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On the Ruin of Britain
St Gildas, tr. Williams, 1899
GILDAS SAYS: An abbot of the stricter rule should not admit a monk of another abbot …
GILDAS SAYS: An abbot of the stricter rule1 should not admit a monk of another abbot somewhat more lax. Also, the more lax should not detain his monk when inclined to stricter ways.
Priests and bishops have in truth an awful judge, to whom, not to us, it appertains to judge of them in both worlds.
Notes
- The growing difference between monasteries meets us again here, but now differentiated by the Rule, the Regula, of each, though personified as well in the character of the abbot. One rule is more lax, remissior, the other more severe, districtior; the victory, however, at this period was for the latter. The present direction, while favouring the growing tendency, by instructing the less strict abbot in no way to curb the ardour of a monk who aims at a severer life, is intended to soften an inevitable change; this it does by recommending that the monastery of the stricter rule should not open its doors too readily to monks who may abandon the less strict community.