Committing indecencies with other Monks, or with Boys, were offences which the Statutes of Convents likewise directed to be punished by severe flagellations; and the above St. Fructuosus, Bishop of Braga, ordered that the punishment should, in the above case, be inflicted publickly. ‘If a Monk (it is said in his Rule) is used to teaze Boys and young Men, or is caught in attempting to give them kisses, or in any other indecent action, and the fact be proved by competent witnesses, let him be publickly whipped[55].’
Refusing to make proper satisfaction to the Abbot for offences committed, or in general persevering in denying them, were also grievous faults in the eye of the first Founders, or Reformers, of Monastic Orders. In the Rule framed fifty years after that of St. Benedict, in order to improve it, the following direction was contained. ‘If the Brothers who have been excommunicated for their faults, persevere so far in their pride, as to continue, on the ninth hour of the next day, to refuse to make proper satisfaction to the Abbot, let them be confined, even till their death, and lashed with rods.’ Nor is the Rule of the abovementioned Bishop of Braga less severe against those Monks whose pride prevents them from making a proper confession of the offences they may have committed. ‘To him (it is said in that Rule) who, through pride and inclination to argue, continues to deny his fault, let an additional and severer flagellation be imparted.’
The habit of holding wanton discourses, or soliciting the Brethren to wickedness, was also deemed by the Founders of religious Orders to deserve severe flagellations; and St. Pacom ordered in his Rule, which, it was said, had been dictated to him by an Angel, that such as had been guilty of the above faults, and had been thrice admonished, should be publickly lashed before the gate of the Convent.
Attempts to escape from Monasteries, were, even in very early times, punished by flagellation. We read in Sozomenius, that St. Macarius of Alexandria, Abbot of Nitria in Thebaid, who had five thousand Monks under his direction, ordered that chastisement to be inflicted upon those who should attempt to climb over the walls of the Monasteries. ‘If any one continues in his wickedness, and says, I can no longer bear to stay here, but I will pack up my things, and go where God will direct me[56]; let any one of the Brothers inform the Prior, and the Prior the Abbot, of the fact; let then the Abbot assemble the Brothers, and order the offender to be brought before them, and chastised with rods.’
The holy Founders of religious Orders have also been very severe, in their provisions, against such Monks as seek for familiarities with the other Sex. In the Rule of the Monastery of Agaunus, it was ordained, that, ‘If any Monk had contracted the bad habit of looking on Women with concupiscence, the Abbot ought to be informed of the fact, and bestow upon the Monk a corrective discipline; and that, if he did not mend his manners in conference thereof, he ought to be expelled from the Society as a scabby sheep, lest he should ruin others by his example.’ The above Monastery had been built by Sigismond, King of Burgundy, to the honour of CXX. Martyrs of the Theban Legion, of which St. Maurice was the Commander, under the reign of the Emperor Maximinus.
The above-quoted Rule of St. Fructuosus, is no less severe against those Monks who seek for the Company of Women. In the XVth Chapter, which treats of the lewd and quarrelsome[57], it is ordered, that, ‘if after having received proper reprehensions, they persist in their wicked courses, they shall be corrected by repeated lashings.’ And St. Columbanus, who is the first who instituted the Monastic Life in France, and has written a Rule as a supplement to that of St. Benedict, also expresses himself with great severity against such Monks as are convicted of having barely conversed with a Woman in the absence of witnesses; for though there are faults for which he orders only six lashes to be given, yet, in the case here mentioned, he prescribes two hundred. ‘Let the Man who has been alone with a Woman, and talked familiarly to her, either be kept on bread and water for two days, or receive two hundred lashes[58].’
