Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| Chapter XIII. How wrong it is considered for any one to say that anything, however trifling, is his own.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter XIII.
How wrong it is considered for any one to say that
anything, however trifling, is his own.
Among their other
practices I fancy that it is unnecessary even to mention this virtue,
viz., that no one is allowed to possess a box or basket as his special
property, nor any such thing which he could keep as his own and secure
with his own seal, as we are well aware that they are in all respects
stripped so bare that they have nothing whatever except their shirt,
cloak, shoes, sheepskin, and rush mat;768
| 768 Psiathium.
The rush mats which served as a seat by day and a bed by night for the
monks. See Book V. xxxv., and the Conferences I. xxiii.; XV. i.; XVII.
iii.; XVIII. xi. S. Jerome mentions it in his preface to the Rule of
Pachomius as one of the very few articles contained in the cells of the
monks of Tabenna. “They have nothing in their cells except a mat
and what is described below: two ‘lebitonaria,’ a kind of
garment without sleeves which the Egyptian monks use (the colobium, or
shirt), one old one for sleeping or working, a linen garment and two
hoods, a sheepskin, a linen girdle, shoes, and a staff.” |
for in other monasteries as well, where some indulgence and relaxation
is granted, we see that this rule is still most strictly kept, so that
no one ventures to say even in word that anything is his own: and it is
a great offence if there drops from the mouth of a monk such an
expression as “my book,” “my tablets,”
“my pen,” “my coat,” or “my shoes;”
and for this he would have to make satisfaction by a proper penance, if
by accident some such expression escaped his lips through
thoughtlessness or ignorance.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
