Religious Writing

When I read in libraries in my youth I was always impressed by the number of diligent religious who made immense historical compilations, like careful lists in many volumes of all the men who were bishops anywhere over several centuries, and so on. Only now in my more experienced years do I begin to understand how and why this happened.

These works were protective walls, ramparts which cagey religious erected so that they could never be asked by priors and superiors to do anything unappetising. 'I have my work', they would say. And soon all the younger monks would accept it as a tradition that Dom Scholasticus must never be asked to do anything, because he was engaged on the next volume of the majestic compilation that would bring so much honour to the abbey. There is nothing like a magnum opus as an abiding pretext for doing nothing else.

From Woodruff at Random edited by Mary Craig