going to the Rule of the Master a little more in detail. I want to warn you, sisters, that I am not speaking in front of an audience now. because the tape which I tried to do yesterday afternoon in discussion or in the class with the novices didn't come out. So I'm going to try to tape this side without someone listening to me. Now there's a problem there with dynamics because I'm not used to just talking to myself in this way. But what I'd like to do this afternoon is to give you some sort of a feel for the Rule of the Master, because we'll be looking later on at the relationship of the Rule of the Master to the Rule of Benedict. This Rule of the Master, which we've been talking about, is a 6th century Italian document. It is found in a collection of ancient monastic rules which were already collected together in the 9th century by Benedict of Anion.

[01:05]

We will see that for many years it wasn't paid too much attention to because people thought it was merely a paraphrase of the Rule of Benedict. The Rule of the Master is a rule which is three times the length of the Rule of Benedict. And it is a real rule for monks. It has a spiritual doctrine section and a discipline section of the monastery. To give you some feel for what this Rule of the Master is like, let us take a look at the aspects of community in the Rule of the Master. The community is not very large as it is prescribed in the Master's Rule. It consists of 26 persons, an abbot, an assailor, and then two deaneries of 10 monks each with two provosts or two deans over each 10 monks. And so the master's rule legislates for a community of 26 people.

[02:12]

This deanery system is something which we find in ancient monastic tradition. For instance, we'll see later on in Bokombian monasticism that the monks were divided up into smaller groups with superiors over them, and these groups were then joined together into a larger community. And we even find in the Rule of Benedict a certain vestige of this or an allusion to it with regard to deaneries which are possible in the Monastery of Benedict. The provosts over the ten monks are the lieutenants, you might say, of the abbot. And their job is to make sure that the monks obey the discipline and the doctrine that the abbot has preached. Their mission is one of surveillance. They have a real authority over their men. They also organize the community on the weekly rotation of duties, as for instance in the kitchen and other places.

[03:14]

They give instructions to the people who can't read and also to those who are learning the Psalter. Now, the cellar does not belong to one of the deaneries. He is placed under the immediate supervision of the abbot. And his department is the cellar, that is, all the provisions for eating, the kitchen utensils, the plates, and the dishes. He has really also charge of all of the material goods of the monastery. He takes care of the various tools. He even has charge of the wardrobe, the sacristy, the treasury, the library, and in general, looks over all the material goods. In the monastery of the Master we have two men who are porters at the gatehouse, and we also have various artisans who do artsy-craftsy things. The monks take turn in the services of the monastery by week. And so we find, for instance, two weekly servers in the kitchen who take care of all the necessities of the community for eating.

[04:23]

And they also clean the kitchen and the refectory. There is a weekly reader for the refectory. There are two men or two monks who are appointed to be the ones who wake the monks up for the night office. And these weekly servers are usually chosen from the same deanery, and then the dean, deaneries, rotate week by week. When we take a look at the community itself, we notice that there is no order in the community, as for instance you find in the Rule of Benedict, where it says that monks will keep the order of their profession. Rather, in the Rule of the Master, there is no specific order, because the abbot, before he dies, will appoint his successor, and he's going to appoint the monk who is the most perfect in the monastic way of life. And so the monks are constantly vying with one another, that is if they have any ambition to be abbot, to be the more perfect monk so that they can be appointed abbot.

[05:32]

Now the abbot doesn't want to show his hand before time, so he keeps rearranging the monks in their order within the community so that nobody has any suspicion who will be the next abbot. In the community there are also distinctions among the brothers according to whether they can read or not. And so the brothers who can read are called the literati. those who know how to read. And brothers who know the Psalter are called the Psalterati. Now the Psalterati have the privilege of being invited to the table of the abbot. No one else in the community will be invited to the abbot's table to eat with them, only those who know the Psalter by heart. There is no novice master, as we know of, in the rule of the master. Rather, the abbot himself takes care of the formation of the new monks who come into the monastery.

[06:37]

And then we see that the provosts, or the deans, teach the people how to read and also teach them the Psalter. If we take a look at the monastery itself of the master, we find that it must be a rather small place, because everything is within sort of hearing distance. One, for instance, the refectory is within hearing distance of the chapel or the oratory. And the seller and his wardrobe or his storehouse is in hearing distance of the oratory. Because if a monk can't come to choir, for instance, he's working in the kitchen or working at his craft, he can call out from where he is to the people who are in the choir and say, remember me in your prayers. It's very interesting in the Rule of the Master that there's a chapter saying how far can a monk be away from the oratory and be excused from coming to the work of God. And it says 95 steps, which is rather a short distance.

[07:38]

But it says that anything over 95 steps, the monk doesn't have to come to the divine office because he would have to run to get there in time for it to start and thus he would be out of breath and he would lose some of his prayer. So he remains where he is in hearing distance of the oratory and says the prayer with the community. So we have in the monastery an oratory, which is the center of the monastery, and here in the center of the oratory stands the altar. In passing, the rule of the master does not legislate for the Eucharist to be celebrated in the community. Rather, every Sunday the whole community goes out of the monastery to the parish church. and there the abbot receives the consecrated bread for the following week. And so they bring back to the monastery the consecrated bread.

[08:41]

And then the abbot distributes communion every day to the monks. So there is daily communion in the Rule of the Master, but the Eucharist is not celebrated in the monastery. This is quite different than the Rule of Benedict, which legislates for the Eucharist to be celebrated within the monastery itself. In the rule of Benedict, the monks do not go out of the monastery to the local parish church. In the auditorium, the monks say the divine office, and you have two rows of choirs, little benches where the monks face each other, sing the psalms. In front of these benches are mats where the monks may prostrate for the prayer which follows each psalm, a prayer of silence. Now, it says in the Rule of the Master that if a monk is sick one day, he comes to choir and he may prostrate on his mat during the celebration of the office, but that his neighbor who is next to him should keep a close watch on him and sort of nudge him with his foot if he falls asleep.

[09:47]

We've figured that this prayer of silence during the divine office after each psalm is about a minute and a half. The way this is figured is that when a monk is excommunicated he must prostrate at the door of the oratory and during the silent prayer after the psalm, he has a long formula that he must recite, begging for forgiveness. And if you read this formula in the Rule of the Master, it lasts about a minute and a half. Thus it seems as though the pause that the monks make after the psalms would be about a minute and a half, so that this excommunicated brother could get this long petition in at that time. The refectory is very close to the oratory. And in the refectory we find the tables in sort of a horseshoe arrangement with the abbot at the center section of the horseshoe and then the brothers sitting down the two legs of the horseshoe.

[10:53]

And in the center of this arrangement is the chair for the reader who sits in the middle of the horseshoe reading to the people. Over the abbot's table is a basket on a pulley, and in this basket is the bread ration for the meal. And when the meal begins, this basket is let down from the pulley so that the monks may always see that their daily bread comes from God. This is an indication of the ritualism and the symbolism that the Rule of the Master enjoys very much. It's also interesting, to give you a little flavor of some of the prescriptions in the Master's Rule, that the breadcrumbs are scrupulously swept up after the meal. And at the end of the week, all of these breadcrumbs are made into a bread pudding. And this bread pudding is brought to the abbot at the evening collation, and he takes a spoon and puts a little bit in his mouth, and then he takes a spoon and puts some in the mouth of the people sitting next to him, and on down the line, so that everybody may be fed from the same common food.

[12:07]

Thankfully, Benedict has left this kind of stuff out of his rule. There is reading at table in the Rule of the Master. However, If the reading is something that the brother doesn't understand, he may make some sign to the abbot that he would like to ask a question. And the master's rule says that the brother makes some sort of noise with his spoon or his knife or his bread. Tells us something about the texture of the bread. It must have been pretty hard that you could make a noise with it by beating it on the table. And then he gets permission from the abbot and he asks his question and the abbot responds and explains the reading. On the other hand, during the course of the reading, the abbot may interrupt the reading and say, well, brother Baphnutius, tell us what was just being read. And so this keeps everybody alert to the reading. Notice that there can be sort of pandemonium in the refectory of the master, because some people are making noises to get the attention of the abbot and asking questions, and the abbot is asking other people to repeat what is read.

[13:19]

And we find in the Rule of Benedict that Benedict says, nothing whatever is to be said in the refectory except if the abbot himself wants to say something for edification. The dormitory is the place where the brothers sleep, and here the brothers sleep sort of in a horseshoe also, with the abbot sleeping in the center of the horseshoe where he can keep a vigilant eye on the brothers during the night. The abbot is awakened by two brothers for the night vigil. They approach the abbot's mat or cot and shake him on the feet to wake him up. But before they do this, they make a sign of the cross on their lips and say, O Lord, open my lips and my lips will proclaim your praise. The reason they have to do this is because at the Compline, or the end of the day, the brothers have closed their lips with the versicle, O Lord, I put a guard on my lips

[14:25]

And now they must break this seal by opening their lips with the versicle, O Lord, open my lips. This shows some of the ritualism or the casuistry and formalism of the Rule of the Master. You cannot speak after you have closed your mouth unless you first open it with a versicle. With regard to the divine office in the rule of the Master. The thing to be noted is that the Master loves symbolism and so he has what he calls the 24 impositions. Now this means that an imposition is either a song and a versicle and a prayer or it can be a reading and a prayer or something of this nature, some sort of combination. But there are 24 of these, if you count all of the impositions at the night office and the impositions during the day.

[15:29]

In fact, there are two series of 24. The reason he wants to have this number 24 is because he says that by this number 24, We participate in the prayer of the 24 elders in the Apocalypse, who were constantly throwing their crowns at the throne of the Lamb, and praying without ceasing. So by this numerical arrangement, the Master enables the monks to pray constantly, because they do these 24 impositions, which unites them with the 24 elders, who are praying constantly. He has a number of complicated things about his divine office, but almost always he's interested in symbolism and in numerical symbolism. We've seen that there is daily communion in the rule of the master and that the community probably does not include a priest.

[16:36]

And this is a reason you have to go outside of the monastery for the Sunday Eucharist. And on special occasions, as, for instance, the blessing of the abbot, a diocesan priest or bishop is invited into the monastery for the celebration of the Eucharist at the blessing of the abbot. The master loves ritual, and there are many rituals in the rule of the master which all have the same sort of pattern. There is usually a request for a prayer, then the prayer which is terminated by a verse and a conclusion, and then the kiss of peace. And there are a number of rites which use this particular outline. For instance, the blessing of the weekly reader, the blessing of the waiters at table, whenever somebody leaves the monastery or when they return to the monastery. Now, many of these things we have vestiges of in the rule of Benedict.

[17:36]

But the Master has an awful lot of these ritual blessings. For everything that is done in the monastery, there seems to be some sort of ritual. If we look at the spiritual doctrine of the rule of the master, the basic idea of the master is that man is a sinner and must avoid sin at any cost and then of course perform virtue. And so he has a rather pessimistic anthropology and man is constantly or the monk is constantly being warned to avoid sin. We see this, for instance, in his doctrine on silence, where he insists that the monks keep silence so that they might avoid sin. Now, Benedict has this same sort of theology of silence but I think his theology of silence or his philosophy of silence is much broader. I would mention in passing that I've done some research on silence in the Rule of Benedict and it was my doctoral thesis and hopefully within the next few weeks it will be in print so

[18:45]

maybe you would be interested in getting a hold of it and reading it. It's going to be published by Cistercian Publications from Spencer, Massachusetts. I've wondered how we've got the language in transit. So the master's asceticism is rather negative. And we will take a look a little later on at some of his spiritual doctrine and how it fits together in a logical order. The Master develops a great deal of what we would call a theology of monastic life. He likes to compare the monastery to the church, and the abbot takes the place of the bishop within the church. And this is very strong and very much emphasized in the Rule of the Master. Whereas on the contrary, this is hardly found in the Rule of Benedict. The Master also shows that monastic life is tied up with our baptism. That monastic life is nothing more than the flowering of our...

[19:49]

baptismal conversion. And so at the beginning of the Rule of the Master, in what we would call the prologue, he develops this baptismal theology of the monastic life. He talks, of course, about the monastery as the school of the Lord's service. And in the school, then, there is a master who gives definite instructions. And also probably with traveling... And this master, our doctor who gives instructions, of course, is the abbot. He is the magister. There may also be an invitation... I haven't mentioned to you, but the title, Rule of the Master, comes from the fact that this rule, which is made up of 95 chapters, begins with, almost every chapter, the statement that the disciple asks a question, for instance, what is the role of the apple, and then it says, the Lord answers through the Master.

[20:51]

And this gives the title, Rule of the Master, to the whole rule, because this literary technique is found at the beginning of all 95 chapters. And the amazing thing about the fourth is that this will give you some sort of introduction to the rule of the master, and it will help us then when we look more closely at the relationship to the rule of the master and the rule of Benedict, and we'll begin to see them in comparison. So I'll leave that for the next tape, and this will be the end of this tape. I want to apologize, sisters, for that disturbance in the tape here at the end, but this was the tape that didn't come out, and when I re-taped it, some of it didn't erase properly, so I hope that doesn't disturb you. There's going to be some, a number of these kind of problems as we go along, but I hope as we continue and I get more used to a tape recorder, some of it will be avoided.

[21:53]

This is the end.

[21:54]

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