§ 208. The Regulation of Monasticism

Just as anchorites (solitaries, hermits) existed before Pachomius’s time, so too did they exist after the establishment of the cenobitic monastic life. These anchorites lived in solitude in some desert, and there practiced Christian asceticism and prayed to God each according to his own understanding. They had no need of any particular established rules, nor was it possible for anyone to prescribe rules for how they were to strive, since they stood outside all superiors’ oversight.

The case of the cenobitic monks was quite different. Living in community, these monks had to have certain rules that would determine the manner of their life in the monastery, their mutual relations, and their position with regard to the monastic superior. Pachomius the Great, as soon as he had established the cenobitic life (§ 207), at once (around the year 325) also wrote rules for his monks. There are 194 such rules in all, of which 142 are strict rules, and 52 are various additions and clarifications of the basic rules. All the rules concern prayer, the refectory, occupation, and monastic life in the monastery generally, and how one may become a brother of the monastery.[1]

Pachomius’s rules did not touch in detail upon every side of monastic life, and this was the cause that in some monasteries the superiors concerned proceeded in various questions according to their own personal judgment, and disorders sometimes occurred as a result. Basil the Great wished to forestall this, and to that end he composed (around the year 362) for the monks fuller rules in catechetical form—that is, in questions and answers. Of these rules of Basil there are 50 longer ones (ὅροι κατὰ πλάτος) and 313 shorter ones (κατ᾽ ἐπιτομήν), and by these rules the whole of cenobitic monastic life must be ordered.[2] Basil composed these rules of his on the basis of holy Scripture, the church prescripts, and the rules of Pachomius. The substance of all Basil’s rules is this: the monk must renounce the world and all the comforts of the world, and for this reason he may possess nothing of his own, and whatever he receives, all of it must pass into the ownership of the monastery of which he is a brother; he must be humble in the strict sense and unconditionally obedient to his immediate superior and to all his elders; he must subdue his body and stifle bodily desires, and for this reason is obliged always to fast and to submit to bodily labor; and since the purpose of his whole earthly life is only eternal salvation, he must dedicate himself wholly to God, must think always of God, must pray unceasingly to God, must read the holy books, and in conversation with his brothers his talk must always be only of God and of eternal salvation. That every monk will fulfill all this strictly and unconditionally, he solemnly vows, and this constitutes those monastic vows of which we speak further below (§ 211). Basil’s aforementioned rules were adopted by the whole of eastern monasticism. On their basis there were afterward composed, in the more notable eastern monasteries, particular statutes or typika, which were then adopted also by all other monasteries, down to this day.

From the East monasticism passed also to the West. This was already in the middle of the fourth century, when, during the reign of the Emperor Constantius, Athanasius the Great spent several years as an exile at Rome and in the West, together with two monks from the East, Amonius and Isidore. From these holy men the men of the West became acquainted with monasticism. Athanasius’s preaching on the sublimity of monasticism stirred up in many in the West a love for that estate, although at first that estate could not altogether take firm root there. Only when Ambrose of Milan began, in the third quarter of the same century, to extol monasticism in his sermons, and when he himself founded a monastery near Milan, prescribing for that monastery those rules which Basil the Great had sent him, did monasticism then become firmly established in the West. To this, Jerome of Dalmatia († 420) and Augustine of Hippo († 430) afterward contributed a great deal, so that by the second half of the fifth century there were monasteries in all the Christian provinces of the West. And in all these monasteries the monks lived according to those rules that were in force in Ambrose’s monastery at Milan—that is, according to the rules of Basil the Great. But the western monks could only with difficulty accommodate themselves to the strictness of Basil’s rules, for all their devotion to asceticism, and for this reason monasticism could not develop as luxuriantly in the West as it did in the East. To this the renowned western ascetic Benedict of Nursia († 543) turned his attention. Having founded a monastery at Subiaco (near Rome), and having studied the causes on account of which Basil’s rules could not be carried out in the West in their full strictness, Benedict composed for his monastery special rules, in which he set forth, in a milder form, the prescripts of Basil’s rules, adapting them to the climatic and social conditions of the West. When Benedict afterward founded the well-known monastery at Monte Cassino, he there had occasion to test in practice the value of his monastic rules. This monastery of Monte Cassino, with Benedict’s rules, served as the model for all the other monasteries of the West down to the beginning of the thirteenth century, when the new monastic orders (Franciscan, Dominican, and others) began.

Benedict’s rules number 73, and their relation to Basil’s rules we have already mentioned. There is only one novelty in them, and that is the novitiate, of which nothing is said in Basil’s rules, and which was prescribed for eastern monasticism only in the ninth century.[3]

We have said that Basil’s monastic rules served as the basis for the statutes or typika of the more notable eastern monasteries. Among these monastic statutes, three are the principal ones: that of Jerusalem, that of Studion, and that of Athos. The first, that of Jerusalem, was composed in the year 561 by Sabas the Sanctified (Σάββας ὁ ἡγιασμένος) for the monasteries of Palestine.[4] The second was written by the renowned Theodore, hegumen of the Studion monastery in Constantinople (τῆς μονῆς τοῦ Στουδίου), in the year 789.[5] The third, finally, was written around the year 970 by Athanasius, founder of the Athonite Lavra (τῆς λαύρας τοῦ Ἄθωνος).[6] In their essence all three of these statutes are alike, and differ only in particulars, according to the local circumstances of the respective monasteries. The most complete is the Studion statute. This statute was adopted for the Kiev Lavra in the eleventh century by Theodosius of the Caves, and from that Lavra the same statute afterward passed into all the Russian monasteries.[7] The Studion statute forms also the basis of the statute of Sava of Serbia for the Hilandar monastery and for all the other Serbian monasteries.[8] It may be said that by the monastic statute of Theodore of Studion the inner regulation of monastic life in the Orthodox Church was fixed for all later times. All the particular statutes of the various monasteries that exist today are nothing other than that same Studion statute, adapted according to local and national circumstances.

Monasticism, as a distinct fellowship of devout persons, existed independently of ecclesiastical jurisdiction right up to the Fourth Ecumenical Council. At that council, for the first time, monasticism and its position in the Church were debated.[9] Up to that time (the year 451) the monasteries and the monks governed themselves independently and were dependent only on their own monastic superiors, and the monastic vows were not yet regarded as such that they could not be renounced. The monks formed in the Church a distinct estate, which differed both from the clergy and from the laity. At first monks were not even permitted to receive holy orders, lest this be some hindrance to them in their strictly ascetic labors; instead they went to the liturgy at the nearby place where there was a church, in which the regular parish priest served; and afterward, when churches began to be built alongside monasteries, one monk—usually the monastery’s confessor, and sometimes also the monastic superior—was ordained presbyter (hieromonk), and he performed the service in the monastery church for all the monks. When, at the time of Monophysitism, great disturbances appeared in the Church, provoked for the most part by monks, adherents of that heresy, availing themselves of their independent position, the Council of Chalcedon then found it necessary to regulate by legislative means the position of the monastic fellowship in the Church and to establish once and for all their relation to the ecclesiastical authority. Recognizing monasticism as a distinct fellowship of devout persons, different both from the clergy and from the faithful laity, the council issued the following basic ordinances: 1) No monastery may be built in advance without the permission of the competent eparchial bishop for this; 2) all monks must in every respect be subordinate to, and dependent upon, the eparchial bishop concerned, just as all monasteries too must depend upon him, over whom he is to exercise strict oversight; 3) no monk may break any one of the monastic vows, and whoever does so and does not return in penitence to the monastery is to be anathema; 4) no monk may occupy himself with any business outside the monastery, except in the one case where the competent bishop permits him this for the needs of the Church, and any monk who presumes to do this on his own authority must at once be excommunicated.[10]

In the sixth century monasticism became also the object of state legislation. There are several Novels of the Emperor Justinian that deal with monasticism and with the monasteries, and which develop in more detail the provisions of the Council of Chalcedon on this matter.[11] All these Novels entered into the Nomocanon in Fourteen Titles, and accordingly the provisions of these same Novels are binding to this day upon all monks and all monasteries of the Orthodox Church.[12] To these provisions of state legislation the Council in Trullo gave ecclesiastical sanction in several of its canons.[13] Afterward the Seventh Ecumenical Council too concerned itself with monasticism, when it was necessary to re-establish and confirm the monastic order, which had been thrown into disarray at the time of Iconoclasm, when, as a result of the iconoclast assaults, many monasteries had been emptied and their monks scattered.[14] At the time of this council Theodore of Studion lived and worked, who, on the basis of the canons issued by this council and of other already-existing canonical provisions on monasticism, composed that monastic statute mentioned above, which became the principal monastic statute of all Orthodox monasticism.

With this, the general regulation of monasticism was brought to completion, both in its internal aspects and equally in its external relations. Several canons were also issued at the Ninth Local Council, but these canons ordain nothing new, but had only the task of correcting particular irregularities that had been observed in monastic discipline.[15]

What has so far been said here about the regulation of monasticism applies equally to monks (μοναχοί, καλόγηροι) as to nuns (μονάζουσαι, καλόγηραι), with the difference only according to sex. Just as the devout men concerned devoted themselves to the ascetic life in the earliest times of the Church, withdrawing from worldly tumult, so too, and at the same time, did certain devout women; and just as in the fourth century monasteries began to be built for monks, so similar monasteries were built also for nuns. In the East, at the time of Anthony the Great, a παρθενών is mentioned, which Anthony’s sister entered as a nun. In the West, at the time of Ambrose of Milan, there existed at Bologna, for nuns, a sacrarium virginitatis. Down to the time of Pachomius the Great, the nuns too, like the monks, lived without fixed rules. When Pachomius issued the corresponding rules for the monks, these same rules were introduced by Pachomius’s sister for the nuns as well. These rules of Pachomius were afterward replaced, for the monks, by Basil’s rules, and these same rules were applied by St Macrina, Basil’s sister, to the nuns as well. And just as Basil’s rules served as the basis for all the later monastic statutes for monks, the same thing occurred also for the monastic statutes for nuns. It was the same in the West as well. Just as the rules of St Benedict were adopted for all the western monks, so the same rules were adopted by St Scholastica for the western nuns as well.