Tertio, quomodo comedendum
The Call to Cleanliness at Table
The chapter opens by introducing the topic of proper observance in eating, emphasizing cleanliness and temperance as essential monastic virtues.
Finally, there is the matter of observance in food — how one ought to take one's meals. This means how cleanly and how temperately. It should suffice to give a few examples of uncleanness in eating, so that when it is noticed in certain of its forms, it can easily be avoided everywhere through similarity.
Examples of Unclean Eating
Five vivid examples of slovenly and undisciplined behavior at table are given, each illustrating a different form of uncleanness in eating.
Some, while eating, wanting to empty their plates, wrap square pieces of the serving dishes — the fat or the dripping grease running down — in the table linens or pile them on top, until, the insides scraped out again, they put back in their original place whatever had remained. Others, while drinking, plunge their fingers into the cups up to the middle joint. Others wipe their greasy hands on their own garments and then go back to handling the food. Others fish for their vegetables with bare fingers instead of a spoon, so that in the very same broth the hand seems to be seeking both washing and refreshment for the belly.1 Others keep putting half-eaten crusts and bitten-off pieces of bread back into the dishes by repeating the process, and — about to make lumps of the remnants from their teeth — submerge them in their cups.
The Shame of Undisciplined Eating
The author reflects that such behaviors are shameful to hear about, yet more shameful to practice, and concludes the discussion of uncleanness as a sufficient warning.
These things, just as we said above, would have been shameful for those speaking about them to hear, if they had not been taken up by those actually doing them. But now let the one who did not want to exercise discipline in the doing endure the shame of hearing about it. Still, let what has been said by way of example about the uncleanness of undisciplined eating be enough.
Temperance and the Limits of Rule-Making
Temperance in eating is defined as eating slowly and in proper measure, though the author declines to set a fixed rule due to individual differences.
By temperance in eating we mean this: that a person eat slowly and not with excessive haste. In this matter, we do advise everyone to keep within proper bounds and measure, yet we have not presumed to lay down any fixed rule, because, as we already said above, one person is one way and another is another.
Closing Exhortation and Prayer
The chapter closes with a brief exhortation to the brothers to pray for goodness, followed by a liturgical Amen.
This much we have said to you, brothers, for now, about knowledge and discipline. But pray for goodness, that God may give it to you. Amen.
Read the original Latin
Postremo est observatio in cibo, quomodo quis cibum sumere debeat. Hoc est quam munde et quam temperate. De immunditia comedendi pauca exempla proferre sufficiat, ut dum in quibusdam suis partibus cernitur, facile per similitudinem ubique caveatur. Quidam inter comedendum dum scutellas exonerare volunt, quadrata ferculorum frusta adipem sive saginam superroratam distillantia mensalibus involvunt aut super injiciunt, donec iterum evisceratis interioribus ea quae remanserant, in pristinum locum reponant. Alii bibentes, digitos mediotenus poculis immergunt. Alii unctas manus ad vestimenta sua detergentes, rursus ad cibaria tractanda redeunt. Alii nudis articulis coclearis vice olera sua piscantur, ita ut in eodem jure et manus ablutionem et venter refectionem quaerere videatur. Alii semicorrosas crustas et praemorsas collyridas cibariis iterando infigunt, et reliquias dentium suorum offas facturi in poculis demergunt.
Haec, sicut supra diximus, dicentibus erubescenda fuerant, si a facientibus praesumpta non fuissent. Nunc autem sustineat in audiendo verecundiam, qui noluit in faciendo habere disciplinam. Verumtamen haec de immunditia indisciplinate manducantium ad exemplum dicta sufficiant. Temperantiam manducandi intelligimus in eo, si tractim homo et non cum nimia festinatione comedat; ubi nos quidem quantum fieri potest modum et mensuram omnes tenere suademus, legem tamen nullam dare praesumsimus, quia, sicut jam supra diximus, alius sic et alius sic. Haec vobis, fratres, de scientia et disciplina interim nos diximus: Bonitatem vero orate ut vobis det Deus. Amen.
Notes
- 1 ↩The Latin plays on the double sense of the hand in the broth — it looks as though the hand is both washing itself and serving the stomach's appetite at the same time. The translation preserves this irony.
De Institutione Novitiorum (On the Instruction of Novices) companion
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