Moralia in Job 7

Argument. 1. St. Gregory's monkhood beyond doubt. 2. Monks of old, as now, distinguished by a peculiar dress; and by the tonsure. 3. Baronius' opinion on the monastic institute of St. Gregory is refuted. 4. And ours is established. The praises given by St. Gregory to the life of St. Benedict and to his Rule. 5. It was observed in his monasteries. 6. He often employs its words. 7. It was also propagated in Valeria. 8. The cavils of the adversaries are refuted. 9. The testimony of the Council of Douzy concerning the Rule of St. Benedict. 10. Another most invincible argument, from the propagation of this Rule through St. Gregory's disciples. 11. Some objections are met. (Year 575.) 1.

That Gregory was a monk no man of sense and sound mind can deny, since he himself so often proclaims it of himself — both in the Dialogues, and in Homily 19 on the Gospels, and in the preface to the books of the Morals, that is, in the letter to St. Leander, where he weaves the history of his long-deferred conversion, [saying] that to change his outward dress would be burdensome to him, especially since he did not doubt that under a secular habit he could soldier for God. But, breathed upon by heavenly light, he broke off his delays, sought a monastery, and escaped naked from the shipwreck of the world. The same about him Gregory of Tours teaches, and marvels at his garments, precious and glittering with gems, changed into a lowly dress. 2. From these things it is sufficiently intimated that monastic garments, as now, so also of old were peculiar to monks;

on the proving of which I would not linger, did I not see scruples on this matter injected by certain critics. Indeed, this can be demonstrated more clearly than light from Gregory. In book 8, letter 5, he writes of the recruits who are candidates for the monastic life: 'According to the norm of the rule they ought to be tried in their own dress for three years, and then, God being the author, to receive the monastic habit.' In letter 8 of the same book: 'Nor, having cast off the religious garments, to return to the secular habit.' In letter 9 of the same place: 'Having cast off the religious garments which he had of his own accord assumed, he disfigured himself with lay garments.' In book 9, letter 114, he calls the monastic habit a 'sacred garment.' The same is established from Homily 10 on Ezekiel, no. 8.

I pass over very many other testimonies, in heaping up which I would waste time in vain. As by a distinctive dress, so also by the tonsure were monks distinguished; which St. Benedict clearly teaches in his Rule, ch. 1, concerning false monks, saying: 'They are known to lie to God by the tonsure.' This too is clearly established from St. Gregory, book 11, letter 50, where he orders the husband of Agathosa — who had become a monk against her will — to be given back, 'even if he has already been tonsured'; that is, even if after his probation he has already changed his dress and received the monastic tonsure. Read also book 10, letter 24. That the tonsure was likewise the mark of cenobitic monks, not of hermits, among the Greeks, we learn from Theodore the Studite, book 11, letter 137. 3.

Having briefly observed these things, and only as occasion offered, let us weigh Baronius' opinion concerning the monastic institute of St. Gregory, whose author he contends to have been not St. Benedict but St. Equitius; on no other ground than that the first abbot of St. Andrew, Valentius, appears to have been sought from a monastery of the province of Valeria, in which the institution of St. Equitius flourished — as is clear, he says, from a twofold testimony of Gregory. Let us therefore hear the holy Doctor speaking of himself: 'Valentius of venerable life [read Valentio], who afterwards, in this Roman city, presided, as you know, over my [the words "and my" are missing] monastery, first governed his own monastery in the province of Valeria.' By what force or art can it be wrung from these words that Valentio was the first [abbot] of the monastery of St.

Andrew's first abbot and founder? What is there here about Equitius, or an Equitian institute, to which Valentio was attached? But, says Baronius, Gregory relates certain things about St. Equitius which he professes to have learned from Valentio his abbot. Now Valentio had known these things while he was living in the monastery of St. Equitius, which alone is found to have been famous at that time in the province of Valeria. As though, forsooth, living in some neighboring monastery — whether of Valeria or of some bordering region — he could not have known a miracle spread abroad by public report. And so, by the testimonies brought forward by Baronius, it is by no means proved that Valentio was a disciple of St. Equitius and a follower of his institute; nay, the contrary is elicited from the two passages compared with each other. For in book 1

of the Dialogues, ch. 4, Gregory asserts that Equitius after his death protected his disciples against the Lombards and delivered them from death. But in book 4, ch. 21, he relates that the Lombards hanged two monks from the monastery of the abbot Valentio on the branches of a tree, who died on the same day. From another quarter, moreover, it is sufficiently clear that, when he says Valentio had first governed his own monastery in Valeria, by 'his own' he understood a monastery founded not by Equitius or by another, but by Valentio himself — in which sense he always calls the Roman ascetery of St. Andrew 'his own.' Let fair readers therefore judge whether these arguments of the most eminent writer persuade [us] that St.

Gregory received his institute not from the neighboring monks of Cassino inhabiting the Lateran monastery — as the common opinion held before Baronius — but from monks stationed far off in Valeria; and whether they ought to outweigh the very weighty reasons by which we claim the most holy man for the Benedictine family. 4. It is established from what has been said above that, long before Gregory thought of the monastery of St. Andrew, the deeds, miracles, and writings — namely the Rule — of St. Benedict were known to him. How highly he esteemed this Rule he reveals in book 2 of the Dialogues, ch. 36: 'He wrote,' he says, 'a Rule for Monks, remarkable for discretion, luminous in language.' But of any Rule composed by Equitius he nowhere makes mention. Meanwhile I am silent about St.

Gregory was rather an admirer of the life of St. Benedict than a writer of it, for the delineating of which the whole second book of the Dialogues scarcely sufficed: for elsewhere too he still often breaks out here and there into the praises of St. Benedict; but of Equitius he speaks only in the single chapter 4 of book 1. How then, having conceived so great an esteem of St. Benedict and of his laws and institutes, would that man, most loving of monastic perfection, have sought for himself and his monastery any other rule than the 'Rule of Monks, remarkable for discretion'? 5. And when he calls it the 'Rule of Monks,' he sufficiently shows that it is to be preferred to the rest, if any others were already received in the West. Of the same he doubtless speaks in book 11, letter

48, when he writes to the abbot Urbicus about the monk Catellus: 'We have recognized that he is no monk; for, out of the small blessing (eulogia) which the monk Bonus received, by demanding a share, he did not in the least fear to make a quarrel on the journey. From how great a bitterness of heart this proceeded, your charity will be able to know, if he had been willing to know the Rule of Monks.' Namely the Rule of St. Benedict, ch. 54, concerning blessings (eulogiae) or any small gifts not to be received without the abbot's command, and ch. 34, where the evil of murmuring is enjoined to be cut off before all things; and it is guarded against, lest, on the occasion of procuring necessary things for oneself, so much vileness should creep in. Urbicus had been provost in the monastery of St. Andrew, or at least in another [monastery of St.

...] founded in Sicily by the munificence of Gregory, as appears from letter 6 of book 5 — afterwards abbot of the monastery of St. Hermas at Panormus (Palermo), one of the six Gregorian monasteries, in the ordering of which, by the authority of the most holy pontiff, he discharged as it were the office of general provost, as is clear even from the aforesaid letter 48 of book 11. But on what ground does Gregory urge against Urbicus and the monks subject to him the 'Rule of Monks,' that is, the Rule of St. Benedict — designated by this title thereafter here and there in Councils and among ecclesiastical writers — unless because they were bound to its precepts? But if this Rule was held as law in the Sicilian monasteries founded by Gregory, why not also in the Andrean monastery at Rome? 6.

Certainly Gregory seems so accustomed to, and as it were nourished on, the Benedictine Rule, that he employs its words everywhere. In St. Benedict, by the name 'congregation' is understood an assembly of monks; and in the same sense it occurs a hundred times in Gregory's Letters, as in letter 48 of book 11. We have observed the same of the word 'utility' (utilitas) taken for useful things. In book 10, letters 32 and 61, he calls the divine office 'the work of God' (opus Dei), which those who have read his Rule know to be familiar to St. Benedict. Elegantly does St. Benedict, in the Rule, ch. 64, admonish the abbot that he ought 'to profit rather than to preside.' And St. Gregory, Morals, book 21, no. 22: 'nor do they rejoice to preside, but to profit.' St. Benedict enjoins the abbot, Rule, ch. 64:

'Let him hate vices, let him love the brethren'; and St. Gregory, in letter 42 of book 11 to the abbot Cono, writes: 'Love the persons, persecute the vices.' In letter 29 of book 12 St. Gregory says: 'For whatever is done amiss by an inferior looks back upon the person set in the higher place' — surely imitating St. Benedict, who in the Rule, ch. 36, says: 'whatever is done amiss by the disciples looks back upon him (the abbot).' In St. Benedict 'responsum' (a response) is the same as an errand or piece of business. Chapter 51: 'The brethren who set out on any errand (responsum).' So too in the holy Doctor, especially at the beginning of the letter to Leander prefixed to the books of the Morals: 'When the business (responsa) of the Apostolic See constrained me there.'

Throughout both authors 'eulogiae' is used for small gifts, and 'solatium' for aid. Not rarely the same holy Lawgiver calls the superior of a monastery 'prior,' as in chapter 53. So too St. Gregory in Book 25 of the Morals, no. 36, and often elsewhere. In Homily 40 on Ezekiel, in no. 31, we read: 'By the very zeal with which he corrected others, he takes himself to task, and he blushes to entertain the unclean thoughts which he recalls having corrected in others.' He had read almost the same in the Rule of St. Benedict, chapter 2, 'What kind of man the abbot ought to be,' in two places, and especially at the end: 'When he administers correction to others through his admonitions, he himself is made corrected of his faults.' In the third Roman council, held in the year

the year 601, in forbidding public Masses to be celebrated in monasteries, lest the quiet of the servants of God be disturbed by crowds of people and the approach of women, he adds: 'Which is in no way expedient for their souls' — the very words that stand in the Rule of Benedict, chapter 66. But in his Exposition of the first book of Kings he still more frequently employs the very sentiments and words of the Benedictine Rule; and no wonder, since he was then an abbot, and in these homilies was training his own disciples to the perfection of the monastic life. In the preface to this commentary you will find very many turns of phrase drawn from the praised Rule, which we have taken care to collect; of which we will now bring forward only this one passage, yet one so luminous that to prove St.

Gregory was a disciple of blessed Benedict it would suffice. 'Wherefore,' he says, 'the best master also of that most strait life, the disciple of the highest Truth, gives command, saying: Test the spirits, whether they be of God; and again: Let the hard and rough things through which the way to God lies be announced to him, that he may know for what he is entering' — which stand in chapter 58 of the Rule in almost these very words. For the rest, to claim and assert that commentary for Gregory in this place would be superfluous, since we have accomplished that in the preface set before it. Nor yet do we deny that some things were added by the abbot Claudius; but if you should wish the things drawn from the Rule of St. Benedict to be attributed to Claudius, the same argument remains about the Benedictine Rule in the monastery of St.

Andrew's monastery, once received by our adversaries, remains to be dissolved. For Claudius was indeed a pupil of this ascetery, and, placed under the discipline of the abbot Gregory, had taken down what the holy father had discoursed upon and expounded from the books of Kings, as he himself testifies in Book 12, letter 24. If therefore Claudius, a son of St. Gregory, served as a soldier under the Rule of St. Benedict in the Andrean monastery, what should be thought of the father? Section 7. Now, in order to overturn the very foundation of Baronius's opinion, it must be proved that the Rule of St. Benedict had been propagated in Valeria; nay, that it alone flourished there when at that time Valentio was governing a monastery in that province. And this is clearly shown from the letter of the abbot Fundanus to Simplicius, the third abbot after St.

Benedict abbot of the monastery of Cassino, is clearly demonstrated; a letter which Mabillon exhibits in full in the preface to Volume I of the Acts of the Saints, and again defends in the Benedictine Annals, Book 6, no. 2. The sum of the letter is that at that time all the monasteries of Campania, Samnium, Valeria, Tuscany, Liguria, and of other provinces of Italy had decreed, their particular Rules dismissed, to observe the Benedictine Rule. This letter Lucas Holstenius, that learned prefect of the Vatican library, examined in a manuscript copied by hand, and approved it by his own reckoning. Mabillon too reviewed the same codex and observed no marks of fraud in it. Therefore a little after St.

Benedict's death, the monasteries even of Valeria — although perhaps earlier instituted by Equitius — were following the Rule of the most holy Lawgiver. Nor is it a wonder that those monasteries to which St. Equitius had assigned no fixed Rule afterward took up that Rule of the Monks, especially notable for its discretion. Nay rather, it would seem close to a miracle that the Rule of St. Benedict — which, as soon as it was composed, was observed in twelve monasteries near Subiaco, afterward within a short interval of time established in the monasteries of Cassino and Terracina, and, while St. Benedict was still living, disseminated in Sicily and a little after in Gaul, sought after and cultivated by the Spaniards — should, right up to the times of St.

Gregory should have remained entirely unknown and neglected in the province of Valeria, situated not far from Subiaco; so that one might argue with Baronius thus: Valentio was a monk and abbot in Valeria; therefore, entirely free from the laws of St. Benedict, he was obeying some Rule other than the Benedictine. Section 8. I know that Gallonius, an upholder of Baronius's opinion, doubted the genuineness of the letter of the abbot Fundanus, because, he says, the names of Bernard and Hugo, unknown in that age, are found in it. But the name of Bernard is no more expressed in this letter than is that of Bartholomew, or of Barnabas, and so on, since only the letter B of the abbreviated word is observed.

Although this name Bernart would seem not to be much foreign to the language of the Goths, in which are found many words ending in '-hart,' various examples of which the abbot Smaragdus sets forth in his Commentary on Donatus, Book 2, chapter 10. And no wonder, since, after the Goths had long occupied Italy, some of that nation were converted in the monasteries of Italy and afterward made abbots. And indeed in the seventh century among the bishops of Cremona one is reckoned by the name of Bernard, in the Sacred Italy, Volume IV. As for the other name, noted by Gallonius as unusual in that age, Hugo or Ugo, it also seems to smack of a Gothic origin, or a Teutonic, that is, Germanic, one:

for nothing occurs more frequently among those northern peoples, whose origin is one, than words ending in '-God' or '-Goth.' Nor ought Gallonius, on account of a single little word, to have brought a whole letter into suspicion of fraud, especially since he himself was the first to publish from the Vatican codex certain verses about our Simplicius, which plainly teach that he propagated the Rule of St. Benedict among all. About these verses, as about this whole argument, read Mabillon, Volume II of the Analecta, page 200 and following. Section 9. Third point. Although it is not my intention to dispute about the well-known Sublacensian privilege, by which they say that St. Gregory in a synod confirmed the Rule of St. Benedict, and proposed it to be observed by all monks in the Latin Church:

yet that this was at some time done by the most holy pope we can scarcely doubt, after that luminous testimony of the second Council of Douzy (in the year 874), chapter 7: 'The same Rule (of St. Benedict), promulgated by the Holy Spirit, and by the authority of praise of the blessed pope Gregory, was decreed to be held among the canonical scriptures and the writings of the catholic doctors.' Since this cannot be referred to chapter 36 of Book 2 of the Dialogues (for although the Rule of St. Benedict is praised in that place, yet no decree about it is read there), it is nearly certain that St. Gregory declared this matter in a synod. There is added the authority of Boniface IV and of the Roman council of the year 610.

For when a controversy had arisen between clerics and monks concerning ecclesiastical duties, Boniface and the Fathers of the synod judged that the dispute was to be ended by the Rule of St. Benedict, inasmuch as it had already been reckoned by a statute among the canonical writings of the Church, and they decreed that monks were not to be barred from the sacred ministries: 'For neither,' says the pontiff, 'was Benedict, the teacher of monks, in any way a forbidder of this thing.' Section 10. Fourth point. There remains another argument, and that a most invincible one, which is drawn from the promulgation of the Benedictine Rule in England through the monks of the Roman monastery of St. Andrew sent by Gregory the Great;

but that we reserve for another place, and will treat more opportunely, when the conversion of the English to the Christian faith, through the work of those monks, comes to be dealt with. Meanwhile, however, let us reply to certain objections, which remain to be resolved, against our opinion here asserted, whether already raised or to be raised. Section 11. Gregory, you will say, established certain things very much at variance with the Rule of St. Benedict. For whereas the probation of novices is scarcely extended to a full year, according to chapter 58 of Benedict's Rule, St. Gregory in Book 10, letter 24, writes to Fortunatus, bishop of Naples:

'Let your fraternity more strictly forbid in all monasteries that those whom they have received for conversion, before they have completed two years in the monastic life, should in any way dare to be tonsured.' Therefore Gregory had not embraced the Rule of St. Benedict, which in this part he disapproved. I answer that St. Benedict, although he does not prolong the time of the novices' probation beyond a year, nevertheless in no way forbids it to be extended further; wherefore in most Benedictine congregations of stricter observance a two-year period is imposed for the probation of the converted brethren, and monks assigned to the choir are sometimes, for just causes, tested beyond a year, without injury to the honor of St. Benedict and his Rule. But why St.

Gregory assigned a two-year period for exercising and testing the novices in the monasteries of the diocese of Naples, he himself teaches in these words: 'It has come to us that a certain Mauricius, who was recently converted in the monastery of Barbacianus, having taken other monks along with him, departed by flight from that same monastery. In this matter this haste vehemently accuses the aforesaid Barbacianus for us, who rashly tonsured a secular man, and one not previously tested.' Assuredly the apostasy of so many monks rashly admitted before sufficient probation was a reason not to be despised for decreeing that thereafter they should be exercised and tested for two years, before they should make profession. Some also object, with Cardinal Baronius, that St.

Gregory forbade adolescents to be received into monasteries before the eighteenth year of their age, as is clear from letter 50 of Book 1. But this manifestly conflicts with the Rule of St. Benedict, which in chapter 59 permits even infants, devoid of freedom and reason, offered by their parents, to be received in monasteries. We reply that that decree of Gregory the Great was promulgated not for all monasteries, but only for those which had been founded on certain islands of the Tyrrhenian Sea; and this the holy pontiff sufficiently intimates when he writes thus: 'But because the community of monks on the islands is hard, we forbid even boys to be received into those same monasteries (of the island of Eumorphiana) before the age of eighteen years....'

'this too we wish you to observe in all respects in Palmaria and the other islands.' We have, therefore, a reason why he forbids adolescents not yet of mature age to be received and to become monks on these islands. For the manner of living in those places was hard and rough, whether on account of the unhealthy air, or on account of the barrenness of the soil; nor were there strength enough in tender age to endure it. These are the weight of the arguments by which the most eminent writer of the Ecclesiastical Annals, or the upholders of his opinion, have attempted to overthrow the opinion — confirmed by the consensus of nearly all learned men and held for so many centuries — concerning St. Gregory's monastic life according to the laws of St. Benedict.

Whether the preconceived opinion collapses under the mass of those engines, or stands unshaken, let the wise reader judge. On this controversy our Mabillon wrote at length and learnedly, after his manner, both in the preface to Volume I of the Acts of the Saints, and in a separate dissertation On the Monastic Life of Gregory the Great in Volume II of the Analecta, and in the Benedictine Annals, Book 6, and in Appendix I, where in the second part, section 6, the weightiest writers from the death of St. Gregory who favor our cause are enumerated; from mentioning whom we abstain, both because after so many weights of reasons we scarcely need witnesses, and because the multitude and magnitude of things to be said in this controversy does not permit us to linger longer.

Now let us examine what Gregory did in the monastery, and how much he advanced in the pursuit of the virtues.