If you think you’re being dealt with
harshly, you will be soothed if
you do the following: think of your accuser as the razor of God
who
wishes to remove your unsightly hair so that you will appear fairer
in
beauty than the sons of men and be more pleasing in the presence
of
God in the light of the living.(43)
[Stephen of Sawley, ‘Mirror for Novices’]
The daily
chapter meeting opened with a reading from the martyrology, to
commemorate the saints celebrated that day. This was followed
by a short morning prayer known as the Pretiosa. A chapter
from the Rule
of St Benedict was then read out and this marked the real
start of proceedings. On Sundays and feast days a passage from
either the Cistercian Customs (the Book of Usages) or
the Statutes of the General
Chapter was read and explained. An office to commemorate
the dead concluded the liturgical part of the meeting. Disciplinary
matters were then addressed. Each monk was invited to step forward
to confess his sins before the community. He prostrated himself
on the floor, asked pardon and awaited judgement. Any monk who
was not forthcoming was ‘accused’- out of charity -
by his brethren, so that he too could be judged, corrected and
progress, unhindered, on the road to salvation. Stephen
of Sawley,
who was a monk and later abbot of Fountains, advised novices to
consider this correction as ‘a pittance sent to you from
heaven.’ (44)
Soothsaying monks
In the later Middle Ages, one member of the Fountains community who was
sentenced to do penance for soothsaying had to wear a paper scroll
on his head with the words ‘Behold the soothsayer’ (‘Ecce
sortilegus’); papers inscribed with the words ‘Invoker
of spirits’ and ‘Soothsayer’ were fastened to his
chest and back so that his guilt would be known to everyone.
[Cited in J. Fletcher, The Cistercians in Yorkshire (London, 1919), p.
92.]
Punishment usually consisted of fasting, demotion
or beating. Anyone who was to be beaten was punished immediately
in front of his fellow
brethren: the offender’s robe was loosened so that it fell
to his waist and left his flesh exposed, while a member of the
community administered his punishment. The whole community witnessed
these punishments but nobody was to disclose what had transpired
at chapter. In more extreme circumstances, such as murder or sodomy,
the offender might face imprisonment or expulsion. In 1206 the
General Chapter ruled
that prisons might be built within the abbeys for those who offended;
in 1230 it was stipulated that these should
be strong and secure. Statutes issued by the General
Chapter suggest
that from the second half of the thirteenth century, life imprisonment
was not uncommon.(45)
[‘Farewell liberty’: Read about the prison at Fountains]