The Omnibus Homo Sacer

by Giorgio Agamben

  age, the Benedictine rule, supported by the bishops and the Roman Curia, is

  progressively imposed on cenobites, until it becomes between the ninth and

  the eleventh centuries the rule par excellence that new orders must adopt or to

  whose model their own organization must conform. It is probable, in this sense,

  that it is precisely the tendential juridicization of the monastic profession that

  we see occurring in the rule that had contributed to its primacy and its diffusion

  in an epoch in which the Church (and, with it, the emperor) were seeking to

  establish a discrete but firm control over the monastic communities. A series

  of decrees from the serenissimus et christianissimus imperator, which culminated

  in the 802 edict Capitula canonum et regula, thus prescribed the Benedictine

  rule—in which the chapters on obedience and the profession were expressly

  highlighted—to the monks.

  In the era that followed the Benedictine rule and up to the formation of

  the first collections of canon law, both the term votum and the verb voveo (or devoveo—se Deo vovere, voventes) appear with increasing frequency in the sources.

  And yet even at this time a definite theory of the monastic vow, as will be de-

  veloped in the scholasticism of Thomas and Suárez, seems to be lacking in the

  canonists.

  Let us open book 7 of the Decretal of Ivo of Chartres, the theme of which is

  declared to be De monachorum et monacharum singularitate et quiete, et de revocatione et poenitentia eorum qui continentiae propositum transgrediuntur (“On the singularity and peace of monks and nuns, and the withdrawal and penance of

  those who transgress the promise of continence”), or the section De vita clericorum (“On the life of clergy”) of the same author’s Panormia. Although the text essentially consists of a heterogeneous collage of passages from Augustine,

  Ambrose, Jerome, and extracts from conciliar canons or letters of the popes or

  imperial constitutions, the approach to the problem essentially has the form of

  a casuistry. A slave cannot become a monk without the knowledge of his master

  ( praeter scientiam domini sui; Decretum, chap. 45, p. 555), and consequently, the early testing period for the novice’s acceptance is viewed from the perspective

  of verifying his juridical condition as free man or slave, in order to permit the

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  master to recover his fugitive slave within three years (ibid., chap. 153, 582). If

  children who have taken the vow of chastity without being compelled by their

  parents later get married, they are culpable even if they had not yet been conse-

  crated (chap. 20, p. 549). Virgins who get married after consecration are impure

  ( incestae; Panormia, p. 1175). If a monk leaves the monastery after his profession, his goods remain the property of the monastery—indeed, “the monk’s propositum, freely undertaken, cannot be abandoned without sin” (p. 1173).

  The same holds for Gratian. If a child has received the tonsure and the habit

  without his consent, his profession cannot be definitive and can in any case be

  annulled ( Decretum, q. 2–3); if the monk wants to pronounce a vow, he must be

  authorized by the abbot ( Decretum, q. 4). The question of whether the voventes can enter into matrimony receives, in the same sense, a full treatment. In question

  each time are the precise juridical implications of the profession, not a theory of

  the profession insofar as it is normatively constitutive of the monastic life as such.

  2.9. The considerations developed up to now must have rendered obvious

  the sense in which it is almost impossible to pose the problem of the juridical

  or nonjuridical nature of the monastic rules without falling into anachronism.

  Even granting that something like our term juridical has always existed (which is

  no less dubious), it is certain, in any case, that it means one thing in Roman law,

  another in the early centuries of Christianity, another still starting from the Car-

  olingian age, and another, finally, in the modern age, when the State begins to

  assume the monopoly over law. Furthermore, the debates that we have analyzed

  over the “legal” or “advisory” character of the rules, which seem to approach the

  terms of our problem, become intelligible only if one does not forget that they

  are superimposed over the theological problem of the relation between the two

  diathēkai, the Mosaic law and the New Testament.

  In this sense, the problem ceases to be anachronistic only if it is restored to

  its proper theological context, which is that of the relationship between evangelium and lex (that is, first of all, the Hebraic law). The theory of this relationship was elaborated in the Pauline letters and culminates in the declaration that

  Christ as messiah is telos nomou, end and fulfillment of the law (Rom. 10:4).

  Even if in the same letter this radical messianic thesis—and the opposition that

  it implies between pistis and nomos—is complicated to the point of giving rise to a series of aporias (as in 3:31: “Do we then render the law inoperative by this

  faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law”), it is nonetheless cer-

  tain that the Christian life is no longer “under the law” and cannot in any case be

  conceived in juridical terms. The Christian, like Paul, is “dead to the law” ( nomōi

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  apethanon; Gal. 2:19), and lives in the freedom of the spirit. Even when the Gos-

  pel is counterposed to the Mosaic law as a “law of faith” (Rom. 3:27), or later as

  a nova lex to the vetus, it remains the case that neither its form nor its content are homogeneous to those of the nomos. “The difference between the law and the

  Gospel,” one reads in Isidore’s Liber differentiarum (chap. 31), “is this: in the law there is the letter, in the Gospel grace . . . the first was given for transgression,

  the second for justification; the law shows sin to the one who does not know it,

  grace helps him to avoid it . . . in the law the commandments are observed, in

  the fullness of the Gospel the promises are consummated.”

  It is in this theological context that one must situate the monastic rules. Basil

  and Pachomius, to whom we owe, so to speak, the archetypes of the rules, are

  perfectly conscious of the irreducibility of the Christian form of life to the law.

  Basil, in his treatise on baptism, explicitly confirms the Pauline principle accord-

  ing to which the Christian dies to the law ( apothanein tōi nomōi), and as we have

  seen, Pachomius’s Praecepta atque iudicia opens with the statement that love is the fulfillment of the law ( plenitudo legis caritas). The rule, whose model is the Gospel, cannot therefore have the form of law, and it is probable that the very choice of

  the term regula implied an opposition to the sphere of the legal commandment. It

  is in this sense that a passage from Tertullian seems to oppose the term rule to the

  “form of the [Mosaic] law”: “Once the form of the old law was dissolved [ veteris

  legis forma soluta], this is the first rule which the apostles, on the authority of the Holy Spirit, sent out to those who were already beginning to be gathered to their

  side out of the nations” (Tertullian 3, 12). The nova lex cannot have the form of law, but as regula, it approaches the very form of life, which it guides and orients ( regula dicta quod recte ducit, recalls an etymology from Isidore, Etymologiarum 6.16).

  The problem of the juridical nature of the monasti
c rules here finds both its

  specific context and its proper limits. Certainly the Church will progressively con-

  struct a system of norms that will culminate in the twelfth century in the system

  of canon law that Gratian compiles in his Decretum. But if Christian life doubt-

  less can readily encounter the sphere of law, it is just as certain that the Christian

  forma vivendi itself—which is what the rule has in view—cannot be exhausted

  in the observance of a precept, which is to say that it cannot have a legal nature.

  3

  Flight from the World

  and Constitution

  3.1. There is, however, an aspect of the rules according to which they can

  be considered as juridical acts; it does not concern civil or penal law,

  but public law. It is possible, that is to say, to consider the rules as constituent

  acts, which bear on the formation of those “political” communities that cenobies

  and convents undoubtedly are, even if in a peculiar sense. At the foundation of

  this jurispublic nature of the rules stands the doctrine of the fuga saeculi as a

  so-to-speak constituent process of the community of believers, which was elab-

  orated by Philo and picked up and developed by Ambrose.

  Let us first consider Philo’s De fuga et inventione (On Flight and Finding).

  Here the flight of Jacob is motivated first of all by the fact that Laban has aban-

  doned all care for the law, in such a way that the “ascetic powers” that drive Jacob

  to flee act in order to reclaim an inheritance that has been unjustly taken from

  them. And the places of refuge and exile ( phygadeutēria; phygē, in Greek, means in the first place exile) are here—on the basis of a midrash on Numbers 35:11–14,

  with regard to the places where those guilty of involuntary homicide could find

  refuge—genuine cities that each symbolize, however, a divine power. There are

  six of them: the first, the mother-city ( mētropolis), is the divine word ( logos), the first place in which it is useful to seek refuge. The other five, which are “colonies”

  ( apoikiai) with respect to the first, are described as follows:

  their leader being creative [ poietikē] power, in the exercise of which the Creator produced the universe by a word; second in order is the royal [ basilikē] power,

  in virtue of which he that has made it governs [ archei] that which has come into

  being; third stands the gracious [ hileōs] power, in the exercise of which the Great Artificer takes pity and compassion on his own work; fourth is the legislative

  power, by which he prescribes duties incumbent on us; and fifth that division of

  legislation, by which he prohibits those things which should not be done. (17, 95)

  Flight is thus conceived as a process that carries the fugitive or the exile through

  six cities that are so many constitutive “political” powers: the divine word

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  (identified with the great/high priest), creation, kingdom, governance, positive

  and negative legislation.

  The cities are, moreover, Levitical cities, because the Levites are themselves in

  a certain way also fugitives and exiles ( phygades), who have abandoned parents,

  children, and brothers in order to please God. To the Levites and priests are en-

  trusted the care of the temple and the leitourgia (that is, the public function of the cult). In the same way, even the fugitives who have been rendered guilty

  of an involuntary fault “are also engaged in a service [ leitourgousi]” (17, 93). In this dense midrash, which was to have a long posterity in Christianity, exile is

  seen paradoxically as a “liturgy,” a public service by which the exiled are assim-

  ilated to priests.

  It is well known that Ambrose’s De fuga saeculi (Flight from the World) de-

  pends heavily on Philo’s text and that, in this sense, it certainly does not sparkle

  with originality. Yet the very fact that he had decided to insert Philo’s midrash

  into one of the foundational works of Christian asceticism inscribes the theme

  of the flight from the world within a peculiar perspective, in which renunciation

  and asceticism are linked closely to the exercise of the priesthood, that is to a

  public practice. Not only does chapter 2 take up once again, almost literally,

  Philo’s exegesis of the cities of refuge, but with a development that is pregnant

  with significance, the high priest, whom Philo already assimilated to the divine

  logos, is identified without reserve with the Son.

  Who is this chief priest but the Son of God, the Word of God? We enjoy his advo-

  cacy in our behalf before the Father, for he is free from every offense, both willed

  and unintentional, and in him subsist all things which are on earth and which are

  in heaven. For all things have been bound by the bond of the Word and are held

  together by his power and subsist in him, because in him they have been created

  and in him all God’s fullness dwells. And so all things endure, because he does

  not allow what things he has bound to be loosened, since they subsist by his will.

  Indeed, as long as he wills, he keeps all things in check by his command and rules

  and binds them by a harmony of nature. (Ambrose, pp. 85/291)

  At the suggestion of Philo and the Pauline letter to the Hebrews, the Word is

  immediately associated with the great priest of Psalm 109:4:

  Be satisfied now that he is the great high priest. The Father swore an oath in his

  regard, saying, “You are a priest forever.” . . . This is the Word of God, in whom

  there inheres the high priesthood. In the account of the clothing of the high

  priest, Moses describes the garments symbolically, because the Word put on the

  world by his own power and is resplendent among all men as if he were clothed

  with it. . . . Christ is the head of all, and from him the whole body extends and is

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  joined by a mutual joining of its parts to one another, while receiving its increase

  in the building up of itself in love. (Ibid., pp. 88–90/293–94)

  Here the theme of the flight from the world, so constitutive of monasticism, is

  united with the exercise of an ecclesial practice in which the fugitive appears as

  a true minister of the community: “the minister of God’s holy altar is one who

  is in flight from his own” ( fugitans igitur est suorum sacri altaris eius minister; pp. 78/285). And it is on this basis that monastic exile from the world could be

  conceived as the foundation of a new community and a new public sphere.

  א By making exile a constitutive political principle, Philo was in reality referring to

  a tradition established in Greek philosophy, which made use of exile as a metaphor of the

  perfect life of the philosopher. In the celebrated passage of the Theatatus (176a–b), in which assimilation to God appears as a phygē ( phygēē de homoiōsis theōi kata ton dynaton), it is necessary to restore to phygē its originary meaning of exile (“assimilation to God is virtually an exile”). And it is in perfect analogy with the Platonic metaphor that in the Politics (1324a 15–16) Aristotle can define the form of the philosopher’s life as “alien” ( xenikos bios). And centuries later, when Plotinus at the end of the Enneads will define the life of “divine and happy” men (that is, of philosophers) as a phygē monou pros monon, the passage becomes fully intelligible only if the political character of the image is not lost: “exile in solitude to the
solitary” ( Ennead 6.9.11). “Exile from the world” is first of all a political gesture that in Philo and Ambrose is equivalent to the constitution of a new community.

  3.2. In 1907 Ildefons Herwegen, the initiator of the liturgical movement in

  the Benedictine abbey of Maria Laach, called attention to an exceptional docu-

  ment that casts new light on the rules and monastic professions and, in particu-

  lar, allows one to situate them in a jurispublic perspective. The text in question

  is the so-called Pactum, which is found at the end of St. Fructuosus of Braga’s

  Regula communis. The interest of this document, from a little before 670, is that

  it is presented as an accord or contract between two parties, the group of monks

  on the one hand (designated with the generic term nos omnes) and the abbot on

  the other (defined as tu dominus), in which they found and regulate the commu-

  nity through decreeing reciprocal obligations:

  Thus, fired with divine ardor, lo, all of us whose names are subscribed below en-

  trust our souls to God and to you, our master and our father, that we may live in

  one monastery under Christ’s guidance and your teaching according to the edict

  of the apostles and the Rule, and as sanctioned by the authority of the fathers

  in the past. Whatever you desire for the safety of our souls to pronounce, teach,

  perform, reprimand, excommunicate, or correct in accordance with the Rule

  [ annuntiare, docere, agere, increpare, imperare, excommunicare, secundum regulam

  emendare], we shall completely carry out with humble heart, all arrogance aside,

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  with mind intent, with burning zeal, with the aid of divine grace, without making

  excuses [ inexcusabiliter], and with the Lord’s favor. If any of us shall be com-

  plaining, obstinate, disobedient, or slandering against the Rule and against your

  command [ contra regulam et tuum praeceptum murmurans, contumax, inobediens

  vel calumniator], then, you may have the power to bring all into an assembly and

  to read the Rule in the presence of all and to correct our guilt publicly, and each

  one who is guilty shall receive his due, the lash or ban of excommunication, with