the rule ( secundum formam regulae profitetur) and therefore is not obligated to
observe either the individual norms or the three principle vows, but all of them
indistinctly ( omnia indistincte), in such a way that the monk’s very form of life
( forma vivendi) falls sub voti efficacia (“under the efficacy of the vow”; Hugh of Digne, 1, p. 178). Not unlike how Suárez will try to think this through three
centuries later in his treatise on the vow, what is promised solely according to the
form of the law is the monk’s very form of life. Through the concept of “form,”
rule ( forma regulae) and life ( forma vivendi) enter into a threshold of indistinction in the monk’s practice.
For this reason the Franciscan promise is neither a promising of the rule nor
a promising to life according to the rule, but an unconditional and indivisible
promise of the rule and of life ( regulae vitaeque): Promittere quidem non regulam, sed vivere secundum regulam, minus ad singula regulae dicitur obligare; sed hic
plena regulae vitaeque promissio ponitur, nec additur “vivendo in oebedientia, sine
proprio et castitate (“To promise not this rule, but to live according to the rule, is said to obligate one less to individual rules, but this lays down a full promise of
the rule and life, nor is there added ‘living in obedience, without property, and
in chastity’”; ibid., p. 177).
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Commenting on this expression from the rule (“living in obedience”), Peter
John Olivi writes: “Note that it makes more sense to say ‘living in obedience’ than
to say ‘observing obedience’ or ‘obeying’: one says, in fact, that someone lives in a
certain state or in a certain work only if his whole life has been applied to it [ cum
tota suc vita est sic applicatus ad illud ], in which case he is rightly said to be and live and dwell [ esse et vivere et conversari] in it” (Olivi 1, p. 119). The traditional juridical idea of the observance of a precept is here reversed. Not only is it the case
that the Friar Minor does not obey the rule, but live it—with an even more ex-
treme reversal, it is life that is to be applied to the norm and not the norm to life.
What is in question in the monastic rules is thus a transformation that seems
to bear on the very way in which human action is conceived, so that one shifts
from the level of practice and acting to that of form of life and living. This
dis-location of ethics and politics from the sphere of action to that of form of
life represents the most demanding legacy of monasticism, which modernity has
failed to recognize. How should one understand this figure of a living and a life
that—while affirming itself as “form-of-life”—cannot be brought back to either
law or morals, to a precept or advice, to labor or contemplation, and that none-
theless appears explicitly as the canon of a perfect community? Whatever answer
is given to this question, it is certain that the paradigm of human action that
is at stake in it has progressively extended its efficacy beyond monasticism and
Church liturgy in the strict sense, penetrating into the profane sphere and en-
duringly influencing both the ethics and the politics of the West. If it is defined,
as we have seen, as a tendential threshold of indistinction between rule and life,
it is this threshold that we must investigate if we wish to comprehend its nature.
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PART TWO
Liturgy and Rule
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1
Regula Vitae
1.1. Historians and theologians who have worked on monastic rules usu-
ally refer in a perfunctory way to the semantic history of the term
regula and normally limit themselves to providing its meanings within the corpus in question. Naturally they all know (or should know) that beginning from the
second century ad, the Fathers often made use of the syntagmas regula fidei (as
Rufinus translates kanon pisteōs in the text of Origen), regula veritatis, regula traditionis, regula scripturarum, regula pietatis. Nonetheless, their relation with the syntagma regula vitae (or regula vivendi), which is found in the text of monastic rules, has not been analyzed in an exhaustive way. On the other hand, outside
the theological context, the importance of the regula iuris in the tradition of
Roman jurisprudence is well known. What is less known, however, is that this
tradition must have been familiar to the Fathers, if Rufinus can refer to the
monastic rules and constitutions themselves as jurisprudential responses ( sancti
cuiusdam iuris responsa; Frank, p. 67).
Peter Stein, to whom we owe a thorough study of the regulae iuris, has
shown that the term derives from the debate over analogy (that is, regular-
ity) and anomaly (namely, custom and use) that divided Greek and Roman
grammarians starting already in the second century ad (Stein, pp. 53ff.). This
means that even grammatical expressions like regula loquendi or regula artis
grammaticae could not have been foreign to the redactors of the monastic
rules, who as we have already seen often made use of the metaphor of the ars.
A passage from Varro on the relation between rule and use (which he extends,
significantly, even beyond the linguistic sphere) indeed shows beyond any
doubt how grammatical questions can be valuable for understanding the same
problem in the monastic sphere. “But if we must follow regularity [ si analogia
sequenda est nobis],” Varro writes (8.33), “either we must observe that regularity which is present in ordinary usage, or we must observe also that which is not
found there. If we must follow that which is present, there is no need of rules,
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because when we follow usage, regularity attends us [ praeceptis nihil opus est,
quod, cum consuetudinem sequemur, ea nos sequetur].”
If it is true, as Spitzer’s studies on the semantic history of the European
lexicon have shown, that it is not possible to understand the meaning of a
term if one ignores its relations with its linguistic context as a whole, an in-
vestigation of the semantics of the term regula in the theological sphere as well
as in law and grammar (and in the artes in general) still remains to be done.
We will limit ourselves here to some preliminary considerations of a general
hermeneutical character.
First of all, as we have seen, the term regula tends to be put together in a
syntagma with another term in the genitive ( regula fidei, regula iuris, regula loquendi, etc.). Is this a matter of a subjective genitive (in which ius is the subject) or an objective genitive (in which ius is the object)? In the case of the syntagma regula iuris, we can provide a reliable answer to the question. The digest notably attributes to Paul this concise definition: Regula est quae rem quae est breviter
enarrat. Non ex regula ius sumatur, sed ex iure quod est regula fiat (“A rule is a statement, in a few words, of the course to be followed in the matter under
discussion. The law, however, is not derived from the rule, but the rule is estab-
lished by the law”; Digest, 50, 17, 1). It is a subjective genitive, then, even if in a special sense: the rule is produced (or must be produced: fiat) out of the existent law ( ex iure quod est).
1.2. An initial survey of the patristic texts of the early centuries shows
that what is in question in the syntagmas regula fidei and regula veritatis is precisely a subjective genitive of this type. Tertullian, who is among the first
to make use of it in a technical sense, uses a a juridical metaphor when in
the De virginibus velandis ( On the Veiling of Virgins) he affirms the primacy of truth, which no statute can invalidate ( cui nemo praescribere potest), over
custom. If truth cannot, as on the contrary happens for the law, be proscribed
or altered by custom, this is because in the case of faith, the truth is Christ
himself ( Christus veritatem se, non consuetudinem, cognominavit; “Christ has
surnamed himself Truth, not Custom”; Tertullian 1, 1.1). Only at this point can
he enunciate the regula fidei, sola immobilis et irreformabilis, credendi scilicet in
unicum deum omnipotentem, mundi creatorem, et Filum eius, natum ex virgine
Maria, crucifixum sub Pontio Pilato, tertia die resuscitatum a mortuis, receptum
i caelis, venturum iudicare vivos et mortuos per carnis etiam resurrectionis (“The rule of faith, indeed, is altogether one, alone immoveable and irreformable;
the rule, to wit, of believing in one only God omnipotent, the Creator of
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the universe, and His Son Jesus Christ, born of the Virgin Mary, crucified
under Pontius Pilate, raised again the third day from the dead, received in
the heavens, destined to come to judge the living and the dead through the
resurrection of the flesh”; ibid. 1.4). The creed—or rather the regula fidei—that
we see here in the process of its progressive elaboration, has not yet assumed
the dogmatic form that it will receive in the councils. As Augustine pointedly
observes, commenting on the Pauline and Gospel formula credere in Christum,
it is not yet an external norm that gives faith and truth its content, as it will be
in dogma. Rather it is faith in Christ that is to furnish the regula with its only truth, which is essentially of a pragmatic order and implies the immediate and
total adhesion to the presence and action of Christ ( “ut credatis in eum,” non ut
credatis ei . . . quid est ergo “credere in eum”? Credendo amare, credendo diligere,
credendo in eum ire, et eius membris incorporari, “‘That ye believe in him,’ not,
that you believe him . . . What then is ‘to believe in him’? By believing to love
him, by believing to esteem highly, by believing to go into him and to be in-
corporated in His members”; Augustine, In Evangelium Johannis, 29.6; hoc est
credere in Deum, quod utique plus est quam credere Deo . . . credendo adhaerere
ad bene cooperandum bona operanti Deo; “For this is to believe in God: which
is surely more than to believe God. . . . To believe in God therefore is this, in
believing to cleave unto God who works good works, in order to work with
Him well”; Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos, 78.8).
This is evident in Rufinus’s Commentarius in Symbolum Apostolorum ( Commentary on the Apostles’ Creed): what the Fathers formulate ( componunt, put together) as regula is drawn from the experience of faith and from the truth of
each of them ( conferendo in unum quod sentiebat unusquisque). The symbolon
that results from it is however only an indicium, a common sign and testimony
of their faith ( symbolon enim Graece et indicium dici potest et conlatio, hoc est
quod plures in unum conferunt; §2). To paraphrase the definition of the Digest, he can also say here that non ex regula fides sumatur, sed ex fide quae est regula
fiat (“faith, however, is not derived from the rule, but the rule is established
by faith”).
In Augustine’s De doctrina christiana ( On Christian Doctrine), regula fidei and regula veritatis often refer to the interpretation of Scripture, whose reading they have a share in guiding. But even here, the rule that will be used to
clarify the obscurities of the Scripture derives first of all from Scripture itself
(“if, . . . it shall appear to be uncertain in what way it ought to be punctuated
or pronounced, let the reader consult the regula fidei which he has gathered
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from the plainer passages of Scripture [ consulat regulam fidei, quam de scripturam planioribus locis . . . percepit]”; 3.2.2). Augustine’s model here is Tyconius, to whose Book of Rules, which can be considered in a certain way the
archetype of treatises on textual hermeneutics, he dedicates a good portion of
the third book of the work. At the beginning of his treatise, Tyconius spec-
ifies that the “mystical rules” that he intends to prepare as “keys and lights”
for the sacred Scripture are found in the text itself, of which they occupy the
most internal and hidden part ( quae universae legis recessus obtinent). It is only after their ratio has been revealed that “whatever is closed will be opened and
whatever is dark will be illumined” (Tyconius, p. 3). Once more the criteria for
the interpretation of the text ( regulae scripturarum) are not exterior to it, but
derive from it: the genitive is not objective, but subjective.
1.3. If we now turn to the syntagma regula vitae—which we encounter, for
example, in the prologue of the Rule of the Four Fathers ( qualiter conversationem vel regulam vitae ordinare possimus)—it is appropriate to ask if even here, as in the texts we have just examined, it is not precisely a matter of a subjective
genitive. Just as in the syntagmas regula iuris and regula fidei, law and faith are not directed by the rule or derived from it, but vice versa, in the same way it
is possible that in the syntagma regula vitae it is not so much the form of life
that is to be derived from the rule as the rule from the form of life. Or perhaps
it should rather be said that the movement goes in both directions and that, in
the incessant tension toward the realization of a threshold of indifference, the
rule is made life to the same extent that life is made rule.
In his treatise On the “Prescription” of the Heretics, Tertullian explains the
expression regula fidei with an instructive formula: the rule of faith is that “by means of which our belief is affirmed” ( Regula est autem fidei . . . illa scilicet
qua creditur; Tertullian 2, 13). In the same sense, it could thus be said that the regula vitae is that by means of which one lives, which corresponds perfectly to the expression regula vivificans that will define the Franciscan rule in Angelo
Clareno. The rule is not applied to life, but produces it and at the same time is
produced in it. What type of texts are the rules, then, if they seem to perfor-
matively realize the life that they must regulate? And what is a life that can no
longer be distinguished from the rule?
א The impossibility of easily distinguishing between rule and life appears clearly
in the lives of the Fathers of the monasteries of Jura, the incipit of which reads Vita vel regula sanctorum patrum Romani, Lupicini et Eugendi, monasteriorum iurensium
abbatum. The editor of the most recent edition ( Jura, p. 240) supposes there is an
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important gap in the third life, where immediately after the biographical narration
we should, according to him, have found the enunciation of the rule. The supposition
has no material foundation in the manuscript, but derives solely from the fact that,
according to the editor, the author had promised in a passage of Romano’s biography
to explain the rule in the third book, tha
t is in the life of Eugendo. When we arrive at
the end of the third biography, however, instead of enunciating the rule, it concludes
with the narration of the abbot’s death. Hence the hypothesis of a gap, whose length
must, according to the editor, be equal to that of the biography itself.
In reality we are presented here with an exemplary case of an emendation (a neg-
ative one, in this case) introduced into the manuscript only because the editor has not
understood the text. If the author had promised to explain the rule, he argues, he cannot
limit himself to a biographical narration. This means he has not understood the peculiar
relationship of indetermination that in the text and with particular clarity in the incipit
( vita vel regula, life or rule) links the two terms life and rule. At the beginning of the first biography, the author declares in fact that he wants to “reproduce faithfully [ fideliter replicare] in the name of Christ—according to what I saw there with my own eyes or received from the tradition of the elders—the deeds, the way of life, and the Rule [ actus vitamque ac regulam] of the esteemed fathers of the Jura Mountains” (ibid., pp. 242/101).
Actus vitamque ac regulam (as underlined by the enclitic— que and the conjunction ac, which coordinate the words more closely than et) is one sole concept in three words, and it refers to something (the Fathers’ form of life) that can be expressed adequately only by means of three indivisible terms.
If the author does not transcribe a separate rule, it is because the rule is already
perfectly contained in the narration of Eugendo’s life. In announcing the exposition of
the rule, he had indeed written of reserving it for the third book, quia rectius hoc in vita beatissimi Eugendi depromitur. The phrase does not mean, as the editor imprecisely translated, il est plus normal en effet de vous le donner la vie de st. Oyend, but rather, according to the proper meaning of the verb depromi (which means “to extract, to deduce”), “because it may be expressed in the most fitting way in the life of the most blessed Eugendo.” An
attentive reading of the biography shows, however, that this contains, in particular in
paragraphs 170–73, an accurate description of the way in which the abbot has organized
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