Penances for Small Faults

So if anyone by accident breaks an earthenware jar (which they call a baucalis), he can atone for his carelessness only by public penance. When all the brothers are gathered for the service, he must lie on the ground and ask for absolution until the prayers are finished. He will receive it when, at the abbot’s command, he is told to rise from the ground. The same amends must be made by one who comes rather late when summoned to some work or to the usual service, or who falters ever so little in singing a psalm. The same applies if he answers needlessly, roughly or rudely; if he is careless in carrying out the duties given him; if he grumbles even slightly; if he prefers reading to work or obedience and is slow in doing his appointed tasks; if, when the service is over, he does not hurry straight back to his cell; if he stops for ever so short a time with someone else; if he goes anywhere else even for a moment; if he takes anyone else by the hand; if he dares to discuss anything, however small, with someone who does not share his cell; if he prays with one who is barred from prayer; if he sees any of his relatives or friends in the world and talks with them without his elder; if he tries to receive a letter from anyone, or to write back, without his abbot’s leave. That is how far spiritual correction goes, and these are the kinds of matters and faults it deals with. [a]

But there are other things which, when they are committed freely among us, we too treat as blameworthy: open wrangling, plain contempt, arrogant contradiction, going out of the monastery freely and unchecked, familiarity with women, anger, quarreling, jealousies, disputes, claiming something as one’s own property, the infection of greed, the desire for and getting of needless things that the rest of the brothers do not have, eating between meals and in secret, and things like these. These are dealt with, not by the spiritual correction we spoke of, but by flogging, or they are atoned for by expulsion.