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Oblation or Obligation? A Canonical Ambiguity*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
Extract
The practice of oblation, the giving of children to a religious community to be brought up and educated, is as old as monasticism itself. Oblation was a means by which parents were able to dispose of unwanted offspring and be fairly confident that they would be cared for by others. However, there were never any clear guidelines laid down by the Church with respect to oblation, and the confusion over the status of an oblate was never to be satisfactorily settled. Even the great effort put into removing ambiguities in canon law in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries failed to clarify the technicalities of oblation. This was because there was no agreement on the nature of oblation from the start.
The practice of the Eastern Church with respect to oblation is best summed up by St Basil the Great, in his Regulae Fusius Tractatae. He took oblation for granted, noting that a child was easily moulded to the religious life, and stipulated no minimum age at which a child should be received, but he did insist that those under the care of their parents were to be received before witnesses. More importantly, Basil was anxious that a child oblate should be questioned strictly when he reached the age of sixteen or seventeen as to whether he wished to be professed. He then had to demonstrate perseverance in the religious life and was only to be professed after much pleading. This final profession was irrevocable. Clearly the tradition of the Church was in favour of the oblation of children, but the giving of a child was not considered a definitive act. Certainly with St Basil we can see that the abbot of a community was to have the final say as to whether or not a child oblate should be professed when he came of age. This was very much in the spirit of early monasticism. The abbot was not to be forced to retain unsuitable monks in his monastery.
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- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1990
Footnotes
*
I should like to thank the committee of the Ecclesiastical History Society for the generous award of a bursary which enabled me to attend the summer conference and present this paper.
References
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