NOVITIATE. - In the material sense it is the time that an aspirant to a religious order spends in a house specially erected for that purpose with the permission of the Holy See. In the formal sense it is a period of trial, in which the aspirant (novice) studies his own possibilities for religious life in the order he wishes to enter and, in turn, the order examines the novice, his intentions and his aptitudes.
I. HISTORY
As a probationary period, the origin of the novitiate goes back to the very beginnings of religious life. In chapter 49 of the Rule of St. Pachomius (292-346), the first legislator of monasticism says that "if anyone desires to renounce the world and be aggregated to the number of the brothers, let him make diligent trial of himself" (PL 23, 73).
The abbot Shenoute (d. 466), St. Basil (330-79) and all the other founders of monks established a period of probation in their Rules. The patriarch of Western monks, St. Benedict, has an entire chapter on the matter in his Rule (58), in which he requires that the candidate complete a year of novitiate in secular dress and under the guidance of a special master. The Council of Orléans V (year 549), in can. 19, alludes to the necessity of testing the young women who enter monasteries for a period of one year or three years, leaving them in secular dress (Mansi, IX, p. 133). St. Gregory the Great in 595, by explicitly approving the Rule of the monasteries of St. Benedict, made the law of the novitiate practically obligatory for all religious (Mansi, X, pp. 476-77). The Rule of St. Francis (ch. 2) and the subsequent Rules of the Mendicant Orders defined ever more precisely all the particulars of the novitiate with regard to time, dress, enclosure, specific formation, etc. Innocent III, with the decree Operante divinae, of 17 Dec. 1198, had imposed a year of probation for the Trinitarians (Bull. Rom., III, Rome 1838, p. 137); Alexander IV in 1260 did the same for the Dominicans (cap. 2, III, 14 in 6°), and Boniface VIII in 1268 for all Mendicants (cap. 3, III, 14, in 6°). The Council of Trent in sess. XXV, in ch. 15, issued the universal law that prescribed a year of novitiate, to be completed after the 16th year of age, by all candidates, men or women, for a religious order. In the case of omission, the profession was declared invalid. The subsequent norms of the pontiffs, especially of Pius V, Sixtus V, Clement VIII, were reworked and reproduced in cann. 542-71 of the CIC.
II. CURRENT CANONICAL LEGISLATION
The novitiate is necessary for the validity of religious profession (can. 572, § 1, 3°). The following cannot be admitted, and their admission without prior license of the Holy See is invalid: those who, having abandoned the faith, have adhered to schismatic or atheistic sects; those who are not at least 15 years of age; those who are induced to it by violence, grave fear or deceit; a spouse during marriage; those who have been or are under a previous bond of religious profession; those who are subject to or threatened with penalties for crimes committed; clerics bound, by special oath, to the service of a diocese or of the missions. The following are admitted unlawfully, without prior dispensation of the Holy See: clerics who have received the major Orders without the opinion of, or in contradiction to, their bishop because of the need of care of souls; insolvent debtors; those who are obligated or entangled in affairs liable to litigation or harassment; children bound to help parents who are in grave necessity and parents who must support their children; those who, being destined to the priesthood, have an irregularity or a canonical impediment for Orders; Orientals without the license of the Sacred Congregation for the Oriental Church, except that they retain their own rite.
Admission to the novitiate is arranged by the major superiors, according to the provisions of the Constitutions of the individual religious orders, but it must be done only after evidence has been gathered of the absence of impediments and the presence of the positive qualities required, such as right intention, good conduct, health, etc. For this purpose the superiors are obliged to gather directly all possible information, and for those who after the age of 14 were in seminaries or colleges or other religious orders, to request testimonial letters (v. LETTERE ECCLESIASTICHE, VII), under secrecy of conscience, from their respective superiors. For women it is also required that the local Ordinary examine the aspirant to the novitiate concerning her freedom and spontaneous desire for religious life (can. 552 § 2); and for monastic novices the dowry is furthermore required, which for other religious women is left to what is laid down in the individual Constitutions (can. 547 § 3).
The novitiate begins with the taking of the habit or in another manner prescribed by the Constitutions (can. 553). It must last one complete and continuous year, in such a way that if it is interrupted it must be begun again, if the novice who has been dismissed leaves the house of the novitiate or abandons it, or if for any necessity he is absent from it for more than thirty days. If instead he legitimately stays outside it for more than 15 days, but not beyond 30, he must make up the days of absence; if this was less than 15 days, it is within the power of the superiors to impose the restoration of the days or to grant a dispensation from it.
During the novitiate the aspirant is entrusted to the spiritual care of a master of novices, to whom belongs the exclusive task of forming and directing the novices toward the new life (can. 561). The master must be at least 30 years of age, have ten years of perpetual profession, and be endowed with prudence, charity, piety, marked religious observance, as well as uncommon gifts as a good educator (can. 559). The intrinsic purpose of the novitiate lies in the ample offering to the novice both of the possibility of careful instruction on the obligations of religious life in general and on the specific obligations of the chosen religious order, and of a serious examination of his own capacity to assume the burdens of religious life; on the part of the religious order, instead, it is a year of study of the novice's aptitudes and of the probabilities of his future correspondence to the commitments that will be placed upon him with profession (can. 565).
The novice enjoys the spiritual privileges of the religious order, and if he dies he has a right to the same suffrages as the professed (can. 567). Although he does not have the formal obligation of religious vows, the novice has a moral obligation to observe the rules and Constitutions of his own institute, as well as a duty of obedience to the legitimate superiors, derived from the spontaneous submission made to them.
Once the novitiate is completed, the novice is admitted to temporary profession or dismissed; he may also freely leave the religious order without being obliged to pay the expenses of the novitiate.
Bibliography5 works
Giulio Mandelli