Abstract
The article deals with the Roudnice statutes (consuetudines) that have not yet been studied in detail. At first it discusses the question of their origin.
Although they share the most aspects with the statutes of the monastery in Marbach, the model for their creation were probably the statutes of some canonry from the congregation formed around the monastery of St. Ruf in Avignon when John of Dražice, the founder of Roudnice, spent some time.
The text of the statutes is preserved in several manuscripts, among them also in one manuscript from Roudnice, today ms. XIX B 3 of the National Library of the Czech Republic, but there is no modern edition of the text.
The statutes provide clear and often very detailed rules for everyday life in the monastery. Substantial attention is given to the liturgy of hours, but the statutes also describes in detail the acceptance of the novices into the community, correct manner of clothing, eating in the refectory, rules of sleeping in the dormitory, and also e.g. the monastic library.
Due to the influence of the canonry in Roudnice, its statutes became very influential and soon came to be widely used not only in all the monasteries of the order in the Czech lands, but also in some monasteries in the areas that are now Austria, Poland, and Germany.