A Short History of Monks and Monasteries Part 16

Wherever there is a luxuriant forest, a pure stream, a majestic hill, we may be sure that religion has left there her stamp by the hand of the monk." But this was Montalembert, the Roman Catholic historian, and the avowed champion of the monks. "A cruel, unfeeling temper," writes Gibbon, "has distinguished the monks of every age and country; their stern indifference, which is seldom mollified by personal friendship, is inflamed by religious hatred; and their merciless zeal has strenuously administered the holy office of the Inquisition." But this was Gibbon, the hater of everything monastic. Between these extreme views lies a wide field upon which many a deathless duel has been fought by the writers of monastic history.

The variety of judgments respecting the nature and effects of monasticism is partly due to the diversity in the facts of its history.

Monasticism was the friend and the foe of true religion. It was the inspiration of virtue and the encouragement of vice. It was the patron of industry and the promoter of idleness. It was a pioneer in education and the teacher of superst.i.tion. It was the disburser of alms and a many-handed robber. It was the friend of human liberty and the abettor of tyranny. It was the champion of the common people and the defender of cla.s.s privileges. It was, in short, everything that man was and is, so varied were its operations, so complex was its influence, so comprehensive was its life.

Of some things we may be certain. Any religious inst.i.tution or ideal of life that has survived the changes of twelve centuries, and that has enlisted the enthusiastic services and warmest sympathies of numerous men and women who have been honorably distinguished for their intellectual attainments and moral character, must have possessed elements of truth and moral worth. A contemptuous treatment of monasticism implies either an ignorance of its real history or a wilful disregard of the deep significance of its commendable features.

It is also certain that while the methods of monasticism, judged by their effects upon the individual and upon society, may be justly censured, it is beyond question that many monks, groping their way toward the light in an age of ignorance and superst.i.tion, were inspired by the purest motives. "Conscience," observes Waddington, "however misguided, cannot be despised by a reflecting mind. When it leads one to self-sacrifice and moral fort.i.tude we cannot but admire his spirit, while we condemn his sagacity and method."

_The Effects of Self-Sacrifice Upon the Individual_

Christianity requires some sort of self-denial as the condition of true Christian discipleship. Self-love is to yield to a love of others. In some sense, the Christian is to become dead to the world and its demoralizing pleasures. But this primal demand upon the soul needs to be interpreted. What is it to love the world? What is it to keep the body in subjection? What are harmful indulgences? To give wrong answers to these questions is to set up a false ideal; the more strenuously such false ideal is followed, the more disastrous are the consequences. One's struggle for moral purity may end in failure, and one's efficiency for good may be seriously impaired by a perversion of the principle of self-abnegation. Unnatural severity and excessive abstinence often produce the opposite effect from that intended. Instead of a peaceful mind there is delirium, and instead of freedom from temptation there are a thousand horrible fiends hovering in the air and ready, at any moment, to pounce upon their prey. "The history of ascetics," says Martensen, "teaches us that by such overdone fasting the fancy is often excited to an amazing degree, and in its airy domain affords the very things that one thought to have buried, by means of mortification, a magical resurrection." In attempting to subdue the body, many necessary requirements of the physical organism were totally ignored. The body rebelled against such unnatural treatment, and the mind, so closely related to it, in its distraction, gave birth to the wildest fancies.

Men, who would have possessed an ordinarily pure mind in some useful occupation of life, became the prey of the most lewd and obnoxious imaginations. Then they fancied themselves vile above their fellows, and laid on more stripes, put more thorns upon their pillows, and fasted more hours, only to find that instead of fleeing, the devils became blacker and more numerous.

Self-forgetfulness is the key to happiness. The monk thought otherwise, and slew himself in his vain attempt to fight against nature. He never lifted his eyes from his own soul. He was always feeling his spiritual pulse, staring at his lean spiritual visage, and tearfully watching his growth in grace. An interest in others and a strong mind in a strong body are the best antidotes to religious despair and the temptations of the soul. Life in the monastery was generally less severe than in the desert's solitude. There was more and better food, shelter, and comfort, but there were many unnecessary and unnatural restrictions, even in the best days of monasticism. There were too many hours of prayer, too many needless regulations for silence, fasting and penance, to produce a healthy, vigorous type of religious life.

_The Effects of Solitude Upon the Individual_.

It has already been shown that some solitude is essential to our richest culture. Our higher nature demands time for reflection and meditation.

But the monks carried this principle to an extreme, and they overestimated its benefits. "Ambition, avarice, irresolution, fear, and inordinate desires," says Montaigne, "do not leave us because we forsake our native country, they often follow us even to cloisters and philosophical schools; nor deserts, nor caves, nor hair shirts, nor fasts, can disengage us from them."

Besides these pa.s.sions, which the monks carried with them, their solitary life tended to foster spiritual pride, contract sympathy, and engender an inhumane spirit. True, there were exceptions; but the sublime characters which survive in monastic history are by no means typical of its usual effects. Seclusion did not benefit the average monk. Indeed there is something wanting in even the loftiest monastic characters. "The heroes of monasticism," says Allen, "are not the heroes of modern life. All put together, they would not furnish out one such soul as William of Orange, or Gustavus, or Milton. Independence of thought and liberty of conscience, they renounced once for all, in taking upon them the monastic vow. All the larger enterprises, all the broad humanities, which to our mind make a greater career, were rigidly shut off by a barrier that could not be crossed. All the warmth and wealth of social and domestic life was a field of forbidden fruit, to be entered only through the gate of unpardonable sin."

Thus self-excluded from a normal life in society, often the subject of self-inflicted pain, it is no wonder that the monk impaired all the n.o.bler and manlier feelings of the soul, that he became strangely indifferent to human affection, that bigotry and pride often sat as joint rulers on the throne of his heart. He who had trampled on all filial relations would scarcely recognize the bonds of human brotherhood. He who heard not the prayer of his own mother would not be likely to listen to the cry of the tortured heretic for mercy. Man as man was not reverenced. It was the monk in man who was esteemed. As Milman puts it, "Bigotry has always found its readiest and sternest executioners among those who have never known the charities of life."

Nor is it a matter of surprise that the monk was spiritually proud. He was supposed to stand in the inner circle, a little nearer the throne of G.o.d than his fellow-mortals. When dead, he was worshiped as a saint and regarded as an intercessor between G.o.d and his lower fellow-creatures.

His hatred of the base world easily pa.s.sed over into a sense of superiority and ign.o.ble pride.

"True social life," says Martensen, "leads to solitude." This truth the monks emphasized to the exclusion of the converse, "true life in solitude leads back to society." John Tauler, the mystic monk, realized this truth when he said: "If G.o.d calls me to a sick person, or to the service of preaching, or to any other service of love, I must follow, although I am in the state of highest contemplation." The hermits of the desert, and too often the monks of the cloister, escaped from all such services, and selfishly gave themselves up to saving their own souls by contemplation and prayer. Ministration to the needy is the external side of the inner religious life. It is the fruit of faith and prayer. The monk sought solitude, not for the purpose of fitting himself for a place in society, but for selfish, personal ends. Saint Bruno, in a letter to his friend Ralph le Verd, eulogizes the solitude of the monastic cell, and among other sentiments he gives expression to the following: "I am speaking here of the contemplative life; and although its sons are less numerous than those of active life, yet, like Joseph and Benjamin, they are infinitely dearer to their Father.... O my brother, fear not then to fly from the turmoil and the misery of the world; leave the storms that rage without, to shelter yourself in this safe haven."

Thus sinful and sorrowing humanity, needing the guidance and comfort that holy men can furnish, was forgotten in the desire for personal peace and future salvation.

Another baneful result of isolation was the strangulation of filial love. When the monk abandoned the softening, refining influence of women and children, one side of his nature suffered a serious contraction. An Egyptian mother stood at the hut of two hermits, her sons. Weeping bitterly, she begged to see their faces. To her piteous entreaties, they said: "Why do you, who are already stricken with age, pour forth such cries and lamentations?" "It is because I long to see you," she replied.

"Am I not your mother? I am now an old and wrinkled woman, and my heart is troubled at the sound of your voices." But even a mother's love could not cope with their fearful fanaticism., and she went away with their cold promise that they would meet in heaven. St. John of Calama visited his sister in disguise, and a chronicler, telling the story afterwards, said, "By the mercy of Jesus Christ he had not been recognized, and they never met again." Many hermits received their parents or brothers and sisters with their eyes shut. When the father of Simeon Stylites died, his widowed mother prayed for entrance into her son's cell. For three days and nights she stood without, and then the blessed Simeon prayed the Lord for her, and she immediately gave up the ghost.

These as well as numerous other stories of a similar character that might be quoted ill.u.s.trate the hardening influence of solitude. Instead of cherishing a love of kindred, as a gift of heaven and a spring of virtue, the monk spurned it and trampled it beneath his feet as an obstacle to his spiritual progress. "The monks," says Milman, "seem almost unconscious of the softening, humanizing effect of the natural affections, the beauty of parental tenderness and filial love."

_The Monks as Missionaries_

The conversion of the barbarians was an indispensable condition of modern civilization. Every step forward had to be taken in the face of barbaric ignorance and cruelty. In this stupendous undertaking the monks led the way, displaying in their labors remarkable generalship and undaunted courage. Whatever may be thought of later monasticism, the Benedictine monks are ent.i.tled to the lasting grat.i.tude of mankind for their splendid services in reducing barbaric Europe to some sort of order and civilization. But again the mixture of good and evil is strangely ill.u.s.trated. It seems impossible to accord the monks unqualified praise. The potency of the evil tendencies within their system vitiated every n.o.ble achievement. Their methods and practical ideals were so at variance with the true order of nature that every commendable victory involved a corresponding obstacle to real social and religious progress. The justice of these observations will be more apparent as this inquiry proceeds.

_Monasticism and Civic Duties_

The withdrawal of a considerable number of men of character and talent from the exercise of civic duties is injurious to the state. The burdens upon those who remain become heavier, while society is deprived of the moral influence of those who forsake their civic responsibilities. When the monk, from the outside as it were, attempted to exert an influence for good, he largely failed. His ideals of life were not formulated in a real world, but in an artificial, antisocial environment. He was unable to appreciate the political needs of men. He could not enter sympathetically into their serious employments or innocent delights.

Controlled by superst.i.tion, and exalting a servile obedience to human authority, he became a very unsafe guide in political affairs. He could not consistently labor for secular progress, because he had forsaken a world in which secular interests were prominent.

It may be true that in the early days of monasticism the monks pursued the proper course in refusing to become Roman patriots. No human power could have averted the ruin which overtook that corrupt world. Perhaps their non-combatant att.i.tude gave them more influence with the conquerors of Rome, who were to become the founders of modern nations.

In later years, the abbots of the princ.i.p.al monasteries occupied seats in the legislative a.s.semblies of Germany, Hungary, Spain, England, Italy, and France. In many instances they stood between the violence of the n.o.bles and the unprotected va.s.sal. Political monks, inspired by a natural breadth of vision and a love of humanity, secured the pa.s.sage of wise and humane regulations. Palgrave says: "The mitre has resisted many blows which would have broken the helmet, and the crosier has kept more foes in awe than the lance. It is, then, to these prelates that we chiefly owe the maintenance of the form and spirit of free government, secured to us, not by force, but by law; and the altar has thus been the corner-stone of our ancient const.i.tution."

Although there is much truth in the foregoing observation, yet on the other hand, when the influence of the monastic ideal upon civilization is studied in its deeper aspects, it cannot be justly maintained that the final effects of monasticism minister to the development of a normal civilization. Industrial, mental and moral progress depend upon a certain breadth of mind and energy of soul. Asceticism saps the vitality of human nature and confines the activity of the mind within artificial limits. "Hence the dreary, sterile torpor," says Lecky, "that characterized those ages in which the ascetic principle has been supreme, while the civilizations which have attained the highest perfection have been those of ancient Greece and modern Europe, which were most opposed to it."

The monks did not hesitate to become embroiled in military quarrels, or to incite the fiercer pa.s.sions of men when it suited their purpose.

Their opposition to kings and princes was often not based on a love of popular freedom, but on an indisposition to share power with secular rulers. The legislative enactments against heretics, many of which they inspired, clearly show that they neither desired nor tolerated liberty of speech or conduct. They were the Almighty's vicars on earth, before whom it was the duty of king and subject to bow down. Vaughan writes of the period just prior to the Reformation: "The great want was freedom from ecclesiastical domination; and from the feeling of the hour, scarcely any price would be deemed too great to be paid for that object." The history of modern Jesuitism, against which the legislation of almost every civilized nation has been directed, affords abundant testimony to the inherent hostility of the monastic system, even in its modified modern form, to every species of government which in any way guarantees freedom of thought to its people. This stern fact confronts the student, however much he may be inclined to yield homage to the early monks. It must be held in mind when one reads this pleasing sentence from Macaulay: "Surely a system which, however deformed by superst.i.tion, introduced strong moral restraints into communities previously governed only by vigor of muscle and by audacity of spirit, a system which taught the fiercest and mightiest ruler that he was, like his meanest bondman, a responsible being, might have seemed to deserve a more respectful mention from philosophers and philanthropists."

The general effect of monasticism on the state is, therefore, not to be determined by fixing the gaze on any one century of its history, or by holding up some humane and patriotic monk as a representative product of the system.

_The Agricultural Services of the Monks_

Europe must ever be indebted to Benedict and his immediate followers for their services in reclaiming waste lands, and in removing the stigma which a corrupt civilization had placed upon labor. Benedict came before the world saying: "No person is ever more usefully employed than when working with his hands or following the plough, providing food for the use of man." Care was taken that councils should not be called when ploughing was to be done or wheat to be threshed. Benedict bent himself to the task of teaching the rich and the proud, the poor and the lazy the alphabet of prosperity and happiness. Agriculture was at its lowest ebb. Marshes covered once fertile fields, and the men who should have tilled the land spurned the plough as degrading, or were too indolent to undertake the tasks of the farm. The monks left their cells and their prayers to dig ditches and plough fields. The effect was magical. Men once more turned back to a n.o.ble but despised industry. Peace and plenty supplanted war and poverty. "The Benedictines," says Guizot, "have been the great clearers of land in Europe. A colony, a little swarm of monks, settled in places nearly uncultivated, often in the midst of a pagan population--in Germany, for example, or in Brittany; there, at once missionaries and laborers, they accomplish their double service, through peril and fatigue."

It is to be regretted that history throws a shadow across this pleasing scene. When labor came to be recognized as honorable and useful, along came the begging friars, creating, both by precept and example, a prejudice against labor and wealth. Rags and laziness came to be a.s.sociated with holiness, and a beggar monk was held up as an ideal and sacred personage. "The spirit that makes men devote themselves in vast numbers," says Lecky, "to a monotonous life of asceticism and poverty is so essentially opposed to the spirit that creates the energy and enthusiasm of industry, that their continued coexistence may be regarded as impossible." But such a fatal mistake could not long captivate the mind, or cause men to forget Benedict and his industrial ideal. The blessings of wealth rightly administered, and the dignity of labor without which wealth is impossible, came to be recognized as necessary factors in the true progress of man.

_The Monks and Secular Learning_

For many centuries, as has been previously shown, the monks were the schoolmasters of Europe. They also preserved the ma.n.u.scripts of the cla.s.sics, produced numerous theological works, transmitted many pious traditions, and wrote some interesting and some worthless chronicles.

They laid the foundations of several great universities, including those of Paris, Oxford and Cambridge. For these, and other valuable services, the monks merit the praise of posterity. It is, however, too much to affirm, as Montalembert does, that "without the monks, we should have been as ignorant of our history as children." It is altogether improbable that the human mind would have been unproductive in the field of historical writing had monasticism not existed during the middle ages. While, also, the monks should be thanked for preserving the cla.s.sics, it should not be supposed that all knowledge of Latin and Greek literature would have perished but for them.

It is surprising that the literary men of the medieval period should have written so little of interest to the modern mind, or that helps us to an understanding of the momentous events amid which they lived.

Unfortunately the monkish mind was concentrated upon a theology, the premises of which have been largely set aside by modern science. Their writings are so permeated by grotesque superst.i.tions that they are practically worthless to-day. Their hostility to secular affairs blinded them to the tremendous significance of the mighty political and social movements of the age.

It is undeniable that the monks never encouraged a love of secular learning. They did not try to impart a love of the cla.s.sics which they preserved. The spirit of monasticism was ever at war with true intellectual progress. The monks imprisoned Roger Bacon fourteen years, and tried to blast his fair name by calling him a magician, merely because he stepped beyond the narrow limits of monkish inquiry. Many suffered indignities, privations or death for questioning tradition or for conducting scientific researches.

So while it is true that the monks rendered many services to the cause of education, it is also true that their monastic theories tended to narrow the scope of intellectual activity. "This," says Guizot, "is the foundation of their instruction; all was turned into commentary of the Scriptures, historical, philosophical, allegorical, moral commentary.

They desired only to form priests; all studies, whatsoever their nature, were directed to this result." There was no disinterested love of learning; no desire to become acquainted with G.o.d's world. In fact, the old hostility to everything natural characterizes all monastic history.

Europe did not enter upon that broad and n.o.ble intellectual development which is the glory of our era, until the right arm of monasticism was struck down, the dread of heresy banished from the human mind, and secular learning welcomed as a legitimate and elevated field for mental activity.

Hamilton W. Mabie, in his delightful essay on "Some Old Scholars,"

describes this step from the gloom of the cloister to the light of G.o.d's world: "Petrarch really escaped from a sepulcher when he stepped out of the cloister of medievalism, with its crucifix, its pictures of unhealthy saints, its cords of self-flagellation, and found the heavens clear, beautiful, and well worth living under, and the world full of good things which one might desire and yet not be given over to evil. He ventured to look at life for himself and found it full of wonderful dignity and power. He opened his Virgil, brushed aside the cobwebs which monkish brains had spun over the beautiful lines, and met the old poet as one man meets another; and lo! there arose before him a new, untrodden and wholly human world, free from priestcraft and pedantry, near to nature and unspeakably alluring and satisfying."

The Dominicans and Jesuits set their faces like flint against all education tending to liberalize the mind. Here is a pa.s.sage from a doc.u.ment published by the Jesuits at their first centenary: "It is undeniable that we have undertaken a great and uninterrupted war in the interests of the Catholic church against heresy. Heresy need never hope that the society will make terms with it, or remain quiescent ... No peace need be expected, for the seed of hatred is born within us. What Hamilcar was to Hannibal, Ignatius is to us. At his instigation, we have sworn upon the altars eternal war." When this proclamation is read in the light of history, its meaning stands forth with startling clearness.

Almost every truth in science and philosophy, no matter how valuable it was destined to become as an agent in enhancing the well-being of the race, has had to wear the stigma of heresy.

It is an interesting speculation to imagine what the intellectual development of Europe would have been, had secular learning been commended by the monks, and the common people encouraged to exercise their minds without fear of excommunication or death. It is sad to reflect how many great thoughts must have perished still-born in the student's cloister cell, and to picture the silent grief with which many a brilliant soul must have repressed his eager imagination.

_The Charity of the Monks_