Chapter V — Community being taken away, neither the vow of obedience nor the observance of regular discipline can long stand

I. The violation of poverty is the rock upon which cloistered men most easily strike. Hence Religions both ancient and later have suffered more or less relaxation. Nevertheless the Institutors of the sacred Orders not only did not mitigate this poverty circumscribed by an exact common life, but fortified it with stronger safeguards. The mendicant Orders, seeing monastic discipline collapsed on account of redundant riches, rejected riches and revenues even to be possessed in common, and determined to live by begging. To these succeeded the Clerks Regular, who, beholding the collapsed discipline of the Mendicants, that they themselves might not be obnoxious to this vicissitude, prescribed a poverty so severe that some determined not even to receive offerings for the celebration of Masses, others not even to seek alms. Why this? The counsel of poverty is free. To possess riches absolutely brings no evil. The Patriarchs of the sacred Orders learned by the experiment of so many ages that the observance of that common life is most difficult and most easily violated by those vowing it. It would have been of their charity to temper this poverty, to permit private purses and life-rents, that by this way they might remove from their subjects the occasions of sinning. For when a law concerning a free and innocuous thing is with difficulty observed by subjects, it is the part of a wise legislator either to take the same away, or to temper it and accommodate it to common use.

II. On the contrary, all the Patriarchs to a man not only did not relax the law of poverty, but strengthened it more severely and fortified it with new safeguards. Why did none of the holy Patriarchs grant private purses and revenues to individual Religious? Why did all without exception most severely forbid them? Let them object to me even one Patriarch who granted private purses and revenues, and I am willing to submit the fasces to them and to sing their victory.

III. What therefore is the cause why all the holy Patriarchs conspired to this, that by unanimous consent they should restrict, straiten, and by every conceivable mode confirm this vow of poverty? Because, the poverty of the common life being taken away, the vow of exact obedience and the observance of regular discipline must needs fall. Since indeed the profession of the regular life, as regards poverty, is a mutual contract, as I have indicated, by force of which subjects with a solemn rite cede all their goods, both present and future, to the Religion; the Religion in turn binds itself by the same sacred bond of feeding and clothing its subjects, both healthy and infirm. If the Prelates of Religions do not discharge their pledged faith, by ministering all necessaries to their subjects, it necessarily follows that subjects are loosed from the bond of obedience, as regards the procuring of those things which are necessary for food and clothing. Therefore, community being taken away, the vow of obedience, and consequently the regular discipline itself, falls in ruins.

IV. The industries, labours, and means which subjects employ that they may acquire a private purse most often are not congruous to Religion. If Prelates attempt to hinder them, subjects oppose the right of nature of providing for themselves in food and clothing not bestowed by the Prelates. Since indeed in cloisters from which a perfect community is exiled, some sum is delivered for clothing, in one place greater, in another less, which does not suffice for the whole. The furniture of cells is not given at least entire. For journeys, for letters, either little or nothing. For the curing of infirmity certain things are held out, as in a hospital; and those who have not whence to succour themselves languish most wretchedly. But those who abound — far be it that they bestow anything upon infirm brethren. Hence some depart in the highest penury; others dying leave very much money. By what helps did they procure vast private purses?

V. Suppose Prelates forbid unfit subjects to hold sermons, because they are not endowed with that probity of morals which is required that outside the cloisters they may be an example to Christians; that they hear not the confessions of Nuns; that they mingle not themselves in earthly businesses; that they seek not patronages; that they wander not through the cities. Straightway subjects cry out: we lose these gains; who will give us clothes; who will pay the expenses of letters, of journeys, of infirmities? Who will hold out chocolate, who tobacco, who so many other things either necessary or congruous? Life-rents are either scanty or none, and so forth; by the common patrimony provision is not made for us: therefore by the right of nature, which precedes every vow, we can justly procure these things for ourselves. What thence? Men rude in letters, destitute of integrity of morals or of prudence go forth from the cloisters; the unskilled preach, the unlearned hear confessions, the inept transact businesses. Those hunt favours and patronages; these canvass for prefectures and offices. If Prelates wish to interdict them, subjects oppose, as I have said, the right of nature.

VI. The evils, scandals, relaxation of discipline, and other absurdities which proceed thence I am unwilling to express in my own words. Dionysius the Carthusian, On the Reformation of the Cloister, chapter 16, writes these things: From a private purse, as from a poisonous root, many sins proceed — as for instance contumacy, pride, contention, partiality, avarice, vainglory, envy, lying, luxury. Since those abounding in a private purse become bold for resisting even superiors, nor do they patiently receive discipline and correction; and they effect partialities, and sometimes are free for revellings and drunkennesses, from which they slip into the vices of the flesh, and most wickedly break their vow of preserving chastity. What if we used this liberty of writing? Like and graver absurdities flowing from a private purse Trithemius and Nider, St. Antoninus, Cajetan, and the theologians commonly describe. Behold the weight of the reasons why the holy Patriarchs even of the last age declared war upon a private purse. Other austerities, as fasts, rough clothing, and several other exercises of penance, they either diminished or took away. But the community of goods, although they acknowledged it to have been a stone of stumbling against which very many struck, they not only did not diminish, but, as I have said, prescribed it more severely: because, this exact community of goods being taken away, the whole monastic discipline must needs fall in ruins.