Skip to content
Catecharium

The Rule of Saint Benedict

Chapter 24. What the measure of Excommunication should be

1 section

Saint Benedict of Nursia

Transcribed from a dated scan; artifacts may remain. Edition notes

THE measure of excommunication or chastisement should be meted out according to the gravity of the offence, the estimation of which shall be left to the judgment of the Abbot. If any brother be found guilty of lighter faults, let him be excluded from the common table. And this shall be the rule for one so deprived: he shall intone neither Psalm nor antiphon in the Oratory, nor shall he read a lesson, until he have made satisfaction. Let him take his meals alone, after those of the brethren ; so that if, for example, the brethren eat at the sixth hour, let him eat at the ninth: if they eat at the ninth, let him eat in the evening, until by proper satisfaction he obtain pardon.

Trans. D. Oswald Hunter Blair (in religion, Dom Oswald Hunter Blair; David Oswald Hunter Blair, 4th Baronet, 1853-1939), a Benedictine monk of Fort Augustus Abbey, Not part of a named series; a standalone Abbey Press printing, 1906. Public domain.

© 2026 Catecharium