J. Charles Cox

“ When undoubted monastic evils come to light through visitations, they bring to mind a graphic story that was a favourite pulpit illustration of that saintly French parish priest of last century, the Curé d’Ars, showing the fierce and persistent temptations that beset the earnest strivers. A hermit, who doubted of the reality of the powers of darkness, had a prayer granted that he might for one day be able to see these hidden forces. ”

“ To these reflections may be added the caution that ought to be obvious to everyone of intelligence, that the object of a visitation is to detect [90] laxity and possible evil, and not to record devoutness and good discipline. To judge of the bulk of the religious from a few given up to bad living, and who were heavily punished for their misdeeds, is as monstrous and childish as it would be to condemn the inhabitants of some given area by the actions of the minute minority who figure in the police-court records. ”

“ The first two Archbishops of Canterbury who ruled in the earlier Norman days, Lanfranc and Anselm, men of great wealth and culture, the one of senatorial rank and the other of noble origin, made considerable temporal sacrifices to follow the Benedictine rule. Or once again, the founder of the remarkable Order of the Gilbertines—who did so good and pure a work right up to their dissolution, the only Order founded by an Englishman—was Gilbert of Sempringham, the eldest son of a wealthy Norman knight, who sacrificed his considerable estates to further his conception of the monastic ideal. ”

“ The general attachment and devotion of the religious to their own houses, wherein they found so deep-seated and genuine a joy, and so true a knowledge of the higher life in the midst of evils and turmoils that rent the world around them, is not infrequently expressed in terms of almost ecstatic delight by chroniclers who wrote from within the walls with no idea of publicity. ”

“ The heads of religious houses, and the chief obedientiaries or officials, had almost invariably some experience of manual labour as well as of agricultural farming, and could sympathise with the toil of the one and the anxiety of the other. Not infrequently in the [27] larger houses special lands were appropriated to the support of the burdens of a particular part of the monastic life, and where this was the case, the almoner, the sacrist, or the cellarer, as the case might be, gave his immediate attention to the cultivation and the produce of such small estates. ”

“ Benet, Holme, in the swamps of the Norfolk Broads, had boys under education, apart from the novices, who were probably the more promising children of the humbler tenants. Here, too, as at Durham, such boys formed part of the almoner’s charge. It would indeed be passing strange if no such records of schoolwork existed, for Benedictine and other custumals were not compiled for amusement or to satisfy hypothetical conditions. Such documents were practical directions for the times when they were drawn up. ”

“ The main excuse for this step in the general suppression was the report of Cromwell’s visitors [95] as to the condition of the monasteries. This was the infamous Comperta, a pestiferous document of unrivalled mendacity and malignity, which for three-and-a-half centuries surrounded the memory of the latter days of England’s religious with a miasma of noxious effluvia. If any unscrupulous or hasty controversialist desires to think evil of monks and nuns, he will herein find a surfeit of garbage. ”

“ The jests and jeers of cynical and satirical writers of mediæval days, who were themselves usually men of depraved lives, as to the supposed laxity of life of monks and nuns, based upon the actions of a few degraded and disgraced religious, coupled with the foul slanders of Henry VIII.’s self-interested tools, have so long succeeded in [87] saturating unreflective minds with scandal that it has become difficult for even well-intentioned writers (who have made no personal investigations) to escape from the evil and lying atmosphere with which the whole subject has been so long surrounded. ”

“ The Devil, naturally enough, was ever ready specially to tempt the monk, vowed to a limited dietary, to gluttony and drunkenness, and to do his work on insidious and gradual lines. Now and again, in some very rare cases, he succeeded; and [50] occasionally a corrupt superior infected for a time his flock until sharply pulled up by a visitation. Such cases, though severely punished, could seldom be kept secret, and the worldling, whose own conduct was rebuked by the generally high level of the religious life, took an evil pleasure in retailing and exaggerating the news. ”

“ At Abingdon monastery there was a daily maundy, when every morning, after the Gospel of the morrow or early Mass, the almoner went to the door of the abbey, and selected three from the poor waiting for an alms, whose feet were washed by the abbot, or by some monk deputed by him; the chosen almsmen were afterwards fed and given a small present of money. On the great maundy of Thursday in Holy Week it was the custom in most Benedictine houses to call in as many very poor men as there were monks. They were placed opposite each other in two rows, the poor men on one side, the monks on the other. ”

“ In the great majority of cases, it is arguing against fact and reason to try and believe that aught save a generous Christian enthusiasm for the higher life led England’s sons and daughters to embrace the vowed life, from the dawn of monasticism down to its suppression. ”

“ The continuous round of work with head or hand, blended with the frequently recurring services of prayer and praise by night as well as by day, regularly practised by those who were leading well-ordered, disciplined, and chaste lives, served to produce not a few of the finest characters that the world has ever known. Such as these were brought into prominence by some adventitious circumstances, and were but samples of thousands of others of equally pious life and conversation, but unknown outside their own precincts or the area to which their relief of the poor extended. ”

“ Another point to bear in mind with regard to, at all events, the spirit of monastic charity, as shown in statutes and custumals, was the endeavour that all the professed religious should cultivate a special sympathy with the poor, as God’s poor, and that such ideals should not be the exclusive privilege of the almoner and sub-almoner, or to some extent of the hosteler. ”

“ Others beyond doubt entered the monastery, without any expectation of early death, after particular excesses or special crimes, with the idea of doing a something by way of satisfaction for the expiation of their sins, and perchance to put hindrances in the way of their re-occurrence. Those, however, who are ready to draw large conclusions from such cases are quite forgetful of the terms under which those who sought some share in the religious life far on in their earthly career were admitted. ”

“ Wherever the records or rolls of one of the greater monasteries are extant in any abundance, references to schools and schooling are almost certain to be found. The accounts, for instance, of the great priory of Durham show that the monastic funds were used to further schooling, altogether apart from the instruction or training of their novices. The boys who attended it were called the Children of the Almery; they were taught by one of the priory chaplains, who received a stipend, and they were also fed at the priory’s charge, but seem to have returned home to sleep. ”

“ The mere worldling will doubtless view with some contempt this association of Divine service and the weary round of agricultural toil; but for such we are not writing. Those who have any faith in the reality of religious joy will realise the blessing of such opportunities, which were so largely multiplied by the monks of England, not only for their own spiritual advantage, but for those who worked under and with them. ”

“ Those of course who were being ordained to serve in monasteries required no title; but those who were ordained as seculars, with monastic titles—and they often formed a large majority of the whole candidates—had almost certainly received their primary education (whether from the ranks of the villeins or free tenants) at the hands of the particular monastery that vouched, if necessary, for their maintenance. No other explanation of these very frequent monastic titles for seculars—mostly before the Black Death of 1349—has as yet been offered. ”

“ Although the poor in their need were never sent empty away from the monastery gate on whatever day they might apply, every house had its general day or days in the week when a general distribution was made to all the needy. At St. Augustine’s there were two such days every week throughout the year, when the needy attended at the monastic almshouse for the general distribution of food and broken meat that had been collected from the refectory, the “misericorde,” and the abbot’s chamber and hall. For this purpose attendants went round after meals with baskets, and vessels for beer. ”

“ Pious Gilbert of Sempringham, in his minute regulations, could scarcely imagine a grosser or more awkward piece of carelessness on the part of the canons who supplied the temporal needs of the nuns than a failure in beer. In that portion of the Gilbertine rule that concerns itself with the provision of beer it is laid down that: “For the avoiding of scandal, if the nuns, having no beer, are obliged to drink water, it is only just that the masters of the house who provide the supplies shall share in their deprivation. ”

“ Mountgrace expressed the thankfulness of the Carthusian Monks for their Yorkshire Charter-house, and the Austin Canons’ name for their Norfolk cell at Heveringham was Mountjoy.
It is the aim, however, of these chapters to deal with facts in an endeavour to dispel fictions, and not to rest on generalities or vague assertions. It is, therefore, incumbent on us to admit that scandals from time to time occurred within the cloisters in England as elsewhere, and were indeed bound to do so as long as sin exists. Sin cannot be walled out. ”

“ The way in which the monks of England triumphed over nature, drained the swamps, and brought barren tracts of land into cultivation, was beyond all praise; thus they found abundant employment for their tenants and neighbours as well as for themselves, and materially increased the food supplies for the country at large. ”

“ As we read the extraordinary and heart-rending methods adopted by the English Carthusians to keep all save the most devoted out of their ranks—precautions that were maintained, as can be proved, by the Carthusians of Sheen up to the very moment of their terrible treatment by Henry VIII.—who a short time before had praised them as the very salt of the earth—the marvel is that they could ever find applicants with sufficient courage to enter their ranks. ”

“ Those best qualified to judge know well how these English sisterhoods and nunneries have been guided and endowed by those of the gentlest blood, whose names in religion hide those by which the world might have recognised them. ”

“ But even in the guest-houses no flesh was on any account to be served save for an Archbishop, Bishop, or Papal Legate, or in the case of real sickness. Supposing a Bishop required it, Gilbert laid down that none of his canons or lay-brothers were to prepare the meat, but the prelate’s own attendants, “for,” he adds, “in our houses nothing of the nature of flesh or blood ought ever to be eaten save by the sick, nor within the walls of the granges save by the sick and hired labourers.” ”

“ The notion of a “lazy” man or woman desiring to take vows is an absurdity; that laziness, and other sins, might of course attack cloistered as well as uncloistered lives, no one would deny. The difficulties surrounding the first steps to enter a monastery were by no means inconsiderable, the harshest side of the cloistered life was always set sternly before the applicant, and the novices were severely tested ere they were permitted to take the habit. ”

“ Rice, which was imported in large quantities from the East, has been mentioned as a pittance at Winchester; on two occasions in the whole year it seems to have served as a delicacy for a few at Durham, for there are two entries of the purchase of 12 lbs. of rice.
When the number of mouths to be filled at this great monastery are considered, it is obvious that the weekly purchases of the cellarer, which averaged about £5 a week, must have been wholly inadequate for the bare support of life. ”

“ CONCLUDING WORDS ALTOGETHER apart from the outrageously scandalous way in which the suppression of the English monasteries was carried out—a fact that any historian worth his salt is now bound to admit—it is a wholesome sign of the times to find that English Churchmen are gradually coming round to a general acceptance of the religious and social blessings that came to this country through monasticism during the many centuries in which it played so important a part in the national life. ”

“ One or two remarks are necessary for the due understanding of Benedictine diet-rolls, of which several are extant besides those of Winchester. Although there were a variety of dishes, it was usual, save on feast days, for the monk to partake of only one dish, though the old as well as those in the infirmary were often allowed a pittance, or something extra. The general method of serving was for two dishes to be handed to or placed in reach of each; “if anyone cannot eat of one dish let him eat of the other, if of neither they shall bring him something else so long as it is not a delicacy.” ”

“ We do not take the rest of our history from scurrilous writers of either prose or verse; the student who attempted to do this would be laughed out of court; it is merely the innate and perpetual hatred of the world for Christ that has made many an historian, or writer of historical sketches, so ready to turn aside from any patient study of the lives of those who tried specially to deny themselves for the Master’s sake, and to accept cynical sneers in the place of sober facts. ”