Letter 19

From: [Lombard bishop] To: [Lombard monastic community] Date: ~630 AD Context: A bishop's letter to a Lombard monastery about the proper maintenance of monastic discipline. The bishop to the most beloved brothers of the holy monastery. I visited you three months ago, and what I saw gives me some concern that I want to address directly rather than leave to fester. The problem is not the major things — your prayer is regular, your observance of the Rule is basically sound, the community is not in open conflict. The problem is the small things: the small accommodations that each individual makes to his own preferences, the small erosions of the common life that seem harmless in isolation but that, taken together, are hollowing out the reality that the Rule is meant to protect. I want to name some specifically. The custom of taking meals privately when community meals are inconvenient. The tendency of the more senior brothers to treat the younger ones as servants rather than as brothers. The accumulation of small private possessions that technically violate the common ownership requirement. The habit of speaking ill of absent brothers. None of these is a dramatic failure. All of them are real ones. A community that permits them gradually becomes a collection of individuals who happen to share a building, rather than a community of persons who have given their lives to one another in God. I ask the abbot to address these things, and I ask each of you to examine your own part in them. Your father in God, The bishop