Unknown Pilgrims

SR No.: 007014
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: N Shanta
Publisher: Sri Satguru Publications Delhi
Publication Year: 1997
Total Pages: 820
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 19 MB

Page 75

General Introduction
55
of this difference is, precisely, in regard to enclosure.45 Monks, certainly, do observe a form of enclosure, but it is not absolute. 46
To conclude this short account of Christian asceticism and monasticism, the history of which tells of so many martyrs, virgins, women hermits and nuns who pursued a very lofty ideal, namely, union with God through renunciation, prayer and meditation, here are some lines of a spiritual author and schclar who so identified himself with the hermits, monks and nuns of the first centuries that one could easily suppose, on hearing him speak, that he had known them personally. He is speaking here of equality between the sexes:
...It is essential to emphasise this point, because in more recent days there has been a reversion to ideas less true to the Gospel under pretext of psychology and physiology. The ancients without doubt were, after Gallian and Hippocrates, not in ignorance of these two sciences and the Fathers knew that they had ranged against them not the anthropology of the scholars but widespread masculine prejudice backed up more or less tacitly by the philosophers. This fact, however, did not prevent the better informed among them from affirming with Origen that the true difference between human beings is a matter not of sex, but of soul.47
And again:
45 Cf. Leclerq, 1971.
46 We are dealing here with a matter of Roman legislation stemming from canon law and not from rules or constitutions suited to a monastic order. The rule of St Benedict does not speak of total enclosure. Nowadays there is a movement in favour of relaxation of the cloister. The principle of enclosure must be retained, but there is no valid reason for imposing on nuns a stricter legislation than that prescribed for monks. In this question it is the wisdom evidenced by an Abbess that must be guiding factor, and not a law imposed from without
47 Hausherr, 1945, pp. 252-253.