Most of those who are even casually acquainted with the Rule of the Master are aware of his intent that the abbot should appoint no one to a second position in the monastery, as prior or under any other title. Instead, let there be a competition of virtue among the monks, each one striving to be the best in all monastic practices. Then, on his deathbed, the abbot will choose the best of his subjects to succeed him.
 
As I mentioned last time, these precepts have not commended themselves to monastic commentators as sound means of ensuring good leadership, and few are the monastic houses down the centuries where what might be called “succession by cooption” has been successfully practiced. It’s quite possible that shrewd confreres will discern the old abbot’s preference, but they then decide for themselves whether his instincts or wishes in the matter are sound.
 
What of a situation when an abbot dies unexpectedly, before he’s had a chance to designate his successor? The Master provides for this circumstance in his Chapter 94, where he writes:
 
The local bishop and clergy [are to] settle on a very holy abbot, who shall live above the community in the place of the former deceased abbot, and he, having received this Rule, shall give thought, according to the ordinances of this Rule, to whom he discerns as better than all the others in all the observances. So on the thirtieth day this abbot, having taken an oath on the most holy gospels in the presence of the same bishop and clergy, is to declare that he has been bribed by no one with promises and compliments but that he is in all honesty revealing what he has found in God’s cause.
 
This worthy abbot then selects the right man, and the bishops and clergy proceed to install him, much as they would have in the Master’s desired scenario, the nomination of the new abbot by the former one just before his death. All in all, an abbreviated “succession by cooption.”
 
Again, I’ll leave aside the impracticability of the plan, upon which most would agree. What strikes me more, actually, is the rather immediate involvement of the bishop and clergy of the area in overseeing the process by which future leadership is chosen. There is much more in the Rule of the Master, and in the Rule of St. Benedict for that matter, than just contacting the bishop after an abbot is chosen and respectfully asking him to grace with his presence the liturgical ceremony at which the new abbot receives the insignia of office. Some genuine supervision seems to be present. The Master and (less vocally) Benedict present all this positively, but it is not difficult to imagine times and places where the oversight of a preoccupied or incompetent or even corrupt bishop would be a curse more than a boon. Far better, the monastic world would eventually decide, to answer more to the See of Peter than to the Chancery Office next door!  The perceived need for exemption would follow.