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By the Labour of their Hands? Religious Work and City Life in Thirteenth-Century Italy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
Extract
In his Historia occidentalis, written in the 1220s after wide travels and varied experience, the Augustinian canon, bishop, and finally cardinal, Jacques de Vitry, described the recent and contemporary history of the West and in particular the many orders of both regular and secular persons in the Church, some of whom he had encountered in his journeying. He covered monks, canons, and secular religious, and it is an extensive list, including the Cistercians (male and female), the Carthusians, the Grandmontines, various hospital Orders, and new Orders such as the Valiscaulians, Trinitarians, Friars minor, Friars preacher, and the Humiliati of northern Italy. His text outlines the activities of the religious in these communities, giving us some sense of how such religious used their time. Manual labour was a long-established part of the regular life, and he naturally and frequently refers to it, the ‘labour of their hands’ of my title. Thus, according to Vitry, after daily chapter the Cistercians spent the rest of the day in manual labour, reading, and prayer; while the Valiscaulians had gardens, herbs, and orchards within their enclosure to which they went at set times ‘so that they might eat by the labour of their hands’, a direct allusion to Psalm 127.2: Thou shalt eat the labour of thine hands: happy shalt thou be and it shall be well with thee.’ Premonstratensian canons likewise went out at fixed times ‘ad labores manuum’, and he describes the Humiliati as keeping sluggishness at bay by assiduous reading, prayer, and manual labour, by which they lived for the most part (‘ex magna parte’). By contrast, the canons of Bologna (as he calls the early Friars preacher or Dominicans) spent their days listening to Scripture, preaching, and working to save the souls of sinners from the jaws of the Leviathan (Job 40.20) through learning, so that they might ‘shine like perpetual stars in eternity’.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Studies in Church History , Volume 37: The Use and Abuse of Time in Christian History , 2002 , pp. 81 - 93
- Copyright
- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2002
References
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