Discipline in School and Cloister

by Jacobus X

In the Coutumes de Cluny, written by the monk Udabric in 1087, we read: ‘At prayers, if the children sing badly or fall asleep, the prior or master will strip them to their shirt and flog them with osiers or specially prepared cords.’

We know nothing of the duration of the punishments, but the following fact plainly shows that the delinquents were intimidated. On St. Mark’s Day some scholars of St. Gall’s had incurred the punishment of a flogging for truancy. The boy who was sent to the attic to fetch the rods, wishing to save himself and his comrades from the punishment, seized a burning brand and set fire to the abbey. This simple fact plainly shows that the children of those days were little rascals, and one is not surprised to find a priest complaining to St. Anselme du Bec that he could do nothing with his pupils although he thrashed them soundly.

It is true he might have had recourse to a more gradual system of education, like that proposed by a bishop of Metz—at the first offence the offender was to be warned: at the second, admonished: at the third, publicly reprimanded: at the fourth, he was to be put on bread and water: at the fifth, to be separated from the rest of the community and locked up or beaten, if his age permitted: and lastly, if those corrections were ineffective, God should be asked to cure him, and he should be taken before the bishop.

Let us be just: if there were some incorrigible children, certain masters treated them with a brutality which invited reprisals. On that, we have undeniable testimony. Guilbert de Nogent, speaking of the master who had trained him, pays homage to his virtue but confesses that he overwhelmed him almost daily with cuffs and blows, to force him to learn what he himself could not teach. ‘One day when I had been thrashed I went and sat at my mother’s knees, cruelly hurt and most certainly more than I deserved. My mother having asked me, as was her custom, if I had been beaten again, I, not wishing to denounce my master, said that I hadn’t. But, in spite of my resistance, she pulled aside my shirt and saw my blackened arms and weal-marked shoulders.

As in ecclesiastical schools, so also in monasteries and convents was flogging in vogue. A rule of St. Cesaire d’Arles, dating from the year 508, stipulates the punishment of flagellation for unruly nuns.

St. Benoit, the restorer of monastic discipline in France, who began his reform in the eight century, prescribed excessive fasts and harsh and bloody flagellations, even for children. If a brother, after having been often checked, neglects to correct himself, he must be punished with strokes. If anyone soils or damages the monastery fitments, he is to be checked and punished according to rule, if he does not mend. If a monk is found with anything claimed as his own property, it is to be taken from him up to two times; if he does not correct himself, he is to be severely punished. If anyone violates the rule of silence, he shall be severely chastised, likewise he who receives books or presents; who reports what he has seen or heard during a voyage; he who takes upon himself to publicly reprimand persons older than himself without an express order from an abbot; or even he who shall correct children with too much warmth and severity. Disobedience of the abbot was also to be punished in the same way.

St. Colomban enters into the most minute details for the administration of discipline to ecclesiastics: so many strokes for the monk who has not prostrated himself when going out of the monastery: so many for him who, at the beginning of a meal, has not made the sign of the cross on his spoon: so many for him who has not trimmed his nails before saying mass: so many for him who has not gathered up his crumbs at table. The superior allotted the punishment and generally administered it.

Another rule stipulates that the monks who shall have gone out of the monastery without the permission of their superior, or who, having been allowed out have not returned as soon as the errand was finished, shall be excommunicated for thirty days or beaten with rods; the same punishment for those who have eaten or drunk to excess. Young monks who have been convicted of theft are never to be promoted to the clericature.

The monks who, after having been excommunicated, should wish to re-enter the community of their brothers (Rule of St. Macaire), are to be flogged in the presence of the abbot and the whole community in order that, it not having been possible to correct them by remonstrances, they shall be corrected by rods.