Curiosities of Christian History Part 20

ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF MONACHISM.

As early as the second century men and women began to feel the charm of a peaceful, contemplative life, wholly severed from the selfish, sensual, and brutish ways of large communities. Hence they were attracted to deserts and secluded places, and to seek happiness by living entirely alone. It is thought this turn of religious life was first developed in Egypt. About 378 St. Basil, afterwards Bishop of Caesarea, introduced monachism into Asia Minor, and thence into the East, and he enjoined poverty, obedience, chast.i.ty, and self-mortification as the great objects to be kept in view. A peculiar habit was found to answer best to this kind of life. Both monks and nuns chose plain coa.r.s.e clothes and girdles. The monks went barelegged, and their hair was more or less shaven. In 529 St.

Benedict, an Italian of n.o.ble birth, inst.i.tuted a code of conduct for his monastery on Monte Ca.s.sino, a hill between Rome and Naples, and added manual labour for seven hours a day. St. Augustine, the apostle to the Anglo-Saxons, about 596, belonged to the Benedictine order, and so did St.

Dunstan, about 930. The habit of the Benedictines consisted of a white woollen ca.s.sock, and over that an ample black gown and a black hood. The female houses had also a white under-garment, a black gown and black veil, with a white wimple round the face and neck. The monks of Clugny, in Burgundy, founded in 927, abandoned manual labour and devoted themselves more to contemplative studies. The Clugniacs, the Carthusians, the Cistercians, and the orders of Camaldoli and Grandmont, all sprang from the Benedictine order, each having their own variations. St. Bernard joined the Cistercians in 1113. The Augustinians were a milder order than the Benedictines, and were divided into canons secular and canons regular. A branch of the Augustinians were the military orders, or Knights of the Temple, who arose about 1118, after the experience of the Crusaders, and devoted themselves to escorting pilgrims to Jerusalem and the holy places.

THE MIRACLES AND WORSHIP OF THE MONKS.

Gibbon sums up his account of the monks as follows: "The monastic saints, who excite only the contempt and pity of a philosopher, were respected and almost adored by the prince and people. The Christian world fell prostrate before their shrines, and the miracles ascribed to their relics exceeded at least in number and duration the spiritual exploits of their lives. But the golden legend of their lives was greatly embellished by the artful credulity of their interested brethren; and a believing age was easily persuaded that the slightest caprice of an Egyptian or a Syrian monk had been sufficient to interrupt the eternal laws of the universe. The favourites of Heaven were accustomed to cure inveterate diseases with a touch, a word, or a distant message, and to expel the most obstinate demons from the souls or bodies which they possessed. They familiarly or imperiously commanded the lions and serpents of the desert, infused vegetation into a sapless trunk, suspended iron on the surface of the water, pa.s.sed the Nile on the back of a crocodile, and refreshed themselves in a fiery furnace. These extravagant tales, which display the fiction without the genius of poetry, have seriously affected the reason, the faith, and the morals of the Christians. Their credulity debased and vitiated the faculties of the mind; they corrupted the evidence of history, and superst.i.tion gradually extinguished the hostile light of philosophy and science. Every mode of religious worship which had been practised by the saints, every mysterious doctrine which they believed was fortified by the sanction of Divine revelation, and all the manly virtues, were oppressed by the servile and pusillanimous reign of the monks."

PHILOSOPHY OF MONKERY.

Dr. Johnson said: "I do not wonder that, where the monastic life is permitted, every order finds votaries and every monastery inhabitants. Men will submit to any rule by which they will be exempted from the tyranny of caprice and of chance. They are glad to supply by external authority their own want of constancy and resolution, and court the government of others, when long experience has convinced them of their own inability to govern themselves."

MOTIVES FOR BECOMING MONKS.

It would be vain to a.n.a.lyse the many modes by which men were induced to become monks. It has been remarked that young men who became monks out of penitence for their sins were most distinguished for zeal. Men of the first rank, struck by the force of momentary impressions or by sudden reverses of fortune, reminded of the uncertainty of worldly goods, the nearness of death, the vanity of earthly glory, would go into solitude as anchorites or enter a monastery. About 1090 Count Ebrard, of Breteuil, a youth of family and fortune, suddenly forsook all his pleasures, and went about earning his bread as an itinerant charcoal burner, and then for the first time found true peace of mind. Another n.o.ble youth, named Simon, about the same time was so struck by the transitoriness of wealth on seeing his father's dead body, that he also became a monk. Many were driven by sickness, poverty, shame, and remorse to do likewise. Those driven into monasteries by the fear of death were said soon to lose their firmness of purpose. Once St. Bernard, when visiting Count Theobald of Champagne, and seeing a crowd following a robber who was about to be executed, begged of the count to give up to him the criminal to be reformed, and Bernard converted him into an exemplary monk, who lived such for thirty years thereafter. Another monk, Bernard, who lived on a desert island near Jersey, made such an impression on a band of pirates, that when afterwards they were on the point of shipwreck and in fear of sudden death, they remembered the good advice of the hermit, and repented, returned, and joined him in holy exercises for the rest of their days.

Anselm of Canterbury, when discoursing on the virtues of monks and the temptations of worldly life, said, "It was true that it was not monks only who are saved. Still, it may be asked, Which of the two attains salvation in the most certain and n.o.ble way--he who seeks to love G.o.d alone, or he who seeks to love G.o.d and the world too at the same time? Was it rational, when danger is on every side, to choose to remain where the danger is greatest?"

THE WEAK SIDE OF MONACHISM.

Though there were many good points in monachism, the Fathers were not slow to point out its defects. Chrysostom lamented that Christian virtue which ought to dwell in cities had fled into deserts. Vigilantius observed, "If all Christian men shut themselves up in cloisters and withdrew into deserts, who shall preach the Gospel and call sinners to repentance?"

There was one Roman monk named Jovinian, sometimes called a prototype of Luther, and obviously before his time, who was uncompromising in his denunciations of the whole system. "There is," he said, "one and the same Divine life springing from fellowship with the Redeemer, in which all genuine Christians share, and a higher stage cannot exist." But in spite of all cavils the system held its ground down to the time of Luther. As Neander remarks: "The more the monks occupied themselves with their temptations, instead of looking from themselves to the Lord, so much the more those temptations increased, many of which they could easily have overcome if they had been willing to forget themselves in an activity of a calling that would have laid under requisition all the powers of their nature; on which account they felt the need of occupying by manual labour, such as basket-making and other handicrafts, the senses and lower powers of their nature."

ST. BENEDICT AT MONTE Ca.s.sINO (A.D. 528).

St. Benedict was born in 480, and gave a fresh impetus to monkish communities and devised better laws. After some experience in other places, he selected one of the heights of the Apennines for the great capital of the monastery orders--namely, Monte Ca.s.sino. He combined agriculture and woodcutting with exercises of piety, and introduced a more severe system of discipline. Many young n.o.bles flocked to take up their abode. They acted as missionaries and almsmen to the poor. After fourteen years' presiding over the monastery, he had a last interview with his sister Scholastica, whom he survived forty days. A violent fever seized him, and he ordered his sister's tomb to be opened for him, and himself to be carried to the chapel of John the Baptist. Then, supported by his disciples, he insisted on standing and receiving the holy _viatic.u.m_, and extending his arms and uttering his prayers, he died standing like a sentinel at his post. His influence lasted a thousand years; his relics were carefully guarded and taken to France. In the eleventh century one of his bones was sent from France to Monte Ca.s.sino, and there received with great enthusiasm.

THE REFORMERS OF MONKERY (A.D. 528-1226).

Though Benedict was a great reformer of the monks by introducing systematic labour into the spiritual life, and though his new order of things began with so fair a promise and had done wonders, yet the monks had by degrees yielded to the treacherous influences of fame, ease, and wealth. The Benedictine monasteries were filled with scholars, whose devotion was directed more to the preservation of cla.s.sic texts than the performance of the Divine office; with luxurious monks, strangers to fasting and unused to vigils, revelling in the good things of life, and in their rich revenues; then abbots were lords and rulers living in princely state, and riding out on richly caparisoned palfreys. The old humility of the monastic life was lost; they took part in state intrigues, dictated laws to kings, shook the thrones of monarchs who had offended them, and began to aspire after worldly power and dominion. At last St. Francis arose in 1180, the founder of the Friars Minors, who discovered that there was nothing in the world really great and thoroughly satisfactory except poverty and self-humiliation, accompanied with efficient street preaching.

St. Dominic also about the same time introduced mendicancy, or the absence of wealth, as part of the system of life. Yet in course of time both these last systems broke down, long before the period of the Reformation.

EARLY DIFFICULTIES OF MONASTERIES (A.D. 600).

When the Irish abbot Columban (who died 615) left the monastery of Bangor, where he had been reared, he became at the age of thirty consumed with a zeal to found a monastery of his own; and having obtained his abbot's permission, he went off with twelve youths to France, and they betook themselves to an immense wilderness in Vosges, and chose the ruins of an old castle as a settlement. As the monks were obliged to till the adjoining land, they at first suffered greatly from hunger. At one time the monks had nothing to eat but the bark of trees and wild herbs; and what made matters worse, one of their number was sick, and the others could do nothing to relieve him. Three days they spent in prayer, seeking relief for their sick brother, when suddenly they saw a man standing at the door of the convent, whose horses were laden with sacks of provisions.

The man told them that he had felt an indescribable impulse to go and a.s.sist with his means those who from love to Christ endured such privations in the wilderness. Another time they had for nine days suffered similar want, when the heart of another abbot moved him to send provisions. When a foreign priest once visited them and expressed surprise at their cheerfulness amid such trials, Columban only said, "If people faithfully serve their Creator, they will suffer no want; for in the Psalms it is said, 'I have never seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.' He who could satisfy five thousand men with five loaves can easily fill our barns with meal."

ADVICE TO MONKS SETTLING IN A FOREST (A.D. 650).

When the Abbot Ebrolf settled with his monks in the seventh century in a thick forest inhabited by wild beasts and robbers, one of the robbers, struck with awe at the simplicity of the newcomers, said to them, "You have not chosen a suitable place for yourselves. The inhabitants of this forest live by robbery, and can endure n.o.body near them who seeks to support himself by the labour of his hands. This is no place for you." The monk answered, "Know, my brother, that the Lord is with us; and since we are under His protection, we fear not the threatenings of men who can kill the body, but cannot kill the soul. Know that He will supply His servants abundantly with food even in a desert. And thou also, my friend, mayst be a partaker of these riches, if thou wilt renounce thy evil vocation and vow to serve the true and living G.o.d. Despair not of G.o.d's goodness on account of the greatness of thy sins, but be a.s.sured the eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous, and His ears are open to their cry, and the face of the Lord is against them that do evil, to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth." Upon this the robber departed, meditating upon these words, which to him were so extraordinary. The next morning he hastened back to the monks, carrying to the abbot a present, such as his poverty could furnish, of three coa.r.s.e loaves and a honeycomb, and professing his willingness to join them and become a monk. After his example other robbers were from time to time persuaded either to become monks or to labour honestly for a livelihood with their own hands.

A MONK DENOUNCES THE FEROCITY OF LOMBARD KINGS (A.D. 749).

The monk Paul Diaconus was at Court in the time of King Rutchis (A.D.

744-749), and relates having himself seen that king after a banquet show the famous goblet which Albuin had made of the skull of c.u.mmund, King of the Gepidi. As is known, Albuin had killed King c.u.mmund in battle, and afterwards married his daughter Rosamund, and used on solemn occasions to drink out of his skull, which had been made into a cup. One day Albuin commanded that the goblet should be handed to the Queen, calling upon her to drink gaily with her father. This horrible outrage was at a later time cruelly avenged by Rosamund. Paul Diaconus, on seeing the goblet and remembering this brutal act of a former king, made this entry in his memoirs: "Lest this should seem incredible to any, take note that I speak the truth in Christ, for indeed I saw on a certain feast day King Rutchis holding this cup in his hand and showing it to his guests."

ANOTHER BENEDICT TRIES TO MAKE THE MONKS WORK (A.D. 780).

Amid the growing demoralisation of monasteries, Benedict of Aniane, whose original name was Witza, when a boy, was cup-bearer in the Court of Pepin, and continued with Charlemagne. In returning from Rome in 774, in the retinue of that king, he narrowly escaped drowning in attempting to save his brother. This turned his thoughts towards joining a monastery, which he soon entered, and at once excelled in all the austerities. He macerated his body by excessive fasting, clothed himself with rags, which soon swarmed with vermin, slept little and on the bare ground, never bathed, courted derision and insult like a madman, and expressed his fear of h.e.l.l in loud outcries. On the death of his abbot Benedict became his successor, and built a little hermitage on the bank of the river Aniane.

Some monks tried to live with him, but found the regimen too severe; others succeeded better. He and his monks resolved to build a monastery between them. They had no oxen to drag the materials, and they did the work themselves. The walls were of wood, the roof thatched with straw, the vestments were coa.r.s.e, the vessels of wood, but all of their own making.

They lived chiefly on bread and water, sometimes a little milk, and on Sundays a scanty allowance of wine. Yet it was noticed that they soon tended to greater luxury and splendour, for in 782 the wooden monastery was replaced by one more solid--marble and decorations and costly vessels.

Charlemagne himself contributed, and exempted the building from all taxes; and he appointed Benedict and two others to collect and recast the rules of monasteries and nunneries. Benedict to the last helped to plough and dig and reap, and died in 821, aged seventy.

IMPROVEMENTS IN MONASTICISM (A.D. 780).

When Benedict, Abbot of Aniane, in Languedoc, born in 750, left the Court in early life, disgusted with its ways and bent on monastic labours, thought of founding a new monastery, he found the system then in vogue far too lax. He taught his monks to accustom themselves to earn a living by their own industry, and then do the utmost good with their earnings.

When starving crowds came to his new settlement, he taught them to join in storing all the grain that could be spared till next harvest, and each made his portion support himself and supply a surplus, as a boon to the needy ones outside. The monastery was also turned into an industrial centre for library work. Louis the Pious thought so well of these improvements in discipline, that he drew up a code in 817 on the same principles, and circulated it throughout the Frankish Empire. Benedict used to say, "If it seem to you impossible to observe many of the commandments, then try only this one little commandment: 'Depart from evil and learn to do good.'"

A MONK AT COURT WRITES HOME TO HIS OLD CONVENT (A.D. 750).

Paul Diaconus was for some time a monk at Monte Ca.s.sino, on the banks of the Moselle, and was sent to the Court of Charlemagne to use influence to obtain a pardon for his brother, then in banishment. The King treated him well, and Paul thus wrote to Theodomar, the abbot: "Although my body is separated by a vast distance, yet my affection for you can never suffer any diminution, nor can I hope to express in a letter, and within the brief limit of these lines, how constantly and profoundly I am moved by the thought of your affection and that of my elders and brethren. For when I consider the leisure, filled with sacred occupations, the delectable refuge of my dwelling, your pious and holy dispositions--when I think of the holy band of so many soldiers of Christ, zealous in all Divine offices, and the shining examples of special excellence in particular brethren, and the sweet converse we had on the perfections of our celestial home--I tremble, I gaze, I languish, I cannot restrain my tears, and my breast is rent with many sighs. I am living amongst Catholics and followers of Christian worship. I am well received. All show me abundant kindness for the love of our Father Benedict and for the sake of your own merits. But compared to your convent, this palace is a prison in contrast to the great serenity of your life; my life here seems only a continual storm. I am only detained in this country by the weakness of my body, but my whole soul goes out to you. Now I seem to be in the midst of your Divine songs, now to be sitting with you in the refectory, where the reading is even more satisfying than the bodily food. Now, methinks, I am watching each at his own special work, now inquiring into the health of the aged and sick, now wearing with my feet the tombs of the saints, who are dear to me as heaven itself."

THE MONKS FIRST DRINKING WINE IN ENGLAND (A.D. 760).

Fuller, in his "Church History," says that about 760 the bill of fare of monks was bettered generally in England, and more liberally indulged in their diet. It was first occasioned when Ceolwolphus, formerly King of Northumberland, but then a monk in the convent of Lindisfarne, or Holy Island, gave leave to that convent to drink ale and wine, anciently confined by Aidan, their first founder, to milk and water. Let others dispute whether Ceolwolphus thus dispensed with them by his new abbatical or old regal power, which he so resigned that in some cases he might resume it, especially to be king in his own convent. And indeed the cold, raw, and bleak situation of that place, with many bitter blasts from the sea and no shelter on the land, speaks itself to each inhabitant there.

This local privilege, first justly indulged to the monks of Lindisfarne, was about this time extended to all the monasteries in England, whose primitive over-austerity in abstinence was turned now into a self-sufficiency that soon improved into plenty, that quickly depraved into riot, and that at last occasioned their ruin.

CHARLEMAGNE HAS HIS DOUBTS ABOUT MONKERY (A.D. 800).

The monasteries were growing rich in the time of Charlemagne, and he saw many weak points in the system. He thought many made false professions of withdrawing from the world and entering as monks merely to escape military service. He therefore made an order in 805 that those who forsake the world shall be obliged to live strictly as canons or monks according to rule. In 811 the King censured the abbots as caring only to swell the number of their monks, and to obtain good chanters and readers without caring about their morals. He asked sarcastically how the monks and clergy understood the text against entangling themselves with worldly affairs: whether those could be said to have forsaken the world who were incessantly striving to increase their possessions by all sorts of means--who used the hopes of heaven and the terrors of h.e.l.l, the names of G.o.d and the saints, to extort gifts not only from the rich, but from the poor and ignorant, and by diverting property from the lawful heirs drive these to theft and robbery. "How," asked the King, "can they be said to have forsaken the world who suborn perjury in order to acquire what they covet, who keep what secular property they can get and surround themselves with bands of armed men?" In that age abbots as well as bishops were addicted to war, as well as hunting and hawking, to games of chance, and to the society of minstrels and jesters. Gross immorality was winked at among the recluses of both s.e.xes. That state of things led to the appearance of St. Benedict, a renowned reformer of monkish life (_ante_, p. 212).

LEAVING CHARLEMAGNE'S COURT TO BE MONK (A.D. 801).

Duke William had well served Charlemagne and often routed the infidels, but at last in 801 he resolved to retire from the world and be a monk in a desert in the Cevennes. But he must first obtain the consent of his King, and in seeking an interview he began: "My lord, you know how I have loved you more than my life and the light of day. I have followed you in the field and been always ready to lay down my life for you. Now I ask leave to become a soldier of the Eternal King. I have long vowed to retire to a monastery and renounce the world." At these words Charlemagne's eyes overflowed with tears, and he said, "My Lord William, these are hard and bitter words, which have wounded my heart; nevertheless, since it is devout and reasonable, I will not oppose. If you had preferred the service of any other mortal king, I might have felt it an injustice; but as you wish to be a soldier of the King of angels, I consent. Only you must take with you some gift as a token and memorial of our friendship." With these words the King fell on his neck and wept bitter tears. William thereafter returned to Aquitaine; and visiting the monastery of St. Julian, at Brives, he deposited his arms as an offering to G.o.d. His buckler was long shown there as a priceless possession, and its gigantic form and strength long attracted all eyes. William then took the humble habit, and entered the monastery of Gelon, comporting himself as the lowliest of the brethren. He might be seen at harvest among the reapers, mounted on an a.s.s, carrying a vessel of wine, from which he refreshed each reaper. Thus he who had so often given battle to the Saracens, and won renown among the warriors of his age, gave himself up entirely to humble occupations and works of charity.

A MONK GOING TO LIVE AT COURT (A.D. 801).

When Alcuin, a monk, who died in 804, was called to the Court of Charlemagne, he gave vent to his feelings thus: "O my cell, sweet and well-beloved home, adieu for ever! I shall see no more the woods that surround thee with their interlacing branches and flowery verdure, nor thy fields full of wholesome and aromatic herbs, nor thy streams of fish, nor thy orchards, nor thy gardens where the lily mingles with the rose. I shall hear no more those birds, who, like ourselves, sing matins and celebrate their Creator in their own fashion; nor those instructions of sweet and holy wisdom, which sound in the same breath as the praises of the Most High, from lips and hearts always serene. Dear cell! I shall weep and mourn for thee always. But thus it is: everything changes and pa.s.ses away; night succeeds to day, winter to summer, storm to sunshine, weary age to ardent youth. And we--unhappy that we are!--we cling to this fugitive world. It is Thou, O Christ, that puttest all away, that we may love Thee only, and Thou canst satisfy every heart."

THE REASONS FOR SO MANY MONASTERIES (A.D. 1150).