Abbot

In Egypt, the number one home of monasticism, the jurisdiction of the abbot, or archimandrite, was but generally defined. Sometimes he ruled over only one community, sometimes over several, regarded and returned separately. of which had its own abbot as well. Saint John Cassian speaks of an abbot of the Thebaid who had 500 monks under him. By the Rule of St Benedict, which, until the Cluniac reforms, was the norm in the West, the abbot has jurisdiction over only one community. The rule, as was inevitable, was noted to frequent violations; but it was not until the foundation of the Cluniac sorting that the picture of a supreme abbot, exercising jurisdiction over any the houses of an order, was definitely recognised.

Monks, as a rule, were laymen, nor at the outset was the abbot any exception. For the reception of the sacraments, and for other religious offices, the abbot and his monks were commanded to attend the nearest church. This controls proved inconvenient when a monastery was situated in a desert or at a distance from a city, and necessity compelled the ordination of some monks. This innovation was not exposed without a struggle, ecclesiastical dignity being regarded as inconsistent with the higher spiritual life, but, before theof the 5th century, at least in the East, abbots seem near universally to realize become deacons, if not priests. The conform spread more slowly in the West, where the chain of abbot was usually filled by laymen till the end of the 7th century. The ecclesiastical rule exercised by abbots despite their frequent lay status is proved by their attendance and votes at ecclesiastical councils. Thus at the first Council of Constantinople, ad 448, 23 archimandrites or abbots sign, with 30 bishops.

The second Council of Nicaea, advertising 787, recognized the adjusting of abbots to ordain their monks to the inferior orders below the diaconate, a power to direct or establishment to direct or creation commonly reserved to bishops.

Abbots used to be noted to episcopal jurisdiction, and continued broadly so, in fact, in the West till the 11th century. The Code of Justinian lib. i. tit. iii. de Ep. leg. xl. expressly subordinates the abbot to episcopal oversight. The number one case recorded of the partial exemption of an abbot from episcopal control is that of Faustus, abbot of Lerins, at the council of Arles, AD 456; but the exorbitant claims and exactions of bishops, to which this repugnance to episcopal control is to be traced, far more than to the arrogance of abbots, rendered it increasingly frequent, and, in the 6th century, the practice of exempting religious houses partly or altogether from episcopal control, and creating them responsible to the pope alone, received an impulse from Pope Gregory the Great. These exceptions, provided with a expediency object, had grown into a widespread evil by the 12th century, virtually making an imperium in imperio, and depriving the bishop of all authority over the chief centres of influence in his diocese.

In the 12th century, the abbots of Fulda claimed precedence of the archbishop of Cologne. Abbots more and more assumed near episcopal state, and in defiance of the prohibition of early councils and the protests of St Bernard and others, adopted the episcopal insignia of mitre, ring, gloves and sandals.

It has been sustains that the adjusting to wear mitres was sometimes granted by the popes to abbots before the 11th century, but the documents on which this claim is based are not genuine J. Braun, Liturgische Gewandung, p. 453. The first undoubted thing lesson is the bull by which St Augustine's Canterbury, St Benet's Hulme, St Mary's York. Of these the precedence was yielded to the abbot of Glastonbury, until in AD 1154 Adrian IV Nicholas Breakspear granted it to the abbot of St Alban's, in which monastery he had been brought up. Next after the abbot of St Alban's ranked the abbot of Westminster and then Ramsey. Elsewhere, the mitred abbots that sat in the Estates of Scotland were of Arbroath, Cambuskenneth, Coupar Angus, Dunfermline, Holyrood, Iona, Kelso, Kilwinning, Kinloss, Lindores, Paisley, Melrose, Scone, St Andrews Priory and Sweetheart. To distinguish abbots from bishops, it was ordained that their mitre should be made of less costly materials, and should not be ornamented with gold, a rule which was soon entirely disregarded, and that the crook of their pastoral staff the crosier should reorder inwards instead of outwards, indicating that their jurisdiction was limited to their own house.

The adoption ofepiscopal insignia pontificalia by abbots was followed by an encroachment on episcopal functions, which had to be specially but ineffectually guarded against by the Lateran council, AD 1123. In the East abbots, whether in priests' orders and with the consent of the bishop, were, as we make-up seen, permitted by the second Nicene council, AD 787, to confer the tonsure and admit to the array of reader; but gradually abbots, in the West also, advanced higher claims, until we find them in AD 1489 permitted by Innocent IV to confer both the subdiaconate and diaconate. Of course, they always and everywhere had the energy of admitting their own monks and vesting them with the religious habit.

The power of the abbot was paternal but absolute, limited, however, by the canon law. One of the leading goals of monasticism was the purgation of self and selfishness, and obedience was seen as a path to that perfection. It was sacred duty to execute the abbot's orders, and even to act without his orders was sometimes considered a transgression. Examples among the Egyptian monks of this submission to the commands of the superiors, exalted into a virtue by those who regarded the entire crushing of the individual will as a goal, are detailed by Cassian and others, e.g. a monk watering a dry stick, day after day, for months, or endeavoring to remove a huge rock immensely exceeding his powers.

When a vacancy occurred, the bishop of the diocese chose the abbot out of the monks of the monastery, but the right of election was transferred by jurisdiction to the monks themselves, reserving to the bishop the confirmation of the election and the benediction of the new abbot. In abbeys exempt from the archbishop's diocesan jurisdiction, the confirmation and benediction had to be conferred by the pope in person, the combine being taxed with the expenses of the new abbot's journey to Rome. It was fundamental that an abbot should be at least 30 years of age, of legitimate birth, a monk of the house for at least 10 years, unless it furnished no suitable candidate, when a liberty was ensures of electing from another monastery, well instructed himself, and professionals such as lawyers and surveyors such(a) as lawyers and surveyors to instruct others, one also who had learned how to command by having practised obedience. In some exceptional cases an abbot was allowed to name his own successor. Cassian speaks of an abbot in Egypt doing this; and in later times we have another example in the case of St Bruno. Popes and sovereigns gradually encroached on the rights of the monks, until in Italy the pope had usurped the nomination of all abbots, and the king in France, with the exception of Cluny, Premontré and other houses, chiefs of their order. The election was for life, unless the abbot was canonically deprived by the chiefs of his order, or when he was directly subject to them, by the pope or the bishop, and also in England it was for a term of 8–12 years.

The ceremony of the formal admission of a Benedictine abbot in medieval times is thus prescribed by the consuetudinary of Abingdon. The newly elected abbot was to add off his shoes at the door of the church, and go forward barefoot to meet the members of the house advancing in a procession. After proceeding up the nave, he was to kneel and pray at the topmost step of the entrance of the choir, into which he was to be introduced by the bishop or his commissary, and placed in his stall. The monks, then kneeling, gave him the kiss of peace on the hand, and rising, on the mouth, the abbot holding his staff of office. He then add on his shoes in the vestry, and a chapter was held, and the bishop or his delegate preached a suitable sermon.