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Monastic Vows

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Origin 500 BCE to 600 CE

Vows are not everywhere the same promise. Benedict asks for stability, obedience and conversatio morum, a phrase usually rendered as fidelity to monastic life and never satisfactorily translated; the familiar triad of poverty, chastity and obedience belongs to the later orders. Buddhist higher ordination is not a vow but an acceptance of a training rule, 227 clauses for a Theravada monk and 311 for a nun, and it may be given back: in Thailand and Burma ordaining for a season and returning to lay life is normal and carries no stigma. Jain initiation takes the five great vows in their absolute form, without the exemptions allowed to laypeople, and the renunciant plucks out their hair by hand rather than shaving. What the vow does in every case is transfer a person from one legal category to another within their own tradition, with different food, dress, property and obligations on the far side.

Facts
Origins
Origin Period
500 BCE to 600 CE 1
Origin Period
The Benedictine profession from the sixth century CE 1
Place of Origin
Two independent origins: ancient India (Jain and Buddhist ordination vows) and sixth-century Italy (the Rule of Saint Benedict) 1
Historical Origin
The Rule of Saint Benedict sets out the threefold vow of stability, conversion of life and obedience taken by a monk entering a Benedictine community, a formula that shaped the vocabulary of monastic profession across the Western Christian tradition. 3
Attributions
Tradition
Takes different forms across traditions that practice it, the three vows of poverty, chastity and obedience professed in Christian religious life, and the far larger set of precepts, the Vinaya, that a Buddhist monastic undertakes at ordination. 1
Purpose
Monastic vows, most commonly poverty, chastity and obedience in the Western Christian tradition, are professed by a monk or nun as a formal, typically lifelong commitment to the monastic way of life. 2
Practice
Who Performs It
The candidate undergoing the rite 1
Frequency
Once, or at a turning point in a life 1
Solitary or Communal
Performed by a gathered group 1
Meaning
Literal Meaning
The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church identifies monastic vows as the formal promises of poverty, chastity and obedience by which a person is admitted into a religious order, professed publicly before the community as a lifelong commitment. 2
Function
Stage of Life Marked
Ordination, profession or vows 1
Form
Implements and Materials
Marked in Christian monastic practice by the postulant's own habit and, in some orders, a public profession before witnesses, while the ordination the Vinaya Pitaka describes centers instead on formal questioning before the assembled sangha. 4
Learn More
Not the Three Promises You Expect

Ask what monks vow and the answer usually given is poverty, chastity and obedience. That triad is real, it is the standard formula for the mendicant and clerical orders from the thirteenth century onward, and it is not what the oldest western rule asks for.

Benedict asks for three things and only one of them overlaps. A monk vows stability, meaning that he will remain in this house with these people and not move on when they become tiresome; obedience; and conversatio morum suorum, a phrase that has resisted translation for fifteen hundred years and is usually rendered as fidelity to the monastic way of life. Poverty and celibacy are assumed by the rule rather than promised in it. The difference is not pedantic. Stability is the vow that distinguishes a Benedictine from a friar, whose whole point is mobility, and communities that keep it produce a very particular kind of institution: one that is stuck with itself.

Catholic law now distinguishes solemn from simple vows and temporary from perpetual profession, with a period of temporary vows preceding any lifelong commitment. Dispensation from perpetual vows is possible and is granted.

Jain initiation goes the other way and removes every mitigation. The five great vows are the same five restraints a devout layperson observes in limited form, taken here without exemption: non-violence extended to the smallest organisms, truth, non-stealing, celibacy, and non-attachment. Initiation includes the plucking out of the hair by hand rather than shaving, which is understood as the first practical test of the equanimity the rest of the life requires.

The most striking absence is in Islam and Judaism. Neither developed monasticism, and Islam has a well-known saying to the effect that there is none in it. Sufi orders, which are sometimes described as monastic, involve neither celibacy nor withdrawal from ordinary work for most of their members, and the comparison misleads more than it clarifies.

An Ordination That Can Be Handed Back

Buddhist higher ordination is not a vow in the western sense. The candidate is admitted to a training rule and undertakes to keep it: 227 clauses for a Theravada monk, 311 for a nun, more in some other recensions. The rule is presented in the Vinaya as case law, a sequence of incidents followed by the ruling each provoked, rather than as legislation handed down.

Because it is an undertaking rather than a lifelong vow, it can be relinquished. A monk may formally disrobe and return to lay life without disgrace, and in Thailand, Burma, Laos and Cambodia ordaining for a rains retreat or for a few weeks is ordinary. Many men do it once in their lives, some as boys, and the merit is understood to accrue to their mothers. This is very hard to map onto a Christian frame in which leaving is a failure requiring dispensation.

The unresolved question concerns women. Full ordination for nuns lapsed in the Theravada countries centuries ago and the Vinaya requires existing nuns to be present at the ordination of new ones, which appeared to make revival impossible from within. The lineage survived in East Asia. In December 1996 ten Sri Lankan women were fully ordained at Sarnath by Sri Lankan monks assisted by Korean monks and nuns, and a much larger international ordination followed at Bodh Gaya in February 1998 under Taiwanese auspices, with a quorum of nuns from Taiwan.

Sri Lanka now has a substantial community of fully ordained nuns. The Thai and Burmese monastic hierarchies have not recognised these ordinations, and the argument turns on whether a lineage of a different recension can supply what the Theravada one lost, and on whether the requirement can be dispensed with at all. Scholars within the tradition have argued in print that the objections do not hold on Vinaya grounds. Women who ordained in Thailand have faced formal sanction. The dispute is live and it is conducted in the technical language of monastic law rather than in the language of rights, which is worth knowing before reading either side.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Belongs to Tradition

Kept across the provinces of the Anglican Communion. Vows of poverty, chastity and obedience are made in the refounded religious communities of this church.

Vows of poverty, chastity and obedience are made in the refounded religious communities of this church.

Kept in the Armenian Apostolic Church. The monastic profession of these churches descends directly from the Egyptian desert and is the oldest continuous monastic observance in Christianity.

Buddhism, Religions
Source The Rule of Saint BenedictBenedict of Nursia
Source The Rule of Saint BenedictBenedict of Nursia

Kept in the Church of Cyprus, autocephalous since the Council of Ephesus in 431. Monastic profession is made in degrees, the rassophore, the stavrophore and the great schema, rather than as a single set of three vows.

Kept in the Church of England, the province from which the Prayer Book tradition comes. Vows of poverty, chastity and obedience are made in the refounded religious communities of this church.

Kept in the Church of Greece. Monastic profession is made in degrees, the rassophore, the stavrophore and the great schema, rather than as a single set of three vows.

Kept in the Church of Ireland. Vows of poverty, chastity and obedience are made in the refounded religious communities of this church.

Kept in the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria. The monastic profession of these churches descends directly from the Egyptian desert and is the oldest continuous monastic observance in Christianity.

Monastic profession is made in degrees, the rassophore, the stavrophore and the great schema, rather than as a single set of three vows.

Kept in the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, the see of first honour among the Orthodox churches. Monastic profession is made in degrees, the rassophore, the stavrophore and the great schema, rather than as a single set of three vows.

Kept in the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church. The monastic profession of these churches descends directly from the Egyptian desert and is the oldest continuous monastic observance in Christianity.

Kept in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. The monastic profession of these churches descends directly from the Egyptian desert and is the oldest continuous monastic observance in Christianity.

Kept in the Georgian Orthodox Church, which has used its own language and script in worship since the fifth century. Monastic profession is made in degrees, the rassophore, the stavrophore and the great schema, rather than as a single set of three vows.

Kept in the Greek Orthodox churches. Monastic profession is made in degrees, the rassophore, the stavrophore and the great schema, rather than as a single set of three vows.

Jainism, Religions
Source The Rule of Saint BenedictBenedict of Nursia

The monastic profession of these churches descends directly from the Egyptian desert and is the oldest continuous monastic observance in Christianity.

Poverty, chastity and obedience are professed in the religious institutes of this church, under a rule approved by the Holy See.

Kept in the Romanian Orthodox Church, the one Orthodox church of the Byzantine tradition whose language is Romance. Monastic profession is made in degrees, the rassophore, the stavrophore and the great schema, rather than as a single set of three vows.

Kept in the Russian Orthodox Church, in the Slavonic recension of the Byzantine books. Monastic profession is made in degrees, the rassophore, the stavrophore and the great schema, rather than as a single set of three vows.

Kept in the Serbian Orthodox Church. Monastic profession is made in degrees, the rassophore, the stavrophore and the great schema, rather than as a single set of three vows.

Kept in the Episcopal Church, whose own Prayer Book descends from the Scottish rather than the English line. Vows of poverty, chastity and obedience are made in the refounded religious communities of this church.

Kept in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Monastic profession is made in degrees, the rassophore, the stavrophore and the great schema, rather than as a single set of three vows.

Conducted By

An abbess receives the profession of nuns in her community.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

An abbot receives the profession of monks in his community.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Related To

Sources
1. The Oxford Dictionary of World Religions
John Bowker (ed.), Oxford University Press, 1997View the Source
2. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised edition
F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.), Oxford University Press, 2005View the Source
3. The Rule of Saint Benedict
Benedict of NursiaChapter 58, on the manner of receiving brothers
4. The Vinaya Pitaka
Anonymous (Pali Canon)Suttavibhanga; Mahavagga I, on higher ordination
The Revival of the Bhikkhuni Order and the Decline of the Sasana, Journal of Buddhist Ethics 20
Bhikkhu Analayo, Journal of Buddhist Ethics, 2013Journal of Buddhist Ethics 20, pages 110-193
Code of Canon Law (Codex Iuris Canonici)
Holy See, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1983Canons 573-746the holders' own accountView the Source
Encyclopedia of Religion
Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005View the Source
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