Folia Canonica 5. (2002)
STUDIES - W. Becket Soule: Hermits in Current Eastern Catholic Legislation; CCEO cc. 481-485
154 W. BECKET SOULE Grottaferrata ( 1900) also spoke briefly of the eremitical life, but this reference has been dropped in the revised constitutions of 1978.20 In 1958, the Holy See granted the Monastery of the Dormition (Byzantine-slav rite) a Typicum Ktetoricum, reviving the practice of the eremitical life; according to these norms, a monk may withdraw to a hermitage with the permission of the superior only after a period of preparation and following ten years in profession. II. The Notion of Eremitical Life Can. 481 — Eremita est sodalis monasterii sui iuris, qui in coelestium contemplatione se totum collocat et ab hominibus mundoque ex toto segregatur. Can. 481 — A hermit is a member of a monastery sui iuris who has given himself totally to heavenly contemplation and who is separated totally from people and the world. A hermit, whether male or female, is completely separated from other people, even from members of that person’s own monastery, in order to be dedicated completely to a consideration of heavenly things, to prayer, to silence, and to a life of greater austerity. In its fullest context, the eremitical life is a state characterized by perfect and complete consecration and contemplation of God, following a special vocation, prepared for and approved in dépendance on the hermit’s monastery and superior and under the vigilance of the bishop of the place. While CIC c. 603 describes the activity of a hermit as “assiduous prayer and penance,” the CCEO, using more traditional Eastern terminology, notes that the hermit is devoted to “the contemplation of heavenly things.”21 In Byzantine history and law, hesychasts (hesychastae, f|aux<xaT0u) in particular were described as those who “devoted themselves completely to the contemplation of heavenly things.”22 20 The reference in the 1900 rule is found in I. c. 2. 21 “Prayer and penance” are certainly compatible with “contemplation of heavenly things”; J. REZÁŐ noted that the eremitical life was “devoted only to contemplation, work, silence, and fasting”: Eremita in Oriente, in Dizionario degli istituti di perfezione, G. Pelliccia-G. Rocca (diretto da), Roma 1976, 1154. The essential elements of the eremitical life, such as prayer, silence, and other forms of asceticism, would be specified in greater detail in the monastery’s typicon and the hermit's own rule, put together in consultation with the monastery’s superior. 22 P. Uspenskij, in Historia Atho. Pars III. Athos Monasticus, records a number of aphorisms about the hesychasts of Mount Athos: “A hesychast is continually attentive to God and lives familiarly with him. He is united to the memory of Jesus in his mind; from this point the practice of hesychasm is of benefit. A hesychast is one who is joined to God alone and constantly prays to him. A hesychast is one who tries to contain the incorporeal in a corporeal house.” These and others are quoted in de Meester, De Monachico statu (nt. 16), 70.
