The Omnibus Homo Sacer

by Giorgio Agamben

  that, in the passage of Quintilian in which habitus seems to be identified with

  dress ( Theopompus Lacedaemonis, cum permutato cum uxore habitu e custodia ut

  mulier evasit . . . , “when the Spartan Theopompus changed clothes with his wife

  and escaped from custody disguised as a woman . . . ”; Quintilian 2.17.20), the

  term cannot refer rather to feminine appearance and conduct as a whole.

  Let us now open the first book of Cassian’s Cenobitic Institutions, whose title

  declares: De habitu monachorum (On the Habit of Monks). Here, beyond any

  possible doubt, what is in question is a description of the clothing of the monks,

  which appears as an integral part of the rule: “As we start to speak of the institutes

  and rules of monasteries [ de institutis ac regulis monasteriorum], where could we

  better begin, with God’s help, than with the very garb or habit of the monks

  [ ex ipso habitu monachorum]?” (Cassian 1, pp. 39/21). This use of the term is,

  however, made possible by the fact that the monks’ clothes, which Cassian enu-

  merates and describes in detail, have been submitted to a process of moralization

  that makes each of them the symbol or allegory of a virtue and a way of life. For

  this reason, to describe the exterior dress ( exteriorem ornatum) will be equivalent to revealing an interior way of being ( interiore cultum . . . exponere; ibid.). The habit of the monk does not really bear on the care of the body, but is instead a

  morum formula, “an example of a way of life” (ibid., pp. 42/23). Thus the small

  hood ( cucullus) that the monks wear day and night is an admonishment to “hold

  constantly to the innocence and simplicity of small children” (ibid., pp. 42/23).

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  The short sleeves of their linen tunic ( colobion) “suggest that they have cut off

  the deeds and works of this world” (pp. 44/24; we know from Augustine that

  long sleeves— tunicae manicatae—were sought as a sign of elegance). The thin

  wool ropes that, passing under the armpits, kept the clothes closely fitted to the

  monks’ bodies, signify that they are ready for all manual labor ( inpigri ad omnes

  opus expliciti; pp. 46/24). The small mantle ( palliolus) or surcoat ( amictus) with which they covered the collar and shoulders symbolizes humility. The walking

  stick ( baculus) reminds them that “they must never go out unarmed in the midst

  of the numerous barking dogs of the vices” (pp. 48/25). The sandals ( gallicae)

  that they put on their feet signify that “the feet of our soul . . . must always be

  ready for the spiritual race” (pp. 50/25).

  This process of the habit’s moralization reaches its apex in the leather belt

  ( zona pellicia, cingulus) that the monk must always wear. This constitutes him

  as “a soldier of Christ,” ready to fight the devil in every circumstance ( militem

  Christi in procinctu semper belli positum), and, in the same moment, inscribes him into a genealogy, already attested in the rule of Basil, that goes back, through the

  apostles and John the Baptist, all the way to Elijah and Elisha (pp. 37/21). What’s

  more, the habitus cinguli (which obviously cannot mean “clothing of the belt,”

  but is equivalent to hexis and ethos and indicates a constant practice) constitutes a kind of sacramentum, a sacred sign (perhaps even in the technical sense of an

  oath: in ipso habitu cinguli inesse parvum quod a se expetitur sacramentum; pp.

  52/26), which signifies and manifests the “mortification of his members, which

  contain the seeds of wantonness and lasciviousness” (ibid., pp. 52/26).

  Hence the decisive character, in the ancient rules, of the moment when the

  neophyte takes off his secular clothes to receive the monastic habit. Already Je-

  rome, translating Pachomius, took care to oppose the secular vestimenta to the

  habitus of the monk ( tunc nudabunt eum vestimentis saecularibus et induent habitum monachorum; Bacht, p. 93). In the Rule of the Master, the habitus propositi, which must not be easily granted to the neophyte (Vogüé 2, 2, pp. 390/264), is

  certainly much more than an article of clothing: it is the habitus—both clothing

  and way of life—corresponding to the propositum, that is to the project to which

  the neophyte is devoting himself. And when, a little further down, the rule

  establishes that the convert who decides to abandon the community to return

  into the world must be exutus sanctis vestibus vel habitu sacro (“divested of the

  holy garments and the sacred habit”; ibid., pp. 394/266), what is at stake here

  is not, as the editor believes, a “redundancy”—the “sacred habit” is something

  more than “the holy clothes,” because it expresses the way of life of which they

  are the symbol.

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  To inhabit together thus meant for the monks to share, not simply a place

  or a style of dress, but first of all a habitus. The monk is in this sense a man who lives in the mode of “inhabiting,” according to a rule and a form of life. It is certain, nevertheless, that cenoby represents the attempt to make habit and form of

  life coincide in an absolute and total habitus, in which it would not be possible

  to distinguish between dress and way of life. The distance that separates the two

  meanings of the term habitus will never completely disappear, however, and will

  durably mark the definition of the monastic condition with its ambiguity.

  א The noncorrespondence between habitus as clothing and habitus as the monk’s form of life is already censured by the canonists with respect to the clergy: Ut clerici, qui se fingunt habitu et nomine monachos esse, et non sunt, omnimode corrigantur atque emendentur, ut vel veri monachi sint vel clerici (“May clergy who pretend in habit and name to be monks but are not, be in every way corrected and emended, so that they may be

  either true monks or true clergy”; Ivo of Chartres, Decretum, pt. 7, chap. 31, p. 553). The ambiguity will become proverbial in the adage according to which “the habit does not

  make the monk” (or, on the contrary, in German circles, where Kleiden machen Leute,

  “Clothes make the man”).

  1.7. Monastic rules (in particular the first chapter of Cassian’s Institutions)

  are the first texts of Christian culture in which clothes acquire a completely

  moral meaning. And this is all the more significant, if one considers that this

  happens in a moment in which the cleric is not yet distinguished by his dress

  from the other members of the community. We possess a letter of Celestine I

  of 428, in which the pontiff admonishes the clergy of the Gallo-Roman church

  not to introduce distinctions in wardrobe, in particular by means of the belt

  ( lumbos praecinti, which can make one think of a monastic influence that the

  pope intends to oppose). Not only is this contrary to the ecclesiastical tradition

  ( contra ecclesiasticum morem faciunt), but the pope recalls that the bishops must

  be distinguished from the people “not by clothing, but by doctrine; not by habit,

  but by way of life; not by elegance, but by purity of mind” ( discernendi a plebe

  vel ceteris sumus doctrina, non veste; conversatione, non habitu; mentis puritate, non cultu; 35.1). It is only after monasticism had transformed clothing into a habitus, rendering it indiscernible from a way of life, that the Church (starting from the

  Council of Macon in 581) began the process that would lead to the clear differ-

  entiation between clerical h
abit and secular habit.

  Naturally in every epoch wardrobe has had a moral significance and, in Chris-

  tian circles, the narrative of Genesis linked the very origin of clothing to the fall

  of Adam and Eve (at the moment when he expelled them from Eden, God made

  them put on clothes of skins— tunicae pelliciae—a symbol of sin). But it is only

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  with monasticism that one witnesses a total moralization of every single element

  of dress. To find an equivalent to the chapter de habitu monachorum of Cassian’s

  Institutes, it will be necessary to wait for the great liturgical treatises of Amalarius, Innocent III, and William Durand of Mende (and in secular circles, Constantine VI Porfirogenito’s Book of Ceremonies). Indeed, if we open William’s Rationale divinorum officiorum, right after the treatment of the Church and its ministries, we see that the third book is dedicated to an analysis of the “garments and equipment

  of the priests.” Exactly as in Cassian, it explains the symbolic meaning of every sin-

  gle element of priestly dress, of which it is often possible to indicate the equivalent

  in the monastic sphere. Before meticulously describing each garment, William

  summarizes the clothing of the priest:

  When the bishop is about to celebrate, he discards his daily clothing and puts

  on clean and sacred garments. And first, he puts on sandals, so that he will be

  mindful of the Lord’s incarnation. Second, he puts on the amicitus, so that he

  might restrain his emotions and thoughts, his throat and his tongue, so that

  his heart will be clean, and he can receive in his innermost parts, the righteous

  spirit that renews him. Third, he puts on the long alba so that he can be stead-

  fast in preserving purity of the flesh. Fourth, the belt, so that he can curb the

  impulse towards illicit behavior. Fifth, the stole, as a sign of obedience. Sixth, a

  hyacinth-colored tunic, which symbolizes the celestial abode. Seventh, he puts

  the dalmatic on top, which is holy religion and the mortification of the flesh.

  Eighth, the gloves ( cirotyhecae) so that he will avoid vainglory. Ninth, the ring, so that he will love his spouse [the Church] as he loves himself. Tenth, the chasuble

  [ casula], which is charity. Eleventh, the sudarium, so that on account of whatever frailty or ignorance through which he sins, penance will cleanse him. Twelfth,

  he places the pallium on top, so that he might show himself to be an imitator of

  Christ, who bore our grief. Thirteenth, the miter, so that in doing this, he might

  merit receiving an eternal crown. Fourteenth, the pastoral staff ( baculus), which

  is the authority of his power and teaching. (William Durand, pp. 178/132–33)

  In another glimpse, priestly garments are listed, according to the military metaphor

  that is dear to the monks, as a panoply of arms in the fight against spiritual evil:

  First, the priest has the sandals as leg-coverings lest some attachment to the

  world—that is, a stain or dust—clings to him. Second, the amictus, which covers

  his head like a helmet. Third, the alba, which covers the whole body like a breastplate. Fourth, he puts on the belt ( cingulum), which is like a bow, and the cord

  [ subcingulum], which is like a quiver; and this cord hangs down from the belt,

  and the stole of the pontiff and his belt are held together in it. Fifth, he wraps the

  stole around his neck, like a lance that he brandishes against the enemy. Sixth,

  the maniple, which he uses like a mace. Seventh, the chasuble, which he uses

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  like a shield; his is armed with the Gospel book, as if it were a sword. (William

  Durand, pp. 179/134)

  The prescriptions of the rules on the habitus monachorum, in their poverty and sobriety, are the courier announcing the glorious codification of the liturgical vestments.

  Both are joined by the fact of being signs and sacraments of a spiritual reality: “the

  priest must studiously apply himself, so that each will not bear a sign without em-

  bodying what it signifies; that is, wearing a vestment without its virtue, lest they ap-

  pear to be a whitened sepulcher on the outside, while filled with filth on the inside”

  (William Durand, pp. 179/134–35).

  1.8. We are accustomed to associate the chronometric scansion of human

  time with modernity and the division of labor in the factory. Foucault has shown

  that at the threshold of the industrial revolution, the disciplinary apparatuses

  (schools, barracks, colleges, the first real factories) had begun to divide periods

  of time into successive or parallel segments already from the end of the seven-

  teenth century, in order then to obtain a more efficient complex result through

  the combination of the individual chronological series. Although Foucault men-

  tions monastic precedents, it is rarely noticed that almost fifteen centuries earlier,

  monasticism had realized, in its cenoby, for exclusively moral and religious ends,

  a temporal scansion of the existence of the monks. The rigor of this scansion

  not only had no precedents in the classical world, but in its strict absoluteness

  it has perhaps never been equaled in any institution of modernity, not even the

  factory of Taylor.

  In the oriental tradition, horologium (“clock”) is, significantly, the name that

  designates the book that contains the order of the canonical Offices according

  to the hours of the day and night. In its originary form, it goes back to Pales-

  tinian and Syriac monastic ascesis between the seventh and eighth century. The

  Offices of prayer and psalmody were there ordered as a “clock” that marked the

  rhythm of the prayers for daybreak ( orthros), the daylight hours (first, third,

  sixth, and ninth), evening ( lychnikon), and midnight (which, on certain occa-

  sions, lasted all night: pannychis). This attention to articulating life according to hours, to constituting the existence of the monk as a horologium vitae (“clock

  of life”), is much more surprising if one considers not only the primitiveness of

  the instruments they had at their disposal, but also the approximate and vari-

  able character of the very division of the hours. The day and night were divided

  into twelve parts ( horae), from sunset to dawn. The hours thus did not have,

  like today, a fixed duration of sixty minutes. Except for the equinoxes, they

  varied according to the seasons, and these hours were longer in the summer (in

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  the solstice they reached eighty minutes) and shorter in the winter. The day of

  prayer and labor was thus twice as long in the summer as in the winter. Fur-

  thermore, solar clocks, which were the rule in this era, function only during the

  day and under clear skies—for the rest of the time the sundial was “blind.” All

  the more will the monk have to keep unfailingly to the execution of his Office:

  “On a cloudy day,” one reads in the Rule of the Master, “when the sun hides its

  rays from earth, let the brothers, whether in the monastery or on the road or in

  the field, estimate elapsed time by careful calculation of the hours ( perpensatione

  horarum), and no matter what time it may be, the usual Office is to be said. And

  whether the regular Hour of the Office is said before or after the exact time, in

  no case may the Work of God ( opus Dei) be left out but it is to be per
formed,

  because the lack of the light caused by the clouds, with the sundial blind because

  of the sun’s absence, serves as to excuse those who are performing the Office”

  (Vogüé 2, 2, pp. 266/222). Cassiodorus (sixth century) informs his monks that

  he has had a water clock installed in the cenobium, so as to be able to calculate

  the hours even during the night: “I have not allowed you to be ignorant in any

  way of the measurement of time ( horarum modulos) that was invented for the

  great use of the human race. I have, therefore, provided a clock for you that the

  light of the sun makes, and another, a water clock ( aquatile) that continually

  indicates the number of the hours by day and night” ( De institutione divinarum

  litterarum, pp. 1146a–b/165). And four centuries later, Peter Damian invites the

  monks to transform themselves into living clocks, measuring the hours with the

  length of their psalmody: “And let him acquire the habit of reciting the Psalter,

  if he wishes to have a daily method of telling the time; so that when he cannot

  see the brightness of the sun or the movement of the stars because of a thick

  cloud, he will act as a sort of clock ( quoddam horologium), with the regular du-

  ration of the Psalms” (Damian, chap. 17).

  In any case, certain monks are specially entrusted, under the guidance of the

  abbot, with providing for the scansion of the rhythm of the hours (Peter Damian

  calls them significatores horarum; Cassian and the Rule of the Master simply conpulsores and excitantes). Their importance cannot be exaggerated: “The bell-ringer must realize that no one in the monastery should avoid forgetfulness more surely

  than he. If any hour of the Divine Office is not said at the proper time, either

  because it is too early or because it is too late, it is clear that the whole order of

  the hours to come will be upset” (ibid.).

  The two monks who, in the Rule of the Master, have the duty of waking up

  the brothers (and first of all the abbot, by pulling him by the feet— mox pulsantes

  pedes; Vogüé 2, 2, pp. 172/194) carry out a function so essential that, to honor