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On ritual and discipline in medieval Christian

monasticismTalal Asad

Version of record first published: 28 Jul 2006.

To cite this article:Talal Asad (1987): On ritual and discipline in medieval Christian monasticism, Economy and Society,

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On ritual and discipline inmedieval Christianmonasticismalal Asad

This paper is part of a lariger project1 in which hope to explorethe various conditions and effects of religious power in medievalChristianity2 with the aid of anthropological concepts.Rather than attempt an account in terms of the familiarideology/social structure duality, want to examine disciplinarypractices, including the multiple ways in which religious discoursesregulate, inform. and consvuct religious subjects. Such an approachseems to me to require an examination of two kinds of power-process: formations of the self, and manipulations of (or resis-tances to) others. Webeq s famous definition of power as theprobability that one actor within a social relationship will be in aposition to carry out his own will despite resistance 1947, p.152) helps us to focus on repressive or manipulative processesof power, but it obscures something wish to examine in thispaper: the conditions within which obedient wills are created.remarkable feature of monastic discipline is tha t it explicitly imsto create, through a programme of communal living, the will toobey. The Christian monk who learns to will obedience is notmerely someone who submits to another s will by force of argu-ment or the threat of force or simply by way of habitual, un-thinking response. He is not someone who has lost his ownwill , as though a man s will could be truly his only when itremained opposed to another s. The obedient monk is a personfor whom obedience is is virtue in the sense of being hisability, potentiality, power Christian virtue developed throughdiscipline. This is certainly one important difference between themedieval monastery and other total institutions , such as prisonsand hospitals, with which the monastery has, sometimes beenclassified (Goffman, 1961). The point is not that force has nonecessary place in monasteries of course it has. It i s that forceis a crucial element in a particular transformation of dispositions,no t merely in the keeping of order among inmates.

conomy and Socie ty Volume 6 Number 2 May 987R.K.P. 987 0308 5147/86/16b2 0159 8


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The story of religious disciplinary practices n medieval Chris-tianity can be told in a number of phases, of which three seem themost significant. They are related to developments in politicaleconomy, but these are not the primary object of concern here.In the first phase, the monastic community is the pre-eminentlocus of Christian religiosity, and thus of the disciplinary prac-tices for developing Christian virtues by which the Christian selfis to be formed. Central to these virtues is the obedient Christianwill, and the disciplinary practices, whose object is the learning ofthe virtues, are organised by means of programmes. Programmaticschedules order the round of daily and seasonal activities, andprogrammatic discourses specify the object of disciplined life.Monastic programmes are put into effect in a variety of historicalconditions, but common to them all is the fact that they aredesigned for communal living n an enclosed space. This firstphase s the setting for the paper that follows.In the second phase the story moves from the confines of themonastery to the Church at large. Here there is a growing concernon the part of ecclesiastical authorities with the religiosity of layChristians, and this is reflected n attempts to develop strategiesfor disciplining an increasingly mobile, affluent and heterogeneouspopulation. The sacrament of penance (confession) is extendedformally to the entire Christian population; the secular clergy isreformed and subjected to strict rules of celibacy; extensiveecclesiastical institutions, doctrines and powers are constructed;new religious movements (cloistered as well as mendicant) areregularised. This is the period in which heresies and inquisitionsare particularly prominent. In social conditions which the Churchdoes not control, it addresses itself to the central disciplinarytask: for forming the virtuous desires of all Christians. Its even-tual failure is marked by the emergence and consolidation of secu-lar states, the Protestant Reformation, and the scientific revolutionof the seventeenth century.The theme of the third phase overlaps in time with that ofthe second, and serves to highlight by contrast the distinctivefeatures of the latter. The disciplinary strategies of the Renais-sance princes are at once similar to and different from thoseemployed by the Church. Their conception of power is moremodest but more effective than the Church s: not to fashionChristian subjectivities but to govern loyal subjects. Conductinterests them far more than belief, and belief largely when itbecomes a political emblem (as in the early Christian communi-ties). The princes borrow disciplinary techniques from the Church

administrative institutions, inquisitorial procedures, penal sanc-tions, etc. and seek to adapt them to their own political strate-


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On r i tual and discipline in medieval Christian monasticism 6gies. It is in this political environment that the formation of theself increasingly becomes th e object of strategies of self-formation.Thu s t he first part of , his story revolves aroun d the idea ofritual, a topic on which medieval historians have written a greatdeal, and in doing so often borrowed from anthropological workson ritual, especially recently. My approach t o th e analysis ofmonastic rites differs in ~ertainespects from the dominant con-cepts of ritual in anthropology. It may therefore be helpful if Ideal with this matter briefly before I proceed with my substantiveaccount.M odem anthropologists writing on 'ritual' have tended t o seeit as the dom ain of the s mbolic in contrast t o th e instrumental.In British social anthropology it was Radcliffe-Brown who helpedt o popularise this distinction, as in this typical passage:

The very common tendency to look for th e explanation ofritual actions in their purpose is the resu lt of a false assimilationof the m t o what m ay be called technical acts. In an y technicalactivity an adequate statem ent of the purpose of any particularact o r series of acts con stitutes by itself a sufficient explanation.But ritual acts differ from technical acts n having in all instancessome expressive or sym bolic element in them . (Radcliffe-Brown, 1939 , p. 1 43)

In other words, some actions require an explanation in terms ofmeaning, others in terms of cause. But this sharp distinctionbetween 'expressive or symbolic' activity on the one hand and'technical' activity on the other (which overlapped the older'sacredfprofane' dichotomy) was re-phrased by Leach in termsof a continuum:Ritual, assert, 'serves to express the individual's stat us as asocial person in t he stru ctural system in which h e finds him-self fo r th e tim e being'. [ ] For my part find Durkheim'semphasis on the absolute dichotomy between the sacred andthe profane to b e untenable. Rather it is that actions fall intoplace on a contin uous scale. At o ne extrem e we have actionswhich are entirely profane, entirely function al, technique pureand simple; at t he o the r we have actions which are entirelysacred, strictly aesthetic, technically non-functional. Betweenthese tw o extremes we have the great majority of social actionswhich partake par tly ofi th e one sphere and partly of the other.From this point of view technique and ritual, profane andsacred, do n ot denote types of action bu t aspects of almost anykind of action. (Leach, 195 4, pp. 10-11, 12-13)


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The idea that ritual as an aspect of action signified social statuswas combined in Leach with the older notion that ritual as astructured v nt served to evoke something in the minds ofparticipants he ideal social structure:If anarchy is to be avoided, the individuals who make up asociety must from time to time be reminded, at least in sybol, of the underlying order that is supposed to guide theirsocial activities. Ritual performances have this function for theparticipating group as a whole; they momentarily make explicitwhat is otherwise a fiction. (Leach, 1954, p. 16)

What was common to both ideas (ritual as a structured event andritual as an aspect of action) was, of course, the assumption thatritual is essentially a symbolic form, signifying something toparticipants, and therefore in need of interpretation.When Douglas produced her own distinctive analyses of sym-bolic behaviour (1966, 1970, 1978), she emphasised that ritualis pre-eminently a form of communication (1970, p. 20) aform which employs a restricted code as opposed to an elabora-ted one. Somewhat like Bernstein, who was the acknowledgedsource of this distinction, Douglas attempted to correlate forms ofcommunication with social functions and types of person: ritualism(restricted code) maintained a common experience and socialsolidarity, and secularism (elaborated code) made explicit andhelped to bridge unique individual perceptions. The distinctionbetween restricted and elaborated codes figures prominentlyin the work of many symbolic interactionists (see, e.g., the contri-butions to Kapferer, 1976), who stressed that symbolic meaningswere the product of negotiation between interacting agents ratherthan of a given normative order.Turner s voluminous writings on the subject are primarily con-cerned to provide exegeses of the semantics of ritual. Drawing ondepth psychology, Turner stressed that ritual symbols shouldalso be interpreted as a set of evocative devices for rousing,channelling and domesticating powerful emotions (1969, pp. 42-3 . Such an interpretation would show how, for example, certainritual symbolsunite the organic with the sociomoral order, proclaiming theirultimate religious unity, over and above conflicts between andwithin these orders. Powerful drives and emotions associatedwith human physiology, especially the physiology of reproduc-tion, are divested in the ritual process of their antisocial qualityand attached to components of the normative order, energizingthe latter with a borrowed vitality, and thus making the Durk-


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On ritual and discipline n medieval Christian monasticism 63

heimian obligatory desirable. Symbols are both the resultantsand th e instigators of this process, and encapsulate its proper-ties. (Turner, 1969, pp. 52-3)Jungian rather Freudian in his religious optimism, Turner was byno means the first to attempt a syntheses of ideas from depthpsychology and anthropology. But more important here is thepoint that he sought, like other anthropologists, to identify ritualin terms of its symbolic features, as prescribed formal behaviourno t given over to technological routine (1976, p. 504), a concep-tion that seems to lead ~ the pre-occupation with deconstructingsymbolic codes .The idea that the ritual process is essentially symbolic and there-fore essentially a matter of the communic tion of mess ges hasbecome a central doctrine of anthropology, both British andAmerican. s Wagner has recently put it:

if ritual is, in its usual definition, what Mary Douglas calls arestricted code hen the anthropologist s job is to decipherit. But wh t is encoded and why? And what is the nature of thecode and why is it formulated in that way? These questionsbear upon the relational role of ritual within the subject-culture,and what it does as communication, regulation, or whatever.(Wagner, 1984, p. 143)There are echoes here of Austin s (1962) analysis of discourse intolocutionary , illocutionary and perlocutionary dimensions, al-though that author is nat cited by Wagner. And as with Austin streatment of the meanings and functions of conventional utterances,such approaches carefully separate the (public) meanings of ritualfrom the (private) feelings and intentions of its performers. Thus:

Rituals as conventionalized behaviour are not designed or meantto express the intentions, emotions, and states of mind of indivi-duals in a direct, spontaneous, and natural way. Culturalelaboration of codes cansists in the dist ncing from such spon-taneous and intentional expressions because spontaneity andintentionality are, or can be, contingent, labile, circumstantial,even incoherent or disordered. (Tambiah, 1979, p. 124)It might appear at first sight that such anthropological statementsare in opposition to Turoer s, but they are not. They do not denythat ritual affects the individual intentions and emotions of par-ticipants, they insist that the meanings of ritual cannot be affectedby the latter.3 As Evans-Pritchard argued earlier: Only chaoswould result were anthropologists to classify social phenomena byemotions which are supposed to accompany them, for such


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emotional states, if present at all must vary not only from indivi-dual to individual, but also in the same individual on differentoccasions and even at different points in the same rite (1965,p. 44 .In views of this kind, ritual becomes principally the object of anauthoritative reading, like a text with true meanings that can bedeciphered by initiates, practitioner and anthropologist alike. ForGeertz, ll cultural practices, not merely ritual events, are symbolsthat can be read as texts: Arguments, melodies, formulas, maps,and pictures are not idealities to be stared at but texts to be read;so are rituals, palaces, technologies, and social formations (1980,p. 135). The representation of totalities which some anthropolo-gists aim at is facilitated by the reduction of heterogeneity to asingle essence: the symbolic.Many French anthropologists too have been concerned withritual as a distinctive mode of communication, although struc-turalists have typically been interested in how ritual communicatesas opposed to what is communicated. For example Levi-Strausswrites: How, then, are we to define ritual? We can say that itconsists of words uttered, gestures performed and objects mani-pulated, independently of any gloss or commentary that mightbe authorised or prompted by these three forms of activity . . .(1981, p. 671). When ritual is thus conceptually purified, itemerges as the mode of communication that makes constant useof two procedures: parcelling out and repetition (Levi-Strauss,1981, p. 672). Smith (1982) builds on Levi-Strauss to elaboratefurther characteristics of rites, su h as the use of elements tocreate an illusion which can be believed in (as in the Westerntheatre of the last few centuries), and the marking of periods andoccasions having a cosmological ~ignificance.~ perber (1975,1980) has been less preoccupied with rite s symbolic practice,and more with symbolism as a mode of t h o ~ g h t . ~must emphasise that these references to anthropologicalwriters are not offered as a comprehensive account of anthro-poIogical theories of ritual . They are cited in order to indicatesome of the ways the approach to rites adopted in this paper aredifferent. Perhaps the most important difference is that am scep-tical of general concepts of ritual because and to the extent thatthey are a-historical. Thus while take it for granted that com-munication and cognition are involved in the learning and perfor-mance of rites, my primary concern is not with reading ritualcodes or with analysing modes of symbolic ( non-pragmatic ) cog-nition. In what follows I present a specific historical analysis ofmonastic rites as disciplinary practices rooted in particular materialconditions. Monastic rites are analysed in relation to programmes


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On ritual and discipline in medieval hristian monasticism 65

for forming or re-forming moral dispositions (that is, for organis-ing the physical and venbal practices that constitute the virtuousChristian self), and in particular, the disposition to true obedience.In these programmes, s we shall see, the meanings of conven-tional performances and ,the feelings and intentions of performersare not sharply separated on the contrary, in such programmesit is precisely their interrelation that is ~ en t r a l .~or anthropolo-gists who regard ritual as morally formative this interrelation hashas ofcen been taken asi unproblematic. The problem that has,in my view, received inadequate attention may be stated as fol-lows: although the formhion of moral sentiments is dependenton a signifying medium, we cannot read off that formation fromthe system of significations that may be authoritatively identi-fied and isolated as a distinctive semiotic phenomenon. The read-ing is a product of social discipline, and the text , the symbol, therite, is the product of (varyingly) disciplined performers8 who dis-course with one another in historically determinate ways;The monastic programme which prescribes the performance ofrites is directed at formibglre-forming Christian dispositions. Themost important of these is the will to obey the Truth, and there-fore the guardians of Truth. The achievement of that dispositionis the Christian virtue of humility. In this paper, ritual is there-fore discussed in relatian to processes of power, but again dif-ferently from most anthropologists who have addressed this prob-lem directly.For example in Gluckman s famous (1954) essay, rituals ofrebellion were seen as a form of catharsis, a ceremonial meansof releasing tensions through the evocation arid expression ofemotions dangerous to hierarchical political order.9Two decades later, Bloch (1974, 1975) described rituals asrestricted communication, a form of rhetoric which locked parti-cipants into positions o political sub~rdinati on: ~In the caseof political oratory, he wrote, we saw that the sign and tool oftraditional authority was formalised communication and that inthe case of religious rituals this formalisation is pushed evenfurther (1974, p. 77). In 1981, Paine put forward a more nuancedthesis:

Politics itself is generally thought of as propositional (becauseof its strong bargaining aspect). At a general theoretical levelthere is complementarity between symbolic and pragmaticaction in any undertaking, and perf oma to speech is to propositional speech as symbolic action is to pragmatic action.Rhetoric, then, belongs to the symbolic side of politics, andsymbolic systems of action, it is known, reduce peoples percep-


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tion of available choices. However, by attending to the con-straints in the speaking relationship between politicians andtheir public, it should be possible to give a grounded explana-tion that shows how the dominance of the performatory modeactually comes about. (1981, pp. 9-10, emphasis added)The politician must persuade his public, says Paine, he cannottake his power for granted. This persuasion may be achieved bysymbolic speaking or by symbolic doing, which is what accountsfor the affinity between rhetoric and ritual and for the role ofrhetoric in the ritualisation of politics . It is on the special politicaloccasions where values are already shared that we recogniseritual as, at once, symbolic action and a justification for what wehave done or have to do. (Paine, 1981, pp. 21-2) Thus whereasBloch presents an authoritarian conception of power-through-discourse, Paine is evidently wedded to a populist 0ne.lGeertz (1980) has been concerned less with symbol as themedium of persuasion and more with symbol as the form of spec-tacle. Bali royal rituals, he claims, constituted metaphysicaltheatre: theatre designed to express a view of the ultimate natureof reality and, at the same time, to shape the existing conditionsof life to be consonant with that reality; that is, theatre to pre-sent an ontology and, by presenting it, to make it happen makeit actual (Gertz, 1980, p. 104). In this conception, the ceremonialrepresentation of hierarchical power is made equivalent to itsformation: l

The exemplary center within the exemplary center, the iconking depicted outwardly for his subjects what he depictedinwardly t o himself: the equanimous beauty of divinity. Putthat way, the whole thing sounds like so much legerdemain, aSteinberg hand drawing itself. But as imagination for the Bali-nese was not a mode of fantasy, of notional make-believe, but amode of perception, representation, and actualization, it didnot seem so to them. To visualize was to see, to see to imitate,and to imitate to embody. (Geertz, 1980, p 130)

In my analysis of monastic rites I try to show that observation andimitation, although important, were not sufficient for the effectiveoperation of power. The formation transformation of moral dis-positions (Christian virtues) depended on more than the capacityto imagine, to perceive, to imitate which, after all, are abilitieseveryone possesses in varying degree. It required a particular pro-gramme of disciplinary practices. The rites that were prescribedby that programme did not simply evoke or release universal emo-tions, they aimed to construct and reorganise distinctive emotions


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On ritual nd discipline in medieval hristian monasticism 7

desire (cupiditas/caritas), humility (burnilitas), remorse (con-tn t io) on which the central Christian virtue of obedience toGod depended. This point must be stressed, because the emotionsmentioned here are not universal human feelings, not 'powerfuldrives and emotions associated with human physiology', such asthose referred to in the quotation from Turner. They are histori-cally specific emotions that are structured internally and related toeach other in historically determined ways. And they are the pro-duct not of mere readings o sylnbols but of processes o power.

Formalised speech and behaviour were by definition aspects ofsuch rites, as Bloch in common with most anthropologists has saidof 'ritual'. But in the monastic programme it was clearly recog-nised that the learning of appropriate forms was important becauseit was essential to the disciplined development of the self. Increas-ing formalisation did not signify increasing subordination: on thecontrary, those less adept in the performance of prescribed formswere placed under the authority of the more adept. Indeed, as weshall see, in medieval Christian society it was precisely those whowere virtually excluded from ritual discipline who were subjectedto sustained material exploitation peasants or lay brothers.And finally, the abbot neither coerced nor negotiated with themonks he addressed in sermons. His ritual discourse played a com-plex role in the selfrestructuring of contradictory religious sub-jectivities. The primary object of that transformation was thedevelopment of the Christian virtue of willing obedience, a pro-cess that did not 'reduce peoples' perception of available choices'(Paine), but ideally re-organised the basis on which choices were tobe made.In spite of these reservations, it remains the case that anthro-pologicaI work on what is usually called 'ritual' in specific cul-tures has provided many insights. No historian who seeks to under-stand medieval Christian rites can afford to be ignorant of it. Theanalysis I present here is tentative and partial, but it is informedby the conviction that a fuller understanding of connections be-tween religious ideology and political power needs the continuoustesting of anthropological texts and historical texts against eachother.

The medieval concept of disciplineI begin with a brief hisgorical sketch of the medieval concept ofdisciplina which will help us t o mark out the basic dimensions ofpower exercised in the monastery. The medieval Christian conceptof discipline was complex, containing a variety of ideas inherited


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68 Talal sad

from the ancient world, pre-Christian and Christian (Leclercq,1957 . Monks had access to this heritage through the writings ofthe early Church Fathers which were read daily in the cloisteredcommunity.In the classical Latin, disciplina was applied to the domains ofwar, politics, and domestic life. In the first, it referred to all therules and measures necessary to the art of war, and therefore toelements of strategies for defeating an enemy. In the second, itimplied order in public life, and hence good government, whichwas ensured by the Censor under the Republic, and later by theEmperor. In the third domain, it covered ll the virtues and obli-gations that were expected from every member of the family forits collective good: this included absolute obedience to the fatheras empowered by the law of patria potestas, but also modesty,fidelity, the practice of sound economy, etc., which defined therole of each family member. In the Bible, disciplina is the nor-mal Latin translation of the Greek word paideia . In the Hellenicworld paideia meant the physical, intellectual, and moral culti-vation of the person. In the Old Testament context it was used toconvey a very different notion ofeducation ivine education direc-ted not at an individual but at an entire people, and achieved throughsubmission to God s Law, to the trials imposed by him, and to theexhortations of his prophets. Hence paideia ldisciplina acquired astrong sense of chastisement, correction, and the penalty inflictedfor a fault. In liturgical and patristic texts, the word was oftenemployed in the plural to mean the process of teaching someoneas well as the substance of what is taught, which comes ultimatelyfrom God through those who represent him. The military usage ofthe classical word is also evident in texts which speak of the Chris-tian s combat against the devil. But this is a combat very differentfrom any known to the world of classical antiquity, because inprinciple its outcome is always certain: victory invariably goes tovirtue, the virtue that is attained by the grace of God. The notionof discipline in this Christian context has, therefore, no close con-nection with the idea of strategy which deals, by definition, withuncertainties. In a general sense disciplina covers ll that which thebishops do in order to govern the faithful in the name of God(see Brown, 1967, pp. 233-43 .In the early middle ages, the Rule of St. Benedict becameestablished as the sole authoritative text for the government of amonastic community and the formation of its members. Althoughmost Christians lived outside the cloister walls, the disciplined for-mation of the Christian self was attainable only within such com-munities. Even hermits were divided by The Rule into those whohad graduated from monastic life (approved) and those who had


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On ritual nd discipline n medievel Christian monasticism 169

never known that discipline (disapproved). The ordered existenceof the monks was defined by various tasks, the most importantof which was the singisg of divine services (opus Dei). Becausethe monk's life was organised around the routine performance ofthe liturgy, The Rule is often at least as specific about the contentand timing of the services as it is about other matters. notablefeature of The Rule is that the proper performance of the liturgyis regarded as something more than the major end of monasticactivity: it is also listed s one of the 'instruments' of the monk's'spiritual craft', and is thus integral to the idea of discipline.The Rule employs the word disciplina in several senses: in thesense of the good ordei- which The Rule should create in themonastery, of The Rule itself, and of the form of proper conductincluding internal and external attitudes. But most often, the wordrefers to all the penalties land corrections specified (see Fry, 1981).In The Rule, discipline therefore connotes (a) divinely derived anddivinely oriented knowledge which is embodied in (b) physicaland spiritual practice within (c) an organised community, andunder (d) the absolute authority of an abbot, whose duty is toapply e) measures necessary for the attainment of Christian vir-tues (divine knowledge embodied in human practice).These different but closely connected senses are reproduced inmedieval monastic writi~pg.Thus in the twelfth century, Peter ofCelle wrote a treatise c qed De disciplina claustrali describing theenclosed Christian life which was common to monks and regularcanons. According to this text, apostolica disciplina is what theApostles have taught the religious by their example, and obser-vantiae disciplinae clausttralis consists of imitating the way of lifetaught by Christ. For Cistercians, discipline had the senses itpossessed in monastic witings generally, but they also applied itto their particular Benedktine programme. Thus Bernard of Clair-vaux uses the word sometimes to refer to the doctrine whichChrist personally propowded to men, and sometimes to the con-duct of the obedient monk. But disciplina also signified ll the pre-scriptions which ensure his good behaviour especially the rulesdefined in the Cistercian programme (ordo cisterciensis), andincluding the decrees isgued by the annual general chapter, thesupreme legislative and executive body of the Order (see Knowles,1963, pp. 654--61). Thi entire range of meanings is found againin the writings of Hugh of St. Victor, but with an explicit emphasison the doctrinal senses pf discipline. Thus in the Eruditio didas-calica Hugh writes of discipline as 'the practical science of goodliving [whose principle, is humility' (Leclercq, 1957, p 1 300).

More interesting for present purposes is the treatise Hugh wrotefor the instruction of novices, in which he propounded the first


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coherent theory of gesture closely related to the concept of dis-cipline. According to Hugh:The novitiate is the road to beatitude: virtue leads to thelatter, but i t is discipline imposed on the body which formsvirtue. Body and spirit are but one: disordered movements ofthe former betray outwardly (foris) the disarranged interior(intus) of the soul. But inversely, discipline can act on the soulthrough the body n ways of dressing (in habitu), in postureand movement (in gestu), in speech (in locutione), and in tablemanners.(in mensa).Gesture is the movement and configuration of the bodyappropriate to ll action and attitude. [ ] Gestus designatesnot so much a unique gesture as the animation of the body inll its parts. It describes outwardly a figure presented to the gazeof others [ ] even s the soul inside is under the gaze of God.(Schmitt, 1978, pp. 9-10)

Although gesture n this sense has its own end, maintains Hugh, itshould conform to the measure that discipline imposes on it. Dis-ciplined gesture is thus not merely a technique of the body vary-ing from one culture or historical period to mother , s Mauss(1979) reminded anthropologists, it is also the proper organisationof the soul of understanding and feeling, desire and will. Thisconcept of discipline, which is the measure as well as the sign ofvirtue, enables Hugh to make an equivalence between the humanbody and the community an equivalence proposed not simplyfor the collective life of the cloister, but (as in other medievalwriters, notably John of Salisbury13) for political order too.The Christian notion of monastic discipline s the force neces-sary for co-ordinating an organic whole belongs to the vocabularyof duty. It presupposes a programme of learning to lead a virtuouslife under the authority of a Law, in which everyone has his orher proper place. The programme determines for disciples what isto be done, how, in what order, and by whom. The older, pre-Christian notion of discipline s one element in a military strategyis different, in that its overall aim is the disabling f not the per-manent defeat of an opponent in conditions of uncertaintywhere precise calculation is impossible.14 The idea of virtue has aplace in both settings, but in medieval Christian thought andpractice it is subordinated to the discipline required by God sLaw.15 That is one reason why the central Christian virtue ishumility a virtue that is not a simple behavioural feature ofsubordinate social status, but an inward condition to be cul-tivated progressively by ascetic discipline (see the famous chap-ter on Humility in The Rule).


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On ritual and d iscipline in medieval Christian monasticism 7

Reorganising th e soulHugh of S t. Victor s concep tion of ritual gestur e and speech asthe discipline of the body that is aimed at the proper ordering ofthe soul expresses very well the central purpose of the monasticprogramme.According t o medieval Christian doctrine a nd practice, sin is aconstant danger to the soul, and so calls for perpetual combat.The entire life of the Christian should be devoted to dealing withth e corruptin g effects of O riginal Sin, t o restoring with God sgrace the sou l made impure and disordered by an original transgres-sion. The Christian s conqern is no t merely w ith Original Sin, bu twith actual sin .e. with the attempt to fulfil the inordinatedesire for temporal ends which is rooted in the flesh, and whichmedieval theologians called concupiscence. In his sinful state manis in mo rtal danger, y et God in his infinite mercy has provided fo rth e possibility of man s salvation. It is for this tha t th e monasticprogramme was instituted, for the performance of practices speci-fied in that programme are in effect attempts at reforming thesoul. The work of reforqnation involves the elimination of sinfuldesire, bu t this is no t necessarily to be seen as a mechanical actionof denial. Th e programme always calls for th e disciplined construc-tion of virtuous desire, but what this meant for unlawful desirehow i t was t o be dealt with depended on the precise historicalcondition of th e disciples.A t th core of the monastic programme are a number of texts,differing in content and authority: The Rule of St. Benedict,custumals supplementing The Rule, the Bible, writings of theChurch F athers, breviaries, etc. These texts between them containgeneral statements abost the nature and purpose of Christianlife, as well as the most precise stipulations regarding what is tobe done, how, when, where, by whom. Thus programmatic textsrelate to performances in a variety of ways nspiring, recommen-ding, prescribing, authorising, justifying. But s trictly speaking, pro-gramme and performance d o no t stand alone in relation to eachother. Essential to both are the mediating practices concernedwith interpreting pro gr m m ati c texts, applying their principles andregulations to the runnipg of th e monastic com mu nity, judgingand assessing performances, and in general teaching novices tocarry out the programme. Furthermore, the programmatic textsdo not simply regulate plerformances, standing as it were prior toand outside the latter. They are also literally part of the perfor-mance: written words to be variously chanted, recited, read,attended to , meditated o n by the monks. From these brief observa-tions two things follow. First, that the distinction between pro-


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grarnme and performance is in practice not a clear-cut duality,nor is the phenomenon wish t o describe essentially a theatricalone, in the sense to which we are now accustomed with all itsimplications of artful impersonation. The programme is performedprimarily not for the sake of an audience but for the sake of theperformers. They are learning t o exercise and develop the Chris-tian virtues, to replace unlawful desires by virtuous ones, not toappreciate a purely 'aesthetic' representation.The monastic attempt at forming virtuous desire can perhapsbe seen most clearly in the ritual techniques developed by Bernardof Clairvaux. These have been described in detail recently byLeclercq (1979), and it is mainly his account draw on in thissection for my discussion of the creative aspect of disciplinarypower.The starting point of Leclercq's study is the changing pattern ofrecruitment into the new monastic orders emerging in the twelfthcentury. In this period the majority of the new recruits wereadults, and usually from the noble or knightly classes.16 They hadtherefore participated actively in secular society unlike mostrecruits to the older monasteries (including the famous monasteryof Cluny) who had lived virtually all their lives in the cloister andbeen raised in it since childhood. This meant that the newmonks had had direct, pleasurable experience of sexual love andknightly violence prior to their having taken up the religious life.Such experiences, Leclercq points out , posed a special problem forreligious training, distinct from the one encountered in the educa-tion of infants for the monastic life. Evidence of how Bernarddealt with this problem is available from a careful analysis of hisminor writings, which shows that he sought to exploit rather thanto repress these dangerous secular experiences. This argument maybe illustrated first by reference to Leclercq's discussion of sexualdesire. For traditional Christians, sensual desire (cupiditas) shouldbe replaced by caritas (love of God) but how was this to beaccomplished?

What strikes one as remarkable [Leclercq writes] is that Bernardnever says or assumes that the love which tends to union withGod excludes an accompanying love tending to union betweenhuman persons, which remains within what he calls the orderof charity, or 'charity in order'. Monastic love and other formsof Christian love have a different quality, but the latter can andought to be integrated into this love for God. And monasticlove for God can and must be expressed in terms of humanlove; it can assume, retrieve, and integrate images, representa-tions of human love, and wen memories of its accomplish-


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nritual and discipline in medievai Christian monasticism 73

ment, as seems to have been the case with some young menwho had become monks. (p. 23Leclercq stresses the compatibility of 'love for God' and 'humanlove' which underlies Bernard's programme, but in this assertionof compatibility important differences are obscured.The Latin word libido had the original sense of 'pleasure, desire,longing' from which the early Christians derived, through theStoic tradition, the senw both of 'unlawful desire' and of 'eager-ness for eloquence and glory' .e. for excellence (Tertullian).(It was in the latter sense that Cicero had spoken of libido as thedesire for a future good, in conirast to laetitia or joy in a presentgood.) In this way, one sense of libido was linked t o a normativeconcept of divine Law, the other to an older, teleological notionof virtue. The former now defines desire as the power derivingfrom concupiscence which impels the Christian to transgress, andwhich must be restrained in order that the Law be upheld. In theother sense desire appea s not as something to be repressed, butas the essential means fot the achievement of excellence, as a pre-condition for training the virtuous self. The critical distinctionhere is therefore not simply between 'love for God' and 'humanlove', but between desire which is measured by an authoritativeLaw, and desire as the motive for exercising virtue. The former is,of course, central to every Christian orientation, and I shalldeal with it below in the final section. But here it is particu-larly the latter notion as employed in Bernard's disciplinaryprogramme for his young monks on which I want to focus. As theprevious monastic traditions had done, Bernard set before hisnovices an authoritative model of virtue towards which they wereled to aspire, but he also sought to use concupiscence itself as thematerial for exercising virtue what medieval theologians calledmateria exercendae virtutcs.It is clear that this work of transformation required a skilfuldeployment of biblical language so that it might resonate with,and re-integrate, the pleasurable memories and desires which hadbeen fashioned in a previous secular life. This, in turn, was depen-dent on the allegorical mode of narrating, interpreting, and beingmotivated by biblical images, a mode so characteristic of medievalChristianity.'' The principal access to this verbal imagery, itsauthorised reception, was intrinsically connected to the regularperformance of the liturgy, to the private reading of the scrip-tures, and t o the sermons whose style was developed by Bernard.lgThus the daily performance of liturgy, the reading aloud andthe hearing and memorising of sacred texts, indeed the entiresequence of monastic pr~ctices were among the material precon-


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ditions and the material means for the transforming work ofBernard s sermons. Monastic sermons were themselves s Leclercqhas elsewhere shown (1977, pp. 206-20) ites.Monastic rites in the programme of Clairvaux are thus not tobe seen as ways of repressing a socially dangerous psychic forceas some modern historians have maintained with reference to therites of the earlier Benedictines (e.g. Rosenwein,ll971). But nor arethey simply to be understood as inculcating new values into par-ticipants a point made innumerable times in anthropologicalwritings about initiation rites (most recently in La Fontaine,1985). Leclercq s account of monastic rites does not lend itselfeasily to an explanation in terms of inculcation , a process inwhich passive subjects are filled with new content. Since monasticrites were either spoken, or spoken-andgestured (in Hugh of St.Victor s sense), the role of language was obviously integral to theirperformance. In this context speech is not simply a mode of com-munication or of conventional representation. It is not an instru-ment of social control . Speech in this context is a dialogicalprocess by which the self makes (or fails to make) itself in a dis-ciplined way. Where rites are at the centre of the tr nsforn tionof preexisting ideas, feelings, and memories, explanations of thatprocess in terms of conditioning is not adequate as Vygotsky(1962) pointed ou t half a century ago.It should be noted that, in theory, Bernard is not manipulatingdesires (in the sense that his monks do not know what is happeningto them), but creating a new rhetorical space for the operation ofa distinctive motivation. In order to do this he develops a discur-sive practice itu l di logue or facilitating and regulating anew way of living. The sermons which give authoritative exegesesof biblical texts provide a new vocabulary by which the monksthemselves can redescribe, and therefore in effect construct, theirmemories in relation to the demands of a new way of life.20 Thisre-description of memories depends on a long and complex process.In it (1) the authoritative preacher and the monk addressed, (2)the monk interacting with fellow-monks, 3) the confessor andthe monk in confession, and 4) the remembering religious selfand the secular self remembered, all contribute in the productionof a moral description by which the monk s desires and feelingsare reconstn~cted see note 6).Thus the learning of the religious life, no less than the shapingof their own memories, has of course to be done by the monksthemselves in their interchange with those in authority. The desirethat motivates this constructive process is not something that canbe internalised in any rite (as though the self were an empty con-tainer). For this reason one might say that. the pedagogic relation-


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O n ritual and discipline in mediev l Chris t ian monasticism 75

ship between Bernard and his monks was in principle one ofauthor ity, no t of domination.However, the relationship between teacher and pupil which Idescribe here in terms of authority rather than domination is adifferent matter from what it is that th e pupil learns when h e triesto transform himself according to an authoritative model. For th eprogramme which aims to transform sensual desire (the desire ofone hum an being for another) into the desire for God requires atth e same time a change m the status of t he m onks as lovers. Frombeing masters or equals of human lovers (male or female), theym ust now learn t o become hum ble subjects of a heavenly Lover.Th e transformation thu s culminates in n unconditional subjectiont o th e Law, in desire becoming th e will to obe y od he supremeChristian virtue. And it was a transformation tha t sought t o bridgea fundam ental co ntradictio n by actively playing on it.The possibility of failure in such a programme is explicitlyrecognised by medieval writers, as we shall see when we examinewhat Hugh of St. Victor has to say. Even Leclercq allows forthings not going according to plan, though in a typically modernway: It m ust be admitted, however, tha t the use of such methods,with th e fran k expression of t he language of aggression and sexuallove, has its pecu liar risks. We m ay w onde r wheth er B ernard spedagogy was always free from such risks and fro m all ambiguity.(p. 105 ) But he does no t appear to have noticed that the ambiguityand risk derive fro m Bernard s deliberate decision to co urt dangerin order t o overcome it. The novice is thru st into ambigu ity andcontradiction, and his fragmented self made th e precondition of avirtuous reformation. Such a decision was connected t o th e facttha t w ith adult recruitment the danger of sensual desire could notbe dealt with directly by simple rejection: the redescription ofpleasurable memory wasIt was no t t he case, as ,Leclercq implies, th at only adult entrantshad definite kno wledge of secular love (19 79 , p. 14 ). Childrenbrought up in the early Benedictine monasteries had that know-ledge too, but in their case the dangers of sexual love could bemanaged by trying to control the conditions of experience withth e aid of avoidance rules backed by severe penalties. Thus in theeleventh century, the punishment recomm ended for the seduc-tion of child or yo ut h by a cleric or monk was public beating,loss of the tonsure, imprisonment in chains and irons for sixmonths, and fasting t h k e days a week until vespers; after thisanother six months of isolation in a cell under strict custody. Inearlier medieval penitentials yo uthful sexual acts were much m orelightly punished (McLaughlin, 197 5, p. 17 1; see also Payer,1984) Such attempts to control the conditions of experience are


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to be contrasted with Bernard s attempt to transform the structuresof memoy 2 2The ritual programme of the older Benedictine monasteries(notably Cluny) was different from the one at Clairvaux nd theprocess of re-learning described by Leclercq was precisely one ofthe things that distinguished the latter from the former. But thepoint is that all monastic communities had programmes for theformation of dispositions. For all of them, the liturgy was anindispensible element in that formation and sacramental confes-sion the principal means by which the formation was tested andregulated. It is well-known that the Cistercians curtailed very con-siderably the time allotted to liturgical activity (opus Dei), and putmuch greater emphasis on prescribed manual labour. But by thatact of reorganisation the Cistercian programme reconstitutedvarious kinds of work s devotional and disciplinary, thus makingit akin to the liturgy. Work, including economically productivework, became a rite, an appropriate part of the morally transforma-tive programme. The rich Cluniac liturgy came to be describedby Cistercians as inappropriate to the formation of Christianvirtues (see Knowles, 195S , and especially the virtue of humility.Such historical reforms indicate that texts comprising the pro-gramme were capable of variant readings. But it is important tostress that alternative readings were not made at random, that theydepended on institutional conditions. Indeed, it can be argued thatit was the establishment of new disciplines that defined new read-ings s authoritative rather than the other way around.Manual labour and the virtue of humilityThe monastic revival of the twelfth century, out of which theCistercian Order emerged, has been much written about by his-torians. striking feature of this movement for reorganisingmonastic discipline was the prominence given to ideas of povertyand manual labour. Many scholars have seen in the new ideasabout manual labour an ideological shift of great importance forthe development of rational organisations familiar to us in themodern world. One historian has claimed that by proclaiming theobligation of work on ll men, even the rich; by rehabilitatingmanual labour and by demonstrating, through monastic example,the benefits of charity, of disinterestedness, and of the variety andalternation of work, St. Bernard outlined plan for an idealorganisation, a programme for a rational way of life (Vigne, 1928,p. 585). More recently, in his study of decaying feudal ideology,Duby has written that unlike the older Benedictines, such as theCluniacs, the Cistercians chose not to live by the labour of other


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On ritual and dis ipline In medieval Christian monasticism 77men, and so took a stanoe outside the seigniorial mode of produc-tion (1980, p. 222). What precisely was the place of labour in theCistercian programme? In this section I want to address myselfbriefly t o this question, with special reference to discipline.Both the older Benedictine and the Cistercian programmes wereorganised around The Rule of St Benedict for cloistered communi-ties subject to the absolu~e uthority of the abbot. Chapter 48 ofThe Rule which deals with Daily Manual Labour begins asfollows: Idleness is an enemy of the soul. Therefore, the brothersshould be occupied according to schedule in either manual labouror holy reading. And it proceeds, to allocate times to both in be-tween the Hours devoted to the opus Dei ( work of God ). It isclear that The Rule regards manual labour from the spiritual pointof view as a means of avoiding the danger of idleness problemwhich Cluniacs had resdved by increased effort devoted to theliturgy (opus Dei). But the liturgical splendour at Cluny whichCistercian reformers denounced in the name of poverty andhumility depended on a productive system that was essentiallyfeudal in character.23Agricultural land acqbired by Cluny whether directly bydonation or by exchange was usually already occupied by serfswho therefore became the absolute property of the monastery.Unworked land was sometimes handed to peasants to settle onand cultivate within a stipulated period on the understandingthat when this was dons it would be divided between abbey andtenant (Evans, 1931, pp 14-15). Like other feudal properties,Cluny s therefore consisted partly of demesnes (cultivated byservile labour) and partly of rents (paid on agricultural.land, butalso on churches, etc.). This arrangement provided the monksdirectly with food for themselves and their servants, and fodderfor their horses, as well as money for a variety of commodities(vestments, condiments, books, etc.) and for building.The Cistercian emphasis on poverty and separation from theworld stands in well-known contrast to the opulent, ceremoniallife of the Cluniac Order. And it also goes with a different form ofproductive property. Cistercian estates were made up of farmingunits called granges , each grange being managed in effect as ademesne but with the important difference that the agriculturallabour was provided from within the Order itself. Unlike the olderBenedictine abbeys, and unlike the typical secular manors, Cister-cians did not exploit the labour of tenants or receive income fromrents, at least in the earlier generations (Postan, 1975, p. 102).The founders of Cfteaux were concerned to re-establish whatthey saw as the purity of The Rule, but it was their explicitcommitment to poverty and to separation from the world that


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78 Talal sad

produced a distinctive form of agrarian property and concep-tion of manual work. simplified and abbreviated liturgy fol-lowed from the intention to reduce consumption, and to renouncethe legal privileges of clerics, ll for the sake of poverty andhumility. 'Tithes and other fees belonging to the priestlyministry, the rights and privileges of clerics, the revenue obtainedfrom the work of men belonging to a [servile] class' were allregarded by the Cistercian founders as 'a usurpation contrary tothe law established by the canonical tradition of the Church. .From this point of view, even ecclesiastical property constitutesriches of this world and, like it, must be renounced' (Leclerc1966, p. 27). But this renunciation of tithes, rents and servicesentailed the problem of organising productive work to securesubsistence, a problem which was solved by recruiting laymen intothe Order. It is certainly not correct to say that in this arrange-ment the monks were 'helped by lay brothers' who although notthemselves monks 'were treated as if they were' (Leclercq, 1966,p. 27). Lay brothers did not live in the enclosure but on cultivatedland at a distance from it. They did not follow the same scheduleas the monks and were not subject to the same discipline. And itwas they who performed the basic agricultural work, assisted atseasonal times by the cloistered monks (Lekai, 1977, p. 367). sRoehl (1972, p. 87) notes, lay brothers were required to observefewer days of rest and fewer fast days but entitled to larger rationsof food than the monks. Once their monasteries were built, thequantity of time spent on cultivation by Cistercian monks was notadequate even for their own subsistance et alone for the impres-sive amounts of wealth they accumulated in later years.Nevertheless, it is not merely the proport on of productive workdone by Cistercian monks (which was not very much) but thechange in the monastic concept of work itself that is of interest.s we saw above, historians have typically dealt with this questionin terms of the new value accorded to manual labour in the twelfthcentury. Here is another writer on the same subject in somedetail:

The confrontation between active and contemplative lives wasrevived in the debate between canons and monks, fed by a number of burning issues of the day. On the theoretical plane, therewas a rehabilitation of Martha [the biblical figure representingactive as against contemplative life] and in practice, manuallabour was restored to a place of honour with the Carthusiansand particularly the Cistercians and the Premonstratensians. Ofcourse, the influence of tradition continued, and strong resis-tance to change appeared. Still, the founding of new orders


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nritual and discipline in medieval Christian monasticism 79makes clear that something had changed, that a mutation hadoccurred in the Benedi~tine pirit, for why else would su h newrules be necessary? It is, of course, possible to point to a Rupertof Deutz, who was irritated by the vogue for manual labour, orto a Peter the Venerable somewhat stunned by the attacks ofSaint Bernard, both of whom point out that, according toSaint Benedict, manual labour, advisable but not obligatory,was merely a means and not an end of spiritual life. But there isabundant evidence from every quarter that the new spiritualattitude toward labour was undergoing a crucial developmentthrough practice. [ ] The concept of penitential labour wassupplanted by the idea of labour as a positive means of salva-tion. (Le Goff, 1980, pp 114-15)

A precursor of the puritan ethic ? The origin of a rationalitydistinctive of modern capitalism? However that may be (and somehistoriansz5 have already answered these questions in the affirma-tive) it is not the ideological value given to manual labour but itsrole in the economy of mpnastic discipline I want to identify here.If labour was once conce/ived of as penance, it would be a mistaket o think that this meant that penance was not a means to salva-tion. It had always been that. What seems to have changed is thatthe concept of manual labour became an important part of theCistercian programme for developing Christian virtues andespecially the virtue of hbrnility. I t does not follow from this thatmanual labour in any general sense came to be more highly valuedthan other kinds of activity. At Cluny, the mending and washingof clothes, the baking of bread, the cooking of food, and the copy-ing of manuscripts, ll cwnted as manual work. However, becauseit was considered partiylarly demeaning, the first of these weregenerally done by paid servants (Evans, 1931, p 87). For Cister-cians, it was precisely hvmiliation that constituted the point ofmanual labour, not its ecdnomic instrumentality.Thus in the Dialogus duorum monachonrm, written by a Cis-tercian monk late in the twelfth century, an argument is represen-ted between a Cluniac ahd a Cistercian on the subject of manualwork. When the former insists that the monks of Cluny did workwith their hands implying among other things the labour ofcopying manuscripts his Cistercian opponent responds withcontempt: what is grinding gold into dust and illuminating hugecapital letters with golddust, if it isn t useless and idle work? Eventhose works of yours which are necessary are contrary to the pre-cepts of the Rule because you pay no attention to the time as-signed to them in the Rule (Idung, 1977, p. 93). Clearly, therewas manual labour and manual labour, and what mattered to the


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18 Talal sad

Cistercian programme was not that work with one s hands was initself t o be exalted over work with one s mind, but that the objectof monastic practice was the realisation of humility through thediscipline prescribed by The Rule. The making of gorgeous manu-scripts could not, by this measure, have any place in such a pro-gramme. The fact that it was productive work (manuscripts werebought and sold) as well as being manual work was not in itselfrelevant.In every society different types of work are, of course, variouslyesteemed. But in all class societies, whether ancient, medieval ormodern, those who control the basic means of production havealways regarded it as more estimable to direct the work of othersthan to work with their own hands. As ecclesiastical landlordshaving powers to draw on the labour of laymen this applies toCistercians no less than it does to Cluniacs. Both Orders com-manded the work of dependent labourers, and if the Cistercianfounders rejected the rents of labouring villagers this was certainlynot because they valued manual labourers highly:

Because they had no use for tenants, whether servile or free,they sometimes destroyed existing villages to make way forgranges, and evicted peasant occupiers, who were settled else-where. Investigation of the Cistercian settlement in the northof England has verified the charge of the twelfth-centurysatirist Walter Map: they raze villages and churches, and drivepoor people from the land . Their preference for estates theycould work [i.e. manage] themselves brought them many giftsof virgin land; but where i t did not, they showed no scruple increating the kind of estate they wanted by means of depopula-tion. The claims of peasants could not be allowed to obstructthe search for the desert. (Lawrence, 1984,p. 162The spiritual distance between monks (who were mostly of upperclass origin) and peasants remained as sharp as ever among the Cis-tercians. Outside the Order peasants were to be excluded evendriven out where necessary; inside it they acquired the status oflay brothers conversi) and performed the labour necessary for thephysical existence of the entire monastery. Because the monasterywas conceived of as an organic entity, the Law, in the form of TheRule, applied to the organism as a whole. The prescription ofmanual labour was a law that could be satisfied if it was followedon the whole by the community. But humility is a virtue not arule, and as such it is an ability of the individual soul not of thecommunity . If manual labour was to be a discipline for developingand exercising the virtue of humility, that virtue was not equallyavailable to all Ci~tercians. ~ hose who did manual labour the


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On ritual and discipline in medieval hristian monasticism 8

most ought to have cultivated the greatest measure of humility.But paradoxically, those who did most of the humble work (theconversi were those who rebelled most often (Southern, 1970p. 259). One reason is perhaps that those who are of servile ori-gin cannot be rendered humble by servile work but they can beexploited through it.Clearly it is not enough that manual labour be valued highlyfor it to achieve its desired effects. For this an entire programmeof discipline is required by which the virtue of humility can belearnt and exercised by each member of the community. Laybrothers, immersed in d e daily demands of agricultural work,were precisely not subjecti tosuch a programme.Rites and the discipline ofsobedienceWhat were the systematic requirements of a programme of discipline within a cloistered community? To answer this question let uslook first at two programknatic statements. One of them, by Hughof St. Victor, expounds a doctrine of the sacraments according towhich these rites are to b t regarded as the basic practice of Chris-tians for learning the virtue of humility. The other, by Bernard ofClairvaux, explains the law in The Rule according to which con-tinuous obedience is owed by monks to their Superior. It isimportant to bear in mind that these writings are not mere idealsopposed to realities , but discursive interventions by practisingreligious people which seek to define and recommend ways ofperforming the monastic programme. It was only through suchdiscursive work that a prdgramme s intention was integrated, andthus a measure of (temporary) coherence achieved. The coherentprogramme had no existence independent of such authoritiativeinterpretations.Hugh was not merely a cloistered canon2 bu t the most influen-tial theologian of the twelfth century, who drew on the doctrinesof his contemporaries, including Bernard of Clairvaux. I proposenext to examine some aspects of his major text known as Desacramentis cbristianae fidei in a little detail, particularly as laidout in Book One, Part Nine.What is a sacrament? Hugh begins his answer to this questionby considering the traditional definition: A sacrament is the signof a sacred thing (p. 154 , and argues that this is not quite preciseenough, because words of Scripture and statues or pictures are allsigns of sacred things without being sacraments. So he proposes amore adequate definition: A sacrament is a corporeal or materialelement [a word, a gesture, an instrument] set before the senseswithout, representing by similitude and signifying by institution


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182 Talal Asad

and containing by sanctification some invisible and spiritual grace(p. 155 . For example the water of baptism represents the washingof sins from the soul by analogy with the washing of impuritiesfrom the body, signifies it for the believer because of Christ s in-augurating practice, and is sanctified by the words of the officiat-ing priest who performs the baptism. The three functions, espe-cially that of representation, are not self-evident but must be iden-tified and expounded by the guardians of true meaning.28 Thusaccording to Hugh, a sacrament, from its moment of authoritativefoundation, is a complex network of signifiers and signifieds whichacts, like an icon, commemoratively. What this icon signifies isalready present in the minds of participants. It points backward totheir memory and forward to their expectation as properly dis-ciplined Chri~tians.~~This is why, he writes elsewhere, the eyesof infidels who see only visible things despise venerating the sacra-ments of salvation, because beholding in this only what is con-temptible without invisible species [i.e. what is accessible to theuninstructed senses] they do not recognise the invisible virtuewithin and the fruit of obedience (p. 156 . The sacrament pre-supposes a certain frame of mind in which the work accomplishedby it is primarily one of evocation and recognition But that inturn depends on the prior existence of cognitive patterns and pat-terns of desire, of feelings structured by conce ts, that have beenbuilt up over time through Christian discipline. 9For Hugh there is thus no direct correspondence between whatthe rite represents and the participant s experience. It is clearthat he does not regard the rite as an expression or representationof inner states, but nor does he regard it as a restricted code bear-ing cultural meanings. We shall see in a moment that he conceivesof rites as the dynamic relation between sign and disposition,which has to be regulated and shaped by authoritative discoursein order to secure its authentic meaning .Having defined sacramental rites, Hugh moves to the nextpart of his exposition. Sacraments are known to have been insti-tuted for three reasons: on account of humiliation, on account ofinstruction, on account of exercise (p. 156 . Hugh s accountmakes it clear that these are not three separate functions, butaspects of a single practical process. Let us take them in order.Why humiliation? Because, having disobeyed God through pride,man is now obliged to subject himself to inanimate things, tomaterial elements of the sacrament, which are by nature belowhim in the scheme of Creation: there is no one, indeed, whodoes not know that rational man exists superior by foundation tothe mute and insensible elements, and yet when this same man isordered to seek his salvation in these, to y the virtue of his


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obedience, what else is this than that a superior is subject to aninferior? (p. 156 .To try the virtue of his obedience: thus according to Hughthere is something to be learnt, and being learnt, to be demon-strated. So in what does the instruction consist? By connectingthe evidence of his senses to the way this evidence should beunderstood, man learns to recognize the value of what he handlesand sees from those in authority: And on this account while theinvisible good which he lost is returned to him the significationof the same is furnished without through visible species, that hemay be stimulated without and restored within; so in that whichhe handles and sees he may recognise of what nature that is whichhe received and does not see (p. 157 .Why exercise? Because, explains Hugh, man s erring flesh,which is the very principle of blind desire, cannot grasp the vir-NeS that lie in perceptible things in a single moment, or even in asingle continuous activity. It is therefore necessary that the en-tirety of human life be differentiated, and that events within itbe divided, so that through the training of discrimination anddisciplined practical work man may gradually form the correctdisposition to recognise truth and realise virtue. structuredworld of differences is pruvidentially available:

Times were divided and places distinguished, corporeal speciesproposed, pursuits and works to be practised enjoined, that theexterior man might prepare a medicine for the interior man andmight learn to be under ,him and benefit him. For when humanlife had first run through two kinds of exercises, in the one untouse, in the other unto vice, unto use for nature, unto vice forguilt; the one unto sustenance, the other unto subversion, it wasfitting that a third kind ofexercise also be added, so that therebyone of the two first might be put aside, since it was harmful,and the other might be perfected, since it was not sufficient.Accordingly works of virtue were proposed to man withoutfor exercising interior edification, so that preoccupied by themhe might never be free for works of iniquity nor always so forworks of necessity. (p. 158

Note that this world of differences is not an abstract structure ofsigns, but a collection of abilities and not human abilities ingeneral, but specific Christian abilities which are developed bypractical exercise. The most important of these is the ability towill obedienceHugh is quite explicit that humiliation, instruction, and exer-cise are all essential to the definition of the sacraments: This,


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therefore, is the threefold cause of the institution of all sacraments:humiliation, instruction, and exercise of man. If there were notthese causes, [material] elements of themselves could not be sacra-ments at all that is signs of instruments of sacred things (p. 159 .It is interesting to notice the way Hugh stresses the constructiverole of sacramental signs by which the processes of humiliation,instruction, and exercise are to be effected. We may summariseHugh s view on this matter s follows: humiliation ensures thatobedience as an act of will is at once a pre-condition, a continuousaccompaniment, and the ultimate objective of Christian rites forrestoring purity. Instruction ensures that learning to organisesensory evidence, to see what the untutored eye does not see, andto form desire, takes place by subjecting oneself to authority sothat virtue (and truth) can be distinguished from vice (and error).And exercise ensures that the practice of differentiating is neces-sary to the formation of the Christian s will, that is by learningwhat to follow and what to shun in accordance with God s Law sconveyed by those who represent him. In the cloister, that repre-sentative is the Superior.This learning always encounters an element of resistance issuingfrom concupiscence. The process is therefore never mechanicallyassured, and that is what makes the developing self at once socialand non-unitary. The self is irreconcilably divided, so the learningprocess depends on a permanent separation from what remains anessential part of oneself. Thus for the Christian the virtue ofobedience is built not on a simple identific tion with an authorityfigure, but on a precarious dist ncing within a fragmented selfwhich is one reason why the notion of socialisation as a transi-tive process does not adequately describe how the virtue isachieved.In this learning process, the sacraments do not stand alone:There were three indeed which from the beginning, whether be-fore the coming of Christ or after, were necessary for obtainingsalvation, namely, faith, sacraments of faith, and good works.And these three so cling together that they cannot have theeffect of salvation if they are not simultaneous (pp. 164-5 .For Hugh rites were aspects of the programme for constructingobedient wills. Central to this programme is as we shall see insection V he sacrament of confession by which the Christian swill is tested, and his works are judged and justified.Hugh s observations on the sacraments are not intended toapply only to the cloistered life, of course, but they do have aspecial relevance to it. For the programme aimed at constructingobedient wills, which is organised through and around the perfor-mance of sacramental rites, is most effective within the enclosed


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space of the cloister and under the absolute authority of anabbot.Although the general conception of discipline as a process isclear enough in these writings of Hugh's, a tension is apparent inthem as in ll monastic prbgrammes: a tension between the idea oflearning. and exercising a virtue, and the idea of respecting andobeying the Law both ideas contained within the medievalChristian concept of discipline. For in relation to virtues, defectscan be described in intrinsic terms as inabilities: thus an ungenerousact is th behaviour of an agent who has failed t o exercise themoral virtue of generosity appropriate to his social role. In thecontext of the Law, however, faults are identified by reference toan external (i.e. universal) rule; a transgression is what i t is onlybecause it disobeys the Law which commands or forbids something.The requirements of the Law and those of the conditions forexercising the virtues are mot always easy to reconcile. Yet Bernardof Clairvaux, in a programmatic text composed in 1142, attemptedjust that.

Bernard's treatise on monastic obedience entitled De praeceptoet dispensatione soon bekame an authoritative statement on thesubject (Leclercq and Gnrtner, 1965). In it he builds on the tradi-tional conception of St Blenedict as the special mediator betweenmonks and Christ. St. Benedict is the paternal model for monks,and his Rule the master programme for their communal life (regu-lae. rnagistra vitae). For the monks to follow St Benedict is toobey the Rule faithfully, but to the abbot there falls the additionalrole of guarding the Rule's integrity and of conducting his monksin its proper observance. In this role, the abbot is also entitled toabsolute obedience from his monks, because in the monastery heis Christ's representative, The Rule is thus at once the centraltext of a programme of life in which virtues are to be exercised,and the basic constitution of a corporate legal body to whichevery monk must submit unconditionally, and the abbot is both ascrupulous teacher and e strict upholder of the Law. Bernardattempts to resolve this inconsistency by emphasising that theRule sets the norm of obedience, and that it is only from the Rulethat th abbot derives his right to demand obedience. The abbotcannot command what the Rule forbids nor forbid what the Rulecommands. In following prescription, the monk is therefore ex-pressing the same will as the abbot's in issuing it he will to obeyGod's Law. Virtuous obedience thus presupposes and results in 'acommon will' (Leclercq and Gartner, 1965, p. 51). This at anyrate is one formulation, but according to another the abbot re-tains a distinct initiative, that of interpreting the Rule where itremains inexplicit about requirements and prohibitions. The Rule


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itself is quite explicit that any tendency on the part of the monkt o dispute with his abbot must be m et by punishment (chapter 3).If there is a disagreement over the interpretation, the monk suty t o obey does no t construct a common w ill : it suppressesa disco rdant will. This judgement of Bernard s o n the nature ofmonastic obedience (the treatise was, as it happens, a response totroubled questions sent to him discreetly by monks from anothermonastery) does not set out the conditions for creating willingobedience but for justifying it. Yet strictly speaking, the practi-tioner of w illing obedience does no t seek justification, it is theupholder of the Law who seeks it when it is pu t in question. Andwhen it is questioned by acts of disobedience, he must seek satis-faction for the transgression in order to vindicate the power ofthe Law. It is in the sacrament of penance that punishment fordisobedience and the creation of willing obedience are jointlymanaged. We shall now look at the structure of this rite in detail.

Th e struct ure of mon astic obedience and the rites of penanceDiscipline is a process at once transitive (the maintenance ofproper order by th e authorities inside and outside th e monastery)and intransitive ( the learning of proper conduct and the exerciseof v irtues by th e monk). Each aspect of this disciplinary processdepends on two functions: (a) continuous observations, and (b)periodic correction. I suggested above that all the rites of con-vent life were the means by which t he v irtuous transforma tion ofChristians was effected. Among these rites the sacrament ofpenance, which was developed in the Middle Ages within themonastic setting, is unique because it belongs a t once to bo th th edisciplinary functions the supervisory and th e correctional.From th e point of view of monastic discipline, th e sacrament ofpenance (confession) is therefore the most important rite; fromthe point of view of monastic obedience it is the main technique.We noted above that one outstanding difference between theCluniac and Cistercian Orders was the latter s restriction of entryto you ths and adults. One result of this rule was to give the novi-tiate a much greater importance than it had had among previousBened ictines (Knowles, 1963 , pp. 634-5). It was only after aprob ationa ry y ear in which the novice s b ehaviour and disposi-tions w ere carefully disciplined, tha t he was admitted t o t he statusof full monk. The novice who carried ou t the ceremony of profes-sion thus committed himself to an enclosed life of discipline. Fornovice and monk, the fact of being confined to a restricted area(and within it to particular places at specified times) optimised th econditions for discipline. In an obvious way, confinement facili-


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On ritual and discipline in medieval hris t ian mon sticism 87

tated the functions of supervision and correction. Confmement tothe molwtery was therefme a precondition of obedience, a volun-tary condition for practising the religious life.The closely connected words carcer, claustrum, and clausura,which were rooted in ideas of compulsory confinement since thetime of classical antiquity, were used in medieval literature t o referto the religious life of the cloister (Leclercq, 1971). Thus in thepolemics of the twelfth century on the respective merits of monas-tic and clerical life, a prison vocabulary is explicitly used. But theidea of the cloister as a prison was invoked not only in controver-sial writing. In a sermon delivered to his religious, Bernard ofClairvaux declares enthusiastically:

What a great miracle to qee so many young ones, so many adoles-cents, so many nobles, in short ll those who are present here asin a prison with open dpors: they are not held back by any tie,they are fixed here only by the fear of God, and here theypersevere in a penance so austere that it is beyond the natureand virtue of man, and contrary to his habit. [ ] What arethese if not manifest proofs that the Holy Ghost lives in you?(quoted in Leclercq, 1971, pp. 413-14)

To incarcerate oneself for the sake of imitating Christ who washimself imprisoned in a ,human body and to commence thisenclosed life with the VQW of obedience to one s abbot, did notguarantee that the precise; limits of willing obedience would alwaysbe clear. Dissatisfied monks sometimes fled from one monastery t oanother. Conflicts between monks and their abbot, occasionallyeven leading to violence and homicide, were by no means unknown(see Dimier, 1972). But en where disagreement did not issue inopen rebellion, the defin ion of true obedience remained a deli-cate and important matter. The major concern, as always, was notsimply one of observing legal duties, but of knowing how to avoidfalling into sin. For this it was not enough to do what one was toldby the abbot, but to want to do so because obedience was a virtue,and disobedience a sin. I t was a matter, as Bernard knew, of con-structing the desire for subjectification.One essential condition for this creative work was continuousobservation within the prison with open doors . Although allmonks were under the authority of the abbot as Christ s repre-sentative and the representative of the Law here was no singlepoint of surveillance. Within the monastery there existed an en-tire network of functions through which watching, testing, learn-ing, teaching, could take place. Mutual observation was urged onall, but the matter was t ~ omportant to be left in the form of ageneral injunction. Because observation and imitation were defined


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as interlinked functions, the elevation of particular roles becamenecessary, as this passage from an eleventh-century customaryshows:The roundsman of the monastery, who are called also thecircus, shall according to the command of St. Benedict go atcertain times the rounds of the monastery s offices, notingthe carelessness and negligences of the brethren, and thebreaches of regular discipline. They shall be chosen from theworthiest and most prudent of the whole monastery, such aswill never denounce any from malice or personal dislike, norpass over any negligences for friendship s sake. Their numbershall vary with the size and needs of the community. On theirrounds they shall behave most religiously and orderly, givingan example of religious observance to all beholders; they shallmake no sign, and speak no word to any person on any pretext,but they shall straitly regard negligences and faults and nothingelse, and, passing by in silence, shall denounce them afterwardsin chapter. (Knowles, 1951, p. 78The function of observation and imitation entailed another: theidentification and correction of faults, which is the second essen-tial condition for the construction of an obedient will. In thisprocess punishment played a central part, and this is reflected evenin the use of the word discipline as the common term for legallyprescribed flogging. But punishment, or the necessity of sufferingpain, was directed at once at vindicating the Law and at correctingthe path to virtue. Both orientations are present in the sacramentof penance as practised in the medieval monastery.The open announcement of faults, the formal humiIiation ofthe transgressor, and his public chastisement, all took place in the

daily Chapter, the general assembly of monks which was held aftermorning mass. tenth-century Monastic Agreement from Englandprescribes how this was to be done:Then, all being seated again, the Rule or, on feast days, theGospel of the day, shall be read and the prior shall explainwhat has been read according as the Lord shall inspirehim.After this, any brother who is conscious of having committedsome fault shall humbly ask forgiveness and indulgence. But abrother that is accused, no matter for what reason, by theabbot or by one of the senior officials, shall prostrate himselfbefore speaking. And when asked by the prior the reason forthis, he shall answer by admitting his fault, saying Mea culpadomine Then, when bidden, let him rise: If he acts in anyother wise he shall be deemed guilty. Thus whoever, when re-


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On ritual nd discipline in medieval Christ ian monasticism 89

buked by a superior for any fault or for anything done amissin the workshops, does not immediately prostrate himself asthe Rule ordains, must undergo the greater punishment [i.e.flogging] ndeed, the more a monk humbles himself andaccepts blame, the more mercifully and gently shall he bedealt with by the prior For it is meet that in all our negligen-ces, whether of thought, word or deed, we should be judgedin this present life by sincere confession and humble penancelest, when this life is o er, our sins declare us guilty before thejudgement seat of Christ. [ ] If, moreover, a brother, urgedby some temptation of soul or body, needs to confess at anyother time, let him by po means delay to have recourse to thehealing remedy of confession. (Symons, 1953 pp. 17-18)

It would seem evident that in such a dramatic playing out of con-viction and punishment3blprit and onlookers were subjected tofear and shame, and it might be assumed that in general theseemotions ensured obedience among most monks. But in factthe situation is more complicated than that, and it would be mis-leading to assert a simple causal connection between the emotionsof fear and shame supposedly produced by public punishment andmonastic obedience allegedly maintained by fear and shame. Itmust be stressed that monks were living an enclosed life in orderto exercise virtues not in order to be beaten into submission Atany rate, cases in which the latter occured do not explain theformer.Our contemporary vocabulary for talking about emotions isnotoriously heterogeneous, a consequence of the fact that weinherit i t from various historical layers of discourse about thestructure of the self. Thus emotions are typically things thathappen to the self (pwsions), but also ways in which the selfexpresses its purposes (c spositions); they are independent of csg-nition (and may interfere with it), but also integral to it (depen-dent on certain percepgions and discourses); they are universalinstinctual elements, but also culturally variable gestalts 32 How-ever that may be, what we would call emotions (e.g. fear, guilt,anger, pride, humiliation) were always of central concern tomonastic discipline because and to the extent that they were inte-gral to the monk's dispositions. Dispositions governed by virtuousfeelings were contrasted with those that were rooted in viciouspassions.33 Something of the way emotions were dealt with isreflected in the structure of penance, the rite in which disposi-tions were monitored, pqrpetuated, or transmuted.

In this context, a aritical emotion was remorse, known inpenance literature s contrition. Remorse is at once a feeling and


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a cognitive process of the kind in which the latter structures theformer: the emotion s distinctive cast is determined by the con-ception that one has sinned. This emotion is therefore not thecause of a changed disposition but its condition: remorse by thetransgressor was often regarded as sufficient reason for reconcilinghim t o the monastic community. It was as the monk s w that hehad sinned, as he verbalised his feeling into a perception of sin, thatremorse was formed, and consequently the desire for self-correctioncould begin. The function of penance here was intended to helpbring about the feeling of remorse and the decision not t o repeatthe sin. But remorse could sometimes precede penance, as whenit motivated the sinner to confess any secret fault of thought,word, or deed, privately t o the abbot. Unlike open accusations ofpublic sins, confession (i.e. self-accusation) did not take place atthe Chapter but at other times set aside for it. Here, penancewould of course have a different function, one which was inde-pendent of the transgressor s determination to avoid the sorrow-causing sin in future. The dual structure of ritual penance may beseen more clearly in the following table:1 Fault 1 Fault2. Public accusation 2. Remorse3 Penance 3 Self-accusation (private confession)4. Remorse 4. Penance5 Reconciliation 5 Reconciliation

In each sequence, fault is the initial element, and reconciliationthe concluding one. But in the second, the penance that followsself-accusatian appears essentially as a matter of satisfying the Lawafter having offende

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