On Tue, 17 Sep 1996, JH Arnold wrote:
> On Mon, 16 Sep 1996, stephen hayes wrote:
> > Make that "murderers of their sick." This is in reference to the
> > Carthusian practice of not providing flesh even to those monks ill and
> > _in extremis_. That I'm aware of, very little has been done on this
> > topic since Thompson's book _The Carthusian Order in England_.
>
> dear stephen
> has anyone drawn comparison here with the Cathar practice of the
> "endura"? (that is, not feeding people who have received the purifying
> rite of the consolamentum on their deathbed; and thus hastening their
> deaths).
No comparison. A stock part of the Carthusian defense against the
accusation that by abstaining from meat under all circumstances they were
murdering themselves is that the empirical data showed that they lived
longer and healthier lives. (Echoing the Book of Daniel: a diet of
vegetables is healthy.) The Carthusians did permit some milk products
and eggs during parts of the year; they would eat fish when it was given
to them but did not purchase fish. I have run across numerous examples
of Carthusians living into their 70s and 80s.
(Of course, the stereotype
of medieval life expectancy--that people died in their 30s, is a myth--once
past the age of five or ten, one could reasonably expect to live to one's
fifties or sixties. But seventies or eighties was relatively uncommon in
the general population. I am not suggesting it was normal for the
Carthusians but they certainly lived as long as the general population
and, though no one has done an statistical work on this -- here's a
thesis topic for someone out there -- my impression is that they may have
lived longer, on average, than the general population. This is probably
generally true for most monastic orders; one would have to do some
careful work to see if very strict abstinence from meat as the
Carthusians practiced it made any difference vis-a-vis other monastic
orders who practiced varying degrees of abstinence from meat. Other
factors enter in, of course -- steady supply of food, even if more
restricted in variety, less exhausting physical labor etc.)
To return to the original point: the Cathar endura and Carthusian strict
abstinence from flesh foods really do not offer any point of comparison.
The Carthusians fully accept the Christian understanding of the goodness
of material creation; asceticism serves the function of subordinating the
body to the soul rather than seeking to destroy the body. I would like
to underscore Augustine's point: to distinguish body from soul and give
greater dignity to the soul (likewise, heaven over earth) does not mean
hating the body or seeking to destroy it. This seems to be difficult for
modern scholars to grasp--all too often, the subordination of one to the
other is interpreted as a metaphysical dualism in which the material,
physical, bodily, earthly is to be escaped or destroyed. Augustine,
William of St. Thierry, Bernard of Clairvaux, Cassian, Benedict, and all
the leading monastic theologians clearly reject that sort of metaphysical
dualism and affirm the goodness of all material and spiritual creation,
even of
"creatures from the heart of hell" -- they are good creatures gone bad,
(to quote Hugh of Balma, a 13thc
Carthusian [translation of his _Viae Sion lugent_ is forthcoming in the
Paulist Press Classics of Western Spirituality series; the idea is also
found in Augustine).
Dennis Martin
Loyola University Chicago
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