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Updated: June 7, 2025
The vow was threefold, comprising stablitas, perpetual adherence to the monastic order; conversio morum, especially voluntary poverty and chastity, which were always regarded as the very essence of monastic piety under all its forms; and obedientia coram Deo et sanctis ejus, absolute obedience to the abbot, as the representative of God and Christ. This obedience is the cardinal virtue of a monk.
Talking often goes with tobacco as it goes with beer; and what is more relevant, talking may often lead both to beer and tobacco. Talking often drives a man to drink, both negatively in the form of nagging and positively in the form of bad company. If the American Puritan is so anxious to be a censor morum, he should obviously put a stop to the evil communications that really corrupt good manners.
"Dost think me perjured Primus Magister Scholarum, Custos Morum, Quartus Custos Rotulorum? Pouf! I know my place. My oath's my oath. But, soft; enough here comes the boy. Who could have told a skylark in such popinjay attire?" And now a strange, new life began for Nicholas Attwood, in some things so grand and kind that he almost hated to dislike it.
On such a little known man a forger of Roman history could safely expatiate; the author of the Annals does so in a portraiture that bears the stamp of the fifteenth century: this is particularly observable when Piso is spoken of as "of brilliant repute among the populace for virtues," or, rather, "qualities that wore the form of virtues," "species virtutibus similes"; that he was "far from being morosely moral, or restrained by moderation in pleasures; mild in temper and soft in manners; given to pompous show and occasionally steeping himself in luxurious excesses," "procul gravitas morum, aut voluptatum parsimonia: lenitati ac magnificentiae et aliquando luxui indulgebat."
Why did we behold the severe Magister Morum himself, in utter forgetfulness of his own rule, mingle in the mazy dance on an evening occasion, at which we were allowed to sit up? Did the girls of a larger growth lose their dangerous qualities on arriving at belle-hood?
On the same principle, too, they had a public officer whose functions resembled those of the Church courts in mediaeval Europe, a Censor Morum, an inquisitor who might examine into the habits of private families, rebuke extravagance, check luxury, punish vice and self-indulgence, nay, who could remove from the Senate, the great council of elders, persons whose moral conduct was a reproach to a body on whose reputation no shadow could be allowed to rest.
That is all of little value when estimated intellectually, and is far from being "science," much less "wisdom"; but, repeated once more, and three times repeated, it is expediency, expediency, expediency, mixed with stupidity, stupidity, stupidity whether it be the indifference and statuesque coldness towards the heated folly of the emotions, which the Stoics advised and fostered; or the no-more-laughing and no-more-weeping of Spinoza, the destruction of the emotions by their analysis and vivisection, which he recommended so naively; or the lowering of the emotions to an innocent mean at which they may be satisfied, the Aristotelianism of morals; or even morality as the enjoyment of the emotions in a voluntary attenuation and spiritualization by the symbolism of art, perhaps as music, or as love of God, and of mankind for God's sake for in religion the passions are once more enfranchised, provided that...; or, finally, even the complaisant and wanton surrender to the emotions, as has been taught by Hafis and Goethe, the bold letting-go of the reins, the spiritual and corporeal licentia morum in the exceptional cases of wise old codgers and drunkards, with whom it "no longer has much danger."
MORIBUS BONIS ET ARTIBUS: for the order of the words cf. n. on 1 animi tui. IN VITA: 'in everyday life' ADELPHIS: Adelphi = αδελφοι, The Brothers; this play of Terence is still extant. DIRITAS: 'harshness of temper'; but Suet. Tib. 21 has diritas morum, and Varro scena quem senem Latina vidit dirissimum.
It was nothing but the love of change, Erasmus declared, that made old bishops run over huge spaces of sea and land to reach Jerusalem. The noblemen who flocked thither had better be looking after their estates, and married men after their wives. Young men and women travelled "non sine gravi discrimine morum et integritatis." Pilgrimages were a dissipation.
Nay, that is the most perfect test of all, for in a matter of importance people are on their guard; in trifles they follow their natural bent without much reflection. That is why Seneca's remark, that even the smallest things may be taken as evidence of character, is so true: argumenta morum ex minimis quoque licet capere.
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