It remains to enquire rather more closely how the Rule worked out in practice. We must take the Benedictine, which was followed by far the most and the greatest houses, as type; the Augustinian, which comes next in importance, resembled it strongly, but was a little less strict.

Disciplinarians insisted that their Rule contained three essential principles—tria substantialia—viz. Obedience, Poverty, and Celibacy. From these not even the Pope could dispense the sworn Religious. He could, indeed, relieve him of the whole vow—could, as it were, annul his marriage to that ideal—but, short of this step, of which there are very few historical examples, those substantialia were as inviolable as matrimony itself. In reinforcement of them the authorities insisted on four main pillars of discipline laid down in the Rule: Propertylessness, Labour, Claustration, and Diet. But, even before the Black Death, those four pillars had been cut away in practice; the Canonist John of Ayton [1340] tells us this in so many words, and monastic records themselves bear him out. Between then and the Dissolution, they were not only neglected in practice but even whittled away in theory. The monk not only had pocket-money, from which he might amass a private hoard and lend it out at usury (we have definite evidence of this), but he would complain to the official visitor if that pocket-money were not regularly paid.