A Short History of Monks and Monasteries Part 15

While the motives just described were unquestionably preeminent among the causative factors in monasticism, it should not be taken for granted that there were no others, or that either or both of these motives controlled every monk. The personal considerations tending to keep up the flight from the world were numerous and active. It would be a mistake to credit all the monks, and at some periods even a majority of them, with pure and lofty purposes. Oftentimes criminals were pardoned through the intercession of abbots on condition that they would retire to a monastery. The jilted lover and the commercial bankrupt, the deserted or bereaved wife, the pauper and the invalid, the social outcast and the shirker of civic duties, the lazy and the fickle were all to be found in the ranks of the monastic orders. Ceasing to feel any interest in the joys of society, they had turned to the cloister as a welcome asylum in the hour of their sorrow or disappointment. To some it was an easy way out of the struggle for existence, to others it meant an end to taxes and to military service, to still others it was a haven of rest for a weary body or a disappointed spirit. Thus many specific, individual considerations acted with the general desires for salvation and solitude to strengthen and to perpetuate the inst.i.tution.

_Beliefs Affecting the Causative Motives_

In the first chapter it was shown that a variety of views respecting the relation of the body and the soul influenced the origin and development of Christian monasticism. It will not now be necessary to repeat what was there said. The essential teaching of all these false opinions was that the body was in itself evil, that the gratification of natural appet.i.tes was inherently wrong, and that true holiness consisted in the complete subjection of the body by self-denial and torture. Jerome distinctly taught that what was natural was opposed to G.o.d. The Gnostics and many of the early Christians believed that this world was ruled by the devil. The Gnostics held that this opposition of the kingdom of matter to G.o.d was fundamental and eternal. The Christians, however, maintained that the antagonism was temporary, the Lord having given the world over to evil spirits for a time. The prevailing opinion among almost all schools was that a union with G.o.d was only possible to those who had extinguished bodily desires.

The ascetic theory undoubtedly derived much support from the views held concerning the teachings of the Bible. The Oriental monks frequently quoted from their sacred books to justify their habits and ideals. In like manner, the Christian monks believed that they, and they alone, were literally obeying the commands of Christ and his apostles. This phase of the subject will receive attention when the three vows of monasticism are considered.

In the West, two conditions, one political and social, the other religious, set in motion all these spiritual desires and ascetic beliefs tending toward monasticism. One was the corrupted state, of Roman society and the approaching overthrow of the Roman Empire. The other was the secularization of the church.

Men naturally cling to society as long as there exists any well-founded hope for its regeneration, but when every expectation for the survival of righteousness yields to a conviction that doom is inevitable, then the flight from the world begins. This was precisely the situation in the declining days of Rome and Alexandria, when Christian monasticism came into being. The monks believed that the end of the world was nigh, that all things temporal and earthly were doomed, and that G.o.d's hand was against the empire. "That they were correct in their judgment of the world about them," says Kingsley, "contemporary history proves abundantly. That they were correct, likewise, in believing that some fearful judgment was about to fall on man, is proved by the fact that it did fall."

So they fled to escape being caught in the ruins of society's tottering structure,--fled to make friends with the angels and with G.o.d. If one cannot live purely in the midst of corruption, by all means let him live purely away from corruption, but let him never forget that his piety is of a lower order than that which abides uncorrupted in the midst of degenerate society. There is much truth in the observation of Charles Reade in "The Cloister and the Hearth": "So long as Satan walks the whole earth, tempting men, and so long as the sons of Belial do never lock themselves in caves but run like ants, to and fro corrupting others, the good man that sulks apart, plays the Devil's game, or at least gives him the odds."

But the early Christian monks believed that their safety was only in flight. It was not altogether an unworthy motive; at least it is easy to sympathize with these men struggling against odds, of the magnitude of which the modern Christian has only the faintest conception.

The conviction that the only true and certain way to secure salvation is by flight from the world, continued to prevail during the succeeding centuries of monastic history, and it can hardly be said to have entirely disappeared even at the present time. Anselm of Canterbury, in the twelfth century, wrote to a young friend reminding him that the glory of this world was perishing. True, not monks only are saved, "but," says he, "who attains to salvation in the most certain, who in the most n.o.ble way, the man who seeks to love G.o.d alone, or he who seeks to unite the love of G.o.d with the love of the world?... Is it rational when danger is on every side, to remain where it is the greatest?"

The Christian church set up an ideal of life which it was impossible to realize within her borders, and one which differed in many respects from the teachings of Jesus. Her demands involved a renunciation of the world, a superiority to all the enticements of bodily appet.i.tes, a lofty scorn of secular bonds and social concerns. A vigorous religious faith had conquered a mighty empire, but corruption attended its victory. The standard of Christian morals was lowered, or had at least degenerated into a cold, formal ideal that no one was expected to realize; hence none strove to attain it but the monks. When Roman society with its selfishness, l.u.s.t and worldliness, swept in through the open doors of the church and took possession of the sanctuary, those who had cherished the ascetic ideal gave up the fight against the world, and the flight from the world-church began. They could not tolerate this union of the church with a pagan state and an effete civilization. In some respects, as a few writers maintain, many of these hermits were like the old Jewish prophets, fighting single-handed against corruption in church and state, refusing to yield themselves as slaves to the authority of inst.i.tutions that had forsaken the ideals of the past.

Thus the conviction that the end of human society was nigh, and that the church could no longer serve as an asylum for the lovers of righteousness, with certain philosophical ideas respecting the body, the world and G.o.d, united to produce the a.s.sumption that salvation was more readily attainable in the deserts; and Christian monasticism, in its hermit form, began its long and eventful history.

_Causes of Variations in Monasticism_

Prominent among the causes producing variations in the monastic type was the influence of climatic conditions and race characteristics.

The monasticism as well as the religion of the East has always differed from the monasticism and the religion of the West. The Eastern mind is mystical, dreamy, contemplative; the Western mind loves activity, is intensely practical. Representatives of the Eastern faiths in the recent Parliament of Religions accused the West of materialism, of loving the body more than the soul. They affected to despise all material prosperity, and gloried in their a.s.sumed superiority, on account of their love for religious contemplation. This radical difference between the races of the East and West is clearly seen in the monastic inst.i.tution. Benedict embodied in his rules the spirit and active life of the West, and hence, the monastic system, then in danger of dying, or stagnating, revived and spread all over Europe. Again, the hermit life was ill-adapted to the West. Men could not live out of doors in Europe and subsist on small quant.i.ties of food as in Egypt. The rigors of the climate in Europe demanded an adaptation to new conditions.

But aside from the differences between Eastern and Western monasticism, the Christian inst.i.tution pa.s.sed through a variety of changes. The growth of monasticism from the hermit stage to the cloistral life has already been described. To what shall the development of the community system be attributed? No religious inst.i.tution can remain stationary, unaffected by the changing conditions of the society in which it exists.

The progress of the intellect, and the development of social, political and industrial conditions, effect great transformations in religious organizations.

The monastic inst.i.tution grew up amid the radical changes of European society. In its early days it witnessed the invasion of the barbarians, which swept away old political divisions and destroyed many of the heritages of an ancient civilization. Then the process of reconstruction slowly began. New states were forming; nations were crystallizing. The barbarian was to lay the foundations of great cities and organize powerful commonwealths out of wild but victorious tribes. The monk could not remain in hiding. He was brother to the roving warrior. The blood in his veins was too active to permit him to stand still amid the mighty whirl of events. Without entirely abandoning his cloistral life, he became a zealous missionary of the church among the barbarians, a patron of letters and of agriculture, in short a stirring partic.i.p.ant in the work of civilization.

Next came the crusades. Jerusalem was to be captured for Christ and the church. The monk then appeared as a crusade-preacher, a warrior on the battle-field, or a nurse in the military hospital.

The rise of feudalism likewise wrought a change in the spirit and position of the monks. The feudal lord was master of his va.s.sals. "The genius of feudalism," says Allen, "was a spirit of uncontrolled independence." So the abbot became a feudal lord with immense possessions and powers. He was no longer the obscure, spiritual father of a little family of monks, but a temporal lord also, an aristocrat, ruling wide territories, and dwelling in a monastery little different from the castle of the knight and often exceeding it in splendor. With wealth came ease, and hard upon the heels of ease came laziness, arrogance, corruption.

Then followed the marvelous intellectual awakening, the moral revival, the discoveries and inventions of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

The human mind at last had aroused itself from a long repose, or turned from a profitless activity into broad and fruitful fields. The corruption of the monasteries meant the laxity of vows, the cessation of ministration to the poor and the sick. Then arose the tender and loving Francis, with his call to poverty and to service. The independent exercise of the intellect gave birth to heresies, but the Dominicans appeared to preach them down.

The growth of the secular spirit and the progress of the new learning were too much for the old monasticism. The monk had to adapt himself to a new age, an age that is impatient of mere contemplation, that spurns the rags of the begging friar and rebels against the fierce intolerance of the Dominican preaching. So, lastly, came the suave, determined, practical, cultured Jesuit, ready to comply, at least outwardly, with all the requirements of modern times. Does the new age reject monastic seclusion? Very well, the Jesuit throws off his monastic garb and forsakes his cloister, to take his place among men. Are the ignorance and the filth of the begging friars offensive? The Jesuit is cultured, affable and spotlessly clean. Does the new age demand liberty?

"Liberty," cries the Jesuit, "is the divine prerogative, colossal in proportion, springing straight from the broad basin of the soul's essence!"

Such in its merest outlines is the story of the development of the monastic type and its causes.

_The Fundamental Monastic Vows_

The ultimate monastic ideal was the purification of the soul, but when translated into definite, concrete terms, the immediate aim of the monk was to live a life of poverty, celibacy and obedience. Riches, marriage and self-will were regarded as forms of sinful gratification, which every holy man should abandon. The true Christian, according to monasticism, is poor, celibate and obedient. The three fundamental monastic vows should therefore receive special consideration.

1. The Vow of Poverty. The monks of all countries held the possession of riches to be a barrier to high spiritual attainments. In view of the fact that an inordinate love of wealth has proved disastrous to many nations, and that it is extremely difficult for a rich man to escape the hardening, enervating and corrupting influences of affluence, the position of the monks on this question is easily understood. The Christian monks based their vow of poverty upon the Bible, and especially upon the teachings of Christ, who, though he was rich, yet for our sakes became poor. He said to the rich young man, "Sell all that thou hast and give to the poor." In commissioning the disciples to preach the gospel He said: "Provide neither gold, nor silver, nor bra.s.s in your purses; nor scrip for your journey, neither two coats, nor shoes." In the discourse on counting the cost of discipleship, He said: "So therefore, whosoever he be of you that renounceth not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple." He promised rewards to "every one that left houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or children, or lands for my name's sake." "It is easier," He once said, "for a camel to go through a needle's eye than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven." He portrayed the pauper Lazarus as partic.i.p.ating in the joys of heaven, while the rich Dives endured the torments of the lost. As reported in Luke, He said, "Blessed are ye poor." He Himself was without a place to lay His head, a houseless wanderer upon the earth.

The apostle James cries to the men of wealth: "Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl, for your miseries that shall come upon you." John said: "Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him."

Whatever these pa.s.sages, and many others of like import, may signify, it is not at all strange that Christians, living in times when wealth was abused, and when critical Biblical scholarship was unknown, should have understood Christ to command a life of poverty as an indispensable condition of true holiness.

There are three ways of interpreting Christ's doctrine of wealth. First, it may be held that Jesus intended His teachings to be literally obeyed, not only by His first disciples but by all His followers in subsequent years, and that such literal obedience is practicable, reasonable and conducive to the highest well-being of society. Secondly, it has been said that Jesus was a gentle and honest visionary, who erroneously believed that the possession of riches rendered religious progress impossible, but that strict compliance with His commands would be destructive of civilization. Laveleye declares that "if Christianity were taught and understood conformably to the spirit of its Founder, the existing social organism could not last a day." Thirdly, neither of these views seems to do justice to the spirit of Christ, for they fail to give proper recognition to many other injunctions of the Master and to many significant incidents in his public ministry. Exhaustive treatment of this subject is, of course, impossible here. Briefly it may be remarked, that Jesus looked upon wealth as tending oftentimes to foster an unsocial spirit. Rich men are liable to become enemies of the brotherhood Jesus sought to establish, by reason of their covetousness and contracted sympathies. The rich man is in danger of erecting false standards of manhood, of ignoring the highest interests of the soul by an undue emphasis on the material. Wealth, in itself, is not an evil, but it is only a good when it is used to advance the real welfare of humanity. Jesus was not intent upon teaching economics. His purpose was to develop the man. It was the moral value and spiritual influence of material things that concerned him. Professor Shailer Mathews admirably states the true att.i.tude of Jesus towards rich men: "Jesus was a friend neither of the working man nor the rich man as such. He calls the poor man to sacrifice as well as the rich man. He was the Son of Man, not the son of a cla.s.s of men. But His denunciation is unsparing of those men who make wealth at the expense of souls; who find in capital no incentive to further fraternity; who endeavor so to use wealth as to make themselves independent of social obligations, and to grow fat with that which should be shared with society;--for those men who are gaining the world but are letting their neighbors fall among thieves and Lazarus rot among their dogs."

Jesus was therefore not a foe to rich men as such, but to that antisocial, abnormal regard for wealth and its procurements, which leads to the creation of cla.s.s distinctions and impedes the full and free development of our common humanity along the lines of brotherly love and cooperation. A Christian may consistently be a rich man, provided he uses his wealth in furthering the true interests of society, and realizes, as respects his own person, that "a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth." The error of monasticism consists in making poverty a virtue and an essential condition of the highest holiness. It is true that some callings preclude the prospect of fortune. The average clergyman cannot hope to ama.s.s wealth. The resident of a social settlement may possess capacities that would win success in business, but he must forego financial prospects if he expects to live and labor among the poor. In so far as the monks deliberately turned their backs on the material rewards of human endeavors that they might be free to devote themselves to the service of humanity, their vow of poverty was creditable and reasonable.

But they erred when they exalted poverty as of itself commending them in a peculiar degree to the mercy of G.o.d.

2. The Vow of Celibacy. "The moral merit of celibacy," says Allen, "was harder to make out of the Scripture, doubtless, since family life is both at the foundation of civil society and the source of all the common virtues." The monks held that Christ and Paul both taught and practiced celibacy. In the early and middle ages celibacy was looked upon by all churchmen as in itself a virtue. The prevailing modern idea is that marriage is a holy inst.i.tution, in no sense inferior in sacredness to any ecclesiastical order of life. He who antagonizes it plays into the hands of the foes to social purity and individual virtue.

The ideas of Jerome, Ambrose, and all the early Fathers, respecting marriage, are still held by many ecclesiastics. One of them, in defending the celibacy of existing religious orders, says: "Celibacy is enjoined on these religious orders as a means to greater sanctification, greater usefulness, greater absorption in things spiritual, and to facilitate readier withdrawal from things earthly." He gives two reasons for the celibacy of the priesthood, which are all the more interesting because they substantially represent the opinions held by the Christian monks in all ages: First, "That the service of the priest to G.o.d may be undivided and unrestrained." In support of this, he quotes I. Cor., 7: 32, 33, which reads: "But I would have you free from cares. He that is unmarried is careful for the things of the Lord, how he may please the Lord: but he that is married is careful for the things of the world, how he may please his wife." And secondly, "Celibacy," according to Trent, "is more blessed than marriage." He also quotes the words of Christ that there are "eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake." He then adds: "It is desirable that those called to the ministry of the altar espouse a life of continence because holier and more angelic."

It is generally admitted that the vow of celibacy was not demanded of the clergy in primitive Christian times. It was only after many years of bitter debate and in response to the growing influence of the monastic ideal, that celibacy finally came to be looked upon as the highest form of Christian virtue, and was enforced upon the clergy. As in the case of the vow of poverty, there certainly can be no reasonable objection to the individual adoption of celibacy, if one is either disinclined to marriage or feels that he can do better work unmarried. But neither Scripture nor reason justifies the imposition of celibacy upon any man, nor the view that a life of continence is holier than marriage. It may be reverently said that G.o.d would be making an unreasonable demand upon mankind, if the holiness He requires conflicted with the proper satisfaction of those impulses He himself has deeply implanted in human nature.

3. The Vow of Obedience. The monks were required to render absolute obedience to the will of their superiors, as the representatives of G.o.d.

Dom Guigo, in his rules for the Carthusian Order, declares: "Moreover, if the Prior commands one of his religious to take more food, or to sleep for a longer time, in fact, whatever command may be given us by our Superior, we are not allowed to disobey, lest we should disobey G.o.d also, who commands us by the mouth of our Superior. All our practices of mortification and devotion would be fruitless and of no value, without this one virtue of obedience, which alone can make them acceptable to G.o.d."

Thus a strict and uncomplaining obedience, not to the laws of G.o.d as interpreted by the individual conscience, but to the judgment and will of a brother man, was demanded of the monks.

"Theirs not to reason why, Theirs not to make reply, Theirs but to do and die."

They were often severely beaten or imprisoned and sometimes mutilated for acts of disobedience. While the monks, especially the Friars and Jesuits, carried this principle of obedience to great extremes, yet in the barbarous ages its enforcement was sadly needed. Law and order were words which the untamed Goth could not comprehend. He had to be taught habits of obedience, a respect for the rights of others, and a proper appreciation of his duty to society for the common good. But while, at the beginning, the monastic vow of obedience helped to inculcate these desirable lessons, and vastly modified the ferocity of unchecked individualism, it tended, in the course of time, to generate a servile humility fatal to the largest and freest personal development. In the interests of pa.s.sive obedience, it suppressed freedom of thought and action. Obedience became mechanical and unreasoning. The consequence was that the pa.s.sion for individual liberty was unduly restrained, and the extravagant claims of political and ecclesiastical tyrants were greatly strengthened.

Such was the monastic ideal and such were some of the means employed to realize it. The ascetic spirit manifests itself in a great variety of ways, but all these visible and changing externals have one common source. "To cherish the religious principle," says William E. Channing,"

some have warred against their social affections, and have led solitary lives; some against their senses, and have abjured all pleasure in asceticism; some against reason, and have superst.i.tiously feared to think; some against imagination, and have foolishly dreaded to read poetry or books of fiction; some against the political and patriotic principles, and have shrunk from public affairs,--all apprehending that if they were to give free range to their natural emotions their religious life would be chilled or extinguished."

IX

_THE EFFECTS OF MONASTICISM_

"We read history," said Wendell Phillips, "not through our eyes but through our prejudices." Yet if it were possible entirely to lay aside one's prepossessions respecting monastic history, it would still be no easy task to estimate the influences of the monks upon human life.

In every field of thought and activity monasticism wrought good and evil. Education, industry, government and religion have been both furthered and hindered by the monks. What Francis Parkman said of the Roman Catholic Church is true of the monastic inst.i.tution: "Clearly she is of earth, not of heaven; and her transcendently dramatic life is a type of the good and ill, the baseness and n.o.bleness, the foulness and purity, the love and hate, the pride, pa.s.sion, truth, falsehood, fierceness, and tenderness, that battle in the restless heart of man."

A careful and sympathetic survey of monastic history compels the conclusion that monasticism, while not uniformly a blessing to the world, was not an unmitigated evil. The system presents one long series of perplexities and contradictions. One historian shuts his eyes to its pernicious effects, or at least pardons its transgressions, on the ground that perfection in man or in inst.i.tutions is unattainable.

Another condemns the whole system, believing that the sum of its evils far outweighs whatever benefits it may have conferred upon mankind.

Schaff cuts the Gordian knot, maintaining that the contradiction is easily solved on the theory that it was not monasticism, as such, which has proved a blessing to the Church and the world. "It was Christianity in monasticism," he says, "which has done all the good, and used this abnormal mode of life as a means of carrying forward its mission of love and peace."

To ill.u.s.trate the diversities of opinion on this subject, and incidentally to show how difficult it is to present a well-balanced, symmetrically fair and just estimate of the monastic inst.i.tution as a whole, contrast the opinions of four celebrated men. Pius IX. refers to the, monks as "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." But then he was the Pope of Rome, the Arch-prelate of the Church. "Monk," fiercely demands Voltaire, "Monk, what is that profession of thine? It is that of having none, of engaging one's self by an inviolable oath to be a fool and a slave, and to live at the expense of others." But he was the philosophical skeptic of Paris.

"Where is the town," cries Montalembert, "which has not been founded or enriched or protected by some religious community? Where is the church which owes not to them a patron, a relic, a pious and popular tradition?