THE HIGHEST POVERTY

Monastic Rules and Form-of-Life

Stanford University Press

Contents

Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

§ 1 Birth of the Rule

1.1. The fourth and fifth centuries of the Christian era witnessedthe birth of a peculiar literature that, at least at first glance, doesnot seem to have had precedents in the classical world: monasticrules. The set of texts that the tradition classifies under this rubricis, at least as concerns form and presentation, so diverse that theincipit of the manuscripts can only summarize them under verydiverse titles: vitae, vita vel regula, regula, horoi kataplatos, peri tesaskeseos ton makarion pateron, instituta coenobiorum, praecepta,praecepta atque instituta, statuta patrum, ordo monasterii, historiaemonachorum, asketikai diataxeis ... But even if we keep to thevery narrow conception of the term that underlies the Codex regularum,in which Benedict of Aniane collected around twenty-fiveancient rules at the beginning of the ninth century, the diversityof the texts could not be greater. This diversity appears not onlyas to dimensions (from the approximately three hundred pagesof the Regula magistri to the few sheets of the rule of Augustineor of the second Rule of the Fathers), but as to presentation (questionsand answers—erotapokriseis—between monks and masterin Basil, an impersonal collection of precepts in Pachomius, verbalproceedings of a gathering of Fathers in the Rule of the FourFathers). Above all, they are diverse in terms of content, whichranges from questions regarding the interpretation of Scriptureor the spiritual edification of monks to the dry or meticulousenunciation of precepts and prohibitions. These are not, at leastat first glance, juridical works, even though they claim to regulate,often in fine detail and through precise sanctions, the lifeof a group of individuals. They are not historical narratives, eventhough at times they seem to simply transcribe the way of lifeand habits of the members of a community. They are not hagiographies,even though they are frequently mixed together withthe life of the founding saint or Father to such a degree that theypresent themselves as recording it in the form of an exemplum orforma vitae (in this sense, Gregory Nazianzus could state that thelife of Anthony written by Athanasius was "legislation [nomothesia]for the monastic life in narrative form [en plasmati diegeseos]";Gregory Nazianzus, Oration 21). Although their ultimate goal isdoubtless the salvation of the soul according to the precepts of theGospel and the celebration of the Divine Office, the rules do notbelong to ecclesiastical literature or practice, from which they distancethemselves—not polemically but nonetheless firmly. Theyare not, finally, hypomneumata or ethical exercises, like those thatMichel Foucault has analyzed from the late classical world. Andyet their central preoccupation is precisely that of governing thelife and customs of men, both singularly and collectively.

The present study intends to show how, in these texts that areat once dissimilar and monotonous, the reading of which seemsso difficult to the modern reader, a transformation is carried out.This transformation—to an extent probably more decisive thanin the juridical, ethical, ecclesiastical, or historical texts of thesame era—collides with law as much as with ethics and politics.It also implies a radical reformulation of the very conceptualitythat up until that moment articulated the relationship betweenhuman action and norm, "life" and "rule," and without whichthe political and ethical-juridical rationality of modernity wouldbe unthinkable. In this sense, the syntagmas vita vel regula,regula et vita, regula vitae are not simple hendiadyses. Rather,in the present study they define a field of historical and hermeneuticaltensions which demands a rethinking of both concepts.What is a rule, if it seems to be mixed up with life withoutremainder? And what is a human life, if it can no longer be distinguishedfrom the rule?

1.2. The perfect comprehension of a phenomenon is its parody.In 1534, at the end of the Vie très horrifique du grand Gargantua,Rabelais recounts how Gargantua, in order to reward the monkwith whom he has shared his unedifying undertakings, has anabbey constructed for him which was to be called Thélème.After having described in all the particulars the architectonicstructure of the edifice (en figure exagone, en telle façon que àchascun angle estoit bastie une grosse tour, "hexagonal in shapein such a way that at each angle was built a stout round tower";Rabelais, pp. 41/118), the arrangement of the accommodations,the style of the vestments of the Thelemites and their age, Rabelaisexplains comment estoient reigléz leur manière de vivre, "howthey were regulated in their way of life," in a form that is, by allevidence, nothing but a parody of monastic rule. As in everyparody, it witnesses a point-by-point inversion of the monasticcursus, scrupulously articulated by the rhythm of the horologiaand the Divine Office, in what seems, at least at first glance, tobe an absolute lack of rules:

Et parce que ès religions de ce monde, tout est compassé, limité etreiglé par heures, feut decrété que là ne seroit horologe ny quadrantaulcun, mais selon les occasions et opportunitéz seroient toutes lesoeuvres dispensées ; car (disoit Gargantua) la plus vraye perte dutemps qu'il sceust estoit de compter les heures—quel bien en vientil?—etla plus grande resverie du monde estoit soy gouverner auson d'une cloche, et non au dicté de bon sens et entendement [Andbecause in the monasteries of this world everything is compassed,limited, and regulated by hours, it was decreed that there shouldnever be any clock or sundial whatever, but all works would be dispensedaccording to the occasions and opportunities; for, Gargantuaused to say, the greatest waste of time he knew of was to count thehours—what good comes of that? And the greatest folly in the worldwas to govern oneself by the ring of a bell and not at the dictation ofgood sense and understanding]. (Rabelais, pp. 37/116—17)

Toute leur vie estoit employée non par loix ou reigles, mais selon leurvouloir et franc arbitre. Se levoient due lict quand bon leur sembloit,beuvoient, mangeoient, travailloient, dormoient quand le désir leurvenoit ; nul le esveilloit, nul ne les parforceoit ny à boire ny à mangerny à faire chose aultre quelconque. Ainsi l'avoid estably Gargantua.En leur reigle n'estoit que ceste clause : FAY CE QUE VOULDRAS [Alltheir life was laid out not by laws, statues, or rules but according totheir will and free choice. They got up out of bed when they saw fit,drank, ate, worked, slept when they came to feel like doing so; noone woke them up, no one forced them either to drink or to eat orto do anything else whatever. Thus Gargantua had established it. Intheir rule was only this clause: DO WHAT YOU WILL]. (Rabelais, pp.60/127)

It has been said that Thélème "was the antimonastery" (Febvre,pp. 165/158). And yet if we look more closely, it is not simply a matterof an inversion of order into disorder and of rule into anomia.Even if contracted into only one sentence, a rule exists and hasan author (ainsi l'avoit estably Gargantua, "thus Gargantua hasestablished it"). And the end that it intends is, despite the point-by-pointdismissal of every obligation and the unconditionalliberty of each, perfectly homogenous with that of the monasticrule: "cenoby" (koinos bios, the common life), the perfection of acommon life in all and for all (unianimes in domo cum iocunditatehabitare, "live harmoniously in a house pleasantly," as an ancientrule has it):

Par ceste liberté entrèrent en louable émulation de faire tous ce que àun seul voyoient plaire. Si quelqu'un ou quelcune disoit : "beuvons,"tous beuvoient; si disoit: "jouons," tous jouoient; si disoit: "Allonsà l'esbat ès champs," tous y alloient [By this freedom they were allmoved by laudable emulation to do what they saw a single one liked.If some man or woman said: "Let's drink," they all drank; if one said:"Let's go play in the fields," they all went]. (Rabelais, pp. 61 /126)

The abbreviated formulation of the rule is not, however, aninvention of Rabelais, but goes back to the author of one of thefirst monastic rules, and still further, to Augustine, who, in hiscommentary on the First Epistle of John (7.4.8), had summarizedthe precept of the Christian life in the genuinely Gargantuan stipulation:dilige et quod vis fac, "love and do what you wish." Moreover,it corresponds precisely with the way of life of those monkswho were, according to a tradition inaugurated by Cassian, pejorativelynamed "Sarabaites" and whose sole rule was caprice anddesire (pro lege eis est desideriorum voluntas). The Rabelaisian parody,though comical in appearance, is thus so serious that one cancompare the episode of Thélème to the Franciscan foundation ofa new type of order (Gilson, pp. 265–66): the common life, byidentifying itself with the rule without remainder, abolishes andcancels it.

1.3. In i785, in his cell in the prison of the Bastille, DonatienAlphonse de Sade, filling a roll of paper twelve meters long witha minute calligraphy in only twenty days, wrote what many considerhis masterpiece: Les 120 journées de Sodome (The 120 Days ofSodom). The narrative frame is well known: on November 1 of anunspecified year at the end of the reign of Louis XIV, four powerfuland rich libertines—the duke of Blangis, his brother the bishop,the president of Curval, and the financier Durcet—lock themselvesaway with forty-two victims in the castle of Silling in orderto celebrate an orgy that would be without limits and yet perfectlyand obsessively regulated. Here as well, the model is unequivocallythe monastic rule. Yet while in Rabelais, the paradigm is evokeddirectly (Thélème is an abbey) in order to be precisely negated andreversed (no clocks, no divisions of time, no compulsory behavior),at Silling, which is a castle and not an abbey, the time is articulatedaccording to a meticulous ritualism that recalls the unfailing ordoof the monastic Office. Immediately after having been locked up(indeed walled up) in the castle, the four friends write and promulgatethe règlements ("statutes") that must govern their new commonlife. Not only is every moment of the "cenoby" fixed beforehand asin the monastery—the sanctioned rhythms of waking and sleeping,the rigidly programmed collective meals and "celebrations"—but even the boys' and girls' defecation is subject to meticulousregulation. On se lèvera tous les jours à dix heures du matin, demandsthe rule, parodying the scansion of the canonical hours, à onze heuresles amis se rendront dans l'appartement des jeune filles ... de deuxà trois heures on servira les deux premières tables ... en sortant dusouper, on passera dans le salon d'assemblée (this is the synaxis or collectaor conventus fratrum of monastic terminology) pour la célébration(the same term that in the rules designates the Divine Offices)de ce qu'on appelle les orgies ... ("the company shall rise every dayat ten o'clock in the morning ... at eleven o'clock, the friends shallrepair to the quarters appointed for the little girls ... from two tothree the first two tables shall be served ... the evening meal concluded,Messieurs shall pass into the salon for the celebration ofwhat are to be called orgies"; pp. 4i—43/24!—46).

Corresponding to the lectio of Holy Scripture (or of the textof the rule itself, as in the Regula magistri) that accompanied themeals and the daily occupations of the monks in monasteries, onefinds here the ritual narration that the four historiennes, la Duclos,la Champville, la Martaine, and la Desgranges, make of theirdepraved life. Corresponding to the unlimited obedience-untodeathof the monks toward the abbot and their superiors (oboedientiapraeceptum est regulae usque ad mortem; Fructuosus, Regulamonastica communis, chap. 5, p. iii5B), there is the absolute malleabilityof the victims to their masters, including extreme torture(le moindre rire, ou le moindre manque d'attention ou respect ou desoumission dans les parties de débauche sera une des foutes les plusgraves et les plus cruellement punies, "the least display of mirth, or theleast evidence given of disrespect or lack of submission during thedebauched activities shall be deemed one of the gravest of faults andshall be one of the most cruelly punished"; Sade pp. 44/248—in thesame sense, monastic rules punish laughter during gatherings: Sivero aliquis depraehensus fuerit in risu ... iubemus ... omni flagellohumilitatis coherceri, "if someone is caught laughing or using scurrilouslanguage ... we order that he be chastised in the name of theLord by every scourge of humility"; Vogüé 1, 1, pp. 202 —4/3D.

Here also then, as at Thélème, the cenobitic ideal is parodicallymaintained (indeed, exaggerated). But while life in the abbey,making pleasure their rule, ended by abolishing it, at Silling thelaws, in being identified at every point with life, can only destroyit. And while the monastic cenoby is conceived as lasting forever,here, after only five months, the four libertines, who have sacrificedthe life of their objects of pleasure, hastily abandon the bynow half-empty castle to return to Paris.

1.4. It can appear surprising that the monastic ideal, born as anindividual and solitary flight from the world, should have givenorigin to a model of total communitarian life. Nevertheless, assoon as Pachomius resolutely put aside the anchorite model, theterm monasterium was equivalent in use to cenoby and the etymologythat refers to the solitary life was dismissed to such a pointthat, in the Rule of the Master, monasteriale can be put forwardas a translation of cenobite, and is glossed as militans sub regulavel abbate ("serving under a rule and an abbot"; Vogüé 2, 1, pp.328/105). The rule of Basil was already on guard against the perilsand egotism of the solitary life, which "the doctrine of charitydoes not permit" (machomenon toi tes agapes nomoi; Basil, Regulaefusius tractatae, chap. 7). "It is impossible, indeed," adds Basil, "torejoice with him who receives an honor or to sympathize with himwho suffers when, by reason of their being separated from oneanother, each person cannot, in all likelihood, be kept informedabout the affairs of his neighbor" (ibid.). In the community of life(en tei tes zoes koinoniai), by contrast, the gift of each becomescommon to those who live together with him (sympoliteuomenon)and the activity (energeia) of the Holy Spirit in each is communicatedto all the others (ibid.). On the contrary, "he who livesalone ... and has, perhaps, one gift renders it ineffectual throughinoperativity (dia tes argias), since it lies buried within him (katoryxasen eautoi)" (ibid.). If to advise against solitude, "the desolationof the desert and the terror of various monsters" are invokedat the beginning of the Rule of the Four Fathers, immediatelyafterward cenoby is founded, through scriptural references, in thejoy and unanimity of the common life: volumus ergo fratres unianimesin domo cum iocunditate habitare ("therefore we desire thatthe brothers live harmoniously in a house pleasantly"; Vogüé 1, 1,pp. 182/17). The temporary suspension of common life (excommunicatio;ibid., pp. 202/31) is the punishment par excellence, whileleaving the monastery (ex communione discedere) is equivalent, inthe Regula Macharii, to choosing the infernal darkness (in exterioresibunt tenebras; Vogüé 1, 1, p. 386). Even in Theodore theStudite, cenoby is compared to paradise (paradeisos tes koinobiakeszoes), and leaving it is equivalent to the sin of Adam. "My son," headmonishes a monk who wants to retire to the solitary life, "howhas Satan the Evil One driven you out of the paradise of the commonlife, precisely like Adam who was seduced by the counsel ofthe serpent?" (Epistle 1, p. 938).

The theme of the common life had its paradigm in the Book ofActs, where the life of the apostles and of those who "devoted themselvesto the apostles' teaching" (Acts 2:42) is described in termsof "unanimity" and communism: "All who believed were togetherand had all things in common.... Day by day, as they perseveredunanimously [homothymadon] in the temple, they broke bread athome and ate their food with glad and sincere hearts" (Acts 2:44—46); "the whole group of those who believed were of one heart andone soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions,but everything they owned was held in common" (Acts 4:32). It is inreference to this ideal that Augustine's rule defines as the first goalof the monastic life "that you dwell in unity in the house, and thatyou have but one soul and one heart in God" (primum propter quodin unum estis congregati, ut unanimes habitetis in domo et sit vobisanima una et cor unum in Deo; Augustine, Regula ad servos Dei, pp.1377/17). And Jerome, who in 404 translated the rule of Pachomiusfrom a Greek version, in an epistle refers explicitly to the Copticterm that, in the original, defined those who lived in community:coenobitae, quod illi "sauses" gentili lingua vocant, nos "in communeviventes" possumus appellare ("There are the cenobites, whom theycall in their foreign tongue sauses; we may describe them as thosewho live in a community"; Epistle 22.34).

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(Continues...)Excerpted from THE HIGHEST POVERTY by Giorgio Agamben. Copyright © 2013 by Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. Excerpted by permission of STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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