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Shorter Rules
St Basil the Great, tr. Lowther Clarke, 1925
Rule 85: Is It Lawful to Have Private Property in the Brotherhood (R. 29)
This is contrary to the testimony in the Acts concerning them that believed, where it is written: “And not one of them said that aught of the things which he possessed was his own.” So he that says anything is his private property has made himself an alien to the Church of God and to the love of the Lord Who taught us by both word and deed to lay down our life for our friends, to say nothing of external possessions.2
Notes
- Acts iv. 32.
- Ben. Reg. xxxiii follows B. closely here. This is a convenient place to summarise B.’s teaching about private property. Possessions are good in themselves (B. 92), but distract the soul. They must be consecrated to God and disposed of with great care (F. 9). But B. himself enjoyed some income after his renunciation (Ep. xxxvii). Relations are to give the monk his income in full (B. 187; cf. 94, F. 9); a monk by contributing to the expenses of the coenobium is not thereby in a privileged position (B. 308). B. asks that monks may be exempted from taxation (Ep. cclxxxiv). See also B. 107, 304, 305. The rule of renunciation was clearly interpreted with some freedom.