M7|m2 Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2009 with funding from Boston Library Consortium IVIember Libraries http://www.archive.org/details/monksofwestfroms11mont THE MONKS OF THE WEST. FROM ST. BENEDICT TO ST. BERNARD. BY THE COUNT DE MONTALEMBERT, MEMBER OF THE FRENCH ACADEMY. FIDE ET VERITATE. VOL. I. BOSTON: MARLIER, CALLANAN & CO. 173 Tremont St. ^ 7/ A1 lUrnQ^ \l. /3<| 01- DEDICATION. TO POPE PIUS IX. Most Holy Father, I lay at the feet of your Holiness a book which, for many reasons, owes its homage to you. Intended to vindicate the glory of one of the greatest institutions of Christianity, this work specially solicits the benediction of the Vicar of Jesus Christ, the supreme head and natural protector of the Monastic Order. Long and often interrupted, sometimes for the service of the Church and of yourself, these studies were taken up again at the voice of your Holiness, when, amid the enthusiasm not to be forgotten which hailed your accession, you declared, in a celebrated encyclical letter, the duties and rights of the Religious Orders, and recognized in them " those chosen phalanxes of the army of Christ which have always been the bulwark and ornament of the Christian republic, as well as of civil society." ^ Your Holiness is well aware, moreover, that this hom- age is in no way intended to withdraw from criticism or discussion, a work subject to all human imperfections • "Lectissimas illas auxiliares Christi militura turmas, quae maximo tuna Christianae, turn civili reipublicae usui, ornamento atque prsesidio semper fuerunt." — Encyclical Letter of June 17, 1847. ill IV DEDICATION. and uncertainties, and which assumes only to enter upon questions open to the free estimate of all Christians. It is solely in consideration of the melancholy and sin- gular circumstances in which we are placed, that you wiL design, most Holy Father, to hear, and perhaps to grant, the desire of one of your most devoted sons, ambitious of imprinting upon the labor of twenty years th'j seal of his uiTectionate veneration for your person and your authority. What Catholic could, in our days, give himself up to the peaceful study of the past, without being troubled by the thought of the dangers and trials by which the Holy See is at present assailed, without desiring to offer up a fihal tribute to him in whom we revere, not only the minister of infallible truth, but also the image of justice and good faith, of courage and honor, shamefully overpowered by violence and deceit ? Accept, then, most Holy Father, this humble offering of h, heart inspired by a sincere admiration for your virtues, an ardent and respectful sympathy for your sorrows, and an unshaken fideHty to your imprescriptible rights. I am, with the deepest respect, Your Holiness's Most humble and most obedient Servant and Son, CH. DE MONTALEMBERT. Apra 21, 1860. CONTHINTS. INTRODUCTION. CH^P. PAOg 1. Origin of this Work, 1 II. Fundamental Charactek of Monastic Institutions 5 i^'^ III. Of the True Nature of Monastic Vocations, 11 IV. Services rendered to Christendom by the Monks, 2-3 V. Happiness in the Cloister, 37 VI. Charges against the Monks— Monastic Wealth, 59 VII. Decline, 73 VIII. Ruin, 97 IX. " The True and False Middle Ages, 113 X. Of the Fortune of this Book, 135 BOOK I. THE ROMAN EMPIEE AFTER THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH. The Roman Empire, converted to Christianity, offers a more sad and surprising spectacle than under the Pagan Caisars. — The alliance of the priesthood and the Empire hinders neither tlie ruin of the State nor the servitude of the Church. — The Fathers of the Cliurch unanimously acknowledged the precocious decay of the Christian world. — Action of the Imperial power on the Church. — Personal intervention of the Emperors in theology ; every heresiarch finds an auxiliary upon the throne ; persecutions and op- pressions more cruel tlian before Constantine. — The divinity of the prince still pro claimed under Theodosius. — Civil society, Christian by name, remains subject at heart to Paganism in its most degenerate form. — Uncurbed despotism of the Emperors; tor- tures of taxation. — Universal destruction in the East ; universal confusion in the West. — Military degradation; moral abiectness; derisive equality of the Roman Citizens ; social impotence of the Roman laws. — Virtue and freedom are only found in the Church, who would not resign herself to the impotence of civil society, but did not succeed in transforming the old imperial world. — In order to preserve the whole of Christendom from the fate of the Lower Empire, two invasions were necessary, that of the Barbarians and that of the Monks, Page 14S a (V) VI CONTENTS. BOOK n. MONASTIC PKECURSOKS IN THE EAST. Origin of monastic life in antiquity, in the ancient law, in the Gospel. — It 1b originated by Jesus Christ. — The monks appear, to succeed the martyrs and restrain the Bar- barians. — Martyrdom of St. Febronia, nun at Nisibis. — The Fathees of the Desert. — The Thebaid. — St. Anthony, the first of the abbots: his influence in the Church; multitude of his disciples; his struggle against Arianism. — St. Paul, first hermit. — St. Pacome, author of the first written rule, founder of Tabenne. — The two Ammons. — The two Macarii. — Meeting with a tribune upon the Nile. — Prodigioos number of monks of the Thebaid : their laborious life, their charity, their studies, their zeal for the orthodox faith. — St. Athanasius concealed in the Thebaid. — Paradise in the desert. — Nunneries in Egypt; Alexandra, Euphrosyne. Converted courtesans; Pelagia. — St. Euphrasia. — The monks of Sinai. — Hilarion introduces monastic life into Palestine. — Hilarion and Epiphanius in the island of Cyprus. — St. Ephrem in Mesopotamia. — St. Simeon Stylites in Syria. — Martyr monks in Persia. — St. Basil AND St. Gregory of Nazianzus in Cappadocia: their friendship, their monastic life, their part in the Church. — Violent opposition against the monks among the pagans and Arians.the rhetoricians and sophists, and among many Christians. — St. John Chrysostom constitutes himself their apologist; his treatise against the detrac- tors of monastic life. — His conduct towards them as Archbisliop of Constantinople. — He is maltreated by the monks at Caesarea. — The monks at Antloch under Theodo sius. — Telemachus puts a stop to the fights of the gladiators. — Decay of the Monks of the East, who end by becoming slaves of Islamism and accomplices of Bchism, Pagft 149 BOOK III. MONASTIC PRECURSORS IN THE WEST. St. Athanasius, exiled, propagates the monastic order in the West and at Rome, where religious life had already been known during the last persecutions : Aglae and Boniface. — Development in Italy: Eusebius of Vercelli. — Movement of the Roman Nobility towards Monastic Life : last ray of aristocratic glory buried in the cloister. — The family Anicia. — The holy and religious patrician ladies : Marcella. — Furia. — Paula and her daughters. — Paulina and her husband Pammachius : Fa- biola.— St. Jerome, guide and historian of these holy women. — His monastic life at Chalcls and Bethlehem : he writes the Lives of the Fathers of the Desert, and points out tlie errors of the false monks of his times. — Roman Emigration into Pales- CONTENTS. vii TINE, — Jerome attracts to JeniBalem St. Paula and her daughter Eustochia : death of Paula. — The two Melanlas at Jerusalem, at Rome, in Africa. — St Paulinus of Nola and his wife Theresa. — Opposition against the Monks: popular invectives ; the poet Rutilius. — St. Ambrose defends them. — His book De Virglnitate ; note on the use of the veil. — St. Augustine : influence of the Life of St. Anthony by Athanasius, and the example of the monks on his conversation : he lives always in the strictest se- clusion. — Kule of St. Augustin^. — His treatise De Opere Monachorum against the idle monks. — St. Fulgentius. — The Monks in Gaul. — St. Athanasius.— St. Martin, soldier, monk, and bishop. — His relations with St. Hilary. — He founds at Liguge the first monastery of the Gauls. — His great position ia Bishop of Tours: ho protests against religious persecution. — He founds Marmoutier, and inhabits there one of the cells. — Sulpicius Severus: the monks of Gaul rebel against fasting. — The Monastery of Lerins: its doctors and its saints : Honoratius, Hilary of Aries, Vin- cent of Lerins, Salvian, Eucher, Lupus of Troyes. — St. Caesarius and his rule. — John Gassianus and St, Victor of Marseilles. — Pelagianism falsely imputed to Lerins. — Other Gaulish monasteries : Rdome in Burgundy. — Monasteries in Auvergne : Aus- tremoine, Urbicus, the Stylites. — Condat in the Jura : the two brothers Romain and Lupicin : Eugende and Viveutiole. — Influence of the monks upon the Burgundians. — The King Sigismund founds in Valais, Agaune, which becomes the monastic metropolis of the kingdom of Burgundy. — St. Severus exercises the same sway over the other Barbarians, on the shores of the Danube : Meeting of Odoacee and Severin. — SUM- .MARy : portion of the cenobitical institution at the end of the fifth century; services already rendered to Christendom; duties of the monks in the Church; they are not yet counted among the clergy, yet notwithstanding almost all the Fathers and great doc- tors are monks. — Abuses and Disorders: monks Gyrovagues and Sarabaites. — Multiplicity and diversity of rules. — The monastic institution was not yet regulated. — A sovereign legislation and a new impulse were necessary: which St. Benedict gave, , tt^e 221 BOOK IV. 1 ST, BENEDICT. State of Europe at the end of the fifth century : debased by the Empire, divided by heresy, and ravaged by the invasions of the Barbarians. — St. Benedict born in 480, aud goes into seclusion at Subiaco, the cradle of monastic life. — His trials. — His mirscles. — His departure for Moute Cassino : he founds there the principal sanctuary of the mo- nastic order. — Note on the description and history of Monte Cassino. — J>ife of Cas- sino. — Relations with the nObility. — Solicitude for the people. — Influence over tha Goths. — History of Galla. — Interview with Totila. — The Lombards. — St. Si'iolaa- tica. — Death of Benedict. — Analysis of his rule: the first made for the West. —Pre- amble. — Two dominant ideas. — Work. — Obedience qualified by the nature ana origin of the authority. — Analogy with the feudal system. — Conditions of the coinuiunity VIll CONTENTS. thus org^anized. — Abdication of individual property. —Novitiate. — Vow of Btability. — Roman wisdom and moderation. — Analysis of the details. — Liturgy. Food. — Clothing. — Penalties. — Services.— Hospitality. — The Sick.— Summary of the rul« by Bossuet. — Benedict's vision of the world in a single ray. — He did not foresee the Bocial results of his work. — Immensity of these results.— The world is reconquered <'rom the Barbarians by the monks, Pat^e 305 BOOK V. hi GREGORY THE GREAT. — MONASTIC ITALY AND SPAIN IN THE SIXTH AND SEVENTH CENTURIES. rASSiODOKUS: his monastic retreat and his Christian academy at Viviers in Calabria.— The disciples of Benedict in Sicily: martyrdom of St. Placidis. — Benkdictine Mis- sion AND MAiiTYR MoNKS IN ITALY. — Kavages of the Lombards: they overthrow Farfa and Novaleae. — First destruction of Monte Cassino. .St. Gri;g<)ky the Great: his birth, his conversion; he becomes a monk at the monas- tery of St. Andrea; his alms and fasts. — lie is nuncio at Constantinople, afterwards abbot of his monastery; his severity against the monastic crime of retaining individual property. — His desire to go to convert the Angles: the Romans detain him. — He I3 elected Pope, to his very great grief: his plaintive letters on leaving the cloister. — State of the world and of the Church at his accession. — Italy at once abandoned and ground down by the Byzantine emperors. — Relations of Gregory with the Lombards: he defends Rome against them. — Homilies on Ezokiel interrupted. — Mediation between Byzantium and tlie Lombards : Agilulf and Theodelinda. — Conver- sion of the Lombards. — Dialogues on the aniient monks.- His struggles against THE Greeks.— Conflict with John the Faster, patriarch of Constantinople, with ref- erence to the title of universal bishop: he desires for himself only the title of servant of the servants of God. — Conflict with the Emperor Maurice: law against the admis- sion of soldiers to monasteries; celebrated letter to Maurice. — Maurice dethroned and slain by Phocas : congratulations of Gregory to the new emperor; in contrast with his courage and habitual rectitude. — He turns towards the new races, becomes their ally . and instructor, and thus begins to emancipate the Church and the West from the Byzantine yoke. — His relations with the Franks and the Burgundians: Vir- gilius of Aries; Brunehaut; letter to the young king Childebert. — Celebrafed charter of Autun, in which the temporal supremacy of the Papacy over royalty is proclaimed. — Relations with the bishops of Neustria. — His respect for the episcopate and for the freedom of episcopal elections. — His vast correspondence: universal vigilance.— Order re-established in St. Peter's patrimony. — He protects peasants, freemen, slaves, Jews. — His conduct towards the pagans and the Donatists. — Services rendered to the Liturgy and religious art; Gregorian Chants; musical education. — Ridiculous slandet CONTENTS. ix respecting his antipathy to classical literature. — His writings : TTie Sacramentary, The Pastoral, The Morals .• letters and homilies. — He is the fourth great doctor of the Church, — His extreme humility. — He remains always a monk, and renders the most signal services to the monastic order: he confirms the rule of St. Benedict at the Council of Rome, and guarantees the liberty and property of the monks, — Exemp- tions. — Rigorous distinction between monastic life and the ecclesiastical state, — Monastic discipline is reformed and enforced. — History of Venantius, the married monk. — Nunneries. — Gregory watches over the freedom and sincerity of vocations. — Catella, the young slave. — The Abbey of Classe, at Ravenna, protected against th« metropolitan; monastic foundations in Isauria and Jerusalem. — He always looks back with regret to cloistral life, and habitually surrounds himself with monks; he makes them bishops and legates. — Charities and monastic hospitality. — His cruel sufferings his last letters. — He dies. — Ingratitude of the Romans. — He is avenged by posterity, ■^ His true greatness. iHE Monks in Spain: origin of the order in Spain conquered by the Arian Visigoths. — St. Donatus, St. Emilian. St. Martin of Dumes. ^ St. Leander, monk and bishop of Seville. — School of Seville. — Martyrdom of Hermenegild; exile of Leander: ha meets St. Gregory at Constantinople ; their mutual tenderness. — Conversion of King Recarede and of the Visigoth nation, under tlie auspices of Leander ; their relations with Gregory. — The family of Leauder : his sister Florentine. — His brother Isidore: action of tlie latter on the monastic order and Spain; his writings. — St. Braulius. — Visigothic formula of monastic foundations.— School of Toledo: Abbey of Agali. — lldefbnso of Toledo, monk his relations with St. Eusice in Berry, and St. Marculph in Neustria. — Emigration of the British monks into Armorica : con- tinued existence of paganism in that peninsula : poetical traditions. — Conversion of Armorica by the British emigrants. — The Christian bards: Ysulio and the blind Herve. — Armorican monasteries: Khuys; St. Matthew of the Land's End; Lande- venec; Dol; Samson, Abbot of Dol, and Archbishop. — The seven saints of Brittany, bishops and monks. — Their intercourse with Childebert. — St. Germain, Bishop of Paris; Abbey of St. Germain-des-Prfes. — Clotaire I. and St. Medard, — Gregory of Tours and the sons of Clotaire.— Note on the foundations of King Gontran in Bur- gundy. — The Abbot Aredius protests against the fiscal system of Chllperic, and frees his serfs. — Maternal love and monastic song. IV. St. Kadegund. — Her origin and her captivity. — Clotaire mates her his wife. — Note on St. Consortia. — Kadegund takes the veil from the hands of St. Medard, estab- lishes herself at Poitiers, and founds there the monastery of St. Croix. — Clotaire wishes to reclaim her : St. Germain prevents him. — Cloister life of Kadegund. — Her journey to Aries. — Her relations with Fortunatus. — Her poetry. — Her indlflference to the outer world ; her solicitude for peace among the Merovingian princes. — Her austerities. — Her friendship for the Benedictine St. Junlan. They both died on the same day. — Revolt of the nuns of St. Croix under Chrodleld and Basine, princesses of the Merovingian blood. — This occurs at the time of the arrival of Columbanus, the great Celtic missionary, in Gaul. V. The Monks and Nature. — Gaul covered with forests from the fifth to the seventh century. — Invasion of the solitude; St. Liephard at Meung-sur-Loire : deserts in Gaul. — The monks in the forests. — St. Seine in Burgundy. — St. Imler in Jura. — St. Junlan in Limousin. — The anchorites of the woods transformed into monks by tho multitude which followed them. — St. Laumer in Perche. — St. Maglorius in Armorica and Jersey. — Donations of Frankish nobles ; some accepted, others refused ; St. Lau- mer once more : popular discontents. — St. Malo. The monks and the brigands: St. Seine and St. Evroul. — The monks and the hunters: Brachio and the wild boar, at Menat. — Right of shelter for game. — St. Calais and his bufi'alo : Childebert and Ultrogotha. — St. Marculph and his hare. — St. Giles and his hind. — The Abbess Nlnnok. — St. Desle and Clotaire II. — St. Basle and his wild boar. — St. Laumer and his hind. — Supernatural empire of the monks over the animals, thfl CONTENTS. xi consequence of man's return to innocence. — Miracles in History.- Vivos, Titua Livius, De Mnistre. — The moults and the wild beasts in the Thebaid. — Gerasimus and bis lion. — St. Martin and his plungeons. — St. Benedict and his raven. — The monks and the birds in Gaul : St. Maxent; St. Valery; St. Calais; St. Male; St. Maglorius. — Sites of monasteries indicated by animals: Fecamp. — St. Thierry; St. Berchaire at Hautvilliers. — Domestication of wild beasts by the monks: Celtic legends: the wolves and stags : Herve, Pol de Leon, Colodocus. — St. Leonor and the stags at the plough. — Agricultural works of the monks in the forest. — Clearings. — St. Brieuc — Fruit-trees. — Various occupations. — Influence of their example on the rural popula- tions — St. Fiacre and his garden. — Karilef and his treasure. — Theodulph and his plough. — Solicitude of the monks for the spiritual welfare of the peasants. — Council of Rouen. — The forest canticle, the monastic spring in the woods, . . : . . Page 437 BOOK VII. ST. COLUMBANUS. — THE IRISH IN GAUL AND THE COLONIES OF LUXEUIL. Ireland, converted by two slaves, becomes Christian without having been Roman. — Legend of St. Patrick : the bards and the slaves; St. Bridget; the lamp of Kildare. — The Irish monasteries : Bangor: St. Luan. — The Irish missionaries.— BiETH AND Education of St. Colcmbanus; his mission in Gaul; his sojourn at Annegray; the wolves and the Sueve brigands. — He settles at Luxeuil; state of Sequania: great influx of disciples; Laus perennis. — Episcopal opposition: haughty letter of Colum- banus to a council. — His struggle with Brunehault and Thierry II. : St. Mar- tin of Autun founded by Brunehault : first expulsion of Columbanus; the young Agi- Iub; Columbanus at Besangon; return to Luxeuil. — He is again expelled ! hie voyage on the Loire ; arrival at Nantes ; letter to the monks at Luxeuil, — He goes to Clotaire II., King of Neustria, and to Theodebert II., King of Austrasia. — His mission to the Alamans ; St. Gall ; the dialogue of the demons on the lake. — He abandons the con- version of the Sclaves, and returns to Theodebert; defeat and death of this king Columbanus crosses the Alps and passes into Lombardy. — He founds Bobbio; his poems ; his remonstrances with Pope Boniface IV. — Clotaire II. recalls him to Gaul s he refuses and dies. — He was neither the enemy of kings nor of popes. — Rule of Columbanus : the Penitential. Disciples of Columbanus in Italy and Helvetia, — His successors at Bobbio ; Attains and Bertulph ; the Arian Ariowald and the monk Blidulf. — Abbey of Disseptls in Rbetia : St. Sigisbert. — St. Gall separates from Columbanus ; origin of the abbey called by his name; the demons again. — Princess Frideburga and her betrothed.— Gall is reconciled to Columbanus and dies. Influence, pbepondeeance, and prosperity of Luxeuil under St. Eustace, flrrt successor of Coiumbanus. — Luxeuil l)ecome8 the monastic capital of Gaul and the first xii CONTENTS. 8cho(?l of Christendom : bishops and saints issue from Luxeuil : Hermenfriod of Ver- dun. — Schism of Agrestin subdued at the council of Macon; the Irish tonsure; Note on Bishop Faron and his wife. — The Benedictine rule adopted in conjunction with the institution of Luxeuil. — The double consulate. — St. Walbert, third abbot of Luxeuil, — Exemption accorded by Pope John IV. Colonies of Luxeuil in the two Burg-undies : St. Desle at Lure and Clotaire II. — The ducul family of St. Donatus : Romainmoutier re-established; the nuns of Jusaamou- tier; Beze; Bregille. — The abbot Hermenfried atCusance: he kisses the hands of the husbandmen. Colonies of Luxeuil in Rauracia: St. Ursanne; St. Germain of Grandval, first martyr of the Columbanic institution. Colonies of Luxeuil in Ncustria: St. Wandregisil at Fontenelle: he converted the coun- try of Caux: St. Philibert at Jumi^ges; commerce and navigation; death of four hun- dred and fifty saints of Jumieges. Colonies of Luxeuil in Brie and Champagne: St. Ouen and his brothers; Jouarre. — St. Agilus at Rebais; hospitality; vision of the poor traveller. — Burgundofara braves martyrdom to be made a nun, and v?hen abbess, repels the schismatic Agrestin. — Her brother St. Faron and King Clotaire II. hunting. — St. Fiacre, St. Fursy, St. Frobert at Moutier-la-Celle, St. Berchaire at Hautvillers and Moniier-en-Der, — St. Salaberga at Laon. Colonies of Luxeuil in Ponthieu; the shepherd Valery, gardener at Luxeuil, founder of Leuconaus. — Popular opposition. — St. Riquier at Centule. Colonies of Luxeuil among the Morins : St. Omer and St. Bertiu at Sithiu; change of the name of monasteries. The Saints of Remiremont : Amatus and Romaric; the double monasteries; Agres- tin at Remiremont; Romaric and the maire du palais Grimoald. — St. Eligius and Solignac. Why was the rule of St. ColumbanuB rejected and replaced by that of St. Benedict ? The Co«ncil of Autun acknowledges only the latter. The Council of Rome in 610 confirmed it. It was identified with the authority of the Holy See, and thus succeeded in govern- ing all, Page Ml BOOK VIII. CHRISTIAN ORIGIN OF THE BRITISH ISLES. CHAPTER I. GREAT BRITAIN BEFORE THE CONVERSION OF THE SAXONS. Character of the English nation. — Heir of the Romans, it borrows from them only their grandeur and their pride. — From whence comes its religion .' From popes and monks. — England has been made by monks, as France by bishops. — The heroes wlio resisted CONTENTS. xiii the Empire: Caractacus, Boadicea, Galgacus. — No trace of Roman law exists in Bri tain; all is Celtic or Teutonic. — Britain the first of the Western nations which could live without Rome, and the first which could resist the barbarians. — Ravages of the Picts — Gildas. — Arrival of the Ang-lo-Saxons in Britain. — Their destruction of primitive Christianity. — Origin of British Christianity. — The proto-martyr St. Alban. — Ravages of the Saxons. — Liberal aid given by the Papacy. — Mission of Palladius, and afterwards of St. Germain of Auxerre. — Battle of the Hallelujah. — Tlie Britoo Ninian becomes the apostle of the Southern Picts His establishment at Whitehorn. — Ferocity of the Caledonians. — His death. — Glastonbury: legend of Joseph of Art mathea : tomb of King Arthur. — Position of Britain between the years 450 and 550. — The four different races : the Picts, the Scots, the Britons, and the Saxons. — From whence did the light of the Gospel come to the Saxons ? Page &13 CHAPTER n. THE SAINTS AND MONKS OF WALES. The British refugees in Cambria mamTain there the genius of the Celtic race. — Testi- mony rendered to the virtues of the Welsh by their enemy Giraldus. — Music and po- etry: the bards and their triads. — Devotion to the Christian faith. — King Arthur crowned by the Bishop Dubricius. — Alliance between the bards and the monies : the bard surprised by the flood. — A few names which float in the ocean of legends.— Mutual influence of Cambria, Armorica, and Ireland upon each other: their legends identical. — The love of the Celtic monks for travel. — Foundation of the episcopal monasteries of St. Asaph by Kentigern, of LlandafT by Dubricius, of Bangor by Iltud, a converted bandit. — St. David, monk and bishop, the Benedict of Wales. — His pil- grimage to Jerusalem, from which he returns archbishop. — The right of asylum recognized. — He restores Glastonbury. — His tomb becomes the national sanctuary of Cambria. — Legend of St. Cadoc and his father and mother. — He founds Llancarvan, the school and burying-place of the Cambrian race. — His poetical aphorisms ; his vast domains. — He protects the peasants. — A young girl carried ofi' and restored. — Right of asylum as for St. David. — The hate of Cadoc. — He takes refuge in Armorica, prays for Virgil, returns to Britain, and there perishes by the sword of the Saxons. — His name invoked at the battle of the Thirty. — St. Winifred and her fountain. — St. Beino, the enemy of the Saxons. — The hatred of the Cambrians to the Saxons an obstacle to the coaversion of the conquerors, Page 660 CHAPTER m. MONASTIC IRELAND AFTER ST. PATRICK. Ireland escapes the Rome of the Ceesars to be invaded by the Rome of the Popes. — The British assistants of St. Patrick carry there certain usages diflferert from those of Rome. — Division between Patrick and his fellow-laborers. — He would preach tht VOL. I. b Xiv CONTENTS. faith to all. — St. Carantoc. — Emigrations of the Welsh to Ireland, and of the Irish to Wales. — Disciples of St. David in Ireland. — Modonnoc and his hees. — Immense monastic development of Ireland under the influence of the Welsh monks. — The pecu- liar British usages have nothing to do with doctrine. — Families or clans transformed into monasteries, with their chiefs for abbots. — The three orders of saints. — Irish missionaries on the continent; their journeys and visions. — St. Brendan the sailor.— Dega, monk-bishop and sculptor. — Mochuda the shepherd converted by means of music. — Continual preponderance of the monastic element. — Celebrated foundations. — Monasterboyce, Glendalough, and Its nine churches. — Bangor, from which came Columbanus, the reformer of the Gauls, and Clonard. from which issued Columba, the apostle of Caledonia, Page 643 THE MONKS OF THE WEST. INTRODUCTION. CHAPTER I. ORIGIN OF THIS WORK. Cieterum et mihi, vetustas ros soribenti, nescio quo pacto, antiquus fit anirans. Titus Livius. This work originated in a purpose more limited Iban its title implies. After having narrated, more than twent}^ years since, in the Histoire de Sainte Elisabeth, the life of a young woman in whom was epitomized the Catholic poetry of suf- fering and of love, and whose modest and forgotten existence belonged nevertheless to the most resplendent epoch of the middle ages, I had proposed to myself a task more difficult: 1 desired, in writing the life of a great monk, to contribute to the vindication of the monastic orders. Happy to have been able to attract some attention to an aspect uf religious history too long obscured and forgotten, by justifying the action of Catholicism upon the most tender and exalted senti- ments of the human heart, I hoped, by a sketch of another kind, to secure the same suffrages in vindicating Catholic and historic truth upon the ground where it has been most misconstrued, and where it still encounters the greatest antipathies and prejudices. The name of St. Bernard immediately recurs to any in- quirer who seeks the most accomplished type of the Eeligious. No other man has shed so much glory over the frock of the monk. Yet, notwithstanding, strange to tell ! none of the numerous authors who have written his history, excepting his first biographers, who commenced their work during his life, seem to have understood the fact which both governed and explained his career — his monastic profession. By consent of all, St. Bernard was a great man and a man of genius ; he exercised upon his age an ascendency without VOL. I. 1 2 THE MONKS OF THE WEST. parallel; he reigned by eloquence, virtue, and courage. More than once he decided the fate of nations and of crowna — at one time, even, he held in his hands the destiny of the Church. He was able to inilucnco Europe, and to precipitate her upon the East; he was able to combat and overcome, in Abailard, the precursor of modern rationali&m. All the world knows and says as much — by consent of all he takes rank by the side of Ximenes, of Richelieu, and of Bossuet. But that is not enough. If he was — and who can doubt it? — a great orator, a great writer, and a great man ; he neither knew it nor cared for it. He was. and above all wished to be, something entirely different: he was a monk and a saint; he lived in a cloister and worked miracles. The Church has established and defined the sanctity of Bernard — but history remains charged with the mission of recounting his life, and of explaining the marvellous influence which he exercised upon his contemporaries. But in proceeding to study the life of this great man, who was a monk, we find that the popes, the bishops, and the saints, who were then the honor and bulwark of Christian society, came, like him. all. or nearly all, from the monastic order. What were they, then, these monks? — from whence came they? — and what had they done till then to occupy so high a place in the destinies of the world? It is necessary, first of all, to resolve these questions. And there is more. In attempting to judge the age in which St. Bernard lived, we perceive that it is impossible either to explain or to comprehend it without recognizing it as animated by the same breath which had vivified an ante- rior epoch, of which this was but the direct and faithful con- tinuation. If the twelfth century did homage to the genius and the virtue of the monk Bernard, it is because the eleventh cen- tury had been regenerated and penetrated by the virtue and the genius of the monk who was called Gregory VII, Neither the epoch nor the work of Bernard should be looked at apart from the salutary crisis which had prepared the one and made the other possible : a simple monk could never have been heard and obeyed as Bernard was, if his undis- puted greatness had not been preceded by the contests, the trials, and the posthumous victory of that other monk who died six years before his birth. It is, then, necessary not only to characterize by a conscientious examination the pon- tificate of the greatest of those popes who have proceeded from the monastic class, but also to pass in review the whole INTRODUCTION. 3 period which connected tlie last struggles of Gregory with the lirst efforts of Bernard, and to thus attempt the recital of the gravest and most glorious strife in which the Church ever was engaged, and in which the monks stood foremost in suffering as in !inn.)r. But even that is not enough. Far from being the founders of the monastic order, Gregory VII. and Bernard were but produced by it, like thousands more of their contemporaries, Tiiat institution had existed more than five centuries when these great men learnt how to draw from it so marvellous a strength. To know its origin, to appreciate its nature and its services, it is necessary to go back to another Gregory — to St. Gregory the Great, to the first pope who came from the cloister ; and further still, to St. Benedict, legislator and patriarch of the monks of the West. It is necessary at least to glance at the superhuman efforts made during these five centuries by legions of monks, perpetually renewed, to subdue, to pacify, to discipline, and to purify the savage nations amongst whom they labored, and of whom twenty barbarous tribes were successively transformed into Christian nations. It would be cruel injustice and ingratitude to pass by in silence twenty generations of indomitable laborers, who had cleared the thorns from the souls of our fathers, as they cleared the soil of Christian Europe, and had left only the labor of the reaper to Bernard and his contemporaries. The volumes of which I now begin the publication are des- tined to this preliminary task. Ambitious of carrying my readers with me on the way which I have opened to myself, my intention by this long preamble has been to show what the Monastic Order was, and what it had done for the Catholic world, before the advent of St. Bernard to the first place in the esteem and admiration of Christendom in his time. In a literary point of view, I know, it is unwise to diffuse thus over a long series of 3'ears, and a multitude of names for the most part forgotten, the interest which it would be so easy to concentrate upon one luminous point, upon one superior genius. It is an enterprise of which I perceive the danger. Besides, in showing thus so many great men and great works before coming to him who oughi to be the hero of my book, I am aware that I enfeeble the effect of his individual grandeur, the merit of his devotion, the animation of the tale. I should take care to avoid this peril if I wrote only for success. But there is to every Christian a beauty superior to art — the beauty of truth. There is something which concerns us more closelv than the 4 THE MONKS OF THE WEST. glory of all the heroes and even of all the saints — and that is, the honor of the Church, and her providential progress through the midst of the storms and darkness of history. 1 was loath to sacrifice the honor of an august institution, too long calumniated and proscribed, to tlie honor of a single man. Had I even been thus tempted, that hero himself,. Ber- nard, the great apostle of justice and of truth, would have resented my so doing — he would not pardon me for exalting himself at the expense of his predecessors and his masters. The subject, thus developed, embraces but too vast a field — -it belongs at once to the present. and to the past. The links which attach it to all our history are numerous and manifest. When we look at the map of ancient France, or of any one of our provinces, no matter which, we encounter at each step the names of abbeys, of chapter-houses, of con- vents, of priories, of hermitages, which mark the dwelling- place of so many monastic colonies. Wliere is the town which has not been founded, or enriched, or protected by some religious community? Where is the church which owes not to them a pation, a relic, a pious and popular tradi- tion? Wherever there is a luxuriant forest, a pure stream, a majestic hill, we may be sure that Religion has there left her stamp by the hand of the monk. That impression has also marked itself in universal and lasting lines upon the laws, the arts, the manners — upon the entire aspect of our ancient society. Christendom, in its youth, has been throughout vivified, directed, and constituted by the monas- tic spirit. Wherever we interrogate the monuments of the past, not only in France but in all Europe — in Spain as in Sweden, in Scotland as in Sicily — everywhere rises before us the memory of the monk, — the traces, ill-effaced, of his labors, of his power, of his benefactions, from the humble furrow which he has been the first to draw in the bogs of Brittany or of Ireland, up to tlie extinguished splendors of Marmoutier and Cluny, of Melrose and the Escurial. And there is also a contemporary interest by the side of this interest of the past. Universally proscribed and dishonored during the eighteenth century, in the nineteenth the religious orders everywhere reappear. Our age has witnessed, at the same time, their burial and their resur. rcction. Here we have succeeded in rooting out their last remnants, and there they have already renewed their life. Wherever the CatlioHc religion is not the object of open p(3rsecution, as in Sweden — wherever she has been INTRODUCTION. 5 able to obtain her legitimate portion of modern liberty — they reappear as of themselves. We have despoiled and pro- scribed them — we see them everywhere return, sometimes under new names and appearances, but always with their ancient spirit. They neither reclaim nor regret their antique grandeur. They limit themselves to living — to preaching by word and by example — without wealth, without pomp, without legal rights, but not without force nor without trials — not without friends, nor, above all, without enemie;'. Friends and enemies are alike interested to know from whence they come, and whence; they have drawn the secret of a life so tenacious and so fruitful. I offer to the one as to the other a tale which shall not be a panegyric nor even an apology, but the sincere testimony of a friend, of an admirer, who desires to preserve the impartial equity which history demands, and who will conceal no stain that he may have the fuller right of veiling no glory. CHAPTER II. FUNDAMENTAL CHARACTER OF MONASTIC INSTITUTIONS. Quest' altri fuochi tutti contemplanti Uoniini furo, aceesi di quel caldo Che fa nascer i tiori e i frutti santi. Qui e Macario. qui e Romoaldo : Qui son li I'rati mioi, cjie do-ntro a' chiostri Fermaro i piedi, e tennero '1 cor saldo. St. Benedict to Dante. — Paradiso, xxii. Before entering npon this history, it seems necessary to make some observations on the fundamental character of monastic self-devotion — upon that which has been the prin- ciple at once of the services it has rendered, and the hate which it has inspired. Some years ago, who understood what a monk really was ? For myself, I had no doubt on the subject when I com- menced this work. I believed that I knew something which approached to the idea of a saint — to that of the Church; but I had not the least, notion of what a monk might be, or of the monastic order. I was like my time. In all the course of my education, dom.estic or public, no one, not even among those who were specially charged to teach me religion and 1* 6 THE MONKS OF THE WEST. history, no one considered it necessary to give me the least conception of" the rehgions orders. Thirty years had scarcely passed since their ruin; and already they were treated as a lost species, of whom fossil bones reappeared from time to time, exciting curiosity or repugnance, but who had no longer a place in history among the living. I imagine that most men of my own age regarded them thus. Have not we all come forth from college knowing by heart the list of the mistresses of Jupiter, but ignorant even of the names of the iounders of those religious orders which have civilized Europe, and so often saved the Church? The first time that 1 saw the dress of a monk — must J confess it? — was on the boards of a theatre, in one of those ignoble parodies which hold, too often among modern nations, the place of the pomps and solemnities of religion. Some years later I encountered, for the first time, a real monk ; it was at the foot of the Grande Chartreuse, at the entrance of that wild gorge, on the brink of that bounding torrent, which no one can ever forget who has once visited that celebrated solitude. I knew nothing then of the services or of the glories which that despised cowl ought to have recalled to the least instructed Christian; but I remember still the sur- prise and emotion into which that image of a vanished world threw my heart. To-day, even, after so many other emotions, so many different contests, so many labors which have re- vealed to me the immortal grandeur of the part taken by the religious orders in the Church, this recollection survives, and steals over me with infinite sweetness. How much I wish that this book may leave a similar impression upon those who encounter it on their way, and inspire some not only with respect lor that vanquished grandeur, but with the desire to stud}' it, and the duty of rendering to it justice ! We ma}', besides, without excess of ambition, claim for the monk a justice more complete than that which he has yet obtained, even from the greater number of the Christian apologists of recent times. In taking up the defence of the religious orders, these writers have seemed to demand grace for those august institutions in the name of the services which they have rendered to the sciences, to letters, and to agriculture. This is to boast the incidental at the expense of the essential. We are doubtless obliged to acknowledge and admire the cultivation of so many forests and deserts, the transcription and preservation of so many literary and historical monuments, and that monastic erudition which we INTRODUCTION. 7 know nothing to replace ; these are great services rendered to humanity, which ought, if humanity were just, to shelter the monks under a celestial shield. But there is, besides, something far more worthy of admiration and gratitude — the peimanent strife of moral freedom against the bondage of the flesh; the constant effort of a consecrated will in the pursuit and conquest of Christian virtue ; the victorious flight of the soul into those supreme regions where she finds again her true, her immortal grandeur. Institutions simply human, powers merely temporal, might perhaps confer upon society the same temporal benefits : that which human powers can- not do, that which they have never undertaken, and in which they never could succeed, is to discipline the soul, to trans- form it by chastity, by obedience, by sacrifice and humility : to recreate the man wasted by sin into such virtue, that the prodigies of evangelical perfection have become, during long centuries, the daily history of the Church. It is in this that we see the design of the monks, and what they have done. Among so many founders and legislators of the religious life, not one has dreamt of assigning the cultivation of the soil, the copying of manuscripts, the progress of arts and letters, the preservation of historical monuments, as a special aim to his disciples. These offices have been only accessory — the consequence, often indirect and involuntary, of an institution which had in view nothing but the education of the human souljils conformity to the law of Christ, and the expiation of its native guilt by a life of sacrifice and mortification. This was for all of them the end and tne beginning, the supreme object of existence, the unique ambition, the sole merit, and the sovereign victory. For those Avho do not acknowledge the original fall, and the double necessity of human effort and divine grace to elevate us above the condition of fallen nature, it is clear that the monastic life can be nothing but a grand and lamentable aberration. For those who neither know nor comprehend the struggles of the soul which seeks, in the love of God elevated to heroism, a victorious weapon and sovereign remedy against the inordinate love of the creature, that mj-s- terious worship of chastity, which is the essential condition of the life of the cloister, "must always remain unintelligible. But, to such minds, the Christian revelation and the priest- hood instituted by Jesus Christ are equally inadmissible. On the other side, every man who believes in the incarnation of the Son of God and the divinity of the Gospel, ought to 8 THE MONKS OF THE WEST. recognize in monastic life the most noble effort which ha& ever been made to overcome corrupted nature and to ap- proach to Christian perfection. Every Christian who beheves in the perpetuity of the Church ought to discern and ven- erate in this institution, let its scandals and abuses be what they will, the imperishable seed of ecclesiastical self-devotion. Thus is explained, on one side, the immense importance oi the services which the regular clergy have rendered to re ligion, and, on the other, the special and constant animosity which the enemies of the Church have always displayed against them. We have but to open the history of Catholic nations, to be impressed by the presence of this double spec- tacle. Since the end of the Roman persecution, the gran- deur, the liberty, and the prosperity of the Church have always been exactly proportioned to the power, the regular- ity, and the sanctity of the religious orders which she em- braces within her bosom.' We can aflSrm it without fear. Everywhere and always she has flourished most when her religious communities have been most numerous, most fer- vent, and most free. To the period immediately following the peace of the Church, the monks of the Thebaide and of Palestine, of Lerins and of Marmoutier, secured innumerable champions of orthodoxy against the tyrannous Arians of the Lower Empire. In proportion as the Franks achieved the conquest of Gaul, and became the preponderating race amongst all the Ger- manic races, they permitted themselves to be influenced, converted, and directed by the sons of St. Benedict and of St. Columba. From the seventh to the ninth century, it was the Bene- ' Tlie religious orders may generally be classed in four great categories : 1st, The Monks properly so called, which comprehend the orders of St. Basil and St. Benedict, with all their branches, Cluny, the Camaldules, the Char- treux, the Cistercians, the Celestines, Fontevrault, Grandinont, — all anterior to tl)e thirteenth century; 2d, The Regular Canons, who follow the rule of Ht. Augustine, and who have neither gained great distinction nor rendered eminent services, but to whom are attached two illustrious orders, that of Premontre, and that of La Merci, for the redemption of captives; 3d, The Brothers, or religious mendicants (Frati), which comprehend the Domini- cans, tlie Franciscans (with all their subdivisions, Conventuals, Obscrvantins, Kecollets, Capucins), the Carmelites, the Augustines, the Servites, the Mini- nifs, and, generally, all tiie orders created from the thirteenth to the six- tecnlh centuries; 4th and lastly, The Regular Clerks, a form affected ex- clusively by the orders created since the sixteenth century, those of the Jet-uits, the Theatins, the Barnabites, &c. The Lazarists, the Oratorians, tlie Eudistes, are only, like the Sulpiciens, secular priests united in a con K egatiou. INTRODUCTION. 9 dictines who gave to the Church, Belgium, England, Gev- mauy, and Scandinavia, and who furnished, to the founders of all the kingdoms of the West, auxiliaries indispensable to the establishment of a Christian civilization. In the tenth and eleventh centuries, the same Benedictines, ccmcent rated under the strong direction of the order of Chiny, contended victoriously against the dangers and abuses of ihe feudal system, and gave to St. Gregory VII. the army which he needed to save the independence of the Church, to de- stroy the concubinage of the priests, simony, and the secular occupation of ecclesiastical benefices. In the twelfth century, the order of Citeaux, crowned by St. Bernard with unrivalled splendor, became the principal instrument of the beneficent supremacy of the Holy See, served as an asylum to St. Thomas of Canterbur}', and as a bulwark to the liberty of the Church, till the time of Bom face VIII -^ In the thirteenth and fourteenth, the new orders instituted by St. Francis, St. Dominic, and their emulators, maintained and propagated the faith among the souls of men and the social institutions throughout the empire ; renewed the con- test against the venom of heresy, and against the corruption of morals ; substituted for the crusades the work of redeem- ing Christian captives ; and produced, in St. Thomas Aquinas, the prince of Christian doctors and moralists, whom faith consults as the most faithful interpreter of Catholic tradition, and in whom reason recognizes the glorious rival of Aris- totle and Descartes. In the fifteenth century, the Church underwent the great schism, and all the scandals which resulted from it. The ancient orders, also, had lost their primitive fervor, and no new institution came to renew the vigor of the Christian bh)od. And we know what was, in the sixteenth century, the in- vincible progress of Reform, until the day when the Jesuits, solemnly approved by the last General Council, came fi^rward to intercept the torrent, and preserve to the Church at lca under the dictation of the monks tliat those civil and political guarantees were written, which the Chris- tian rebels against the abuses of power wrested from their unjust masters. It was to the care of the monks that they confided these charters of liberty, in which the conditions of their obedience were inscribed.''' It was in tlie cloister of the monks that they sought a sepulchre not only for the kings, the great men, and the conquerors, but also for the feeble and the vanquished. There the victims of tyranny, of injustice, of all the. excesses of human power, found a last asylum.'" There slept in peace, in the midst of perpetual prayer, the exile, the outlawed, the doomed." These admi- rable verses of Statins upon the temple of Clemency, at Athens, which the monks have preserved to us, found their realization in the bosom of monastic life — " Sic tutum sacrasse loco mortalibus regi'is Confugium, unde procul starent ira3que minajque Rcgnnque. et a justis Fortuna recederet aris. . . . Hue victi bcllis, patriaque e sede f'ugati, . , . Conveniunt, pacemque rogant." '* No men have ever showed less terror of the strongest, less weak complaisance towards power, than the monks. Amidst the peace and obedience of the cloister they tempered their hearts every day, as indomitable champions of right and truth, for the war against injustice. Noble spirits, hearts truly independent, were to be found nowhere more frequently than under the cowl. Souls calm and brave, upright and lofty, as well as humble and fervent, were there and abounded — souls such as Pascal calls 'perfectly heroic. " Freedom," says a holy monk of the eighth centur}^ " is not given up because humility freely bows its head." '" And at the height of the middle ages another monk, Pierre de Blois, wrote those proud words, which express at once the political code of that epoch and the history of the monastic '' In testimony of this, to quote one example among a thousand, the Char- ter de libertatibus comitatus Devonice was preserved at Tavistock Abbey, DlGBY, X. 167. 1® See in the Formvles Inedites de la Bibl. de Saint Gall, published by M. de Roziere, how tlie abbots interceded with the nobles to obtain forgiveness for the serfs who had incurred the anger of their masters. '^ See in Ingulph of Croyland, the fine iiistory of Earl Waltheof, victim of the Normans, of whom we shall speak further on. i "* Theb. xii. v. 481. *' " Nee ideo libertas succubuit, quia huniilitas semetipsam libere prostra- Tit." — Ambkosius Autpehtus, Abb. S. Vincentii, ad Vulturn., ann. 7G8. 20 THE MONKS OF THE WEST. order : — '' There are two things for which all the faithful ou.cclit to resist to blood — justice and liberty." """ it is sufficient to say, that we find them little infected with that political servility which has so often and so lamentably disfigured the annals of the clergy, which began Avith Con- stantine, and which, sometimes forgotten or thrown off in those great emergencies, when human liberty and dignity have triumphantly displayed themselves, continually re-ap- pears, like an incurable leprosy, in those other periods, far more prolonged and frequent, of debasement and servitude. 'I'he saints themselves have not always been able to escape tlie contagion of that fatal delusion, which has induced too many pontiffs and doctors to seek the ideal of Christian so- ciety in a resurrection of the Roman empire transformed into a Catholic monarchy. The monks, more than any other por- tion of the Christian community, more than any other ecclesi- astical corporation, have kept themselves free of it. Seldom, very seldom, do we find among them the instruments or apostles of absolute power. When that anomaly presents it- self, it disgusts us more here than elsewhere. I have noted some traces of that baseness, the contrast of which brings out all the clearer the masculine and noble independence which, in social and political matters, has always distinguished the monks of the ages of faith. Mixing in the world, more perhaps than was expedient, and drawn, even by the trust and affection which they in- spired, into the midst of interests and of conflicts to which they were strangers, tliey did not always issue out of these uninjured ; but, on the other lumd, they carried with them qualities of which the world stand always in great need, and for which it ought to have been more grateful. They did not believe that piety, orthodox}', or even sanctity itself, could dispense with integrity and honor. When such a ca- lamity befell, — wlien prelates or monks showed themselves indift'erent or unfaithful to the duties of public life, to the obligations of uprightness, to the laws of humanity, of grati- tude, or of friendship, their indignation was roused, and they did not fail to mark and stigmatize the culprits in their an- nals. We see that they invariably place the natural virtues, tlie services rendered to a countr}' or to human society, side by side with those marvels of penitence and of the love of God which they have registered so carefully ; and we love to fol- ^^ •' Duo sunt, justitia et libertas, pro quibus quisque fidelis usque ad sanguinem stare debeat." — Petr. Blesens., De Inst. Episcop. INTRODUCTION. 21 low tbroiigh alJ ages the long- succession of monks, us active as they were pious, as courageous as iervent, to whom we may justly apply that brief and noble eulogium pronounced by the Saxon Chronicle upon an abbot who distinguished himself during the convulsions of the Norman Conquest. "He was a good monk and a good man, loved uf God and of good men." ''' For myself, who for more than twenty years have lived in the good and great company of the monks of otlier times, 1 declare that it is there above all, and perhaps there only, tnat I have recognized the school of true courage, true freedom, and true dignity: when, after long intervals, and from the midst of the painful experiences of political life, I returned to the study of their acts and writings, I met there another race, of other hearts and heroisms. I owe to them, in a point of view merely human, my thanks for having reconciled me to men, by opening to me a world in whicli 1 hardly ever found either an egotist or a liar, an ungrateful or servile soul. There 1 have beheld, there I have tasted, that noble inde- pendence which belongs, by right of their humility itself, to Fiumble and magnanimous souls. There I have learned to understand how, and by what means, great corporations and successive generations of good men have been able to live at an equal distance from the unrestrained license and the ab- ject servility which alternately characterize our modern society, in which individual man, conscious that he is noth- ing, that he has neither a root in the past nor an influence upon the future, prostrates himself entirely before the. idol of the moment, reserving to himself only the right of demol- ishing, of betraj'ing, and of forgetting it on the morrow. And besides — why should not I acknowledge it? — even in the midst of this contemporary Avorld, the downfalls and miseries of which have been to me so bitter, the Divine good- ness brought me acquainted in my youth with the t}pe of a monk of ancient times, in a man whose name and glory be- long to our time and country .^^ Although he was not j'et professed at the time when our souls and our lives drew close to each other, and although he has since entered an or- der apart from the monastic family of which I have become the historian, he revealed to me, better than all books, and ^' "Fuit enim bonus monachus et bonus vir : proptoreaque eum dilexor'mt Deus et boni viri." — Chron. Saxon., ad ann. 1137, p. 240, ed. Gibson. ^^ Father Lacordaire, the regenerator of the Dominican Order in Franc*;, and the most celebrated preacher of the day. 22 THE MONKS OF THE WEST. more clearly than all my studies of the past, the great and noble qualities which go to the making of a true monk — self- abnegation, fortitude, devotion, disinterestedness, solid and fervent piet}^, and that ti'ue independence which does not ex- clude filial obedience. His eloquence has astonished a coun- try and a time accustomed to the victories of eloquence ; his noble genius has conquered the admiration of the most rebel- lious critics. But he will be honored by God and by a Chris- tian posterity, not so much as a writer and an orator, but as a monk austere and sincere. His name is not needed here — all who read will have di- vined it. All will pardon me for this impulse- of a heart younger than its age, and for this homage to the community of contests, ideas, and belief, whicli has united us for thirty years, and which has lasted through differences of sentiment as well as diversity of career. Our union, born amid the charming dreams and confidence of youth, has survived the reverses, the betrayals, the inconstancy, and the cowardices which have overshadowed our mature age, and has helped me to overleap the abyss which separates the present from the past. Such an example, in spite of all the differences of times and institutions, helps us also to comprehend the influence of the noble character and powerful associations with which the monastic order has so long enriched the Church and the world. For the reality of that influence is incontestable. We are obliged to acknowledge, under pain of denying the best ascertained facts of history, those succors which the most difficult virtues and the most generous instincts of man, even in temporal affairs, have drawn from the bosom of the cloister, when the whole of Europe was covered with these asylums, open to the best intellects and highest hearts. None can deny the ascendency which a solitude thus peo- pled exercised upon the age. None can deny that the world yielded the empire of virtue to those who intended to flee from the world, and that a simple monk might become, in the depths of his cell, like St. Jerome or St. Bernard, the centre of his epoch and the lever of its movements. Let us then banish into the world of fiction that affirma- tion, so long repeated by foolish credulity, which made mon- asteries, and even religion itself, an asylum for indolence and incapacity, for misanthropy and pusillanimity, for feeble and melancholy temperaments, and for men who were no longer dt to serve society in the world. Tlie very incomplete nar- IXTRODUCTION. 23 rative which I shall place before my readers, will, T venture to believe, suffice to prove that there has never been in any society, or at any epoch, men more energetic, more active or more practical, than the monks of" the middle ages. We shall see how these idlers were associated dui-ing ten centuries with all the greatest events of t!ie Church and of the world — always the fii'st in labor and in combat. We shall see them issuing from the cloister to occupy pulpits and professors' chairs, to direct councils and conclaves, parlia- ments and crnsades; and returning thither to rai^■e monu- ments of art and science, to erect churches and produce books, Avhich astonish and defy modern pride. We shall see that these dreamers were, above all, men in every meaning of the word, viri — men of heart and of will, with whom the most .tender charity, and humility the most fervent, excluded neither perseverance, nor decision, nor boldness. They were masters of their will. Throughout the whole duration of the Christian ages, the cloister was the permanent nursery of great souls — that is to say, of that in which modern civiliza- tion most fails. And for that reason we repeat it without ceasing. The most brilliant and enduring glory of the mo- nastic institution was the vigorous temper which it gave to Christian souls — the fertile and generous discipline which it imposed upon thousands of heroic hearts. CHAPTER IV. SERVICES RENDERED TO CHRISTIANITY BY THE MONKS. ' Sine fictione didici, et sine invidia communico, et honestatem (illorum) non abscoudo. — Sap. vii. i:{. There are some services and ti-iumphs of a deep and silent kind which acquire their due lK)nor only from posterity, and under the survey of history. Such are those which we have just described. But there are otliers more visible and more palpable, which seize at once upon the admiration and grati- tude of contemporaries. When we inquire into the causes which have given to the religious orders, from their origin, and as long as their fervent spirit lasted, a part so important in the destinies of the Church, and so high a place iu the 24 THE MONKS OF THE WEST. heart of all the Christian populations, it seems easy to recog nize them in the two great functions common to all the or* ders and to all their branches — Prayer and Alms. The first of all the services which the monks have con ferred upon Christian society was that of praying — of pray- ing much, of praying always for those whose praj^ers were evil or who prayed not at all. Christianity honored and es- teemed in them, above all, that great force of intercession; these supplications, always active, always fervent; these tor- rents of prayers, poured forth unceasingly at the feet of God, who wills that w^o should supplicate Him. Thus they turned aside the wrath of God ; they lightened the weight of the iniquities of the world ; they re-established the equilibrium between the empire of heaven and the empire of earth. To the eyes of our fathers, it was this equilibrium between prayer and action, between the suppliant voices of humanity, timorous or grateful, and the incessant din of its passions and labors, which maintained the world in its place. In the main- tenance of this equilibrium lay the strength and life of the middle ages ; and when it is disturbed, all is disturbed in the soul, as in the world. We Avill not inquire to what extent this disturbance exists m our modern world. It would be too sad to enumerate all the points of the globe where prayer is extinct, and where God listens for, without hearing, the voice of man. We know only that the universal need of prayer, and that ardent trust in its efficacy which characterized the middle ages, and which their detractors instance as a mark of childish simpli- city, had been bequeathed to them by two antiquities, from whom they accepted the inheritance. The wisest of men has said, " The prayer of the humble pierceth the clouds : and till it come nigh, he will not be comforted ; and will not de- part till the Most High shall behold to judge righteously, and .execute judgment." ' Homer, who was nearly contemporary with Solomon, brightened his mythology Avith a light almost divine, when he made Phoenix say to Achilles, in that famous address which survives in all memories, " Even the gods per- mit themselves to be persuaded. Ev'ery day men, after hav- ing offended them, succeed in appeasing them with vows, with offerings, with sacrifices, libations, and prayers. The Prayers are daughters of the great Jupiter. Tottering, and ' •• Oratio humiliantis se nubes penetrabit : et donee propinquet non con eolabitur; et nou discedet, donee Altissimus aspiciat." — Ecclic. xxxv. 17. INTRODUCTION. 25 with a wn'nkled brow, scarcely lifting their humble eyes, they hasten anxiously after the steps of Wrong. For Wrong is haughty and vigorous, and with a light step always pre- cedes them. She hastens throughout the earth outraging men, but the humble Prayers follow her to heal the wounds which she has made. These daughters of Jupiter approach to him who respects and listens to them. They bring aid to him, they hearken in their turn, and grant his requests. But if a man, deaf to their desires, repulses them, they fly to- wards their father, and implore of him that Wrong may at- tach herself to the steps of that man, and rigorously avenge them." ' I cannot imagine a finer subject than the history of prayer — that is to say. the history of that which the creature has said to her Creator ; the tale which should instruct us when, and wherefore, and how she places herself to recount to God her miseries and joys, her fears and her desires. If it was given to a human pen to write it, that history should be the history of tlie monks. For no men have known, as they did, how to wield that weapon of prayer, so well defined by the most illustrious bishop of cur days, who has lately showed us how " the great witness of our weakness becomes, in the poor and feeble breast, a power redoubtable and irresistible to heaven itself : Omnipotentia supj^lex.'' " God," continues that eloquent prelate, "■ in throwing us into the depths of this valley of miser}', has willed to bestow upon our feebleness, upon our crimes even, the potency of prayer against Himself and His justice. When a man makes up his mind to proy, and when he prays well, his weakness itself becomes a strength. Prayer equals and surpasses sometimes the power of God. It triumphs over His will, His wrath, even over His justice."* The Gospel has assured us of nothing more certain than this omnipotence of prayer. " If ye shall say unto this mountain. Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea, it shall be done. And all things whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer^ believing, ye shall receive." ' " Jesus Christ," says Bossuet, *' expressly uses comparisons so extraordinary to show that all 2 Iliad, ix. 497-512. ^ M. DuPANLonp, Bishop of Orleans — First Sermon upon Prayer, Lent, 1858. ■* Matth. xxi. 21, 22; Mark xi. 23. It is said elsewhere: " He will fulfil the desire of them that fear Him" (Ps. cxlv. 19). And again: "Ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall he done unto you" (John xv. 7). The Fiat lu3 is not more energetic. VOL. I. "^ 26 THE MONKS OF THE WEST. is possible to him who prays." And he adds, " Behold her« the prodigy of prodigies — man reclothed with the omnipo- tence of God !"5 Penetrated by this conviction, men of old neglected no means and no occasion of augmenting and maintaining the intensity of prayer in its highest form. Of old, as to-day, there were doubtless many Christians no better instructed how to pray than he who writes these lines. But all rec- ognized the importance — the grandeur — the necessity of prayer. All admitted that the greatest blessing of Heaven to a nation, to a family, or to a soul, was to shed abroad npon it the spirit of prayer. All understood and all acknowledged that this flame of the heart should ascend to God by hands specially consecrated to that august mission. All passion- ately invoked that pledge of true fraternity. All thirsted for that alms ; and, to obtain it, all turned towards the monks. Thus, as long as the monks remained faithful to the spirit of their institution, their special mission, their first duty was to pray, not only for themselves, but for all. They had been the veteran and indefatigable champions of Christianity in the " holy and perpetual struggle of human prayer with the divine omnipotence."^ Gathered together and constituted by rule for prayer in common, they were regarded with reason by the good sense of the Christian populations as a potency of intercession, instituted for the salvation of souls and of nations. Thanks to them, prayer existed in the character of an institution of permanent and public force, universally recognized and blessed by God and by man. '' Where goest thou ? " said the Emperor Valens one day to a noble Persian, Aphraate, Avho had become a monk and missionary of the Nicean faith. '• I go to pray for your empire," answered the monk. "' In the midst of the pomps of the Byzantine Court, the most ancient and eloquent apologist of the order, St. John Chrysostom, declared in words which have not grown old, the sovereign efficacy of monastic prayer — " The beneficence of the monks is more than royal : the king, if he is good, can solace the hardships of the body ; but the monk, by his prayers, frees souls from the tyranny of demons. A man who is struck by a spiritual affliction » Meditations on the GQspel, part i., 39th day ; part ii., 21st day. 6 M. UUPANLOUP, 1. C. ^ " Imperator ad ilium: Die, inquit, quo vadis? Pro tuo, inquit, regno precaturus." — Theodobeti, Ecclesiast. Histor., lib, iv., c. 26, t. iii. p. 28i, edit. Cantabr. INTRODUCTION. 27 passes before a king as before a body without life, and flies to the dwelling of the monks, as a peasant terrified by the sight of a wolf, takes refuge near the huntsman armed with a sword. What a sword is to the huntsman, pra3'er is to the monk. , . . Nor is it we alone who seek that shelter in our necessities; kings themselves invoke them in their dangers, — all, like mendicants fleeing, as in time of famine, to the houses of the rich." ® The words of St. John Chiysostom became a historical truth when the Christian royalty had replaced, at the head of new nations, the dishonored majesty of the Ccesars. Dur- ing a thousand years, and among all the Catholic popula- tions, we perceive what an enviable resource the princes find in the prayers of the monks, and how the}^ glorify them- selves by confidence in them. At the apotheosis of the feudal age, when the fleet of Philip Augustus, sailing towards the Holy Land, was assailed in the Sicilian seas by a horrible tempest, the king reanimated courage and confidence in the breasts of the sailors by reminding them what intercessors they had left upon the soil of their country. " it is midnight," he said to them ; '^ it is the hour when the community of Clair- vaux arise to sing matins. These holy monks never forget us — they are going to appease Christ — they go to pray for us ; and their prayers will deliver us out of peril." ^ A similar story is told of Charles V., a great emperor iu spite of his errors, who, in the decline of the Catholic ages, fired by a last breath of that flame which had illuminated the Crusades, twice led his fleets and his armies against the infidels ; first to victory, and afterwards to defeat, on those coasts of Africa where St. Louis died. Like its chiefs, the entire mass of Christian society, during the whole period of the middle age, showed a profound con- fidence in the superior and invincible power of monastic prayer ; and for this reason endowed with its best gifts those who interceded the best for it. All the generations repeated, 8 S. Joan. Ciirys., Comparatio Regis et MonacJii, c. 4; cf. Homel. in ifatih., G8-72, et in B, P/nlogomum, c. 3, ed. Gaume, i., 607. * "Jam inatutinas Claravallensis ad lioras Concio surrexit : jam sancta oracula sancti, Nostri baud immemores, in Christi laude resolvunt; Quorum pacificat nobis oratio Christum, Quorum nos tanto prece liberal ecce periclo. Vix bene finierat, et jam fragor omnis et sestus, Ventorumque cadit rabies, pulsisque tenebris, Splendiflua radiant et luna et sidera luce." GuiLLELM. Bbktoriis Pkilippidos, iv. Ht 28 THE MONKS OF THE WEST. one after the other, with an inexhaustible diversity in form, but with a steadfast unanimity in spirit, the formula used by St. Eloysius in 631, in his charter of donation to the monks of Solignac — I, your supplicant, in sight of the mass of my sins, and in hope of being delivered from them by God, give to you a little thing for a great, earth in exchange for heaven, tliat which passes away for that which is eternal," ^^ Thus, in receiving perishable riches from the hand of the faithful, the monks appeared to all to return the price of them in the unmeasured and unparalleled beneficence of prayer. By their mouth the voice of the Church rose with- out ceasing to heaven, drawing down, the dew of divine benedictions. They inundated the whole soil of Christen- dom with a fertilizing moisture, inexhaustible source of grace and consolation. If it is true, as human wisdom has said, that he who works prays, ma)' we not also believe that he who prays works, and that such work is the most fruitful and the most meritorious of all ? '* To occupy one's self with God," said St. Bernard, "is not to be idle — it is the occupation of all occupations." ^^ It is this, then, which has justified and glorified in the eyes of Christian people all the orders, and specially those whom the world has comprehended least — those whom it has blamed for idle contemplations and prolonged prayers. How can we forget that it is precisely those who have merited and obtained the first place in the esteem of the Church and the gratitude of Christians? Has not St. Augustine even said, " The less a monk labors in any thing else but prayer, the more serviceable is he to men?" ^^ To deny that, is it not to deny the Gospel? Did not God himself judge that cause and determine that question, when he took the part of Mary against Martha ?i^ But have the monks confined themselves to this solitary class of benefits? Has prayer been the only proof of solici- tude, of affection, of gratitude, which they believed them- 10 u j^gQ supplex vestcr, coiisiderans molem peccatorum meorum, ut merear ab ipsis erui et a Doinino sublevaii, cedo \obis parva pro inagnis, terrena pro ccelestibus, tenipnralia pro seternis." — Ap. Mabil., Acta SS. 0. B., t. ii., p. 1092. " " Otiosuni non est vacare Deo, sed negotium negotiorum omnium." '* " Monachi si non fideliuni eleemosynis juventur, nccesse est eos opere terreno, quanto fiddium damno, plus solito occupari." — S. Augustin., t. v., p. 3192, ed. Gaume. '■* "Creator omnium Deus, per hoc quod Mariai causam contra Martliam assumpsit, evidentius patefecit." — Eugenii Pap^ 111., Epist. ad Wibald. Corbeiens., iu Amplissima Collect., t. ii., p. 293. INTRODUCTION. 29 selves able to f^ive to their brother?, to their bencf^ictors, to all the Christian coinmtinity? Did they practise the giving of alms only under this purely spiritual form? No; all his- tory witnesses to the contrary. All her monuments prove that the religious orders have practised a charity, active and palpable, such as had never been before them, and can never be exercised by otlier hands. They have displayed in that task all the intelligence and devotedness that is given to man. To that unfortunate multitude condemned to labor and priva- tion, which constitutes the immense majority of the human race, the monks have always been prodigal, not only of bread, but at the same time of a sympathy efficacious and indefat- igable — a nourislnnent of the soul not less important than thnt of the body.^* What delicate cares, what tender fore- sight, what ingenious precautions, have been invented and practised during twelve centuries in these houses of prayer, which count among their dignitaries les injirmiers des paa- vres, the nurses of the poor.^^ After having given an inces- sant and generous hospitality to the indigent crowd whom they never found too numerous,^^ after having edified and re- joiced them by the sight of their own peaceful and gentle life, they offered to them, besides, in time of war, a shelter, an asylum almost always respected by Catholic conquerors. After having given all that they could give on their own account, they inspired to marvels of generosity all those who loved and surrounded them. Their aspect alone seems to have been a permanent sermon to the profit of charity. Their habitual familiarity with the great has always benefited the '* To quote only one example among a thousand, we see, in the fifth century, Ht. Lie, Abbot of Mantenay, in Champagne, working wiih his own hands in the vineyard of the convent, carrying with him bread to distribute to the poor; and, whilst they ate it, preaching to them the fear and the love of God. — Desguerrois, Histoire du Diocese de Troycs, p. 110. '* Infirmarii pauperum. There were such at Clairvaux to whom Thiemar of Juvencourt bequeathed in 1244 twelve deniers of annual income, payable at Martinmas. — Extracts MSS. made by D. Guitton from the Archives oj Clairvaux, t. ii., fol. 79. '^ They were no sooner escaped from proscription and ruin, than they re- sumed faitlifully and universally the habits of their fathers. After the Cis- tercians or English Trappists of Melleray had been expelled from that abbey in 1831, some few from among them returned to England, and, favored by the religious liberty which reigned there, and by the munificence of Mr. Am- brose Lisle Philips, they were able to settle in an uncultivated region called Charnwood Forest, in the centre of a province in which monks had not been seen for three centuries. In this new monastery they have so well followed the traditions of their fathers, that, from the 1st of January 1845 to the 21st of April of thfe same year, they have given alms and hospitality to 6327 of th« poor — and lived tliemselves only on charity! 3* 30 THE MONKS OF THE WEST. small. If they were richly endowed by rich Christians, they in their turn endowed the poor with this purified wealth. and became thus the intermediar}^ agents, delicate and inde- fatigable, from whose hands the alms once bestowed by the rich descended in perpetuity upon the poor.^" They have nobly and faithfully fulfilled that mission ; and everywhere, even in the depths of their modern decadence, that supreme virtue of charity has specially distinguished them. In recent ages, the spirit of the world had every- where invaded them, but had never been able to extirpate from their hearts the pious prodigality of their ancestors. The world had never succeeded in closing that door, from which has flowed forth upon the surrounding population the inexhaustible current of their benefits, so well symbolized by that wicket of Clairvaux, which, in the time of the monks, was called La Donne,^^ and which we can still see standing, though defaced and blocked up by the modern desecrators of the monastery of St. Bernard. No ; the most enterprising traveller, the most unfriendly investigator, may search thorouglily, as we have done, through the ruins and traditions of the cloisters ; he shall nowhere find a single monastery, however it may have been in its last days, wliich has not deserved the funeral oration, which we heard on visiting the remains of the Val-des Choux, in Champagne, from the lips of an old woman contemporary with the monks, — " It was a true convent of charity ! "' Our modern experience can, doubtless, easily conceive of means more intelligent and eflScacious for relieving poverty, " In March 1228 Elizabeth, lady of Chateauvillain, gave to tlio Cistercians of Clairvaux 620 livres de Provins in alms. They employed that sum in buying the great titlie of Morinvilliers, and consecrating the produce of it to distribute clothes and shoes every year, on the day of the Nativity of Our Lady, to eiglity poor: Quod unusquisque pauper quinque alnas de burello novo et sotulares novos . . . percipiet. If this tithe produced more than was necessary for the number appointed, this surplus was to be employed ex- clusively in buying shoes for other poor, all for the good of the soul of the said lad}'. — MSS, Gcitton, p. 421, from the copy of Langres. It would be easy to quote ten thousand analogous examples ; we limit ourselves here to two or three of those which belong to the same Abbey of St. Bernard. '* Information furnished to the author in 183'J by the octogenarian Postel, who had been plumber of the ancient abbey, now transformed into a central police-office. Elisende, Countess of Bar-sur-Seine, gave in 1224 a villa to tlie abbey, with the intention of providing specially the alms which were bestowed at that gate. We find also a gate called La Donne, in the sad ruins of Echarlis, a Cistercian abbey, situated between Joigny and Courtena)'. At least it still existed in 1846. At Aubrac, a monastic hospital of Rouergue, there was a gate called De la Miche, because they gave there a loaf of bread to all who came to ask it. — Bousquet, UAnc. Ildpital d' Aubrac, p. 150. INTRODUCTION. 31 and, above all, for preventing it; but how can we refrain from feeling and acknowledging gratitude to those who, during «o long a time and with such an inexhaustible mu- nififenGe, have accomplished all the duties of charity and Christian brotherhood, according to the measure of the light of their times? Besides, it was not solely by direct alms- giving that they served, and softened, and improved Christian society : it was still more by the honor which they rendered to poverty. This, as one of their most courageous and most regretted defenders among ourselves has already indicated,^^ is one of the principal advantages which the religious orders offer to the world, but it is also one of the aspects which is most repugnant to that spirit which would fain exclude God from modern society. The infidel loves not the poor — they remind him too much of a compensating justice, of a future in which ever}'' one shall be put in his proper place for eter- nity. He loves not those who regard them with kindness and sympathy. He knows well that the power of the priest is enrooted in the miseries of this life. Pie would willingly say with Barrere, " Almsgiving is an invention of sacerdotal vanity." He will never be able to .eradicate the laws and necessities of afflicted nature ; but wc know that he has too often succeeded in securing a temporary triumph for that fatal system which seeks to make charity a humiliation,-'^ alms an impost, and mendicity a crime ; and by which the wicked rich man, more pitiless than he of the Gospel, will not even tolerate Lazarus upon the steps of his palace. It is precisely the reverse of this that the religious orders have designed and accomplished. They were not satisfied simply to solace poverty; they honored it, consecrated it, adopted, espoused it, as that which was greatest and most royal here below. " The friendship of the poor," says St. Bernard, " constitutes us the friends of kings, but the love of poverty makes kings of us."^i *' We are the poor of Christ." Pauperis Christi is the enviable distinction of the monks: and to prove it the better, we see, when the great orders proceeding ou^" of the Benedictine stock declined, an entirely new family of Religious arise, taking as the basis of '^ Ch. Lenokmant, Des Associations Religieuses dans le Catliolicisme, Paris, 1815, p. 182. -" " Cliarity degrades and lowers those who receive it: beneficence does not so." — Extract of the Report after which the Boards of Cliaritj continued to take tlie name of Boards of Beneficence in 1831, quoted in the Annales dt la Qharite, t. i., p. 597, Oct. 1845. ^' " Amicitia jiauperum regum amicos constituit : amor paupertatis reges.' — S. Bern., ep. ciii. 32 THE r.ioNKS of the west. their existence the voluntary exercise of poverty in its most repulsive aspect — that is to say, mendicity — and lasting until our own days under the name of Ilendicant Orders. But long before this, and at all times, the monks knew well how to ennoble poverty. At the beginning they opened their ranks, and placed there, from the origin of their insti- tution, slaves, serfs, and men of the extremest indigence, beside, and sometimes above, princes and nobles : for it is above all to the monastic condition that the fine expression of the Comte de Maistre upon the priesthood in ancient soci ety applies : " It Avas neither above the last man of the State, nor beneath the first." ^^ And even to the poor who did not enter into their ranks, the monastic order presented a spectacle more adapted than any other to console them, and to elevate them in their own eyes — that of the poverty and voluntary humiliation of the great men of the earth who enrolled themselves in a cro-wd under the frock^^a Prom the cradle of the institution, the fathers and the doctors of the Church had already ascertained the consolation which the poor experienced in seeing the sons of the greatest families clothed in these miserable monk- ish habits, which the most indigent would have disdained, and the laborer seated upon the same straw as the noble, or the general of an army : the one as free as the other in the same libert}^, ennobled by the same nobility, serfs of the same servitude,'-^^ all blended in the holy equality of a voluntary humility .25 During the whole course of the middle age, each year, each country, saw the perpetual renewal of that ma;> vellous sacrifice of the most precious and envied possessions in the world, which their possessors immolated as they im- molated themselves upon the altar of some obscure monastery. What lesson of resignation or humility is it possible to im- agine for the poor, more eloquent than the sight of a queen, of the son of a king, or the nephew of an emperor, occupied by an effort of their own free choice in washing the plates, or oiling the shoes of the last peasant who had become a novice? 2^ Now we can reckon by thousands, sovereigns, ^^ Lettre inedite sur V Instruction Publique en Russie, Ami de la R£ligion, t. cxix. p. 212. *^ S. John Chrtsost., in Matthceum Ilomil., G8 et 69; ed. Gaume, t. vii. p. 761 et 773. ^ Advers. Oppug. Vit. Monast., lib. iii. t. i. p. 115. ** Uomil. in Matth., G2, p. 795. *® Let us quote, among many otiiers of whom we shall speak later, St Ftadegund, wife of Clotharius 1.; Carloman, son of Pepin the Short; St INTRODUCTION. 33 dukes, counts, nobles of every order, and women of equal rank, who have given themselves to such vile offices, burying in the cloister a grandeur and a power, of which the dimin- ished grandeurs, ephemeral and xmconsidered, of our modern society can give no idea.-^ And even now, in our own days, wherever the cloister is permitted to survive or to be resus- citated, the same sacrifices, in proportion to our social infe- riority, reappear — the same homage is rendered to poverty !>y the free will of tlie rich — so natural has the immolation of self become to a man who is governed by grace, and so inexhaustible is the treasure of consolation and respect which the Church, mother of all the religious orders, holds always open to the poorest among her children. These first foundations laid, and these primary conditions of the true grandeur and supreme utility of the monks suf- ficiently indicated, let us pass to those services less brilliant, but also less disputed, which all agree in reckoning to their credit. And if you would have us speak, in the first place, of the services which they have rendered to knowledge, we desire no better. We can never adequately tell how marvellously their life was adapted for study, for the ardent, active, and assiduous cultivation of letters. We can never sufficiently celebrate their touching modesty, their indefiitigable re- searches, their penetration almost supernatural. We can never sufficiently regret the resources and the guarantees offered by these great centres of literature to the most ele- vated works of erudition, of history, of criticism, by that spirit of succession, that transmission of an intellectual and moral inheritance, which encouraged them to the longest and most thankless undertakings. Ah ! who shall restore, not only to studious readers, but, above all, to authors, these vast and innumerable libraries, always keeping up to the day, and receiving the contemporary stream of all publications se- riously useful, which, by that very fact, secured to these publications an utterance which they lack at the present Frederick, cousin of the emperor St. Henry; St. Amedeus of Bonnevaux; Henri, brother of Louis the Fat, monk at Clairvaux. *^ To measure the abyss wiiich separates modern ranks and titles from those which were sacrificed in the middle age by embracing cloistral life, one has only to picture to one's self the difference t)etween a count of to-day and a count of the twelfth century. And with the exception of ecclesiastical dignities alone, is it not very much the same with all titles and distinctions whatsoever? 34 THE MONKS CF THE WEST. time, and wliich they ask, like everything else, with anxious servility from the State? Let us add, that we can never re- gret sufficiently that disinterested devotion to science, apart I'rom the self-satisfaction of vanity or any material advantage, wliich seems to have perished with them.^^ But the service which we should most desire to secure oui'selves from forgetting, and which the religious orders have rendered longest and with most success to the human mind, has been the purifying it by charity and subduing it by humility. They have thus conveiied a larger number of savants than they have made ; and these were, of all conver- sions, the ones most highly considered in the middle age, Avhich understood that of all pride the most dangerous and incurable is that of knowledge. We owe to a monk that say- ing which pronounces the eternal condemnation of intellec- tual pride — " To know, is to love."^^ And let us once more celebrate all that they have done to cultivate and people the West. There we can say nothing that does not fall short of the truth. But every attempt at justice, however tardy and incomplete, will be at least a commencement of reparation towards those pretended slug- gaids, so long and so unjustly calumniated, and of legitimate protest against the odious ingratitude of which they have been victims.- Who will be able to believe, hereafter, that the French people has permitted the men and the institutions to which three-eighths of the cities and towns of our country owe their existence, to be, in their name, ignominiously driven forth, pursued, and pi-oscribed?^^ Let us unfold the map of France. Let us mention the names of towns actually existing. St. Brieuc, St. Malo, St. Leonard, St. Yrieix, St. Jnnien, St. Calais, St. Maixent, St. Servan, St. Valery, St. Riquier, St. Omer, St Pol, St. Amand, St. Quentin, St, Venant, Bergues St. Vinox, St. Germain, St. Pourgain, St. Pardoux, St. Diey, St. Avoid, St. Sever. All these bear the names of men ; yes, and the names of saints, and, what is more, the names of monks ! The names of men admirable, but now unknown, *** Lt't us recall, in connection with this, the nohle homage which lias been rctidcrfd in our day to the Benedictines of Saint-Germain-des-Pres, by one of the iiiofit illustrious of our modern scholars, by a man of whom it may be said with justice that he was worthy to belong to the body which he has so well comprihended and so much praised — M. Guerard, in his prolegomena of the I'oli/^jtique d' Irminon. '^^ Tritliemius, Abbot of Spanheim. ^^ According to the calculation of P. Loncdevll, Histoire de VEglist Gallicane. INTRODUCTION. 35 forgotten, disdained, even in the midst of tl/ese nngratcfnl towns, which owe their existence to tlie devoted labors of these ancient fanatics ! Ask an actnal inhabitant of one of these towns, it matters not which, who was the founder whose name and memory ought, we might suppose, to be identified with his earliest and most lasting impressions. He cannot answer. Yet the pagans themselves felt, acknowledged, and consecrated, a sweet and innoffensive respect for municipal traditions, for the genealogies of places, and that holy old ago of cities, which Pliny, in his admirable epistle, loves to de- scribe and identify with their dignity and liberty itself.^^ But besides these, how many other flourishing towns are there everywhere, which, without bearing their origin writ- ten in their name, are not the less born in the shadow of the cloister, and under the protection of the paternal government of the monks ! In France, for example : Gueret,^^ Pamiers,^^ Perpignan, Aurillac, Lu^on, Tulle, St. Pons, St. Papoul, St. Girons, St. Lizier, Lescar, St. Denis, Redon, La Rdole, Nantua, Sarlat, Abbeville, Domfront, Altkirch, Remiremont, Uzerches, Brives,St. Jean d'Angely,Gaillac, Mauriac, Brioude, St.Amand en Berry.s^ In Franche Comte alone : Lure, Luxeuil, the two Bauraes, Faverney, Chateau-Chalon, Salins, Morteau, Mouthe, Montbenoit, and St. Claude, all founded by the monks, Avho have peopled the Jura and its hillsides. In Bel- gium : Ghent, Bruges, Mons, Maubeuge, Nivolle, Stavelot, Malmi^dy, Malines, Dunkirk, St. Trend, Soignies, Ninove, Re- naix, Liege. In Germany : Fulda, Fritztar, Wissemburg, St. Goar, Werden, Hoxter, Gandersheim, Quedlinburg, Nord- ^^ " Eeverere conditorcs deos, nomina deorum ; reverere gloriam veterem et banc ipsara senectutom, quce in homine veiierahilis, in urhibus sacra est. Sit apud te lionor antiquitati, sit ingentibus factis, sit fabulis quoque : niliil ex cujusquam dignitate, niliil ex libertate, nihil etiam ex jactatione decerpse- ris." — C. Plinius sec, Ad Maximum, epist. viii. 24. *^ Founded in 720 by the Abbot St. Pardoux, called at first the Bourgaux- Moines. "^ Castle belonging to the Abbey of Eredelas, restored to the abbey by Roger II., Count of Foix. so that the village formed around the enclosure. It is from this fusion of the castle, the abbey, and the village, that the epis- copal town of Pamiers has sprung. — We shall dispense with attaching an analogous note to each of the names which we shall quote. ^^ We quote only the chief places of the diocese, of tiie province, or of the district, and we leave unnoticed many other localities more or less important, which have had a monastery for their cradle, such as Cluny, Tournus, iVlou- zon, Paray-le-Monial, la Chaise-Dieu, Aigues-Mortes (Ibiinded by the Abbey of Psalmodi), &c. We refer to the learned work of M. Branche, L' Auvergne au Moyen Age, t. i. p. 439, for the curious enumera;ion of the thirty-six towns, market-towns, and virages of Auvergne, which owed their origin to the monks. S6 THE MONKS OF THE WEST. tiansen, Lindau, Kempten, Munster. In England: Westinin ster, Bath, Reading, Dorchester, Whitb}', Beverly, Eipon, Boston, Hexham, Evesham, St. Edmundsbnrj. St. Ives, St. Albans, St. Neots. In Switzerland : SchafFhausen, Soleuro^ St. Maurice, Appenzell, St. Gall, Seckingen, Glaris, Lausalnne, Lucerne, and Zurich. A ti]-esome enumeration, certainly; but how is it that these men of whom we speak were never tired of founding, of constructing, of bui!dnig up, of making populous and fruit- ful ? How is it that they have had the gift, the art, and the t'lste of creating and preserving, just as the modern instinct has too often that t)f destruction? Ah, yes ; it is fatiguing to listen while we narrate and celebrate the works of those who build, as it is fatiguing to listen to the praises of virtue. Those who write and those who read the history of our days, need fear no such lassitude. But it is necessary to bear with it for a little, if we wish to have the slightest notion of monastic institutions. And it is not only their incredible fertility which we must admire, but also the prodigious duration of that which they have brought forth. Oh, miracle of Christian greatness ! it is in preaching the frailty of human things, the nothingness of all human productions ; it is in demonstrating this by their example, by their retirement, by a steady sacrifice of rank, of iamily, of fortune, and of country, that they have succeeded in creating monuments and societies the most lasting which we have seen upon the earth, and which would seem able to brave indefinitely the action of time, if modern barbarism had not appeared to substitute itself in the place of time, as in that of right and justice. How many monas- teries have lasted seven, eight, ten, sometimes even fourteen centuries ; ^5 that is to say, as long as the French royalty, and twice as long as the Roman republic ! We admire the works of the Romans : masters and tyrants of the world, they used the strength of a hundred different nations to create those (constructions which archceologists and the learned have taught us to place above all others. But what then must we say of these poor solitaries ?2^ They '•'^ For example, Lerins, Marmoutier, St. Claude, all three prior to the l-"rencli royalty; le INlont-Cast^in, Luxcuil, Mlcy, and many others that will aii()ear successively in our recital. ^ "Tliose long and costly works," rays tlie father of Mirabeau, '-which are a sort of anibiiioii and joy to bodies winch regard themselves as per- petual, always slow to .".lienate, alwi^ys .'^^trong to preserve, are beyond the uowers of private individuals. It is the same with the buildings. The INTRODUCTION. 37 nave tnken nothing from any one ; but, without arms and without treasure, with the sole resource of spontaneou.s gifts, and thanks to the sweat of their own brow, they have covered the world Avith gigantic edifices, which are left to the pickaxe of civilized Vandals. They have achieved these works in the desert, without roads, without canals, without machinery, without any of the powerful instruments of modern industry, but with an inexhaustible patience and constancy, and at the same time with a taste and discern- ment of the conditions of art, which all the academies might envy them. We say more — there is no society in the world which might not go to their school, to learn at the same time the laws of beauty and those of duration. CHAPTER V. HAPPINESS IN THE CLOISTER. Cio ch' io vodeva mi sembrava un riso Deir uiiiverso . . . O gioia ! o ineffabile allegrezza ! O vita intera cl' amoro c cli pace ! O senza brama sicura ricliezza ! , Luce intellettiial piena d'amore. Amor di vero ben pien di letizia, Letizia che traseende ofrni dolzore. Dante. I'arcul., c. 27-30. What lasted most amidst the monks was not only their monuments and works, material and external : it was the in- terior edifice, the moral work, and, above all, the happiness which they enjoyed — that pure and profound happiness which reigned in them and around them.^ Yes, even in the bosom of that life which they despised, same solidity, the same perfection. One of the churches of our abbey is known in our liistory by a famous episode, for 700 years; it is absolutely in the same state as it was then. Where are the private buildings erected at that time of which a stone is standing now?" — L' Ami des Ilomrnes, 1758, torn. i. p. 25. ' ] know no writer who has better comprehended and shown the happi- ness of monastic life, such as it is described and authenticated by ancient authors, than Mr. Kenelm Digby, in the tenth volume of the curious and in- structive collection, entitled Mores Catholici, London, 1840. It has served to guide me in this attractive study, and has afforded me a pleasure which I would wish to share with all my readers by referring them to this valuable work. VOL. L 4 38 THE MONKS OF THE WEST. and which they had offered as a sacrifice to God, God by a permanent miracle of His mercy has caused them always to find a joy and felicity unknown to other men. Yes, happi- ness, that rare and much desired e:ift, reigned without rival in those monasteries which were faithful to the rule of their ibunders, to the law of their existence. This is evident even in the charming names which the monks gave to the places of their retirement and penance — Bon-Lieu,^ Beau- Lieu,s Clair-Lieu,* Joyeux-Lieu,^ Cher-Lieu,^ Chere-Ile," VauJx-la-Douce,^ Les Delices,^ Bon-Port.^^ Bon-Bepos/^ Bonne- I\Iont,i2 Val-Sainte,i3 Val-Benoite,i4 Val-rle-Paix,i5 Val-d'Esper- ance,i6 Val-Bonne,i" Val-Sauve,i8 Nid-d'0iseau,i9 Font-Douce,20 the Voie-du-Ciel,2i the Porte-du-Ciel.22 the Couronne-du-Ciel,23 the Joug-Dieu 24 the Part-Dieu,25 the Paix-Dieu,26 the Clart^.- Dieu,2' the Science-de-Dieu,-^ the Champ-de-Dieu,-' the Lieu- de-Dieu,30 the Port-Suave,3i the Prd-Heureux,32 the Pr6-Bdnit,33 ^ Good Place, of the order of Citeaux, in Limousin, and several others of the same name. ^ Beautiful Place, Abbey of the Benedictines in Lorraine; of Citeaux, in England, in Rouergne, and elsewhei-e. '' Briglit Pliice, Cistercians, in Lorraine. * Joyous Place, Netley, the Lcoio Loco, in England. * Dear Place, Cistercians, in Eranche-Comte. '' Dear Island, Cara Insula, in Norway. * Sweet Vale, Cistercians, in Champagne. 9 The Delights, Las JIuelgas, near Burgos, ip Castile. '" Good Haven, Cistercians, in Normandy. *' Good Rest, Cistercians, in Brittany. '^ Good Mountain, Cistercians, near Geneva. '■* Holy Valle}'. Carthusian, in Switzerland. ''' Blessed Valley, order of Citeaux, in the Lyonnais. '* Valley of Peace, Cartliusian, in Switzerland. '* Valley of Hope, Carthusian, in Burr^undy. " Good Valley, Carthusian, in Languedoe; order of Citeaux, in Boussil' Ion. Tliere was besides a multitude of Good Vales and Good Valleys. '® Valley of Salvation, Citeaux, in Languedoe. "* Bird's Nest, Benedictines, in Anjou. ''*' Sweet Fountain, Benedictines, in Saintonge. *' The Way of Heaven, Carthusian, in the kingdom of Murcia. ^* The Gate of Heaven, Carthusian, in the kingdom of Valencia. *^ The Crown of Heaven, Ilimmdskrone, in Germany. ^* God's Yoke, Benedictines, in Beaujolais. ** The Portion of God, Carthusian, in Switzerland. ^* The Peace of God, order of Citeaux. in the neighborhood of Liege. ^"^ The Brightness of God, Citeaux, in Tourraine. '^ The Knowledge of God, Benedictines, in Lorraine, Theolegium. *^ The Field of God, Ciiltura Dei, Benedictines of Maisa. ^^ Tiie Place of God, Dilo for j)ei Locus, Premontres, near Joigny ; Loc Dieu, Cistercians, in Rouergue and clsewliere. ^' The Haven of Salvation, Porhis-Suavis, corrupted to Poursas and Poussay, a noble chapter-house in Lorraine. *- Tlie Happy Meadow, Felix Pre, near Givet. ^' The Blessed Meadow, Cistercians, in La Marche. INTRODUCTION. 39 the Sylve-Bcnit,34 the Eeglo,^^ the Reposoir,^^ the Reconfort/' L'Abonclance.^*' La Joie.-'^'^ And this joy, so lasting and so lively, reigned in their hearts with all the greater warmth, in proportion to tlie auster- ity of their rule and the fidelity and completeness with which they observed it.**^ Their testimony is so unanimous in this respect that we are obliged either to believe it, or to believe that all which is holiest and most pure in the Church has, during successive centuries, directed the publication of a lie to humanity — a supposition so much the more absurd that monastic historians have never shunned the sad duty of recoiding the disorders and sufferings produced by any re- laxation or contempt of their primitive constitution. Tlie indisputable evidence of this happiness shines from every page of the writings left to us by the monastic fathers, doctors, and historians. The}' passionately loved those mon- asteries which we consider prisons, and the life which they led in them. *' Toto corde iiieo te, Centula mater, amavi."'*' Tt is with this exclamation of love that the beautiful and curious chronicle of the great Abbey of St. Riquier, in Ponthieu, is concluded ; and five centuries later the Abbot Trithemius, one of the most celebrated historians of the Benedictines, made a similar exclamation on completing the first half of his celebrated annals of the beloved abbey where he had been trained : '* Me sola Hirsaugia gaudet.^ ^* The Blessed Wood, Carthusian, in Dauphiny. ^^ The Rule, Regida, the Reole, Benedictines, in Aquitaine. ^* The Resting-place. Carthusian, in Savoy. •*' Cons^oiation, Cistercian, in Nivernais. "^ Abundance, Benedictine, in Savoy. '' Joy. Two abbeys bear this name, one in Champagne, the other in Brittany. ■'" Tliis phenomenon, which has never failed to reappear at the origin of all religious orders, and to last as long as they have maintained their primi- tive fervor, presents itself anew amidst the difficulties of our modern life. The houses of La Trappe overflow with novices. On the contrary, during last century, the numerous abbeys where the Commende had destroyed all regular discipline, and in whicii life was almost as easy as in the world, know not where to turn for recruits. *' Hakiulfi Chron. Centul., concluded in 1088, ap. Dachekt, Spicilcg., V. ii, p. 356. *2 r. 616 of the edition of St. Gall, 1690, in folio. — He says again in the dedication of his work, " Nimia dilectione Hirsaugensium devictus laborem hunc magnum libens suscepi; " and at the end of the second part, " Quanto Hirsaugianos amore diligam omnes, saltern laboribus meis communlcatis ad loci honorem ostendam," t. ii. p. 692. 40 THE MONKS OF THE WEST. The echo of that joy is prolonged from century to century. The austere St. Peter Damien calls Cluny a " garden of da. lights. ^^ '^'^ ^ St. Bernard, the father of a hundred and sixty monasteries, which he had filled with the flower of his con- temporaries, was never weary of repeating " Good Lord ! what happiness Thou procurest for Thy poor ! " ^ And Pierre de Blois, in leaving the Abbey of Croyland to return into his own country, stopped seven times to look back and contemplate again the place where he had been so happy .^^ They loved these dear retreats so much that they re- proached themselves for it, as we might reproach ourselves for loving too much the world and its fascinations ; and when it was necessary to leave them, were* obliged to recall to themselves their inviolable laws of Christian sclfdenial. " Oh, my cell ! " said Alcuin, at the moment of leaving his cloister for the Court of Charlemagne, '' sweet and well- beloved home, adieu for ever ! I shall see no more the woods which surround thee with their interlacing branches and flowery verdure, nor thy fields full of wholesome and aromatic herbs, nor thy streams offish, nor thy orchards, nor thy gardens where the lily mingles with the' rose. I shall hear no more these birds who, like ourselves, sing matins and celebrate their Creator, in their fashion — nor those instruc- tions of sweet and holy wisdom which sound in the same breath as the praises of the Most High, from lips and hearts always peaceful. Dear cell ! I shall weep thee and regret thee always ; but it is thus that everything changes and passes away, that night succeeds to day, winter to summer, storm to calm, weary age to ardent youth. And we, unhap})y that we are! why do we love this fugitive world? It is Thou, Christ ! that puttest it to flight, that we may love Thee only ; it is Thy love which alone should till our hearts — Thee, our glory, our life, our salvation ! " *^ The happiness of the monks was natural, lasting, and pro- found. They found it, in the first place, in their work, in *^ " Hortus deliciarura." ^ " Deus bone ! quanta pauperibus procuras solatia! " *' Petr. Blesensis Contin., Ing. Croyland, ap. Gale, Rer. Angt., Script., V. i. *^ " O mea cella, mihi habitatio dulcis amata, Semper in £eternuni, mea cella vale ! . . . Onine genus volucruin matutinas personal odas, Atque Creatorem laudat in ore Deum." . . . Alcoini Opera, v. ii. p. 456, edit. Froeben. INTRODUCTION. 41 regular labor, sustained and sanctified by prayer;*" then in all the details of a life so logical, so serene, and so free — ■ free in the highest sense of the word. They found it, above all, in their enviable indifference to the necessities of domes- tic and material life, from which they were delivered, partly by the simplicity and poverty of their condition, and partly by the internal organization of the community, where all such solicitudes rested upon an individual, upon the abbot, who, assisted by the cellarer, undertook that charge for the love of God and the peace of his brethren. Thus, in the midst of tranquil labor and a sweet unifor- mity, their life was prolonged and wrought out. But it was prolonged without being saddened. The longevity of the monks has always been remarkable. They knew the art of consoling and sanctifying old age, which, in the world — but especially in modern society, where a devouring activity, wholly material, seems to have become the first condition of happiness — is always so sad. In the cloister we see it not only cherished, honored, and listened to by younger men, but even so to speak, abolished and replaced by that youth of the heart which there preserved its existence through all the snows of age, as the prelude of the eternal youth of the life above. They were, besides, profoundly impressed by the beauty of nature and the external world. They admired it as a temple of the goodness and light of God, as a reflection of Ilis beauty. They have left us a proof of this, first in their choice of situation for the greater number of their monaste- ries, which are so remarkable for the singular suitableness and loveliness of their site ; and also in the descriptions they have left of these favorite spots. We read the pictures drawn by St. Bruno in speaking of his Charterhouse of Calabria, *s or by the anonj^mous monk who has described Clairvaux, ^^ and we are impressed with the same delicate *' " Martyris Albani, sit tibi tuta quies ! Hie locus aetatis nostrse primordia novit, Annos feliees, laetitiffique dies ! . . . Militat hie Ciirijto, noctuquc diuque labori Indulget sancto religiosa coliors." — Lines of Neckham, Abbot of Cirencester in 1217, upon the abbey of St. Alban, ap. Digby, x. 545. ^' In his letter to Raoul le Verd, Archbishop of Eheims, ap. Mabillok, Ann. Bened., t. v., 1. G8, ad Jinem. *^ 0pp. S. Bernardi, t. ii. — We should also refer to the beautiful ob- servations on nature, animate and inanimate, of Frowin, Abbot of Engelberg, in the thirteenth century, in his Explication of the Lord's Prayer, ap. Piatt* 4* 12 THE MONKS OF THE WEST. and profound appreciation of rural nature which has dictated to Virgil and Dante so many immortal verses. Like the feudal nobles, and indeed before them, the monks possessed that taste for the picturesque — for nature in her wild, abrupt, and varied aspects — which prevailed in the middle ages, and which we find, like the apparition of an ideal desire, in the landscapes of Hemling and Van Eyck, although these great painters lived only in the monotonous plains of Flan- ders. That taste disappeared later, with many other forms of the good and beautiful. The successors of the old monks, like those of the knights, abandoned as soon as they could the forests and mountains for the prosaic uniformity of towns and plains. ^^ But the Religious of the early ages discovered and enjoyed all the poetry of nature. And if inanimate nature was to them an abundant source of pleasure, they had a delight still more lively and elevated in the life of the heart, in the double love which burned in them — the love of their brethren inspired and consecrated by the love of God, The same monastic pens which have written treatises upon the beauty of the earth,^^ have written others still more eloquent upon Christian Friendship.^^ Love, these writers say, derives its life from knowledge and memory, which, in turn, take from it their charm.^^ But their example is better upon this point than the most elo- quent of essays. What a charming book might be written on friendship in a cloister 1 What endearing traits, what delightful words might be collected from the time of that Spanish Abbot of the eighth century, who said, ^' I have left but one brother in the world, and how many brothers have I not found in the cloister ! " ^ — down to those two nuns of the order of Fontevrault, one of whom having died before the other, appeared in a dream to her companion, and pre- dicted her death, saying to her, " Understand, my love, that ner, Schweizer Blatter fur Wisscnschaft und Kimst., Scliwyz., 1859, t. i. p. 52. *" In the Voyage Litteraire de Devx Benedictins, written at the commence- ment of the eighteenth century, the learned travellers designate constant)}' by the title of site affreux the sites of the ancient monasteries which they went to visit. *' De Vemistate Mundi, by Dents le Charteedx. ** De Ainicitia Christiana it De Cha')itate Dti et Proximi, tractatus du- plex, by Pierre de Blois. Edit, in lol. de 1G67, p. 497. " " Ut amor ex scientia et niemoria convalescat, et ilia duo in amore dul- cescant." — Petr. Bles. Tract., i. cxi. *■* " Unum fratrem dimisimus in saeculo : ccce quantos invenimus in moil' asterio." — Contr. Elipandum, 1. ii., ap. Bulteau, ii. 2U5. INTRODUCTION. 43 I am already in great peace ; but I know not how to enter paradise without thee ; prepare then and come at thy quick- est, that we may present ourselves together before the Lord." 55 And how indeed can we wonder at the development given in the cloister to these sweet emotions of virtuous souls ? The Religious require and have a right to seek in these mutual sympathies a preservation against the hardships and disgusts of their condition, an aliment for the dreams and ardor of their youth. In seeking under the robe of their brethren, for tender, disinterested, and faithful heart*?, they obeyed at once the instructions of the divine law and the example of the God-man. The holy Scriptures, on which they meditated every day in the psalms and lessons they chanted in their choral liturgy, presented to them immortal examples of the affection which might exist among the elect. In the Gospels, and, above all, in that one, the author of which has not feared to call himself " the disciple whom Jesus loved," they saw the radiance of that tender and pro- found friendship which the Saviour of all men vouchsafed, during His short life here below, to some predestined souls. In the Old Testament they found its type in the delightful history of that Jonathan who loved David as his soul — of that David who loved Jonathan more than a mother can love or a woman be loved ; in the vows, and tears, and kisses which sealed the union of the king's son with the son of the shepherd.^ Everything invited and encouraged them to choose one or several souls as the intimate companions of their life, and to consecrate that choice by an affection free as their vocation, pure as their profession, tender and gener- ous as their youth. Thus initiated in the stainless pleasure of a union of hearts, they could again, with the sage, recog- nize, in the fidelity of these voluntary ties, " a medicine for life and for immortality." ^'^ But where shall we find among ourselves a pen sufficiently " " Notum tibi facio, dilecta. . . . Prepara ergo te et A'eni quantocius ut siraul Domino praesentenmr." — Herberti De Miraculis, I. ii. c. 43, apud Chifflet, Genus Illustre S. Bernardi. *® " The soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul." " And they kissed one another, and wept one with another, until David exceeded." " We have sworn both of us in the name of the Lord." " I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan : very pleasant hast thou been to me: thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women." " " Amicus fidelis medicamentum vitae et immortalitatis." ~ Ecdie. vi. m. 44 THE MONKS OF THE WEST. pure and delicate to record these annals of real love ? The most charming poet of our generation, thoug-h oy his own er- rors the most unhappy, seems to have caught a glimpse of it, when, out of the midst of strains so strangely and danger- ously beautiful, he permitted to escape him such lines as the following, a singular testimony to the high and generous in- spirations whicli he knew too well how to interpret, and too oiten how to stifle : — "Monastic arches, silent cloisters, lone And sombre cells, ye know what loving is. These are your ciiill cold naves, your pavements, stones Which burning lips faint over when they kiss. With your baptismal waters bathe tlieir face : Tell them a moment how their knees must wear The cold sepulchral stones before the grace, Of loving as you loved, they liope to share. Vast was the love which from your clialices, Mysterious monks ! with a lull heart ye drew : Ye loved with ardent souls ! oh, happy lot for you ! " **• Should we not say that the hand which has traced these lines had been turning over the pages of that immortal code of divine love written by St. Bernard in his discourse upon the Song of Songs, where he speaks with such passionate earnestness that universal language of love, " which is un- derstood only by those who love ; " ^^ where he celebrates the nuptials of the soul with God, and depicts in lines of light that bride who loves only for the sake of loving and being loved, who finds in love alone all that she seeks, all that she desires, all that she hopes, who no longer fears anything, nor doubts the love which she inspires any more than that which she feels ?^^ Human tenderness, however eloquent, has never inspired accents more passionate or profound. And to prove how little the divine love, thus understood and practised, tends to exclude or chill the love of man for man, never was human eloquence more touching or more sincere, than in that immortal elegy by which Bernard suddenly interrupts the course of his sermons upon the Canticles of Solomon, to la- ** Alfred de Musset, Rolla. ** "Amor ubique loquitur; et si quis horum quae Icguntur cupit adipisci notitiam, amet. . . . Lingua amoris ei qui non aniat, barbara eric." — Serm. 79 in Cantic. *" " Quae amat, amat, et aliud novit nihil. . . . Ipse (amor) meritum, ipse praemium est sibi. . . . Fructus ejus, usus ejus. Amo, quia amo : amo ut amem. Sponsse res et spes unus est amor." — Sermo SZ- "Nihil dilecta tiniendum. Paveant quae non aniant. . . . Ego vero amans, amari me dubi tare non possum, non plus quam aaiare." — Sermo 84. INTRODUCTION. 45 ir.ent a lost brother snatched by death from the cloister, where thc}'^ had lived in so much harmony and happiness. We all know that famous apostrophe — " Flow, flow, my tears, so eager to flow! — he who prevented your flowing is here no more ! ... It is not he who is dead, it is I who now live only to die. Why, oh why have we loved, and why have M-e lost each other ?"^i It is thus that natural tenderness ami legitimate affections vindicate their rights in the hearts of the saints, and penetrate there by means of that which Bernard himself calls the broad and sweet wound of love. "^^ Thus this great disciple of Jesus loved and wept for him whom he loved, even here below, as Jesus loved and wept in Lazarus a mortal friend. " Behold how He loved him ! " ^^ Without alwaj^s exalting itself so high, the mutual affec- tion which reigned among the monks flowed as a mighty stream through the annals of the cloister. It has left its trace even in the formulas, collected with care by modern erudition, and which, deposited in the archives of the diff"er- ent monasteries, served as models of the familiar epistles ex- clianged between communities, superiors, and even simple monks. We find here and there, in the superscription of these letters as well as in their text, those nupulses of the heart which charm and refresh the patient investigator of the past. ''■ To such an one, his humble fellow-countryman, who would embrace him with the wings of a sincere and indis- soluble charity, sends salutations in the sweetness of true love."^^ And again — "I adjure you, by your gentleness, visit us often by letters and messages, that the long distance which separates us may not triumph over those who are uni- ted by the love of Christ." *' To the faithful friend," says another of these forgotten rubrics, the barbarous Latin of which has doubtless served more than one loving and delicate soul. " Let us aspire, dearest brother, to be satisfied by the fruits of wisdom, and bedewed by the waters of the divine fountain, that the same and sole paradise may receive us, and *■' " Exite, exite, lacrynite jampridem cupientes : exite quia is qui vobis meaium obstringerit, commeavit. . . . Vivo ut vivens nioriar, et hoc dixerim vitam ! . . . Cur, quaeso, aut aniavimus. aut aniisimus ;ios?" — Sermo 26. iSfe also tlie admirable discourse of bt. Bernard on the death of his friend Iiiunl)ert, a monk of Clairvaux, t. i. p. 1066, ed. Mabillou. "^ '• Grande et suave vulnus amoris." "^ John xi. 36. "■' '• lndis^olubili vinculo individuse sincerrimagque caritatis alis aniplec- '.cndo illi, ille humilis terrigcna in dulcedine vere caritatis salutem." — Furmi'lcs InedUes, published from two MSS. of Munich and Copenhagen, bj iiuu. CE KoziERE, 1859, No. 68. — Cfr. Nos. 34 and 71. 46 THE MONKS OF THE WEST. Open to our enjoj^ment the freedom of the celestial kingdom. ... If thou wilt, it shall be well for us to be divided by vast territories, and withdrawn from each other under differ- ent skies — our tribulations are the same, and our prayers shall strengthen us by the union of our souls." Sometimes verse, faintly outlined, is mingled with the prose, to repeat :he perpetual burden of all that correspondence. ''Remem- ber me — I always remember you ; I owe to you, and I give you, all the love that is in my heart." ^^ Bat with how much greater force than in these anonymous formulas, with what constancy and impetuosity does that in- exhaustible tenderness overflow in tlie authentic letters of the great monks, the collections of which certainly form one of the most precious monuments for the study of the past, as well as for that of the human heart. The more celebrated and powerful they are, the holier are they and the more they love. The correspondence of the most illustrious, of Geof- frey de Vendome, of Pierre le Venerable, and of St. Bernard, give incontestable proofs of this at every page, and the pleasure of our researches will be proportioned to the fre-- quency with which we encounter them upon our road. But even at the present moment we may appropriately quote certain lines which portray the heart of St. Anselm, who lived, loved, and was happy for sixty years in his Nor- man Abbey of Bee, before he was condemned to the glorious contests of his episcopate. " Souls, well beloved of ray soul,"' he wrote to two of his near relatives whom he wished to draw to Bee, " my eyes ardently desire to behold you; my arms expand to embrace you ; my lips sigh for your kisses ; all the life that remains to me is consumed with wait- ing for you. 1 hope in praying, and I pray in hoping — come and taste how gracious the Lord is — you cannot fully know it while you hnd sweetness in the \yorld. I would not de- ceive you ; first, because 1 love you, and further, because 1 have experience of what I say. Let us be monks together, that now and always we may be but one flesh, one blood, and one soul. My soul is welded to your souls; you can rend it, ** " Non sejungant longa terrarum spacia, quos Christi nectit amor. . . . Age jam, o meus carissime frater, . . . ut in regni celestis libertate . . . gaudere valeamus. ... Si vis, terrarum spatio divisi sumus atque seques- *ramur intervallo et celi inequali climate dirimemus, pari tamen tribulationum depremimur (sic) face. Esto raei memores, sum vestri : debeo vobis Et voveo totum quicquid amore." — E. De Roziere, Formules de S. Gall., Nos. 39, 41, 58. INTRODUCTION. 47 but not separate it from you — neither can you draw it into the world. You must needs then live with it here, or break it ; but God preserve you from doing so much harm to a poor soul which has never harmed you, and which loves you. Oh, how my love consumes me ! how it compels me to burst forth into words! — but no word satisfies it. How many things would it write ! but neither the paper nor the time are suf- ficient. Speak Thou to them, oli good Jesus ! Speak to tlicir hearts, Thou who alone canst make them understand. Ijid them leave all and fullow Thee. Separate me not from those to whom Thou has linked me by all the ties of blood and of the heart. Be my witness. Lord, Thou and those tears v^hich flow while I write ! " '^'^ The same earnestness is evident in his letters to the friends whom lie had acquired in the cloister, and from whom a tem- porary absence separated him. He writes to the young Lan- franc — " ' Far from the eyes, far from the heart,' say the vul- gar. Believe nothing of it; if it was so, the farther you were distant from me, the cooler my love for you would be ; whilst, on the contrary, the less 1 can enjoy your presence, the more the desire of that pleasure burns in the soul of your friend." ^^ Gondulph, destined like himself to serve the Church in the midst of storms, was his most intimate IVieud. "To Gondulph, Anselm," he wrote to him: " I put no other or longer salutations at the head of my letter, because 1 can say nothing more to him whom 1 love. All who know Gon- dulph and Anselm know well what this means, and how much love is understood in these two names." And again : '' Huw could I forget thee ? Can a man forget one who is placed like a seal upon his heart? In thy silence I know that thou lovest me ; and thou also, when 1 say nothing, thou knowest that I love thee. Not only have I no doubt of thee, but 1 answer for thee that thou art sure of me. What can my let- ter tell thee that thou knowest not already, thou who art my second soul ? Go into the secret place of thy heart, look there at thy love for me, and thou shalt see mine for thee.""^^ *• " Animse dilectissimae animae mese . . . concupiscunt oculi mei vultud vestros, extendunt se bracliia niea ad amplexus vestros; anhelat ad oscula vestra os meuiii. . . . Die tu, o bone Jesu, cordibus eorum. . . . Domine, tu testis es iuterius, et lacrymae quae me hoc scribente tiuunt, testes sunt ex- tei ius." — Erist. ii. 28. " Epist. i 66. *® " Quisquis enini bene novit Gondulfum et Anselmura, cum legit: Gon- dulfo Ansehnus, non ignorat quid subaudiatur, vel quantus subinteliigatur aiioctus." — £j}. i. 7. *' Qualiter namque obliviscar tui? Te silente egu 48 THE MONKS OF THE WEST. To another of his friends, Gislebert, he says : " Thou knew- est how much I love thee, but I knew it not. He who has separated us has alone instructed me how dear to me thou wert. No, I knew not before the experience of thy absence how sweet it was to have thee, how bitter to have thee not. Thou hast another friend whom thou hast loved as much or more than me to console thee, but I have no longer thee — thee ! thee ! thou understandest ? and nothing to replace thee. Thou hast thy consolers, but I have only my wound. Thospi who rejoice in the possession of thee may perhaps be offend- ed by what 1 say. Ah ! let them content themselves with their joy, and permit me to weep for him whom I ever love." ^^ Nor could death, any more than absence, extinguisli in the heart of the monk those flames of holy love. And when these gentle ties were broken, the dying carried with him a certainty that he should not be forgotten, and the survivor believed in the invisible duration of his tenderness, thanks to those praj^ers for souls, incessant and obligatory, which were identified with all the monastic habits — thanks to that devotion for the dead which received in a monastery its final and perpetual sanction."^ They were not content even with common and permanent prayer for the dead of each isolated monasteiy. By degrees, vast spiritual associations were formed among communities of the same order and the same country, with the aim of relieving by their reciprocal prayers the defunct members of each house. Rolls of parch- ment, transmitted b}' special messengers from cloister to clois- ter, received the names of those who had " emigrated," accord- ing to the consecrated expression, from " this terrestrial light to Christ," and served the purpose of a check and register to prevent def;\fcation in that voluntary impost of prayer Avhich our conobites solicited in advance for themselves or for their friends.'^i novi quia diligis me et me tacente scis quia amo te. Tu milii conscius es quia ego non dubito de te; et ego tibi testis sum quia tu certus es de me." — Up. i. 4. " Sed quid te docebit epistola meu quod ignores, o tu altera anima? Intra in cubiculum cordis tui." — £p. i. 14. *^ •' Et quidem tu sciebas erga te dilectionem meam ; sed utique ego ipse nesciebam earn. Qui nos scidit ab invicem, ille me docuit quantum te dili- gerem." — Ep. i. 75. '" It is known that the Festival of the Commemoration of the Departed was instituted by St. Odilon, Abbot of Cluny, in 998. " " De hac luce migravit, ut credimus, ad Christum. Deprecor vos om- nes . . . ut me familiariter habeatis, maxime in sacris orationibus, et quando dies obitus mei vobis notus fuerit, misericorditer de me facere dignemini. INTIIODUCTION. 40 Here let us return to Anselm. When he was elected prior of Bee, a yonn<2; monk called Osbern, jealous of his promotion, was seized with hatred towards hinj, and demonstrated it violently. Anselm devoted himself to this young man, g-ained upon him by degrees by his indulgence, traced for him the path of austerities, made him a saint, watched him niglit and day during his last sickness, and received his last sigh. Af- terwards he still continued to love tlie soul of him who had been his enemy ; and, not content with saying mass for him every day during a year, he hastened from monastery to monastery soliciting others to join him. "I beg of you," he wrote to Gondulph, " of you and of all my friends, to pray for Osbern. His soul is my soul. All that you do for him during ray life, I shall accept as if you had done it for me after my deatli,and when T die you shall leave rae there. . . . 1 conjure you for the third time, remember me, and forget not the soul of my well-beloved Osbern. And if 1 ask too much of you, then forget me and remember him. . . . All those who surround me, and Avho love thee as I do, desire to enter into that secret chamber of thy memory where 1 am ahvays : I am well pleased that they should have places near me tliere ; but the soul of my Osbern, ah! I beseech thee, give it no other place than in my bosom." '^ Great is the history of nations — their revolutions, their destinies, their mission, their glory, their punishments, their heroes, their dynasties, their battles; the tale is great, noble, and fruitful. But how much more fruitful and vast is the history of souls ! Of what importance, after all, are his an- cestors and his descendants to a man ? Of what importance to an atom is the orbit in which it moves? That which does concern him is to love, to be loved ; and, during this brief liie, to know that he is the being dear above all things to an- other being. '' It appears manifest," says Bossuet, with his solemn gravity, " that man is the delight qfmanP There is . . . Nomina fratrum delunctoruni libenti animo suscipite . . . et ad vicina monasteria dirigite." — Formules de S. Gall., E. de RozifeRE, Nos. 29 and 81. Compare the excellent work on this subject by M. Leopold Delisle, in the Bibl. de V Ecole des Chartes, t. iii. 2d sei'ies. ^^ " Anima ejus anima mea est. Accipiam igitur in illo vivus quicquid ab amicitia poteram sperare defunctus, ut sint otiosi, me defuncto. . . . Precor et precor et precor, memento mei et ne obliviscaris animas Osberni dilecti mei. Quod si te nimis videar onerare, mei obliviscere et illius memorare." — Ep. i. 4. " Eos interiori cubiculo memoriae tuae ibi, ubi ego assiduus as- sideo . . . colloca mecum in circuitu meo : sed animam Osberni mei, rogOt chare mi, illam non nisi in sinu meo." — £p. i. 7. " Sermon for the Circumcision. VOL. L 5 50 THE MONKS OF THE WEST. DO real key of the heart but love. Love is the law of the heart. It is this which moves its most secret inclinations and energies." ^^ Tiie solitary sufferings of that love, its emotions perpetually renewed, its crises, its revolutions, its confidence, and its enthusiasm — all that great world which palpitates within the narrow enclosure of a man's life, of a heart which loves, ah ! this is the most beautiful and absorb- ing of histories ; this is the tale which endures and moves us all to the depths. Of all the scanty number of immortal pages which float upon the ocean of time, almost all are filled with this theme. But let us see here the glory and unparalleled force of religion — it is this, that in resolving all social problems, and interpreting all historical revolutions, she retains every- where, and above all, " the key of our hearts." She has a balm lor all our sufferings, and an object for all our tender- nesses. She knows how to discipline passion without weak- ening it ; better than drying up our too precious tears, she makes them flow from a source purified for ever by an eter- nal object. She replaces the twilight of our transitory dreams by the radiant and enchanting serenity of an undying light. She encircles our hearts with that flame, the rays of which shine through infinitude. She has originated and con- secrated the supreme triumph of love. She crowns the most tender and powerful passions by something sweeter and stronger still, the happiness and the glory of sacrificing them to God. It is in monasteries that this science of true happi- ness and real love has been longest taught and practised. We have seen that rehgion does not interdict either the warm impulses of affection, or the endearing accents of the most penetrating sympathy to souls united in God. Let us ever listen to the sounds which are audible in that sacred silence : they will reveal, perhaps, some sweet and touching mystery of the history of souls. Let us give ear to the gen- tle and perpetual murmur of that fountain which every cloister once enclosed — an emblem and an echo of the spring from which gushed such inexhaustible love. Therefore our monks were happy, and happy by love. They loved God, and they loved each other in Him, with that love which is strong as death. If we would seek the natural con- sequence, the general condition, and the best proof of all his happiness, we recognize it without difSculty in that external '' Sermon for Pentecost. — Id. for the Annunciation. INTRODUCTION. 51 and inleriml peace, which was the predominAut characteristic of" their existence. A sweet and holy peace which was the radiant conquest, the inahenable patrimony of those monks who were worthy of their name, and of which no one else, in an equal degree, has ever possessed the secret or the under- standing ! St. Benedict, the greatest of monastic legislators, has re- ceived no nobler title from a grateful posterity than that of Founder of Peace. " Ipse fundator placidse quietis." ^' We are, said St. Bernard, the Order of the Peaceful?^ Ho had the most perfect right to say so : in the midst of tliat belligerent world of the middle ages, entirely organized for war, the monks formed a vast army of soldiers of peace, and that was. indeed, the title which they gave themselves : Deo et pad TYiiLitantihus ."'' See, therefore, how happiness, according to the divine promise, accompanies the ministers of peace. " To the coun- sellors of peace is joy." '^ It is not enough even to say happiness ; we should say gayety, hilaritas, that gayety which Fulbert of Charters, describing its union with the simplicity of the monks, called angelical'^ Of all the erroneous conceptions of Religious life, there is not one more absurd than that which would persuade us to regard it as a life sad and melancholy. History demonstrates precisely the contrary. Let us cease then to waste our pity upon all these cloistered victims of both sexes, phantoms cre- ated by false history and false philosophy, which serve as a pretext for the prejudices and the violence by which so many souls, made for a better life, and so many real victims of the most cruel oppression, are retained in the world. A truce to all these declamations of the wretchedness of being con- demned to a uniform life, to unavoidable duties, and unvaried occupations. There is not one of the objections made against "'" Alfano, Monk of Mont Cassin, and Archbishop of Salerno, quoted by Giesebrecht, De LiUerar. Stud. ap. Jtalos, p. 48. "® De Conversione, c. 21. "' This is the title of the letter of Wibald, Abbot of Corvey, in the twelfth century, to the inonks of Hastieres, in Belgium. In the epitaphs of the monks, it is the eulogium which recurs oftenest: '^ Pacijicus, tranquilla pace serenus ; " ^^^mulus hie pads ; " ''■ Fraterna pads amicus." See numeroua examples collected by Digby, t. x. c. 1. '^ Prov. xii. 20. " "Angelica hilaritas cum monastica simplicitate." — Fulb. Cabnot., Ep. 66 52 THE MONKS OF THE WEST. the life of the cloister which does not apply with quite aa much force to conjugal life. The Christian, the true sage, knows well that perpetual obligations, voluntarily undertaken, never render a man permanently unhappy. He knows, on the contrar}', that they are indispensable to order and peace in his soul. That which tortures and consumes, is neither obligafion nor duty ; it is instabilitj^, agitation, the fever of change. Ah ! when the spirit of the world penetrated the cloi>ter, and ended by stealing it away from the spirit of God — when it had introduced there the commende, the prin- ciple of individual property, indolence, coldness, all that corruption which lay usurpation sowed everywhere through- out the field, which she took upon herself to confiscate — then, doubtless, that which had been a rare and guilty excep- tion, became an abuse too habitual and general. Then, doubtless, there M^as a crowd of vocations false or compul- sory, and of bitter sorrows, stifled under the frock or the veil. Butv.'hilst it was permitted to the monastic orders to flourish in freedom under the wing of the Church, sheltered from secular invasions, melancholy was unknown, or at least ap- peared only now and then like a malady, the rareness of wliich renders it more I'rightfnl. '' TJtey had no sadness,^^^^ is the testimony given of them in the fourth century, by the first of their apologists : " they ivage loar with the devil as if they were playing J ^ ^^ \V"e see it unceasingly specified among the qualities of the most pious abbots and exemplary monks, that they were gay, joyous, amusing, loving to laugh, Jocundus, facetus. These expressions overflow above all from the pen of Orderic Vital, who, speaking of himself in his long and precious history, tells us — '' I have borne for forty-two years, with happiness, the sweet yoke of the Lord." ^^ St. Anselm, that great and irreproachable monk, certainly knew what he said when he thus challenged the secular clergy of his time : " You who believe that it is easier to live religiously under the habit of a priest than to bear the burden of monastic life, behold and see with what lightness that burden is borne by Christians of each sex, of every age and condition, who fill the entire ^ ^'OrSev yciQ tj^cvni XvnrjQor." — S. JoANN Chrysost., I'w Maith. Homil. 69, ed. Gaume, vii. 770. *' Literally, dancing, utantq ;j'o^e!'oiTtc, quasi choreas agentes. —• Ibid, ®* " Sincero monachorum conventui fcedere indissolubili sociatus, annos xlii. jam leve juyum Domini gratanter bajulavi." — Ordek. Vit., lib. v. p. 307. INTRODUCTION. 53 world vi itli their songs of joy." ^^ And six centuries ufter him, the Abbot de Ranee, who has been so often instanced to us as a type of monkish melancholy and suffering, opposed to the calumnies with which his Religious were then assailed, their conjunction of gayetyand edifying charity .^^ But they made no monopoly of that peace and joy which was their inheritance ; they distributed it with lull hands to all who surrounded them — to all who gave them permission — . everywhere. They evidenced it, the}' preached it, they bestow- ed it upon all who approached them. " The monks," said the great Arclibishop of Constantinople, whom we here quote for the last time, — '* the monks are like the lighthouses placed on high mountains, which draw all navigators to the tranquil port which they light — those who contemplate them fear no more either darkness or shipwreck." ^^ The happiness enjoyed by the people who were subjects or neighbors of the religious orders when they themselves were free and regular, in a fact, the evidence of which is de- clared by history, and consecrated in the memory of all na- tions. ^^ No institution was ever more popular, no masters were more beloved. Doubtless they have had their enemies and persecutors in all times, as the Church and virtue itself has had. But while Europe remained faithful, these were but a minority disavowed by general opinion. And even when that minority became master of the world, it succeeded in destroying the monastic orders only by violence and pro- scription. Wherever the orders, still free from lay corrup- tion,^^ have perished, it has been amid the grief and lasting ** " Consideret per totum mundum quanta hilaritate utrique sexui, onmi setate et omni genere hominum, sit pondus illud cantabile." — S. Anselm, Epist. ii. 12. ^* "You might have said to that incredulous person that, in addition to 1500 to 2000 poor, whom, as I have oiten counted, they supported by pubHc donations in the dear years, they also sustain privately, by monthly pensions, all the families in the neighhorhood who are unable to work; that they re- ceive four thousand gue^ts ; that they nourish and maintain eighty monks ; and all for an income of 8000 or 9000 livres at the most: and you might ask him to point out to you ten households, each with the same income, who do anything approaching to what those sluggards, as he calls them, do with a gaycty and an edilication of wiiich you would wish that he might be a spec- tator." — Letter from the Abbot de R-xnce to the Abbot Nicaisc. ^* S. Joan. Chrys., Uomil. 59, ad Popitl. Antiochtiium. He recurs con- stantly to this simile in his several writings. Cf. Adv. Oppugn. Vit. Monast., lib. iii. t. i. p. 114. Bom. iti Epist. ad Timoth., 14, t. xi. p. 57G, ed Gaume. ®® We have quoted a thousand times the German proverb: " Unter dem Krummstab ist es gut wohnen " (It is gocd to live under the crosier). ®'' It will be shown further ou that we do not include in this judgment the 5* 54 THE MONKS OF THE WEST. regret of the population which depended on them. And if elsewhere, as in France, where the epoch of their ruin wag contemporary with the ruin of faith in the whole nation, their fall has been seen with indifference, at least it has never been called for by popular vengeance or antipathy. The spoliations and crimes of Avhich they were the victims, Lave been the work of princes or assemblies who plumed themselves upon their scorn for the affections as for the faith of the vulgar, and have inspired only regret and alarm to the people of the country, or to those inferior and indigent classes whoso necessities and passions awake so much just solicitude at the present time. This testimony has been borne by all who have sincerely studied the history of their destruction, even among their adversaries.^^ Above all, it should be rendered to them by the author of these pages, Avho has visited, in many countries, the site of nearl}' two hundred monasteries, and who has collected, wherever any contem- poraries of monastic charity survived, the expression of their gratitude and their regret. And how could they fail to e:s- ercise that influence, — they ''whose trade was doing disin- terested good ? " S9 How could they fail to be loved, they who loved so well ? It was not only for their alms, for their practical generosit}' and hospitality, that they reigned thus in all hearts ; it was for their benign and paternal sympath^y, their active and cordial interest in the people ; it was still more by their constant and active solicitude for the salvation and happiness of all suffering souls.^ monasteries morally ruined by the commende, or any other abuse, which suc- cumbed in 1790; but that it refers to the destruction of those which had re- mained faithful to tlieir rule in England, Germany, Sweden, and recently in Spain and Switzerland, where the people armed themselves to defend them. '*' Let us quote, from among a tliousand, a Portuguese author, a great partisan of the system wliicii has ruined and inthralied the Church of his country, and who has recognized, but too late, the inconvenience of the in- discriminate suppression of monasteries. "We," says he, ''wlio have assisted at the suppression of part of the ancient monasteries of Minho, and wiio have seen the tears of the people, wlio had always found there succor in their illnesses and bread in tlieir -dd age, — we know not whether those tears were deceitful, but we know well that they gave an express contradiction to the theories of politicians wiio wrote l';;r from the countries, in the silence of tlieir cabinets, or in the midst of the noise of great towns." — Panorama, jornal litterario, No. 27, I^isboa, 1S37. ^' Wordsworth. *® " Mitis erat cunctis, suavis, plus. . . . Quen moistuni vidit, queni tristem, queinque dolentem Afl'atu dulci ma'rentia pectora mulcens." Tills fiiiguRtit. iVom the epita|)ii of an abbot of Gembloux, Herluin (ap, Dacheky, Spicileg., t ii.), applies to almost all the abbots who are known t* us in liistoiy. INTRODUCTION. 55 "Weep with tlie unhappy," ^^ said one of the patriarchs of the monastic order, St. Columba; and it was a precept which they never disobeyed. Nowliere has the human race in its joys and sorrows found sympathies more living; and productive than under the frock of the monk. A h'fe of solitude, morti- fication, and ceHbacy. far from extinguishing- in the heart of the monk the love of his neighbor, augumented its inten- sity, and redoubled by purifying it. We have proof of this in their innumerable writings, in their animated chronicles, in all that remains to us of them. Their writers employed, to designate that disposition which was native to monastic souls, a special term,that o{henignitas — that is to say, benevo- lence elevated and purified by piety ; benignitas, a word en- tirely Christian, entirely monastic, and as difficult to trans- late as the other two habitual virtues of the cloister, sim- pUcitas^^ nwd hilaritas. Their doors were always open, not only to the poor and exiled, but to all souls fatigued with life, bowed down under the weight of their faults, or simply enamoured of study and silence. To all these different guests the monk ofiered his peace and shared it with them. Thus there was not a necessity, moral or material, for which the monks, who, of all the benefactors of humanity, V7ere certainly the most generous, the most ingenious, the most amiable, disinterested, and persevering, had not at- tempted to provide. From thence resulted much happiness imperceptible in the annals of history, but distilled in abun- dance into the heart of the Christian people during all the period of monastic fervor ; from thence came that invinci- ble peace, that luminous serenity, which held sway over so many souls — even in the midst of the most stormy epochs of tliG Middle Age. Who knows, besides, how much the mere sight of their worship, the pomp of their ceremonies so majestic and solemn, and the very sound of their chants, delighted the surrounding population ? These were during many centuries the favorite spectacles, the fetes most sought after by the poor and by the country people, who resorted thither in crowds, and always found a place. Those who were pros- perous in the world — the great, and rich, and even stran- 91 " Pro misero misorans lacrymas effunde sodali." — S. Colu jib an Car- men MonasticJion, ap. Canisius, Thesanr-, t. ii. p. 749. *^ " Hie jacet in tuinba simplex tidolisque columba." — Epitaph of an ab- bot of St. Victor, in 1383, ap. Digby, t. x. p. i41. 56 THE MONKS OF THE WEST. gers — found a heartfelt enjoyment in contemplating close at hand the peaceable course of monastic life, though they did not cease to navigate for themselves the agitated waves of the world ; they loved to quench their thirst in that pure and fresh stream. The mere siglit of the monks, who were at the same time so austere and so happy, often sufficed to determine remarkable conversions ;^2 and always re- newed in the heart salutary thoughts of eternity. The most beautiful souls, the highest intelligences, have yield- ed to that attraction, and have eloquently confessed it. True philosophy has rendered to it, by the mouth of Leibnitz, a generous homage.^^ True poetry has appreciated its sin- gular and unconquerable charm. At a time when more than one symptom of approaching decadence obscured the horizon, Petrarch spoke of monastic solitude like a Father of Vallom- brosaor of the Chartreuse,^^ ^^(j Tasso has never been more happily inspired than in his sonnet addressed to the order of St. Benedict, the touching melody of which comes opportune ly to interrupt this poor prose : — ^^ " Nobil porto del mondo e di fortuna, Di sacri e dolci studj alta quiete, Silenzi amici, e vaghe cliiostre, e liete ! Laddove e 1' ora, e 1' ombra occulta, e bruna: Teinpli, ove a suon di squilla altri s'aduna, Degni viepiu d' archi, e teatri, e niiete, In cui talor si sparge, e 'n cui si miete Quel clie ne puo luidrir 1' alma digiuiia. Usci di voi clii, fra gli acuti scogli, Delia nave di Pietro antica e carca, Tenne 1' alto governo in gran tempesta. A voi, deposte 1' arme e i feri orgogli, Venner gli Augusti : e 'n voi s' ha pace onesta, Non pur sicura : e quindi al ciel si varca." ^' Beside that great Italian and Catholic poet, we quote the '■* For example, that of Guibert, of Nogent, so well related by himself, Vita propria. ^* •' He who is ignorant of their services or who despises them," says Leib- nitz, speaking of tlio monks, "has only a narrow and vulgar idea of virtue, and stupidly believes that he has fulfilled all his obligations towards God by some habitual practices accomplished with that coldness which excludes zeal and love." ^* See his treatise De Vita Solitaria, especially Chapter viii. of Book 2, which begins thus : "O vere vita pacifica, coelestique siuiilliina. vita nie- lior super vitas. . . . Vita reformatrix aninise. . . . Vita philosophica, poet- ica. sancta, prophetica," page 25G, ed. loSl. *® Among the modern poets, no one has celebrated with more feeling and truth the glory of the Monastic Orders, nor more eloquently deplored theil ruin, than the English Wordsworth. ^' Tasso, Rime Sucre e Morali, Sonn. 5. INTRODUCTION. 57 master of English prose, the Protestant Johnson, whose roas- online genius appreciated, even in the eighteenth century, the holy beauty of monastic institutions. " I never read," said he, "of a hermit, but in imagination I kiss his feet: never of a monastery, but I fall on my knees and kiss the pavement." Thus, then, by acknowledgment of the most competent and impartial judges, the much abused monks had found the secret of the two rarest things in the world — happiness and duration. They had discovered the art of reconciling great- ness of soul with humility, a tranquillized heart with an ardent mind, freedom and fulness of action with a minute and absolute submission to rule, ineffiiceablo traditions with an absence of all hereditary property, activity with peace, joy with labor, social life wnth solitude, the greatest moral force with the greatest material feebleness. And this mar- vellous contrast — this strange union of the most diverse qualities and conditions — they had been able to maintain during a thousand years, through all the frailties of human things, and despite a thousand abuses, a thousand causes of corruption, decadence, and ruin. They would have lasted still if tyrants, sophists, and rhetoricians, under pretext of curing the sick man whom they hated, had not slaughtered him to enrich themselves with his spoil. Now all has disappeared : that fountain of the purest and most inoffensive happiness to be found upon earth is ex- hausted : that generous stream which flowed through ages in waves of incessant and fruitful intercession is dried up.^^ We might say a vast interdict had been cast upon the world. That melodious voice which the monks raised day and night from the bosom of a thousand sanctuaries to assuage the anger of Heaven and draw down peace and joy into Chris- tian hearts, is silenced among us.'^^ Those fair and dear churches, where so many generations of our fathers resorted to seek consolation, courage, and strength to strive against the evils of life, are fallen. Those cloisters which offered a safe and noble asylum to all the arts and all the sciences — 98 " It was as though the Kaiser liad stopped the fountains of one of the Lombard rivers. . . . That Carthusian world of peaceful sanctity, of king- protecting intercession, of penitence and benediction, of heaven realized be- low, was signed away, swept from the earth by a written name! " — Faber, Sigiis and Thovght in Foriiyn Churches, p. 165, in reference to the sup pression of the Carthusians of Pavia by Joseph 11. ^^ '• Dulcis cantilena divini cultus, quaj corda fidelium mitigat ac lajtificat, conticuit." — Okdkr. Vital., t. xii. lib. xiii. p. 008, ed Duchesne. 58 THE MONKS OF THE WEST. where all the miseries of man were solaced — where the hungry were always satisfied, the naked clothed, the igno- rant enlightened, exist no more except as ruins, stained by a thousand ignoble profanations. Those sylvan heights, those ho!y mountains, those elevated places, where thoughts of God had their habitation — "He dwelleth on high " (Isaiah xxxiii. 5) — which heretofore cast upon the world a light so pure, and shadows so fresh and salutar^y, resemble only the uuwooded summits which we encounter here and there, transformed by the devastating axe into arid and naked rocks, where a blade of grass or a green leaf reappears no more. In vain the sun gilds them v;ith his fruitful rays — in vain the dews of heaven suffuse them. The hand of the destro3^er has been there : burned, dried up, condemned to an eternal sterib'ty, they subsist ao longer but as monuments of ruin and folly. Often, however, nature has had pity upon these ruins,' which testify to the pitiless ingratitude of men. She has thrown around these monuments of their rapacity deco- rations perpetually renewed — she has veiled their shame under the inexhaustible riches of her abundant verdure — she has wrapped them, as in a shroud, with her immortal robe of ivy and eglantine, with creeping plants and wild flowers. She attracts to them thus, even from the indifferent, a sj'mpathetic and attentive gaze. And where the climate, or the still more cruel hand of man, has not permitted that struggle of nature against scorn and foi'getfulness, some- times a plaintive legend survives and resists them, like a last protest. Thus amid the ruins of the Abbey of Kilconnell, in the western extremity of Ireland, the Irish peasants, themselves spoiled and dishonored for so many centuries, still show in the pavement of the ruined church certain long lines and little hollows, furrowed in the stone, according to their tale, by those drops of fire, the burning tears of the poor monks when they were expelled forever from theii well-beloved sanctuary. INTRODUCTION. 59 CHAPTER VI. CHARGES AGAINST THE MONKS — MONASTIC WEALTH. Who planteth a vineyard, and eatoth not of the fruit thereof or who fecdeth a flock, and eatetli not of the milk of the flock ? — ] Coii, ix. 7. But whilst we abandon oui^selves, with tender and melan- choly respect, to the contemplation of that extinguished grandeur, the world still retains in its recollection the clamors which, during three centuries, have assailed the monastic order, and does not cease to celebrate its fall. " Monk ! " said Voltaire, " what is that profession of thine ? It is that of having none, of engaging one's self by an in- violable oath to be a fool and a slave, and to live at the ex- pense of others." ^ That definition had been universally accepted and applauded in the kingdom which was the cradle of the order of Cluny and of the congregation of St. Maur, in the country of Benedict d'Aniane, of St. Bernard, of Peter the Venerable, of Mabillon, and of Ranee. It had crossed the Rhine ; and the Emperor of that Germany which was converted by the monk Boniface, his Apostolic Majesty Joseph II., wrote in October, 1781: ^' The principles of monasticism, from Pacome to our own days, are entirely con- trar}^ to the light of reason." The French Revolution, and the secularization imposed by Bonaparte on Germany, gave effect to these oracles of the modern world. The instruc- tions of Madame Roland, who wrote — '' Let us then sell the ecclesiastical possessions — we shall never be freed of these ferocious beasts till we have destroyed their dens,"^ having been punctually executed, we might have hoped that hate should have been quenched by proscription. But it is not so. The cruel passions which have buried that long-enduring institution under the ruins of the past, ' Dialogues. '■' Autograph letter to Lantlienas, SOlli June, 1790. Three years later, the representative Andrew Dumont wrote as follows to the Convention of the department of Soninie, where he was on a mission : — " Citizen colleagues, new captures ! certain iniamous bigots of priests li\ ed in a heap of hay in the ci-devant Abbey of Gard; their long beards proved Iww inveterate was their aristocracy. These three evil creatures, these monks, have been discovered. . . . Thee three monsters have gone to tiie dungeon to await their sen- tence ■' LoGard was an abbey of the crder of Citeaux, in Picardy, between An/iens and Abbeville, situated on the Somme. 60 THE MONKS OF THE WEST. live still among us. Steadfast and implacable, they watch around that which they believe to be a tomb, fearing some day the resurrection of their victim ; and at the least appear- ance of a renewed life, they pursue even his memory with trite and vulgar calumnies. The diatribes which have been drawn from too celebrated pens by^ a culpable complaisance for these victorious preju- dices, are expounded and aggravated by the unknown voices which bellow in the shade, and swell the echoes of falsehood and of hate. Whilst one denounces to his hundred thousand readeis '' the beatified aberrations and ignorance of monkish asceticism," 3 others repeat, in emulation, that "'the monks and the nuns are but sluggards, fattened at the expense of the people."* This is said and resaid every day in spite of the man}' monuments, old and new, of historical science, which prove beyond refutation how generally the people have been fattened at the expense of the monks. Those commonplaces of ignorant and triumphant wicked- ness have taken their place as a final judgment in the mind of the crowd. All obsolete and repugnant as they are, let us listen to them and recall them, if it were onl}' to confirm ourselves in a horror of falsehood and injustice. Let us take up, in the first place, at the head of these slanders of misled reason, the grand I'eproach for which it will shortly begin to blush, but which the sophists of the last two centuries employed with so much success as to diminish the credit of the monks with statesmen. They were vowed to celibacy, and celibacy put a troublesome limit to the progress of population. This was then the most uni- versal and incontestable of their crimes.^ We know what ** M. DE Lamartink, Ilistoire de la Restauration, livre xv. § 8. * L". Semeur, i>\\\\oso\}\\\