choice; but after you promised, you began to belong to God. Now it is not lawful for you to abandon what belongs by right to God. Your voice has bound you to God: either you will be saved as a monk, or otherwise you will not be saved.

Behold, before your eyes is the way of life and the way of death; choose whichever you wish. If you keep faith with God, if you fulfill your promise, you will have reward; if you deny it, you will receive punishment for contempt. Hence Paul, admonishing you, says: Brothers, do not err; God is not mocked. For whatever a man has sown, that also will he reap. What do you presume you will receive, you who sow in the flesh? For he says: Those who sow in the flesh, from the flesh also will reap. But the fruit of the flesh has no share in the inheritance of the saints. Why then do you deceive yourself? Why do you trust vainly in vanity? Why do you transgress the ancient bounds which the holy fathers set? The vow which you solemnly made to God you deny, and yet you expect a portion with the elect of God as though righteous.

There is no peace for the impious with the sons of God. Behold, you squander the inheritance of the Lord; you enrich strangers from the goods of the holy father Benedict; you deny your promise; and, so that you may sin freely, you heap up false things as true. If you are a good monk, do not desert your purpose; do not abandon the seclusion of the monastery. But if you are a bad monk, you will never be a good canon. For he who is not good is bad; and he who is bad is not as he ought to be, and therefore is unjust. But the unjust have no share in the kingdom of God. And it matters little where you are, so long as, being bad everywhere and wretched everywhere, you are tormented. Unless perhaps you wish to be liable to a double damnation, so that, while you are a bad monk and an unjust canon, guilty and false in both places, you demand the wages of both.

Nor should you object to me the dispensation of the Roman pontiff, which, unless God approves it, will by no means excuse you. Not all things please God which are done on earth by the supreme pontiff. Now if you cry out and are angry with me, as though I were judging the acts of the vicar of Christ, I answer: I embrace, honor, and venerate the supreme pontiff as the true vicar of Christ; I by no means reprehend his deeds, but I know that he is a man, and that as a man he can both be deceived and deceive. No wonder. For in so great a care of all the churches, in so great an occupation with affairs, when false things are reported as true, a mind distracted in many matters is easily deceived.

But you, apostate from a holy order, who think yourself secure because of a bull of dispensation, see to it that after death, as the common saying goes, you do not meet an illiterate demon, one who does not know letters, who does not defer to an appeal, who despises the bindings of your immunity. Believe me: there is no craft that can deceive God. O wretchedly unhappy man, O senseless apostate, what will you answer to Saint Benedict concerning the profession which you spurn? What will you answer to the almighty ones concerning the vow which you contemn? Whom will you be able to appoint as advocate of your case in that dreadful judgment, where nothing can lie hidden? There all things will be naked, all things open; there no place of saving repentance is now left; there the space for making excuse is denied to all. What will that dispensation rashly presumed here profit you there, when it will be permitted neither to prove it by testimony nor to defend it by law? Then you will see, O perverse monk; then you will understand what strength it contained in itself may a licence fraudulently obtained [unclear], when you have felt the vengeance of the eternal Judge in punishment. Why do you plead dispensation to me? Why do you proclaim a licence to sin? Do you think that by the authority of the supreme pontiff you can escape the wrath of God? I dare to say: the pope’s dispensation will profit you nothing if it has been obtained by fraud, by deceit, by falsehood, or unjustly. That is not good, that is not just, which is acquired by evil arts. For a dispensation to be just, four things are required, without which a dispensation will by no means save you. What are they? Necessity, namely, congruity, usefulness, and honorableness. But you, perjured monk, who are led by mere willfulness, who despise God and your order, invent necessity, show a false congruity, lie about usefulness, and fashion honorableness by fraud. Let necessity be evident and manifest, congruity true, usefulness not private but public, honorableness not fictitious but proper; otherwise the dispensation will be unjust.

Indeed, I have nothing for which I should be angry with the supreme pontiff in this dispensation; I reprehend nothing in his actions, since I am not unaware that he was circumvented by the false narratives of monks. You are the guilty ones, you deceitful men, you who must be marked for wickedness, O perverse monks, criminal apostates, who by lying, deceit, and fraud seek what you despair of obtaining by just prayers. What necessity urges you to desert your order and pass over into the state of secular life? What congruity recommends breaking what, once promised to God, no one may revoke? What usefulness is there in laying aside the monastic habit, deserting the order, denying your purpose, transferring the monastery, and not only breaking but utterly casting away the vow made to God in the presence of all the saints? Or what honorableness is it for a monk dedicated to God to return to the world, break faith, commit perjury, and perpetrate sacrilege? Workers of evil and impious men, how will you ever be able to excuse such a wicked presumption? None of these four agrees with your transfer; none of them confirms your dispensation. For what necessity could have driven you to this rashness? What cause for this dismemberment could you have alleged before the vicar of Christ? The poverty and ruin of the monasteries. But you could have quickly restored this if you lived according to the Rule of Saint Benedict.

For a dispensation to be just, four [things are required], etc.

For you have been made poor by wicked morals; by holy conduct you would again be enriched. Look around you at monasteries restored to regular observance: how, after extreme poverty, with the Lord bestowing it, they now advance again to their former riches. And this, indeed, quite justly. For the Lord promised us in the Gospel, saying: First seek the kingdom of God and his justice, and all these things shall be added unto you. But you put aside the love of God, neglect his worship, devote yourselves to games, banquets, drunkenness, and gluttony, and do not regard the work of the Lord. You care nothing for regular observance; therefore, because spiritual things have been neglected, by the just judgment of God temporal things too have failed you. False, then, is the necessity that you invent, and insufficient the dispensation that you allege. But perhaps you say: We are not sons of rustic men but of nobles, noble, delicate, and weak. We cannot keep the observance of servants, farmers, and shepherds; fasts, abstinence, vigils, disciplines, and the other exercises they have are unbearable for us, which we neither can nor ought to imitate. What then? Are you not a monk because you are noble, because delicate, because weak? There is nothing by which you can defend yourself against Saint Benedict, who in the Rule provided abundantly for every estate, every rank, every age; who with the greatest discretion came to the aid of the delicate and the weak. Are you the only ones from among the noble, tender, and delicate who have professed the monastic order? Many most noble young men, sons of emperors, kings, dukes, and princes, have shone in our order in holiness and learning under regular observance at various times; they, nobler, more delicate, and more tender than you, yet preserving cenobitic discipline inviolate, will stand against you in testimony, easily able to prove to those who love God that what you, full of [unclear], cast away as if unbearable [unclear]. Nor do I bid you imitate the observance which you despise as that of cobblers, but the Rule which you promised, which you vowed, which you pledged yourself before God to keep. If anything in our conduct displeases you, you have the Rule; go to its precepts, shape your life. No one exacts more from you; no one requires more. The exercises of monks which you condemn in observers of the Rule, the Rule itself teaches, the Rule itself commands; and if you refuse to imitate them, by the very sentence of your own mouth

[You promised?] conversion of morals; for the Rule of Saint Benedict enjoins upon those professed under it fasts, abstinence, vigils, disciplines, obedience, patience, humility, poverty, and the other exercises of monastic discipline. These things, which you judge hard and burdensome, are so proper to the Rule that without them no one deserves to be called a monk.

Tell me, I ask, transgressor of your vow and of your order, tell me: do you still wish to live blessedly? Do you still hope that you can come to eternal life? You will answer: “That question you ask is foolish. Who would not wish to live blessedly? Who does not hope to come to eternal life? Therefore I both desire to live blessedly and trust that I can come to the heavenly fatherland.” If, then, it is so, if you trust that you will receive the blessed life, why do you abandon, spurn, and despise the way that leads to it?

You are mistaken, wretched unhappy man; you are deceived. One does not come to the kingdom except through humility, nor to rest except through labor, through abstinence, through obedience, through poverty. For Scripture says: “Through many tribulations we must enter into the kingdom of God.” But you, unhappy apostate, who cast away the order, spurn humility, refuse obedience, hate poverty, despise patience: by what rashness do you presume to such heights? If the mouth that lies kills the soul, unless you do penance you have no share in the kingdom of Christ and of God, you who lie not to man but to God, who violate the pact, who deny the faith, who retract the vow of religion made to God.

The dispensation of the Roman pontiff, which you seek by fraud, recount with falsehood, and extort by importunate petitions, will not save you, I dare to say. For the four things which we said make a dispensation due we see to have come together not at all in your frauds. For that transfer which you make from a holy order is neither useful nor necessary, and for that reason is unfitting and dishonorable. In it, indeed, will is put in place of necessity, pleasure in place of utility, carnality in place of fittingness, impiety in place of honorableness. Is this the due occasion for your dispensation?

Keep for yourself your little letters obtained by fraud; keep the instruments of denial and apostasy. It is good for me to rest under the Rule of the most pious father Benedict, in which, if I have offended in anything through frailty, I trust that I have him as a pious advocate before the strict Judge; whose order I love, venerate, and guard with such diligence as I can. But I do not know what patron you will have, you who cast away the order, offend all the saints, and publicly lie to God. For the Rule shows that he who, after profession of the order, lives otherwise than he promised is to be condemned as a mocker of almighty God. For it has this: “Therefore, if he has acted otherwise, let him know that he is to be condemned by him whom he mocks.”

Hear these things, sons of Belial; deserters of the order, attend, and if there is any sense in you, tremble. “Let him know,” it says, “that the converted monk is to be condemned by him whom he mocks.” What greater mockery, what crime more wicked than to deny the faith promised to God, to set aside the vow, to lie to him, to withdraw service from him? I wonder, and indeed greatly, whether ever, even for an hour, apostates so criminal can have true joy, because of the confusion of conscience and the remorse of synderesis. But, to confess plainly what I think, I can be induced by no persuasions to believe that they will thereafter ever live without the very grave torment of their conscience.

By probable experience we have learned that the monks of whom we speak, after the transfer of order, become almost mad: prone to every shameful work, desperate, without devotion, without affection, without piety, without conscience, without honorableness, [unclear], troubled, witless, and obstinate; so much so that they care nothing, notice nothing, wish to hear nothing about God, about his kingdom, about purgatory, about hell, about death, about virtue, about seemly conduct. And in them is fulfilled that saying of the wise man: “When the impious man has come into the depth of evils, he despises.” And he always presumes that with a troubled and defiled conscience. Hence such apostates, as if freed from long imprisonment, boldly hurl themselves into every vice, and compensate for the shortness of time by the magnitude of their crimes.

They are offended if anyone wishes to speak before them about the love of God, the study of the Scriptures, or the honorableness of life. Nor is it any wonder if they cannot hear the words of God, to whom after so unspeakable an apostasy they prove unfaithful. They have hated the one who rebukes in the gate; they do not admit the words of salvation; they despise the sermon of penance. Therefore the wise man says: “Consider the works of God, because no one can correct him whom he has despised.” If God ever despises some men

[unclear] could not: they are surely among the first who, after their vow, prove unfaithful to him. Hence, being so despised, they rarely have recourse to repentance. Therefore let them know that they are to be condemned by him whom they mock. For they are guilty of a double sacrilege, because they unjustly take themselves away from God and monasteries away from Saint Benedict. And whoever supplied occasion, favor, counsel, and aid to these [dismemberments?] has done this irrecoverable harm to the order and to Saint Benedict. For the rule of law says: He who gives occasion for damage is deemed to have caused the damage. Therefore such men are liable to the holy lawgiver of monks and bound to restitution. Let them see how they will answer at the last judgment to God and his saints, whose temporal goods they unjustly usurp for themselves or for others.

Woe to those who unjustly take what belongs to others, which they can never restore either in this life or in the future. Woe also to you, apostate and renegade monks, who confound right, despise equity, and violate faith and covenant. Woe also to you abbots, who do not correct the evil pursuits of your monks, who consent to their apostasy, and who yourselves apostatize from the order with them. O abbot, shepherd and idol, who make wolves from sheep and secular men from monks, what answer will you have to give to the supreme shepherd when you are compelled to render account of your stewardship? What will you say to Saint Benedict when he demands back his sheep from you? He will require monks from you, not canons. What then will you answer him? Are canons monks?

When that day comes, to be feared by all mortals, on which the just judge will render to each according to his works, Benedict, the lawgiver of monks, doubt not, will accuse you gravely. Against you he will bring forth as witnesses all the true monks of his order, who will cry out unanimously to the judge: Just judge, Jesus Christ, who know all things, behold the madness, crime, sacrilege, and cruelty of this apostate, who destroyed the holy order, called monks back to the world, broke faith, and with unheard-of presumption violated the vow made to you and to us. Wretched man, what will you do, accused so gravely? Where will you flee from the face of the fury of the Lord? To whom will you have recourse? There will be no place to flee, but you will stand before the tribunal of Christ to receive a harsh sentence, unless here, through repentance and tears, you have taken care to come before the face of the Lord.

No place will be granted for excuse when you have been accused in the judgment of him who knows all things. For whatever you may wish to say will be nothing, because, accused outwardly and inwardly by the testimony of conscience, you will be judged worthy of condemnation. You seize the things that belong to divine right, you who had been appointed their guardian; therefore you will hear the Lord saying: Pay what you owe. That is: give back the monks whom I entrusted to your faith; give back the monastery which you received to govern; give back faith; give back the vow; give back holiness; give back gain; give back merit; give back honor. Pay what you owe.

I appointed you shepherd of my sheep, so that you might preserve them in holy religion, teach them, instruct them, amend them, and correct those who sinned. But you hated discipline and cast [my?] words behind you; if you saw a thief, you ran with him, and with adulterers you placed your portion. Intent on the pleasures of the flesh, you did not guard my sheep; therefore pay what you owe. After monks came from the world to religious life, they became subject to my right, and it is not lawful for them to return any further to the world. But you were appointed minister of my sheep, not lord, nor was it lawful for you in any way to alienate, usurp, or plunder anything belonging to my right. You were guardian of my things, not owner; you ought faithfully to preserve what had been acquired and to seek what had been scattered.

But you, forgetful of me, squandered my inheritance, scattered the sheep, indeed made beasts from sheep, enemies from servants, and faithless men from allies. Now therefore pay what you owe. I entrusted monks to you, whom you ought to have preserved in their holy purpose: to raise up the fallen, care for the sick, restore the failing, kindle the sluggish with charity, rouse the negligent, rebuke sinners, correct the disobedient, restrain the dissolute, and hold back the perverse from their evil pursuits. But you took care of none of those things which [unclear] by office; given over to greed, lust, and gluttony, you not only permitted monks to return to the world, but, utterly forgetful of pastoral care, you also became the leader and companion of their apostasy. Now therefore give back what [was entrusted?] to your faith, not to say to your treachery. But because you will not be able to give it back, you will be cast into a dark prison covered with the gloom of death; from there you will not come out until you pay the debt, which you will never pay. There

[not only?] will you receive punishment for your own deeds, but also for all the sins of those committed to your governance whom you have neglected to correct. For thus Saint Benedict says in the Rule: Let the abbot know that the fault of the shepherd falls upon him, if the father of the household has been able to find any lack of profit in his sheep. Therefore, abbot, whoever you are, if you are wise, if you understand, if indeed you believe in the judgment to come, if you desire to escape the torments of hell, do not yield to the depraved desires of monks; do not consent to criminal dismemberments. What does pleasure profit you in this most brief life, for which you are compelled to receive eternal punishments? Do not, I beg you, do not inflict so great an injury upon Saint Benedict; do not take from him the monasteries which neither you nor all your forefathers built. Let it be enough for you that you are abbot, because you live from his patrimony. Do not forsake the order; do not consent to devilish suggestions; do not make your monks secular; do not resign the monastery entrusted to you into the hands of others. Know yourself to be a man subject to death, of brief life upon the earth. Do not do so ruinous a thing; do not commit this crime; do not perpetrate so immeasurable a sacrilege. Remain in the holy order, and do not forsake your profession, if you desire to come to eternal life. For the Lord says: He who puts his hand to the plough and looks back is not fit for the kingdom of God. Behold, you have put your hand to the ploughshare; behold, with Lot you have gone out of Sodom. If you look back, if you corrupt your profession, if you return to the world, you are not fit for the kingdom of God, and you will by no means deserve to receive it. But if you persevere in your renewal, if you keep your good will, if you have the charity of God in your heart, believe me: even if in some respects you have lived negligently, you will find Saint [Benedict?] a kindly intercessor with God, for love of whom you did not wish to forsake the order when you could have done so. Remember, I beseech you, the covenant of the Lord which you made with him when you entered the order; and do not be unfaithful to your Redeemer; do not break your vow; do not violate the pact with so wicked a perjury. Consider the pact; attend to the condition; and take care that you not prove a liar to God. Before you promised him, you were free; but after you promised, you were no longer free, but were made a servant of God. It is not lawful for you thereafter to abandon this servitude voluntarily assumed; nor is it lawful for you anywhere after profession to return to the world. But if you corrupt your profession, if you deny your vow, if you return to the world, God will not have you in that rank in which he would previously have had you, before you entered the monastery. For before your entrance into religion you were, as it were, of the household of the Lord, among his subjects and laborers. You were, I say, a creature of God; you were a servant; you were a slave; but you were not a friend, an officer, an intimate, a secretary. But after you became a monk, you promised fidelity to the Lord, that you would cleave to him continually, that where the Lord is, there you too would be, his minister. He chose you as a friend and, so to speak, as guardian of his body, that in his sight you should always minister to him and fulfill his will in all things. For this you promised. Therefore, if you withdraw from him to whom you vowed yourself, if you are found unfaithful and a despiser of your vow, he will not have you of his household as before, before you became a monk, but certainly as a fugitive, unfaithful, a transgressor, perjured, and lying. For the monk who denies his vow denies Christ. For blessed Jerome says: I, who seem to be a monk, if I corrupt my profession, have denied Christ. But you transgressors, who, despising the sacred order, have from monks been made canons: you, I say, have not only corrupted your profession, but, what is more wicked, have utterly destroyed it. Now therefore either you have denied Christ, or what Jerome says is false. But because what so great a man taught cannot be false, it remains that you are deniers of Christ, perjured and unfaithful. Would that at least, though late, you would at last undergo the remedies of penitence, you who are placed in such great dangers. If he has denied Christ who violates the monastic profession, what does he deserve who defrauds the whole order, and finally all the saints, of what is due? If he always burns who unjustly occupies the professions [unclear] of men, of what punishment is he worthy who usurps goods dedicated to God and the saints for himself? If, according to ecclesiastical tradition, he sins mortally who unjustly claims for his own use another's house or field, of how great a crime is he guilty who [unclear] the house and possessions of God and of the saints [unclear] of things unduly taken away, man is bound to man; how much more are those who take monasteries from God and Saint Benedict bound to restitution. If pec sin is not forgiven unless he restores what has been taken away. When will those be able to be absolved from guilt who turn the dwellings of the servants of God to alien uses, and monasteries, once taken away, will never be brought back to the order? Woe to those who did not fear to draw up for themselves this testament, which they will be able to revoke by no satisfaction whatever. O monk, O abbot, you who revoke your vow solemnly made to God, who cast off the habit of holy religion, who transfer monasteries consecrated to Saint Benedict into the hands of clerics: what will you answer when accused before almighty God? Perhaps you will say: We have changed the vow for the better, since indeed they are not ignorant of the difference of a vow. To live as a canon is good and holy, if a man has been called by God to that state. But if he has been called to the rank of monastic perfection, it will never be lawful for him to descend to the canonicate. For no one doubts that canons are inferior to monks.

Tell me, whoever you are, who are a cooperator in the depravity of monks, who transfer them from the order, who defend unjust causes against God and Saint Benedict, who are held to be the favorer and patron of their apostasy. Tell me, then, what seems to you? Is it lawful for monks professed in a holy order to take off the habit and become secular canons? If it is lawful, why do you obtain, with such expense, labors, wearisome efforts, and importunate princes, the dispensation of the Roman pontiff? For lawful things do not need dispensation. But if it is unlawful, who will make it lawful? A dispensation? I very much doubt it. Whether the pope can dispense in this matter or cannot is not mine to discuss, since it is agreed that he has the fullness of power. Far be it from me, therefore, to derogate even in the least from the authority of the supreme pontiff. For he is the vicar of Christ, and it is not lawful for a man to judge anything concerning him. Therefore are you secure if he does what he seems able to do? Believe me, you are not secure, because you have told a false cause for your transfer; you have fraudulently deceived the vicar of Christ, because both the narrative was false and the supplication, not to say extortion, was importunate.

Finally, the bull of your transfer, written carefully and cautiously, does not absolve you from the order, nor remove the vow, nor take away religion, nor consent to laying aside the monastic habit. Do you think that the supreme pontiff wishes to entangle his conscience in your sins? Read the bull attentively; consider the words; note the intention of the one dispensing; and you will find that even after the dispensation you are a monk before God and the Church. For I have both seen and read the bull of this transfer, in which the pope consents that monks may have prebends and benefices, and nevertheless commands that they render to Saint Benedict what they have vowed. He grants them the habit of the canonicate, but by no means takes away the monastic garb. See how secure you are, who transgress the limits of the indult, who fashion false things as true, who lie to the vicar of Christ, who extort bulls no less than you obtain them.

In those matters that are of positive law, a dispensation makes lawful what otherwise was not lawful, if a reasonable cause requires it. But you are commanded by divine law to render the vow made to God, from which the pope never intends to absolve you without necessity. But tell me, I ask you: what is the cause of your transfer? You will perhaps answer what all those so transferred are accustomed to answer: There are many causes, which necessarily drove us to this matter. What, then, are they? The poverty of the monastery, the incursions of enemies, the exaction of princes, the bad rule of abbots. These are the causes of our transfer. But a web of spiders, fashioned with blood, is easily broken, if anything of weight is placed upon it. You apostates, however, narrate false things as true, and under the fiction of poverty deceive the vicar of Christ, indeed your very selves. Would that your poverty were what you allege; would that you had less earthly substance, as you falsely pretend. Why do you allege poverty, you who possess the greatest riches? Who does not know that the monastery of Saint Alban, before it could be transferred in temporal matters, always abounded in many riches? What shall I say of Ellwangen, once a distinguished monastery, whose riches could have sufficed for a prince? Surely the monastery of Saint Burkhard ought not to have been transferred on account of poverty, since to this very day it exceeds all the monasteries of that province in riches. What shall I say of Seltz, what of Klingenmuenster, monasteries most abundant as far as moderate measure is concerned? Surely in their transfer poverty could not truthfully have been alleged?

O betrayers of your order and transgressors of your vow, do you believe that lying words can remain hidden? Your deceits are not concealed from us, nor are we ignorant of the riches which you deny. If you were poor, as you pretend, you could not expend for your transfer some two thousand, others four thousand florins, and some even more. Why then do you allege poverty, you who are not poor? Why do you say that you have nothing from which you can live as monks, you who can expend such great sums of money so as to become canons? Finally, if the poverty of the monasteries oppresses you, why do you not undertake reform? Why do you not bring private possessions, contrary to the rule, back to common use? For while each man loves his own purse, the state of the community falls. If, according to the rule which you have professed, you lived without property of your own, by the Lord’s providence you would abound in all riches. But you, neglecting spiritual things, devote your labor to the pleasure of the flesh; for this reason you have come down to lack of temporal goods. I would have said these things against those who, because of contempt for spiritual goods, also suffer want of temporal goods. But those who transferred themselves from the order, if they had been poor, would have persevered in it. For there is need of many expenses, costs, and provisions, which the poor could never have laid out. Therefore those who take poverty as the cause of their transfer are lying. As for the fact that they allege wars, battles, and the devastations of enemies as a defense of their dismemberment, there is no prudent person who does not know that this is frivolous, vain, and insufficient. For all the things they recount can be hostile no less to canons than to monks. But when they call the rule of the abbot among the causes, it is not undeservedly ascribed to the fault of those whose election sets a bad ruler over the monastery. And not undeservedly. As the monks are, so is the abbot of the monks. For bad monks are judged unworthy of a good abbot. Finally, if the abbot is bad, how does a good provost arise? You ought to have sought other remedies from experienced men, by which you might make progress in the order without complaint. But he seeks an occasion who wishes to withdraw from a friend; he invents countless causes who desires to dismember himself from the order. Now he has exhausted the debts of the monastery, now he falsely asserts the hardship of hostility, now he invents a harsh lordship, now he blames the sloth of prelates. He seeks everything, he takes up everything, so that he may either disparage the whole order or show the place unfit for regular observance. “If,” he says, “most blessed father, such a monastery is transferred into a secular church, especially the divine worship is thereby increased; it will make princes beholden to the Roman Church; it will prepare peace round about for the peoples, and the greatest honor for the Christian name.” O deceitful tongue, O lying lip, O contriver of deceit, O inventor of fraud, O minister of iniquity, who recount false things for true, evil things for good, sacrilegious things for holy. Kings and princes have been accustomed to build monasteries, not also to destroy them; you ought not mendaciously to have alleged them as patrons of your treachery. For if they seek the praise of God, they will never consent that monasteries be transferred from the holy order. But if they wish to consider their own advantages, they are accustomed to receive more profit from monasteries than from collegiate churches. Whence, then, comes such unheard-of presumption to you, that before the vicar of Christ you should falsely claim as pleasing to princes a matter which is known to be contrary to them? Thus you act, thus you deceive the vicar of Christ, master of evil, deviser of deceit, inventor of lying, author of crime, craftsman of iniquity, you who live by fraud, who fortify yourself with impiety, who attack religion, who gape after gains, who are fed by pleasure, to whom everything consists in crime and nothing in the love of God. Far be it from faithful princes that they should take away from Saint Benedict the monasteries which their once devout forebears built for him. Woe to you, perverse monk, who presume to inflict such great insult on the order, that you destroy monasteries which neither you nor your parents built. Woe also to you who give patronage to evil matters against God and his saints, who entangle yourself in the sins of others, who sell your tongue, who for a paltry price incur the indignation of God and of all the saints. Woe to you, I say, advocate of reprobate monks, who do injury to God, who by wicked work mock his saints, who deny the right of equity, who by words and deeds exhort monks to return to the world. O what will you answer almighty God when [unclear] of all your an account of works will be required. When you are accused by Saint Benedict as the destroyer, as it were, of his order, what then will you set against the accusation of the saints? What will you answer? How will you excuse yourself? Who is going to make a distinct plea to the judge for your deliverance? What advocate will you then be able to have, you who now are the advocate of the wicked against God? Would that you were wise and understood; would that you looked to the end, and by no means entangled yourself in the sins of others. But, inflamed by the torches of avarice, you think only of the gains of this life; you show that you have no understanding at all of future calamities. Therefore, just as birds are caught in a snare, so in your sins and in those of the men whom you made apostatize from the order, when you do not expect it, you will be caught. O how harsh a sentence they will receive by whose counsel monks have despised their order. You lied about a great advantage in the petition, you who intend only this: that you may disgracefully empty out the honor of the order. Is this how the worship of God is increased? Is this that peace promised round about to men? You will never make bad monks into good canons. But he who makes men bad, what does he deserve except the reward of the bad? Monks who, having despised the order, return to the world are bad. For unless they were bad and sinners, they would by no means have deserted the holy order. For no one hates the good except a bad man; no one withdraws from the holy purpose that he vowed except a perverse man. But he who offers himself as patron to perverse men in evil causes makes himself a participant in the sins of others. To be a good canon in the church of God is holy; but to be a monk for the love of God is of greater perfection. A canon is permitted to pass over to monks as to a higher grade, but a monk is forbidden to descend to canons. Nor will a dispensation make lawful what has been obtained by false accounts. If there is necessity in the petition, integrity in the intention of the petitioner, and honorableness in the use of the dispensation, I say boldly that the pope can dispense with a monk so that he may become a canon, yet in such a way that he is not absolved without necessity from that by which he is known to be bound to God. For I am certain that the supreme pontiff intends to absolve no one from any approved religious order without evident common advantage and manifest necessity. But the advocates of apostates recount false causes as true ones; they fabricate necessity; they lie about advantage; they pretend to honorableness, which they flee. The root and cause of this whole evil is founded on pleasure alone and hatred of discipline. But when the cause of the account is false, the dispensation does not free the one who obtained it, but condemns him. The supreme pontiff, after hearing the accounts of petitioners, is accustomed to answer cautiously: “If it is so,” he says, “as is related, let what is requested be done, in the manner and form that follows.” He answers cautiously; he grants secretly; and, once the dispensations have been heard under fixed limits, they are transgressed, while they consider not what they have obtained but what they wished to obtain. O senseless misery, O unhappy men, why do you deceive yourselves? Why do you voluntarily destroy your souls? The intention of the dispenser does not absolve you from what you promised to Saint Benedict. But you usurp more for yourselves than the pope granted; indeed you assume the whole without permission, which you unlawfully desired to obtain. It is true what a certain man, still surviving among us, said about some of us, when, with excommunication, he had stripped them of the monastic habit: “And if,” he says, “I have taken off the habit from them, nevertheless, according to the tenor of the bull, they are still monks before God.” Unhappy apostates, who will deliver you from the hand of the living God? Who will be able to defend you from the accusation of Saint Benedict? What will it profit you that here you have been made canons from ex-monks without attack, if at the last judgment of God it happens that you are numbered with the reprobate? For truly, unless Saint Benedict, prince of monks, consents, no dispensation excuses you. Your transfer does not have regard to the proper end, and for that reason it will be inexcusable. Question your consciences, and consider with what intention you withdrew from the order. If for the love of God, if from desire for the heavenly homeland, if for the salvation of souls, if for the advancement of virtues and the state of a holier life, you had put off the habit. But in all these things your intention was contrary; therefore the transfer from the order is deservedly judged alien to the will of God. For, in order that you might live without law, you cast off the habit, without obedience, without humility, without to live in poverty. This was your first intention. The fear of God is not before your eyes. You think nothing of the salvation of souls. You have no understanding of eternal life. You desire to walk in the pleasure of the flesh alone. All the causes and reasons that you related in your petition are fabricated and false. How will the dispensation be lawful? How will the authority of the supreme pontiff excuse you, which you did not fear to circumvent by falsehood, fraud, deceit, and importunate prayers? What should be thought of you, your conduct, once examined, has declared. For the Lord says in the Gospel about ravening wolves: By their fruits you shall know them. Never is true joy seen among you because of it; never can the conscience be secure, but it is always anxious over its guilt, always troubled, since they have the devil as an inciter to despair, by whose prompting you have withdrawn from the order of necessity. Hence it is that you are not at all solicitous about the love of God and the salvation of souls, but, intent on earthly vanities and carnal desires, you think of nothing less than eternal life. By what spirit this transfer was made among you, your way of life shows. For those who are led by the spirit of God have crucified their flesh with its vices and desires. But you are not so. For as soon as you cast off the habit of religion, like wanton oxen, released from the yoke of subjection, you plunge yourselves, as if lawfully, into every disgrace; you cast off all honor; you make a pact with vices and wage war against virtues. The charity of God is not in your hearts. You despise mercy and piety. You love vanity, and you have become vain. You are evil to all good men, worse to monks, worst to yourselves. A transfer that has opened an entrance to vices has not been made for the better. Deserters of the love of God and of the order, enemies of honor, adversaries of piety: if you love God, if you are good, if you love religion, why do you hate monks? But you hate especially those who have persevered in the order from which you have fallen away, because, when you see those men now standing firmly in their vocation, you fear their testimony against you in judgment. Therefore all monks persevering in holy conduct will stand in the strict examination, about to bear testimony against you; by their works they will show that all the accounts and causes of your apostasy, already here cloaked in fraudulent words, are false and empty. You hate the monks of your order because, in truth, as you know yourselves to be, so you judge others to be; and the good that you do not see in yourselves, you also envy in others. We do not wonder at the madness of your heart against monks, when we consider the injury and insult that you have brought upon God and upon your holy lawgiver. For one who does not love God, who breaks the vow solemnly made to him, who casts off the habit of religion, is not to be wondered at if he hates the monks who are his servants. For every apostate is an adversary and despiser of his order. But I beg, but I exhort, but I urge all of you who have deserted your order: abandon fury, soften your rage, cease to rave against monks, lest those whom you now persecute with hatred you have in judgment as witnesses and judges against you. Do penance for this impiety of yours while you have time, lest swift death seize you unprepared. Do not, I beseech you, vent the corruption of malice against Saint Benedict; do not wish, by your transfers, to destroy his venerable order; do not despise the opportunity for repentance, if you desire to attain eternal life. You have built no monastery for Saint Benedict. I ask and exhort you not to transfer to the uses of secular men those built for him by others. Remember how brief the present life is, how certain death is, how strict the judge is; and do not place upon your necks so heavy a burden of sacrilege that you will never be able to restore it worthily by any satisfaction. Do not stir up Saint Benedict as an adversary against you, if you desire to find the friendship of the other saints. For when one has been offended, none of the rest will be a friend. Consider the end of those who long ago transferred themselves from the holy order, and likewise fear for your own. Where are the abbots and monks who once withdrew from the order and handed over the monasteries of the holy father Benedict into the hands of secular men? [unclear] They are either dead, or shortly will die. You also who still live, who, following the example of those before you, have withdrawn from the order, [unclear] think that you will go to those whose imitators you are.

for you would fear for yourselves from another’s peril, and, while there is time, would take up penance with your whole heart. I have heard from many with how great bitterness of mind, at the point of death, many transgressors of the order have been constrained: those who from monks became canons, or also those who were the authors of transfers of this sort. For they said that they grieved for no sin so much as for that one, because they knew that they had given their consent, or their help, to the transfer of the order. If the transfer of monasteries from the order is good, why did those who had made it grieve when they were dying? But if it is evil, why do you make it and take it upon yourselves? Let all who occupy the monasteries of monks remember how stern an anathema they are marked with by blessed Pope Gregory: those who do not fear to turn the property of monasteries consecrated to God to alien uses. Let Thietgandus, formerly archbishop of [Trier?], be an example to them: when he had received from Pope Adrian, in the city of Rome, the monastery of Saint Andrew in [unclear], and, after that had been [unclear], had been warned by Saint Gregory in a third vision not to occupy the dwellings of monks any longer, since, when ordered to withdraw, he ignored it, he perished with all his people by a hard death. Whether those who occupy the monasteries of monks are secure before God, we leave to their consciences. But he who possesses another man’s goods without that man’s will is bound to restitution; whoever occupies the goods of some saint against his will, let him consider what he deserves. We have now used a sufficiently long discourse against the transgressors of our order; and so let us now come to the things that remain.

Chapter V.

How these dismemberments of apostate monks are to be opposed.

Although both my mind and necessity itself, having been constrained, offer an abundance of material for inveighing against the destroyers of our order, nevertheless, since those are not present who might be recalled to penance by exhortations, I think that enough has been said against them. For they are senseless, those who so wickedly oppress the honor of their order; and I judge that they must be resisted not only with words, but with deeds. For those who do not fear God will by no means acquiesce in our admonitions. Come then, most reverend fathers, who have assembled in chapter for the adornment of our order, who labor for its restoration: recall to mind its former state, and consider into how great a calamity it has fallen in this time. Behold, monasteries are snatched from the hands of Saint Benedict; our order is being destroyed all around by the enemies of God; monks return to the world; the impious tear apart our religion; strangers are endowed with our goods. What shall I say of internal wars? What shall I report of civil evils? It is no wonder, fathers, take heed, if we are confounded without, since we are torn apart within by our own people. Our abbots kick against discipline, tear apart the unity of the order, neglect the statutes of chapters, spurn visitations, and despise your censures, fathers. Unless you fight against these men with all censures [unclear] to bring back [unclear] under the order for long. Why then do you dissemble? How long do you sleep? When will you wake up? When will you fight for the inheritance of Saint Benedict? Fathers, arm yourselves with zeal for God, for order, and for discipline, because it is time; fight for your lawful rights; defend the rights of sanctity. Stand manfully against transfers of the order. Behold, from our order in the province of Mainz alone six monasteries have already been transferred in our times; and unless we keep watch otherwise, we shall suffer more grievous losses day by day. Thus, while we dissemble, not to say grow torpid, the order is gradually diminished, until at last it will be entirely scattered. Why do we not meet such great dangers? Or, while the others perish, do we wisely trust in our own security? Did not the poet truly say: your affair is at stake when the nearest wall is burning? Yesterday it was for them; tomorrow a like danger will threaten us. Each one of you, I do not doubt, loves his own monastery, and would in no way consent that it be transferred from the order; indeed, he would wish not only its present but also its future happiness to be extended for eternal years. Why, then, do you not defend in common what you fear to lose individually? I fear, fathers, that in this most evil dissembling our tenacity may be accused. We love money and lose a monastery. We fear a few expenses and lose broad dwellings. We are unwilling to lay out a modest sum of money, and we suffer most abundant monasteries to pass from the order to outsiders. Private advantages [are preferred?] to the common utility we do not take care to preserve the honor of the order. We say much; we conclude much in favor of the useful defense of the order, but we are afraid to lay out all the money. O feeble zeal, which tenacity renders useless. If we will not give money for our brothers, when shall we expose our life? If we do not contribute a few expenses for the preservation of the order, when shall we give our bodies? He who is grasping in a small matter, when will he be generous in a great one?

I shall now speak to you, fathers, who pretend not to notice that the order has been placed in such great dangers and needs help. Blessed Benedict made you rich from poor men; now he asks alms from you, and, shameful to say, does not receive them. Behold how many there are among us, if I may say so with pardon, who divide their substance among frivolous persons, prepare banquets for birds and dogs, enrich their parents and kinsmen from the goods of the monastery, and squander the rest on empty pleasures. Few are those who grieve over the desolation of our order; fewer think about a remedy; very few supply assistance. Is the sacred order of Benedict, once the most excellent among all, thus not defended from the assault of enemies? Wake up, fathers, while watchfulness is of use, and do not repent too late that you have slept.

Look at the officials of other orders, how carefully, how zealously, how steadfastly they defend the rights, privileges, and monasteries of their religion, sparing neither expenses, nor labors, nor contributions, so that they may preserve their orders in vigor. Are you inferior to them? Are you poorer than the mendicants? If one wishes to consider the number of monasteries of the order, we are more numerous; if the substance of temporal goods, richer; if force and authority, undoubtedly more outstanding. What is lacking to us, except zeal and constancy, that they possess? Why then do we hesitate? Why are we ensnared in sluggish idleness? Why do we not keep watch for the defense of the order? Do you not know, fathers, that the laws assist those who are vigilant? It is not good patience by which the honor of God is neglected, the worship due to him is diminished, and the integrity of the holy order is violated.

What shall I say? You already grieve over monasteries that have been transferred, and yet you do not undertake to preserve those that are to be transferred. You put private things before common ones; for that reason your zeal bears little fruit. Each one of us, as I see, thinks himself safe if, when his neighbor’s house is burning, his own wall does not immediately grow hot. But O folly, O stupidity deservedly to be blamed. Whoever, entangled in so many dangers, is not stirred concerning his own safety, after a little while will be compelled, when he has fallen, to beat himself.

Therefore, fathers, if we desire to keep our houses unhurt by fire, let us meet the fire with water while it is still far away. For if the flame is allowed to pass as far as the neighboring places, thought is taken for a remedy much too late. Hence the poet says: Resist at the beginnings; medicine is prepared too late, when evils have grown strong through long delays. Dangers that are ignored are strengthened by time, and what in the beginning readily admits a cure gradually becomes an incurable wound. At the same time take care that an error, neglected in [unclear], does not in the course of time grow beyond measure, when no one is found who will steadfastly set himself against it on behalf of the order.

But if you say that opposition has likewise always been made to the authors of dismemberment, and that they nonetheless prevailed, I answer with that Virgilian saying: because the herdsmen came late. After the confirmation of letters, a Latin sentence is not easily recalled. For if Pilate was unwilling to change what he had once written, how will the supreme pontiff, the vicar of Christ, readily revoke a decree once made? A sentence is more easily prevented than revoked. Moreover, he who neglects his right yields to his adversary. All must keep watch in a case that touches all, because what is snatched from one is judged to have been taken from all. Whenever a monastery is seized from our order, our common inheritance is in part dissipated. If anyone should attempt to occupy your house or field, you at once accuse him before a judge, at once request an inhibition, and until you defeat your adversary you do not desist from the lawsuit. Why then do we all not do in the public causes of the order what each one does in private matters? Will that be impossible for many which one man does? Unless perhaps where there is a multitude, there is also confusion, so that what is entrusted to different persons is preserved more negligently. For we gladly embrace what each person commands to be nearest to himself. But while, with the body drawn together on every side, like a hedgehog, we turn over our own concerns within ourselves, we cast aside care for the order.

And so now, reverend fathers, with such goodwill as is fitting, I admonish you; with such attention as I can, I ask you: [unclear] for your order, which is nearly falling run; and oppose these dismemberments as quickly as possible. Do not put money before such necessities; do not love coins more than the order. Shameful is the keeping of riches by which the commonwealth is not helped in necessity. What will an insatiable desire for gold profit you, if the desolation of your order, so holy, so venerable, so glorious, should prevail? If our predecessors had not kept watch for the order with greater care than we, the name of our religion would long ago have failed in many monasteries. Let us therefore imitate the constancy of those whose inheritance we have received. If we love God, if we love the honor of the order, if we desire to preserve it, let us think in time about a remedy. Let us contribute a little to the preservation of the order, so that we may deserve to receive much; let us spend a part, so that we may be able to preserve the whole; let us offer cheap things, so that we may be able to acquire precious things; let us give earthly things, so that we may be able to possess heavenly things. Let us expend money, and let us expend prayer also, since by the former man is appeased, by the latter God. Whatever we have belongs to the right of our holy father Benedict; when we expend something for him for the preservation of the order, we do not give him what is ours, but return to him what is his. Indeed, we are bound to him not only for the souls committed to us, but are also obliged to render account for the substance of the monastery. Never, moreover, is a safer account rendered concerning the [revenue?] than if money is spent opportunely in the causes of the Lord. But if money is spared in the Lord's necessity, suspicion is generated of the servant's faithlessness. At the beginning of this chapter we set down the title concerning the manner of resisting the dismemberments of the wicked; lest we seem to have passed it over untouched, let us explain it briefly. And although that discussion does not pertain to me, nevertheless, since I am a foster-child and lover of your chapter as well as of the same order, I think the admonition of a disciple will not be burdensome to you. It is for you, fathers, to distinguish the true from the false; let it suffice for me to have explained what I think about it. The manner of opposing the presumptions of monks is easily learned if it is turned from example into practice. Look at the other orders, and from their diligence it will be recognized what you must do. [Each?] establishes procurators of its own in the city of Rome, who manfully resist the beginnings of evils and permit nothing to gain strength against their order. And you, fathers, unless you do the like, will feel grave losses hereafter.

If therefore it can be done, if it is pleasing, let some man be chosen from the order, zealous, devout, learned, and experienced, who fights no less by favor than by zeal; who does not prefer his own advantages to public ones; who does not flee labors; who attempts nothing by his own rashness to be done contrary to the commission given him; who, established as procurator of the order, may always keep careful watch for it in the city. I believe that if such a man were had, he would forestall many dangers of the order. For it is the greatest foresight if a procurator in the city can denounce before the pope as false and fictitious the things which perverse monks lie as true for the sake of their own dismemberment. And this is not a work of great difficulty. For all the causes which they allege are full of fear and lying. But the vicar of Christ, who grants the transfers of monks more from importunity than from favor, when he has perceived that their allegations have been repelled by the diligence of our procurator, will rejoice that he has found an occasion for denying what he grants unwillingly. For he too fears the judgment of his Lord. Therefore, if we kept watch, we would have him as defender and advocate of our order. Our negligence alone is accused; our stinginess alone is condemned.

Against those who uselessly consume the goods of monasteries and scorn to assist the order even in a little. Chapter VI.

But now it is pleasing to turn the force of words against those who in such great necessities do not deign to assist the holy order even in a little. These are worldly abbots, useless, given over to pleasures, who, to use the words of the Mantuan, neglecting the worship of those above and spurning the command of the Thunderer, indulge Bacchus and serve Venus. They bear sacred things with gold, store coined money in gold; with gold they pour libations of wine, with gold the panelled ceilings gleam. They cover whores with gems; they set feasts for dogs; from the spoils of the needy they are adorned, rich by plunder, elated by success, and they laugh at the powers above and at Acheron. They have no care for the salvation of the soul; no love of God, no reverence for holy things, no exercise of virtues. These are the abbots rebellious against your chapter, who neglect the statutes, scorn the sanctions, Now they despise [it]. From the lowly they have been made great, but they impiously despise the order that honors them. Saint Benedict raised you up, O ungrateful abbot; he made you rich. He received you as a monk. He appointed you shepherd of his brothers. Why then do you not acknowledge the munificence of your lawgiver? Why do you not repay his benefits in return? What do you have that you did not receive from his rule? Who endowed the monastery committed to you? Was it not the devotion of princes and the alms of faithful peoples? Why then are you ungrateful for such great benefits? Behold, you think of nothing less than regular observance. You reject discipline. You spurn God; you despise his precepts, and you presume upon security. Behold, contrary to the rule, you play with the birds of the air; behold, contrary to the law of clerics, you hunt with unclean dogs; behold, contrary to honesty, you take delight in the pleasures of the flesh; behold what is most shameful: despising the oath of chastity, you consume the substance of Saint Benedict with prostitutes and pimps. You do not fear to spend thirty or forty gold coins in the bath, and to offer Saint Benedict even one [unclear]. I lie if I have not known abbots who consumed more than fifty florins at the baths, of whom some are the first to resist the subsidies of the chapter. Others too, from among those who wish to be called observant, impatient of seclusion and quiet, unable to remain long in the monastery, consider every occasion suitable by which they can move from place to place at great expense. What shall I say of elaborate and superfluous building works, which are liable to no less censure than expense? The walls are adorned with paintings; the pinnacles gleam with gold; the windows are marked with memorials. The poor cry out at the door; the sacred order, hard pressed, asks for help, and no one deigns to give assistance. O abbot, servant of self-will, cultivator of vanity, enemy of piety, you who shamefully pour out the substance of the monastery, who pour wine in gold, who deny support to your order: how will the account of your stewardship be rendered to Saint Benedict? If the rich glutton was buried in hell because he did not, for God's sake, give help to Lazarus from his own goods, where will the abbot be buried who denied to his own lord what belonged to another? If he will burn forever who did not give alms from his own goods, what does the abbot deserve who has committed robbery? What do you have, O abbot, that you did not receive? For everything that you possess belongs to the right of Saint Benedict. Moreover, it is a moral rule for all that he who lives by the support of justice should dare to deny no one what is just. The definition of justice is to render to each person what is owed to him by right. But we who are placed in the monastery have nothing of our own; rather, in good faith we possess what belongs to another. What belongs to another is judged liable to restitution. For the gifts that princes and faithful peoples conferred upon monasteries for the support of monks are remembered as having been handed over to Saint Benedict. If, therefore, you have squandered his substance, if you have despised rendering to him what is his, you will be subject to a twofold damnation, since from unfaithfulness you will be judged sacrilegious, and from trust denied you will be judged criminal. Render, therefore, to each what is his, and do not usurp for yourself what is not yours. Give to your lawgiver his share, who bestowed the whole upon you. Why do you deny a little to him from whom you received much? Surely you will not be able to allege the poverty of your monastery, you who so shamefully consume so many things. I am ashamed to say what many abbots are not ashamed to do: they, not so much submerged in the pleasures of the flesh as maddened by them, preserve nothing of monastic honesty and omit nothing of worldly shamefulness. They think that all things are permitted to them, who [do not ask what is lawful, but] seek what pleases them. Behold, that one, abhorring monastic quiet, seeks solace in the world by wandering excursions. This one, impatient of regular seclusion, proceeds pompously in public. Another, disparaging the discipline of honesty, sits all day drunk as a companion with frivolous persons. This one, despising the meekness of the saints, involves himself in the cases of litigants. Another sits at the gaming table; another, [unclear], dances to the drum. What do ambitious abbots not presume? What pleasure do they pass by untried? As he dines, the knees of servants are bent. As he passes through the church, a whole [cloth?] is spread. As he goes forth in public, a great abundance of servants follows. You will find, I do not lie, an abbot even among those who boast in the name of reform, whose ambition is so great that he does not wish to be called inferior to a bishop; who at table with such great ... he resides in such [state?] that an abundance of vessels, a variety of food and drink, and a multitude of servants could suffice for any prince. Finally, if you should meet this man as he proceeds through the city, and see him surrounded by so great a multitude of servants, you would think that not an abbot but an archbishop was passing by. If they did not feign themselves poor, but were poor, they would by no means run to waste in such great solemnity of vanity. For I am certain that this crowd follows plunder, not the man. Who would expect to find plunder among the poor?

O abbot, runaway shepherd, ungrateful and unfaithful steward of the goods of your lord, who so uselessly expend the substance of the monastery; who live voluptuously and shamefully: who will help you at the final examination? Whom will you appoint as manager for the account that must be rendered? Behold, you consume the goods of Saint Benedict in pleasure; from them you assist your relatives; you lavish gifts on shameful men; you distribute presents to your flatterers; day and night you serve gluttony and drunkenness. You eat the richest things of the earth and drink the best wines; poor monks live in want; humble brothers eat the bread of sorrow; the sheep committed to you are fed on worthless things. O vain shepherd, who neglects the Lord's flock, who scorns the necessities of your brothers, remember to whom you are to render account; recall how dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God, who does not regard the person of man, who repays each one his reward according to his works.

But hear my counsel and do penance, and redeem your sins with alms; rather, absolve them by repayment of what is owed, so that before the inward judge you may deserve to find mercy. Lay aside haughtiness; cast off [unclear]; leave vanity behind. Be abbot of your brothers according to the Rule; be a shepherd in solicitude, a father in charity. Feed them with word; feed them with example; feed them with sustenance. If you omit one of these, you will be a useless shepherd; for without spiritual things temporal things avail nothing for eternal salvation; without the help of temporal things, spiritual things do not long subsist in this life. Therefore, if you wish to be a good shepherd, you must not deny that the care of both kinds of feeding, namely spiritual and bodily, has been laid upon you.

I had said that your sins must be loosed by repayment of a debt. Of what debt? That, namely, by which you are held bound to Saint Benedict. What is that? All that you have. For from him you have that you are a monk; from him that you are an abbot; from him that you are wealthy. Now, therefore, he from whom you have all these things knocks at your door; because of the necessity of his order he asks for help; he desires to receive the least portion from the greatest things that he has entrusted to you. Why do you deny him his own goods? Why, when they are demanded, do you not immediately restore what has been entrusted to you?

Divine Scripture commands and says: If you see the naked man, cover him, and do not despise your own flesh. Behold, your order is naked. Behold, your torn [origin?] cries out; it asks alms; it seeks back its own; it seeks help. If there are any bowels of compassion within you, if any inner sweetness, if any love of your order, if any love of God, do not despise your own flesh; do not scorn so great and public a necessity. Honor him who first honored you. Give alms to him who raised you up. Bestow a little on him who made you rich in many things. However much you give him, nothing at all is diminished for you, if only you bring a good will. You will give a little and receive much; you will bestow earthly things generously and hope for heavenly things.

Nor should it escape you that, as is commonly said, whatever is withdrawn from honor is reserved for disgrace. For the jurist says in his maxim: The treasury takes what Christ does not receive. He is not free from the guilt of crime who sets avarice before the piety owed to the order. If they despise the words of God, what wonder if they scorn ours? Although I may say many things, speak many things, urge excellent things, I shall never bend rebels by words to contribute to the order. Indeed, unless your authority, O presiding lords, intervenes, the speech of one who admonishes labors in vain. Therefore it belongs to your office to bend the rebellious; to you it is committed to humble the disobedient; ours is humbly to obey your sanctions. Therefore, if you desire to defend our order from the attacks of the wicked, take care first of all to recall the abbots to obedience, because unless unanimity is restored to the order, the wickedness of adversaries will easily prevail. For the Lord says in the Gospel: Every kingdom divided against itself will be desolated, and house will fall upon house. Division alone confounds the order. The treasury takes what Christ does not receive.

How disobedient and rebellious abbots are to be compelled to assist the order. Chapter 7.

If judges lack authority to restrain rebels, legislation will be made in vain. For we always strive after what is forbidden, and unless compelled we resist commands. For where there is no fear of power, the condition of law is quickly despised. Therefore the preservation of law is the fear of power. But where the laxity of power dissembles, the vigor of law totters. For a constitution, however holy or necessary, is quickly carried into oblivion if there is no authority by which contempt may be punished. Take away power, and the commonwealth will be nothing other than a confusion full of sedition. For rustic savagery is not led by reason, nor calmed by gentleness. Among our own too, may God amend it, there are many abbots and monks, coarser than rustics, more savage than beasts, who are not bent by gentleness to the observance of the commandments of God and of the Rule, and are never persuaded by exhortations, however holy. If the authority of superiors does not oppose these men, they will never be led by any obedience of the chapter.

For this reason the supreme pontiffs, founders of this most sacred provincial chapter, established for us many suitable remedies by which we can compel the abbots subject to the chapter to assist the order. We have authority; we hesitate about power. And what is authority worth without power? If you wish, most honored fathers, that I should say more openly what I have wished to depict concerning the power of authority, you will pardon me if I have noted your pusillanimity, not to say negligence. Behold, we know that one hundred twenty-seven abbeys have been placed under our provincial chapter, but we do not receive from all of them the subsidies of the contribution owed. Why is this? We have received authority to exact it, but we do not exercise power. We receive what is freely offered; we fear to compel the disobedient. For I am certain that many abbots of our province contribute nothing to the assistance of the order; indeed, if they are asked, they contradict as if by prescription. What is it that we are doing? Why do we dissemble so long? To one running of his own accord we apply spurs; to one lying down, indeed kicking back, we do not even apply lashes. From this is born contempt of our statutes; the authority of the chapter is despised; the inheritance of the order is everywhere laid waste.

These things are to be brought against you, O fathers, who neglect to subdue rebels at the beginning. Consider what this dissimulation is at last going to bring forth, and if you love your order, think as soon as possible about a remedy. Weak and near dissolution is the body that is deprived of the support of its members. Behold, from one hundred twenty-seven abbots, how few you see in the present chapter, all of whom ought by statute to have been present. Where are the rest, with all the procurators of the absent? Few have contributed to the necessity of the order; fewer keep the statutes of the order; very few have assembled at the chapter. Where are the letters of excuse of those who did not send procurators? Where are the double expenses of the rebels? Who of the absent and rebellious has ever in many years been compelled to pay the penalty of double, and [unclear]? What use are our statutes to us; what do laws do; what help are the privileges of the supreme pontiffs, if in time of necessity they are not put into practice? Behold, Pope Benedict XII provided for us suitably in all things, when he promulgated the restraints of censure to be imposed against the contumacious and rebellious. Why then do we delay? Why do we not put into practice against the disobedient the remedies granted to us? Truly, fathers, this dissimulation of ours that we practice is not praiseworthy. For the rebellion of a few, if dissembled, will be an occasion for many to resist. But if a few are compelled to obedience by discipline, the boldness of the multitude will be restrained by fear. Every kingdom divided against itself will be laid waste, and every religious order disagreeing with itself is gradually dissipated. There is no fair hope for an order where the confusion of unity is in tumult. For the first road to desolation in every commonwealth is the disobedience of subjects. Therefore, venerable fathers, if you desire to continue the provincial chapter; if you wish to oppose the dismemberments of monks; if finally you choose to defend your order from the hands of enemies, take care first of all to call the contumacious back to obedience, lest what you acquire outside by industry you lose within through the division of subjects. This indeed must first be attempted by the sweetest exhortations; but if with hardened neck they have despised these, they must be [met] with harsher rebukes

[unclear]. But if neither gentle measures nor harsh ones have taken care of them, then ecclesiastical censure is promulgated against them. For fools are not corrected by exhortations, but become proud. Yet in these matters measure must be observed, and necessary discretion, without which no rebellion is ever mitigated. For it is better to have weak sheep than none. But who is so fit that he may preserve discretion everywhere? It is difficult to apply measure to all deeds. But he who wishes to cure infirm souls must be both severe and pious, and, as it were, tempered from a certain mean between both, so that severity may not be excessive, nor piety slack. For the one breaks, the other dissolves. But the fairest manner of restraining rebels and the contumacious is that which the long experience of elders commends.

On Celebrating the Provincial Chapter. Chapter VIII.

When we have come together into one place, most excellent fathers, let us diligently investigate what the celebration of the provincial chapter requires. For the greatest force of our stability is placed in it, if it is celebrated rightly. For it is the sole stronghold of our order; without it our whole religion would be thrown into confusion, as is apparent in those who for many years have celebrated no chapters. For the chapter is the preservation of the order, the increase of regular discipline, the uniting of unity. For in it integrity is given to morals, purity is increased in minds, the quality of regular life [unclear]. But what does it require, that it may be celebrated rightly?

Hear what its sincere celebration demands. It requires zeal; it requires knowledge; it requires piety. Without these three the celebration of the chapter is worth nothing. For if zeal is lacking, who will rebuke the delinquent? If knowledge is lacking, what fruit will excessive [unclear] bear? Again, if piety is lacking, zeal does not sharpen, knowledge directs; piety produces fruit. Without zeal knowledge remains cold; without piety, fruitless. Likewise zeal without knowledge comes forth excessive and indiscreet, without piety hateful. But piety is of value for all things, although without zeal and knowledge it does not suffice for the governance of souls. For it pleases all; it benefits [unclear], apart from the humble. Therefore the whole matter of celebrating the chapter consists in the disposition of those presiding, which requires men who are zealous, learned, and gentle. For if they are remiss, if unskilled, if cruel and impious, how then will they reform others to piety? If he who sits to punish crimes admits them, whom, like himself, will he correct? Therefore this fault must be referred to you, fathers, if you have chosen deformed and vicious abbots for the presidency. Therefore take care with the greatest solicitude that you appoint such men to preside over the chapter as an irreproachable life commends, the zeal of holy religion sharpens, and instruction in saving knowledge tempers. For one who presides over others ought to be a man sound in morals, mature in conduct, instructed in knowledge of the Scriptures, adorned with gentleness. Such a man, O fathers, is deservedly to be preferred by us, whose life may provide an example, whose doctrine an increase of virtue. If the presidents of the chapter are such, those subject to it will easily be brought back to obedience. For those will be fit to preside who by word can instruct the teachable, by example the rude, and by authority the contumacious. In these ways indeed the chapter will be celebrated rightly, and the souls of subjects will also be edified. The other things that render presidents fit I am not permitted to describe on this occasion, since I believe none of them is ignorant what sort they ought to be. Therefore, O fathers, I turn to you again, you who have come together in this place for celebrating the chapter. I address you, I exhort you, that you direct your intention to the restoration of the order, and carefully consider why the chapter was instituted. Do you wish to know why chapters were instituted? Seek out the decrees of the supreme pontiffs, and the cause of their institution will be known. But lest either sloth or occupation impede the understanding of this matter, I shall briefly explain the occasion for the erection of the chapter instituted. For the Roman pontiffs and the presidents of general councils, seeing our order without a special remedy in obser-

that [observance?] could not long subsist: through a provincial chapter they decreed that aid should be given to it, in which, through the diligence of those presiding, all would be instructed to live according to the Rule, and no one could deviate from the reform once begun. For in a chapter of abbots vices are to be corrected; exhortations to virtues are to be made, so that the bad may find what they should fear, and the good may hear what may make them better. Therefore various things are read for edification, so that increases may always be present to good minds. There the abbot is instructed concerning his governance; there he is warned concerning the danger of pastoral care. There what he should do is commanded; what he should avoid is forbidden for the love of God. In short, when we come together thus for chapter, many useful things result, which, if we seek the salvation of souls, are very necessary. For, to pass over the rest, mutual acquaintance in charity is conceived there; experience shows how much this conduces to love of regular observance. There, from acquaintance, fraternal charity is both preserved and increased; otherwise it would quickly grow lukewarm if it did not have the nourishment of mutual recognition. Here easy access lies open to uniformity, where, by honorable conduct, from the mutual conference of the fathers a fire is prepared; from the fellowship of holiness an example is furnished. These are the camps of God, O fathers, and the strongholds of our order, by which all the devices of our adversaries are reduced to nothing. But there is not one sincerity in all; nor does equality of conduct appear among you. Whence could so great a disparity of manners have arisen in one order, where capitular unity is seen? Who has divided between you and the Rule of Saint Benedict, O fathers, long-haired with thick-grown hair? Why do you not look to uniformity, you who celebrate an assembly of unity? If you love the holy order which you profess, why do you not love uniformity in it? What is the use to you of the shadow of a hairy head? Whom do you think the height of a curled crown adorns, O ringlet-wearers? Believe me, fathers: a face covered with hair is reckoned a disgrace, not an honor, in a monk. O how beautiful this assembly would be, if it came together, as it ought, in one discipline of regular observance. What shall I say? I praise the assembly, but I rebuke the deformity in its members. For because of the confusion of the order, the presence of unity grows cheap. The outer habit judges that the inner clothing reproves the life of many. Truly, fathers, this disparity of manners and habits offends the provincial chapter not slightly; and it is known to have been instituted for this reason, that equality of life might be preserved above all things. For outward discord is an indication of inward discord. Therefore, so that we may be of one mind in observance of regular discipline, let us strive first of all to be conformed in habit and tonsure.

How necessary a diligent reform of the monasteries in our province would be. Chapter 9.

How necessary a diligent reform of the monasteries in our province may be, you yourselves know, O fathers, who are not ignorant of the condition of the monks of this time. I have known it as known to you, with how great labors, expenses, and sweats the fathers once reformed our order; concerning them we find memorials, both few and weak, in our age. But among all the reforms of our order in our province, three most recently shone forth before the rest: namely the Castellan, taking its name from Castellum; the Melk, from Melk; the Bursfeld, from Bursfeld. All these, as they were fervent in the beginning, so, gradually cooling again, they approach their end. For the first two, as if worn out with age, have been reduced to a small number. The last, however, which is also the later, because it is still younger, also seems to be more steadfast. Yet even it nevertheless now seems to grow cool again in certain of its members, and to decline back again toward the laxity of the former life. So once the Cluniac reform, known throughout the whole world, when it carried itself far and wide, gradually failed, as though its strength had been lost through expansion. For it is said in the proverb: everything that grows old is near destruction. For a reform, however celebrated or holy it may have been, unless it is often renewed through the diligence of prelates, gradually vanishes. For the more it grows with time, the more it is diminished in fervor. For when those who demonstrated zeal for the order in deed had died, new abbots arose after them who, neglecting the holy fervor of reform, [unclear] into the former deformities they have fallen. And, to touch upon matters nearer at hand: where is that reform which Nicholas of Cusa, cardinal and legate, began with incredible zeal? Where are those terrible oaths of all the abbots of our province, by which they bound themselves to regular observance into the hands of the same cardinal, before the altar of Saint Stephen at Würzburg? Where is the promised regular observance? Behold, fathers, you have one hundred twenty-seven abbeys under your chapter; of these, from the three observances already mentioned, scarcely seventy have remained under reform. Yet there are, I do not doubt, some who think themselves excellently reformed; but their manner of life denies it. Would that the abbots would heed the threat, often repeated, of our holy lawgiver, in which he says that the government of souls is liable to a most exact accounting. Would that they compelled the sheep entrusted to them to the pastures of heavenly life, lest they themselves perish eternally with their sheep. Look at the manner of life of abbots as well as monks, reeking all around without the law of monastic propriety; of this, once known to me, it is shameful for me to speak, and dreadful for you, most reverend fathers, to hear. For the three vows of religion, which because of their excellence are called substantial, they care for no more than if they had never promised to observe them. They confound everything; they defile everything; they presume everything.

If we look to divine worship, they perform it so confusedly, so disorderly, so dissolutely, that neither do the words sound out their sense, nor the melody its proper tone. For they are devoid of all learning and of the good arts, so that they understand absolutely nothing of the things they sing. Hence it happens that without affection, without devotion, without the savor of inward sweetness, they do not so much discharge the canonical hours as confound them. In their hands the book of divine Scripture is never seen. The practice of edifying speech is never taken up. No account is ever taken of the formation of morals. The whole day is consumed in obscene rumors. All time is enslaved to games and feasting. No mention is ever made of reform. The madness of those at odds with one another rages, and among the cowls, peace having been broken, the monastery, with the law despised, [unclear] to insane lawsuits. Spears and sword are ready there, so that you would think what you see not a monastery but a stronghold of men at war.

Witnesses to their own possession, contrary to the statutes, contrary to the laws, contrary to the Rule, they each inhabit separate houses, in which they practice not the pursuits of monks but those of clerics. They neither fear God nor love him. They think nothing of the future life, since they put the concerns of the soul after the pleasures of the flesh. They do not read the Rule of monks; they do not heed the statutes; they despise the decrees of the fathers. They spurn the vow of poverty; they know nothing of chastity; they hold obedience in contempt. And would that, since they refuse to be chaste, they would at least deign to be continent. The filth of vices fumes all around; and what everyone knows, we alone, who are commanded to correct it, do not know. Why should I use many words? They commit so many, so great, so various illicit acts against the Rule of Saint Benedict that I would think it easier to establish a monk anew than to be able to amend the life of such men. For nothing of monastic propriety remains inviolate among them; instead everything lies neglected, everything despised, everything contemned and torn. Angers, quarrels, dissensions, envies, detractions, curses, oaths, insults, and things like these are not judged among them to be sins, because what is public has begun to be lawful. A place lies open to vices and crimes; virtue alone does not deserve admission. They laugh if anyone begins to give a discourse on penitence before them; and, as Mantuan says, they despise those above and Acheron alike. There is no fear of punishment, no dread of the judge. You would see among them, as if in the spring of all vices, pride, greed, lust, gluttony, sloth, anger, hatred, and every pleasure of the flesh abound; if they can grasp it, they rejoice; if they cannot, nevertheless they eagerly desire it. The oaths have collapsed in their filth, and, as though reason had been lost, they are unwilling to be called back to penitence.

O good God, to what great calamity has an order once exalted been brought, one which could deservedly have been preferred to all orders. O holy father Benedict, who once were so solicitous for your religion, why do you abandon us at the end? Why do you not look upon your inheritance? Why do you not come to the aid of your order, now already falling? Have you cast aside care for it?

Or has your soul come to abhor your sons? Help us. Come to our aid. Bring assistance, for never has your religious order been surrounded by such grave evils. Behold, it is destroyed from without by lovers of the world; behold, it is torn apart within by perverse monks, so that no one can easily discern which is the greater crime: for monasteries to be transferred into the hands of secular clerics, or to remain longer in the hands of such wicked monks.

Alas, holy father, what shall I say? You, when once instituting abbots, commanded them to be solicitous toward weak monks; now pastors have no care for the sheep, no diligence for the salvation of souls. All seek the things that are their own, and not those of Jesus Christ. Behold, father, your sons, having zeal, desire to come to the rescue, but they accomplish nothing, hindered by the rashness of the wicked.

Who, amid these things, will truly come to the aid? The bishop? But he cares for his own affairs; he seeks his own interests; he despises ours. The prince? But he sells favor, rejects discipline, seeks temporal things. There is no one who grieves over the ruin of your order, no one who comes to its aid, no one who renders assistance. All who can restore it neglect it; others who seem to have zeal for discipline try to help, but cannot.

O abbots, abbots, you who are the occasion of all evils in your monasteries, who, given over to vanities, do not at once correct delinquent monks: how harsh a sentence of damnation you will receive. To you, believe me, to you will be imputed the damnation of your monks, you who were set as their rulers and neglected to form their morals. Woe to you. It would be better if you had never been abbots. You, given over to avarice and lust, neglect the work of the Lord; you despise the care of souls; you think nothing of the path of observance.

You who ought to correct the vices of monks commit vices yourselves, and, lest your own be reproved, you pretend not to see those of others. You see, most honored fathers, what the state of your order is: what abbots, what monks; how those who might correct the wicked are lacking, and only those who quietly [unclear] among them come forward. Why, then, do you delay? Why do you not think about the reform of such men? Why do you not restrain the monks’ wicked pursuits? Their ill repute confounds us; their examples scandalize us, since the more numerous they are, the more [unclear]. Now then, father, come to the aid: they are your sons, your instituted ones.

[unclear] by those who do not know as preferable to action. Rise up, fathers, for the days are both short and evil. Reform, according to your powers, the order that has been deformed; raise up what has been cast down; restore what has collapsed. For unless you quickly apply a remedy, you will soon suffer grave harm.

For dissolute monks, enemies of regular discipline, always aspire to worse things, and, lest they be saved in the order, they strive to abandon it. For beginning reform you have the aids of law; you have the Rule; you have the statutes. This alone is required of you: that you put them into practice. Therefore, if you love your order, indeed because you love it, do not neglect it; do not delay, because the greatest necessity presses, since the impiety of perverse monks presumes everywhere. Behold, the rich of the world violently seize the goods of monasteries; behold, devotees of avarice invade the possessions of the order; behold, secular clerics receive the abbeys of Saint Benedict in commendam. None of these things would happen if abbots and monks had persevered in regular observance. Let us therefore impute to ourselves what we suffer, since we did not resist the rashness of wicked men from the beginning. To us, I say, this blame is justly ascribed, since, intent on our own advantages, we do not care for the losses of the order, as though they were another’s.

Rise up, I pray, fathers; rise up, even if late at last, after so many losses, after the perdition of so many souls, and let us do what lies within us, henceforth imploring the mercy of God, that he may supply what is lacking in us, direct our zeal, and bring holy endeavors to completion. And if we cannot bring the whole order back to unity of good conduct, let us strive at least to reform, [as far as possible?], those monks who are in our province. But if complete conformity cannot be had in all things, let them at least be reformed in three essentials, without which the life of monks is to be judged nothing other than the shameful brothel of an unfaithful soul.

Reform, moreover, must begin with the abbots, and thereafter be continued among the monks. For unless the shepherd has been brought back to sincerity, the health of the sheep will not endure long. For it is commonly said: when the head is sick, the other members suffer. Therefore every adornment of the body must begin from the head. There are certain unreformed abbots who, for the reform of their monks to conform; but they themselves do not wish to be subject to regular observance even in the least. They hate in themselves the good which they love in others, and they are not ashamed to do themselves what they forbid their subjects to do. Do not trust such men, fathers: for they are the ones who confound us; they spurn visitations; they despise the decrees of chapters. Let experience make us cautious, whom zeal without knowledge has sometimes made repentant.

That visitors ought to be solicitous for the reform of our order. Chapter 10.

But the chief force of reform is placed almost entirely in diligence. Therefore it is said in the constitutions of the fathers that suitable men should be deputed to the office of visitation, who by word and example can effectively instruct those to be visited in honorable conduct. For a visitor must be learned in divine law; he must be holy and irreproachable in life, so that by word he may teach the teachable, and by example instruct the obstinate. For one without the other will not suffice in a ruler of souls. For if he is ignorant, how will he instruct others? If his conduct does not provide those to be visited with an example of good action, how will he compel them to reform? He will indeed hear the objection of the proverb, which says: Physician, heal yourself. And not undeservedly. For by what presumption are you led, O wordy visitor, that you attempt to reform others, while until now you lie in your own deformity? You are polluted with the filth of vices, and will you be able to cleanse others? Believe me: the Holy Spirit will not give power to your words, when by a contrary life you offend his grace. Speech lacks efficacy in the heart of the hearer when the conduct of the preacher condemns it. What shall I say? I lie if it is not often the disobedient man who rebukes the disobedient, the foul man who defames the foul man, and he believes that he has escaped the witness, as though conscience were not enough. There are, I say, among those who denounce vices, vicious men; in public, accusers: [unclear][unclear] in secret [unclear]; against themselves they are at once censors and offenders. They condemn outwardly what they do inwardly. They willingly commit what, once they have committed it, they make a crime. It is boldness wholly characteristic of revilers, and shamelessness befitting the shameless. Often the avaricious man rebukes the greedy, the lustful man the immodest, the proud man the haughty, the criminal the base. What, fathers, what do you think? Can deceivers of this kind be found even among the visitors themselves? I dare not say it; yet I have experience of it. Many say many things; few show in deeds what they speak. They cannot reform themselves and their own, and yet they strive to force others to observance. They say great things and do the smallest. Foolish presumption, which, neglecting its own affairs, is carried away to those of others. He who is not sufficient for himself, for whom will he be sufficient? He who cannot bring himself and his own to amendment of life, when will he be able to amend others? I have said these things against those who are such men, who condemn in others what they scorn to amend in themselves. But as for zealous, good, and suitable visitors, of whom I have known several, I would not wish anything to have been said as an injury. But you, most excellent fathers, who have to choose visitors, take care to appoint better men to that office, if you desire to bring monks to regular observance. For the whole of regular discipline lies with the visitors: when continued it grows; when neglected it fails. Indeed, if the visitors diligently fulfill their office, they will preserve reformed monasteries in regular observance, and will easily bring unreformed ones back to a better state. But if they are negligent, even things well begun by others they would quickly destroy. For nothing so confounds unity, nothing so disturbs peace, nothing so injures charity, as the ignorance of visitors. It grows heated not by reason but by an undiscerning will. Experience has very often taught us what great disturbances, dissensions, angers, quarrels, slanders, and hatreds unskilled visitors have stirred up in congregations of monks: men for whom everything consists in command, and nothing in knowledge and charity. But I have said enough about this, lest I seem to accuse those whom, because of the dignity of their office, we are commanded to treat with honor.

How Dangerous the Government of Souls Is. Chapter XI.

If we considered how dangerous a thing the government of souls is, how heavy the burden of pastoral care, how subject it is to strict examination, it would be a wonder if ever in this life our heart presumed upon security. For Scripture says that very hard judgment will be made upon those who preside. For, as blessed Benedict attests in the Rule, the abbot will have to render an account to God for the souls of all the monks entrusted to him. Therefore he says: Let the abbot who has been ordained always consider what a burden he has undertaken, and to whom he will render an account of his stewardship. Certainly it is both a heavy and dangerous burden to render an account for the souls of many, since each person can scarcely answer for himself. O what will abbots devoted to earthly things answer to the supreme shepherd, who destroy the souls of their brothers by evil example, and feed them neither by word nor by deed? What shall I say about certain abbots of our order, who neither read the Rule of Saint Benedict which they profess, nor, if they read it, understand it? I would be lying if I said that I did not know abbots established under our chapter who are wrapped in such darkness of ignorance that they do not understand even the smallest sentence from the Rule. They neither know nor love the divine Scriptures; submerged in the vanities of the world, they vanish away, serving the desires of the flesh and not of the spirit. According to the precept of our lawgiver, the abbot ought to be learned in the divine law, so that he may know and have a source from which to bring forth new things and old; chaste, sober, merciful, and so forth. What will these men say, what will they teach, what exhortation will they give, who understand nothing of the holy Scriptures, nothing of regular discipline? O good God, to what misery our order has come, which once was full of most learned and most holy men. Where now is love of regular observance? Where is study of the Scriptures? Where do we find the traces of honorable conduct? Our abbots, with few exceptions, either given over to avarice or bound fast by the vanities of the world, think of nothing less than knowledge of the Scriptures, although many may consider them learned. But from their works the learning of their intellect is recognized. Now the greedy man is believed learned; now he is called religious who joins field to field, who keeps watch over earthly gains, who loosens his appetite for gathering riches. But believe me, fathers, since I am going to speak the truth: temporal riches do not make discipline stable in the order. O what a terrible sentence abbots will undergo: those who neglect the Rule, who do not go before their monks in word and by the example of holiness, who despise spiritual exercises, who devote themselves to earthly gains, who scorn the discipline of monastic honor. Would that they were wise and understood, and foresaw the last things; and either governed carefully the burden of so great a rule, or, if they could not, humbly laid it down. Happy is he who stands solicitous upon his watch, who always does the will of the Lord, who lives without pretense according to the purity of the Rule.

But for the present these things which we have said concerning the state and reformation of our order, as I believe, are sufficient; let the reading of them also obtain its end at the same boundary as the chapter. Moreover, all and each of the things which I have written in this treatise or in others, or shall write, I submit to the examination of the sacrosanct Roman Church, whose faith, doctrine, and definition, so long as I live, I wish always and everywhere to observe, teach, and defend. But if anything, which God forbid, has been said by me otherwise than she holds, teaches, and believes, I now by these presents simply revoke it, and wish it to be regarded as not said. By this my protestation I wish and hold the supreme pontiff, the vicar of Christ, to be in all things the judge and moderator of my faith and doctrine.

The present treatise was read in the provincial chapter of the order of Saint Benedict of the province of Mainz, celebrated at Hirsau at table, in the year of the Lord 1493, on Jubilate Sunday and on the following days until the end. With all the abbots gathered there wishing and consenting, it was decreed that it should be printed and in future provincial chapters always be read publicly at table, as is clear in the statutes.

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