Mr. Monk

“ This testimony is of the more value, because the conclusion does not depend upon any conflicting statements, of partial or prejudicial witnesses, but upon a fact which is essential to the system of monachism; that no persons can know all the secrets of nunneries, but the Chaplain, the Abbess, and their accomplices in that "mystery of iniquity." Mr. Smith's declaration in one other respect is absolutely decisive. He has declared not only that Maria Monk has been a nun, but also that the descriptions which she gives are most minutely accurate. ”

“ But I dread adding a spark to the flame already kindled in Ld. H.’s disposition; for every change must be the worse for me, who already possess such unalloyed happiness.
‘MONK’ LEWIS
Mr. Lewis, [178] who is known in the literary world by [167] having written a very popular romance called The Monk in which there are some very pretty verses, has just given to the public a play not totally without merit. He has borrowed very much from the literature of the German, and his imagination, so schooled, is sometimes extravagant and monstrous. ”

“ Grant, at Montreal, in the presence of Mr. Comte, one of the superior order of priests of that city; and of another Priest, believed to be either Phelan or Dufresne, who was concealed behind the sofa.
It is also incontrovertible, that the nominal Papists in Canada, who, in reality, are often infidels, notwithstanding their jocose sneers, and affected contempt, do generally believe every title of Maria Monk's narrative. This is the style in which they talk of it. They first, according to custom, loudly curse the authors ”

“ Slowly, slowly, its legs labored through the thin sand. At last it stopped some six inches from Monk's face.
It appeared immense, like a lumbering, scaly giant from the planet's billion-year-ago past.
It rubbed its claws together, threateningly. Its black mouth opened, closed, opened, closed. Its needle tongue twisted like a silver snake.
I am hungry, came the thought. So very hungry. But I should call the others.
Combined fear and hope hung over Monk like an omnipresent shower of fire and ice. Sweat dripped into his hot eyes, obscuring his vision. ”

“ There was a time when they used to sing in the forest round the old Abbey Himmerode, as they now do in the valley of Honnef.
The pious monks, walking about in the cloister gardens in holy contemplation heard their seductive songs: the penitents in their cells, mortifying the flesh heard them also. Their alluring warble mingled itself with their murmured prayers; and in the heart of many a monk, who had long since renounced the world and its pleasures, the remembrance of them was gently awakened, and sweet sinful things were whispered into the holy brother's ears. ”

“ CLOISTERS OF MONTSERRAT.
All this may still be seen and heard now and then, but with the number of monks sadly curtailed. It is said that they now never exceed twenty. When their day of persecution came they escaped to their mountain fastness, climbing higher and ever higher like hunted deer, hiding in the cracks and crevices of the rocks; fear giving them strength to reach parts never yet trodden by the foot of man, whilst many a less active monk slipped and fell into the bottomless abyss, his last resting place, like that of Moses, remaining for ever unknown. ”

“ They do not seem likely to die in a hurry. Some of them would take the prizes in any human exhibition for fatness and sleekness. Their loose [Pg 97] and flowing robes of some cream-colored stuff, perhaps, impart an unreal fullness to their figures. One wonders if their lives are quite as austere as represented. The monk who piloted our party about is magnificent in physique. He stands about six feet two inches, as straight as an arrow, weighs fully two hundred pounds, has a winning, slightly sunburned Italian face, and is in manner a perfect gentleman. ”

“ But except on the 1st and 15th of every moon and other holidays the novices are put on active service, the monks enjoying an unbroken idleness; they are apparently cursed with an unquenchable thirst, but as a fountain of perennial tea flows for them they are not to be pitied. I suppose you would ask the name of my friend with the neat boots; this would be an arch mistake and violation of good-breeding on your part. When a man shaves his tail and turns monk he cuts himself off from the whole world, including his family, whose name even he no longer bears. ”

“ But all honor to his manes and to his memory! for how much that is admirable in the human character—how much sweet and virtuous humility was hid in him, in the strict retirement of the cloister. The writings of that humble monk outlive the fame of many a proud ecclesiastic or haughty baron of his day; and well they might, for how homely does his pen record the simple annals of that far distant age. Much have the old monks been blamed for their bad Latin and their humble style ”

“ Yet it seemed impossible—at least, it seemed impossible for me—to consider this great vital hulk of a man as a monk of one of the oldest religious orders in the world. Every common, academic conception of such a monk he distinctly negatived. ”

“ Many bishops and priests were little better than the nobles, yet the Church preserved Christian belief and did something to improve morality. Everywhere the monk was the most striking object-lesson, with his austerities, his terror-stricken sense of sinfulness, and conviction of the peril of the world. No martial, grasping bishop, no dissolute and treacherous priest denied that the monk’s was the ideal Christian life; and the laity stood in awe, or expectation, of the wonder-working power of his asceticism. ”

“ Matilda darted upon him a look of scorn.
“Absurd!” She exclaimed with an air of passion and majesty which impressed the Monk with awe. “After robbing her of all that made it dear, can you fear to deprive her of a life so miserable? But ’tis well! Let her live to convince you of your folly. I abandon you to your evil destiny! I disclaim your alliance! Who trembles to commit so insignificant a crime, deserves not my protection. Hark! Hark! Ambrosio; Hear you not the Archers? They come, and your destruction is inevitable!”
At this moment the Abbot heard the sound of distant voices. ”

“ The prayers of the dead are recited over him, to celebrate his death to the world; and it has been said that, when he dies, he is buried without prayer; but I am informed that this is not the case. The monks are very numerous, and there are many nuns. They lead a life of great austerity; and are obliged always to wear woollen garments next the body. Every monk is distinguished by a strip of woollen stuff, of a deep blue or black colour, about four inches wide, attached beneath the turban and hanging down the back to the length of about a foot. ”

“ Opposite me, at the table of the convent refectory, had sat a taciturn monk, whose influence I felt from the first day—a stronger consciousness of his presence, that is to say, than of any one of the other monks—though he did not seem particularly to observe me, and till recently had scarce spoken to me at all. He was a man of perhaps fifty years of age, with the countenance of one who had suffered and gained a victory of contemplation—a look as if no suffering could be new to him, and before whom no riddle of human vicissitudes could stay unread ”

“ There was no religious hatred, except towards Turks and Saracens. The monk, in his narrowness and ignorance, may be repulsive to an enlightened age: he was not repulsive to his own, for he was not behind it either in his ideas or in his habits of life. In fact, the more repulsive the monk of the dark ages is to this generation, the more venerated he was by bishops and barons seven hundred years ago ”

“ Mr. Smith also testifies that the account which Maria Monk gives of the proceedings of the priests, the obscene questions which they ask young females, and their lewd practices with them at auricular confession, are constantly exemplified by the Roman Priests; and he also confirms her statements, by the testimony of his own individual experience, and actual personal acquaintance with the Canadian nunneries, as well as with those in the United States, and especially of that at Monroe, Michigan, which was dissolved by Mr. ”

“ Art toiled in the church, and whole generations of busy fingers worked patiently at the decoration of the temple of the Most High. The pale, thoughtful monk, upon whose brow genius had set her mark, wandered into the calm retirement of the library, threw back his cowl, buried himself in the study of philosophy, history, or divinity, and transferred his thoughts to vellum, which was to moulder and waste in darkness and obscurity, like himself in his lonely monk's grave, and be read only when the spot where he labored should be a heap of ruins, and his very name a controversy amongst scholars. ”

“ I am not defending the monastic system, or the corruption of the cloister—far from it. I would see the usefulness of man made manifest to the world; but the measure of my faith teaches charity and forgiveness, and I can find in the functions of the monk much that must have been useful in those dark days of feudal tyranny and lordly despotism. We much mistake the influence of the monks by mistaking their position ”

“ When a monk, his life is one of ease and often of indolence. Early in the morning, about daybreak, he is aroused from slumber by the beating of the great gong, drum, or bell attached to the monastery, and, after washing his face, puts on his yellow robes, suspends his iron begging-bowl over his shoulders, hanging under his left arm, and his fruit-bag on his right elbow, and leaves the monastery, by boat or by land, a little before sunrise. ”

“ But a monk like this, with a face like a conqueror, set square in its whiteness, and yet so wretched to see in his poor patched frock and his bare feet; a monk, too, not acting love, but really and truly ready to die for a beautiful woman not thirty feet from him in the house; above all, a monk with a voice that speaks like the clarion call of the day of judgment in its wrath, and murmurs more plaintively and sadly in sorrow than ever the poor Peri sighed at the gates of Paradise—such a monk, what could he not make people feel? ”

“ The monks are not half bad old fellows. The Hegoumenos—that’s the abbot—has been trotting me round this morning to show me the church and the library and all the chapels, and at dinner last night he was full of the most infantile questions. Of course, he had to ask them all through Papa Athanasios, who is my particular monk, and what with his French and mine, the abbot must have amassed some wonderful information.”
“It’s all very well their being nice, but will they let us out?” broke in Zoe. ”

“ And doubtless the average monk, even when well-conducted himself and in a well-conducted monastery, was, like average men of every creed, rank, or occupation, a very common-place person, acting from very mixed and often very questionable motives; and valuing his shaven crown and his sheepskin cloak, his regular hours of prayer and his implicit obedience to his abbot, more highly than he valued the fear and the love of God. ”

“ Years came and went, other hands tended the lantern, till in the Revolution the light of the monks and the Order itself were swept away, and the monastery was laid in ruins. But the legend is even now held for truth by simple folk, that in Friar’s Rock the monk lives still, hearing always the eddying flood about him, that beats in upon his memory the story of his sin; and they say that with it mingles ever the cry of men in their last agony, and the cry is his name, thus kept continually before the Judge. ”

“ Yet, though the monk, who is now in our house, describes his leaving the monastery in a different manner, this may be the work of his own imagination. He may have dreamed all that he tells about his escape; and, in short, I am persuaded that this monk is no other than Brother Medardus, the Capuchin, whom the Prioress educated, and whom the devil enticed to all sorts of crimes, until Heaven at last punished him with the infliction of utter insanity. ”

“ Perhaps they always will be. The wealthy monk falls a prey to pride and arrogance; he becomes luxurious in his habits, and lazy in the performance of duty. Vice creeps in and his moral ruin is complete. The transformation in the character of the monk is accompanied by a change in public opinion. The monk is now an eyesore; his splendid buildings are viewed with envy by some, with shame by others. Then arise the vehement cries for the destruction of his palatial cloister, and the heroic efforts of the remnant that abide faithful to reform the institution. ”

“ They had gone rather more than a league and had begun to descry the first houses of the village, the red-tiled roofs of which stood out from the green trees which surrounded them, when, coming toward them mounted on a mule, they perceived a poor monk, whose large hat and gray worsted dress made them take him for an Augustine brother. ”

“ And he who was asked answered and said unto him, “I have been in the desert for forty years striving with a monk, and to-night I have hurled him into fornication”; and when Satan heard this, he rose up straightway and embraced and kissed that devil, and he took the crown off his head, and placed it upon him, and he made him to sit by his side upon his throne, saying, “And so thou hast been able to do so great a work as this in so short a time! For there is nothing which I prize so highly as the fall of a monk.” ”

“ There is scarce a monk in any lonely monastery, (such as those in the hot and unwholesome valley of Waldubba) , not a hermit of the many upon the mountains, not an old priest who has lived any time sequestered from society, that does not pretend to possess charms offensive and defensive, and several methods by which he can, at will, look into futurity. The Moors are all, to a man, persuaded of this: their arms and necks are loaded with amulets against witchcraft. Their women are believed to have all the mischievous powers of fascination ”