Abstract
Medieval monastic customs (in Latin consuetudies or statuta) represent unique testimony of religious practices. These texts describe in detail practical matters of the daily life in medieval monasteries, including daily religious rhythm and common prayers of the monks, admission to the community and the novitiate, the relationship between the community and the laymen, sleeping in the dormitory, eating in the refectory, clothing, personal hygiene, care for the sick persons, or punishments for the monks.
This paper is concentrated on the creation, development and expansion of the Consuetudines Rudnicenses, the customs of the canonry of Regular Canons of St. Augustine in Roudnice nad Labem in Bohemia.
The canonry in Roudnice was the first canonry of the order in the Czech Lands, it was founded in 1333. It was very influential and became the mother of all other canonries in the Czech Lands.
Its customs were presumably written soon after its foundation and their original text is preserved in the manuscript XIX B 3 in the National Library in Prague. The Consuetudines Rudnicenses were written particularly for the Czech environment, but they surely had their model.
They were inspired by statutes of the congregation of St. Ruf in Avignon.
In contrast with the texts of this genre from the Western Europe, the Roudnice customs are standard in their content but substantially shorter. Despite of this fact, they were used in canonries in Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, Slovakia, Poland, Austria, and Germany.
Roudnice statutes had great importance during the 14th and 15th century in Central Europe. The evidence indicates that the wide expansion and influence of the customs was caused more by the strong political and cultural influence of the canonry in Roudnice than by the actual text of the statutes.