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Rule

St Benedict of Nursia, tr. Hunter Blair, 1907

Chapter 59

IF any nobleman shall perchance offer his son to God in the Monastery, let the parents, should the boy be still in infancy, make for him the written promise as aforesaid; and together with the oblation¹ let them wrap that promise and the hand of the child in the altar-cloth, and so offer him up. With respect to his property, they must in the same document promise under oath that they will never either themselves, or through any one else, or in any way whatever, give him anything, or the means of having anything. Or else, if they are unwilling to do this, and desire to offer something as an alms to the Monastery, for their own advantage, let them make a donation of whatever they please to the Monastery, reserving to themselves, if they will, the income thereof during their life. Thus let all possiblity of expectation be excluded whereby the child might be deceived and so perish (which God forbid), as we have learnt by experience may happen. Let those who are poorer do in like manner. But those who have nothing whatever may simply make the promise in writing, and with the oblation, offer their son before witnesses.

Notes

Note V (p. 158).—Cum oblatione. An offering, that is, of bread and wine, which was made by the parents at the offertory of the Mass in which their child was dedicated to God. (Statuta Lanfranci, c. 18; Ordo Cluniacensis, c. 27.) Mere infants were sometimes offered in this way; but most of the ancient monastic constitutions forbade them to be received before they had attained the age of reason, and could distinguish right from wrong. The ratification of the parents’ act was conditional on the subsequent consent of the child, whose final and solemn consecration to religion could not take place until his fifteenth year. The Council of Trent afterwards (Sess. XXV., cap. 15) fixed the age for profession at sixteen years complete; and Pius IX., by a decree promulgated in 1857, further ordained that simple vows only should be taken at the end of the novitiate, and that the final and crowning act of solemn profession should not take place until three years more had elapsed.
The Ordo Cluniacensis of Bernard, already cited, contains (cap. 17) a detailed account of the discipline and mode of education of these alumni, or youthful monks, in one of the most important mediæval monasteries. The writer concludes his account with the expression of his opinion that “it is hard to see how a king’s son could be brought up with greater care in a palace than the youngest boy receives in the Abbey of Cluny.” (From the Vetus Disciplina Monastica, Paris, 1726.)