twelve months of trial, prayer, and reflection they were permitted to make their vows or ‘profession’ from which there was no dispensation. In recent years, however, the practice of taking aspirants at an earlier age has developed so rapidly that one feels apprehensive of a revival of the old Benedictine custom of accepting children of tender years whose parents were determined that they should be monks, for financial or political reasons. Pius IX. effected an important change in this direction. ‘Attenta raritate vocationum—seeing the fewness of vocations,’ as he naïvely confessed (the confessions which Popes have made in their Latin encyclicals from time immemorial are not sufficiently appreciated), he decreed that there should be two sets of vows. It would be too serious an outrage on human nature to allow boys of sixteen to contract an utterly irrevocable[1] obligation of so grave a character; at the same time it was clearly imperative to secure boys at that age if the religious orders were not to die of inanition. So a compromise was effected: boys should be admitted to the monastic life at the age of fifteen for their novitiate, and should make what are called ‘simple’ vows at the age of sixteen. From the simple vows the Pope was prepared to grant a dispensation, and the General of the Order could annul them (on the part of the
- ↑ The pope claims de jure to have the power to dissolve solemn vows, but de facto they are practically insoluble. There is only one clear case on record where the power has been used: it need hardly be said that it was in favour of a member of a wealthy royal house.
