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If then any one by accident breaks an earthenware jar (which they call
"baucalis "), he can only expiate his carelessness by public penance; and
when all the brethren are assembled for service he must lie on the ground
and ask for absolution until the service of the prayers is finished; and
will obtain it when by the Abbot's command he is bidden to rise from the
ground. The same satisfaction must be given by one who when summoned to
some work or to the usual service comes rather late, or who when singing a
Psalm hesitates ever so little. Similarly if he answers unnecessarily or
roughly or impertinently, if he is careless in carrying out the services
enjoined to him, if he makes a slight complaint, if preferring reading to
work or obedience he is slow in performing his appointed duties, if when
service is over he does not make haste to go back at once to his cell, if
he stops for ever so short a time with some one else, if he goes anywhere
else even for a moment, if he takes any one else by the hand, if he
ventures to discuss anything however small with one who is not the joint-
occupant of his cell, if he prays with one who is suspended from prayer,
if he sees any of his relations or friends in the world and talks with
them without his senior, if he tries to receive a letter from any one or to
write back without his Abbot's leave. To such an extent does spiritual
censure proceed and in such matters and faults like these. But as for other
things which when indiscriminately committed among us are treated by us too
as blameworthy, viz.: open wrangling, manifest contempt, arrogant
contradictions, going out from the monastery freely and without check,
familiarity with women, wrath, quarrelling, jealousies, disputes, claiming
something as one's own property, the infection of covetousness, the desire
and acquisition of unnecessary things which are not possessed by the rest
of the brethren, taking food between meals and by stealth, and things like
these--they are dealt with not by that spiritual censure of which we spoke,
but by stripes; or are atoned for by expulsion.
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