Saturday, November 4, 2006
![In the Rule of St. Benedict, four orders of monks are described: Cenobites, Anchorites, Sarabaites, and Landlopers. Cenobites are monastics, living under the rule of an Abbot. Anchorites are hermits, who, after years of monastic discipline, practice their faith in solitude. Sarabaites and Landlopers are considered almost beneath mention. The Landlopers were itinerants, moving from place to place and taking whatever they could en route. The third group are known as Sarabaites, which the Rule of St.Benedict describes as:
a “most vile class of monks. . .who have been tried by no rule under the hand of a master, as gold is tried in the fire (cf Prov 27:21); but, soft as lead, and still keeping faith with the world by their works, they are known to belie God by their tonsure. Living in two's and three's, or even singly, without a shepherd, enclosed, not in the Lord's sheepfold, but in their own, the gratification of their desires is law unto them; because what they choose to do they call holy, but what they dislike they hold to be unlawful.” [from The Holy Rule of St. Benedict, Chapter 1]
It is hard to find much written about them, presumably because they were a patent embarrassment to those who lived under the accountability of scripture and ruling bodies of the Church. All that remains of them is a few scant references, all appended with black marks. They probably would have disappeared from history altogether were not certain Christians so eager to revive their ranks. Episcopalians (ECUSA) and Presbyterians (PCUSA) in particular seem most eager for the Sarabaitian redux.
Check their rationale (which all extant texts speak of in the pejorative):
Living . . .without a shepherd. . .the gratification of their desires is law unto them; because what they choose to do they call holy, but what they dislike they hold to be unlawful.
Neo-Sarabaitianism is alive and well in the Church in the form of “justice/love” and the polemics of gay marriage and/or ordination. But rather than the mouthful “Neo-Sarabaitianists,” let’s just keep calling them Progressives.
It should awaken our conscience that the Rule of St. Benedict, the writings of St. Jerome, and the works of John Cassian all seem utterly disgusted with their logic and rationale, every mention of them tagged with a tone of moral disgust.
We all need the rule of scripture and the Church to correct, reprove and rebuke our self-styled pietisms, and just because “two or three” agree that self-gratification isn’t all that evil, it doesn’t mean their order has any legitimate to Christianity.
It will be interesting to see if the PCUSA and ECUSA attempt to revive the order of Landlopers as well, playing Hungry Hungy Hippo from property to property as congregations in good conscience feel no choice but to secede from their tragically-desalinized foundations.](782810CE-7694-4EC0-A3A7-E52DD6F47C83_files/shapeimage_2.png)
