約伯倫理 第 24 章 第 1/3 段

Argument. — 1. The objections drawn from Gregory's Letters are dissolved. — 2. Reply is made to the other objection. — 3. Whether a monk promoted to the clerical state is no longer called a monk, in the usage of Saint Gregory. — 4. Monks were formerly commonly called clergy. — 5. Whether Saint Gregory instituted canons regular. John the Deacon is explained. — 6. Whether the common life indicates rather a canon than a monk. — 7. The genuine sense of John the Deacon's objected words is established. Whether all clergy who live according to the canons are to be numbered among the canons regular. — 8. On the distinction between secular and regular canons. — 9. A new fabrication concerning Saint Augustine's companion monks, never ordained. — 10. Laurence and the others of Saint

Augustine's associates were all monks. — 11. Concerning the presbyters of Arles who followed Augustine, another fiction. — 12. Gregory's reply to Augustine is explained. — 13. The testimony of Urban II is weighed. — 14. The decree of Boniface IV for monks discharging ecclesiastical offices. — 15. His letter for the monks serving in the Church of Canterbury. Ill understood by the recent writer. 1. Two letters of Saint Gregory are opposed to us. In the former, which is the first of the fourth book, it is read: No one can both serve ecclesiastical offices and persist in orderly fashion in the monastic rule, etc. Therefore, once Augustine's companions had been admitted into the clergy, it was not permissible for them to retain the monastic institutes.

To this passage answer has already been made many times, both by our Mabillon and by ourselves, book II, chapter 12, § 11, and in the notes to this letter, where we have opened up the genuine sense of those words. Yet to what has already been said it must be added that we most willingly admit that monks who serve certain ecclesiastical offices—such as the assiduous preaching of the divine word, the administration of the sacraments, the governance of churches—and those things which Gregory signifies by these words: He who is daily compelled to remain in the service of the Church, cannot to the exact line observe more strictly all the institutes of the monastic rule, in silence, vigils, fasts, and other like things; which is, in Gregory's phrase, to keep the strictness of the monastery.

Whence abbots and other prefects of monasteries, upon whose word and example depends all the vigour of regular observance, cannot at once fulfil ecclesiastical duties and preside over monasteries. But other monks, if they bear the care of churches and congregations, may be compelled to relax somewhat of the rigour of discipline. But what forbids one to say the same either of canons regular—especially of a stricter and narrower observance, such as still flourishes among the Reformed Premonstratensians—or of their prefects? Shall anyone therefore dream that they cannot at once discharge the office of clergy and be assigned to ecclesiastical duties, unless they first bid farewell to the institute of canons regular?

Perhaps, employing a distinction, they will answer that two things are joined in their institute of canons regular: namely the vows, which pertain to the essence of their state, and certain pious ascetic practices, such as to sing psalms in choir at fixed hours, to give attention to reading, prayer, and meditation, to take food in the common refectory, to withdraw from the fellowship of men and to devote oneself to silence, to lie down in the same place and at the same time, etc. And indeed that those who devote themselves either to winning or to governing souls suffer the loss of these; but that the vows remain inviolate. But this same answer will equally serve monks discharging the priestly office, and the solution of the knot which they try to tighten from the former testimony of Gregory. 2.

Let us now come to the latter passage. The holy Doctor, book VII, letter 43, decrees this: If any of the abbots or monks from any monastery whatsoever should proceed to the office of the clericate or to a sacred order, let him have no further power there, as we have said. 'By this very fact that a monk was ordained to sustain the care of the Church, monkhood was taken away,' says the recent writer. A wondrous consequence indeed! As though the power in a monastery, and the monastic state, which consists in obedience and subjection rather than in power and authority, were the same thing. But the aim of Saint Gregory in writing these things we have already shown (above, chapter 3, number 9).

For the rest, that we may set the most certain and unconquerable arguments against things so doubtful—not to say plainly false—let us briefly show, first, that Gregory the Great did not everywhere so separate the clergy from the monk that whoever he had once called a clergyman, that man, by this very fact, whoever he be, is by no means to be reckoned as a monk—which that writer, thinking perhaps of something else, said; secondly, that monks were commonly called clergy also, in the most celebrated writers contemporary with Gregory. 3. Certainly Saint Augustine was already a clergyman, and given to ecclesiastical, nay apostolic, offices, when the most holy master sent him to the conversion of the English.

That he was then at least either a presbyter or a deacon is almost evident, because Gregory, with no mention made of any other order conferred, testifies that he was ordained bishop. Nonetheless he still calls him a monk, writing to Eulogius: While the nation of the English, placed in a corner of the world, remained faithless until now in the worship of woods and stones, it pleased me, from the help of your prayer, that I should, by God's authorship, send a monk of my monastery to it for preaching. Who, licence being given by me, was made bishop by the bishops of the Germanies (Book VIII, letter 30). The same is to be said of Saint Augustine's companions and helpers in the conversion of the English, whom Saint

Gregory, although sent to preach and to apostolic works, never fails to call monks: For, he says, since, with the grace of our Redeemer cooperating, so great a multitude from the nation of the English is being converted to the grace of the Christian faith, that our most reverend common brother and fellow-bishop Augustine asserts that those who are with him cannot suffice for carrying out this work through the various places, we have provided that some monks should be sent to him, together with our most beloved and common sons, Laurence the presbyter and Mellitus the abbot (Book XI, letter 58). The same he repeats even to nausea in other letters written on this matter (ibid., letters 54, 55, 56, 57, 59, 60, 61, 62).

Shortly we shall hear Boniface IV speaking no otherwise than his predecessor Gregory, in a letter to King Ethelbert: That those very preachers of your salvation, monks, may associate to themselves a flock of monks. Boniface is not ashamed to call monks those preachers, who were doubtless clergy, nay bishops, presbyters, deacons. 4. From contemporary writers let Gregory of Tours suffice us, to show that at that time monks were commonly called clergy. In book I of the Glory of the Martyrs, chapter 76, those who were rendering praises to God in the monastery of Agaunum are indiscriminately called now clergy, now monks.

A certain woman, says Gregory, bringing her only son to this monastery, delivered him to the abbot to be instructed, namely that, being made a clergyman, he might be devoted to holy offices. But when he had already been trained in spiritual letters, and was chanting psalms in the choir of singers with the rest of the clergy, etc. Behold, the Agaunenses are called clergy; but a little further down they are called monks: You will hear his voice among the choirs of chanting monks. And a little after: When the throng of monks took up the antiphon, the mother hears, she recognizes the voice of her little one. The same Gregory, in the book of the Miracles of Saint Julian, chapter 28: But a certain clergyman of Aridius, abbot of Limoges, etc. Many things I omit, in which he relates that this clergyman was by a miracle introduced into the basilica of Saint

Julian's basilica. And he adds: That no one may doubt this, I call to witness Almighty God, that I learned all these things from the mouth of that very abbot, at whose monk they were done. You see here a monk, whom above you read as a clergyman. But conversely, in chapter 35, him whom he had first called a monk, he straightway calls a clergyman. And even though a monk taken up to ecclesiastical cares and dignities were no longer called a monk, yet he would by no means cease to be one—which the learned man contends, but who is almost a stranger in the reading of Gregory the Great.

For since a denomination is derived from the nobler grade, what wonder if someone who puts a bishop, for example, over a monk is no longer called a monk, although he has not laid aside the monk, and perseveres even in the monastic institutes, in vigils, fasts, and prayers? Concerning these matters, which we only touch upon lightly, one should read our Mabillon, both in the Preface to the second Benedictine century, number 27, and in his first reply to the writing of the canons regular concerning the sessions in the assemblies of Burgundy; Hadrian Valesius in his disputation on basilicas, and in its defence; and also Thomassin, in part I, book I, of Ecclesiastical Discipline. 5.

That the learned man, whose arguments we are now weighing, is a great theorizer, no one will deny who has come to weigh them free from all prejudices; which arguments, namely, to propound is to refute, as will become clear from what is presently to be said. It shall not rest with him to keep us persuaded that Gregory the Great instituted canons regular, and afterward decreed that from the same institute clergy should occupy the primary Church of the English founded at Canterbury; and finally that the remaining pontifical sees of England likewise fell to canon-clergy. The first, indeed, he strives to prove from John the Deacon, book II of the Life of Saint Gregory, chapter 12: There seemed, he says,

everywhere to cleave to the pontiff most religious monks together with most learned clergy, and in the diverse professions the common life was maintained: so that the Church then under Gregory in the city of Rome was such as Luke commemorates it to have been under the apostles, and Philo under Mark the Evangelist at Alexandria. Here I acknowledge our Gregory, a cultivator of the monastic life, and most tenacious of his own monastic institute, having monks as table-companions, with whom, occupied day and night, he left behind nothing of monastic perfection in the palace, says John. I see also clergy cleaving to him, who, freely bound by no vows, obligated by no law, led a common life with the monks.

Moreover, as to the institution of the canons regular, of which order St. Gregory is claimed to have been the parent, nothing is read on this point either in this passage, or in any of Gregory's letters or writings. Will clerics, then, the moment they hold a common life and common table, straightway become canons regular? But you will say, along with a learned man, a poet, that I know not who has made mention of an order of canons of the Gregorian kind; therefore Gregory the Great instituted the order of canons regular; and why should we not, he says, name them Gregorian canons for honor's sake? Far be it from us to call the pious and religious men of the Gregorian order 'canons' in the same sense in which they are so called by that poet, who reports that they were cast out of the monastery of St. Walaricus in these words:

'The leader Hugo, presently emptying the temple of the Gregorian order, established the regular rule of monks.' For from the history of the account of St. Walaricus we learn (Mabillon, saec. V) that those canons were secular: 'Then the aforesaid Duke, procuring with great solicitude the place of St. Walaricus, cast out from it the secular congregation, and gathered into it the regular order of monks.' So writes a near-contemporary author, who could not have been ignorant who and of what sort those canons were, cast out of doors like salt that has lost its savor — perhaps called of the Gregorian order for this reason, that in psalmody they followed the Roman order composed by Gregory (not the monastic order such as St. Benedict prescribes), which afterward those who succeeded the canons in St. [Walaricus's church, the Benedictine monks,] observed.

[St.] Walaricus's church, [namely] the Benedictine monks. 6. This deceives a man who is fired with excessive zeal for his own order, that wherever mention occurs of a common life after the manner of the earlier and apostolic Church, he drags it to prove the institution of the canons regular — not considering that the cenobitic and common life of monks was likewise prescribed after the model and rule of that same more ancient Church founded by the apostles, and that in nearly all monastic rules the example of that ancient Church of Jerusalem under the apostles is brought forward. 'Let all things be common to all,' says St. Benedict, 'as it is written (Acts 4), and let no one call anything his own or presume to do so.' And in chapter 34:

'Whether all ought to receive necessaries equally. As it is written, distribution was made to each according as each had need.' Now in this matter nearly all the founders of monastic rules agree with St. Benedict, as may be seen in the 'Concord of Rules,' composed by St. Benedict of Aniane the abbot, chapters 42 and 43; and therefore by a stronger right monks can claim for themselves the testimonies of the ancients concerning the cenobitic and common life. As regards the Church of Alexandria, most flourishing in sanctity under St. Mark, most of the ancients who treated of monastic matters judged that in it, and in the therapeutae of Philo mentioned by John the Deacon, was set forth a pattern of the state and polity of monks, not of canons. 7.

Having exploded the false and fictitious sense of John the Deacon's words, let us now open up the true and genuine one. St. Gregory, who had used monks as his fellow-boarders when he acted as apocrisiarius at Constantinople, so that by their example he might always be held back, as by an anchor's cable, to the calm shore of prayer (Preface to the Moralia), wished to have these same men as his companions after he had been unwillingly seized to the pontificate, and turned his own palace as it were into a kind of monastery, where certain chosen monks sat familiarly by his side. John the Deacon lists six monks distinguished for piety and holiness.

He also names four clerics conspicuous for prudence and learning, whose service and counsel he employed both in the affairs of the Church and in his studies. Moreover, since he had removed all laymen from his bedchamber (which he even decreed by a Roman synod, on his own authority, should thereafter be done by the pontiffs [Decretal 1]), he had summoned certain men indiscriminately from among the clerics and the monks to minister to him. Admiring the unanimity of all these — though in a diverse profession — and their social and common life, John the Deacon did not hesitate to say that in that fellowship and concord there seemed to be, as it were, revived the Churches founded by the apostles at Jerusalem and by St. Mark at Alexandria.

But as for canons regular instituted by Gregory, he did not think of them even in a dream, seeing that there were none either in St. Gregory's times or even in John's. For not even all those clerics who ordered their manners according to the canons and rules of the Church — who, it is agreed, existed from the beginning — are to be reckoned among them, unless they were bound by vows. To be sure, from the eleventh century onward, mention is frequently made of canons regular — who, after the manner of monks, bound by nearly the same vows, lived obedient to their abbots or provosts under strict discipline — in Fulbert, Bernard, Peter of Blois, and other contemporary authors:

we know the origins of abbeys or other monasteries then built for canons of this kind, or the changes of others already existing which passed over to them (for not a few provostships of the Order of St. Benedict were granted to them, among which stands out the most celebrated house of St. Victor at Paris); but concerning these before that century nothing occurs. For the canons of Aachen, or those who followed the rule of Chrodegang, or even of Eugenius II and Leo IV, not only lived free from religious and solemn vows, but also, by the prescription of their rules, held something of their own and of private property — as is admitted by the very advocate of the canons regular whom we are here opposing.

Furthermore, this retention of private property alone, by the very institution of the rule, is so abhorrent to the state of a canon regular that it overturns it and renders him secular. (Cf. Gallia Christiana, Alber. chron. ad an. 1029.) 8. I am indeed aware that the least of distinction between a secular and a regular canon is acknowledged by the author of the 'Disquisitions,' in whom, not without astonishment, I read (chap. 1, art. 2, p. 8):

'For whoever will recall that the Benedictine monks were, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, distributed into the Cluniac order, or the Tironensian, into the order of the Grand Monastery, and into many other orders as well, he will easily understand how at that period the regular order and the secular order of canons could be distinguished and separated from one another, although both ought to have been of one and the same kind.' Whence he infers: 'But neither will any learned man, if he sees regions abounding in secular canons long lacking regular ones, thence draw anything toward charging the canons regular with novelty; otherwise, by a similar argument, one would necessarily conclude that the beginnings of the Benedictine order are to be taken from the Cluniacs or contemporary monks.'

And so, according to the mind of this recent writer, in the order of canons there is no greater distinction between regulars and seculars than in the Benedictine order between Cluniacs, Tironensians, etc., who, since they all followed the master-rule of St. Benedict and were held by the law of the same vows, could be distinguished only by the most minute rites — accidentally, as they say; and thence it follows that there is nothing which separates the regular canonry from the secular as regards essence, to which therefore neither vows nor the institutions of religious life pertain, but which ought to be dismissed as it were among things indifferent (adiaphora), and constitute only the very slightest difference. At this, I confess, I was aghast;

and had not the writer's known piety and that of his associates set me at ease, I would greatly have feared lest perchance by these means a defection and passage to secular canons were being prepared for them, whom the author of the 'Disquisitions' shows to be so close, and separated by scarcely the slightest difference. But I would rather believe that these things slipped from him incautiously, and quite without the counsel of the most religious superiors of his congregation, than press the matter further. These things therefore being passed over, after we have proved that what this writer devised concerning canons regular formed in the Roman Church by Gregory the Great is plainly fictitious, let us weigh whether he divined better when he asserts that these same canons were instituted in the Church of Canterbury by command of the most holy pontiff. 9.

First, indeed, he feigns that, of the monks chosen to procure the conversion of the English, none was ordained or, in Gregory's intention, to be ordained, except Augustine: 'Not yet, that is,' he says, 'was Gregory thinking about the ordination of the monks; he had merely arranged that Augustine was to be ordained their bishop, if they were received by the English' (Book 11, ep. 58 and following). Therefore he sent them not for the preaching of the divine word or for the sacred ministry (which, however, Gregory himself everywhere proclaims, with the agreement of Bede, Boniface IV, the writer of the Life of St. Augustine, etc.), but perhaps for planting vegetables, or for taking care of the kitchen.

For what wise man would take it into his head to send to the apostolic work laymen who were never even to be ordained, especially when there is an abundance of sacred ministers? I do not indeed deny that Augustine alone was chosen by Gregory for the episcopal dignity straightway, while the outcome was still doubtful. But concerning other orders, either not yet conferred or never to be conferred on Augustine's associates, there is deep silence everywhere. Nay, of his monk-helpers, nearly all whom we know became bishops — such as Mellitus of London, Justus of Rochester; on which matter Bede is to be read. 10.

Secondly, it pleases the patron of the canons regular to strike Laurence the priest, one of Augustine's companions, from the number and census of the monks, and to enroll him among his own. But by what right, when St. Gregory, Bede, and the others who speak of them proclaim them all monks? Is it because he was a priest? As though at that time there had existed no priests in monasteries — contrary to what so many of St. Gregory's letters prove. Goscelin in the Life of St. Augustine says that he and his fellow-initiates were torn from the maternal bowels of the monastic Church; and he adds that so many footsoldiers of the Lord's embassy are numbered up to forty — even as Bede relates that they landed on the isle of Thanet.

Therefore no room is left for priests who were not monks, taken either from Italy or from Gaul — not even for the men of Arles, whom the Disquisitor most liberally assigns to his own order, feigning that they brought the canonical religious life to the English Church. The pope had indeed enjoined Augustine and his companions that, for carrying out these tasks, they ought to take priests with them from nearby. But perhaps there was none at hand who was prepared for this embassy and pilgrimage; since Bede teaches (Book 1, ch. 25) that they took interpreters of the Frankish nation, but is altogether silent about priests taken along — which, if it had been done, he would not have concealed. Add that Augustine was compelled to summon new preachers of the divine word from the Roman [monastery of St.] Andrew;

[from the Roman monastery of St.] Andrew, doubtless because in Gaul he had obtained little assistance. 11. Yet grant that certain priests of Arles followed them; why should we not say that they were at the same time monks, and perhaps from among those priests of the monastery of Lérins whom St. Gregory praises? Namely, lest a diversity of profession should, as happens, breed some discord in this holy company, Virgilius bishop of Arles ought to have joined monks with monks — especially since he himself had been a monk of Lérins, as very many of his predecessors had been (Book 6, ep. 56). Let us even grant that some priests in no way bound by monastic laws were joined to Augustine;

what will the learned man draw thence toward proving the institution of canons regular in the Church of Canterbury? As though, indeed, all clerics and priests in those times belonged to their order. Every difficulty, if any should occur, would be removed by the single testimony of venerable Bede cited above. He alone it is who has transmitted to us St. Gregory's response to Augustine's queries concerning the common life to be maintained in the Church of Canterbury; of which he is therefore the legitimate interpreter. But he understood the same of the cenobitic life of monks.

Nor indeed could so diligent and learned a writer, and one nearly contemporary, be ignorant of who and of what sort from the beginning had served God as soldiers in this most renowned Church, the primatial see of the whole English nation — whether clerics or canons regular, or monks; since even now we are not ignorant which cathedral churches, which for three hundred years have passed to secular canons, were of old occupied either by canons regular or by monks. But who, save rashly, would believe that a man conspicuous for holiness wished to feign that no clergy other than monks existed in the Church of Canterbury — a falsehood which anyone born in England could easily have refuted? 12.

Therefore, that we may now gather together what has been said more at length, and interpret from the premises St. Gregory answering Augustine's question (for on the understanding of his response the settlement of this controversy depends). First, St. Gregory wishes his disciple to remember the monastic life which he had professed at Rome in the house of St. Andrew. 'Because,' he says, 'your Fraternity, trained in the rules of a monastery, etc.' Secondly, he exhorts him to lead a cenobitic and common life with his clerics: 'you ought not to live apart from your clerics';

by which name are signified both the monks given him as helpers for preaching and called to a share of the labor, and also the younger clerics whom they were training, as the superiors and administrators of an episcopal seminary. Thirdly, he provides for the sustenance of those clerics who, since they were not established in sacred orders, were permitted to take wives: 'But if there are any clerics constituted outside sacred orders who cannot contain themselves, let them take wives and receive their stipends externally.' 13. Against all these arguments, nay demonstrations, a single testimony of Urban II is objected to us, certainly weighty, and the less to be rejected by the Benedictines because he himself was raised to the supreme pontificate from the [family of] St. [Benedict].

[from the family] of St. Benedict he was raised to the supreme pontificate. He therefore, in a certain letter written to the canons regular, testifies that Gregory had commanded the canonical life to be instituted for Augustine the archbishop of the English — doubtless when he wrote to him that he should live in common with his clerics. Whatever be the case concerning this letter, to which the collectors of councils have not even given a place in the appendix of Urban II's Letters, I answer that by these words there is signified only that St. Gregory, in his response to Augustine, gave a prelude to the instituting of canons regular:

just as (as is read in the same letter of Urban) the apostles, by instituting all things to be common in the Church of Jerusalem, and Urban the pope and martyr by his decrees (which, however, all the learned hold to be spurious), are said to have delineated beforehand the discipline of the canons regular; for what St. Luke writes concerning the Church of Jerusalem cannot properly be understood, by way of example, of the institution of those canons — in which Church, besides apostles, disciples, and clerics, there were married laymen, widows, and women of every age and condition. Certainly not a few of the ancient writers, and not of the lowest rank, judged that the institution of the monastic life should be traced back to Elijah, John the Baptist, and the apostles.