George Hodges

“ For such as were unemployed about these matters, there was the cloister with its books, and the church with its frequent services. It is likely that there were idle monks; for the monk was of like passions with us, and was beset by the same temptations which assail us. As the Abbey increased in wealth, and the early ardour of the monastic life began to cool, there was, no doubt, a disposition to hire men to do some of the homely tasks which at first the monks had done themselves. ”

“ A monk—monos—is a man who lives alone. The time came when a monk was never, under any circumstances, alone; but at the beginning he was a solitary person, living his own life by himself.{55}
It is true that the wise church quietly and patiently followed these mystics in their wanderings, followed these enthusiasts who had forsaken the priests and the sacraments, and carried to them the altars which they had left behind, and by-and-by most of the monks were priests. ”

“ In the west walk, against the cellarium wall, sat the novices, busy with their books, studying church music and grammar and theology. Apt students, when they became monks, were sometimes sent to complete their education at Oxford, where they lived in the Cistercian Abbey of Bewley (founded in 1280) , or in the Cistercian College of St. Bernard, now St. John’s (founded in 1432) . There they learned to preach, and teach some simple theology to the novices who succeeded them. There they learned also to interpret and apply the canon law: they became the lawyers of the monastery. ”

“ This good life was appreciated by rich and powerful neighbours, and they brought gifts and built a church; and one of them was buried there. This was Odo, duke of Burgundy, whose son Hugh, with a company of friends, people of the court, took a fancy for going to church at the monastery chapel, so that the plain place shone with their silks and jewels, and the simple brethren were distracted in their prayers by the neighbourhood of all this fine array. The chapel was becoming a fashionable church. By this time Stephen was the abbot—abbot of Cistercium, which was the Latin for Citeaux. ”

“ It is true that the enthusiasm for the monastic life was waning; the best men were turning their energies and finding their ideals in other directions. The strength and devotion of the people were being put into politics, into preaching, into the practical life of{88} the parish. Moreover, there had gradually grown up a social as well as a religious separation between the monks and their neighbours. Fountains Abbey, for example, was built, as we have seen, by the benefactions of rich and noble persons. ”

“ In the infirmary, which was the abbey hospital, there must be physicians and attendants. In the guest-house,{92} which was the abbey inn, there must be porters, hostlers, cooks. The common details of a domestic establishment of a hundred men were enough to keep many persons busy. It is true that much of the heavy work was done by the lay brothers; but every choir brother had his share also, and went out daily with axe or spade, with fishing-rod or pruning-hook, with basket or barrow, to his appointed task. ”

“ To the men of the cloister, living by rule and wonted to silence, the bold ideas of the robust prophets of the new time had a harsh and forbidding sound. Rumours of the current sayings and doings found their way into the Abbey—the farmer made report to the cellarer when he brought in his beets and onions—and the brethren shuddered to hear them, as men shake and shiver upon whom the cold wind blows around the corner after a day spent by the warm fire. In the quick{121}ening contention between the old learning and the new the monks held with the past. ”

“ If the sinner had money enough, he engaged a group of them to pray for him in particular. He built a monastery, and established them in it for that necessary purpose.
Thus Ralph de Merlay, chancing on his travels to spend a day at the Abbey, and there beholding the pious conversation of the brethren, made up his mind, from what he saw, that these were the kind of men to have influence with God;{22} and being in need of friends at that court, he asked the abbot to let him have some of them, pro redemptione animae suae. This was the first colony which went out from Fountains. ”

“ The knight took the monks into his castle at Morpeth, in whose neighbourhood he presently built them a monastery, which they called Newminster. The abbot of this new brotherhood was the Robert who had come from Whitby to take the place of the inconstant Gervase after the flight from York: a good man, modest in his bearing, gentle in his conversation, bearing rule with mercy, and at last enrolled in the honourable list of the saints. The abbey, like the mother house, was built beside a little river ”

“ The place, as the narrative says, was a long way out of the world—locum a cunctis retro seculis inhabitatum; it was full of thorns and rocks, and seemed a better dwelling for wild beasts than for men. But they accepted it with gratitude. In the midst of the valley they made a thatched hut, with the trunk of the great elm for roof-pole, and having{13} chosen the prior Richard to be their abbot, they began with contented minds to live the life of devotion and straitness for which they had longed amidst the pernicious comforts of the Abbey of St. ”

“ Accordingly, the lay brothers of Fountains were so named not to distinguish them from their brethren in priests’ orders, but to mark a difference between them and the cloister brothers. The conversi, as they were called, were divided from the monachi not by a barrier of ordination, but by a barrier of education. They were monks who could not read. When the Cistercian Order began, there were many such persons, some of good birth, many of good ability, but ignorant of letters. It was characteristic of the Cistercians that they made a place for the piety of these men. ”

“ The labourers were the monks themselves, assisted by their neighbours, some of whom were hired, while others gave their day’s work as an investment in the securities of heaven. It is interesting to find that the little company of poor monks, rich in faith, laid out the foun{30}dations of their church upon the great lines on which it stands to-day. Other generations built the chapel of the nine altars and raised the noble tower, but the vast nave with its transepts was both planned and completed by the men who began the monastery. ”

“ As the monasteries increased in wealth, there would be a constant temptation to dine more abundantly. Eating is not only one of the earliest but one of the most universal of arts, and no cook{104} nor convert could completely resist its allurements. For the most part, however, the abbey fare was fit food for soldiers, for men in training for a war with Satan.
Thus the silent meal progressed, the level voice of the reader at his desk in the gallery, accompanying the cheerful sounds of honest eating and drinking. ”

“ There must be no gold or silver in the church, except a silver cup for the sacramental wine. A single candlestick must suffice for light, and that must be of iron and straight from top to bottom. Vestments must be of common stuff, no more of silk or cloth-of-gold. All the pictures must come down. The brethren said their prayers in a chapel as severe as a Puritan meeting-house. In the midst of a time of monastic splendour, when monks of St. Benedict and even monks of Cluny rode abroad like knights or{7} princes, Stephen Harding’s household were separate from the world in all sincerity. ”

“ An eye-witness has left a description of the spoiling of the dependent house of Roche Abbey. “The sudden spoil fell,” he says, “the same day of their departure from the house.... The church was the first thing that was put to the spoil, then the abbot’s lodging, dorter and frater [i.e., dormitory and refectory] with the cloister and all the buildings thereabout within the abbey walls.... The persons that cast the lead into fodders plucked up all the seats in the choir where the monks sat when they said
Fountains Hall. ”

“ God sat on His throne, like the king, and had His court about Him, part of angels, part of saints in glory, and part of holy persons still in the flesh. The sinner’s hope of success in his petition lay in the securing of the kindly offices of some of these influential courtiers. And these were to be found most readily on earth in monasteries. Accordingly, these companies of praying men seemed, even to the sinners of the neighbourhood, to be engaged in an important and essential business. ”

“ Accordingly, after the daily mass and chapter, this substantial activity engaged the mind and muscle of the monastery. The abbot betook himself to his executive affairs, the prior and the sub-prior to their daily inspection of the establishment,{93} the cellarer to his house-keeping, the sacrist to his care of the church, the bursar to his accounts, the infirmarius to his hospital, the terrararius to his inn, the almoner to his dependents at the gate, the master of the novices to his school, the scriptor to his copying, the kitchener to his cooking, others to the fields and forests. ”

“ For these homely tasks came to the monks in turn. One after another, they cooked the dinner, or waited on the table, or swept the dormitory. Finally, cases of discipline were considered.
In a life which at best was somewhat monotonous and narrow, the minor annoyances of human fellowship would easily be exaggerated. The rule of silence could not restrain the brothers from thinking; and some of the thoughts would naturally take the direction which is indicated in Browning’s “Soliloquy in a Spanish Cloister.” ”

“ They had verified the wise saying, “When anybody does a good thing, all the neighbours join together to keep him from doing it again.” They had grown rich in the treasures which are subject to the invasions of moth and rust and thieves, but they were growing poor in the accounts of heaven. The purpose of the Cistercians was to return to primitive monastic simplicity. Gregory the Great had said that he who would see angels must have his head pillowed on a stone. The Cistercians believed it.
Stephen Harding, who founded the Cistercian Order, was an Englishman, from Dorsetshire. ”

“ The services, it is true, were very frequent, and human nature was with them what we know it to be with us; the thoughts of the brethren would sometimes wander, and the devout words would be words only. ”

“ Benedict took pain out and put work in the place of it. No man was to afflict his soul or body needlessly, but every man was to devote himself, for his physical and spiritual good, to vigorous exercise. ”

“ Turstin, Archbishop of York, wrote to Bernard at Clairvaux, asking for Cistercian monks; and Bernard, being now, in Stephen’s old age, at the head of the Order, sent over a colony which settled in the valley of the Rie, at Rievaux.{9} There they lived their new life of simple devotion. And presently the fame of the sanctity of the monks of Rievaux began to vex the consciences of their neighbours.
The Benedictine abbey of St. Mary of York was a rich and vast establishment. It had received gifts from William the Norman, and from William his son. ”

“ William of Newminster (1179-1190) and Ralph Haget of Kirkstall (1190-1203) carried on the Abbey into the thirteenth century; but without any notable, or, at least, discernible, erection of buildings.
With William’s administration, old Serlo’s narrative stops. He praises William, but says that he may perhaps (forsitan) have been just a shade too strict. The acts of Ralph are described by Hugh of Kirkstall, who has written up to this point at Serlo’s dictation. Here, says Hugh, the old man made an end of speaking. You yourself, says Serlo, know well what to say about the holy Abbot Ralph. ”

“ There were bad monks, no doubt, as there are still bad ministers; and the few bad ones attracted more attention than all the cloistered saints. And, anyhow, the life which they were endeavouring to live was an abnormal life, apart from the wholesome influences of natural human society, and from the helpful engagements of the common routine. ”

“ But “an enemy,” as Burke said, “is a bad witness; a robber is a worse.” The quiet judgment of the modern historian is in favour of the monks, and finds most of them to have been men of respectable and pious lives. The sober persons in white cassocks, who confessed faults in the chapter meeting and cheerfully suffered chastisement for them to which the man in the street gave not a moment’s thought, had a passionate longing to be{90} good. They were intent upon the living of a righteous life. ”

“ He joined this monastery, and thereafter saw England again no more.
But presently, the rule seemed to many of the brethren to be too hard for human endurance, and they relaxed it, and began to live more softly, so that Stephen was dissatisfied. And out he went, and a few like-minded brethren with him, in quest of hardship, which they found at Citeaux. This was a wild place in the dark woods, with a deep stream running{5} through the midst of it, the banks of which were the residence of beasts of prey. Here Stephen was made prior; the honest severity of Benedict’s laws was sought again ”