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CHRISTIAN MONASTICISM
Oe
SHRISTIAN MONASTICISM
A Great Force in History __..
BY
IAN C. HANNAH, F‘S.A.
PROFESSOR OF CHURCH HISTORY
OBERLIN COLLEGE
jQew Work
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1925
All rights reserved
CopyriIcHT, 1925,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and printed.
Published April, 1925.
Printed in the United States of America by
J. J. LITTLE AND IVES COMPANY, NEW YORK
DEDICATED
TO MY COLLEAGUES
THE FACULTY
OF OBERLIN COLLEGE
A MARK OF
AFFECTION AND ESTEEM
PREFACE
It is my experience as a teacher of history that there is
no subject on which the ordinary student, even though per-
haps tolerably well read upon the Middle Ages, is more
vague in his mind than upon the place of Christian monasti-
cism in the story of the world. That is the theme with
which I have tried to deal, and though many excellent things
have been written about monks I am not aware of the exist-
ence of any book which deals with their earnest labours for
mankind from just this point of view. The subject is, of
course, dealt with to some extent in very many works.
The twin pillars of medieval civilization were the tradi-
tion of Rome and Christian monasticism (rather than the
Christian faith as such), and each had a great contribution
to make. “The Holy Roman Empire,” by the late Lord
Bryce, will ever remain a classic concerning the former.
With the work of that most eminent scholar it would indeed
be the very height of presumption that I should compare
my own.
Nevertheless, I have attempted to set forth the main out-
lines of the second pillar of medisvalism—those tasks so
well achieved by the monks whose original traditions might
have appeared so exceedingly unpromising.
I have sought to keep in mind the needs of all students,
not merely those specializing in ecclesiastical history. This
book has been my chief occupation for about eight years
past, during the rather scanty leisure of a college professor.
No one can be more conscious of its faults than myself. I
have supplied a mere introduction. The theme is such as
would justify a really great work.
i
8 PREFACE
If, however, these few pages shall stir up some scholar to
treat a vast historical field with the fulness of a Gibbon or
a Hodgkin my work will not have been altogether in vain.
I confess myself a great admirer of all that is best in the
monasticism of the Christian Church. I trust that no word
I have written will grate upon the feelings of any reader,
whatever his convictions or his faith.
| Ba 445 ¥.
Oberlin College,
Easter, 1924.
‘ CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER
Tue Desert Monks or Eaypt .
i
II. THe Work or S. Bast anp His Successors
III. Tue First Monks or THE WEST
IV. §S. BeEnepict
V. Monk ReEsBvuinpers or A Wor.LpD
VI. Cerntic Monasticism .
VII. Nuns, Hermits anp Pincrms
VIII. Tue Great House or Ciuny
IX. SS. Bernard anp THE CISTERCIANS
X. Tue Rist or THE Friars
XI. Tue Monk as Missionary
XII. Tue Monk as STATESMAN
XIII. THe Monk as Souprer
XIV. Monastic Literature
XV. Monastic Art
XVI. THe DEcLINE oF THE GREAT MEDIEVAL ORDERS .
XVII. Jesuits anp Later ORDERS .
PAGE
11
19
39
56
74
86
101
110
123
138
154
173
188
198
208
223
239
247
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INTRODUCTION
That ascetics who had left the world in blank despair,
voting it so vile as to be past all hope of mending, should in
their lonely cloisters, amid desert or forest, have evolved an
efficiency that was not known outside, was far indeed from
being logical. But so it was. Monks were compelled to
take the leading part in raising up again that culture of the
West that ceased to be when from the nerveless hand of
Rome the rod of empire fell.
It was not logical, nor even likely, but so it came to pass
that those who had abandoned their fellows to gain a fore
taste of the world beyond, were called by an impulse that
was irresistible to take a leading part in the affairs of the
very world that they had scorned. Perhaps, indeed, they
bore the greatest share of all in the rebuilding of European
civilization after barbarian hordes from North and East had
tramped it in the dust. At the very least, the magnificent
culture of the Middle Ages would without monastic inspira-
tion have been so much impoverished as to become a totally
different, a far inferior thing.
Here lies the gripping interest and the extraordinary
inspiration in the study of monastic story. It is hardly too
much to say that in these unhappy times our stricken world
is waiting for some such compelling force as, in those days
long past, devoted monks gave to Europe in despair when
the glory that had once been Rome lay, ruined cities, blood-
soaked plains, at the feet of miscreant barbarian hordes.
Organized asceticism cannot be claimed as a distinctively
Christian institution. Its origins must unquestionably be
sought beyond the confines of Christianity and even of
11
12 INTRODUCTION
Judaism, whose ideals were most unmonastic in every respect.
Centuries before Christ came, monks were flourishing in
countries much farther to the east than the parts of Asia
that He knew.
There would appear to be good grounds for claiming as
the original home of the monk either India or some closely
bordering land.*’ That part of Asia through all the ages has
been most interested in problems of religion, to the exclu-
sion of political development. All the faiths that were cra-
dled on Indian soil have very strongly, though in varying
degrees, emphasized ascetic ideals, a thing not true of lands
to the east or the west. Asceticism seems to be of the
essence of all truly Hindu religious conceptions, in spite
of the fact that the Brahman priesthood has ever formed a
married caste.
In the two other great centres of primeval Oriental
thought—Kgypt, with Mesopotamia and the Far East—
nothing quite analogous was known. For in Egypt, Assyria,
and Babylon, intensely religious though they were, no severe
mortifications, nor even celibacy, appear to have been re-
quired from the powerful priesthoods, while in China and
Japan there was virtually no hierarchy at all till the yellow-
robed Buddhists from India arrived.
These were the first to make monasticism a real force in
the history of the world, and the monks and nuns were in-
stituted by Buddha himself. The ideal was already vener-
able in his time; it had been enriched and developed by
the legacy of perhaps twenty centuries of Indian thought.
China’s ancient culture was modified by the influence of
Buddhist monasticism, which in Japan virtually founded
civilization, much as the Christian monks introduced orderly
life over wide areas of northern Europe. Beyond the moun-
tains that wall India still exists by far the largest of all
1See Flinders Petrie, Personal Religion in Egypt before Christianity,
p. 57
INTRODUCTION 13
monastic political states (p. 189) where the wide highlands
of Tibet are governed by Lama monks—the most powerful
hierarchy that Buddhism ever knew. In some respects there
is a very remarkable similarity between the secular careers
of Buddhist monks in Eastern Asia and of Christian ones in
Western Europe.
Christ lived among men and took part in the social func-
tions of His time. Women were among His friends. He
instituted no monastic order. He impressed on His disciples
nothing of the kind. Three centuries had passed away before
any of His adherents were anchorites or monks. And yet,
at least followed in one direction, monasticism may fitly be
called the climax and the crown of His ideals.
Alone among all the great religious teachers of the world,
He never was married. He was heralded by the Baptist her-
mit. He spent much of His time in lonely contemplation
among the deserts. He declared that the man that did not
hate his father and his mother could not be His disciple; He
told a rich young man who wished to be perfect that he might
go, sell everything he had and give to the poor. His teach-
ings are full of exhortations that are admirably appropriate
to monks and yet in some cases very hard sayings to those
who live in the world.
It was hearing some of these read as the Gospel for the
day that caused S. Antony to embrace his severely ascetic
life? And yet it is not unlikely that He knew nothing dur-
ing His earthly sojournings of any professed ascetics. The
Jewish Essene monks at Engaddi were not by any means
prominent in Palestine, at least so far as we know. As a
general rule Jewish religious enthusiasm, prominently rep-
resented in Pharisaism, took very different forms.
To the Oriental view that matter is an evil thing in itself
and that our vile bodies need to be subdued by asceticism,
* Life, by S. Athanasius; 2. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd
series, vol. iv, p. 196.
14 INTRODUCTION
the first origins of monasticism must unquestionably be
referred. Such ideas, in a most exaggerated form indeed,
were introduced into Christianity by Gnosticism, but it was
not from such that came the inspiration of Christian monasti-
cism. So great a movement was not stained by heresy at its
birth, though in its early days it did unquestionably repre-
sent an acute reaction against the sacramental system of the
Church.
S. Paul, the hermit, and S. Antony, serving God in the
farthest recesses of the wilderness, found little need for the
ministrations of the priests, and must for years together
have gone without receiving the Holy Communion. On one
occasion it required a special miracle to let S. Benedict know
when it was Easter Day.®
Long before Christianity had adopted monasticism in any
formal way, the Church had been to some extent permeated
by its spirit. S. Paul himself declares that he that giveth
his daughter in marriage doeth well, but he that abstaineth
doeth better. The “Shepherd of Hermas” is full of the
praises of virginity. Origen tells us that “certain among
them, from a desire of exceeding chastity * * * wish to
worship God with greater purity and abstain even from the
permitted indulgences of lawful love.’ * Tertullian, though
married himself, speaks in many places of the superior sanc-
tity of virginity.
Most of the Fathers, both East and West, may somewhere
or other be quoted to justify Dr. Hatch’s generalization that,
in the early Church, “To marry was indeed not a sin, but it
was a confession of weakness: to marry a second time was
almost to lapse from grace.” ®
The earliest home of Christian monasticism was almost
certainly Egypt, which by the very forbidding nature of its
* Gregory, Dialogues, bk. II, ¢. 1.
*Agaimst Celsus, bk. I, ch. xxvi.
5 Organisation of the Early Christian Churches, Bampton Lectures,
1880, p. 43.
INTRODUCTION 15
scenery appears at all times to have turned the minds of its
inhabitants to thought of the other world. There were other
monks than the Christian ones, the Therapeute of Philo in
earlier, and the Moslem dervishes in later times. Unlike
some Oriental religions, and notably Buddhism, Christianity
cannot at any time be said to have depended for existence
upon monastic organization.
In the Western Church to this day monastic and secular
clergy exist side by side, either being qualified to hold any
administrative office. In the East, while the higher offices
are unfortunately reserved for monks, the main work of the
parishes is performed by a married clergy. but for some-
thing like a thousand years, from the sixth century to the
sixteenth, monasticism was in varying degrees and in dif-
ferent forms the dominating influence in Western Europe
in the affairs both of Church and State.
In studying its long and wonderful career, four great.
periods seem clearly to stand out. They are very unequal
in length, but each is characterized by a new and different
scope for the energy of the religious.®
The first extends from the Oriental beginnings till the
days when in the sixth century the great 8. Benedict gave
monasticism, unconsciously enough, something of the organ-
izing power of the West: this period is dominated by SS.
Antony, Pachomius, and Basil the Great (Chh. i, ii).
The second embraces the long centuries during which the
Benedictine monk was laying firmly down the foundations
of the splendid culture of the Middle Ages and the days
when rather numerous reform movements were giving birth
to the daughter orders: this period is dominated in turn by
the early Benedictines, the Cluniacs, and the Cistercians
(Chh. iii-ix).
‘This word is convenient as denoting all “regular” clergy; that is,
those who live by rule beyond the ordinary ordination vows, whether
monks, friars, canons, or clerks.
16 INTRODUCTION
The third is the era of the friars when S. Francis of
Assisi and 8. Dominic (by no means for the first time) were
seeking to find a definite work for ascetics to accomplish.
This movement began in the early part of the thirteenth cen-
tury, the climax of medizval culture (Ch. x). |
During the fourth period the Church of Rome was mak-
ing the most energetic efforts by means of her new orders—
especially the Jesuits—to repair the losses that the Reforma-
tion caused (Ch. xvii).
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
The main facts about each phase of monasticism are to be
found in numerous articles of the Hncyclopedia Britannica, and
in larger detail in the Catholic Encyclopedia.
General works on the subject are Herbert Workman’s Evolution
of the Monastic Ideal, and O. Hardman’s The Ideals of Asceticism.
Both these are excellent; the former is especially to be com-
mended for its copious references to the sources; the latter is very
comprehensive and carries the story far beyond the limits of
Christianity. A very small book is Prof. Wishart’s (Chicago)
Monks and Monasteries.
CHRISTIAN MONASTICISM
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CHRISTIAN MONASTICISM
CHAPTER I
THE DESERT MONKS OF EGYPT
The first of Christian monks was named S. Paul. His
life has been written, not very critically, by S. Jerome.
From the Decian persecution he fled to the remotest recesses
of the desert and a man learned in all the wisdom of Egypt
and of Greece, wealthy and cultured, was content for long
years to dwell alone in a cave where a secret mint had existed
in the days of Cleopatra and Antony.
The blessed Paul had lived the life of heaven on earth
for a hundred and thirteen years when he was visited by
S. Antony, another monk who was destined to a larger share
of fame. S. Antony was directed to the spot by friendly
beasts of rather fearsome shape, the first a hippo-centaur,
half man, half horse. “This monster, after gnashing out
some kind of outlandish utterance, in words broken rather
than spoken through his bristling lips, at length finds a
friendly mode of communication, and extending his right
hand points out the way desired. Then with swift flight he
crosses the spreading plain and vanishes from the sight of
his wondering companion.” ?
18. Jerome, Life of Paulus the first hermit, Nicene and Post-Nicene
Fathers, 2nd ser., vol. vi, p. 300. In the Lausiac History of Palladius,
bk. IT, ch. ii (vol. i, p. 197, seq. Paradise of the Holy Fathers, translated
from the Syriac by Wallis Budge.) this beast gives no help and in faet
turns out to be the devil. The Syriac version gives Jerome’s story in a
slightly different form.
19
20 CHRISTIAN MONASTICISM
S. Antony was_amazed, for in all his ninety years he had
seen nothing of the sort and as he passed along he pondered
what he had witnessed. Another still more wonderful beast
turned out to be a mortal man misled by the false faith of
the Gentiles.
The third was a she-wolf who pointed out the very cave.
S. Antony entered “with halting step and bated breath, care-
fully feeling his way. * * * At length through the fearful
midnight darkness a light appeared in the distance. In his
eager haste he struck his foot against a stone and roused the
echoes, whereupon the blessed Paul closed the open door and
made it fast with a bar.’ §. Antony, however, persisted.
If S. Paul would receive wild beasts why not a man ?
At length he was admitted, and the two old monks ex-
changed the kiss of peace. S. Paul asked for the latest news:
“How fares the human race? Are new homes springing up
in the ancient cities? What government directs the world ?
Are there still some remaining for the demons to carry away
by their delusions?’ At supper time a raven brought them
food, twice the usual ration it was wont to bear to S. Paul
alone. For sixty years he had thus been fed.
S. Antony was asked to return to the world to fetch the
cloak of S. Athanasius in which to wrap the body of 8. Paul
who rightly thought that he was nearing death. So he sped
away to his little dwelling and, refusing to answer the eager
questions of his disciples, returned to the cave with the
cloak.
But on the way he saw “Paul in robes of snowy-white
ascending on high among the bands of angels and the choirs
of prophets and apostles.” The rest of the way to the cavern
he traversed at such speed that he flew along like a bird,
and not without reason, for on entering the cave he saw the
lifeless body in a kneeling attitude with head erect and hands
uplifted. He wrapped the body in the cloak and carried it
out, but had no spade to dig a grave.
THE DESERT MONKS OF EGYPT 21
Soon there came, with manes flying, from the recesses of
the desert, two lions. “At first he was horrified at the sight,
but again turning his thoughts to God, he waited without
alarm, as though they were doves that he saw. They came
straight to the corpse of the blessed old man and there
stopped, fawned upon it and lay down at his feet, roaring
as if to make it known that they were mourning in the only
way possible to them. Then they began to paw the ground
close by, and vie with one another in excavating the sand,
until they dug out a place just large enough to hold a man.”
Not until they had received his blessing with an “outburst of
praise to Christ that even dumb animals felt His divinity,”
did the lions leave S. Antony to his own thoughts.
S. Jerome ends his narrative with the truly monastic re
flexion: “I may be permitted to ask those who do not know
the extent of their possessions, who adorn their homes with
marble, who string house to house and field to field, what did
this old man in his nakedness ever lack? Your drinking
vessels are of precious stones: he satisfied his thirst with the
hollow of his hand. Your tunics are of wrought gold: he
had not the raiment of the meanest of your slaves. But, on
the other hand, poor though he was, Paradise is open to him:
you with all your gold will be received into Gehenna.”
S. Paul the hermit has never bulked very large in Chris-
tian tradition, but churches in his name are not unknown;
there is one at Norwich, England. A few miles below Mon-
treal is the village of S. Paul |’Hermite.
Very much more famous is S. Antony, already named, a
man of Coptic or Egyptian birth, generally reputed the
father of Christian monasticism. His celebrated Life by
S. Athanasius has given him an enduring name.? He is
2The work is printed in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd ser., vol.
iv, pp. 188-221. The evidence for its authenticity is well given in the
introduction. The external evidence for 8S. Athanasius’ authorship seems
to me far too strong to be set aside merely because parts of the work
are rather unlike the great Bishop’s customary style.
22 CHRISTIAN MONASTICISM
nowhere described as a pioneer. The Life itself mentions a
convent for virgins (sec. 3) to which he sent his sister, and
in the same connexion we are told: “For there were not yet
many monasteries in Egypt and no monk at all knew of the
distant desert.” *
Monasticism, in all real essentials the same throughout the
ages, appears indeed to have been well established by the
time of 8. Antony, or even a little before. Not only are
monks in considerable numbers assumed to be in existence
as a matter of course, but there is no hint of their origin
having been recent. Socrates expressly says that the aged
bishop and confessor Paphnutius, who at Nicwa defended
the married clergy, had been brought up in a monastery,‘
and had himself had no experience of wedded life.
It can hardly be said that this Life gives promise of
the glorious future of monasticism as one of the great con-
structive forces of the world. When 8. Antony was “grown
and arrived at boyhood and was advancing in years he could
not endure to learn letters” and in later life, though his man-
ners were not rough, but graceful and polite, and his speech
was seasoned with the divine salt, he declared that whoever
has a sound mind has no need of letters.
On another occasion, as reported by Socrates,° he retorted
when asked how he could get on deprived of the comfort of
books: “My book, O philosopher, is the nature of things that
are made, and it is present whenever I wish to read the
words of God.”
Nor are we left in any real doubt by the general tenor of
*In Cassian’s Conferences, xviii, ch. x, Abbot Piamun says. that “mon-
astery may mean the dwelling of a single monk.” That is probably
the meaning here.
“The word used is doxnrnp and the late Prof. Gwatkin of Cam-
bridge used vigorously to deny that any convent existed at so early a
date, but whatever sort of religious house is indicated it must clearly
have been very much the same thing. See Hefele, History of the Chris-
tian Councils to 825 A.D., Tr. by W. R. Clark, p. 435 seq.
® Eoclesiastical History, bk. IV, ch. xxiii.
THE DESERT MONKS OF EGYPT 23
the Life that the sole object of S. Antony in leaving the
busy haunts of men and going out to face the solitudes of
the deserts was to save his own soul. Shutting himself up
at first in a tomb and later in a fortress so long deserted that
it was full of creeping beasts, he did everything to discour-
age visitors.
When they still found their way to his retreats he made
for a yet remoter refuge on a hill of the inner desert, being
conveyed thither by certain Saracens, who were presumably
on trading journeys to the south, perhaps to the mysterious
ruined settlements now known as Zimbabwe in Rhodesia,
which are generally believed to have been built by men of
that race. When on one occasion a military officer, who had
induced him to come and make a brief address, desired that
he would stay and continue his ministrations among men, he
made the reply destined to be so famous in monastic annals:
“Fishes, if they remain long on dry land, die. And so monks
lose their strength if they loiter among you and spend their
time with you. Wherefore as fish must hurry to the sea, so
must we hasten to the mountain.” ®
A great part of the Life is taken up with descriptions
of how S. Antony by prayer and fasting overcame the in-
numerable devils who kept coming to tempt him in many
disguises, now seeking to terrify him by their frightful forms
and again to tempt his virtue by assuming the shape of
lovely girls. These imps are very familiar to readers of
all monastic history, Buddhist as well as Christian.
S. Antony’s primary object was to save his own soul,
wrestling as an athlete by severe mortification to buffet his
body and bring it into subjection: still, it would not be just
to assert that he did nothing to benefit the world. To the
numerous other monks he gave the most earnest exhortations ;
in the churches of Alexandria he sometimes spoke against
* Itfe, sec. 85. It will be remembered that Chaucer’s monk repudiated
this very remark.
24 CHRISTIAN MONASTICISM
the blasphemous errors of the Arians,’ he helped those who
persisted in getting access to him, both by curing their sick-
nesses and by exhorting them to a righteous life.
As S. Athanasius nobly says: “Who in grief met Antony
and did not return rejoicing? Who came mourning for his
dead and did not forthwith put off his sorrow? Who came
in anger and was not converted to friendship? What poor
and low-spirited man met him, who hearing and looking
upon him, did not despise wealth and console himself in his
poverty? What monk, having been neglectful, came to him
and became not all the stronger ?”’
S. Antony established no order and appears to have left
no organization. This was done by his younger contem-
porary, S. Pachomius, of whose work a rather full descrip-
tion is given by Sozomen. Of all the early Church his-
torians this writer is the most sympathetic with monasti-
cism. He was himself a lawyer at Constantinople. “It is
said,” he writes, “that Pachomius at first practised philoso-
phy alone in a cave, but that a holy angel appeared to him,
and commanded him to call together some young monks, and
live with them, for he had succeeded well in pursuing phi-
losophy by himself, and to train them by the laws which
were about to be delivered to him.”
The monastic life was termed philosophy because it was
regarded not only as the climax of Christianity, but also as
the highest and noblest expression of the ancient culture of
the Greeks. ‘A tablet was then given to him which is still
carefully preserved. Upon it were inscribed rules by which
he was to permit every one to eat, drink, work and fast
according to his capacity. Those who ate heartily were to
have arduous labour; the ascetic more easy tasks.
‘“‘Pachomius was to have many cells erected, each for three
" Life, sec. 87.
* But the great convent of S. Catharine on Mt. Sinai professes to fol-
low his rule.
THE DESERT MONKS OF EGYPT 25
monks who were to eat in a common refectory in silence.
They must have veils so arranged that they could not see
each other, but only the table and the food. Only genuine
travellers were to be received as guests.
“Those who wished to join the community must undergo -
a probation of three years with laborious tasks. They were
to clothe themselves in skins, and to wear woollen tiaras
adorned with purple nails, and linen tunics, and girdles.
They were to sleep in their tunics and garments of skin,
reclining on long chairs. * * * On the first and last days of
each week they were to receive Communion in the Holy
Mysteries, and were then to unloose their girdles and throw
off their robes of skin.
“They were to pray twelve times every day and as often
during the evening, and were to offer the same number of
prayers during the night. At the ninth hour they were to
pray thrice, and when about to partake of food; they were
to sing a psalm before each prayer.” ® Different classes were
to be distinguished by letters of the Greek alphabet.
There was a central house at Tabenna, in the Thebaid,
where 8. Pachomius dwelt himself. There were other con-
vents which looked up to the community on that island as
their mother. The Superior of the central house nominated
the heads of the daughter houses, and at Easter and in
August a general chapter of the whole was held. There was
thus a Pachomian order in the true sense of the word, the
only one that ever existed in the East and far more closely
bound together than any that came into being in the West
till something like a thousand years later (p. 125).
The order also included very numerous nuns, who dwelt
on the mainland near the island of Tabenna, with a com-
munity of married women who seem to have had quarters on
the far side of the Nile. Of one of the virgins, Palladius *°
; Sozomen, Eccl. Hist., bk. ITI, ch. xiv.
» Lausiac History, bk. 1, ch. xxxiii. This same chapter gives an ac-
count of the rule quite similar to that of Sozomen.
26 CHRISTIAN MONASTICISM
tells a story which is of great human interest from its close
resemblance to the tale of “Cinderella,” which has been
traced to an ancient Egyptian original. She was not per-
mitted to eat with the rest but was assigned the most menial
work, and some of the sisters further showed their contempt
by throwing over her the rinsings of their vessels.
The blessed Piterius, however, visited the convent by
direction of an angel and he caused no small sensation by
saying: ‘Ye yourselves are creatures of contempt, but this
woman is your mother and mine, and I entreat God that
He will give me a portion with her in the day of judgment.”
The sequel was less satisfactory, for the blessed woman,
unable to endure the honour and praise that all the sisters
now lavished upon her, left the house, but “‘where she went
and when she died no man knows.”
There is evidence that the monks in early days were looked
on with some suspicion by the bishops. Palladius*? tells us
how the blessed Nathaniel (d.c. 376) refused to escort for
the distance of one step certain prelates who were all holy
men and had prayed with him in his cell. When their
servants found fault with this apparent want of courtesy
he replied: ‘I died once for all to my lords the bishops and
to the whole world, and I have a secret matter concerning
which it is God only Who knoweth my heart and why I did
not go forth and escort them.” |
At first S. Pachomius was not favoured by the official
Church and his way of life was condemned by a council. But
by showing great deference and respect to the bishops he
contrived completely to overcome their suspicion. In 330,
S. Athanasius as bishop officially visited Tabenna.
The loyalty of the monks to the Bishop of Alexandria
appears sometimes to have left much to be desired. When
Theophilus sent out his festal letter of 399, condemning the
#7b., bk. 1, ch. exii.
THE DESERT MONKS OF EGYPT oT
heresy of the Anthropomorphites, so strongly were the soli-
taries inclined to disagree that in the desert of Scete, so
famed for its religious houses, none would even permit the
letter to be read except an abbot named Paphnutius, who
had formerly been an anchorite and was so fond of being
alone as to have earned the surname of the Buffalo.
It does not, however, appear that exemption from epis-
copal control was claimed. Two monks made themselves
eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake, and to their great
surprise found themselves excommunicated by the local
bishop. So they went to make a complaint to “the head of
our monasteries,” the Bishop of Jerusalem. He confirmed
the sentence, and the Bishop of Antioch took a precisely
similar view.
Then they went to the great Patriarch and Bishop of
Rome and said to him: “We have come unto thee because
thou art the head of them all.” Then the Bishop of Rome
also said to them: ‘‘I also excommunicate you and excommu-
nicate ye shall be.” ??
As a rule, the monks were laymen, and this was clearly
considered the ideal. Of all. people “a monk ought by all
means to fly from women and bishops. For neither of them
will allow him who has once been joined in close intercourse
any longer to care for the quiet of his cell, or to continue
with pure eyes in divine contemplation there his insight into
holy things.” 1%
Occasionally it did happen that a monk was compelled to
take some administrative post in the Church. Cassian’s
point of view, which was undoubtedly very widely shared,
is expressed in his account of “that most blessed and excel-
lent man, Bishop Archbius, who had been carried off from
the assembly of anchorites and given as bishop to the town
4“ TLausiac History, Sayings of the Holy Fathers, 524. Budge, vol. ii,
p. 118.
4% Cassian, Institutes, XI, xviii; Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd ser., vol. xi,
p-. 279.
28 CHRISTIAN MONASTICISM
of Panephysis, and who kept all his life long to his purpose
of solitude with such strictness that he relaxed nothing of the
character of his former humility, nor flattered himself on the
honour that had been added to him, for he vowed that he
had not been summoned to that office as fit for it, but com-
plained that he had been expelled from the monastic system
as unworthy of it.” **
Heretical monks were not unknown; Sozomen?® and
Socrates 7® tell us of the strange hallucinations of Eusta-
thius, Bishop of Sebaste in Armenia, who founded a society
of ascetics +” and there were otber examples, but as a rule
monasticism was rigidly orthodox, at any rate in matters
of importance. This sometimes drew upon the ascetics the
wrath of Arianizing prelates.
The adherents of Lucius, the Bishop of Alexandria, who
succeeded S. Athanasius and was far from walking in his
steps, “assailed and disturbed and terribly harassed the
monastic institutions in the desert; armed men rushed in
the most ferocious manner upon those who were utterly
defenceless, and who would not lift an arm to repel their
violence; so that numbers of unresisting victims were in
this manner slaughtered with a degree of wanton cruelty
beyond description.” +8
This most unfortunate tendency. to violence could be used
by both sides, and several councils were disgraced by the
turbulence of great hordes of monks whose bravery, as Mil-
man says, often shamed the languid patriotism of the im-
perial troops.*®
*Cassian, Conferences, XI, ch. ii, P.N.F. 2nd ser., vol. xi, p. 416.
% Feel. Hist., Ill, xiv.
*%* Ecol, Hist., II, xliii.
Their vile ‘parody of Christian monasticism, which included a pro-
hibition of marriage, was condemned by the synod at Gangra, about the
middle of the fourth century. All details will be found in Hefele, His-
tory of the Councils of the Church, trans. H. N. Oxenham, vol. ‘ii, p-
a Berton, Moot, Hise. IV. exit
* Latin Christiamty, vol. i, p. 344.
THE DESERT MONKS OF EGYPT 29
S. Pachomius prescribed only a moderate asceticism, but
left his monks free to go beyond it if they would. Very
soon the Egyptian solitaries were vying with one another in
making records in asceticism, and that with enthusiasm at
least equal to anything to be expected from the modern
athlete.
Sozomen relates 7° how Dorotheus, a native of Thebes,
“spent the day in collecting stones upon the sea-shore, which
he used in erecting cells to be given to those who were unable
to build them. During the night he employed himself in
weaving baskets of palm leaves and these he sold to obtain
the means of subsistence. He ate six ounces of bread with
a few vegetables daily and drank nothing but water.
“Having accustomed himself to this extreme abstinence
from his youth, he continued to observe it in old age. He
was never seen to recline on a mat or a bed, nor even to
place his limbs in an easy attitude, or willingly to surrender
himself to sleep. * * * He was once asked by a person
who came to him while he was exhausting himself, why he
destroyed the body. ‘Because it is destroying me,’ was the
reply.” And when Palladius urged him to throw himself
upon a mat of palm leaves and rest a little, he replied in a
grieved manner: “If thou art able to persuade the angels to
sleep thou wilt be able to persuade me.”
Few of these monkish athletes could hear of any one else’s
record in asceticism without promptly desiring to beat it.
So very abstemious was Macarius of Alexandria, sur-
named the Glorious, that not even the hairs of his beard
would grow.*! Stories of these ascetic records fill up a very
great part of all the histories of the Egyptian solitaries, but
they are not very remarkable for variety.
Monks, particularly in the East, have at all times in their
Eccles. Hist., VI, xxix; Palladius, Lausiae History, I, ii, gives a
very similar account.
= Lausiac Hist., 11, xviii.
30 CHRISTIAN MONASTICISM
lonely wilds felt a sympathetic fellowship with the beasts,
who are almost always represented as their friends. This
beautiful trait seems to betray far more the influence of
India (p. 12) than that of early Christianity.
Even S. Paul could ask: “Doth God take care for oxen ?”’ 2”
In his ‘Life of Malchus, the Captive Monk,” S. Jerome re-
lates how a lioness facilitated his escape.?* He had been
led to relieve the monotony of his captivity by watching the
useful labours of a colony of ants “whose toil is for the com-
munity and since nothing belongs to any one, all things
belong to all.” The description given of the ants shows
close observation of their ways.
Sulpicius Severus ** gives a detailed account of how a
certain recluse living in a little hut in the valley of the
Nile used to share his supper with a wolf. One day the wolf
came and found no monk, but as it knew the way to the
larder, it saw no reason why there should be no supper
either. So it helped itself to a loaf, but afterwards
when the monk returned it displayed a most dog-like
contrition and the former pleasant relations were re-
stored.
The incident leads to the delightful reflexion: “Behold, I
beg of you, the power of Christ to Whom all is wise that is
irrational, and all is mild that is by nature savage.
88 CHRISTIAN MONASTICISM
“the drawbacks of marriage, such as pregnancy, the crying
of infants, the torture caused by a rival, the cares of house-
hold management, and all those fancied blessings which
death at last cuts short.” * This is all the more striking
because the context is the proper motives for taking the vow
of virginity. In the twelfth century, we have the remark-
able Norman Prior’s door in Ely Cathedral, which displays a
satire on wedded life, beginning with an affectionate pair
kissing, and ending with their sitting in the same boat, one
rowing, the other backing.
A well-known story of 8S. Francis of Assisi records his
making a wife and children and servants of snow and
then congratulating himself that if he serves God alone
he will be .free from all the anxieties and cares of
providing clothes and other necessities for such a house-
hold.*
The same ideas are expressed with yet more pungent satire
in “Holy Maidenhood,” a work of the thirteenth century:
“And how, I ask, though it may seem odious, how does the
wife stand, who, when she comes in hears her child scream,
sees the cat at the flitch, and the hound at the hide? Her
cake is burning on the stone hearth, her calf is sucking up
the milk, the earthen pot is overflowing into the fire, and the
churl is scolding. Though it be an odious tale, it ought,
maiden, to deter thee more strongly from marriage, for it
does not seem easy to her who has tried it. Thou, happy
maiden, who hast fully removed thyself out of that servi-
tude as a free daughter of God and as His Son’s /spouse,
needest not suffer anything of the kind.” ® And we have the
* Letter XXII, sec. 2.
*Thomas of Celano, Leg. II, ch. 82. S. Bonaventura, Legende due
de Vita 8. Francisci, chap. v, sec. 4. (Quaracchi ed., p. 48.) A similar
story, but with mud instead of snow, will be found in Verba Seniorwm,
auctore probabili Ruffino Aquileiensi presbytero, printed in Migne, P. L.
73, col. 747 (copy).
5’ Hali Meidenhad, edit. Cockayne, Early English Text Society, 1866,
p- 37. The author is unknown.
—
MONK REBUILDERS OF A WORLD 89
testimony of a modern abbot that Benedictine life at the
present day is not one of great austerity.®
S. Gregory the Great was certainly under no delusions
whatever as to the real condition of the Roman world. In
reply to a letter of congratulation on his election as Pope he
wrote to John the Faster, Patriarch of Constantinople: “It
is evident that you do not love me as yourself, seeing that
you have wished me to take on myself that load which you
were unwilling should be imposed on you. But since I, un-
worthy and weak, have taken charge of an old and griey-
ously shattered ship (for on all sides the waves enter, and the
planks, battered by a daily and violent storm, sound of ship-
wreck), I beseech thee by Almighty God to stretch out the
hand of thy prayer’ ‘“—since at Constantinople he can pray
in peace.
Nothing stands out more clearly than the fact that this
government of the world was not sought by the quiet cloister,
but in the first place, at any rate, forced upon its reluctant
inmates. To Narses, the Patrician, S. Gregory writes: “In
describing the sweetness of contemplation, you have renewed
the groans of my fallen state, since I hear what I have lost
inwardly while mounting outwardly, though undeserving, to
the topmost height of rule.
“Know then that I am stricken with so great sorrow that I
can scarcely speak. * * * For I reflect to what a dejected |
height of external advancement I have mounted in falling
from the lofty height of my rest.” ® To the Emperor’s sister
he writes in the same terms. In many places in his writings
S. Gregory displays a longing for the quiet peace of the
cloister as far superior to the turmoil of the world. He feels
*See the very interesting ch. xxii in Abbot Butler’s Benedictine Mon-
achism. He virtually says that sound scholarship is far better worth
seeking to attain than any great asceticism. Incidentally he gives one a
very great respect for his own character.
™ Hpistles of St. Gregory the Great, bk. I, Ep. iv.
®Ib., Hp. vi.
90 CHRISTIAN MONASTICISM
that he has left a delightful haven to be tossed about on the
stormy waves of an uncongenial sea.
S. Gregory sought neither the Papacy nor temporal
power. Both were forced upon him by the absence of any
possible alternative. No real administration of Italy was
to be expected from the feeble Exarch at Ravenna, the pale
representative of the once powerful Emperor. 8S. Gregory
alone was in a position to do something—and it was not very
much—to restore some semblance of ordered life. Despite
the fact that, as his own letters show, the state of the Western
monasteries left something to be desired, 8. Gregory’s policy
' was as far as possible to use the monks both to restore pros-
perity to what remained of the empire and to extend the
Gospel among the barbarians (p. 177).
The smallest matters, such as the rights of individual peas-
ants on Church lands, received his closest attention. For
the development of the huge estates that belonged to him,
especially in Sicily, he provided by the foundation of monas-
teries. In the extreme uncertainty of those unhappy times
when Lombards, as yet untutored,? were making havoc of
Italy, and other barbarians of all sorts were tearing away so
many provinces of the empire, few ordinary laymen pos-
sessed the energy or the confidence to seek to repair the
damages of devastating wars. Whether the spiritual chil-
dren of 8. Benedict soared so very far above the general level
of the secular clergy in pure morality is a far more arguable
thing than the fact that they were now the chief rebuilders
of Western Europe.
It was largely because the monks, and they alone, pos-
sessed the skill, the capital, the organization, and the faith
in the future to undertake large projects of reclamation
° Few, or none, foresaw at that time how great things the “unspeak-
able” race was eventually to accomplish through its very presence, a
vigorous northern brood of tremendous virility and energy on the north-
ern plains of Italy. For centuries their descendants have been chief
leaders in Italian progress.
MONK REBUILDERS OF A WORLD 91
over fields long desolated by the slave system of Roman
villa life and later the tramp and retramp of barbarian
hordes.
The times were so disturbed that secular men might well
hesitate to sow the crops whose fruits they might never see,
but the monks’ real home was heaven, and if all the founders
of a monastery were dead there would be others to take their
places. They could carry on agricultural and other works
upon a scale absolutely beyond the reach of the wealthiest
individual. Immense tracts of barren heath and of water-
soaked fen were by monastic hands turned into excellent agri-
cultural land. Many a great abbey, such as S. Benet, Holm,
in Norfolk, which stands today amid smiling fields and rich
cornlands, was built originally on the self-same spot in the
centre of barren desolation.
It is impossible to conceive any agents better qualified to
restore cultivation and the arts of peace to the desolated
European world than the ascetic communities who might
bring to the task the organization of numbers, the enthusiasm
of religion, and the feeling that it was no matter how long
their schemes of betterment might take to come to maturity,
because their monasteries could never die.
As Newman expresses it: “St. Benedict found the world,
physical and social, in ruins; and his mission was to restore
it in the way, not of science, but of nature, not as if setting
about to do it, not professing to do it by any set time or by
any rare specific or by any series of strokes, but so quietly,
patiently, gradually, that often, till the work was done, it
was not known to be doing. It was a restoration, rather
than a visitation, correction, or conversion.
“The new world which he helped to create was a growth
rather than a structure. Silent men were observed about the
country, or discovered in the forest, digging, clearing, and
building; and other silent men, not seen, were sitting in the
cold cloister, tiring their eyes, and keeping their attention
92 CHRISTIAN MONASTICISM
on the stretch, while they painfully deciphered and copied
and re-copied the manuscripts which they had saved.
“There was no one that ‘contended or cried out,’ or drew
attention to what was going on; but by degrees the woody
swamp became a hermitage, a religious house, a farm, an
abbey, a village, a seminary, a school of learning, and a
city. Roads and bridges connected it with other abbeys and
cities, which had similarly grown up; and what the haughty
Alaric or fierce Attila had broken to pieces, these patient,
meditative men had brought together and made to live
again,” 1°
There are many European towns which originally grew
up around monasteries. Most of them are relatively small,
but a few, such as Peterborough, England, have grown into
big cities. | tad
S. Gregory the Great had turned into a convent his ances-
tral palace upon the Ccelian, and there he himself dwelt as
a monk, finding such a life extremely congenial. He dedi-
cated the place to S. Andrew, but it now bears his own name
and is known as S. Gregorio.
When in 581 the Lombards plundered Monte Cassino, the
monks came flying to Rome and founded another house by
the Cathedral of Rome, the Lateran Basilica. Hither from
their example or independently, and perhaps before they
arrived, S. Gregory established the Benedictine rule in his
own abbey on the Celian Hill. It is obvious, however, that
the rule must have been modified, at any rate in some degree,
for a convent in the middle of a city (p. 82).
The work of 8. Gregory was never lost, but after he had
passed away, the European world was in little better state
than it had been before. From the barbarians themselves
there came the next great rebuilder of the West. Charles
the Great (Charlemagne), brilliantly restored the empire,
and his coronation at Rome on Christmas day, 800 a.p., was
*° Mission of S. Benedict, sec. 9, in Historical Sketches, II, p. 410.
MONK REBUILDERS OF A WORLD 93
the virtual foundation of the great structure of medizvalism.
The new empire, holy and Roman, that was set up that day
lasted in fact till the time of the Renaissance (when Charles
V was the last sovereign who was really in any sense the
ruler of Europe), and in theory till it was ended by Napo-
leon,? in 1806.
_ It was again very largely to monks that Charles the Great
had recourse in his civilizing work for the world. Einhard,
his friend and biographer, had been educated in the convent
of Fulda and was ever a great admirer of monasticism. In
old age he himself took the vows. Other prominent courtiers
were the sovereign’s cousin, Adalhard, the Abbot of Corbey,
and Angilbert, another monk who took the part of Homer
when the denizens of the palace at Aachen each acted the
part of some ancient worthy, the sovereign himself being
King David. Alcuin, on whom he chiefly relied for his edu-
cational reforms, does not appear to have been a professed
monk, but he owed everything to the monastically inspired
culture of his native Northumbria. Charles made him
Abbot of Tours, but this may have been an early example of
that commendatory system that was afterwards to prove a
chief solvent of monasticism.
One of Charles’ soldiers had his mind so turned to sacred
things by a narrow escape from drowning that he became a
monk. In religion he is known as Benedict of Aniane, from
a monastery that he founded in a gorge above that river in
Aquitaine. Louis the Pious, on his succession to his father’s
dominion, invited him to the capital and made him abbot of
a monastery close by.
S. Benedict presided over the council of Aachen (817)
which was largely concerned with much needed reform of
monastic discipline. He had been so perfectly appalled by
“The matter was complicated but this is substantially true, though
barons of the Holy Roman Empire still exist, and the title “Emperor of
Austria” had been substituted for the higher one a little before 1806.
94 CHRISTIAN MONASTICISM
the conditions that confronted him that he contemplated re-
introducing the strict discipline of the East. The council,
however, under his guidance, turned in the more hopeful
direction of a restoration of the Benedictine Rule. Attempts
were also made to impose upon all the clergy some rule
based upon Chrodegang’s reforms (p. 96). Imperial in-
spectors were to be charged with the duty of enforcing a
cast-iron uniformity upon all monasteries, a strange new
departure that very soon passed away.
_ Undoubtedly something was accomplished, ‘but as the
work of the great Charles was undone by the relative feeble-
ness of his successors, it was not easy for the cloister to rise
entirely superior to the disorders of the world. However
much corruption there may have been, we hear nothing of
any decay of monastic energy. The foundation of the great
house of Cluny in 910 (p. 123) was to bring most vigorous
new life.
Monks were constantly finding new methods of serving
the world.
One of the very greatest works performed by Rome had
been the building of that net of splendid roads that gave
relatively easy communication throughout the whole extent
of the empire. Many of the old imperial highways still
formed the chief thoroughfares of Europe, but the system
naturally fell to pieces as a result of barbarian invasion.
Many of the medieval travellers were pilgrims and the
monks were soon keenly interested in providing for keeping
open communications.
Conspicuous in this work was S. Bernard of Menthon
who in 962 built a hospice amid the Alpine snows for the
benefit of travellers on the great roads into Italy. The dogs
that bear his name still commemorate his methods of bring-
ing first aid to those who had been overcome with fatigue.
But while it was chiefly instrumental in moulding the
whole civilization of the West during the early medieval
MONK REBUILDERS OF A WORLD 95
period, it is remarkable that monasticism did not dominate,
nor identify itself with, the official Church as was coming
to be the case in the East. The houses of the monastic
orders, though nearly always subject to the bishops, formed
as a rule no part of the diocesan and parochial system of the
Church.
Secular and regular clergy had their own separate organi-
zations which met only in the sovereign pontiff himself. It
is true indeed that the monks were gradually ceasing as a
rule to be laymen. Abbot Butler believes that about the
tenth century the custom became established that monks
should be ordained, and this led to their abandoning work
in the fields for more sedentary occupations.’” At an earlier
period it seems to have become the custom that the abbot
should be ordained, and if the head of the convent was a
layman he was merely called the prior. There is a letter
from S. Gregory the Great to the Bishop of Naples directing
that for the present a certain monk, Barbatianus by name,
- shall be Prior of a convent not named. He suffers unfortu-
nately from being ‘“‘exceedingly wise in his own conceit,” but
has “good qualities that commend him.” If the Bishop finds
him worthy he is to ordain him Abbot, otherwise to defer his
ordination and report to Rome.*? Of course this may have
been exceptional, but the context seems rather to show that
an abbot was ordained as a matter of course.
But even when ordained, monks as a rule did ‘not min-
ister to laymen. ‘The parish churches which architecturally
formed part of the monasteries and those that were appro-
22 Benedictine Monachism, p. 294. The question is discussed at some
length and the statement is made on the authority very largely of Ed-
mund Bishop.
8 Epistles, bk. IX, Hp. xci. An abbot is the head of an abbey, the
prior usually his second in command. In the case of a cathedral convent
usually the bishop was titular abbot, the actual head being a prior in
title, but an abbot in dignity. The Prior of Canterbury was mitred and
sat in Parliament (p. 194). Usually a priory was a house of less dig-
nity than an abbey.
96 CHRISTIAN MONASTICISM
priated to religious houses were served by secular priests,
and if monks became dignitaries of the Church their rela-
tions with their old orders became nominal.
But to all such generalizations there are frequently im-
portant exceptions and, especially in countries converted by
the monks, the monastic and secular organizations were apt
to get partially interlaced. In England about half the
cathedrals were also monastic churches and in Scotland and
Ireland there were several similar instances. Monastic
cathedrals on the Continent were more rare, but the noble
Benedictine church at Monreale (Sicily) has been the cathe-
dral of a diocese since 1174, and during 1371 the Abbot of
Monte Cassino became bishop of a large diocese formed by
the Pope by the federation of several others. The conven-
tual church is the cathedral, but if the abbot is not in
episcopal orders the duties have, of course, in part to be
performed by a deputy. German monastic (Premonstraten-
sian) cathedrals were Liibeck, Brandenburg, Havelburg and
Ratzeburg. |
On the whole, however, during the earlier Middle Ages
the monk as such took little direct part in the actual routine
work of the civilization that he did so much to mould.
Rather he directed from outside. But this was not to be
permanent.
Feeling that monks were apt to have far greater earnest-
ness than the secular clergy, Chrodegang, Archbishop of
Metz, cousin and minister to Pepin, the first of the long line
of ecclesiastical statesmen, tried to impose a rule upon all
his clergy. He thus became to some degree a pioneer in the
West of bringing the monk as such into the service of the
Church. He succeeded permanently in separating canons
who met in their chapter houses and were bound to chastity
and obedience, but not to poverty,’* from the ordinary paro-
chial clergy.
4 That is, they might hold private property.
MONK REBUILDERS OF A WORLD 97
A semi-monastic body of clergy 1° was not yet, however,
destined to appear. Canons themselves came to be either
secular, serving a cathedral or collegiate church, or else
monastic, belonging to definite orders such as the Augus-
tinian, founded about 1080 by S. Ivo of Chartres, which
followed the rule of S. Augustine (p. 62), or the Premon-
stratensian, founded by S. Norbert in 1120, at a little place
near Laon, called Premontré.
In the case of these orders all the brethren must be clergy
and they were sometimes expected to preach and, though
rarely, to exercise cure of souls like ordinary parish priests.
Even so, however, the religious were not very anxious to
identify themselves with the work of the church itself; in
England, out of two hundred and fifty-four Augustinian
churches, only thirty-seven were parochial.’® Still, such
orders did very definitely establish the principle that the
whole duty of a religious is not to save his own soul.
Medievalism, through its whole history, retained the stamp
of its monastic origin, in its superb and lofty idealism. It
devoted itself to a serious attempt, and the only one in his-
tory that ever was made, to Christianize the order of the
world. This, of course, is not to say that the period was
morally better or perhaps even more religious than any
other, but law, politics, and social institutions were defi-
nitely based upon what the Middle Ages saw as distinctly
Christian principles. In Geneva, New England, Scotland,
and elsewhere there have been indeed in later days rather
short-lived efforts to Christianize the order of a city, or a
province, or a state, but, so far, hardly of the world itself.
% Such as the Eudists, in much later times.
16 Rev. J. Hodson, Arche@ological Jowrnal, (London) vols. xli-xlii. The
canons served Carlisle Cathedral. The other English monastic cathedrals
(Canterbury, Rochester, Winchester, Worcester, Ely, Norwich, Durham, |
Bath, and Coventry, now destroyed), were all Benedictine. The Augus-)
tinian order was introduced into England by Matilda, daughter of S.
Margaret, and wife of Henry I. Gregor Mendel belonged to it in
later times.
98 CHRISTIAN MONASTICISM
During the medieval period, moral values were preferred
to material, at least to a far greater degree than in the
earlier days of Greece and Rome or the later ones of the
Renaissance. An enormous proportion of communal energy
and wealth was devoted to building those glorious cathe-
drals, abbeys, and churches that to the majority of cultured
travellers are the chief glory of Europe today.
Even so, however, nothing but ignorance of medieval
documents can excuse the impression that the average man
of those days was better or happier than he is at present.
Some of the grandest parts of the great Benedictine Cathe-
dral at Durham were built by Flambard, who did so much
to enhance the tyranny of John, the vilest minister indeed
of England’s vilest king.
It is a remarkable tribute to medizval monasticism that
it seems never to have been conscious of the magnificent
work it was doing for the world. Monastic literature
nowhere, apparently, displays any pride in the secular
activity of the monks, and there is much to show the sur-
vival of the old Egyptian tradition.
Cesarius of Heisterbach (b. 1180, probably in Koln),
tells of a priest who entered his monastery and then pro-
posed to leave it again to serve his parish in Alsace or to
attend to the duties of his prebend at Kéln, but he was told
most definitely that all such ideas came from the fiend. The
cloister life was more pleasing to God than any good service
to the world, and to return to the work even of an ideal
secular priest would be to risk salvation itself.17 This is
indeed the universal view.
The European unity of the Middle Ages, which was in
great part at least the work of monks, left no room for
nations with their senseless animosities, that bane of recent
years. Christendom was one. Churchmen might hold office
" Cesarius, I, 215, quoted by Coulton, Five Centuries of Religion, I,
352.
MONK REBUILDERS OF A WORLD 99
under any sky. In the thirteenth century one Albert was
Archbishop, first of Armagh in Ireland and then of Livonia
(p. 120). Chaucer’s monk had fought in Egypt, Prussia,
Latvia, Russia, Armenia, and Spain, and always in the same
Christian cause. The great medieval orders had their houses
in all parts of Europe and as a rule knew no distinction of
people or of race.*®
The Pope was the universal priest, the Emperor the uni-
versal monarch. No ecclesiastic could be independent of
the former; no secular ruler might challenge in theory at
any rate the world-supremacy of the latter. The ideal is
majestically set forth in the famous painting on the east
wall of the Spanish chapel of the Dominican church of
S. Maria Novella at Florence, where Pope and Emperor sit
on twin thrones supported by all the orders of the Church
and of chivalry. Dante, in the magnificent language of his
“De Monarchia,” sets forth the same great conception of
the world-wide empire with its gift of universal peace.
Doubtless the actual results came very far short of the
ideal, but one comes across recognition of it in all sorts of
medizval by-ways. S. Francis of Assisi, though of course
an Italian, desired that he might see the Emperor in order
to ask him entreatingly and persuasively to issue a decree
against catching his sisters the larks. The whole conception
of the Holy Roman Empire is set out on the (fifteenth cen-
tury) roof of the cathedral in far-off Aberdeen.
The Middle Ages had a proverb: “When anything is tom
be done in the world a monk must be in'it, were it only asa’ ~
painted figure.” *°
#% A sad exception to this was a statute passed by a Parliament at
Kilkenny in 1310, prohibiting the Irish convents from taking neophites
who were not of English blood. But this was later reversed. Cox,
Hibernia Anglicana, 100, Stuart, Armagh, 115-116.
2% Quoted by Luther: Dedicatory letter to Address to the German
Nobility.
100 CHRISTIAN MONASTICISM
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
The main facts in the life of the greatest of all the Popes are
given by Paulus Diaconus in his Vita Gregori.
Far more is to be gathered from the fourteen books of the
Epistles of 8S. Gregory, which are printed (in selection) in vols.
XII and XIII, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, with his Pas-
toral Rule. There is a good brief account of his life. Excellent
English accounts of Gregory are given in Rev. H. K. Mann’s
Lives of the Popes in the Early Middle Ages, vol. I, Pt. I; and
Hodgkin’s Italy and her Invaders, bk. VI, chh. vii-x; and for
Charles the Great, [b., bk. VIII, chh. xi-xiv; bk. IX.
For the central ideal of the Middle Ages of course Bryce’s
Holy Roman Empire is absolutely indispensable.
In addition to books already cited Foakes Jackson’s Introduc-
tion to the History of Christianity, a.p. 590-1314, and the chapter
on The Monk a Civilizer, in Charles Kingsley’s The Roman and
the Teuton.
CHAPTER VI
CELTIC MONASTICISM
By monks, too, in a remote island of Europe was being
preserved and developed a culture, magnificent, yet strangely
unequal, that might have given the Irish race, supposing
they had been endowed with organizing power, a world
place comparable to that of Rome.
Irish Christianity was even more monastic in character
than that of the continent of Europe. Elsewhere the Church
was organized by dioceses whose boundaries were fixed and
whose areas had been moulded very largely by the political
arrangements of Rome. But in Ireland we read far more of
monasteries than of dioceses, and though the episcopal system
was necessarily maintained, the abbot appears in many cases
to be more important than the bishop, while the limits of
dioceses and even their seats were constantly getting changed.
There is excellent evidence that many, at any rate of the
most characteristic features of ancient Irish monasticism —
were derived from the East. The common interlacing pat-
terns of the Celts were copied from characteristic Byzantine
forms; the description of the church at Kildare in Cogitosus’
(ninth century) “Life of S. Bridget” with its numerous
screens to separate the sexes, its eikonostasis, its painted pic-
tures and jewelled ornaments pendant from the roof, exactly
suggests a Coptie church of today.*
The common practice of fasting on a debtor, not at all
See my article on Some Irish Religious Houses in the Archeological
Journal (London), vol. lxxii, pp. 89-134, June, 1915, pt. 286.
101
1022 CHRISTIAN MONASTICISM
infrequently mentioned in the Irish records (well known as
far east as China), the belief in reincarnation, the numerous
little chapels in place of large churches, the flabellum (or
fly brush), in the “Book of Kells” portrait of S. Mat-
thew, all show Oriental influence, while the Irish Easter,
though peculiar to the Celtic Church, was almost cer-
tainly derived originally from the East. But Irish Chris-
tianity had very definite features of its own and was
far from being a mere reproduction of the Eastern
Church.
An Irish monastery consisted as a rule of a number of
huts where the recluses lived, with stone chapels where they
prayed, defended by a rampart of earth or stones against
the lawless world outside. Very many of the chapels can
still be seen, though most of them are now roofless ruins.
It is strange that during many centuries of early Christian
history (perhaps from the fifth to the ninth), there was
preserved in these remote spots the finest culture that the
west of Europe knew.
To some of these monastic retreats on mountain, bog,
or shore came students from nearly the whole Christian
world, and so well was the old learning maintained that
during several centuries it was said that if in Western
Europe any man knew Greek he must be Irish-born or
Trish-taught.
In most striking contrast to the stability to which S. Bene-
dict attached so much importance was the undisciplined
restlessness of the Irish monks. In the sixth century
S. Brandan, a monk of Clonfert, sailed out into the ocean
till he came to the fairest country that any man might see,
which was a heavenly sight to behold, the trees burdened
with ripe fruit, always day and never night, and neither too
hot nor too cold.
And in the centuries that followed we find the Irish monks
wandering over all lands between Italy, and the Danube,
CELTIC MONASTICISM 103
and Iceland,? most diligently preaching the Gospel if there
was anyone to convert, and yet appearing even more content
to pray and meditate beside the tumbling seas, chanting
their psalms to the accompaniment of the screech of sea-
gulls and the eternal thud of the waves against the rocks.
Many parts of Europe owe the planting or the revivification
of their Christianity to the Celtic mystic-monks (p. 178).
Dreamers they may have been and doubtless were, but it
is remarkable that the first of them to gain a European
reputation was likewise the first to turn the mind of the
Christian Church to the serious discussion of one of the
greatest questions of the world. The pagans regarded with
a half-amused contempt the rather weary controversies con-
cerning the human and divine natures in the Person of
Christ that so perplexed and disturbed the mind of the
Eastern Church.
It was a Welsh or Irish monk, Pelagius, who broke new
ground in denying that everything is preordained, boldly
asserting that man may make himself just what he will.
His conclusion that we may do without the grace of God—
almost, not quite—was dangerous Christian speculation, and
- it brought upon him the crushing wrath of S. Augustine
himself; but at least the Celtic Church had raised a point
of very vital interest not to Christians only, but to all man-
kind.
It was in line with the cheerful, happy, rather care-free
type of mind that has ever marked the Celt, and enabled him
to bear his own misfortunes and help others to bear theirs
with a light-heartedness that all men do not know. Much the
same character of good-fellowship and keen humour that
marks the Irish race today may be traced in these ancient
seers.
The renowned John Scotus Erigena, one of the most
?The ninth century Irish chronicler Dicuil in his De mensura orbis
terre gives an account of many lands, including Iceland and Egypt.
104 CHRISTIAN MONASTICISM
original thinkers of them all—whatever view be taken of
some of his conclusions—was a friend of the Emperor,
Charles the Bald. About the year 850, when at his court
the monk had rather angered the prince, who bade him
say what was the difference between a sot and a Scot: “‘Only
this table,” was the reply ’—a pleasantry in substance
repeated many times.
The Irish chronicles, some in Latin but most in Erse, are
very detailed and minute, but on the whole, it must be con-
fessed, not very entertainingly written, and they almost
entirely lack that human interest which is so delightful a
feature of the Icelandic sagas. They reveal a terrible amount
of lawlessness on the part of the very clergy themselves, and
very clearly show the strangely unequal character of ancient
Trish civilization, magnificent as to learning and art, but
appalling as to public order.
_ The very mission of S. Columba to Iona is said to have
been occasioned by most lawless wars. He. had secretly
copied a psalter that belonged to an abbot named Finnian,
who taking the act as theft claimed that the copy was also
his. Columba refused to give it up and appealed to the high
king at Tara. }
The sovereign decided that as to every cow belongs her
calf, so the copy belonged to the owner of the original work.
Instead of accepting this verdict, which certainly proceeds
upon a rather questionable analogy, Columba raised the
North and West against the high king, who was defeated
and forced to fly to the earthworks of Tara. But rebuked
by a synod, and stung by remorse, the Apostle of Scotland
sailed out into the northern seas. |
Eventually, out of sight of his beloved Ireland, he founded
*The authority for this tale is De Vita et Preceptis Joannis Scoti
Hrigenee, chap. iii. See Migne, P.L. 122, col. 17. Scotia was originally
the name of Ireland. From her colony of Dalriada, in what is now
Argyle, came the kings of Scotland, and the name was gradually trans-
ferred about the eleventh century.
CELTIC MONASTICISM 105
a convent on the treeless island of Hi, which as Iona was
soon to be known to all the earth. Thence sailing over
stormy seas and wandering over heather moors and beside
the Highland lochs, he penetrated far into Caledonia and
sought to win to Christ heathen souls, as many as had per-
ished in the war.
This is the common story, but it is not mentioned by
Bede * or Adamnan,* the former of whom merely says that
he came into Britain after having founded in Ireland a
noble monastery called the Field of Oaks; the latter, that
“God helping, he drove out from Iona, which now has the
the primacy, malignant and innumerable demons.” In the
library of the (Royal) Irish Academy at Dublin is still
preserved the copied psalter which for a thousand years was
carried as a standard of battle by the Clan O’Donnell to
which Columba belonged.®
The MS. annals of MacFirbis record (a.p. 700) that “the
clergy of Ireland went to their synods with weapons and
fought pitched battles and slew many persons therein.”
Mixed indeed it may have been, but the ancient culture
of Ireland was one of the most splendid products of any age
of the Church. So purely Christian was its character that
for centuries the country was very widely known as the
Island of the Saints.
It was, perhaps, more than any other civilization, the
product of monastic hands. By monks, largely at least, its
chronicles were kept. By their hands probably in chief the
manuscripts were illuminated and perhaps to some degree
the ornaments of the Church were fashioned (p. 236). The
famous schools were monastic. Wholly by monks was the
great missionary work maintained—lIreland’s best gift to
mankind,
‘ H.H., bk. ITI, iv.
5 Life of Columba, bk. I, ch. i.
*The story is given at great length by Montalembert, Monks of the
West, bk. IX, ch. i.
106 CHRISTIAN MONASTICISM
No better monument of the ancient glories of monastic
Ireland could possibly be asked than: “the city of Ciaran of
Clonmacnoise, a dewy-bright, red-rose town, of its royal seed,
of lasting fame, the hosts in the pure-streamed peaceful
town.” * On desolate peat bogs beside the smooth-flowing
Shannon stand about a dozen ancient chapels, all ruined
except one, in a large churchyard, treeless except for a few
old gnarled and almost leafless ashes. ‘Two round towers
and many sculptured crosses, the rude architecture of some
of the chapels with beautiful carved details in a few of them,
and numerous monuments of almost every age, make the
place profoundly interesting to all who love the work of
other days; and yet the very lonely desolation of the spot
perhaps constitutes its greatest charm.®
Here was the one convent of Ireland that was common
to all the septs, where each clan had a chapel of its own,
peculiarly and universally esteemed, its property so vast
that half Ireland was said to be within its bounds, and deemed
so holy that all interred within its sacred soil were assured
of entrance into heaven.
Founded in the early sixth century by Ciaran, it remained
the most famous of all Irish monasteries throughout the
period of independence; later in the Middle Ages it passed
to the Augustinian order (p. 97), yet so great was the re-
spect for the days gone by that instead of building a clois-
tered abbey in the usual style, the ancient Celtic chapels
were zealously preserved. But yet in spite of all, no convent
was more often burned by lawless Irish bands.
In most extraordinary contrast with the rudeness of the
buildings belonging to these ancient monastic retreats was
the beauty and value of the things that they contained.
‘Quoted from an ancient Irish poem, by Douglas Hyde, A Literary
History of Ireland, p. 205.
®See my article Irish Cathedral Churches, in the Archeological Jour-
nal (London), vol. Ixxii, No. 288; 2nd ser., vol. xxii, No. 4, pp. 350-352.
One of the churches of Clonmacnoise was the cathedral of a diocese.
CELTIC MONASTICISM 107
“The Book of Kells,” perhaps the most beautiful illumi-
nated manuscript on earth, drawn and painted by devoted
monkish hands about the seventh century, though now the
chief treasure of the library of Trinity College, Dublin, was
probably kept for the first few centuries of its existence in
huts no better than those of the South African Kafirs today.
At Clonmacnoise itself in 1129 “the Four Masters” record
how, ‘‘The altar of the great Church of Cluain-mic-nois was
robbed, and jewels were carried off from thence, namely the
carracan (model) of Solomon’s temple, which had been pre-
sented by Maelseachlainn, son of Domhnall; * * * and the
three jewels which Toirdhealbhach Ua Conchobhair had
presented, 2.e., a silver drinking cup of Ua Riada, king of
Aradh; a silver chalice with a burnishing of gold upon it,
with an engraving by the daughter of Ruaidhri Ua Conchob-
hair; and the silver cup of Ceallach, successor of Patrick.”
Incidentally this list is interesting as showing that the
ancient Irish works of art were sometimes made by women.
The genesis of each new movement in monasticism was
nearly always marked by the codperation of women, sisters
or close associates of the men. In the cases of SS. Pacho-
mius, Basil, Augustine, Benedict, and Francis of Assisi, the
houses for monks and nuns were far apart, separated by a
river or by miles of countryside.
But Celtic monasticism was not averse to double houses
and sometimes a lady ruled the whole foundation as in the
ease of S. Bridget of Kildare (p. 101), one of Iveland’s three
great patron saints.®
But for their exceedingly limited power of administra-
tion, the Irish might have evolved a third type of Chris-
tianity as different from that of the Latin Church as it is
from the Greek. But this was not to come. Irish govern-
° The others being SS. Patrick and Columba. The three are frequently
represented together as.on the east gable of the cathedral at Down-
patrick,
108 CHRISTIAN MONASTICISM
ment, both of Church and State, was largely in chaos when
the English conquest in the twelfth century confounded con-
fusion, but did not for a long time, and never completely,
succeed in assimilating Irish Christianity to the general
orthodoxy of Western Europe.
Vainly in 1220 did an English bishop put out the sacred
fire of S. Bridget of Kildare. The Irish got it relighted as
soon as they possibly could and preserved something of the
strange atmosphere of one of the most unique monasteries
of Europe, a community of Christian vestal virgins that had
been founded by 8S. Bridget in the early part of the sixth
century.’?
In the ancient history of the Irish Church we meet with
nothing that can be called an order. Each monastery went
its own way; each great abbot was practically a law to him-
self. Such organization as there was, developed along tribal
lines. The level of asceticism frequently maintained was
exceedingly high. There was all the traditional monastic
sympathy with birds and beasts.
In Ireland itself the lovely traditions of the ancient Celtic
Church are fragrant to this day, yet despite their splendid
missionary work, the early monks had little of their very
own to give the world. Workman points out that the system
of penitentials is one of the chief survivals from the earliest
days.'?
First in their mission convents, then in their own island,
the rather confused traditions of the Celts gave way to the
organizing genius of Rome, the customs of Columba and
Columbanus yielded to the Benedictine Rule.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
The ancient chronicles of Ireland were digested into a single
record in 1632-36 by Franciscan friars; their work is generally
* The Four Masters gives the date of her death as 525.
“ Hvolution of the Monastic Ideal, p. 212 seq.
CELTIC MONASTICISM 109
known from the chief compilers as The Four Masters, but it is
often cited by the name of Colgan, another Franciscan of Lou-
vain. Some of the works they used, such as the Annals of
Clanmacnoise have perished, so that The Four Masters has some
value as an original source. A very convenient edition is that
by John O’Donovan, Dublin, 1851. This has parallel columns in
Erse and English. Another compilation of the old Chronicles is
the History of Ireland by Geoffrey Keating, tr. by J. O’Mahony,
New York, 1866. Adamnan’s Life of Columba is conveniently
accessible in Huyshe’s English edition.
Douglas Hyde’s Literary History of Ireland is a monument of
patient research.
For details of the different Irish monasteries, Archdall’s Mo-
nasticon Hibernicum, 1786, is invaluable.
Among other secondary authorities are Montalembert’s Monks
of the West; Prof. George T. Stokes, Ireland and the Celtic
Church; Prof. Bury’s Life of St. Patrick, and a particularly good
chapter (iv) in Workman’s Evolution of the Monastic Ideal.
CHAPTER VII
NUNS, HERMITS, AND PILGRIMS
Nuns: It may surely be claimed for monasticism that it
has done something for the position of women. If indeed
it be true that they have not played a part in asceticism at
all cor parable to that of men, at least women have been as
prominent in the cloister as their sisters ever were in the
world. Along some lines, indeed, far more.
One of the most remarkable women of all time was un-
doubtedly S. Hilda, the renowned Abbess of Streanshalch,
which the Danes called Whitby, whose double monastery for
men and women preserved a very ancient tradition of the
Celtic Church. By the Irish missionaries it was introduced
into Saxondom, and there it took deep root.
It was during her time in this abbey that there was held
(in 664) the most momentous council that ever came together
on English soil. The convention was purely monastic; it
gathered in an abbey, or perhaps beside it on the grassy
slopes that stand high above the North Sea. Monks were
the chief debaters: S. Wilfrid, who pointed out the absurdity
of a gdittle community on a fringe of the earth defying the
customs of the universal world; and S. Colman, who spoke
with pardonable enthusiasm of the great tradition of Co-
lumba, and the still greater one of the Apostle, S. John,
whose Easter he claimed to keep.
Two civilizations stood opposed, the Latin South and the
Celtic North. Intruding Saxondom was asked to make its
choice. Should it share with Europe the greatest metropolis
of the earth, now in the realm of religion regaining what it
110
NUNS, HERMITS, AND PILGRIMS 111
had once held and lost in the realm of politics; or should it
honour as the centre of its faith a remote rock island with
neither wealth, population, nor power? The nominal ques-
tion concerned the proper date for Easter, but eventually a
decision was reached on rather strangely material grounds.
To 8. Peter, all admitted, Christ had delivered the keys of
the portals of heaven. Could he reasonably be expected to
open to any that minimized the authority of his own Ch arch ?
To Columba no one could claim that Christ had given any
such powers. So the king, Oswy, decided in favour of Wil-
frid and of Rome.
The importance of this decision could not easily be exag-
gerated. Had it been in favour of Iona instead of Rome a
union of Celtic and Saxon Christianity might have had time
to consolidate in the British Isles a culture so different from
that of the Continent that the whole story of England had
been changed.
In a monastery whose Superior was a woman as famous
as any of her contemporaries, the fate of Britain was decided
for centuries to come. And yet it is possible enough that a
decision in favour of so ill-administered a Church as that
of the Celts would have had to be revised. Wilfrid is in
many ways a far less lovable character than his rivals, several
of them saints, but he represented a broader view.
The names of women are very prominent in the annals of
Celtic and Saxon monasticism. All admired maidens who
set their virginity above everything else. Besides SS. Bridget
and Hilda, 8. Ebba of Coldingham ? and S. Etheldreda of
Ely were as well known as any in the ascetic story of their
day. Eventually the feudalization of monasticism inevitably
tended to reduce the prestige of women rulers, who become
1The council is described by Bede, H.H., bk. III, ch. 25; and Eddius,
Life of Wilfrid. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, An. 664, merely says that
Colman with his companions went to his own country. Montalembert,
Monks of the West, bk. XII, ch. i, gives a detailed account.
*¥For both see Bede, H.H., bk. IV, ch. xix.
112 CHRISTIAN MONASTICISM
far less prominent after the tenth century. During the later
Middle Ages no one of the first religious houses of Europe
was a nunnery. The great Benedictine abbey of Whitby
rose on the site of S. Hilda’s convent, but it still bore her
name; today the majestic ruins of its thirteenth century
church stand high above the cliffs of jade, seen far over the
North Sea. At Ely and Coldingham as well monks kept the
Benedictine Rule where nuns had lived before. |
Still some great houses of women survived, notably in the
West country, Romsey and Shaftesbury, both with royal
associations. ‘The latter was so rich that it was popularly
said in the Middle Ages that if the Abbot of Glastonbury
could marry the Abbess of Shaftesbury their son would be
richer than the king.*
It is perhaps in the realm of literature that cloistered
women have contributed most to the world. There is not a
great deal to record of the writings of lay women between
Sappho and Madame de Staél, or at least Madame de
Sévigné. But during the Middle Ages there lived in dif-
ferent cloisters of Northern Europe a succession of mystics
who do something to fill the gap.
In the tenth century, Hrotsvith was writing her well-
formed metrical legends, her vigorous religious plays, and
rhyming chronicles, based largely on the Latin authors whose
works were in the library of her Saxon convent at Gander-
sheim.
In the twelfth century the more famous Hildegard,* of
Bingen on the Rhine, a double monastery for monks and
nuns, was writing her visions and prophecies, some of which
the great S. Bernard (p. 141) declared to be divinely in-
spired, while Pope Eugenius III wrote to express his wonder
* Dugdale, Monasticon, vol. i, p. 472. The remark is still very common
in both towns, but probably the tradition has not been continuous. Dug-
dale very possibly preserved it. See also Fuller, Church History of
Britain, III, p. 332.
“She died 1178; for her writings see Migne, P.L. 197.
NUNS, HERMITS, AND PILGRIMS 113
and delight; and the Emperor Barbarossa once asked her
advice. Her contemporary, 8S. Elizabeth of Schénau, had
revelations about the famous virgins of Koln and S. Ursula.
It is remarkable that her passion for celibacy made her feel
doubts as to the complete depravity of heretics who were
supposed to be opposed to marriage, the Cathari.
In the thirteenth century the literary nuns of Helfta in
Saxony were giving their house wide fame for its Christian
mysticism. The well-known revelations of Sister Gertrude
(d. 1311) have a clear, sweet note of true monastic devotion
and deep love of Our Lord, but before the time of 8. Thomas
a Kempis (p. 213) no other writer, monk or nun, seems to
have come quite to the level of real inspiration that character
izes the Lady Julian of Norwich.
The revelations of this fourteenth-century mystic make a
real appeal. They stand out distinct and clear. They leave
a strong impression which many of such writings do not. As
she describes the heaven that she saw from her lonely cell,
she gives us a real picture that all would like to remember
in death: “And in this Shewing mine understanding was
lifted up into heaven where I saw our Lord as a lord in His
own house, which hath called all His dearworthy servants
and friends to a stately feast. Then I saw the Lord take no
place in His own house, but I saw Him royally reign in His
house, fulfilling it with joy and mirth, Himself endlessly to
gladden and to solace His dearworthy friends, full homely
and full courteously, with marvellous melody of endless love,
in His own fair blessed Countenance.” °
And there is something extraordinarily beautiful in her
description of the blessed Virgin: “I saw her ghostly, in
bodily likeness: a simple maid and a meek, young of age and
little waxen above a child, in the stature that she was when
she conceived. Also God showed in part the wisdom and
the truth of her soul: wherein I understood the reverent
5 Revelation, vi.
114 CHRISTIAN MONASTICISM
beholding in which she beheld her God and Maker, marvel-
ling with great reverence that He would be born of her that
was a simple creature of His making.”
But while the mystic writings of medizval nuns are apt
to compare quite favourably with such rather ordinary reve-
lations as those, for example, of the Monk of Evesham
(really Eynsham), it is evident that they were rather in-
clined to prefer to receive their rules from men. The Cis-
tercian chronicler, Ailred of Rievaulx (the biographer of
King David I of Scotland) in the twelfth century wrote a
rule which advises nuns to live by the work of their hands,
not to own flocks, nor to engage in secular business, nor to
turn their cells into schools.
The better known “ancren riwle” of the following century
distinguishes between professed nuns and ladies who merely
lived together without taking any vows. “The true re-
cluses,” it says, “are indeed birds of heaven, that fly aloft
and sit on the green boughs singing merrily; that is, they
meditate, enraptured, upon the blessedness of heaven that
never fadeth but is ever green, singing right merrily.”
Keeping school is fraught with danger from the personal
affection it is apt to bring. So it will be better to let servants
do any teaching that must be done. No other animal than
a cat should be kept, unless the community has need of a
cow. Apparently dogs were deemed unsuitable to religious
as entailing a good deal of attention, which seems indeed to
have been the case with the one owned by Chaucer’s nun.
At Carrow Priory, Norwich, the monastery cat once con-
trived to make considerable trouble by killing a pet sparrow
belonging to a nun, an incident immortalized by one of
Skelton’s best-known poems,® which to a slight extent helps
us to picture the atmosphere of a sisterhood at the end of
the Middle Ages. The evil custom of using convents for the
* Boke of Phyllyp Sparowe slain by Gib, owr cat savage, among the
Nones Blake, by John Skelton (d. 1529). Ed. A. Dyce.
NUNS, HERMITS, AND PILGRIMS 11485
support of girls belonging to leading families for whom no
husbands could be found had long tended to multiply the
number of nuns with no real vocation to religion.
That the old double monastery rather appealed to the
British mind seems to be indicated by the way it reappears
in the only distinctively English order of the Middle Ages.
S. Gilbert of Sempringham in Lincolnshire (c. 1083-1189),
after studying all monastic rules with the object of taking its
best features from each, decided in favour of houses for both
nuns and monks. The head of the whole establishment was
a prior with direct charge of the canons, and the women were
under the control of three colleague prioresses, who took it
in turn to preside in chapter.
The nuns did the cooking and sewing, besides being in
charge of the library, but hatches were arranged so that men
and women should see as little as possible of each other.
Excavations at Watton Abbey* have shown that a wall
divided the church so that both nuns and canons when in
choir could see the altar and take part in the same singing
but could not see each other.
The Premonstratensian order (p. 97) was originally
double, but this was abolished as early as 1137, though some
few nunneries remained.*' Another double order was that
of Fontevraud,®? which had a house at Amesbury in England.
There were very obvious dangers in these houses and the
system never spread very far. As early as 1200, we find
Abbot Hugh of Cluny (p. 123) issuing an order that no
woman might be received into any monastery of the order
except ad succurrendum; that is, when there is immediate
danger of death.’°
™In Yorkshire, founded about 1150 by Eustace Fitz John on an old
nunnery site.
®See Helyot, Histoire des ordres monastiques, 1714, ii, p. 175.
°This abbey was founded by Robert of Arbrissel (d. 1117), who made
a lady, Husende of Champagne, its Superior.
”D. Royce, Landbok of Winchcombe, I, 210. Coulton, Five Centuries
of Religion, I, 480.
116 CHRISTIAN MONASTICISM
It is remarkable, however, that as late as the fourteenth
century a woman felt that the cause of religion could best
be served by the foundation of a new order and by a revival
of double monasteries. One of the most interesting monu-
ments in the cathedral at Upsala, Sweden, commemorates a
man known to his own generation as the president of a com-
mission that codified the laws of Upland in 1296, but to us
as the father of S. Brigitta, or Briget (1304-73). Though
she had been married and was the mother of seven children,
she developed in later hfe a great admiration for monasticism.
She received a number of revelations which are not very
interesting in themselves, but they were so pointed in their
allusions that she had to travel abroad. She made the pil-
_grimage to Jerusalem and spent some time in Italy, attempt-
ing to get the Popes back from Avignon to Rome, in which
latter city she died.
Her order centred at Wadstena, in her native land. Ata
time when monastic culture was beginning to decay (p. 241)
it tried to collect books and to promote education and in fact
is chiefly remarkable as the last great effort that was made in
the Middle Ages—and it was after the rise of the friars—
to revive without any serious modification the older monastic
ideals,
The only house of the Brigittine order in England was
Zion on the Thames, and it came into being through the mar-
riage of a daughter of Henry IV to Eric XIII of Sweden
(1406). The chapel had a double choir, separated only by
an iron screen, so that the monks and nuns could see each
other as they chanted their offices.
At the dissolution some of them retired to the Continent
and have continued their corporate existence—the only Eng-
lish convent that escaped complete dissolution.
Hermits: Despite the decision of 8. Benedict of Aniane
11 There are copious extracts’ in Bp. Wordsworth’s Hale Lectures, 1910,
The National Church of Sweden, pp. 129-132.
NUNS, HERMITS, AND PILGRIMS 117
to seek a revival of the Rule of S. Benedict the Great
(p. 98), there were important medizval developments in
the direction of a completer return to the genesis of monasti-
cism as practised by the solitaries of the desert. Purely
from the point of view of the story of asceticism these are
possibly of even more significance than the rise of the orders
of Cluny and Citeaux, but as we are principally concerned
with the place of monasticism in the history of the world
their importance is very much less.
In the eleventh century the Camaldulensian order was °
founded (c. 1020), by Romuald of Ravenna who, after sow-
ing his wild oats, became exceedingly austere and helped to
bring about in Italy a remarkable monastic revival which
sought to restore much of the manner of life of the Egyptian
monks.
General religious life was at a low ebb; the great Em-
peror, Otto III, the last who ever reigned at Rome, was
trying to reform the Papacy by the inauguration of a
German, Bruno (Gregory V) and he greatly welcomed
Romuald’s reform, reverently kissing his cowl. Though an
eremitical or hermit order, the Camaldulensians followed the
Benedictines in their splendid missionary work. Vallom-
brosa, among the Apennines, founded in 1038 by Gualbert,
became the centre of another such order.
That of Grandmont (1073) was almost purely French and
that its bons hommes might be free for their contemplation,
all business affairs were entrusted to lay brothers. Its Rule,
based on the Camaldulensian, was committed to writing in
1124 after the death of its founder, Stephen, a nobleman of
Auvergne.
A German, Bruno of Koln, was the founder of the best
known of the eremitical orders. It dates from about 1086
and takes its name from the mother house in the deserts of
Chartreuse, near Grenoble, in what was Burgundy of old.
Alone of all great orders, though it never was very large, the
118 CHRISTIAN MONASTICISM
Carthusians boast that they have never needed to be re-
formed, for through all the centuries till today they have
kept something like the austerity with which they began.
Their severe asceticism made a profound impression on
the Benedictines of that day. Guibert, Abbot of Nogent,
wrote of them: “They hardly ever speak, and if they want
anything they make signs. If they drink wine it is watered
so as to be scarcely stronger than water. They wear a hair
shirt next the skin, while their other garments are scanty
and thin.” +* Peter the Venerable (p. 184) says of them:
“To mortify the flesh they wear hair shirts; their fasting
is almost continuous; * * * they never eat meat; cheese
and eggs only Sundays and Thursdays. * * * They live in
separate little houses like the monks of Egypt and occupy
their time in silence in reading, prayer, and working with
their hands, particularly writing books. They say most of
the offices in their cells, but come together in their church
for vespers and matins.” **
Just under the Hambleton Hills of Yorkshire still stand
the singularly complete ruins of a house of this order, which
was built in the fifteenth century; Mount Grace is absolutely
destitute of that monastic magnificence so characteristic of
Cistercian abbeys not far off. The severely simple cells sur-
round two large courts, each with a hatch through the wall
by which food could be passed to its occupant.
Between the courts is a church, small and extremely plain
(p. 285); but that in one respect at least there was an im-
provement on the habits of the Egyptian monks is proved by
the presence of the usual monastic lavatory at the entrance
to the refectory, a building not very frequently used, for
only on particular festivals were there any common meals.
Directly, perhaps, this order has played but little part in
the story of the world, but it was a work by a Carthusian
4 Migne, P.L., 161, col. 853.
*Ib., 189, col. 943-5. De miraculis, II, 28.
NUNS, HERMITS, AND PILGRIMS 119
monk which at a very critical time turned the thoughts of
Ignatius Loyola to religion and changed the whole current
of his life.
Piterims: Visiting places consecrated by the faith was a
very common occupation of our medieval fathers. Not again
till the building of railroads did men tour Europe so much.
Not infrequently there was exactly that mingling of religion
and pleasure, of pilgrimage and picnic, that may yet be seen
in the ancient shrines of Japan. Despite the utmost differ-
ence of every detail, much of the atmosphere of Chaucer’s
pilgrimage to Canterbury may be felt in Nikko or Kyoto
today.
Veneration for the last resting-places of saints and pil-
grimage to their tombs seems to be nearly as old as Chris-
tianity. It was probably the origin of the dedication of
churches to saints. Reginald Pecock thus defends the prac-
tice: ‘And ferther, sithen it is not resonable and conuenient
that such bodies or bonis or relikis be left withoute in the
baar feeld (and that bothe for it were azens the eese of the
peple which schulde come therto in reyny and wyndi wedris,
and for that thei myzten thanne be take awey be wickid men
not dredind God) therfore it is ful resonable and worthi
for to bilde ouer tho bodies and bonis and other relikis
chapellis or chirchis.” 14
The custom of pilgrimage antedates the rise of monasti-°
cism, but both in East and West most chief shrines came into
- the Reason of monks. In Britain those of S. Patrick at
Down, 8. Columba at Iona, S. Thomas at Canterbury, S.
Cuthbert of Lindisfarne, enshrined at Durham, Our Lady
of Walsingham, 8. Edmund, 8. Alban, S. Swithun at Win-
chester, the Confessor at Westminster, and Edward II at
Gloucester, with many more, were all in the churches of
* Repressor of overmuch blaming of the clergy, II, 8. The work did
much to get the writer into trouble; it is strongly anti-Lollard and yet
not according to the orthodox standards of the day. The work belongs
to the middle of the fifteenth century and is printed in the Rolls Series.
120 CHRISTIAN MONASTICISM
monks, but others of importance such as S. David and S. >
Richard of Chichester were in the churches of secular canons.
Monks guard most of the holy places of the East, but in
Western Europe on the mainland many great shrines have
always been in secular hands, such as the Three Kings, at
Milan, carried off by Barbarossa to Koln, 8. Olaf, at Trondh-
jem, Charles the Great, at Aachen.
In the treasury of the cathedral at Sens is a most inter-
esting collection of thirteenth-century documents relating to
the miracles and canonization of S. Edmund Rich, Con-
fessor, and Archbishop of Canterbury, 1234-40. He died at
Soisy and was buried in the abbey at Pontigny, canonized
1248,
In 1240, Guy de Villenauxe, Abbot, notifies the faithful
at Canterbury that miracles are being wrought at the tomb.
In 1244, after communications from the university of Ox-
ford, the convent of Merton, and Robert, Bishop of Salisbury,
an inquiry was held at Pontigny by Albert, Archbishop of
Armagh, and Lucas, Dean of Paris. Next year the former
issued an indulgence to all visitors to the tomb. In 1245,
(S.) Richard, Bishop of Chichester, the Prior of Esseby,
and Robert Bacon, a Dominican friar, report on the miracles
and next year the Bishops of Lincoln and London publish
another report favourable to the miracles.
We then get indulgences or other endorsements of the
miracles from the Archbishop of Canterbury and several
other English prelates, from Scottish, German, and French
bishops, besides those of Lacedemonia, Antarade, and of
Sora, while Henry III of England in 1251 presented four
candles. Finally on April 20, 1255, Pope Alexander IV
issues an indulgence of seven years for all who visit the
shrine and offer alms.
Probably the documents that survive are only part of the
original collection. The whole suggests that the monastic or
other guardians of the tomb of a saint, or other prominent
NUNS, HERMITS, AND PILGRIMS 121
Christian, sometimes sent travellers to interview bishops and
others whose endorsement was expected to carry weight in
every part of Christendom to get indulgences for their pil-
grims. These might be expected to enhance the popularity
of the new shrine by demonstrating to patrons from every
land that the place was accepted as worthy of veneration by
the bishops of their own home towns.
That sometimes a business element entered into such mat-
ters is evident from the fact that when the rather worthless
king of England, Edward II, was put to death in Berkeley
eastle, one church after another refused sepulture. Thokey,
Abbot of Gloucester, however, realizing that a reaction would
inevitably come and that the stock of the murdered sovereign
was sure to rise as time softened existing animosities, gave a
tomb in the choir of his church.
His prescience was abundantly justified. After a few
years the tomb became a shrine, and from the offerings of
the pilgrims most of the church was splendidly transformed
as we see it today in all the magnificence of the twilight of
the Gothie style.
The pilgrimage to Canterbury inspired in Chaucer one of
the finest of all English poems. It is remarkable that in
later days its lingering memories suggested the “Pilgrim’s
Progress.” Staying in the neighbourhood of Guildford beside
the North Downs, on the road from the west country to Can-
terbury, when the memories of old days were still fresh,
Bunyan must have spoken to men whose grandfathers had
made the pilgrimage. And as he wandered over the grass-
grown way and explored the downs and the swamps, the
rivers and the fields, as he visited Shelford Fair and looked
up to the Surrey Hills, the idea of his great masterpiece
must gradually have taken shape in his mind.
It was medisvalism that inspired the noblest of all the
writings of early Puritanism, which in its general atmos-
phere still preserves much of the old monastic point of view.
122 CHRISTIAN MONASTICISM
It is the spirit of the Middle Ages that pervades the work,
but in its pure simple language and its tremendous sincerity,
in the marvellous and unstudied success of its allegory, it can
rank with the very finest outpourings of the soul of Chris-
tianity in any age.
By the other great Puritan writer of that same period,
the middle of the seventeenth century, was described the
charm and beauty of monastic life in poetry that has cer-
tainly been excelled by no one. The whole spirit of the
medizval mystic in his cloister lives again, as for many of us
nowhere else, in Milton’s “Il Penseroso.”
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Bede’s Ecclesiastical History and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
are very conveniently accessible in the well-known translation by
Dr. J. A. Giles. For the centenarian of the monks, S. Gilbert,
see Dictionary of National Biography (which for British ascetics
is generally better than any encyclopedia); also Dugdale, Mo-
nasticon Anglicanum, VI, 2, pp. Il-xcix. Also Graham: St. Gil-
bert of Sempringham and the Gilbertines.
Sixteen Revelations of Divine Love shewed to a Devout Servant
of our Lord, called Mother Juliana, an Anchorete of Norwich, ed.
Cressy, 1670. Last edition, Fr. Tyrrell, 1902.
Lina Eckenstein’s Woman under Monasticism (Cambridge,
1896) is admirable, with copious references to the sources.
Eileen Power’s Medieval English Nunneries, c. 1275-1555 is an
excellent piece of work.
Works on medieval pilgrimage are: Camm, Forgotten Shrines.
vege et tr. Smith; English Wayfaring Life in the Middle
ges.
:
,
CHAPTER VIII
THE GREAT HOUSE OF CLUNY
Of all the great abbeys of medieval days, there was none
quite so powerful as that of Cluny, which became eventually
the mother house of an order that counted several hundred
priories stretching from Palestine to Scotland, all under the
immediate control of the Abbot of Cluny himself. He en-
joyed a preéminence overshadowed only by that of the Pope.
Within his own domain, he coined money and exercised
almost regal power.
The house was founded by William, Duke of Aquitaine, ~
and the original charter, dated September 11, 910, is exceed-
ingly interesting as illustrating the general point of view of
the pious founders of medieval times; in its main provisions
it is exactly like a thousand more. K
“To all right thinkers it is clear that the providence of ,
God has so provided for certain rich men that, by means of |
their transitory possessions, if they use them wall: they may
be able to merit everlasting rewards. As to eich thing,
indeed, the divine word, showing it to be possible and altos
gether advising it, says: ‘The riches of a man are the redemp-
tion of his soul,’ + I, William, count and duke by the grace
of God, diligently pondering this, and desiring to provide
for my own safety while I am still able, have considered it
advisable—nay, most necessary—that from the temporal
goods which have been conferred upon me I should give some
little portion for the gain of my soul.
1 Proverbs, xiii, 8.
123
124 CHRISTIAN MONASTICISM
“T do this, indeed, in order that I who have thus increased
in wealth may not, perchance, at the last be accused of having
spent all in caring for my body, but rather may rejoice, when
fate at last shall snatch all things away, in having reserved
something for myself. * * * I hand over from my own
rule to the holy apostles, Peter namely and Paul, the pos-
sessions over which I hold sway, the town of Cluny namely,
with the demesne manor and the church in honour of St.
Mary the mother of God and of St. Peter the prince of the
apostles, together with all the things pertaining to it, the
vills, indeed, the chapels, the serfs of both sexes, the vines,
the fields, the meadows, the woods, the waters and their out-
lets, the mills, the incomes and revenues, what is cultivated
and what is not, all in their entirety. * * *
“T adjure you, oh holy apostles and glorious princes of
the world, Peter and Paul, and thee, oh supreme pontiff of
the apostolic see, that, through the canonical and apostolic
authority which ye have received from God, ye do remove
from participation in the holy church and in eternal life,
the robbers and invaders and alienators of these possessions,
which I do give to you with joyful heart and ready will.”
The Rule of S. Benedict is prescribed and the charter con-
templates nothing like the foundation of a new order. The
Duke asked advice from his friend Berno, of whose well-
ordered little monastery at Baume he had heard excellent
things. To the ducal horror the Abbot declared that the only
really suitable site for the new house was his favourite hunt-
ing place at Cluny and further, perhaps not entirely without —
a grim sense of humour, he selected the dog-kennel as occu-
pying the exact spot where the church should rise. The Duke
was shocked, as any good sportsman might be. He protested,
but it was quite in vain.
Bidden to reflect what reward God would give him for dogs
and what for monks, he let Berno have his own way, and
where the hunting dogs had bayed there rose the great church
THE GREAT HOUSE OF CLUNY 125
that in size? and magnificence surpassed all other buildings
of medieval date.
The abbey was endowed with wide local autonomy and
freed from secular control by any earthly power. The
charter provides that no count nor other worldly ruler, no
bishop, nor even the Pope may invade its property. Thus
from the first, Cluny was the seat of a prince abbot, who was
rapidly to take his place among the highest prelates of
Christendom.
It is remarkable that there was no intrinsic reason why
Cluny should soar to so high an eminence; no great saint
was there enshrined, it represented no important city or state,
its founder was a feudal prince not more illustrious than
many of his fellows.
But the abbey may be said from the very first to have stood
preéminently for a monastic imperialism that was presently
to influence the whole Church. It sought to reincarnate the
Roman spirit of discipline and that on the vastest scale.
-§. Benedict in his Rule had taken the Roman conception of
the patria potestas; the abbot was the father in a monastic
_ family, who claimed no high position in the Church, and in
the State still less.
Cluny rapidly evolved an abbot who stood in the place of
a sovereign and exercised imperial sway over every house
of the vast organization. The medizval orders, and Cluny in
particular, might have tended to decentralize the Church by
giving to monastic Christianity other capitals than Rome,
but any such tendency was completely neutralized by the
closest union of the ascetic forces with the Papacy.
In authority the Abbot of Cluny was second but to the
2 Prof. Edward Prior points out (History of Gothic Art in England,
p. 34) that no less than four English churches were larger than the
original church at Cluny,—London, Winchester, S. Edmundsbury, and S.
Albans—all but the first monastic. But the addition of the huge nar-
thex at Cluny, finished in 1220, made the Burgundian church larger
than any of its English rivals.
126 CHRISTIAN MONASTICISM
sovereign Pontiff, the only other ecclesiastic (except perhaps
the grand masters of the military orders [chap. xv]) whose
authority was Europe-wide; more powerful than any metro-
politan, yet in orders merely a priest. The heads of all the
daughter priories met together in the General Chapter, but
this was purely advisory and all real authority in the im-
mense organization belonged to the Abbot of Cluny, who thus
towered over all other figures in the monastic world almost
as did the Pope in the universal Church. Far too much
depended on his own personality for permanently effective
rule.
Berno died before any great building progress was made.
The real moulder of the destinies of Cluny was Odo, the
second abbot. His life was written by an enthusiastic dis-
ciple, another monk named John.? Odo had a very peculiar
veneration for S. Martin (p. 57) to whom his father had
dedicated him when a child.
He was horrified, however, by the monks of Tours who
were so entirely oblivious of the traditions of their great
Father that they would not even wear monastic garb; they
went about in flowing robes of many colours and wore shoes
that shone like glass.* Evidently the ravages of the North-
men and the general confusion they brought about were ruin-
ing monastic life.
Eventually at Baume he had found congenial cloister life
and because of his learning he was appointed schoolmaster.
When nearly fifty years of age he became the Abbot of Cluny
and energetically entered upon the task of building the struc-
tures that were needed. Funds were lacking, the plans were
on a vast scale, many difficulties were encountered, but
S. Martin, who was always very highly honoured at Cluny,
gave miraculous help.
* Vita Odonis a Joanne, Migne, P. L. 133.
*Vita, III, 1. It is remarkable that monastic excess in dress in the
Middle Ages frequently took the form of very splendid shoes.
THE GREAT HOUSE OF CLUNY 127
In 927, Odo obtained a royal charter from Rudolf of
Burgundy, king of the Franks, confirming the privileges
granted by the founder, particularly its freedom from royal
authority and the right of the abbot to coin money.
The good name of the house and his own prestige were
greatly enhanced by the much needed and successful reform
which he carried out at Fleury, an ancient abbey whose
reputation stood very high from its enshrining the bones of
S. Benedict and his sister, Scholastica. These had been
piously stolen from Monte Cassino in the sixth century by
the second abbot of Fleury, aided first by a miraculous light
which guided his agent to the shrine, and then by a mist
which concealed him from pursuing soldiers. ®
This good work was only the beginning of the splendid
part that Odo took in the monastic reform which in the early
tenth century was preparing the way for that brilliant re-
vival of civilization which so marked the eleventh, a develop-
ment often attributed (and perhaps with some measure of
truth) to the general relief that the year 1000 had safely
passed without bringing the much dreaded end of the world.
Tirelessly, both in Italy and Gaul, Odo travelled about
reviving monastic life, which had suffered sorely in the bar-
barian invasions. Among other houses, Monte Cassino itself,
which was in a pitiable condition, felt his fostering care.
He appointed his disciple Baldwin its abbot.
Combining great powers of organization with a deep
humility and real delight in helping those he met, sometimes
in the most menial way, fired by an apostolic fervour and
animated by the truest piety, Odo was one of the best prod-
ucts of monasticism in a dark and dreary age.
While he was crossing the Cottian Alps his party fell in
with a poor old man staggering under the weight of a sack
’>The success of the theft is admitted by the Cassinese monk, Paul
_ Warnefrid, who wrote a History of the Lombards about 775. See Coul-
ton, Five Centuries of Religion, I, p. 237, seq.
128 CHRISTIAN MONASTICISM
of garlic, onions, and bread, which were so evil-smelling that
John himself got away as far as he possibly could. But for
miles and miles over the steepest portions of the alpine road,
while the old man rode upon the Abbot’s horse, the repellent
load was carried by one of the chief leaders of the Europe of
that day. When John at length came up, Odo, still bearing
the load, rebuked him for objecting to the odour of what the
poor man had to eat and told him it was time to chant some
psalms.®
John tells the story against himself. It is so typical of
Odo’s whole character that it is not at all difficult to account
for the extraordinary popularity that he and other monks
were everywhere winning for themselves. Of all the rulers
that Europe ever knew, none so deserved the people’s love as
the best and most devoted of the monks.
Odo may possibly have originated the common proverb:
“Beauty is only skin-deep,” which occurs in a very character-
istic passage where the vileness of the body is pointed out in
language that recalls Buddhism.? He was stricken by mortal
sickness while in Rome, but by the special favour of S.
Martin his strength was temporarily restored and he died
at Tours amid the much loved associations of childhood
(942 a.p.)
. Thus very early in its career the Abbey of Cluny showed
that imperial spirit of solicitude for monastic revival and —
organization that marked the course of its history. Con- —
veniently remote from serious royal interference, yet close to
a chief highway from the north of Europe to Rome, it ha”
many advantages of site and the growth of its power ¥
rapid.
The story of each newly rising order is monotonously,
same. The early members displayed a saintly humility 4°
* Vita, a Joanne monacho, II, 6. Migne, P.L. 133 col. 64.
col. 556.
i
3
'§. Odonis Collationum Libri Tres, II, ix. Migne, P.L. vol. 13%, :
THE GREAT HOUSE OF CLUNY 129
recalls much that is best in the traditions of the Egyptian
monks; their successors developed a pomp and magnificence
that is more reminiscent of Louis XIV, or Napoleon. Yet
no princely abbot at the very worst was such a pest to man-
kind as the war-lords that Europe breeds.
The fourth Abbot of Cluny was Maiolus, a man of noble
birth, the trusted and intimate friend of Otto the Great, and,
despite his high birth, such an enthusiast for monastic reform
that he apparently refused the Papacy itself. He was ani-
mated by the same high spirituality as Odo, dividing all
spare time between silent prayer and reading, moderate in all
things, and so devoted to charity that on one occasion he
improved upon the record of S. Martin himself by giving his
whole cloak to a beggar.®
Among other convents of ancient date that in the true
spirit of Cluny he did something to reform were Lerins itself
(p. 69) and S. Bénigne at Dijon. (The rebuilt church of
the latter became the cathedral after the old one had been de-
stroyed in the French Revolution.) Captured in the defiles
of the Alps by marauding Saracens, Maiolus is said to have
converted several of the Moslems, but Cluny was temporarily
impoverished in order to ransom its Abbot.
Odilo, the fifth Abbot, who also came of the Burgundian
nobility, displayed the imperial spirit of Cluny by rebuild-
ing the cloister ® and other portions in so splendid a style
that he used to boast that like Cesar Augustus he had found
his seat of wood but would leave it of marble. It was appar-
ently his work that distressed the mind of S. Bernard
p. 231) as being so inappropriate for monks.
All the time the authority of the Abbot was being ex-
ided, partly by the foundation of new Cluniac houses and
artly by the voluntary submission to the central abbey of
8 Vita Sancti Maioli, auctore Syro monacho, II, 18, Migne, P.L. 137,
col. 763.
°Of the cloister there are few remains, but some capitals in the sur-
viving portions of the church answer to 8. Bernard’s description.
130 CHRISTIAN MONASTICISM
older priories. Odilo was intimate with sovereigns, for
Cluny was ever an aristocratic house.. Even with emperors,
he associated on something like equal terms. After the coro-
nation of Henry II, the Pope (Benedict VIII) presented
publicly to the holy Roman Emperor a golden apple sur-
mounted by a cross. Gratefully accepting the gift, the sov-
ereign at once passed it on to the Abbot of Cluny, declaring,
“Tt is more fitting that this should belong to those who tread
the pomps of the world underfoot and follow the cross of
the Saviour.” 1°
Thus Cluny secured emphatic imperial recognition of-a
very special place indeed. To its Abbot in preference to any
one of the princely archbishops of the Rhineland was handed
the choicest symbolic gift that the Pope could present to the
Emperor himself. In his favour a German sovereign pre-
ferred a Frenchman or at least a Burgundian to any of the
great Teutonic ecclesiastics.
The impression that the rising magnificence of Cluny was
making upon unsympathetic outsiders is interestingly set
forth in the rather laboured lampoon written by Adalbero,
the Bishop of Laon (p. 193). A monk of the old school was
sent by him to visit Cluny. He returned in an impossibly
short time, incredibly transformed.’
No longer clothed in monastic garb, but with high pointed
toes to his shoes and spurs that pricked the ground, he leapt
off his foaming steed and called for wife and children. The
Bishop he addressed with clenched fist and stretched-out arm
without an atom of respect. “JI am a soldier now,” he said,
“and if a monk, a monk with a difference. Indeed I am no
longer a monk, but fight at the command of a king, my
master Odilo.” ™
This is hardly the judgement of Odilo that posterity will
07, M. Smith, Cluny, p. 151. She quotes Rod. Glad, I, 5.
11 Adalberonis Carmen (ad Rotbertum regem Francorum), lines 80-
115; Migne, P.L. 141, col. 771, seq.
THE GREAT HOUSE OF CLUNY — 181
endorse. He was extremely interested in the effort to end,
or at least moderate, the pest of war that marked the begin-
ning of the eleventh century, and he is credited with having
by divine inspiration instituted the treuga Det, or peace of
God by which all private war was barred from Saturday
night till Monday morning.’”
At least he sought with all his power to deal with what for
fifteen hundred years has been Europe’s greatest curse.1®
If he had not all the success that might have been hoped, at
least our own generation cannot throw many stones.
There was always apt to be difficulty in adjusting the rela-
tion of monasticism with the official Church. Basil, in the
Kast had sought to overcome it by a not very happy expedient
of amalgamation (p. 47). The early Benedictines had fully
accepted the decision of the Council of Chalcedon (451 a.p.)
by which all monasteries were to be subject to the diocesan
bishops.
Cluny had been expressly exempted from episcopal con-
trol, but as (except in Celtic monasteries) it was extremely
rare—if indeed it was ever the case unless in exceptional
conditions—that any member of a monastic chapter should
be in episcopal orders, it was not possible to dispense with
outside authority for functions that an ordinary priest could
not perform. As by this time it was the custom that
most, at any rate, of the monks should be in holy
orders (p. 95), the question was of frequent occurrence.
The second prelate of Western Christendom was, in the
service of the sanctuary, inferior to the bishop of the meanest
see.
At the council of Ansa in 1025, Gauzlin, the Bishop of
Macon, lodged a complaint that, in contempt of his diocesan
2 Pertz, Scriptores, VIII, 403. Hugo Flaviniac, quoted Smith’s Cluny,
% 18 Odilo is also credited with the institution of the feast of All Souls
(Nov. 2d) on the day following All Hallows. To pray for all Christian
souls was preéminently the duty of the monk.
132 CHRISTIAN MONASTICISM
authority, Abbot Odilo had called in another bishop to ordain
certain monks.** ‘The intruding prelate complained of was
Burchard, the Archbishop of Vienne. Odilo naturally
pleaded the charters that exempted his abbey from all dioc-
esan authority. To this it was objected that no power in
the Church could override the decrees of an cecumenical
council and the canons of Chalcedon were precise. An ap-
peal was made to the Pope, who vigorously took up the
abbey’s cause and the Bishop of Macon had completely to
withdraw his claims.
It would, of course, have been just the same had he
occupied one of the greatest sees of Christendom, but Cluny
undoubtedly found it easier to maintain its autonomy because
of the relative insignificance of the diocese in which it was
situated. The small porch and octagonal towers of the Cathe-
dral of S. Vincent, which are all that the fury of the revolu-
tionists spared, remind one that Macon was one of the lesser
dioceses of Christendom; the cathedral itself was hardly too
large to have formed a Lady Chapel to the huge abbey church
at Cluny.
The Popes were drawn by unescapable circumstances into
the position of taking the part of the regular clergy against
the diocesan bishops. Monasteries’ were definitely cosmo-
politan and as a rule knew no distinction of country or. of
race. The secular clergy usually had more local associations
and as nations began slowly to emerge, as feudalism decayed ©
and the imperial theory grew dim, they were inevitably
caught up in the movement.
The medizeval system had no room for a national Church,
if for no other reason than that it knew no such thing as a
nation, but at different times such forces as Anglicanism and
Gallicanism could not be entirely ignored.
That Hildebrand was a monk of Cluny can now no longer
be asserted. Indeed doubts have been expressed as to whether
Mansi, Concilia, XIX, p. 423.
THE GREAT HOUSE OF CLUNY 133
he was a monk at all.‘° The point is not of great impor-
tance; he was undoubtedly inspired by the same great ideals
as. were the Cluniacs when he determined rigorously to
enforce ancient canons on all the clergy, and so to build up
a great theocracy by separating the clergy from all worldly
interests and giving them no other serious concern than the
maintenance of that great organization that has made the
Latin Church by far the most impressive religious fabric
that the world has ever seen.
During the latter part of the eleventh century the good
order of Cluny made so favourable an impression on William
de Warenne and his wife Gundrada,(?) daughter of William
the Conqueror, that he founded in his own town of Lewes a
splendid priory of the same order, thus giving the Cluniaes
one of the first of their thirty-five English houses. Doubt-
less the monks knew how worthily to entertain the great ones
of the earth. Possibly the earl was not very critical of
monastic magnificence.
In the second charter to Lewes (1087) the founder recites
how he and Gundrada, being prevented from passing on to
Rome because Pope and Emperor were at war, “turned to
the monastery of Cluny, a great and holy abbey in honour of
% The only contemporary authority for saying that Hildebrand was a
Cluniac is Bonizo of Sutri Liber ad amicum (P. Jaffe, Bibliotheca rerum
Germanicarum, II, 630) and this is worthless. The Catholic Encyclo-
pedia, Art. Gregory VII, says that Hildebrand was professed in Rome;
Workman, Hvolution of the Monastic Ideal, p. 229, says that he was not
a monk; but neither gives any reference. In any case, as Provisor he
reformed the convent of S. Paul without the Walls, at Rome, and was
entirely in sympathy with monastic ideals.
The chief early Western canons concerning clerical marriage were:
Rome, in 386 a.p. A layman who has married a widow may not be re-
ceived among the clergy; Hefele, Hist. of Councils, II, p. 387. . Rome, in
402 a.D. Bishops, priests and deacons must remain unmarried; Hefele,
II, p. 429. Hippo, in 398 a.p. Bishops and other clergy must not make
their children independent till their morals are well established.
Orange, in 441 a.D. Married men may not be ordained deacon unless
they have made vows of chastity; Hefele, III, p. 163. Second Synod of
Arles, in 443 or 452 ap. A married-man may not be ordained priest
unless he consents to divorce; Hefele, III, p. 168.
134 CHRISTIAN MONASTICISM
S. Peter; * * * and because we found the sanctity, the
religion and the charity of that place so great, and we were
received with such honour by the good Prior and all the
holy convent into their society and fraternity, we began to
have a love and devotion towards that order and to
that house above all others which we had seen”; and they
had visited many monasteries both in Burgundy and
France.
The Stewart family, later to ascend the Scottish throne,
founded in the twelfth century a Cluniac priory in Paisley.
This house, in 1245, received from Cluny the extremely rare
privilege of having an abbot of its own, who duly became a
lord of the Scottish Parliament.
Cluny was to know much unpeace in connexion with
Pontius de Melgueil, a godson of Pope Pascal II, who had
himself been a monk of that house. Pontius was elected
Abbot in 1109, and for a time ruled with some success. But
apparently the dominating position which he held in Chris-
tendom entirely turned his head. Not content with giving
offence to many of the Burgundian bishops, he attempted
definitely to establish his supremacy over the Abbot of Monte
Cassino as the head of the monastic world.
Cluny was wealthier than the older house and it had the
advantage of being at the head of a great and rising order,
but it had never been associated with anyone at all to be
compared with S. Benedict. The claim was perhaps in
accordance with the soaring ambition of Cluny, but it was
very ill-advised and eventually Pontius was forced to resign
and go on pilgrimage to the Holy Land.
The monks of Cluny elected in his place (after another
who almost immediately died) the greatest of all the line of
abbots and one of the most admirable and genial men of
medieval times, Pierre de Montboisier, generally known as
Peter the Venerable. Vigorously he set himself to the task
of restoring prosperity to the sadly desolated house, and
THE GREAT HOUSE OF CLUNY 135
things were beginning to improve when a chain of new
troubles made them again still worse.
Pontius had been finding his residence in the Latin king-
dom of Jerusalem an insupportable exile. And so to Cluny
he returned, not in the garb of a penitent but at the head of
a body of troops. Having stormed the Abbey, he paid his
brigand followers from the spoils of the very church, and
resumed his old position in a very novel way.
He contrived to maintain himself in infamous prosperity
for the space of about eight months. Then he had to submit
to a Papal decree declaring that as a usurping, sacrilegious,
schismatic, and excommunicate person he was deposed from
the position he had long ceased to adorn.*®
This extraordinary scandal was the occasion at least in
part of S. Bernard’s famous “Apology” concerning the
shortcomings of the monks, and particularly the Cluniacs.**
He begins with some criticisms of the Cistercians and a pro-
fession of real friendliness for the older order. But many
features of their life are most unsatisfactory. Meals are
sumptuous, well-cooked, and so varied that ‘even when |
the stomach complains that it is full, curiosity is_ still
alive.” 18 )
' Instead of the reading at meals that S. Benedict pre-
~seribed (p. 80) small talk and laughter fill the air. There
is a choice of several kinds of wine and the fact that the
Rule prescribes “a little” is ignored. The markets of town
after town have to be ransacked to find cloth enough for the
7° Peter the Venerable, De Miraculis, Lib. II, cap. xii, Migne, P.L. 189,
col. 922-924.
# Apologia ad Guillelmum Sancti Theoderici abbatem, Migne, P.L.
182, col. 895 seq.
% A study of the existing remains at Dunfermline seems clearly to
show that the huge and magnificent kitchen was common to the royal
palace and the great Augustinian Abbey which enshrined S. Margaret’s
remains. ‘Matthew of Westminster,” anno 1303, indignantly describes
the place as one where the chief nobles of Scotland were wont to meet
to arrange their designs against the king of England, implying that it
was far more fortress than monastery and therefore fair game in war.
136 CHRISTIAN MONASTICISM
dress of the monks, and the religious are clothed in a manner
that emperors or kings would not disdain.
Manual labour is done by servants. The pomp of the
\. Abbot is beyond all bounds: “I have seen an Abbot with
sixty horses after him, and even more. Would you not
think, as you see them pass, that they were not fathers of
monasteries, but lords of castles—not shepherds of souls, but
princes of provinces ?
“Then there is the baggage, containing tablecloths, and
cups, and basins, and candlesticks, and. well-filled wallets,—
not with the coverlets, but the ornaments of the beds. My
lord Abbot can never go more than four leagues from his
house without taking all his furniture with him, as if he were
going to the wars, or about to cross a desert where necessaries
cannot be had. Is it quite impossible to wash one’s hands in,
and drink from, the same vessel? Will not your candle burn
anywhere but in that gold or silver candlestick of yours
which you carry with you? Is sleep impossible except upon
a variegated mattress, or under a foreign coverlet?’ 1° The
magnificence of the buildings is extremely excessive (p. 230) ;
the effect of the splendid services was heightened by great
trees of brass glittering by their jewels quite as much as by
their numerous candles.
The Cluniacs had started out with greatly lengthened
services but not with any strong effort to increase the Bene-
dictine standard of asceticism. It seems clear from the testi-
mony of S. Bernard himself that even in the early twelfth
century the monasteries—at any rate, some of those belong-
ing to the Cluniac order—were already becoming those
pleasant clubs of which Chaucer’s monk was a typical inmate
-—not a saint but a country gentleman and pleasant, friendly
neighbour.
For centuries yet the cloister was to attract a large pro-
portion of the best intellects of Europe. A medizeval “Who’s
* Trans. by J. C. Morison, Saint Bernard, p. 130.
THE GREAT HOUSE OF CLUNY 137
Who” would very largely have been made up of monastic
names, at least into the fifteenth century.
The letters of Peter to S. Bernard are couched in an ex-
ceedingly conciliatory spirit. He addresses the Abbot of
Clairvaux as ‘‘most dear brother,” wishing him eternal salva-
tion, and according to his usual custom he describes himself
as the humble Abbot of Cluny. In courtesy he certainly has
the better of Bernard, but hardly in argument.
He cannot deny the substantial truth of most of the allega-
tions, but he says they are of relatively minor importance.
Probably he would himself have liked to tighten up Cluniac
discipline to something nearer the Cistercian standard.”°
With him the great Abbots of Cluny come to an end.
Leadership, though not the same power, was to pass to the
rising order of the Cistercians. From 1528, the Dukes of
Guise held the great Abbey as commendatory Abbots. By
the French revolutionary mobs its buildings were wrecked
and part of what is left of the proud church is now built up
into the houses of the little town.
‘BIBLIOGRAPHY:
The principal authority for the history of Cluny is Bruel;
Recueil des chartes de Cluny.
Vols. i-iv are very extensively used in the admirable work on
the early history of the Abbey, up to the death of Odilo; L. M.
Smith’s The Early History of the Monastery of Cluny.
The Carmen of Adalbero is printed in Migne. P.Z. 141.
Vita Odonis a Joanne monacho, discipulo suo, is printed in
Migne. P.L. 1383; Vita sancti Maiolt, auctore Syro monacho, Migne.
P.L. 187. The works of Peter the Venerable are in Migne, P.L.
189.
There are very numerous modern works that deal in part with
Cluny, especially the controversy between S. Bernard and Peter
the Venerable. Maitland, Dark Ages, has much of the charm
of early Victorian scholarship in the early days of the Oxford
Movement.
*® The letters are printed in Migne, P.L. 189. 8S. R. Maitland, Dark
Ages, Nos. xxii, xxiil, defends the Cluniacs. G. G. Coulton, Five Centu-
ries of Religion, vol. i, ch. xxi, with a very much wider knowledge of the
original documents, is inclined to support the Cistercians.
CHAPTER IX
SAINT BERNARD AND THE CISTERCIANS
There is no real evidence that the Cluniacs ever aimed at
any more stringent asceticism than the Rule of 8. Benedict
contemplates. It was largely as a protest against their
splendour that the Cistercian reforms began. Neither of
these great orders had a particular rule, being merely Bene-
dictine developments.
It was in that part of Burgundy that surrounds Dijon,
the chief seat of the dukes, on whose southern border stands
Cluny itself, that the new order came into being. To it we
are indebted for some of the most beautiful ruins on the
earth, and many of these are in the British Isles.
The early suppression of the abbeys in those parts has had
the satisfactory, though certainly undesigned, result of pre-
serving large portions of the original medieval buildings, for
on the Continent nearly every important house reconstructed
all but the church in the far less picturesque style of \the
Renaissance. By a law dating from the very beginnings of,
the order, its houses were never to be in towns. They were
so frequently in low-lying spots as to give vogue to the
couplet:
Bernardus* valles, montes Benedictus amabat,
Oppida Franciscus, celebres Dominicus urbes.
Of course there are many exceptions, but Durham and
Monte Cassino, dominating great stretches of country from
*So prominent in early Cistercian days as frequently to be regarded
as the founder of the order.
138
SAINT BERNARD AND THE CISTERCIANS 139
their hill-tops, are typical Benedictine houses; Tintern or
Rievaulx, nestling beside a stream in a valley with hanging
woods to shut out the world, are what we look for in the
houses of Cistercians; the latter is in so narrow a vale that
the church (contrary to all northern custom) had to be built
north and south because the space between the river and the
hillside left no room for it to stand in the usual orientation.
In the northern portion of the monastic holy land of Bur-
gundy, the country of famous abbeys, in 1075, a rich convent
at Molesme had been founded. S. Robert was its Abbot,
S. Alberic its Prior, when to it came an Englishman from
Sherborne in Dorset. Stephen Harding was his name. He
was like-minded with the Abbot and the Prior, but the other
monks were not. Molesme was growing in wealth, but its
inmates were not growing in grace, and the stricter brethren
became earnestly desirous of leading a severer life.
So they retired to Vivier; but the other monks strongly
objected to this desertion and so the pioneers of the austerer
life were induced to return to Molesme. Matters, however,
did not improve. Dispensations permitted one modification
of the rules after another. It was very clear that no vigorous
enforcement of the Benedictine Rule was possible at
Molesme.
So, fortified by a special authorization from the Papal
legate (Hugo, Archbishop of Lyons), the reforming monks
retired to the wild wastes of Citeaux, a few miles south of
Dijon, a forbidding spot that was destined to immortal fame.
Odo, the Duke of Burgundy, who had a palace in the same
vicinity, confirmed the grant of a site which was made by
the lord of Beaume. So there, on March 21, 1098, was in-
augurated the new monastery of S. Mary. Alberic became
Abbot and Stephen Prior, but by order of Urban IT (at a
synod which assembled in Rome during the Kastertide of
1099), S. Robert was sent back to Molesme.
The new house prospered fairly well. Rules of much
140 CHRISTIAN MONASTICISM
rigidity were framed. Manual work in the fields, which was
entirely below the dignity of the monks of Cluny, was taken
up once more. Citeaux was to become a great centre for
monastic farming; the sheep-runs of its order were to be
known all over Europe. But this was neither planned nor
foreseen; indeed what was deemed a sheet-anchor against
wealth was thrown out in the refusal to accept those parochial
tithes which so many benefactors had presented to the Bene-
dictine convents, and which were in many cases the backbone
of their resources.
When Alberic died, in 1109, Stephen succeeded him as
Abbot, and in that capacity he attended the Council of Troyes
(p. 199). So intense was his zeal for poverty and simplicity
that he actually refused to allow the periodic visits to Citeaux
even of the premier duke of Christendom, Hugo, the suc-
cessor of Odo.
This step was the more significant as Odo, who had died
on a crusade, in 1102, was buried in the abbey church.
Stephen had a very just presentiment that he must make a
definite choice between the constant presence of princes in
the cloister and a rigidlly ascetic life for the community.
Such rigour did not appeal to all. Cistercian novices were
few. Citeaux was before long in a most depressed material
state. Many of the monks had died. Funds were running
low. Despite the excellent beginnings made, it is quite pos-
sible that the house would have had no more distinguished a
career than hundreds of other abbeys scattered over Europe,
but that its reputation for asceticism and, indeed, its very
misfortunes, were a keen attraction to certain serious minds.
In 1114, a party of novices came to be admitted, including
one of the greatest men of any age.
It was to be the peculiar glory of Cistercianism to nurture,
and to be moulded by, one of the few men who in different
centuries since the fall of the Roman Empire may be said to
have ruled Europe. And in many respects he was the most
SAINT BERNARD AND THE CISTERCIANS 141
remarkable ruler that Europe ever knew. Unlike Hildebrand
and Innocent IIT, he held no high office in the Church. Un-
like Louis XIV and Napoleon, he was unsupported by a
single gun. Unlike Barbarossa and Frederick II, he inher-
ited no great office which shed a lustre upon its possessor to
the very bounds of Christendom.
Unlike the great Abbots of Cluny, he ruled not as the
holder of an elevated post but purely from the force of his
own character. Unlike almost all other leaders of every
time, he incurred the awful curse of Nietzsche on those who
have the power to rule, but not the will. He might have sat
in S. Peter’s chair. He was begged to accept the command
of an army in which kings and an emperor served, and which
was perhaps the most imposing that Europe up to that time
had ever raised.
Rude and untutored in every way the twelfth century
doubtless was, but when we look round on the force-respect-
ing world in which our own lot is cast, we must incline our
heads in quiet homage to an age that insisted upon being
ruled by simple goodness; that in every great crisis placed
the reins in the hands of one whose pure character was a
compelling force before which all who ever met it—from
Pope and emperor to the poorest churl—bowed in a reverent
awe that is impressive even across the vicissitudes of more
than seven centuries.
Of all the world’s great leaders, S. Bernard of Clairvaux -
depends for his greatness more than any other on pure saintli-
ness. He was in the very truest sense the mouthpiece of the
ideal aspirations of the age in which he lived. His sermons
and his letters are full of the superiority of the work of
serving God in the cloister to any other duty, the eternal
song of monasticism.
No better man ever trod this earth. It is not presumptuous
overmuch to compare his character even with that of the
Thus Spake Zarathustra, p. 215, English ed.
142 CHRISTIAN MONASTICISM
Incarnate Son of God Himself. Born in a castle, heir at will
to a fair domain, brought up by a saintly mother, he was
utterly unmoved by any care for the pomp of power, the
luxury, or even the most ordinary comforts of this
present world. Communing with his God in quiet prayer
and meditation meant for him what it has meant for
few.
So entirely was he wrapped up in the heavenly vision that
on one occasion he rode for a whole day along the shores of
the Lake of Geneva without noticing even the splendid sheet
of water beside the road. William of S. Thierry (p. 153),
his enthusiastic biographer, tells us: “I remained with him
for a few days (at Clairvaux), unworthy though I was, and
in whatever direction I turned my eyes I wonderingly saw as
it were a new heaven and a new earth, and the foot-paths
of the ancient monks of Egypt, our fathers, with the steps
of the men of our own time in them. The golden age ap-
peared to have returned at Clairvaux when men once rich
and honoured in the world were glorying in the poverty of
Christ.” 8
Perhaps, indeed, the saintliness of S. Bernard stands out
in all the clearer light because in some respects it was but-
tressed by but little earthly vision. , He forced a half unwill-
ing continent to rush into the disastrous Second Crusade
against the best judgment of very many whose opinions were
entitled to respect. The last of the Fathers, he entirely repu-
diated the scholastic speculations of Abélard, and yet so
failed to realize the future direction of Ultramontane ortho-
doxy that he combated the doctrine of the Immaculate Con-
ception of the Virgin, and in his letters speaks to Popes with
decidedly less deference than modern conceptions would
demand.
Such prosperity and such numbers now came to Citeaux
that colonies were sent out to settle daughter houses. In_
* Vita Prima, cap. VII; Migne, P.L. 185a, col. 247.
SAINT BERNARD AND THE CISTERCIANS 143
1114, Hugh, once lord of Macon but now a humble monk,
led a band to found Pontigny (p. 120) and next year S. Ber-
nard led another to Clairvaux—both in the same Burgundian
land of monasteries that included also Citeaux, Cluny, and
Molesme. 7
The daughter houses were not made independent, but
formed the nucleus of the new Cistercian order, far less cen-
tralized than that of Cluny, but binding the daughters to the
mother house in a way that the Benedictines did not.
Our Lady was the patron of the whole order; to her every
house was dedicated, and on one occasion Christ was said to
have spared the world for the sake of her Cistercian
friends.
In 1116, the first General Chapter was held, and at that
of 1119 was drawn up the Carta Caritatis,* a constitution
providing for a yearly General Chapter of all the Abbots of
the order at Citeaux, whose Abbot was given a most com-
manding position, but not the autocracy that belonged to his
brother of Cluny.
In these early years the real headquarters of Cistercianism
was not the mother house. From his cell and his arbour at
Clairvaux S. Bernard was ruling a continent, and that in a
truer sense than many a crowned king.
We visualize rather the ante-room of an emperor’s palace
than a poor little abbey in a passage from one of Bernard’s
letters to Peter the Venerable: “I grieved that I was not able
to answer according to my feelings; because the evil of the
day, which was great, called me away. For a vast multitude,
out of almost every nation under heaven, had assembled. It
was my place to answer every one; because for my sins I was
born into the world that I might be confounded with many
and multifarious anxieties.” °
“Migne, P.L. 166, col. 1377.
5 Letter quoted in No. XXV, Maitland’s Dark Ages, p. 432. The letter
was by the hand of his secretary, Nicholas.
144 CHRISTIAN MONASTICISM
It may be doubted whether in the whole course of history
‘any leader supported neither by force nor by high office ever
gained the confidence of Europe as did 8. Bernard. In 11380,
after the death of Honorius II, two rival Popes were elected,
and in such circumstances that it was really a debatable
question which was more canonically chosen. Europe was
divided. Anacletus IL was in firm possession of Rome and
had been a Cluniac monk. He had received a majority of
the votes of the cardinals, but his rival, Innocent II, had
been elected first.
A council was summoned to Etampes by the French king,
Louis VI. Christendom might easily have been torn and
the great schism anticipated but that a man was there who
commanded the confidence of all.
To Bernard the question was referred. It is extremely
characteristic of the man that his decision was not swayed
by any sort of expediency but based solely on the merits of
the case. After a careful enquiry into all the circumstances
of the election, and influenced, it appears, still more by the
characters of the two men, he declared for the candidate who
materially was the weaker. He pronounced Innocent to be
the true Pope.
The council instantly accepted the decision. Europe did
not. It required the personal intervention of S. Bernard to
induce Henry II of England and the Emperor Lothaire to
recognize the Pope he had chosen, but no one could ever
resist the iron will and the stern and saintly character of
the unbending Abbot of Clairvaux.
Nothing can be better evidence of this than the fact that
the powerful King Roger of Sicily, a violent partisan of
Anacletus, feared to meet 8. Bernard face to face, especially
after he had travelled through Italy in a series of triumphal
marches in the interests of his Pope, reconciling Pisa with
Genoa and many other rivals with each other, dominating a
council at Pisa, and even winning over the great city of
SAINT BERNARD AND THE CISTERCIANS 145
Milan, whose archbishop had been strong for Anacletus.®
Not till the death of the antipope was the matter finally
disposed of, but his feeble successor was easily prevailed
upon by 8. Bernard to make his submission to Innocent.
The First Crusade had set up the Christian kingdom of
Jerusalem (p. 199), but its subsequent fall had made it very
evident that only by constant support from Europe could its
existence be made secure. The zeal that Pope Urban IT had
kindled at Clermont had largely died away. There was a
strong feeling that further attempts would not be well ad-
vised. But to S. Bernard all mere worldly considerations
were utterly base. To his pure and unspotted devotion the
insults that infidels were offering to the very places where his
Master had trod, overbore all else that could be urged. He
was fired by a new enthusiasm as holy as it was pure, and
through a great part of Europe his fervid character lit up
again the flames that had burned a generation before.
With the same enthusiasm as at Clermont, all classes put
on the cross. S. Bernard’s success in Germany was all the
more remarkable that the great bulk of his hearers could not
understand his language, but yielded to a personal mag-
netism that the world never saw excelled.
It must have been one of the most impressive scenes in all
history when at Mass in the cathedral at Spires, moved by
a sudden impulse to deliver an impassioned address, S. Ber-
nard induced the reluctant Emperor, Conrad III, to take the
eross. The sovereign was moved to tears and promised to go,
before the vast congregation, which broke forth into uncon-
trollable enthusiasm.’
The Second Crusade was extremely disastrous, as those
rare enterprises in which Germans and French march side
by side are somewhat apt to be. As moral unity was needed
‘Vita Prima, Lib. secundus; auctore Ernaldo, abbate Bone-vallis,
caps. I, Il; Migne, P.L. 185a, col. 268 seq.
7 Vita Prima, cap. IV; Migne, P.L. 185a, cols. 381-382.
146 CHRISTIAN MONASTICISM
more even than military skill, it is by no means impossible
that if S. Bernard had accepted the command and injected
into every crisis of difficulty and peril his own marvellous
personality, the result might have been different. He showed
himself personally unmoved by the unpopularity that he in-
evitably incurred when the shattered and discredited rem-
nants of the splendid armies of Christendom straggled back
to their homes. He tried to justify the ways of Heaven by
the ordinary argument that we can see but very little of the
great designs of God.
The extremely far-reaching influence of S. Bernard. was
shown when, in 1140, he successfully intervened to prevent
a nephew of King Steoien being elevated to the archbishop-
ric of York. The rival, Henry Murdach, died in possession
of the see, but the king was furious, and it was in connexion
with this matter that the friends of his nephew William laid
waste the great Cistercian abbey of Fountains, giving occa-
sion for the erection of the magnificent conventual buildings
whose ruins today form one of the most complete religious
houses that the Middle Ages have bequeathed to our own
generation.
In a way, perhaps, the climax of S. Bernard’s life was his
famous encounter with Abélard at the Council of Sens in
1140.8 The two men were both of noble birth and both were
monks, but there all resemblance ceased. S. Bernard was,
tried by every imaginable standard, the very finest flower of
monasticism. Abélard was singularly unfitted to the cloister,
brilliant, erratic, and restless, far too much interested in life
to have any real desire to abandon the world. S. Bernard’s
whole soul was with the past; he ends the long line of the
Fathers of the Church. Perhaps no one who ever lived felt
with more perfect sincerity that heaven was his true home.
‘This was held in the Senonensem Metropolitanum, probably the ex-
isting cathedral still unfinished at the time. See Vita Prima, Lib. III,
auctore Gaufrido, cap. V; Migne, P.L., 185a, cols. 310-311.
SAINT BERNARD AND THE CISTERCIANS 147
Abélard, with his fearless speculation, boldly faced the
future, anticipating very much of the spirit of the modern
world. §. Bernard was a devout Churchman who counted
doubt a sin. Abélard was a keenly critical logician, treating
S. Augustine himself with the utmost freedom, boldly
asking: “How far are they worthy of attention who
assert that faith is not to be built up or defended by rea-
son ?”
Yet that erratic Breton, so intensely human, in some
respects at least, interests us far more than the sternly devout
Burgundian. Abélard’s youth in the Breton castle, with its
intense eagerness for study, his conflict with William of
Champeaux and brilliant career in the schools of Paris, his
romantic marriage with the sweet and unselfish Héloise, his
daring but tactless questioning of the things his age held
dearest, his restless wanderings, his founding of the Para-
clete which eventually he made over to his wife with her
nuns, his desperate resolve at one time to seek refuge and
freedom among the Moslems, his old age spent in long medi-
tation under the lime tree at Cluny, ever facing towards the
Paraclete where Héloise was living, his eventual burial there
where his loving wife was to be laid to rest beside him, united
in death after the long and sad separation of life—all form
one of the most humanly interesting stories of medisval
years.
_ Cousin declares that Abélard was the chief founder of the
philosophy of the Middle Ages.? Huis conceptualism, main-
taining that by the faculty of pure thought, and not through
the senses alone, we can and must form general ideas, pro-
vides a middle ground between nominalism and realism. In
any philosophical discussion he might expect to be able very
easily to carry S. Bernard beyond his depth. S. Bernard
had come to Sens unwillingly, at the eager solicitation of his
friends. The two men could find but little common ground.
° Owvrages Ined, Introd., p. IV.
148 CHRISTIAN MONASTICISM
S. Bernard looked upon the faith as purely a matter of the
heart. Abélard regarded Christianity as a series of theses
to be argued about like any other problems in philosophy. A
brilliant company had gathered, and many of them sympa-
thized with Abélard.
But all his philosophy broke down at once. He could not
any more than others stand up against the pure character
and compelling personality of S. Bernard. After a deplor-
able effort, he broke down and merely stuttered that he
appealed to the Pope. On his own principles it would seem
to have been quite inconsistent. His condemnation was a
foregone conclusion.
It is to the eternal credit of Cluny that Peter the Vener-
able offered him a home, and after his death he wrote a most
sympathetic letter to Héloise ascribing to divine providence
the fact that so honoured a philosopher and servant of Christ
had enriched the abbey with a gift more precious than topaz
and gold.?° |
Although the matter in dispute was relatively not ver
important, S. Bernard enjoyed no more striking personal
triumph than he won over William, the Duke of Aquitaine.*!
This man was deemed one of the most formidable princes of
his time, not only on account of ‘his wide dominions and
great military power, but also because of his gigantic
streneth and violent temper. He had expelled certain
bishops from their sees and utterly refused to restore
them.
No one seems to have dared to beard this lion and even
S. Bernard in a long interview could do absolutely nothing
to budge him. Dr. Storrs says: “It was almost like reason-
ing with a tropical storm, or addressing arguments to the
brutal fierceness of a wild beast. S. Bernard broke off the
1 Hpistole, Lib. IV, xxi; Migne. P.L. 189, cols. 347-353.
“The incident is very fully described in Vita Prima; Lib. Sec. auctore
Ernaldo, abbate Bone-vallis, cap. VI. Migne, P.L. 185a, cols. 289-291.
SAINT BERNARD AND THE CISTERCIANS 149
useless discussion and proceeded to the church to celebrate
mass.” 1°
Shortly he issued bearing with arms uplifted the sacred
Host; with flashing face and burning eyes he again con-
fronted the monster. He now asked if he would dare defy
the very Judge of all the earth at Whose dread tribunal he
must one day appear? Who was present in very truth in
Bernard’s hands. Amid the hushed awe of the assembled
knights the prince quailed. He could not even stand.
_ Meekly he bowed to the overmastering will of a man who
physically was weak as he was strong. The bishops were
immediately restored. The duke seems never to have recov-
ered from the blow.
S. Bernard had added another to his many triumphs.
And yet how utterly ashamed he would have felt could he
have seen the future, when the grandson of that duke,
Richard, Coeur de Lion, sarcastically told by the hermit
Fulk de Neuilly to get husbands for his daughters, whose
names were Luxury, Greed, and Pride, was able to make
the withering retort: ‘The husband of Luxury shall be the
prelates of Holy Church; of Pride the Knights Templars;
Greed may most appropriately be wedded to the monks of
the Cistercian order.” 1%
There was possibly a little tinge of ingratitude in the last
reference, seeing that, only three years previously, the Cis-
tercians had been made to contribute a whole year’s wool
towards the ransom of the king.’*
Great and marvellous indeed as 8S. Bernard’s triumphs
were, they had been strangely personal, curiously uncon-
nected. He was the dictator of Europe in a truer sense,
though less spectacular, than Napoleon. He had far more
2 Bernard of Olairvaux; the Times, the Man, and His Work, by R.
S. Storrs, p. 168.
"Flores Historiarwm, 1197 AvD., Rolls Series, vol. ii, pp. 116-117
(from Hoveden).
44 Matthew Paris, Chronica Maiora, vol. ii, p. 399.
150 CHRISTIAN MONASTICISM
power than he ever used. His authority ended only with
his death, for moral force in the long run is invariably
greater than material. He passed as greatly as he had lived;
his career ended neither in St. Helena nor in Doorn.
He built his life into the noble structure of medieval
monasticism; yet for himself he reared no monument. It
was the very last thing that he would have desired. In his
lifetime none ever dared to stand up to him. Churls,
knights, sovereigns, emperors, and even popes quailed before
the compelling force of a character whose pure holiness gave
to him much of the authority of an angel from above. But
perhaps for that reason S. Bernard stands rather apart
from the world. He handed down no great tradition. Even
his own order soon ceased to be permeated by his spirit.
(See p. 242.)
But although the extreme severity that was his ideal did
not last very long, we get some most impressive proofs of
its intensity in buildings that may still be studied. The
original parts of Jerpoint Abbey in Ireland, dating from the
middle of the twelfth century and so probably erected in
S. Bernard’s lifetime, are as severe as could possibly be
wished.
The chapter house consists of a rude tunnel vault of the
roughest rubble starting from the ground each side and pre-
senting a most forbidding sense of gloom and darkness the
moment it is entered. And amid the simple beauty of much
of the later Cistercian work, the rude structures of the first
generation of monks have in many places been preserved.
_ In S. Bernard’s own lifetime, at the General Chapter of
the Cistercians in 1152, there are hints that monks were
beginning to eat flesh and that some houses were already
engaging in gainful trade.1® Owning vast estates, their
houses exclusively in the open country, working hard with
* For details of this see Coulton, Five Centuries of Religion, vol. i,
p. 336.
SAINT BERNARD AND THE CISTERCIANS 151
their own hands, the monks of S. Bernard’s order were soon
widely known for their enormous commerce in wool. It was
largely grown on their land in the north of England and
shipped from the wharves of Norwich and other ports to the
Flemish marts.
Posterity must be very grateful that they spent their
money in raising those marvellous abbeys that give York-
shire and many other parts of Europe what to many is their
greatest charm; it may well be doubted if the great indus-
tries of today are preparing any similar heirlooms for future
years.
Monastic history is full of the strangest paradoxes, and
surely none is stranger than that the order which, under
Stephen Harding and 8. Bernard, so laboured to prevent
even the most decent comfort for its zealous monks, should
have become one of the most wealthy commercial corpora-
tions of all Europe, and indeed it may plausibly be argued
that the Cistercian order was the chief pioneer of modern |
industrial capitalism. Largely at least it controlled the
staple trade of the country whose chancellor sat on the wool-
sack. Kings complained of its greed.
One result of this agricultural and commercial spirit was
a great development of Cistercian conversi, or lay brothers.
Probably they were recruits who were unable to be monks
because they could not read nor write. They had their sepa-
rate quarters in the west side of the cloister with their own
choir in the nave of the church. Their labour greatly en-
riched the order—with the inevitable result. The Benedic-
tine custom of pittances, or extra dishes provided for on
particular days by special endowments, appeared in Cister-
cian houses. In many of their ruined dwellings may be
studied the misericord or chamber in which meat might be
eaten—in the refectory strictly forbidden—and the second
kitchen in which it might be cooked.
The story of the Cistercian order in later days is much the
152 CHRISTIAN MONASTICISM
same as that of others. Richelieu was at one time Abbot in
commendam of Citeaux, which practically meant that he
took the revenues but had no duties to perform. He failed,
despite a vigorous effort, to bring about any real reform.
Yet from within this order was a movement to rise, going
back to the utmost vigour of earliest years, and forward to a
new and excellently useful sphere.
A convent in Normandy at La Trappe had been founded
in 1140. Its commendatory Abbot in the seventeenth cen-
tury (Aimend Jean de Rancé) became its regular Abbot in
1664, and he set on foot a reform that carried asceticism
further than the West had known before—at least in perma-
nent form.
Strict silence, the hardest work, and the plainest fare
kept away all but the very most earnest souls. Eventually
a virtually new order emerged and it carried its work over
all the world. At Marianhill in Natal it still maintains one
of the most interesting of all the missions to the negro race.
In its church, the Bantu are invited to kneel before a black
Madonna. In 1898, the Trappist monks restored the ruined
convent at Citeaux to its earliest use.
It is apt to be while musing amid the enchanting creeper-
clad ruins of some Cistercian house. such as Fountains, that
one falls in love with monasticism. Great banks of trees
shut out the troubles of the world; the murmuring stream
is whispering of peace. The size and beauty of the conven-
tual buildings witness to a solid comfort, and the great chim-
ney of the warming house seems to suggest a pleasant social
life. The quiet cloister breathes the atmosphere of peace,
and the long-drawn broken arches of the vast and lofty
church invite to quiet prayer.
How the place must have been loved by the really earnest-
minded monk to whom the early green of spring and the
autumn golds and russet browns of the surrounding woods,
and the wild flowers and butterflies and birds seemed a
SAINT BERNARD AND THE CISTERCIANS 153
foretaste of that eternal paradise to which the abbey was the
gate.
Such may be the inevitable reflexions of the modern tourist
—not of the medieval monk. It is rather a shock to find
Matthew Paris relating the story of certain strict monks of
S. Mary’s, York, coming “ad quendam locum horrorts et
vaste solitudinis sctlicet in convallem profundam et opacem’”’
in that terribly forbidding spot to found the Abbey of
Fountains.*®
From medieval writings it is very clear that the monks
preserved to the end the old ideals of the Egyptian desert.
Even in later times, but very typical of the medizval mind,
we find S. John of the Cross, the Carmelite mystic, exclaim-
ing: ‘The spiritual Christian ought to suppress all joy in:
created things, because it is offensive in the sight of God.17
In his real and genuine love of the beauties of this world
the great S. Basil stands almost alone among monks (p. 40).
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
The Letters and other works of S. Bernard, including the four
Lives by various writers, are printed in Migne, P.L. 182-185b,
five volumes.
A fairly full account of the founding of the Cistercian order
and of Stephen Harding is given in William of Malmesbury’s
Chronicle of the Kings of England, bk. IV, ch. I, p. 347 seq., in
J. A. Giles’ English ed.
J. T. Fowler: Cistercian Statutes, in Latin, with English notes.
Secondary authorities are Cistercian Origins; Life of Stephen
Harding, ed. by Cardinal Newman. J. ©. Morison, Life and
Times of Saint Bernard, an extremely well-written work. J. B.
Dalgairns, Life of St. Stephen Harding, ch. xv; A Day at Citeauz.
Richard S. Storrs, Bernard of Clairvaux. FE. Vacandard, Vie de
S. Bernard, 2 vols. There is much on the same subject in books
already cited by Coulton, Workman, and S. R. Maitland.
6 Chron., Mai, 1127.
™ Ascent of Mt. Carmel, bk. III, ch. 19.
CHAPTER X
THE RISE OF THE FRIARS
Dean Milman has said: “It was this wonderful attribute
of the monastic system to renew its youth, which was the
life of medizval Christianity; it was ever reverting of itself
to the first principles of its constitution.*
The context is S. Bernard and the Cistercians. The
observation appears to be even more justified in connexion
with the rise of the friars, associated as that is with the
career of the figure in monastic story that appears to interest
the modern world far more deeply than any other, S. Francis
of Assisi*. One of his own disciples, Father Cuthbert, has
called him, “the most inspiring personality in medieval
Christendom.” * His story is an oft told tale. His father
was disappointed and indeed disgusted that a boy of such
unusual promise would not attempt to gain success in the
conventional paths of the world.
S. Francis might indeed by doing that Wane kept the
goodwill of the folk of an obscure little town, have lived
respected and died lamented, but to the world Ae yay
By following the rough paths along which his own con-
science beckoned, that boy has given associations to the little ~
town that have made Assisi one of the best known spots on
2 History of Latin Christianity, vol. iv, p. 156 (bk. VIII, ch. iv).
7G. K. Chesterton has recently entered the field with a little book,
St. Francis of Assisi. No other monastic saint has so many popular
lives in English. ,
*Chapter in The Lady Poverty, ed. by Montgomery Carmichael, on
Spiritual Significance of Evangelical Poverty, p. 144.
154
THE RISE OF THE FRIARS 155
earth, has added to Christianity traditions as imperishable
as any of older date, has founded a religious order that, not
content with a vigorous revival from end to end of Christen-
dom, has carried the Gospel in a literal sense from China to
Peru, and has gained for himself a name and a fame that
is hardly equalled by that of any saint since apostolic days.
The happy romanticism of youth he made a possession of the
Church for all the ages that were to come.
The study of his life enables one to realize something of
the spirit in which the authors of the Song of the Three
Holy Children felt so lively a brotherhood with all created
things.
In most respects, indeed, S. Francis was a typical inheritor
and reinterpreter of the ancient monastic tradition, but he
was very much more. His feeling of fellowship with all
nature brought a new and splendid joyousness, not merely
into the inheritance of asceticism, but into the very wor-
ship of the Church itself. Everything from the sun down-
ward he felt to be a brother or a sister.‘
In the sermon which he preached to the birds,’ he seems
to revive and in a manner to consecrate anew one of the very
oldest traditions of Christian monasticism. “My little sis-
“An extremely valuable critical work on the subject is Saint Francis
of Assisi and His Legend, by Nino Tamassia. The Paduan professor
points out how very largely Thomas of Celano (author of the Dies Ire),
the chief original authority for the life of 8S. Francis, plagiarises from
such earlier monastic writers as Gregory the Great, Sulpicius Severus,
and Cassian. His English translator, Lonsdale Ragg, does not consider
that this very materially affects the credibility of the actual incidents,
seeing that all monastic (and other) lives of the saints are couched in
most strikingly similar language. Very much the same might be said of
much of the original literature concerning S. Ignatius Loyola in post-
medieval times. In truth, there is no need to stop at the frontiers of
Christendom. The story of S. Francis of Assisi has many points of re-
semblance with that of Buddha. It is impossible to read of such Japa-
nese religious men as Kobo Daishi, and to listen to the local legends that
are still told about his life, without being reminded of many of the
Christian saints. The early Jesuits knew well how to use such re-
semblances.
5’ Fioretti (Little Flowers), 16.
156 CHRISTIAN MONASTICISM
ters, birds, much bounden are ye unto God, your Creator,
and alway in every place ought ye to praise him, for that
He hath given you liberty to fly about everywhere, and hath
also given you double and triple raiment; still more are ye
beholden to Him for the element of the air which He hath
appointed for you; beyond all this, ye sow not neither do ye
reap; and God feedeth you, and giveth you the streams
and fountains for your drink, the mountains and valleys
for your refuge, and the high trees whereon to make your
nests.”
S. Francis has sometimes, but quite unfairly, been accused
of pantheism. Such things can be said only by those un-
familiar with monastic traditions. The monk has ever felt
the brotherhood of birds and beasts (p. 19). S. Francis
imported a love of nature that is largely his own, though to
some degree he shares it with Anselm and Hugh of Lincoln.
In 8S. Francis, it is not so much the love of scenery that
S. Basil felt (p. 40) as a most intense sentiment of fellow-
ship with beasts and flowers and birds.
Monks and friars ® are in these days very often confounded
as if they were practically the same. That would have been
impossible in Chaucer’s age, but it was common by the time
of Luther. The very words explain what the essential dif-
ference was. The monk was supposed to live alone, to medi-
tate and pray, the friar to live in brotherly relations with
the world.
Indeed the friars, unlike the earlier orders, were insti-
tuted to do a special work, not merely to save their own
souls. Theirs it was to minister to the outcast, to seek the
downtrodden and the aftlicted, in fact to supplement the
work of the parish clergy. The message of the monk had
been communal, setting an example of ordered social life
*The four orders of friars, mentioned in Chaucer’s Prologue, were
Franciscans, Grey Friars, or Minorites; Dominicans, Black Friars, or
Friars Preachers; Carmelites, or White Friars; Austin or Eremite
Friars.
THE RISE OF THE FRIARS 157
that had made an immense appeal to the whole world of
Northern Christendom (p. 177).
The appeal of the friar was far more individual. There
can be no doubt that the friars helped to bring about in the
thirteenth century a remarkable religious revival, but the
great movement that was mainly responsible for the era of
cathedral building came very largely from the laity. —
The espousals of 8. Francis with the Lady Poverty is
superbly represented on the vault of the lower church at
Assisi, and yet amidst such magnificent surroundings not
entirely without a suggestion of satire. The conception
reflects the atmosphere in which the friars were to live.
S. Benedict refused to permit the monks to own anything
at all, but this had been rendered largely nugatory as the
convents might hold property to any extent.
So S. Francis would permit neither friar nor order to
own property of any sort. The devoted lives of the friars
were so to be approved of all men that necessary provisions
should never fail, and anything more was to be avoided.
The friars were to live by begging, and so if they ceased to
be popularly approved they could not live at all.
Like SS. Pachomius, Basil, Augustine, and Benedict of
old, S. Francis found a woman to share his ideals and to
interpret them to her own sex; not, indeed, a sister, but the
noble Clare. “She gave her heart to S. Francis and he, in
- turn, consecrated it to God.” 7
Each was in love with the other, but it was not an earthly
love; for both of them the love of virginity and of the
Saviour was an absorbing and overmastering passion, far
stronger than any emotion of the world. Clare organized the
friaresses at San Damiano as S. Francis organized the friars
at the Portiuncula. She lived for many years after S. Fran-
cis was dead; the influence of the poor Clares reached far
beyond the limits of the order.
™Fr. Robinson, Life of St. Clare, p. 36.
158 CHRISTIAN MONASTICISM
In reading the Rule of S. Francis ® one is struck by the
marked absence of that clear Roman love of order which is
so prominent in the Rule of S. Benedict. “The rule and life
of the brothers minor is this, to observe and keep the holy
gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, living in obedience without
property and in chastity.”
Only the provincials ® may receive new brethren. “And
- In nowise it may be lawful to them to forsake this religion,
after and according to the commandment of the Pope, for,
after the saying of the holy gospel, no man putting his hand
to the plow and looking backwards is apt to the kingdom of
heaven. * * * And all the brethren must be clothed with
simple and vile clothing. And they may piece them and
amend them with pieces of sackcloth, or with other pieces
with the blessing of God.
“The clerks shall do their divine service after the order
or use of the holy Church of Rome. * * * And they shall
pray for them that be dead. And they shall fast from the
feast of all hallowtide unto the nativity of our Lord. * * *
I counsel also warn and exhort my brethren in our Lord
Jesus Christ that they brawl not * * * but that they be
meek, peaceable, soft, gentle, and courteous and lowly, hon-
estly speaking and answering to every man as unto them ?°
accordeth and belongeth. And they shall not ride, but if
they be constrained by evident necessity or else by sickness.
“T command steadfastly and straitly to all the brethren
that in nowise they receive any manner of coin or money,
but care shall be taken of the sick.
“The brethren to whom God hath given grace and strength
®It has come down in several forms. I have used an early English
translation, printed in Monumenta Franciscana, Rolls Series, vol. ii, p.
65, from the fifteenth century Cottonian MS., Fustina D. IV, R. How-
lett, ed. I have modernized the spelling.
° That is an officer charged with the oversight of all the monasteries
of a certain district, more or less answering to a bishop in the secular
Church.
It is interesting to note that this common grammatical blunder is
as old as the fifteenth century.
THE RISE OF THE FRIARS 159
to labour, shall labour truly and devoutly, so and in such
wise that Idleness, the enemy of the soul, excluded and put
away, they quench not the inward fervour and spirit of
holy prayer and devotion.
“The brethren shall nothing appropriate to them, neither
in housing nor in lands, nor in rent nor in any manner of
thing, but like pilgrims and strangers in this world, in pov-
erty and meekness, serving Almighty God. They shall faith-
fully, boldly and surely and meekly go for alms. Nor they
shall not nor ought to be ashamed, for our Lord made Him-
self poor in this world. * * * This should be your portion
the which will lead you to the land of quick and living
people. To which my most well-beloved brethren, utterly
knit and conjoined, you shall never desire other thing under
Jesus for the love of our Lord Jesus Christ.*?
“The brethren shall not preach in the diocese of any bishop
when it is of him to them forbidden, and none of the brethren
shall be so bold to preach to the people, but if he be of the
general minister of this brotherhood examined, approved,
and admitted of him to the office of preaching.
“And those that be unlearned shall not busy themself to
be lettered and learned; but they should attend and take heed
above all things, and desire to have the sprite of our Lord
and his holy operation to pray always to almighty God with
a pure spirit and a clean heart.”
The friars must never enter nunneries unless by special
permission from Rome. “Nor they may not be godfathers
or gossips of men or women, lest thereby rumour or slander
should rise of the brethren amongst the brethren.
“Whosoever of the brethren, by divine inspiration, will
go among the Saracens or other infidels they shall axe license
thereof of their ministers provincial.”
The ideal is admirably illustrated in the “Sacrum Com-
11For certain details as to the government of the order here pre
vided, see p. 19€.
160 CHRISTIAN MONASTICISM
mercium,’* or the Marriage of St. Francis with the Lady
Poverty,” written probably in the fourteenth century by
some author entirely unknown, presumably a Franciscan
friar. It is a charming allegory about the origin of the
new order. Avarice, the great rival of the Lady Poverty,
has captured the older orders, taking the name of Discretion.
“After a time some of the religious began to sigh most
lamentably for the flesh-pots of Egypt which they had left
behind. * * * In short, they began to fawn upon the world,
striking bargains with worldlings. * * * They enlarged
their buildings and multiplied those things they had for
ever renounced. * * * They eagerly frequented the courts
of kings and princes that they might join house to house and
lay field to field.”
We then get a most scathing denunciation of the monks
from a source that cannot possibly be accused of anti-cleri-
calism. But some allowance must be made for the rivalries
of different orders.
In startling contrast to that of the degenerate monks is
the way of life of the friars. They ask the Lady Poverty
to a meal. “But she said unto them: ‘Show me first your
Oratory, the cloister and chapter house, the refectory,
kitchen, dormitory, and stables, your fine seats, and polished
tables, and noble houses. For I see none of these things.’ ”
To wash their hands they could only provide a broken vessel]
of water, for towel one of the brothers had to offer his habit.
The table was spread—two or three crusts of barley bread—
upon the grass.
The lady marvelled exceedingly and delightedly ex-
claimed: ‘‘Who ever saw the like in the generations of old.”
When asked for cooked food the brothers could only bring
a basin of water in which to dip the bread. For savoury
herbs from the garden no better substitute could be found
“This work is conveniently accessible in English, published by Mont-
gomery Carmichael under the title, The Lady Poverty, 1902.
THE RISE OF THE FRIARS 161
than bitter wild herbs from the woods. There was no salt
to season them, nor even a knife to trim them. Wine there
was none. When the Lady Poverty was weary she was
obliged to rest upon the bare ground with only a stone for a
pillow.
“So after she had slept for a brief space in peace she
arose and asked the brothers to show her their cloister. And
they, leading her to the summit of a hill, showed her the wide
world, saying: “This is our cloister.’ ” 13
Batightedly bidding them all sit down, she praised them
in the very highest terms: “Behold what T longed for I see,
what I desired I hold, for I am joined to them that are a
type on earth of Him to whom I am espoused in Heaven.
* * * IT pray and most earnestly beseech you as most dear
sons to persevere; * * * not abandoning your perfection as
is the manner of some. * * * Most high is your perfection,
above man and the strength of man and it excels in bright-
ness the perfection of your forefathers.”
S. Dominic, a Spaniard who enjoyed the confidence of
Popes, was much more a practical man of affairs than
S. Francis, though by no means so interesting a figure. In
many ways he was a great contrast to the Italian, far keener
about learning but much less sympathetic with nature. In-
deed on one occasion, in the manner of the old Egyptian
monks, he saw the devil in a sparrow that was disturbing
his studies and so he plucked it. alive.*#
A far happier incident in his life was his famous visit to
a Franciscan chapter at the Portiuncula, when he was so
much impressed that he went and knelt before the blessed
Francis exclaiming, “Truly God hath taken care of these
saintly little ones and I did not know it. Wherefore I now
promise to observe holy evangelistic poverty, and I in God’s
name utter a malediction against all brethren of my order
PON, \KXI1V, Yeats
4 Coulton, Five Centuries of Religion, i, p. 179.
162 CHRISTIAN MONASTICISM
who in the said order shall presume to have possessions of
their own.”
» §. Francis desired that his friars should win men to
\ Heaven by their example; S. Dominic looked more to preach-
ing. So keen was he that his disciples should excel in
this that he became the first monastic legislator to dispense
them from manual work; at Bologna he even proposed
(though the Chapter did not agree to it) that all business
details should be left to the conversi, to whom manual work
was assigned. S. Benedict’s stability was entirely set aside;
the friar belonged to the order and must be free to go wher-
ever his work would count for most.
The Dominicans did some service to the Church, but to
civilization none, in the help they gave to Simon de Mont-
fort the Elder in destroying the Albigensian heresy, which
Cesarius of Heisterbach *® says had conquered a thousand
cities and would if left alone have subjugated the whole of
Europe.
The friars do not seem to have been primarily respon-
sible for the methods used—as to which, the less said the
better. The miserable desolation of Provence must always
remain a sad blot on the story of the thirteenth century.
Besides the Franciscans and the Dominicans, there rose
two other orders, making the four chief divisions of friars.
Both Carmelites and Augustinians (or Austins) date back
to earlier times, but are first prominently heard of in the
thirteenth century.
The Carmelites are unique in professing an origin far
antedating the birth of Christianity. They claim continuity
with the Sons of the Prophets sponsored by Elijah and so
take their name from Mount Carmel. It is not very easy to
see why S. Elijah, of all men, should be so much the most
prominent of the small number of Old Testament saints
adopted into the Church’s calendar. Many convents of the
VI, 21.
THE RISE OF THE FRIARS 163
Eastern Church bear his name and from his manner of
leaving the earth he was chosen as the patron saint of the
flying corps of the Tsarist armies—a capacity in which he
appears to have been singularly unsuccessful.
A rule was apparently given to the Carmelites in 1209 by
Albert, Patriarch of Jerusalem. Not long afterwards they
left Palestine, on the failure of the Crusades, and settled in
the West, some travelling in the train of Richard, Earl of
Cornwall (1241), the only English emperor, or rather king
of the Romans.
The Austin friars or hermits, who, like the canons sharing
the name, follow the rule of S. Augustine (p. 62), were
formed by the consolidation of a number of small orders,
united in 1255 by Alexander IV, who also annulled the bull
of his predecessor which subjected all the mendicant orders
to episcopal control (p. 27). The brethren of a small, but
exceedingly vigorous, suborder were known as Sackites from
the extraordinary simplicity of their attire.
The Austin vicar-general, Staupitz, under whom Luther
was a friar, seems almost entirely to have anticipated the
reformer in his doctrines about justification by faith,1® but
the order was never specially concerned with scholasticism.1*
The friars, and particularly the Franciscans, did a very }
great service to humanity by a wide development of the use
of lay-helpers. The so-called Tertiaries, or third order—
the first and second being friars and Frinrondade= raineaeeal in
the world and gave their spare time to good works.
In 1395, Boniface VIII permitted them to form regular
congregations,!® and this is contemplated in a much earlier
* This important question is very fully discussed by Prof. Késhlin
(Halle) in his Luther’s Theology.
7 The Austins and Carmelites are hardly so significant as the Fran-
ciscans and Dominicans. Workman, in his admirable chapter The Com-
ing of the Friars, says almost nothing about them, “as they do not il-
lustrate any new ideas.” LHvolution of the Monastic Ideal, p. 315.
*%® Manuale Historie ordinis fratrum minorum, by P. Dre H. Holzapfel,
p. 605.
164 CHRISTIAN MONASTICISM
rule of 1221, which is shorter and simpler than that for
regular friars. It contemplates the Tertiaries’ being either
clerks or laymen; they must say the seven daily canonical
hours, and they are bound by severe regulations as to fasting,
and are restricted from bearing arms.!®
Sometimes monasteries were founded for the third order.
At Slane, on a ridge above the Boyne, in county Meath, Ire-
land, may still be seen the ruins of a convent founded for
them as late as 1512 by Sir Christopher Fleming, the build-
_ ings fortified and grouped around a little uncloistered
court.2° The lay third order is also still maintained.
For a time the extraordinarily high standard with which
the friars set out, or at least something near it, was well
maintained. The bare-footed and extremely devoted Fran-
ciscans received the warmest welcome in every European
country to which they turned their steps. Their refusal of
anything beyond the barest necessities, the simple barn-like
little chapels in which they prayed, the fervour with which
they ministered to the poorest of the people, all seemed to
bring back the purity of Christianity in its very earliest
days.
Eecleston *1 gives many particulars of the great eae
of the first brothers who settled in England, and in London
on one occasion had to keep a sick brother warm by all lying
close together as is the manner of pigs. But the original
idea of their having no homes whatever of their own proved
impracticable even in the lifetime of S. Francis, and they
soon built monasteries which were in most respects not very
different from those of ordinary monks (p. 284). It is not
® Regula Antiqua Fratrum et Sororum de Paententia, seu Tertu Or-
dims Sancti Francisci, ed. by Paul Sabatier, from a MS. in the library
of the convent of Capistran in the Abruzzi. There is doubt as to the
correctness of the date, 1221. ;
* The Tertiaries were placed under the Franciscan visitors by Nich-
olas IV, in 1290. Bull. Unigenitus in Sbaralea, Bull. Franc. IV, p. 167.
2 Thomas de Eccleston, de Adventu Minorwm in Angliam (in 1224)
printed in vol. i, Monuwmenta Franciscana, Rolls Series, pp. 5-72.
THE RISE OF THE FRIARS 165
easy to see how otherwise they could have trained novices
and kept their order together at all.
We have some most inspiring testimonies to the unselfish
zeal of the friars for righteousness which are all the more
valuable because to a large extent delightfuly unconscious.
Matthew Paris ?? relates how, in 1252, the king sent the
Franciscans some woollen cloth, which they at once returned
because he had taken it without payment from the merchants.
A little later he tells us how they contrived to rescue certain
Jews accused of the murder of a boy at Lincoln “from prison
and the death which they deserved,” even though it involved
such unpopularity that the common people withheld their
accustomed charity.?*
The Burton annalist, however, attributes this saving of the
Jews to the Dominicans: “Meanwhile, horrible to relate, the
friars preachers, who, for love of the Crucified, have chosen
poverty and professed a strict rule of life that by the ex-
ample of good works and by the word of life they might save
- souls about to perish and rescue them from the jaws of hell,
strove with all their might to save the rest of the Jews who
were shut up in prison and deserved eternal damnation with
the devil, seeing that they had no wish or intention to be con-
verted to the faith of Christ. Hence it is amazing that they
should attempt to save unbelievers from death, unless they
wished to be converted and baptized.**
It certainly shows the friars in a most magnificent light,
that they should dare to stand up against constituted au-
thority in an unpopular cause and resist the strongest racial
and religious prejudices of the mob.
This splendid zeal for poverty and righteousness was suc-
ceeded by one of the most remarkable revivals of learning
that the Middle Ages ever witnessed (p. 217). The friars
2 Chron. Mai, Rolls Series. V, 275-6.
1b. V, 546.
* Annales Monast., Rolls Series, I, pp. 346-7.
166 CHRISTIAN MONASTICISM
also carried on a noble missionary work far beyond the
boundaries of Europe (p. 181).
Meanwhile the intense difficulty of applying literally the
strict rules of S. Francis to the conditions of the vastly
expanding order gave rise to very considerable differences of
opinion, and gradually two parties were formed, the stricter
being known as spirituals. Even S. Bonaventura failed to
find an acceptable compromise, and accordingly a division
was made. Franciscans were classed as Observants and Non-
observants.
By the efforts of S. Bernadine of Siena, the Observantines
were given a vicar-general of their own, thus definitely divid-
ing the Franciscan order into Observant and Conventual
bodies. The Observantines were still divided among them-
selves; stricter bodies split off—Capuchins in Italy, Récol-
lets in France, Aleantarines in Spain.
The relations between the friars and monks were usually
strained, largely because of the popularity of the former
with the people, and their aptness to draw unfavourable com-
parisons between the work done for them by the wealthy
monks and by the poverty stricken friars. By the time the
friars arose, the monks had ray done much of their
best work.
Not only were pious founders inclined to erect collegiate
churches instead of further monasteries (see, nevertheless,
p. 116), but the old houses were beginning to attract fewer
neophytes. The arrival of the Franciscans in England is
thus chronicled by one of the monks: “1224. Hodem anno o
dolor! O plus quam dolor! O pestis truculenta! Fratres
minores venerunt in Angliam.” ?°
At first the secular priests, and especially the more earnest
of them, welcomed the friars who were able to do so much
to improve the spiritual state of their parishes by their elo-
* Chron. Petriburg, by John, Abbot of Peterborough, ed. by J. Sparke,
Hist. Angl., Script. III, p. 102.
THE RISE OF THE FRIARS 167
quent preaching and evangelistic piety. S. Francis himself
had taught by word, and illustrated by example, that friars
should be very humble toward the clergy: ‘We are sent,”
he used to say, “to help the clergy for the salvation of souls
that whatsoever is found lacking in them may be supplied
by ug!’ 26
This feeling gradually changed as the friars became rivals
rather than merely voluntary helpers, and especially when
they took the fees that should have formed a large part of
the incomes of the rectors.
In 1250, Innocent IV permitted the friars to bury in their
churches and yards anyone who desired it, thus taking a
most valuable source of income out of the hands of the parish
priests, who now had nothing to offer that the friars could
not duplicate, particularly as endowed chantries and Masses
might be established in the churches of friars.??
It was felt that the goodness of the friars would greatly
assist in their salvation all those found buried in their
_ churches at the Day of Doom, and sometimes laity were
actually in pious fraud laid to rest in friars’ gowns.
Their extreme popularity had caused property to be
almost forced upon them, and in England the custom of
the community’s holding it to the use of the friars did much
to develop the notion of trusteeship. In other countries such
possessions were frequently vested in the Pope.
Before very long, in all lands, the friars were ministering
in magnificent minsters, superior to most parish churches,
vast in dimensions, brilliant with painted glass, resplendent
* Speculum Perfectionis, seu 8. Francisci Assisiensis Legenda Anti-
quissima, auctore Fratre Leone, IV, 54; Ed. by Paul Sabatier, pp. 92-93.
* Monks, friars, and secular priests are not infrequently found satir-
ized in the carved details of churches belonging to their rivals. A fox
dressed as a friar addressing a congregation of geese is to be seen in
Norwich Cathedral, a Benedictine house. In Ludlow Church, Shropshire,
which was always parochial, a misericord displays a monk sitting by his
fire in a large arm-chair. Before him is a kettle on a fire, behind him
hang two fat pigs.
168 CHRISTIAN MONASTICISM
with coloured frescoes, and variegated with the canopied
tombs of wealthy and high-placed patrons. Brother Elias,
who even in the lifetime of S. Francis had succeeded to the
control of the order, erected at Assisi the splendid basilica
that is one of the finest artistic monuments of Italy.
The Franciscan church of 8. Croce, in Florence, is one of
the noblest in the city, equalled only, perhaps, after the
cathedral, by another friar church, the Dominican 8. Maria
Novella. Matthew Paris alleges that by the middle of the
thirteenth century the convents of the friars rivalled the
palaces of kings.?* There is little in the way of archeological
evidence to support this view, but plenty to corroborate the
sneer of Piers Plowman a century later against those who
wish to put their names on the stained windows of friars’
churches:
And sithen he seyde,
We have a window in werkynge.
Woldest thou glaze that gable,
And grave there thy name,
Nigher should thy soul be
Heaven to have.
The vast Greyfriars Church in London (three hundred by
eighty feet) with its pillars of marble and magnificent win-
dows of coloured glass, built by queens, and nobles, and
wealthy burgesses, was one of the finest buildings in the
city. In 1461, when the fugitive Henry VI and his adher-
ents were entertained by the Scots at Edinburgh, the place
chosen was the Dominican Convent.?®
Still, whatever faults they may have had, it was a splendid
revival of monasticism that the friars brought about. They
were ubiquitous; helping the parish clergy, ministering to
the very outcasts, or serving as chaplains to kings; filling
*° Chron. Mai, IV, 280.
* Hume Brown, History of Scotland, vol. i, p. 251.
THE RISE OF THE FRIARS 169
bishops’ sees—sometimes the Papal chair, sent on diplomatic
missions,®® rallying to Simon de Montfort in support of
Parliament, patronizing and sometimes practising art, lec-
turing at the universities (p. 217)—ready for any sort of
work that wanted men.
Sometimes, indeed, they are found acting in somewhat
unexpected capacities. Thus, in 1378, some of the Irish
Carmelites apparently undertook the duties of a regular
garrison. In that year, Richard II made a grant in con-
sideration of the great labour, burden and expense which the
Priors of the Convent of Leighlin Bridge have and do sus-
tain in supporting their house, and the bridge contiguous
thereto, against the king’s enemies.**
As the duty of guarding the bridge, which was on the high-
road between Dublin and Kilkenny, is assigned to the Prior,
it is possible that it was his duty to provide regular soldiers;
but it appears more probable that military services were
performed by the Carmelites in person. In any ease, their
convent in ruin is more like a castle than a priory.
As the Middle Ages wore on toward their end, the friars
were doing very much to reassert that ascetic control of the
world that had been the dominant feature of their first dawn.
Father Cuthbert claims ** that their vernacular preaching
did much to promote the national literatures of Europe; the
monks had done something along the same lines (p. 192),
but certainly on a far smaller scale.
There is no doubt that the friars did something to popu-
larize the church service on what would now be called “mis-
sion” lines. The Christmas Crib, and simple miracle plays,
sought to make the events of the Church’s year more real
* Thus, it was a Franciscan friar who was sent (indirectly) in 1317
by Pope John XXII to Robert Bruce, whom that sovereign declined to
see, as he had to confess that his master declined to recognise him as
king of Scots. There were abundant other instances.
* Archdall, Monasticon Hibernicum, art. Leighlin. On its suppres-
sion, the monastery was converted into a fort, regularly garrisoned.
* Romanticism of St. Francis, p. 180.
170 CHRISTIAN MONASTICISM
to the people. Hymn singing in the vernacular was another
feature of the revival that the friars brought about. As late
as the time of Shakespeare, popular ditties about them were
current, one of which is used in the “Taming of the Shrew”:
It was the friar of orders grey,
As he forth walked on his way.”
Despite the fact that the friars had by the time of the
dissolution accumulated considerable property, it was trifling
compared with that of the monks. They still lived by beg-
ging. Chaucer reproaches them not with wealth but with
the hypocritical character of their mendicancy. But he
specially says that his own friar was exceptional.
It is perfectly impossible not to feel that by the mid-
fourteenth century the friars had lost their original ideals
to a very great extent. Whatever allowance be made for
exaggeration by Wyckliffe, Langland, and Chaucer, it is
impossible merely to brush aside their references to friars.
In Chaucer’s ‘‘Prologue,”’ as nowhere else at equal length,
the Middle Ages live again. All the pilgrims fare alike; the
foibles of lay folk and Church folk are treated with impartial
hand. . |
Later on, all four orders were to experience a most splen-
did revival. Alone of the great medieval orders the friars,
aid particularly the Franciscans and Dominicans, were to
take a very leading part in the post-Renaissance revival of
monasticism. A new sphere of usefulness was opened when
their churches were made parochial—a common arrangement
now.** ‘They have carried the Gospel to many lands. They
> Act IV, Scene I, Petruchio’s fourth speech.
* At any rate after the dissolution in England friars sometimes held
parishes. In Lurgashall Church, Sussex, is preserved (in a copy made
1716) a declaration of the parishioners concerning land for the mainte-
nance of a clerk dated 1567, containing the sentence: “a Fryer called
Sr John was parson next after the said Sr Richard.” It is printed in
Sussex Archeological Collections, LXV, p. 257. 1924.
THE RISE OF THE FRIARS Dee
have founded colleges and schools. They have done as much
as any to interpret Latin Christianity to the masses of today.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
The chief authority for the life of S. Francis of Assisi is 9.
Francisci Assisiensis Vita et Miracula, Celano, printed in the
original Latin at Rome, 1906. Ed. E. d’Alengon.
The Vita Prima was written (1228-1229) for Gregory IX; the
Vita (Legenda) Secunda in 1248. The English edition is Lives
of St. Francis of Assisi, by Brother Thomas of Celano, trans. by
A. G. Ferrers Howell.
Other sources of the greatest value are: Legenda Trium So-
ciorum, 1246, ed. Faloci-Pulignani (Foligno, 1898). Trans. into
English by E. G. Salter, 1902.
Speculum Perfectionis, by Brother Leo, ed. by its discoverer,
P. Sabatier, in 1898. English translation, The Mirror of Per-
fection, 1899, trans. by S. Evans.
Sacrum Commercium. Published as The Lady Poverty in
English, ed. by Montgomery Carmichael, 1902.
Legende Duae (Maior et Minor) of Bonaventura, de Vita S.
Francisct, ed. by Franciscans of Quaracchi.
Floretum, Italian Fiorettv. Eng. trans. T. W. Arnold. Little
Flowers, 1898. De Adventu FF Minorum in Angliam, by Thomas
de Eccleston, and the Epistole Fratris Adae de Marisco de Ordine
Minorum are printed with other documents in Monumenta Fran-
ciscana, Rolls Series, ed. J. S. Brewer.
There are other documents, including the Rule and the Grey
Friars Chronicle in English, in vol. II, also R.S. Ed. Richard
Howlett.
Eccleston is translated in The Friars and how they came to
England; introduction by Fr. Cuthbert, London, 1903.
Regula Antiqua Fratrum et Sororum de Paenitentia seu Tertir
Ordinis Sancti Francisci, Ed. Sabatier, 1901.
Some of the best of the extremely numerous secondary writings
are A. G. Little, Studies in English Franciscan History, Man-
chester University, 1917.
Mrs. Oliphant, Francis of Assist.
A. Jessopp, The Coming of the Friars.
P. Sabatier, St. Francis, Eng. trans. L. S. Houghton.
Fr. Cuthbert, Life of St. Francis, and Romanticism of St.
Francis.
St. Francis of Assisi and his Legend, by Nino Tamassia, trans.
by L. Ragg, is of great interest, concerning the general subject
of the lives of the saints.
For S. Dominic, the chief source is the Record by Jordan .of
172 CHRISTIAN MONASTICISM .
Saxony, ed. J. J. Berthier, Freiburg, 1891. The Bollandists,
A.SS. Aug. 4th 359, seq., give a life in their well known series.
Bede Jarrett, O. P. The Life of St. Dominic (1170-1221).
The great interest taken in the Franciscans appears rather to
have caused the Dominicans to’be neglected by English scholars.
Medieval England. Ed. by H. W. G. Davis (Oxford Univ., 1924)
ch. X, pp. 344-427. Monks, Friars and Secular Clergy is a val-
uable study of relations.
SS
CHAPTER XI
THE MONK AS MISSIONARY
It was not to be expected even in the earliest days that
monastic enthusiasm would long remain contented in the
actual cloister. The great world beckoned, heathenism chal-
lenged, and one of the first duties that monks took upon
themselves was that of spreading the faith. It was chiefly
from their lips that those who dwelt beyond the empire’s
bounds heard the Gospel in many regions of the world, from
Scotland to Cathay.
Among the earliest, and in some respects the most remark-
able, of these noble missionary labours was that which ecar-
ried the faith, though in its Nestorian form, from the shores
of the Mediterranean to those of the far distant Pacific.
More than twelve hundred years have passed away since
a few poor monks began that task of evangelizing China,
which even today makes but slow progress despite the earnest
efforts of so many relatively wealthy missions, and the
devoted lives of multitudes of well taught workers. In view
of present day efforts to Christianize the Far East, the
extremely successful monastic methods of dealing with the
same problem before Alfred the Great was born, have an
exceedingly special interest.
The spiritual followers of Nestorius, who clung to his
teachings after their condemnation by the Council of Ephesus
in 431, were largely of Syrian:race. Nobly turning toward
the rising sun, instead of disturbing the Roman Empire
with further religious controversies on that particular point,
the Syrian monks carried on a glorious missionary work,
173
174 CHRISTIAN MONASTICISM
which covered Asia with their bishoprics from Jerusalem to
Peking, and from southern India to Turkestan. At the
height of their prosperity they seem to have had no less than
twenty-five metropolitan bishops under the Catholics or
Patriarch, whose seat was at Seleucia-Ctesiphon, close to
Baghdad. The monks who ‘observing the course of the
winds made their way to China through difficulties and
perils,” ? must have been cheered by arriving at monasteries
occupied by their brethren at the end of every few days’
march. Layard saw a number of curious bowls from China
in an ancient Nestorian church in a valley of Kurdistan, an
interesting evidence of the former Asia-wide extent of a
communion that has now only a few thousand members.
Most of our real knowledge of these missionaries in the
Far East is derived from the now famous tablet at Si-ngan-fu
which the Jesuits discovered in 1625, and which bears a date
corresponding to 781 a.p. The genuineness of the monument
was at one time a matter of great interest in Europe and
was discussed by Voltaire and Renan. It admits of no
serious dispute.
In all the long story of Christian missions, there is per-
haps no single document that can compare with this one for
interest, giving us an excellent idea of Nestorian methods ©
of propaganda. As to the extent of their success, there is
little evidence beyond the fact that in the T’ang capital
(Si-ngan-fu) they had at one time about sixty clergy. With
many vicissitudes their Church lasted till in the thirteenth
century the Franciscans began to arrive, but it appears not
seriously to have survived the downfall of Mongol power in
1368, when the native Ming dynasty was established.
The first part of the tablet sets forth the main truths of
the Christian faith, asserting that the Wise Men came from
1A very good map of the metropolitan bishoprics of the Nestorian
church is given in Colonel Yule’s Cathay and the Way Thither, vol. iii,
p. 23, last ed. Khanbalik (Peking) and Sin are in China.
? Expression used on the Nestorian Tablet.
THE MONK AS MISSIONARY 175
Persia. It is remarkable that the Christian message is
presented in language and in terms entirely familar to the
Chinese. The writer was himself a Chinese, Ching-ching,
evidently an excellent scholar. All three religions are
conciliated.
The Jewish Prophets are called “sages”; the first man is
said to have had bestowed upon him an excellent disposition
superior to all others, exactly in the Confucian way; the
Scriptures are called sutras, like the Buddhist sacred works.
The Christian Way is emphasized in terms most familiar to
the Taoists. Many other Chinese religious expressions are
adopted; the whole inscription would be readily understood
by any educated Chinese.
The noblest part of the Christian social message, espe-
cially as it was seen by the monks, is very well set forth.
Christians “keep neither male nor female slaves. Putting
all men on an equality they make no distinction between the
noble and the mean. They neither accumulate property nor
wealth; but giving away all they possess, they set a good
example to others. They observe fasting in order that they
may subdue ‘the knowledge’. Seven times a day they meet
for worship and praise and earnestly they offer prayers for
the living and the dead (presumably this is in connexion with
ancestor worship). Once in seven days they have a sacrifice
without the animal.”
The first monk to arrive (Alopen), in 635 a.p., hastened
to get imperial support, and Chéng Kuan of the T’ang
dynasty gave by imperial rescript a somewhat guarded sup-
port to the faith, ending: “This teaching is helpful to all
creatures and beneficial to all men. So let it have free
course throughout the empire.” * In gratitude, a faithful
portrait of the Emperor was placed upon the walls of the
monastery: “The celestial beauty appeared in its variegated
colours.”
*This edict has been identified among the dynastic records.
176 CHRISTIAN MONASTICISM
In every respect it is clear that monasteries were built in
purely Chinese style, and they must outwardly have resem-
bled the Buddhist ones. “The corridors and walls were nobly
ornamented and beautifully decorated; roofs and flying eaves
with coloured tiles appeared like the five-coloured pheasant
on the wing.” From the imperial rescript it is clear that
the first missionaries brought images, for the days of icono-
clasm in the Byzantine Empire had not yet come.
The Nestorians possessed a great advantage over modern
missionaries in being able to say what they liked about
Christendom; it was not represented by samples at treaty
ports. In describing the condition of Syria it must be ad-
mitted they had in mind far more the need for impressing
the Chinese than of setting forth strict truth.
“The country produces asbestos cloth, the soul-restoring
incense, the bright-moon pearls, and night-shining gems.
“Robberies and thefts are unknown among the common
people, while everyone enjoys happiness and peace. None
but the luminous teachings prevail; none but virtuous rulers
are raised to the sovereign power. The territory is of vast
extent; and its refined laws and institutions as well as
accomplished manners and customs are gloriously brilliant.”
In point of fact, Syria had for a century and a half been
under Moslem rule and some of the other statements might
be hard to verify. At the end is given the name of a patri-
arch (of Seleucia-Ctesiphon), who had really been dead
several months.
It seems probable that the persecution of all foreign creeds
which broke out in 845 was fatal to Nestorianism in China,
but it was reintroduced from the conversion of two tribes of
Turkish origin, the Keraits and the Onguts, who were later
connected with the Mongols.*
‘There exists a letter of 1007 from the Bishop of Merv to the Patri-
arch, reporting the conversion of the Keraits and asking for concessions ~
about their fasting.
THE MONK AS MISSIONARY 177
Thus on the establishment of the Mongol dynasty, Nes-
torian Christianity got a new foothold in the empire. At
Fang Shan, a few miles southwest of Peking, there is a
Buddhist “Temple of the character Ten” (in Chinese +-)
which contains some old Christian monuments and was un-
doubtedly Nestorian originally. Other remains have been
found.
These first Christian missionaries represented no alien
culture, but could speak to the Chinese in terms that they
perfectly understood. They appear to have done more than
our modern missionaries have so far been able to accomplish
in the way of direct conversion—not otherwise. On the
other hand, it does not appear that Nestorian Christianity
really exerted any traceable influence on the stream of Chi-
nese civilization.®
It was likewise by monastic preaching that virtually all
Northern Europe was converted to the faith. It certainly
does not seem that the monks deliberately planned by their
wide-spreading missions to bring about the much needed
stabilization of Europe after the fall of Rome, they rather
went forward step by step as they saw the will of God, not
specially concerned as to the ultimate result of their labours;
yet this was by far the most important eventual outcome of
all the work they did.
To the rude and warlike Northern children—for as such
they are depicted in the entrancing Icelandic sagas, the
whole race of them more like college freshmen than men
of mature years—Christianity meant far more immediately
a sharing of the culture of the South than any very con-
spicuous improvement in their morals. This is very evident
in the history of the Franks by Gregory of Tours.
5T am much indebted both to the lectures and personal conversation
of Prof. Paul Pelliot, of the Collége de France, who has made some most
interesting discoveries about the Nestorians, collecting materials for a
much fuller account than any that has yet been written. His volumes
will be welcomed by scholars.
178 CHRISTIAN MONASTICISM
The legions of Rome had failed at length to guard the
imperial frontiers or to set any bounds to the ravages of
barbarians swarming over land and sea. ‘The Christian
monk succeeded not only in keeping the Northern races in
the Northern lands, but by adding those territories to Chris-
tendom, he both relieved the southlands of that special
danger and gave Western Europe a real unity that endured
for almost an entire millennium.
The South gave a common Latin tongue and a common
cultural tradition that reached into the Arctic Circle; the
North contributed a common architecture whose glory has
never been surpassed and whose magnificent Gothic min-
sters, enriched by endless variety, and yet in most features
essentially the same, still rise from the Norwegian fjords to
the Sicilian hills, and from the furthest limits of Portugal
to countries far east of the Vistula.
In employing monks as their missionaries, and founding
monasteries as their mission stations, besides addressing
themselves in the first place to kings, both the Celtic and
the Latin Churches agreed ; in other things for the most part
they differed. An Irish monastery in a pagan land, as in
Ireland itself, was set down far from the abodes of man, in
surroundings that suggested, in some degree at least, the
deserts where monasticism itself was born. Such were
the places beloved by SS. Columba and Aidan, and Cuth-
bert. Jona and Lindisfarne, lonely, rocky, wave-beaten
islands, Melrose beside a river well inland, all distant
from cities and marts, are typical Ivish missions. It is a
beautiful story of simple devotion, deep sympathy for beasts
and love of nature’s own solitudes that Adaman has to
tell in his famous “Life of Columba.” ® and in later years
*That the Irish monks were more appreciative of nature than the
Latin will hardly be denied; yet it is noteworthy that no Celtic record
even mentions the now famous Fingal’s cave in Staffa, close though it is
to Iona.
THE MONK AS MISSIONARY 179
Gall 7 and Columbanus among the mountains of Switzerland
represented the untiring devotion of the Celts. They did
not seek big towns.
The Latins represented a different tradition and a greater
one, maybe. Theirs was the accumulated wisdom and the
imperial tradition of Rome. Bede tells us how in sending
S. Augustine to Ethelbert of Kent, Pope Gregory sought to
impress the Saxons by such an feet as one sovereign
might send to another.
The Latin monks, whatever their race, and many were
of barbarian stock, set up their seats in the largest towns
there were—S. Augustine in Canterbury, striving also to
occupy Rochester, London, and York; 8. Boniface at Mainz
upon the busy Rhine; 8. Willibrod at Frisian Utrecht;
S. Ansgar, the apostle of the North, at Charles’ stronghold
of Hamburg; Boro among the Wends; and Adelbert at
Prague, all sought the biggest cities or the best strategic
points.
It is of extraordinary interest to find that (unlike the
Nestorians in China), S. Boniface in his very uphill work
of bringing Christianity to the German lands has to com-
plain in a letter to the Pope that his German, Bavarian,
and Frankish converts were scandalized by travellers’
reports of what went on under the very shadow of
S. Peter’s at Rome. Pope Zachary (under date of April 1,
743), could only reply that he was outraged too, but
that all his efforts to bring about an improvement had so far
failed.®
™The Abbey of S. Gall afterwards became famed throughout Europe
for its singing and also for its copying of MSS. (See p. 225.)
®See the correspondence quoted in Maitland’s Dark Ages, No. IX, pp.
154-5. Unfortunately the barbarians did not draw the inference of
Boccaccio’s Jewish convert, that a faith that could continue to exist with
such appalling scandals at its very heart must indeed be divine. His
tale is plagiarised in Luther’s Table Talk (Sec. DCCCLXIX, W. Haz-
litt’s ed., p. 353) where the incident is said to have happened at Wit-
tenberg and in the reformer’s own experience.
\
4
180 CHRISTIAN MONASTICISM
As with missionaries in many other lands and centuries,
the monks were building for posterity very well, but for
their own generation the results were by no means what
might have been hoped for. The newly Christianized people
were apt to throw off their old barbarian codes of morality
and honour without being very seriously influenced by the
ethics of their new faith.
A terrible example among the Franks is the well-known
story of the revolt of the nuns at Poitiers shortly after the
death of S. Radegund (587). With the help of “murderers,
adulterers, law-breakers, and other scoundrels” the furious
women broke all bounds, committed disgraceful excesses and
routed completely the bishops and clergy who desired to
restore order. Fighting went on in the very church and
the trouble lasted for two years.® In the days of early
mission work, Christianity would seem to have done very
much more for architecture and political organization than
for actual morals.
As the generations wore on, improvement was steady
and perhaps even rapid. The Christianization of Europe
was never quite completed; the Lapps are mostly pagan
yet. But of all northern Christendom—practically every
church beyond the empire’s ancient bounds—the monk
could feel that it was his own work. Without the devoted
labours of the ascetics, the barbarians must have remained
for further centuries outside the pale. The position of
~ the monk at the dawn of the Middle Ages is very well ex-
pressed by Henry Osborn Taylor: ‘Many bishops and priests
were little better than the nobles, yet the Church preserved
Christian belief and did something to preserve morality.
“Everywhere the monk was the most striking object lesson,
with his austerities, his terror-stricken sense of sinfulness
and conviction of the peril of the world. No material, grasp-
ing bishop, no dissolute and treacherous priest denied that
° Gregory of Tours, History of the Franks, bk. IX, chh. 39-44.
THE MONK AS MISSIONARY 181
the monk’s was the ideal Christian life; and the laity stood
in awe, or expectation, of the wonder-working power of his
asceticism.” 1°
Missionary zeal, in fact, seems to be inherent in the very
essence of monasticism, for from their very foundation in
the thirteenth century, the friars found their way out to
China; the Jesuits in the sixteenth to Japan. Both sup-
plied many pioneers for the exploration and settlement of
the Americas.
S. Francis himself, travelling to the East with the Cru-
saders, preached to an Egyptian army with the sultan at
its head, though he knew no syllable of the Arabic tongue.
Success in such conditions was hardly to be hoped for,
though it speaks something for the chivalry of that day that
such a thing was permitted at all.
The scene must have been picturesque, but we know little
more than the fact. Probably the great difference in the
whole cultural background between the two civilizations pre-
vented the personality of 8. Francis from being specially
impressive to the Moslems. In the “Speculum Perfec-
tionis” 14 we read how he taught the brethren to travel with
humility and devotion to the furthest portions of the world.
God has chosen them to look after the souls both of the
faithful and the heathen.
From the first, the Franciscans were a missionary order.
It would undoubtedly have delighted the soul of S. Francis
could he have seen his children carrying the Gospel to the
furthest recesses of the American wildernesses. It was they
who, when in the late eighteenth century the Russians pene-
trating southward from Alaska caused somewhat needless
alarm to the Spanish rulers of Mexico, under Junipero Serra
carried HI Camino Real through the California hills, along
the shore. Beside it, at convenient intervals, they strung
Medieval Mind, vol. i, p. 195.
“IV, 65, pp. 118-122, Sabatier’s edition.
2.
182 CHRISTIAN MONASTICISM
those picturesque old missions that impart to that delightful
country something of the atmosphere of Southern Europe.
One of them, close by the Golden Gate, has given the name
of San Francisco himself to the metropolis of the West;
while its rival, Los Angeles, takes its name from another
mission. Others have given names to pleasant, palm-shaded
sea-side towns. White men now worship where once the
Indians prayed.
The Mongol conquests, extending into Europe and in-
cluding China under the great Emperor Kublai Khan (well
known from Coleridge’s poem), opened a secure way to the
Far East along which travelled some of the early Fran-
ciscans, such as John of Montecorvino, made Archbishop of
Peking,?” Friar Odoric of Venice, and many more.
Those were the days when Marco Polo gave Europe its
first real knowledge of China and, though they are far less
known, some of the friars, particularly Odoric, supply in-
formation of little less importance. Odoric refers to the
Nestorians as “Christians indeed, but schismatics and here-
tics.” +8 Marco Polo is less unsympathetic in his references.
Some two centuries later, the Portuguese conquests in
the East, following in the wake of Vasco da Gama, who
doubled the Cape in 1498 and found a new route to India,
opened new communications with all the far Oriental lands.
S. Francis Xavier (1506-1552), one of the original mem-
bers of the Society of Jesus (p. 251) had a most remarkable
career as a missionary, travelling about in the true spirit
of his Basque race, over all the wide areas between Goa and
Japan.
He inaugurated Jesuit methods of propaganda, wholesale
Baptism, and very tolerant recognition of ancient customs
* Where he arrived about 1295. He became Archbishop in 1307, and
is said to have had seven suffragans. His most notable convert was
Prince George, mentioned by Marco Polo, formerly Nestorian. Kublai’s .
mother was a Kerait princess, a Nestorian Christian.
“Travels of Friar Odoric, sec. 6.
THE MONK AS MISSIONARY 183
not entirely inconsistent with Christianity, in the hope of
providing for the future of the Church by bringing up
children in the faith.
To him belongs the credit of having realized before any-
one else, at least to some extent, those peculiar qualities of
the Japanese which have given them in their intercourse
with Europeans so very different a fate from that of all other
Asiatics. His letters from their country contain many
references to the keen anxiety of the people to learn, in
contrast to the comparative listlessness of other Oriental folk.
The missionaries were eventually expelled from the em-
pire by the founder of the Tokugawa line of Shoguns. The
Japanese view is given by Count Okuma: ‘Although the
object of the pioneer of the mission, Xavier, was to preach
the Gospel, that of those who followed him was by no means
to spread the doctrine of Christianity, but to absorb our
country by a series of most treacherous intrigues.” “If the
Portuguese ministers had confined their energy to religious
enterprises only, Japan would easily have been transformed
into a Christian country.”
But that the Jesuits planted the seeds of Christianity
very deep is evident from the fact that when in the nine-
teenth century Japan was opened up to intercourse with the
world by the expedition of Commodore Perry (1852-4), it
was found that many families had in secret preserved their
faith all through the long seclusion of the land—two hun-
dred and fifty years.
This is one of many romances connected with the story
of the early Jesuit missionaries, both in East and West.
One Constantino Beschi contrived to get high in the favour
of a native Indian prince, and he used to travel about his
dominions in all the pomp and circumstance of a high Asiatic
grandee, while many of his colleagues, no worse men than
himself, in their own opinion or his, were ministering to
wretched outcasts who got ruthlessly driven from the path
184 CHRISTIAN MONASTICISM
by his numerous attendants whenever the great man was
pleased to pass along that way.
In China, Matteo Ricci (1552-1610) inaugurated a strik-
ingly successful policy of using Western knowledge of as-
tronomy, architecture, artillery, and clocks so to impress the
emperors as to make the missionaries virtually indispens-
able.*4
Nor did the Jesuits show any narrow spirit of mere par-
tisanship when the empire was convulsed by strife. Amid
the wars of the early seventeenth century by which the
Manchu Tatars eventually overthrew the native Mings, the
Jesuits gave help to both, and yet contrived to be in the
confidence of the Manchus. Schall, Verbiest, and others
held high office under the vigorous and most capable Kanghi.
The Jesuits delighted the unsophisticated Manchu rulers
by their scientific knowledge, by building a palace in the
style of the Renaissance, and by making those ornate astro-
nomical instruments that the Germans appropriated during
the Boxer disturbances.
Unfortunately neither their common traditions in monas-
ticism nor even their allegiance to the See of Rome were
sufficient to keep friars and clerks regular in harmony. The
Jesuits got into most unhappy disputes with the more un-
yielding Franciscans and Dominicans, who strongly disap-
proved of the large concessions made to Chinese ideas in the
matter of ancestor worship and other Confucian traditions.
Long and somewhat acrimonious disputes—during which
successive Popes tried to get at the truth, and Chinese sov-
ereigns were called in by the Jesuits to decide problems of
Christian theology—led eventually to utter disaster for the
mission.
In the Western hemisphere, as in the East, Jesuit mis-
“sionaries were to play a most important part. The first
“By this time it seems likely that both Nestorian and Franciscan
missions had quite died out.
THE MONK AS MISSIONARY 185
wide explorers of the American continents had been laymen
—the renowned conquistadores of Spain, such as Cortes,
Pizarro, Valdivia, and De Soto, or vigorous French pioneers
such as La Salle.*® But it was largely by the Jesuit mis-
sionaries, both in North and South, that more detailed
knowledge was secured.
Thus, by Fr. Kuno, a Spanish Jesuit, was discovered,
amid the colourful deserts of Arizona, the wonderful ruins
of Casa Grande, and by him was begun the quaint old church
of San Xavier del Bac (near Tucson), whose very archi-
tecture with its pagan looking detail and Indian statues illus-
trates the Jesuit desire to be all things to all races. By
French Jesuits the upper lakes were mapped, and the Mis-
sissippi was explored, tracing out that great French empire
based on Louisiana and Canada that was never to come to
birth. But men of another speech still honour Joliet and
Marquette.
A peculiarly interesting result of the Jesuit missions was
_ the setting up in the heart of South America of a remark-
able monk-ruled state, the fourth that Christendom founded
—not counting as separate realms the. successive dominions
of the military orders (p. 201). In Paraguay, extending
over a very much larger area than belongs to the present
republic of that name, they founded a vast Indian reserva-
tion where on fertile river flats the aborigines were pre-
served from that debilitating contact with the Spaniards
that had so immensely reduced their numbers in other parts
of the continents and islands.
The Jesuits were first called in to care for that territory
by a Dominican friar who had recently been made a bishop in
those parts about the year 1586. The fathers did a splendid
work in protecting the Indians from the rapacity of the
* This man got into trouble and lost his French estates on account of
his connexion with the Jesuits. He had a brother among the Sulpicians,
but he does not appear to have joined any order, though this is not
impossible.
186 CHRISTIAN MONASTICISM
Spaniards, but the state they organized was a paternal abso-
lutism, controlled by the distant General in Rome and
owning but a nominal allegiance to the Spanish king. It
was probably the best that circumstances allowed, but there
was much trouble both with bishops and governors of
Asuncion.
The order must have derived large profits from the planta-
tion, but the Indians were undoubtedly better off than their
brethren exploited by the Spanish settlers. A treaty between
Portugal and Spain, in 1750, which divided Paraguay, was
the beginning of the end of the state. The Indians had
not been consulted, the Jesuits objected to the partition, and
there was fighting for some months.
In the very interesting old walled city of Carthagena,
upon the Spanish Main, there stands a double-towered Classic
cathedral of a common Spanish type. It contains the relics
of a Jesuit saint, Peter Claver (1581-1654), who through
many years worked among the slaves that in huge numbers
were shipped to the place, caring nothing for the unpopu-
larity that it brought him from the wealth and fashion of
the town.
He went out to the ships bringing negroes from Africa
in the pilot boats and is said to have baptized no less than
three hundred thousand of those whose slave for ever he
declared himself to be.
» Thus, it was mainly by members of religious orders that
the bounds of Christendom were extended in both ancient
and recent times. Indeed, from the Council of Chalcedon
to well into the eighteenth century, they had something ap-
proaching a monopoly in the noble work. Nestorian, Bene-
dictine, Franciscan, Jesuit, each in turn, each in his own
way.
It is monks who inaugurate the story of the English as
told in the deathless pages of Venerable Bede. And a
thousand years later, members of orders then unformed gave
THE MONK AS MISSIONARY 187
to America memories of a not dissimilar kind. A railroad
and many cities, besides countless little whitewashed
churches, still keep alive their honoured memories from the
coral reefs of Florida to the poppy-strewn hills of California
and northward to where the eternal forests of Michigan dip
into the waters of the lakes.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
There is an excellent account of the earliest Christian mission
among the Chinese in The Nestorian Monument in China, by
_ Prof. P. Y. Saeki, a Japanese scholar. The inscription is given
both in the original and in English.
Col. Yule’s Cathay and the Way Thither, 2 vols., gives ac-
counts of the Nestorians, early Franciscans and others, with
translations of most of the original sources. The second edition
in 4 vols., brought up to date and revised by Henri Cordier, is a
great improvement.
Among the most interesting sources for the conversion of
Northern Europe are the Icelandic sagas, particularly the Story of
Olaf in the Heimskringla by Snorri Sturleson.
A general account will be found in Hope, Conversion of the
Teutonic Races.
For later missions, Jesuit Relations, ed. by Prof. Thwaites, 73
vols. More briefly Parkman, Jesuits in North America, and Pio-
neers of France.
See also works under Chapter xvii.
_ Bancroft’s History of the United States deals with the subject
in part.
CHAPTER XII
THE MONK AS STATESMAN
The monastically moulded culture of the Middle Ages
was perhaps one of the most democratic that the world ever
knew in the sense that an extremely large proportion of the
‘population felt that they had in it some genuine share.
The wonderfully high civilization of ancient Greece was
always upon a foundation of slavery, and this was the case
even more with the empire of Rome. The culture that was
inaugurated by the Renaissance was shared by a relatively
small portion of the general community, especially during
the eighteenth century, when, perhaps, from the purely in-
tellectual point of view, it reached its most splendid climax.
But during the Middle Ages architecture was a communal
art and the names of individual designers are usually all
unknown. It required the codperation of all classes to raise
from medieval poverty cathedrals and churches that for
beauty and size have but seldom been approached with all
the wealth and material resources of modern times. There
is a democratic atmosphere of camaraderie among all classes
—from the plough-man up to the knight among the pil-
grims who journeyed with Chaucer to Canterbury—that in
Europe could hardly be paralleled today.
It certainly is not true that in the Middle Ages social
conditions were satisfactory, nor that the poor were not ex-
ploited and oppressed on the manor, nor that the average
person was morally better or materially happier than at the
present time, but the difference in the actual standards of
188
THE MONK AS STATESMAN 189
living was less than today* and in the carrying out of
public works and particularly the building of churches there
were elements of a real democracy.
In no respect is the contribution of the religious orders
to modern life more striking than in what they did for the
development of democratic administration, and yet evidence
is almost wholly circumstantial. It is not a point upon
which medizval writers display any interest whatever.
S. Basil had feared, and definitely provided against, a
democratic state of affairs in his convents (p. 44). In the
East it is certainly true that whatever popular control of
the policy of monasticism the monks may have won has
been of very little significance to the outside world. Nor
has it been at all considerable in itself.
That the Greeks were the inventors of democracy is evi-
denced by the very word itself, but after the days of Alexan-
der its flame had burned somewhat murkily, and there is not
much evidence that popular control was ever a very vital
tradition of the Eastern Church. It is remarkable that
Procopius, writing about 550 a.p., speaks of the Sklabenoi
or Slavs as “not ruled by one man but dwelling from of old
in a state of democracy.” ? But the race has never since,
at least not until the nineteenth century, shown any very
democratic tendencies either in secular or ecclesiastical
affairs.
The first commonwealth ever to be controlled by Christian
monks was that of Mount Athos and it has outlasted the,
historically, far more significant instances that were to rise
in Western Europe (p. 53). It never had any lay sub-
jects and in fact all women and even female animals are
excluded from the holy mountain. The rocky peninsula
forms a monastic republic, in whose assembly each of the
+ Adam Smith in the Wealth of Nations has some interesting observa-
tions on this point and much that he says will stand the test of modern
research.
2 De Bello Gotthico, III, 14.
190 CHRISTIAN MONASTICISM
twenty convents is represented, but the state is not of great
interest in general history (p. 201).
In Western Europe it will hardly be questioned that the
parliaments of nations owe something to the chapters of the
monks. How much it is most difficult to say.
The rule of S. Benedict provides that the abbot must do
nothing of moment without calling together the chapter of
his monks; ‘fas often as anything special is to be done in
the monastery, the abbot shall call together the whole con-
gregation, and shall himself explain the question at issue.”
But the abbot, having pondered the advice given, and remem-
bering that it is often to a younger person that God. reveals
what is best, must himself decide.
This leaves the abbot in complete control of the situation,
indeed, but it makes him much less of an autocrat than an
early feudal king, who was not absolutely obliged to consult
his council on all occasions, however politic he may have
found'it to do so. It is inconceivable that under such a
rule the abbot should have been usually an autocrat.
In course of time the monasteries became great land-
owners and this in Europe has for centuries involved large
responsibilities for local government. In Britain the tradi-
tion even yet is strong, though of course a waning force.
Inevitably the abbots found themselves compelled to take
their part in the feudal system. They were impelled to take
their share in county activities as local magnates, just like
other land-owners. They had their own manorial courts;
they sat in the shiremoot.
Their education was apt to be better, often much
better, than that of the lay barons; their usefulness was
extended accordingly. The king called them to the great
council of the realm; in England eventually twenty-
nine of them had seats in the House of Lords. So they
had to acquire London residences, and, with less reason,
they frequently had others in provincial centres. At
THE MONK AS STATESMAN 191
Exeter, for example, in the Close may still be seen the city
houses of three great country abbots. The town house of
the abbots of Cluny is the seat of a well known museum in
Paris. At the abbeys themselves S. Benedict’s provision in
the Rule that the abbot should have his meals in the guesten
hall, and if guests failed might thither summon such of the
cloister monks as he pleased, was extended into giving the
abbot a house of his own, frequently with separate hall and
chapel, so that sometimes the monks themselves may have
known little more of their Father-in-God than when they
saw him pontificating with all the state of a diocesan bishop
in the abbey church (p. 180). He had a fixed income from
the abbey funds with a completely separate establishment in
the case of a great house.
Everything, in short, was early tending to make the abbots
practical men of affairs, feudal lords, statesmen, ambassa- °
dors for kings or Popes, rather than simple recluses. The
Confessor at Westminster founded (or rather refounded)
the famous abbey close to his own palace—S. Stephen’s, now
the Houses of Parliament. Scottish kings at Holyrood and
Dunfermline had palaces forming part of the same block of
buildings as abbeys. In Spain at the Escurial and for a
short time at Yuste* there were similar arrangements.
This may have led to monks being informally consulted
upon matters of State, though it is not suggested in the old
Scottish couplet telling how the king used to go to Holyrood:
Unto the saintly convent with good monks to dine,
And quaff to organ music the pleasant cloister wine.
The lord abbot became a great grandee in the world that
his spiritual ancestors had given up as wholly vile. It
would not have seemed right to the desert solitaries, but
the evolution was quite inevitable. The monk was not seek-
* Whither the emperor, Charles V, retired in his later years. See p.
135, note, about Dunfermline.
192 CHRISTIAN MONASTICISM
ing political power; it was being forced into his hands. A
most typical abbot, elected not for family connexions nor
any sort of “pull” but purely from his popularity with the
monks, a man of humble birth, is described for us in the
well known “Chronicle” of Jocelin de Brakelond, the original
for Carlyle’s “Past and Present.”
“An eloquent man was he, both in French and Latin,
but intent more on the substance and method of what he
said than on the style of words. He could read English
books most admirably, and was wont to preach to the people
in English, but in the dialect of Norfolk, where he was
born and bred; and so he caused a pulpit to be set up in
the church for the ease of the hearers, and for the ornament
of the church.
“The abbot seemed also to prefer an active life to one of
contemplation, and rather commended good officials than good
monks. He very seldom approved of any one on account of
his literary acquirements unless he also possessed sufficient
knowledge of secular matters; and whenever he chanced to
hear that any prelate had resigned his pastoral care and
become an anchorite, he did not praise him for it.”
Abbot Samson, in fact, seems to have lost the true—or at
least the original—spirit of monasticism entirely. He can-
not even appreciate it in others. Nothing perhaps could
better illustrate the fact that a thirteenth century abbot
had almost ceased to be a real monk, and had become instead
a practical man of the world, quite as well equipped to bear
his part in Parliament as any of the lay barons.
As one studies some of the monks from the original sources
it is impossible to avoid the feeling that if they were to
come back to life today many of the old abbots and priors
would instinctively turn their steps toward Wall Street
or the Capitol, quite as readily as to the churches.
The feudalization of the monasteries came at a later time
than a similar process in the Church herself. Representa-
\
THE MONK AS STATESMAN 193
tives of the great baronial houses filled most of the sees of
Christendom during early medizval years, but the abbots
were usually elected by the monks, and, as these were re-
eruited from all classes in the community, the religious
houses appear to have formed a fairly complete democracy
in a society where politically it was almost or entirely un-
known. The German chronicler Bernold (1083) tells us
that he saw in the monasteries counts cooking and margraves
feeding pigs.*
The qualities that gain popularity are in all ages very
much the same and the general atmosphere that Jocelin
describes at the Abbey of S. Edmund is strangely similar
to what still exists in the great English public schools. A.
more democratic state of affairs as between the members of
the community themselves it would not be easy to find.
Money confers almost no prestige at all. The son of a
British nobleman may at Eton have to fag for the son of a
country rector.®
_ This democratic tradition of the monks is strongly con-
firmed by the bitter invective upon them which in the
eleventh century was addressed to King Robert by Adalbero
(p. 180) who, from his hill-top bishopric of Laon, looked
with the utmost disgust on the changes that the regulars were
making. The only very definite part of his complaint is
that men of the lowest birth, ignorant, lazy, deformed, peas-
ants, sailors or shepherds were being raised to the highest
places in the Church.®
How far was this democratic tradition in monasticism a
* Monumenta Germanice historica; (Hanover), V, 439.
’This is illustrated by the well-known story of how when a boy from
S. Europe was sent to Harrow it was hoped to give his schoolfellows
high respect for him by letting it be known that in certain circum-
stances he might occupy a prominent throne. The only result was that
almost all the Harrovians took the necessary steps that would enable
them to boast in the event of the conditions being fulfilled that they
had kicked a king of Spain.
* Migne, P.L. 141, Adalberonis Oarmen, col. 773.
194 CHRISTIAN MONASTICISM
power in the world at large? It may not be entirely without
significance that Magna Carta was drawn up in the Abbey of
S. Edmund.
Parliament met originally in the palace of the king at
Westminster, the theory being that the sovereign summoned
leading men from all portions of the country to consult
about government and to vote supplies. Among those entitled
~ to be called were mitred abbots, eventually twenty-nine,
besides the bishops and the barons. One of the abbots was
the head of the great house across the street and, presum- —
ably at his invitation, Parliament soon formed the custom of
meeting in the Chapter House of Westminster Abbey, which
continued so to be used after the dissolution, and to this
day the building is the property of the nation, not, like
the rest of the shrine, of the Church.
- It is also to be noted that when Parliament met at Oxford
or any other provincial town it was usually in a religious
house. The first regularly constituted Parliament of Scot-
land met on July 15, 1326, at the Abbey of Cambuskenneth
by a wind of the Forth near Stirling; later ones met fre-:
quently in religious houses, particularly Franciscan friaries.
We read in the reign of Henry VIII of a “Parliament Cham-
ber near the Friars Preachers.”
Though no friar ever had a seat in Parliament (as such)
it is rather to the friars than to the monks that we must go
for illustrations of representative government. While S.
Francis was primarily a saint, S. Dominic was a practical
statesman, and his order was given a remarkably demo-
cratic constitution, the main elements of which date from
the Chapter held at Bologna, under 8. Dominic himself in
1220-1.
The friars of each local priory elected their own prior 7—
™Constitution of 1228 as printed in Hhrle-Denifle, Archiv. I, p. 196
seq., quoted by Ernest Barker, The Dominican Order and Convocation ;
a study of the growth of representation in the Church during the thir-
teenth century.
THE MONK AS STATESMAN 195
as in the old Benedictine arrangement—but S. Benedict
had gone no further than this. In the Dominican order each
province (usually roughly corresponding to some modern
nation) had a prior elected by a chapter composed of the
conventual priors and two friars elected by the whole body
of each priory. The master-general was elected by a General
Chapter composed of the provincial priors and two friars
elected by each provincial chapter.®
Besides these elected officers are assemblies, largely
elected. All the friars of each individual convent are en-
titled to seats in its chapter. The provincial chapter consists
of the priors of all convents within it, the general preachers
of the province and one representative of the friars from each
convent. It annually elects a committee of four definctors
from the most discreet and proper friars and this forms a
sort of executive body with wide powers extending even, in
case of need, to the suspension of the provincial prior.
The General Chapter of the whole order consists of all
the provincial priors with their soci and the general preach-
ers of the province in which the General Chapter is held.
This, again, has an inner circle of definitors. In two suc-
cessive annual chapters, one definitor is elected by each
provincial chapter and each has a soctus assigned to him by
the provincial prior. In the third annual chapter, the
elective character for the time being disappears and the
provincial priors ex-officio and by themselves act as definttors.
Twice in the history of the order (1228 and 1236), the
capitulum generalissimum met, containing all the provincial
priors and elected definitors—two appointed by each pro-
vincial chapter. Modelled to some extent on the organiza-
tion of earlier orders, particularly the Hospitalers (p. 202),
and still more the Premonstratensians, but far more intricate
and more democratic than either, the Dominican order was
8 Only one representative friar from each of four provinces erected
since 1221.
196 CHRISTIAN MONASTICISM
thus endowed with a very elaborate constitution which" at
once recalls more secular instruments of government.
A German scholar has declared that “it is by far the most
perfect example that the Middle Ages have produced of the
faculty of monastic corporations for constitution building.” ®
The Franciscans originally had only the simplest constitu-
tion. Instead of the master-general at the head of the whole
order the Rule provides for the election of a general minister
“by the mynisters provynciallis and the custodies at the
chapter of Whitsuntide.” *° This body is usually to meet once
in three years but this may be varied by the general min-
ister, whom it may replace if he appear not to be sufficient
and able for the office. Though thus without the representa-
tive system of the Dominicans, the Franciscans had vigorous
democratic ideals and their government was later assimilated
to that of the preaching order.
It was in the Dominican convent at Oxford that in 1258
the so-called Mad Parliament ** met which forced upon the
sorely reluctant king a council of fifteen, and took a some-
what significant step in limiting royal power. Evidence that
the Dominican order directly influenced the constitution of
the British Parliament is purely circumstantial, and it cer-
tainly cannot be proved, but at the same time it is un-
doubtedly probable.
The elder Simon de Montfort was associated with 8. Dom-
inic in the terribly devastating work of putting down the
Albigenses, and in 1212 at Pamiers he summoned to a Par-
liament, bishops, barons, and burgesses. It was his son who
led the English barons against Henry III, and summoned
the first Parliament in which the towns of England were
represented. It is certainly unlikely that he was entirely
uninfluenced by the precedents set by the friars.
* Hauck, Kirchengeschichte Deutschlands, IV, 390; quoted by Barker,
op. cit., p. 18.
See Monumenta Franciscana, Rolls Spidey BG hy fF
™ Matthew Paris, Ohron. Mai. IV. 697. R
THE MONK AS STATESMAN 197
A monk of Westminster expresses pained surprise that
the Franciscans should have supported Simon de Montfort
against king and Pope, not thinking, as would have been
proper, of the privileges and honours which the Roman
Church has showered upon them, nor how King Henry (IIT)
has cared for and watered the little plant of their order.
The monk is so scandalized that he refers to the friars simply
as “quidam,”’ and he goes on with a sad lamentation over
the state of his country beginning: “O Anglia, olim glorv-
osa.” 1" The “Song of Lewes,” written by a Franciscan,
shows a very strongly democratie spirit.
All that we are entitled definitely to assert is that in mon-
asticism we find important elements of democratic govern-
ment, and in the Dominican order a well developed repre-
sentative constitution, antedating anything of the kind that
is at all well organized in the government of the English
State; that men closely connected with the genesis of repre-
sentative parliaments were associated with Dominican friars
and that monastic chapter houses were very usual places
in which parliaments met. The Mother of Parliaments may
well have been a daughter of the chapters of the monks. The
Dominican order itself may have been influenced by the
ancient cortes of Spain, but there seems to be nothing to
prove it.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
A very useful and suggestive little work is Ernest Barker’s
The Dominican Order and Convocation, urging the point that it
was the Church which supplied both the idea of representation
and its rules of procedure.
The Parliament of Scotland by Robert S. Rait (1924. Univ. of
Glasgow) points out how at a convention in Brigham (1290) sat
23 abbots and 10 priors. Different rolls up to 1560 enumerate
seven more abbots and as many priors. The principle of monas-
tic representation was so well established that even commendators
sat till the act of 1640 which excluded all clergy.
“Flores Historiarwm, 1265, Rolls Series (Ed. Luard), III, 266.
CHAPTER XIII
THE MONK AS SOLDIER
Nowhere in history, perhaps, does the monk appear in a
more incongruous role than as the restorer of a professional
soldiery in the days of feudal levies. His desire to win
back the Holy Sepulchre of Christ from the hands of infi-
dels was of the noblest and the best, but the eventual results
of his action were by no means entirely good.
It was no uncommon thing from their very earliest years
for monks to take up arms in causes that to them seemed
right (p. 28). In the winter of 754-5, the Abbot Warnerius
helped to defend Rome against Astolph and the Lombards.+
All through the Middle Ages it was by no means unusual,
especially on borderlands, for monks to spring to arms in
some patriot cause. Their failure to assist in the defence of
Constantinople, in 1453, has never been counted for good.
The medieval effort to consecrate war was in itself one
of the greatest triumphs of the monastic ideal. The noviciate
of the knight was borrowed from the noviciate of the monk.
Assuming that a thing in its very essence so fundamentally
beastly as warfare is capable of any consecration, the all
night watching of the armour before the dimly hghted altar,
the vow that such arms should till death be wielded to break
the heathen and uphold the Christ, and the noble conceptions
of all that Christian chivalry implied, are among the most
beautiful ideals that the world ever knew. There is hardly
a greater reproach to our own generation than the fact that,
4See Milman, Latin Christianity, II, 423.
198
THE MONK AS SOLDIER 199
while warfare is commoner than ever, all chivalry is well-
nigh past.
When the success of the First Crusade had set up the
feudal Christian kingdom of Jerusalem, many of the soldiers
of the cross went home. But others stayed in the Holy Land.
Realizing the great insecurity of the weak outpost of their
faith, a few good knights vowed themselves to fight till death
for the highest of all earthly aims, to hold the Sepulchre of
Christ against the Moslem hordes. They took their name
from the Temple where Christ so often was, on part of whose
site their barrack-priory stood (1118).
In 1128 at the Council of Troyes they were formally rec-
ognized as an order, chiefly by the influence of the great
S. Bernard (p. 140), the dominating spirit of that gather-
ing. Accepting the Cistercian rule, they adopted the white
habit of the order, adding the red cross of Crusaders.
They were exempted from all other jurisdiction than that
of the Pope, relieved from paying tithes, and endowed with
the singular privilege that their churches were unaffected
by interdicts. Jacques de Vitry describes them as “in turn
lions of war and lambs at the hearth; rough knights on the
battlefield, pious monks in the chapel; formidable to the
enemies of Christ, gentleness itself to His friends.”
The Grand Master, residing in the mother house at Jerusa-
lem, ranked in Christendom as a sovereign prince, but the
order was not destined to hold any political state. Each
large district covered by the Templars’ organization was
under the control of a grand prior, and over each local chap-
ter of knight-monks was set a preceptor.
Had the weak and unstable little kingdom of Jerusalem
been entrusted to the order, its life would probably have
been longer than it was. Divided counsels had much to do
with the fall of Jerusalem itself in 1187, and then the
Templars moved their headquarters to Antioch, later to
Acre. Unsupported by Europe and unable to hold their
200 CHRISTIAN MONASTICISM
position in Asia, the Templars made peace with the aostores
and retreated to the West.
The failure of the Crusades brought great kapepnleaey
upon them. Some of their number laid themselves open to
severe criticism by fighting with the English against the
Scots in the battle of Falkirk, in 1298, where certainly their
vows did not call on them to be.
The tragic end of the order was one of the most disgrace-
ful episodes of medizeval times. It had gathered encrmous
riches and held a most dominating position in Europe, when
Philip the Fair, aided by the weak French Pope, Clement V
(a former bishop of Bordeaux), trumping up charges
that never were proved, had all the Templars in France
arrested (1307), and after proceedings that reflect no
credit on anyone concerned, the noble order was dissolved
in 1312.
Chapter meetings were secret, and at these novices were
admitted. There is little doubt that less enquiry than in
the earlier days had sometimes been made into the records
of recruits. Possibly the great and cultured order had
learned to appreciate the civilization of its Saracen foes.
But there is no real doubt that the chief complaint against
the order was its wealth. What little of this escaped royal
rapacity was handed over to the Knights of S. John, except
in Portugal and Spain where crusades were needed at the
very gates against the Moors.
In Portugal the name was changed (in 1319) to ““The
Order of Christ.” In the fifteenth century the Grand Mas-
ter was the celebrated Prince Henry the Navigator, who,
from his sea-girt retreat at Sagres near Cape S. Vincent,
organized with the funds of the order those maritime ex-
plorations which eventually, after his own death, led to Vasco
da Gama’s doubling of the Cape.
Among the earliest results of these voyages was the dis-
covery of Porto Santo and Madeira. On the former island
THE MONK AS SOLDIER 201
for a time was the home of Moniz Perestrello.? His daughter
was the wife of Christopher Columbus, and it has never
been doubted that from his father-in-law he got many ideas
about exploration. His great voyage was unquestionably
facilitated by those undertaken by the Order of Christ. Thus .
even in the discovery of America monasticism may claim
some share.
The Knights Hospitalers, as their name implies, were
originally an ambulance unit. They count their founder
one Gerald (d. 1118), but in some form or another they
existed before his time. Under Raymond of Provence
(Grand Master 1120-60), they established a hospital near
the Church of the Sepulchre, following S. Augustine’s rule
(p. 62). Gradually they adopted a military organization
and thus became colleagues, but rivals, of the Templars.
So great did their prestige become that in 1131, Al-
phonsus, king of Navarre and Aragon, actually left his
crown to the military orders, believing that they could hold
his dominions against the Moors better than any secular
prince. But the will was set aside. The order, however,
took part in the Moorish wars in Spain as well as in the
Holy Land Crusades.
Meanwhile preceptories and commanderies had _ been
founded all over Europe. The capture of Jerusalem by
Saladin, in 1187, was, of course, a very severe blow, but
yet the most glorious period of the order’s history even in
the East was still to come. It had become a political power,
although on a small scale, when Richard Coeur de Lion
handed over to it Acre, which was held until 1291.
So for the second time in history we find a monastic power «
governing as a sovereign state. And, unlike the monk-re-
public of Mount Athos (p. 53), the Hospitalers were called
7Its doors are preserved in the Chicago Historical Society’s Rooms,
in North Dearborn Avenue and Ontario Street.
?> Murray, New Oxford Dictionary, Hospitaler, says they were founded
about 1048.
202 CHRISTIAN MONASTICISM
upon to rule in their successive territories a considerable
population of laity.
On the loss of Acre, a refuge was found in Cyprus by
invitation of its king. A chapter of the whole order was
held at Limisso, on the shore of that island, to consult as
to the best way to restore its stricken fortunes, and to adapt
itself to new conditions. Among other new ventures a fleet
was equipped, and with such success that, in 13809, Rhodes
was captured, under Grand Master Villaret. The island
was held for more than two centuries.
So monks governed a kingdom on a tolerably extensive
scale, nominally indeed under the suzerainty of the Emperor
of the East, but practically in absolute sovereignty. New
resources came in when greatly required, on account of the
suppression of the Templars.
The General Chapter was sovereign in legislation and
discipline, the grand master being the executive, so that the
constitution was democratic so far as the actual knights
were concerned. ‘There were seven langes (Provence, Au-
vergne, France, Italy, Aragon, Germany, England) consti-
tuted in that form, after the healing of a schism occasioned
by an anti-grand master who had risen against Villaret whom
he accused of intolerable luxury. The local commanderies
were under preceptors and held chapters every Sunday.
They were grouped into priories with an annual chapter
on the Feast of S. John. The priories numbered twenty-
four, divided among the langes. Only the General Chapter
had any legislative authority. This was a large inter-
national body, the order having the very strange status of a
sovereign state in its own territory, a monastic order in every
country of Western Christendom, under a single control.
At Rhodes, the knights were in a very favourable position
to dominate the Christian communications with the East
*Delaville Le Roulx, Cartulaire Général des Hospitaliers de Jérusa-
lem, 1100-1310, Paris.
THE MONK AS SOLDIER 203
and to check the piracy of the Moslems. Unfortunately they
afterwards took to piracy themselves and harassed the ship-
ping of the Turks. This drew upon them the crushing
wrath of the Ottoman Empire, but the knights repelled sev-
eral attacks, one of them led by a member of the imperial
house of the Paleologi, a renegade to Islam, commanding the
forces of Mahomet II.
Eventually, in 1522, the island was reduced by Suleiman
II. During the very siege, the knights had been compelled
to execute their chancellor, who tried to turn traitor because
he had not been elected grand master, but their bravery so
gained the admiration of the sultan that he provided ships
to send them with honour to the West.
By Charles V they were granted, in 1530, the island of
Malta, a convenient base from which they renewed their
maritime war on the Turks, and a monastic power controlled
the central Mediterranean. In 1565, Suleiman, not un-
naturally regretting his former generosity, dispatched a most
formidable expedition under Mustapha to attempt to reduce
Malta. The siege that followed was one of the most memor-
able in all history. Under the heroic la Valette every attack
was repulsed till an army of relief arrived from Spain.
Thus, it was Christian monks that administered to the -
Turkish power at its highest flood, the first serious reverse
that it sustained. The crushing defeat at Lepanto followed
in 1571. The restoration of the command of the Mediter-
ranean to the Christian powers, partial as it might be, was
owed very largely to the military monks.
The later history of the order is far less glorious. A con-
stant series of petty fights with the Barbary Corsairs seems
to have done much to reduce the knights to the moral level of
the pirates. The grand master’s authority was greatly dimin-
ished by the tendency of individual knights in possession of
the different commanderies to defy his power, and it was
still further diminished by the Reformation. In 1798, Na-
204 CHRISTIAN MONASTICISM
poleon was able to seize Malta itself, before long to pass
into British hands.
The order still exists, though, being partly Protestant,
unity is lost; the office of grand master is in commission.
For a time the venerable Hospital of S. Cross, near Winches-
ter, was under the care of the knights, and the habit and
cross worn by the present brethren of the institution still
preserve the memory of the connexion. The English lange
was revived in the early nineteenth century. JBesides its
well known ambulance work, it maintains a hospital at Ash-
ford.
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