§ 211. Monastic Tonsure

Tonsure (μοναχικὴ ἀποκάρσις) is the act by which the person concerned formally enters the monastic fellowship and becomes its full member. This act is performed solemnly according to the prescribed rite in the great Trebnik [Euchologion], in the course of which the hair on the person’s head is cut crosswise.

The right to perform this act belongs to the competent monastic superior, the hegumen or archimandrite.[1] At the performance of the act itself there must also be present that monk under whose guidance the person concerned spent the time of probation—that is, that sponsor (poručnik, prijemets) who vouches before all that the probationer is worthy to become a monk. The tonsure of a nun only a bishop has the right to perform.[2]

At the tonsure of a rhasophore the rite is shorter, and during the corresponding prayers the new monk receives the rason and kamilavka. The tonsure of a monk of the small schema is much more solemn. There, first of all, the person concerned publicly and solemnly confesses that of his own good will and without anyone’s compulsion he receives the holy schema, then promises constancy in the monastery and in ascetic struggle, and finally takes, according to the prescribed form, the monastic vows (ἐπαγγέλματα), which are: a) continence, b) obedience, and c) poverty.

1. Continence (παρθενία, virginity, chastity) is the first and chief vow that the monk takes before God and the Church, pledging thereby his own conscience. He publicly and solemnly renounces, for the whole of his life, every bodily gratification in the most unrestricted sense, and by an oath before God promises that he will unconditionally abstain from such gratifications, and in particular: that he will always wear the plain black garment prescribed by the monastic statute, that he will never go to any worldly entertainment, that he will always be humble and devout, that he will fast throughout his whole life according to the monastic statute, and that until his death he will unconditionally abstain from bodily intercourse with the female sex (and a nun with the male sex). This last point forms the chief foundation of this vow, and particular attention is paid to it in the canons, subjecting to the severest penances the monk or nun who should break this vow and commit fornication. Basil the Great, by his 60th canon, subjects such monks to a fifteen-year penance. The Council in Trullo, by its 44th canon, reduced this to a seven-year penance, but only, according to Balsamon’s remark, in the case where the monk concerned who had committed fornication had sincerely repented and returned to his former, strictly monastic life.[3] This canonical severity becomes still greater if a monk or nun presumes to enter marriage. The canons do not even regard such a marriage as a marriage at all, but as plain fornication, and the 16th canon of Chalcedon ordains excommunication from the ecclesiastical community for every monk or nun who should do this. This same canon gives the competent bishop the right to deal even more mercifully with such persons. But this should not be understood to mean that the bishop could even recognize as lawful the marriage of some monk or nun, for that would contradict the canons that expressly address this (the 15th of Chalcedon, the 19th of Ancyra, the 44th of Trullo, the 6th and 18th of Basil the Great, and others); rather it means that the bishop may refrain from excommunicating such transgressors altogether from the ecclesiastical community, prescribing them instead another penance.[4] Balsamon, in his commentary on this same 16th canon of Chalcedon, adduces the ordinances of Greco-Roman legislation, according to which, in agreement with the teaching of ecclesiastical legislation, the marriage of a monk is regarded as plain fornication and not as marriage, and such a marriage not only had to be dissolved unconditionally at once, but the persons concerned were subjected to the severest corporal punishments.[5] In the 77th rule of the Nomokanon appended to the Trebnik, this teaching is set forth thus: “Монахъ или монахиня аще пріидутъ во общеніе брака, не судится то бракъ, но блудъ. Сего ради донелѣже не распустятся, въ церковь да не входятъ, но да отлучатся. Аще же случится имъ умрети безъ покаянія, да не погребаютъ ихъ, нижи творятъ имъ поминъ, ибо чужды суть христіанъ.” [If a monk or a nun should come together in marriage, this is not judged to be a marriage, but fornication. Therefore, until they separate, they are not to enter the church, but are to be excommunicated. And should it happen that they die without repentance, they are not to be buried, nor is a memorial to be made for them, for they are strangers to the Christians.][6] As for whether a monk or nun may, of his or her own will, after regular tonsure, leave the monastic order—whether he may abandon the vows taken, and in particular the vow that he will never in his life have intercourse with the other sex—that is, whether he may thus un-become a monk and then enter marriage—of all this there is not a single word in the canons; on the contrary, there exists in the Nomokanon an ordinance that a monk who leaves the monastery and passes into secular life must be forcibly returned to the monastery, there to repent throughout his whole life for his apostasy from his order.[7]

2. Obedience (ὑπακοή, poslušanije). According to the monastic rules contained in all the monastic statutes, the obedience to which a monk vows himself must be understood in an absolute sense, such that the monk has not, nor may have, any will of his own, but subjects that will in everything and in every respect to the will of his superior, and accordingly cannot by himself perform any juridical act. Basil the Great speaks at length, in his monastic rules, of this unconditional obedience of a monk to his superiors, and the 2nd canon of the Tenth Local Council notes that the vows of monasticism include the duty of daily obedience and discipleship. In keeping with this, civil legislation too does not recognize that monks may perform anything in state service or carry out any act in the sphere of private law.[8] In submitting to his superiors, and in the first place to the monastery’s superior, the monk must unconditionally obey their commands and carry out those commands at once and without the slightest objection. Should he fail to do this, according to the words of rule 113 of the Nomokanon appended to the Trebnik, “соперникъ Божій обрѣтается” [he is found to be an adversary of God], and he is subjected to punishment. The monk must carry out every command of the superior even then, if it seems to him not to be strictly justified, being free afterward to lodge a complaint with the competent bishop.

3. Poverty (στενοχωρία, narrowness/privation). By the fact that at his tonsure the monk renounces the world and everything that is in the world, he can possess nothing of his own; rather, everything he acquires by whatever means whatsoever belongs to the monastery. Basil the Great, in his monastic rules, calls the private property of a monk theft (κλοπή), and Theodore of Studion, in his rules on penances, ordains that a monk may not, in an absolute sense, possess anything of his own.[9] To this effect a special (19th) canon was issued by the Seventh Ecumenical Council.[10] In the ninth century, the Ninth Local Council reduced all the legal prescripts on this matter existing until then to a single (6th) canon, ordaining that a candidate for monasticism must, before tonsure, dispose of his private property, and that everything he acquires afterward belongs to the monastery in which he received tonsure. This canon, together with the corresponding prescripts of ecclesiastical and state legislation, has always been strictly observed in the Orthodox Church down to this day.[11] — Exempted from this general rule can only be those monks who, by permission of the eparchial bishop, take up outside their monastery some office that is not dependent on the monastic administration. On this there exists a special legal ordinance, which Balsamon adduces in his commentary on the 6th canon of the Ninth Local Council.[12] By that ordinance, a monk who acquires something independently of monastic service may dispose of it as he wishes, if he gave something to the monastery when he became a monk; but if he gave nothing at that time, he is obliged, at death, to leave a third part of his acquired property to the monastery.[13]

FOOTNOTES