Explaining How It Is against the Vow of Poverty to Receive or Give Anything without Leave of the Superior, Even though the Thing Be Not Belonging to the House

WE have said that it is the common opinion of doctors that not only is it against the vow of poverty to take anything of the house for your own use, or give it to another, without leave, but also to receive anything from another without leave of the superior. Thus, if a friend, or penitent, or your father, or relation, gives you anything to buy a coat or a book or anything of the sort, and you receive and keep or use it without leave of the superior, you will sin against the vow of poverty, whether you ask for it or he gives it you without your asking, either by way of friendship, or by way of alms or relationship, or in any other way that you shall direct. But someone will say: “When the thing belongs to the house, I quite agree that it will be against the vow of poverty; but when it is given me by another, how can it be so? I take nothing from the house, nor put it to any loss; rather it seems I do it a good turn, saving it the cost of what otherwise it would have to give me. What sin is there there, and against what commandment?” I say that ordinarily it is a sin of theft, and against the Seventh Commandment of the law of God. And so St. Augustine says expressly in his rule: “If anyone wishes to give anything to a religious, if a father wishes to give his son some clothing or anything else, the religious cannot receive it without leave, but the superior is the person to receive it, and that not for the individual, but for the house and community, to give it to whomsoever he thinks stands most in need of it.” If the superior thinks fit to give to another the clothing that was sent to you, he does you no wrong, since it is not yours. Coming into the house, it becomes common property; it is as much mine as yours. To come to the point, St. Augustine goes on to say: “And if anyone receives anything without leave, and keeps it covered up without giving an account of it to the superior, let him be condemned as guilty of theft.” “For theft it is,” says St. Basil, “to keep anything in private without leave of the superior.” From whom is the thing stolen? Would you know from whom? St. Basil will tell you: “From your order and the community.”

And let no one say that these are exaggerations of the saints, their usual way of talking, enhancing the matter in order to strike more terror and alarm into those whom they rebuke. It is not so; it is very plain truth and the common opinion of all the doctors, based on the principle, in which all agree, that a religious by his vow of poverty is incapacitated for holding anything as his own or giving anything away. As he is not his own, but belongs to his order, so all that they give him, when it comes under his hands, in whatsoever form it comes, at once becomes the property of his order. When a religious holds a chair or pension, such as we see are held at Salamanca and other universities, the revenues do not belong to the religious, but to his monastery; and the superior collects them, and the procurator in his name, as he does the other revenues of the monastery; and the religious who fills the chair has recourse to his superior for necessaries, just as he would if he did not hold the chair.

Hence it is very clear that it is theft for a religious to receive anything from another and retain it without leave of his superior; because the thing then belongs to the order when it comes into the hands of the religious; and so, if he keeps and retains it without leave, he usurps and steals from the order, acting contrary to the will of the superior. That is the definition of theft—to take or retain of another’s goods contrary to the will of the owner. Hence it follows that, if a religious gives anything to another without leave, though it be by way of alms, the receiver acquires no dominion or ownership over it, but is obliged to restore it to the order. Hence it will be seen what a mistake it is to think that you can give to your relation or penitent or friend, a book, a picture, a reliquary, or anything of the sort, on the ground that it is not the house or order that gave it you, but another party. As it is a theft and an offense against the vow of poverty to take or give or dispose of anything of the house without leave of the superior, so also is it the like sin to take and receive anything from an outsider, and keep or dispose of it without leave of the superior.

But it must be observed that, though it were not a theft, and no wrong were done thereby to house or monastery or any other party, as might happen in some case, nevertheless it remains a mortal sin of its own kind to take or receive, use or dispose of any temporal thing without leave of the superior, because by the vow of poverty this is forbidden to the religious, and he is rendered incapable of such an act. And the recipient of such a thing from a religious would acquire no ownership of it, and would be bound to restore it, because he receives from one who cannot give, like one who receives from a minor.

In confirmation, there is a case related by Pope St. Gregory in his “Dialogues” (iv. 55). And the case was of this sort. In the monastery of St. Andrew, which St. Gregory built at Rome when he was pope, there was a monk called Justus. He asked a brother that he had in the world to buy him a woolen shirt. The brother put his hand into his purse and drew out three reals, and said to him: “There you see three reals; buy one to your taste.” So Surius tells the story and says that he drew it from the original; but in the “Dialogues” of St. Gregory it is said to have been three ducats; but to our purpose it comes to the same thing whether they were reals or ducats, and at that time three reals were enough, and more than enough, to buy a woolen shirt. Anyhow, the monk took the three reals, or the three ducats, without leave, and kept them. He came to fall seriously ill. Another monk, happening to know that he was keeping those three reals and being uneasy in conscience about it, went to acquaint the abbot—according to the rule which we also have, that whoever knows anything serious about another must at once acquaint the superior therewith. The abbot thought the case so grave that the pope ought to be consulted about it; so he reported to St. Gregory, to see what was to be done. St. Gregory ordered that none of the monks were to visit the sick man, nor speak to him, but all should hold him for excommunicate, since he had broken his vow of poverty. He further ordered that when he died they were not to bury him with the other monks in consecrated ground, but outside the monastic enclosure, in a dunghill, and that they were to throw on his corpse the money that he was keeping, saying all aloud: Thy money be with thee unto perdition (Acts viii. 20). The monk died of that illness, and they did with him accordingly. St. Gregory says that this example struck such horror and alarm into the monastery that all the monks started rummaging their cells, and all the little things that they had, even with leave, and things that they might have kept lawfully, they took to their superior, to be sure of having nothing against poverty. By these and the like examples of the ancient Fathers, there was established this penalty by the sacred canons against religious who died proprietors.