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Rule
St Benedict of Nursia, tr. Hunter Blair, 1907
Chapter 45
IF any one make a mistake in the recitation of Psalm, responsory, antiphon, or lesson, and do not humble himself by making satisfaction there before all, let him be subjected to severer punishment, as one who would not correct by humility what he did wrong through negligence. But children for such faults are to be whipt.1
Notes
- Note R (p. 126).—Infantes . . . vapulent. The infantes or pueri referred to here and elsewhere in the Holy Rule were not boys receiving their education in the Monastery in view of some secular career, but were the alumni, properly so called, or youthful aspirants to religious life, who wore the habit, and assisted at the Divine Office and other monastic exercises. (See post, Note V.) The following passage from the Ordo Cluniacensis of Bernard, drawn up in the 11th century, curiously illustrates the fidelity with which the instructions of St. Benedict were carried out in mediæval times.
“Ad Nocturnos, imo ad omnes Horas, si quid ipsi pueri offendunt in Psalmodia, vel in alio cantu, minime differtur: absque mora frocco et cuculla exuti judicantur, et in sola camisia cæduntur (nisi laici sint in ecclesia, a quibus videri possint): et hoc fit a Priore, vel eorum magistro, virgis vimineis levibus et teretibus, ad hoc provisis.”