Carthusian monastery

“ No American need think that he can ever get the better of an art-dealer in Europe. That is impossible.
One of the most interesting sights in the environs of Florence is the Carthusian Monastery. I had the pleasure of visiting it with a party of American ladies. The monastery is an immense structure, covering acres of land, and contains ten or a dozen chapels of different sizes. This is enough to give each monk a chapel all to himself—the inmates not exceeding that number. ”

“ The peculiarity of the arrangements of a Carthusian monastery, or charter-house, as it was called in England, from a corruption of the French chartreux, is exhibited in the plan of that of Clermont, from Viollet-le-Duc.
The whole establishment is surrounded by a wall, furnished at intervals with watch towers (R) . The enclosure is divided into two courts, of which the eastern court, surrounded by a cloister, from which the cottages of the monks (I) open, is much the larger. ”

“ It is not necessary for us to determine the origin of the name of the order and its chief monastery. If it be assumed that the monks took their name from the region in France in which they settled in the eleventh century, it still remains true that it became peculiarly their designation. And the word 'Chartreuse,' as applied to the liqueur which for generations they made and sold, cannot be regarded in a proper sense as a geographical name. It had exclusive reference to the fact that it was the liqueur made by the Carthusian monks at their monastery. ”

“ The church is curious and interesting; it is ornamented with representations of saints, and holy men in fresco, upon the walls of the interior and in the porch. I could not make out when it was built, but probably before the twelfth century. Arsenius, Philotheus, and Dionysius were the founders, but who they were did not appear. The monastery was repaired, and the refectory enlarged and painted, in the year 1492, by Leontius, ο βασιλευς Καχετιου, and his son Alexander. I was shown the reliquaries, but they were not remarkable. The monks said they had no library ”

“ He enjoined upon his monks strict asceticism, rigid silence, earnest study, prayer, and a contemplative life, clothed them in a great coarse cowl, and allowed them for their support only vegetables and bran bread. Written statutes, Consuetudines Cartusiæ, which soon spread over several houses of the Carthusians, were first given them in A.D. 1134 by Guido, the fifth prior of the parent monastery. A steward had management of the affairs of the convent. Each ate in his own cell ”

“ Best of all we are safe here; the door is heavy, the front of the building is of stone, and from the rear no one could climb over the wall without danger to himself. It is, indeed, the wall of a monastery to which none but monks have access. Above us is the alchemist, Kreutz, and below on the ground floor are the old woman and her son, both of whom take care of the building and watch the gate at night.
“Across the way live a few students, one of them this Johann Tring who accompanied us. Those seeking us would never think of looking for us here; the change in name is also a protection. ”

“ His monks were to wear a hair-cloth next their body, a white cassock, and over it a black cloak: they were never to eat flesh; to fast every Friday on bread and water; to eat alone in their chambers, except upon certain festivals; and to observe an almost perpetual silence; none were allowed to go out of the monastery, except the prior and procurator, and they only about the business of the house.
The Carthusians, so called from the place of their first institution, are a very rigid order. They are not to go out of their cells, except to church, without leave of their superior. ”

“ All are gone; they are either overgrown, or buried, or removed, and have entirely disappeared. Trees which are a hundred years old have grown up on the site. Traditions concerning it still exist among the older folk of the country, and vague, romantic, and wonderful tales are told about the monks, their wealth, their shipbuilding, their whale fishery, and their commerce with foreign lands.
The founder of the monastery was known as Trifon, and his name is celebrated to-day throughout the Greek Church. ”

“ Most of them are, however, very small. Their large one is directly adjoining the church of the Holy Sepulchre; and the top of the church (not the dome) may be used as a terrace for its inmates. From the top of the convent I [121] passed over most of the top of the church, or of the chapels contained within its walls. This large monastery is able to receive and entertain many pilgrims—this is one design of those establishments. The Latins have a very large monastic establishment. It covers several acres of ground; is so constructed as to be capable of making a good defence; is a strong fort. ”

“ There was no court or open space within the convent; the only place where its inhabitants could have walked for exercise in the open air was upon the flat terrace of the roof, the deck of this ship of St Peter; for the White Monastery in some respects resembled a dismasted man-of-war, anchored in a sea of burning sand.
In modern times we are not surprised on finding a building erected at an immense expense, in which the architecture of the interior is totally different from that of the exterior. ”

“ The successive reforms, Clugny, Carthusians, Cistercians, beginning in poverty and ending in wealth and worldly influence, show what sort of men wore the cowl. The monks were not all alike; some were worldly, some were religious, some were scholars, and some were merely indolent. The monastery was a home for the scholar, a refuge for the disconsolate, and an asylum for the disgraced. And a monk might often be a man whose sensibilities, instead of being dull, were more sharply awake than our own to-day. ”

“ After this a nunnery was founded, which in the tenth century became a Benedictine convent.
Ages rolled on, and it grew famous. When destroyed by the French it held as many as 900 monks: a great religious community, wealthy and powerful. But the mighty are fallen. The few remaining monks, more exclusive in their retirement than the great body of their predecessors, have a school attached to the monastery in which much time is given to the study of music. It is going far out of the world for instruction, but Nature herself should come to their aid. ”

“ The secularization of monasteries was an evil which grew with their wealth and influence. At a Council held by the patriarch Photius in the Apostles’ church at Constantinople, it is complained that some persons attach the name of “monastery” to property of their own, and while professing to dedicate it to God, write themselves down as lords of what has been thus consecrated, and are not ashamed to claim after such consecration the same power over it which they had before. ”

“ The monastery proper lies behind the church, where a vast quadrangle, the Great Cloister, some three acres in extent, opens out, surrounded on three sides by the little houses of the monks, with the graveyard in the midst. Here the monks live, and are buried without coffin or shroud in their white habits, the hood drawn over the face. The cells are delightful to look upon, "a solitude within a solitude" ”

“ This beautiful shrine is of Byzantine workmanship, and, in its way, is a superb work of art.
The refectory of the monastery is a large square building, but the dining-room which it contains is in the form of a cross, about one hundred feet in length each way; the walls are decorated with fresco pictures of the saints, who vie with each other in the hard-favoured aspect of their bearded faces; they are tall and meagre full-length figures as large as life, each having his name inscribed on the picture. Their chief interest is in their accurate representation of the clerical costume. ”

“ If they do not sometimes pine and sigh for the busy haunts and the excitement of the great towns? Such questions are not easily answered, unless we get the answer in the fact that the monastic vows are faithfully and religiously kept; and there is no record of a Carthusian monk ever having broken his vow. Surely then there must be something strangely, even terribly attractive in that stern life which is so full of hardship and trial, and from year's end to year's end knows no change, until the great change which comes to us all, sooner or later, whether we be monks or revellers. ”

“ All Greek monasteries are built in this irregular way, and the confused mass of disjointed edifices is usually encircled by a high bare wall; but in this monastery there is no such enclosing wall, as its position effectually prevents the approach of an enemy. On a portion of the flat space which is not occupied by buildings they have a small garden, but it is not cultivated, and there is nothing like a parapet-wall in any direction to prevent your falling over. ”

“ On the summit of an abrupt height, over a double row of arcades, appears the monastery; at its base a torrent plows the soil, winding off in the distance between banks of boulders; beyond is the old town prolonging itself on the ridge of the mountain. We ascend slowly under the burning sun, and suddenly, at the end of [Pg 79] a court surrounded by slender columns, enter within the obscurity of the cathedral. It is unequalled; before having seen it one has no idea of the art and the genius of the Middle Ages. ”

“ The vast and celebrated monastery, called in German Karthaus, or La Chartreuse, situated on a high mountain, in the neighbourhood to the west of Coblentz, from which the countries of Treves, Mayence, Cologne, Darmstadt, d’Anspach, and Wied, may be seen, is converted into an observatory, and a place of very agreeable recreation. ”

“ Theodosius the Great built it up again in gratitude for the miraculous escape of his son Arcadius, who having fallen overboard from his galley in the Archipelago, was landed safely on this spot through the intercession of the Virgin, to whose special honour the great church was founded: fourteen other chapels within the walls attest the piety of other individuals. In the year 862 the Saracens landed, destroyed the monastery by fire, slew many of the monks, took the treasures and broke the mosaics ”

“ Such monasteries as Novy Afon are true institutions of Christianity; they do more for the real welfare of a people than much else on which immense sums of money are spent. It is a matter of real charity and real hospitality both of hand and mind combined. The great monastery sits there among the hills like some immense mother for all the rude, rough-handed tribes that live about. In her love she sets an example. By her open-handedness she makes her guests her own children ”

“ One of the monks was leaning in a brown study upon the ponderous and gigantic volume in its primæval binding, in the interior of which the blind abbot had hoped to find a treasure. Perched upon the battlements of this remote monastery we formed as picturesque a group as one might wish to see; though perhaps the begrimed state of our flowing robes as well as of our hands and faces would render a somewhat remote point of view more agreeable to the artist than a closer inspection. ”

“ There was a look of comfort about it that savoured of easy circumstances, but the number of monks in it was small. Altogether this monastery, as regards the antiquities it contained, was the most interesting of all. The church, a good-sized building, is in a very perfect state of preservation. Hanging on the wall near the door of entrance was a portrait painted on wood, about three feet square, in a frame of silver-gilt, set with jewels; it represented Alexius Comnenus, Emperor of Trebizonde, the founder of the monastery. ”

“ The devout man thinks little about the effect of light and shade, or about the more or less learned proportions of architecture; he knows, however, that, beneath that altar of so mediocre a form, lie hidden the bones of the saint who died for the sake of the faith which he professes, and that suffices for him.
The Carthusian Convent, at present bereft of monks, like all other convents in Spain, is an admirable edifice, and we cannot regret too much that it has ever ceased to be used for its original purpose. ”

“ Monastic history, like secular, centers in the biographies of such great men as Anthony, Basil, Jerome, Benedict, Francis, Dominic and Loyola. To understand the [pg 85] character of the powerful forces set in motion by the coming of the monks to Rome, it is necessary to know the leading spirits whose preeminent abilities and lofty personalities made Western monasticism what it was.
The time is about 418 A.D.; the place, a monastery in Bethlehem, near the cave of the Nativity. In a lonely cell, within these monastic walls, we shall find the man we seek. ”

“ The Greater Monasteries, formed as they were of a vast number of separate buildings for agriculture, cattle rearing, handicraft and arts of all kinds, for elementary teaching, for higher education, for hospitable entertainment, caring for the sick, etc., came by and by to attain the proportions of little towns. Frequently they were the centre around which cities were raised. The monastery of Vivarium in Calabria, Cassiodorus’ foundation, inspired Western monasticism with an enthusiasm for scholarly studies. The regulations of Monte Cassino were extended to all monasteries of the West. ”