Quid in singulis locis agendum
The Principle of Place-Specific Conduct
The novice is taught that proper monastic discipline requires adapting one's conduct to each distinct place—church, refectory, conversation room, cloister, and public versus private settings.
It is necessary to consider not only what you do, but also what you ought to do in each particular place. The way you carry yourself in the place where God is worshipped is different from the way you carry yourself where the body is refreshed. It is different in the place set aside for conversation, and different where silence is kept. In short, it is one thing indoors, another outdoors; one thing in private, another in public.
Discipline as Witness and Example
Discipline must be guarded most carefully where its neglect causes scandal or where its observance offers an edifying example to others.
And although a person should never abandon their discipline in any place, it must be kept more carefully and more diligently precisely where neglecting it causes scandal for many, or where keeping it sets an example worth imitating.1
Discerning What Is Essential and What Is Flexible
The novice must learn to discern which disciplinary practices are inviolable and which may be adapted according to circumstances of place and time.
So we must discern which practices can never be relaxed in the keeping of discipline, and which ones, depending on place and time, may now be set aside and now be taken up again.
Private Practice as the Root of Public Integrity
Public discipline must be rooted in private practice; without it, the monk will either scandalize others by his failure or expose himself to ridicule by pretending to a virtue he does not possess.
And yet the things required in public often demand that you first practice them in private, because if we completely neglect them in secret, we shall not be able to use them when the need arises in public. And then we either fall short of discipline entirely and cause scandal to those watching, or we try to fake what we do not actually possess and provoke ridicule.
Read the original Latin
Non solum autem quid agat, sed etiam in quo loco quid agere debeat, consideret necesse est. Alius est modus habendi in eo loco ubi Deus adoratur, alius in eo ubi corpus reficitur. Alius in eo qui locutioni deputatus est, alius in eo ubi silentium custoditur. Alius denique intus, alius foris, alius in secreto, alius in publico. Et, quamvis in nullo loco disciplinam suam homo deserere debeat, diligentius tamen et magis sollicite ibi conservanda est, ubi vel neglecta pluribus generat scandalum, vel custodita bonae imitationis exemplum. Discernendum est igitur quae sint illa quae in custodienda disciplina nusquam intermitti possunt, et quae rursum illa sint quae pro loco et tempore nunc intermitti, nunc exerceri volunt. Saepe tamen illa quae in publico necessaria sunt, quemdam prius in secreto exercitationis usum exposcunt, quia si ea prorsus in occulto negligimus, uti postmodum eis dum opus est in publico non valemus. Et tunc aut prorsus a disciplina deficientes intuentibus scandalum facimus, aut inepte id quod in nobis non est simulare conantes, irrisionem excitamus.
Notes
- 1 ↩bonae imitationis exemplum rendered as 'example worth imitating' to capture the sense of a model for others' good imitation; could also be read as 'example of good imitation.'
De Institutione Novitiorum (On the Instruction of Novices) companion
Keep the novice's rule going, one morning at a time
The Chosen Portion app serves a short historic devotional reading and prayer each day, so your new rule has content waiting for you every morning.
Hugh trained novices with fixed daily portions of instruction; Chosen Portion continues that method by delivering one fixed devotional portion each day.
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- Texts drawn from 78 works of royal and monastic devotion, 1000-2020
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