Of work and spiritual labors.

19. There is contained also in the rule that the friars, to whom the Lord has given the grace of working, should work faithfully and devotedly so that having excluded idleness, the enemy of the soul, they may not extinguish the spirit of prayer and devotion. Since truly on account of this passage some have sometimes striven to accuse the friars themselves of idleness of life and of bold transgression of the rule in this regard, We restraining monstrous verbal attacks of this kind do declare that having considered the aforesaid words and the form and manner of speaking, under which the friars are led to an exercise of this kind, it does not seem to have been the intention of the institutor that he would subject those spending time in study or the divine offices and in the execution of ministries to manual labor or work or might reduce them to this, when by the example of Christ and that spiritual labor of many holy Fathers would so much outweigh him in as much as they preferred those which are of the soul to those corporal. Truly to those others, who do not exert themselves in the aforesaid spiritual works (unless such be occupied in the licit services of other friars) lest they live idly, We declare the aforesaid words to be extended, unless such are both so excellent and notable in contemplation and prayer that for the sake of this merit they are not to be withdrawn from such good and pious an exercise. For the friars [who] do not spend however much time in study or the divine offices, but [rather] inheriting from the services of those spending time in study or in other divine offices and ministries, since for their very selves they merit to be sustained by those who serve, because it has been established to have been sanctioned by that favorable law, by which that vigorous fighter David justly decreed, namely that the portion of those who descended into battle and of those who remained among the baggage [train] was to be equal.