§ 212. The Consequences of the Monastic Tonsure

By tonsure duly performed, the person concerned formally enters the monastic, or holy, order. This order the holy fathers and teachers of the Church regard as a mystery (μυστήριον), and compare it with the mystery of baptism and the mystery of marriage; and just as the mystery of baptism has an indelible character, so too does the monastic order have it, and just as marriage in its normal state is indissoluble, so too is the bond of the monastic order indissoluble. According to this teaching, a person who has received the monastic order can never again renounce that order, and if he does so, let him be anathema (ἀναθεματίζεσθαι), so the 7th canon of Chalcedon ordains. This teaching was set forth in the greatest detail by Theodore the Studite in his various writings.[1] And the Nomocanon provides that a monk who renounces the order, leaves the monastery, and begins to live as a layman must be punished by both the ecclesiastical and the civil authority, must have taken from him all property he happened to have acquired, and must be forcibly (ἄκων) returned to the monastery.[2] But that a monk may seek to be released from the order, and that the church authority may permit him this under any condition whatsoever—of this, as we have already mentioned, there is not a single word in the canons, and according to the teaching of the Orthodox Church on the significance of the monastic order, there can be no question of it at all.[3]

The monastic life must be strictly ordered according to the holy order. The greater the obligations that someone voluntarily and in full consciousness takes upon himself, the greater also is his responsibility when he transgresses those obligations. This holds especially for monks, whose life is altogether different from that of the rest of society, and among whom even acts that among the rest of the faithful hardly draw notice are reckoned a grave sin. Since monks bind themselves voluntarily and by solemn oath to lead a holy life, every act of theirs against that sanctity must be strictly condemned, and the canons subject every such act of theirs to a tenfold penalty greater than that which is prescribed for the same act when committed by persons who have not bound themselves to such a life.[4] Judgment of this belongs to the monastery’s superior and to the competent bishop.[5]

As a consequence of the tonsure and according to the vows taken, monks are restricted in the exercise of certain rights in society. Thus:

a) A monk may not occupy himself with worldly affairs—military, political, civil, and other similar matters[6] — and accordingly, both the ecclesiastical and the civil laws alike do not recognize the right of a monk to assume any guardianship over others,[7] nor may he appear as a witness in civil matters.[8]

b) A monk (hieromonk) may not perform marriages.[9] This, moreover, is to be understood of those monks who live in a monastery; but if a monk is in parish service, with the permission of his bishop he may then freely perform marriages, just as he may perform every other mystery to which a presbyter is entitled.[10]

c) A monk may not even serve as a godparent to a child at baptism.[9] This prohibition is conditioned by that basic principle, that a monk may have nothing in common with the world, and accordingly he could not, as a baptismal godparent, exercise over his godchild the canonically prescribed care.[11]