Mons

“ said the Bishop. “Let us announce our Te Deum from the pulpit, nevertheless, Monsieur le Curé. Things will arrange themselves.”
They instituted a search in the churches of the neighborhood. All the magnificence of these humble parishes combined would not have sufficed to clothe the chorister of a cathedral properly.
While they were thus embarrassed, a large chest was brought and deposited in the presbytery for the Bishop, by two unknown horsemen, who departed on the instant. The chest was opened; ”

“ Many wise and true sermons are preached us every day by unconscious ministers in street, school, office, or home; even a fair-table may become a pulpit, if it can offer the good and helpful words which are never out of season. ”

“ "There exists yonder in the mountains," said the Bishop, "a tiny community no bigger than that, which I have not seen for three years. They are my good friends, those gentle and honest shepherds. They own one goat out of every thirty that they tend. They make very pretty woollen cords of various colors, and they play the mountain airs on little flutes with six holes. They need to be told of the good God now and then. What would they say to a bishop who was afraid? What would they say if I did not go?"
"But the brigands, Monseigneur?"
"Hold," said the Bishop, "I must think of that. ”

“ I advise you to say the thing you want to say. When I began to preach, another of my Nestors said to me, "Edward, I give you one piece of advice. When you have written your sermon, leave off the introduction and leave off the conclusion. The introduction seems to me always written to show that the minister can preach two sermons on one text. Leave that off, then, and it will do for another Sunday. The conclusion is written to apply to the congregation the doctrine of the sermon. ”

“ The mighty demons of the storm have met
In battle fierce. Relentless anger fires
Their bosoms, proud of desolating power.
Their swords in rapid wavings flash; and oft
In lightning gleams illume the darkened earth. ”

“ The Monks (in confusion) . The Abbot! the
Abbot!
Friar Cuthbert (to the girl) . Put on your disguise!
Friar Francis. Hide the great flagon
From the eyes of the dragon!
Friar Cuthbert. Pull the brown hood over your face,
Lest you bring me into disgrace!
Abbot. What means this revel and carouse?
Is this a tavern and drinking-house?
Are you Christian monks, or heathen devils,
To pollute this convent with your revels? ”

“ The Church was gloomy, ascetic, austere, like the cathedrals of that time. Monks buried themselves in crypts; they sang mournful songs; they saw nothing but poverty and misery, and they came to the relief in a funereal way. But they were not cold and hard and cruel, like baronial lords. Secular lords were rapacious, and ground down the people, and mocked and trampled upon them; but the clergy were hospitable, gentle, and affectionate. They sympathized with the people, from whom they chiefly sprang. They had their vices, but those vices were not half so revolting as those of barons and knights. ”

“ The MONASTERY OF THE FRANCISCANS is really an object worth visiting ... if it be only to convince you of the comfort and happiness of ... not being a Franciscan monk. I went thither several times, and sauntered in the cloisters of the quadrangle. An intelligent middle-aged woman--a sort of housekeeper of the establishment--who conversed with me pretty fluently in the French language, afforded me all the information which I was desirous of possessing. She said she had nothing to do with the kitchen, or dormitories of the monks. They cooked their own meat, and made their own beds. ”

“ When the infirmary cook or servant came to die, for his faithful service he was borne to the grave, like all the other servants of the monastery, by the whole convent. His body was met at the great door of the church by the community in procession, and after Mass had been celebrated for the repose of his soul by the sub-sacrist, the monks carried his remains, as that of a good and faithful servant gone to his reward, to his last resting-place. ”

“ The lay monks who, by their virtue and humble submission to the orders of their new abbot, should merit the favor, the entirely Christian favor, would be allowed to enter the clergy and become Roman monks. ”

“ We see the hermit in his lonely cell, the monk at his devotions or at his work of copying in the scriptorium or under the open sky; or we hear the ascetic who, alone or with twelve chosen companions, has left one of the great monasteries in order to live in greater solitude among the woods or mountains, or on a lonely island. The fact that so many of these poems are fathered upon well-known saints emphasises the friendly attitude of the native clergy towards vernacular poetry. ”

“ Of these I will name to you, as messengers of God and masters of men, five monks and five kings; in whose arms during the range of swiftly gainful centuries which we are following, the life of the world [pg 52] lay as a nursling babe. Remember, in their successive order,—of monks, St. Jerome, St. Augustine, St. Martin, St. Benedict, and St. Gregory; of kings,—and your national vanity may be surely enough appeased in recognizing two of them for Saxon,—Theodoric, Charlemagne, Alfred, Canute, and the Confessor. ”

“ Now, hard by that city, just without the walls, stood a great monastery, wherein lived men called monks, who dwelt apart from other men, and thought best to serve God by renouncing those things which men hold dear, and giving themselves to fasting and prayer. ”

“ They renounced the world and its pleasures, and in the holy church of the Resurrection, in the presence of the patriarch of Jerusalem, they embraced vows of perpetual chastity, obedience, and poverty, after the manner of monks. Uniting in themselves the two most popular qualities of the age, devotion and valour, and exercising them in the most popular of all enterprises, they speedily acquired a famous reputation. ”

“ Here the monks, sitting in their cloisters, enjoying the fresh air, when they happen to look up towards the horizon, behold the tops of the mountains, as it were, touching the heavens, and herds of wild deer feeding on their summits: the body of the sun does not become visible above the heights of the mountains, even in a clear atmosphere, till about the hour of prime, or a little before. ”

“ Over against this group a naked, well-made youth, wounded with an arrow, and in chains, is looking straight before him with a slight expression of resignation in his countenance. In the intermediate space stand two monks, bearing a cross and lilies, and devoutly looking up to heaven. ”

“ The lord monks were the aristocratic order of the clergy. Their convents were wealthy and powerful, their minsters and houses were the glory of the land, their officials ranked with the nobles, and the greatness of the whole house reflected dignity upon each of its monks.
The friars were the popular order of the clergy. The Four Orders were great organizations of itinerant preachers; powerful through their learning and eloquence, their organization, and the Papal support; cultivating the favour of the people by which they lived by popular eloquence and demagogic arts. ”

“ When learning and literary activity served in these several ways to bring to a monastery fame and fortune, it was natural for the monks, whose service as scholars, instructors, and scribes had proved most effective in the scriptorium and in the schools, to be selected for honour and preferment, and that the learned armarius or librarius should frequently become the abbot, and should, later, find himself bishop or archbishop, or even pope. ”

“ 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 Church at all times gave most honour to those monks and nuns who were members of a convent and lived under the rule of a superior, but it did not deny the credit of holy living, or the appellations monk and nun, to those who either alone or with a few companions devoted themselves to religion, and dwelt sometimes near a chapel or sanctuary, sometimes in a churchyard. ”

“ Hermit, or eremite, from the Greek, [Greek: herêmos] , desolate, solitary. One who dwells alone apart from society, or with but few companions. Not used of those who dwell in cloisters.
Monastery, comes from the same source as monk. Commonly applied to a house used exclusively by monks. The term, however, strictly includes the abbey, the priory, the nunnery, the friary, and in this broad sense is synonymous with convent, which is from the Latin, convenire, to meet together. ”

“ Sometimes the monks perished with their monastery, often they escaped only with their lives and a few precious title-deeds, to find on their return merely a heap of blackened ruins and a desolate countryside. ”

“ The life and conversation of our holy Father Antony, written and sent to the monks in foreign parts by our Father among the saints, Athanasius, Archbishop of Alexandria.
You have begun a noble rivalry with the monks of Egypt, having determined either to equal or even to surpass them in your training towards virtue; for there are monasteries already among you, and the monastic life is practised. This purpose of yours one may justly praise; and if you pray, God will bring it to perfection. ”

“ Of the Monk’s Girdle.
As we are going to speak of the customs and rules of the monasteries, how by God’s grace can we better begin than with the actual dress of the monks, for we shall then be able to expound in due course their interior life when we have set their outward man before your eyes. A monk, then, as a soldier of Christ ever ready for battle, ought always to walk with his loins girded. ”

“ A young Monk at Milan, Preacher to the Benedictine Nuns, when he addressed them, added to almost every sentence in his discourse, 'my most dear and lovely sisters, whom I love from the deepest bottom of my heart.' When a monk becomes Preacher or Chaplain to a Nunnery, his days are passed in constant voluptuousness; for the Nuns will gratify their Confessor in every thing, that he may be equally indulgent to them. ”

“ From their lovely churches and chapter-houses the spirits of the old monks invite us to join them in an unworldly peace on earth, a renewal of the golden age, a life full of aspiration and self-forgetfulness, with all the burdens of egotism laid aside. ”

“ The monks built, as well as wrote, for posterity. The never-dying nature of their institutions set aside in all their undertakings every calculation as to time and age. Whether they built, or whether they planted, they set the generous example of providing for the pleasure, the honour, the wealth and greatness, of generations upon generations, yet unborn. ”

“ The monks, with truly monastic virtue, did not seem to mind them. Gaunt-looking women, hiding their faces with tattered white cotton vails, peeped at us, and dirty but pretty children came crowding round. ”

“ All down through the Middle Ages, the idea continued to prevail that the monastic life was the highest and purest expression of the Christian religion, and that the monks' chances of heaven were much better than those of any other class of men. ”

“ If there be a monk, who by the merit of his exemplary life is worthy of the priesthood, and the abbot under whose authority he fights for Christ his King, ask that he be made a priest, the bishop shall take him and ordain him in such place as he shall choose fitting. ”

“ The higher I raise myself, the higher I shall raise those who surround me. As for seeing me play the part of Monk, dismiss that from your mind. Monk lived in an age in which the prejudices we fought and overthrew in 1789 were in full force. ”

“ As these Monks were of the reformed [67] order of Benedictines, and of the Gilbertine kind, a nunnery was allowed in their vicinity; this they would make us believe was done with no other view, than to shew the triumph of faith over the impulse of sense, but it certainly must be confessed, to speak even most charitably of it, that such an union amid the sequestration of solitude, carries a strange appearance with it to our protestant suspiciousness. ”

“ Thomas Flatman (poet) did affirm, that he had seen those hieroglyphicks in an old parchment manuscript, writ in the time of the monks.
* Monarchy: or, No Monarchy, 4to.
In the nave of the cathedral church at Wells, above the capitals of two pillars, are the head of the King, and the head of a Bishop: it was foretold, that when a King should be like that King, and a Bishop like that Bishop, that Abbots should be put down, and Nuns should marry: above the arch, is an abbot or monk, with his head hanging downwards; and a nun with children about her. ”

“ A monk who passes his life near a tabernacle every day mingles a little drop of the water of his own sacrifice with the wine of our Redeemer's offering, so as to fill up in his flesh those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ for His body, which is the Church. ”

“ A regular Abbot of a Monastery in Italy, talking with me said—'Melius est habere nullam quam aliquem—It is better to have none than any woman.' I asked him what he meant; he replied, 'Because, when a person is not tied to one, he may make use of many;' and his practice was conformable to his doctrine ”

“ When the mass is celebrated in the presence of the emperor or king, the archbishops of Mainz, Trier, and Cologne, or any two of them, being present, the archbishops shall perform the services on the different days in turn in the order of their consecration, each one on his day officiating in the confession which is said before the mass, in the presenting of the gospel to be kissed, in the giving of peace after the Agnus Dei, in the benedictions after the mass and before meals, and in returning thanks after meals. ”

“ Hist, hist! the gates are thrown open, and yonder come the Monks in procession with the Prior at their head.
(Enter Prior and Monks from the Monastery, and range themselves on one side of the stage.)
Prior. (to the Peasants) Retire, my children, and don't come so near us. Don't stand near the soldiers as they pass neither, but go to your houses. ”