2.27 About the Statutes of the Carthusian monks

And since my goal is thus (as I have already revealed to the reader several times), that without any consideration of time, not attending to what happened when but rather to when it was related to me, I shall write out what things have been ascertained to be certainly true for the glory of God and for the edification of those reading, I deliver to the readers what I learned a few days ago. But before I begin to write them, I must first relate a few things pertaining to them.

In fact, —according to their wisdom and as much as it is possible for man— in order that the order instituted by them was armed against pride which, according to Scripture, is the beginning of all sin and against its abominable descendants, that is to say envy, ambition, vain glory and whatsoever there are, they choose very base clothes, more scorned that those of all the other religions and even ugly to look at. Narrow and short in their size, rough and common in their quality, to the point of being hardly able to be viewed, they underlined to being unable to allow any right to show. I know, certainly, that the devil seeks he who is his [the devil’s] under a base habit and who intermingles sometimes the thread of pride into the chain of humility.

And more about that, for binding the beast which is their bodies and for subduing, as the Apostle said, the law of their limbs which rebels against the law of the spirit, they exhausted their flesh unceasingly with rough hair shirts and by severe and almost continuous fasting, they weakened their bodies, they tired them out and emaciated themselves. This is why they always used bread [made] from bran flour and wine so watered down that we would call it more a taste than wine. Healthy or sick, they abstained altogether from eating meat. They never bought fish, but is by chance, it was given to them out of charity, they accepted it. Sunday and Thursday only did they permit cheese and eggs.....

Moreover, in the manner of the ancient monks of Egypt, they remained continually in their own cell where they applied themselves without pause to silence, reading, prayer and manual labour, above all the copying of books.

For vespers and matins, all came together in the church and there, not in the negligent manner like some, but with their eyes very intently grounded to the earth and their hearts fixed on heaven, they offered to God their prayers, to God their actions of grace, beyond all the visible and in the scorn of all the rest, by their attitude, their look, their countenance revealed a being completely (as much interior as exterior) absorbed and more concentrated.

in the imitation of the ancient hermits