Archives of the Order (5) - Statutes of Fra Roger De Moulins

 

STATUTES OF FRA ROGER DE MOULINS 1177-87

The Chapter-General of 1181

THAT THE CHURCHES SHOULD BE REGULATED WITH THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE PRIOR.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. In the year of the incarnation of Our Lord 1181 in the month of March, on the Sunday on which they chant Laetare Jerusalem (i.e. 22nd March), I, Roger, servant of Christ's poor, in the presence of the clerical and lay brethren seated around the Chapter-General, to the honour of God and the glory of our Religion, and the support and benefit of the sick poor.

1. It is commanded that the statutes of the church aforesaid and the benefits for the poor afterwards written should be kept and observed forever, without going contrary to them in any respect. Concerning the churches it is commanded that they should be arranged and regulated at the disposition of the Prior of the clerics of the Hospital with regard to books clerics vestments priests chalices censers perpetual light and other ornaments.
2. And secondly, it is decreed with the assent of the brethren that for the sick in the Hospital of Jerusalem there should be engaged four wise doctors, who are qualified to examine urine, and to diagnose different diseases, and are able to administer appropriate medicines.
3. And thirdly, it is added that the beds of the sick should be made as long and as broad as is most convenient for repose, and that each bed should be covered with its own coverlet, and each bed should have its own special sheets.
4. After these needs is decreed the fourth command, that each of the sick should have a cloak of sheepskin and boots for going to and coming from the latrines, and caps of wool.
5. It is also decreed that little cradles should be made for the babies of the women pilgrims born in the House, so that they may lie separate, and that the baby in its own bed may be in no danger from restlessness of its mother.
6. Afterwards it is decreed the sixth clause, that the biers of the dead should be concealed in the same manner as are the biers of the brethren, and should be covered with a red coverlet having a white cross.
7. The seventh clause commands that wheresoever there are hospitals for the sick, that the Commanders of the houses should serve the sick cheerfully, and should do their duty by them, and serve them without grumbling or complaining, so that by these good deeds they may deserve to have their reward in the glories of heaven. And if any of the brethren should act contrary to the commands of the Master in these matters, that it should be brought to the notice of the Master, who shall punish them according to the sentence of the house commands.
8. It was also decreed, when the council (i.e. Chapter-General) of the brethren was held, that the Prior of the Hospital of France should send each year to Jerusalem one hundred sheets of dyed cotton to replace the coverlets of the poor sick, and should reckon them in his Responsion together with those things which shall be given in his Priory to the House in charity.
9. In selfsame manner and reckoning the Prior of the Hospital of St. Gilles should purchase each year the like number of sheets of cotton and send them to Jerusalem, together with those things which shall be given in his Priory for the love of God to the poor of the Hospital.
10. The prior of Italy each year should send to Jerusalem for our lords the sick two hundred ells of fustian (cotton sheets) of divers colours, which he may reckon each year in his Responsion.
11. And the Prior of Pisa should send likewise the like numbers of fustians.
12. And the Prior of Venice likewise, and all should be reckoned in their Responsions.
13. And likewise the Bailiffs this side of the sea should be particular in this same service.
14. Of whom the Bailiff of Antioch should send to Jerusalem two hundred ells of cotton cloth for the coverlets of the sick.
15. The prior of Mont Pelerin (i.e. Tripoli) should send to Jerusalem two quintals of sugar for the syrups, and the medicines and the electuaries of the sick.
16. For this same service the Bailiff of Tabarie (i.e. Tiberias) should send there the same quantity.
17. The Prior of Constantinople should send for the sick two hundred felts.
18. Moreover guarding and watching them day and night, the brethren of the Hospital should serve the sick poor with zeal and devotion as if they were their lords, and it was added in Chapter-General that in every ward (rue) and place in the Hospital, nine sergeants should be kept at their service, who should wash their feet gently, and change their sheets, and make their beds, and administer to the weak necessary and strengthening food, and do their duty devotedly, and obey, in all things for the benefit of the sick.

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THE CONFIRMATION BY THE MASTER ROGER OF THE THINGS THAT THE HOUSE SHOULD DO

Let all the brethren of the House of the Hospital, both those present and those to come, know that the good customs of the House of the Hospital of Jerusalem are as follows:

1. Firstly the Holy House of the Hospital is accustomed to receive sick men and women, and is accustomed to keep doctors who have the care of the sick, and who make the syrups for the sick, and who provide the things that are necessary for the sick. For three days in the week the sick are accustomed to have fresh meat, either pork or mutton, and those who are unable to eat it have chicken.
2. And two sick persons are accustomed to have one coat of sheepskin (pelice de brebis), which they use when going to the latrines (chambres), and between two sick persons one pair of boots. Every year the House of the Hospital is accustomed to give to the poor one thousand cloaks of thick lamb skins.
3. And all the children abandoned by their fathers and mothers the Hospital is accustomed to receive and to nourish. To a man and woman who desire to enter into matrimony, and who possess nothing with which to celebrate their marriage, the House of the Hospital is accustomed to give two bowls (escueles) or the rations of two brethren.
4. And the House of the Hospital is accustomed to keep one brother shoemaker (corvoisier) and three sergeants, who repair the old shoes (soliers) given for the love of God. And the Almoner is accustomed to keep two sergeants who repair the old robes that he may give them to the poor.
5. And the Almoner is accustomed to give twelve deniers to each prisoner, when he is first released from prison.
6. Every night five clerics are accustomed to read the Psalter for the benefactors of the House.
7. And every day thirty poor persons are accustomed to be fed at table once a day for the love of God, and the five clerics aforesaid may be among those thirty poor persons, but the twenty-five eat before the Convent, and each of the five clerics should have two deniers and eat with the Convent.
8. And on three days of the week they are accustomed to give in alms to all who come there to ask for it, bread and wine and cooked food.
9. In Lent every Saturday, they are accustomed to celebrate Maundy for thirteen poor persons, and to wash their feet, and to give to each a shirt and new breeches and new shoes, and to three chaplains, or to three clerics out of the thirteen, three deniers and to each of the others, two deniers.
10. These are the special charities decreed in the Hospital, apart from the Brethren-at-Arms whom the House should maintain honourably, and many other charities there are which cannot be set out in detail each one by itself. And that these things be true good men and loyal here bear witness, that is to say Brother Roger, Master of the Hospital, and Brother Bernard the Prior and all the Chapter-General.

Archives of the Order (4) - Chapter Generals of Fra. Jobert

THE CHAPTER GENERAL OF 1176
THE PRIVILEGE OF THE SICK TO HAVE WHITE BREAD 

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

• Let all men know of those who are, and those in the future shall be sons of Holy Mother Church, that I Jobert, Master of the Hospital of Jerusalem, with the good will and unanimous consent of all our brethren assembled in our Common Chapter, before the presence and witness of the passion and resurrection of Our Lord, have given and granted in permanent possession to our blessed lords, that is to say to the poor of the hostels (Xenodocheum) of the Hospital of Jerusalem, and to Brother Steven the Hospitaller at the present time, and to their successors who shall come after them perpetually for all time, two casales, that is to say the casales of St. Mary and Caphaer, with all their possessions and appurtenances within and without, for the provision of white bread which should be given to them forever; and if by chance it should happen that the corn should fail in the casales or be insufficient to provide for the needs of the poor, enough should be taken from the Treasury to purchase white bread and to provide sufficient for the poor; and if should happen that the wheat from the casales should be mixed with evil herbs, good wheat should be taken measure for measure from the granary of the Hospital, and so sufficient should be provided for our lords the poor. And in order that this gift may be established and unaltered forever, we have caused this charter to be sealed with our seal; and if anyone from henceforward would go to contrary to this Holy Commandment, or would distort it, may he be damned with Judas the traitor in everlasting damnation, with Cain and Dathan and Abiron, whom the earth swallowed up, may he be cursed with the curse. Amen.
• Each loaf should be the weight of two marks, and should be given to two poor persons.
• This decree was made in the year of the Incarnation of Our Lord 1176. 

THE CHAPTER GENERAL OF 1177

THE CUSTOMS OF THE CHURCH OF THE HOSPITAL OF JERUSALEM

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

These are the customs which should be observed in the House of the Hospital of Jerusalem.

1. The first morning Mass should not be begun before it is day, nor should the Commander of any house order the priest to chant mass. And no priest should chant mass twice in a day, unless by chance the body of the dead person be there, and then in this manner, first should be chanted the mass for the day, if it be a Sunday or a day of Festival, and afterwards should be chanted that for the dead, if a body be present there. And everywhere where a deceased (brother) of the hospital shall be buried, the day of his death should be written in the calendar. And for thirty days masses should be chanted for his soul. And when the Trental shall be completed, the day the anniversary should always be celebrated for his soul, and when the church where the Trental shall be celebrated has three priests, one should celebrate the Trental, and the other two chant the masses for the day. And if two priests only be there where the Trental should be celebrated, the service should be shared between them, and the gratuity. And when there shall be there no more than one priest, they shall obtain another a stranger to celebrate the service of the Trental.
2. And when it shall be celebrated, one besant and a new shirt and breeches, according to the custom of the House, should be given to him. And if it be impossible to find a stranger priest. and the priest of the house be without the company of another priest, the Trental should be celebrated in this manner, that is to say that every day he should chant for the dead except on Sundays and days of solemn festival; and then afterwards he should make the commemoration and remembrance for the brother that is departed. But when the thirty days shall be passed, and after the number of days on which commemoration should be made only for the soul of the brother shall be fulfilled by the Trental, and there should be given to the priest the charity aforesaid. And if by chance these things should happen in Lent in the houses where there shall be no more than one priest, let it be postponed until after Easter, and then let celebration be made for the soul of the brother without delay.
3. And let the brethren always take care to have a light in the church, and let the chalice for administration be of silver, and the censor of silver.
4. And it is commanded that the bodies of pilgrims or of other Christians, who shall die after the Hour of Vespers, should be left until the next day; and in the Hospital, where they shall have died, let them not lie upon their biers without a light. And the next day before Prime they should be carried to the church, and after Mass should be buried; the biers of the dead should be like those that are in Jerusalem.
5. The bodies of the brethren should be watched in the church, and the clerics should be around them chanting their psalms, and the tapers should be lighted. Of the charity that is given to the priests for the Trental the house should retain nothing; but for the Trentals of strangers the brethren should retain the half.
6. For the public and private masses the priests should have nothing for themselves, except so much as the brethren should wish to give them of their own free will.
7. Of the payments from confessions the sixth part should be given to the priests and the clerics, not by contract but of grace; but in casales where there shall be no burgesses, and no one except one priest, the arrangements aforesaid shall be at the discretion of the Commander of the house, and the gratuity of the clerics he shall give as shall seem good to him.
8. Of the wills and legacies, which shall be made to vicars up to one besant, the half should be given to them; but the legacies and wills, which shall be left to the Hospital , when they shall be paid over, the brethren should receive them without deduction.

Benedict XVI on temptations

"In this Year of Faith, Lent is a favorable time to rediscover faith in God as the fundamental criterion of our life and of the life of the Church. This always entails a struggle, a spiritual combat, because the spirit of evil naturally sets itself against our sanctification and seeks to make us deviate from the way of God.

At the beginning of his public ministry Jesus had to unmask and reject the false images of the Messiah that the tempter proposed to him. But these temptations are also false images of man, which always assail our conscience, disguising themselves as suitable and efficacious, even good, proposals.

The evangelists Matthew and Luke present three temptations of Jesus, differing in part only in their order. The nucleus of these temptations always consists in using God for one's own ends, giving more importance to success or to material goods. The tempter is deceptive: he does not direct us immediately toward evil, but toward a false good, making us believe that the true realities are power and what satisfies primary needs.

In this way, God becomes secondary; he is reduced to a means, in the end he becomes unreal, no longer counts, disappears. In the final analysis, in temptations, faith is at stake, because God is at stake. In the decisive moments of life and, if we see clearly, at every moment of life, we are faced with a choice: do we want to follow the “I” or God? Do we want to follow individual interest or the true Good, that which is really good?

As the Fathers of the Church teach us, temptations are part of Jesus's 'descent' into our human condition, into the abyss of sin and its consequences. A 'descent' that Jesus undertook to the very end, to the point of death on the cross and the descent into the netherworld of extreme distance from God. In this way, he is the hand that God stretched out to man, to the lost sheep, to bring him back to safety.

As St. Augustine teaches, Jesus has taken temptations from us, to give us his victory (cf. Enarr. in Psalmos, 60,3: PL 36, 724).

We are not, therefore, afraid to face, we also, the combat against the spirit of evil: the important thing is that we do it with Him, with Christ, the Victor.

And to stand with Him we turn to the Mother, Mary: let us invoke her with filial confidence in the hour of trial, and she will make us feel the powerful presence her divine Son, to reject the temptations with the Word of Christ, and so to put God once again at the center of our life."  Benedict XVI, Angelus, 17 February 2013.

Benedict XVI on Lent

Let us live Lent as a "Eucharistic" time in which, welcoming the love of Jesus, we learn to spread it around us with every word and deed. Contemplating "him whom they have pierced" moves us in this way to open our hearts to others, recognizing the wounds inflicted upon the dignity of the human person; it moves us in particular to fight every form of contempt for life and human exploitation and to alleviate the tragedies of loneliness and abandonment of so many people. May Lent be for every Christian a renewed experience of God's love given to us in Christ, a love that each day we, in turn, must "re-give" to our neighbour, especially to the one who suffers most and is in need.

(Benedict XVI, Message for Lent, 2007)