the rule of life 50 and hourly in order to fulfill the vows of obedience, poverty, and chastity by following ascetic disciplines and counsels in the spirit of love, mortification, and inner recollection. Therefore, the Rule contains elements of both a religious institute’s rule and of a constitution, and for that reason, Fr. Papczyński, who strove to obtain papal approval for his Order, did not consider choosing any of the rules already existing and approved by the Holy See. It seems that his original concept was for the Marian Fathers to have only constitutions, approved by the Holy See, instead of a rule (according to the principle constitutiones pro regula). It is true that an addition was introduced later into the Rule’s text, obligating the Marians to observe the Rule’s regulatory prescripts along with the Rule of St. Augustine;4 however, it seems that the Marians have never been formally bound by the said Rule. The addition was made to strengthen the Marian Order’s legal position within the Church by demonstrating that their way of life was in accordance with the Rule of St. Augustine and that the NV’s spiritual kinship with that Rule best suited the Marians and had, therefore, all the qualities necessary for receiving the Holy See’s approval as constitutiones pro regula. Indeed, the NV contains such an ample spiritual doctrine, so many ascetic principles in the spirit of the Gospel and the Tradition of the Church, that it is comparable with the early religious rules indicated by the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 as the only rules upon which future religious congregations were to be based. Authenticity of the Text, Its Source and Subsequent Editions It has been generally accepted that the author’s name is not displayed on the cover of the constitutions of a religious congregation. The same principle applies here: Father Papczyński was not named as the author either on the book’s cover nor within the contents. However, there is no doubt as to his authorship, for which there are proofs both internal (the book’s style), and 4 Cf. Rule of Life, Chapter I, §1.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjI2Mw==