DIFFERENCE IN
UNDERLYING PHILOSOPHICAL CONCEPTS
There are other reasons, moreover, of a deeper and more
philosophical nature that made it necessary for this side
of life to be carefully ordered. The classical civilizations
of Greece and Rome, affirmative in their response to the
human organism and the pleasures derived from it, reacted
to the problem of evacuation of human waste with the
same naturalness with which they responded to the phenomenon
of eating or breathing. To the Christian mind,
taught to "chastise the body" and to "deny the desires of
the flesh,"[670]
it was, by contrast, an indignity inflicted upon
man because his soul was condemned to reside in a body.
This different concept is as manifest in the terminology
used to define this physiological inevitability as it is in the
layout of the building devised for its accommodation. The
classical languages are clear, descriptive, and to the point
on this matter.[671]
The monastic language, as one is not
surprised to find, is reticent but not prudish. St. Benedict
coined the evasive phrase ad necessaria naturae exire ("to
go out for the necessities of nature")[672]
which becomes the
base for numerous insignificant variations subsequently
used, such as necessitas fratrum,[673]
corporis necessaria,[674]
corporea
necessitas naturae,[675]
necessitas naturae;[676]
or the variants
necessarium, exitus necessarius, or requisitum naturae used on
the Plan of St. Gall—a terminology designed to express the
inescapable condition of the function it denotes.
The needs to which he attends in the privy were not
only the lowest of all activities in which a monk was bound
to engage, but were also a source of mortal danger. The
light shown on the Plan of St. Gall as an obligatory piece of
equipment in the Monks' Privy is a precautionary measure
aimed at more than merely protecting the monks from
stumbling in a physical sense.[677]
Besides his bed and his
bath, this was the only other place where, by no fault of his
own, he could not avoid bodily contact with himself. Like
the temptations of the dormitory and of the bathhouse, the
temptations of the privy could only be met with the most
stringent of directives for conditions and time of use—
especially strict in the case of the younger monks. We learn
more about these from Carolingian commentaries to the
Rule of St. Benedict than from the Rule itself.
[678]
