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OF TASTING

The abbess spake to the sifters in these words: “ The chiefeft reason for the which we live the religious life is that we may contemplate God, and adore Him, and serve Him; and among the things which moft impede contem¬ plation and prayer is superfluity of eating and drinking:

and drink with temperance. Nevertheless there muft be ioi™n“\n° hyP0Cnsy> such as is found among those that join an order and make a show of auftere living in respeft

OF TASTING

of meat and drink, when in truth they eat and drink deli¬ cately and with superfluity.”

2. “ If flesh be forbidden to a religious, it is a thing illbeseeming that she give savour and pleasure to her palate, whether with fish or with other viands, through using sauces or other things such as these. If it be good to faft, it is unlawful to eat as much in one hour of the day as do others in two; for were it not so, there would be no great virtue in facing. If our raiment and our beds give significance of religion, the bread that we eat and the wine that we drink mud likewise signify aufterity of life.”

3. “ Superfluity of eating and drinking engenders boils and bad blood, and occasions sickness and death. Through superfluity of vidtuals the body is to the soul an occasion of desire for carnal delights. Many a religious house is poor and in debt through exceeding superfluity of vidtuals. If any that is of a religious order eats better and more deli¬ cately than when he was of the world, then did he more of penance in a worldly habit than he does in the habit of a religious. To suffer patiently hunger and third! is to mortify sin and give health to the body, since nature con¬ sumes in the body superfluity of evil humours.”

4. “ Let us eat and drink that we may have life to love and serve God ; let us not live that we may eat and drink. If we are servants of God because we are His creatures, and because He has redeemed us in the Incarnation of the Son of God, let us not be the servants of the belly which pardons not nor grants respite to its slaves. Let us not truft rather in the meats which nourish the body than in the virtues which feed the soul.” All these words and many more spake the abbess to the sifters, to the end that each of them should afllidt her body by hunger, thirft and meagre¬ ness of vidtuals, and that by virtue of their aufterity of life God should pardon those in the world that are in bondage to the sin of gluttony.

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