Monachism

“ The influence the first form of monachism has exercised upon the world, so far as it has been beneficial, has been chiefly through the imagination, which has been fascinated by its legends. In the great periods of theological controversy, the Eastern monks had furnished some leading theologians; but in general, in Oriental lands, the hermit life predominated, and extreme maceration was the chief merit of the saint. But in the West, monachism assumed very different forms, and exercised far higher functions. At first the Oriental saints were the ideals of Western monks. ”

“ Monachism, or Monasticism, is an institution in which individuals devote themselves, apart from others, to the cultivation of spiritual contemplation and religious duties, and which has constituted a marked feature in Pre-Christian Jewish asceticism, and in Buddhism as well as in Christianity ”

“ X. My design here is not to pursue the whole argument, but merely to point out, by the way, the characters of the monks who belonged to the ancient Church, and the nature of the monastic profession at that period, that the judicious readers may be able, from a comparison, to judge of the effrontery of those who plead antiquity in support of the monachism of the present day. When Augustine gives us a description of holy and legitimate monachism, he excludes from it all rigid exaction or imposition of those things which the Lord in his word has left free. ”

“ Towards the conclusion of the third century, when monachism was so vehemently propagated, and the East inundated with a restless class of men, who strolled about in pursuit of proselytes (not much unlike the errant-knights of a subsequent age) the position I have laid down is more clearly evinced. It would be doing injustice to my subject, if, in speaking of this singular fact, I used other language than that of the historian of the Roman empire. "The progress of the monks," says this philosophic writer, "was not less rapid, or universal, than that of Christianity itself. ”

“ In both these respects, the nature of modern monachism is so different, that it is scarcely possible to find any thing more dissimilar or opposite. For, not content with that 443piety, to the study of which Jesus Christ commands his servants constantly to devote themselves, our present monks imagine I know not what new kind of piety, in the meditation of which they are become more perfect than all others. ”

“ Others found their vocation in manual labour in the fields or workshops; while a certain number devoted themselves to literary work in the cloister.
[2] § 2. The rule of St Benedict, on which western monachism was founded, distinguishes between four classes of religious. Of these the two principal were cenobites, monks living in a community (coenobium) under rule, and the anchorites, who have departed (ἀναχωρεῖν) from the world to live a solitary life of prayer. These were the sources of the two main streams of Christian monachism. Naturally, the anchorite came first into existence. ”

“ And when we talk of the sensuality of the monks, of their gross indulgences and corporeal ease, we surely do so without discrimination; for when we speak of the middle ages thus, our thoughts are [4] dwelling on the sixteenth century, its mocking piety and superstitious absurdity; but in the olden time of monastic rule, before monachism had burst its ancient boundaries, there was surely nothing physically attractive in the austere and dull monotony of a cloistered life. Look at the monk; mark his hard, dry studies, and his midnight prayers, his painful fasting and mortifying of the flesh ”

“ In the first place, then, monachism in art, taken in a large sense, is historically interesting, as the expression of a 307 most important era of human culture. We are outliving the gross prejudices which once represented the life of the cloister as being from first to last a life of laziness and imposture. ”

“ And, if his monks are to be anything better than representations of monkish habits hung upon “lay figures,” he must know what kind of men the Middle Age monks were intellectually and morally. These particulars we proceed to supply as fully as the space at our command will permit.
Monachism arose in Egypt. As early as the second century we read of men and women who, attracted by the charms of a peaceful, contemplative life, far away from the fierce, sensual, persecuting heathen world, betook themselves to a life of solitary asceticism. ”

“ Monachism in Europe presented more of its practical and less of its contemplative side, than in its cradle in the East. An example of how the monks of the East did work for the good of others is seen in the instance of the monks of Pachomius ”

“ Before we advance to the consideration of the achievements of the Benedictine order, we wish to call attention to a circumstance which has seldom, if ever, been dwelt upon by historians, and which will assist us in estimating the influence of monachism upon the embryo civilization of Europe. ”

“ Benedict in the 6th century stamped its permanent form on Western Monasticism, and that of St. Francis in the 12th gave it a more comprehensive range, entrusting the care of the poor, the sick, the ignorant, &c., to the hitherto self-centred monks and nuns; during the Middle Ages the monasteries were centres of learning, and their work in copying and preserving both sacred and secular literature has been invaluable; English Monachism was swept away at the Reformation; in France at the Revolution; and later in Spain, Portugal, and Italy it has been suppressed ”

“ In its essence monachism was the selfish effort of the individual to secure his own salvation by repudiating all the duties and responsibilities of life. It is true that at one time it had earned the gratitude of the world by leaving its retreats and carrying civilization and Christianity into barbarous regions,{266} under such men as St. ”

“ In the first place, there was the permanent difficulty of maintaining in its first fervour a body embracing hundreds of monasteries and thousands of monks, spread all over Europe; and as the Cistercian very raison d’être consisted in its being a “reform,” a return to primitive monachism, with its field-work and severe simplicity, any failures to live up to the ideal proposed worked more disastrously among Cistercians than among mere Benedictines, who were intended to live a life of self-denial, but not of great austerity. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Monasticism, as we have shown, originated mainly from a sense of inability to lead a Christian life in an atmosphere largely tinged with paganism, and in which the prevailing ideal of life had sunk to a very low standard. The remarkable success of monasticism led to a great increase in the number of those who desired to enrol themselves as members of an organised religious community. In course of time, not only had Christianity become the generally accepted religion of the western world, but the monks had come to be regarded as the élite among the clergy. ”

“ In every field of thought and activity monasticism wrought good and evil. Education, industry, government and religion have been both furthered and hindered by the monks. What Francis Parkman said of the Roman Catholic Church is true of the monastic institution: "Clearly she is of earth, not of heaven; and her transcendently dramatic life is a type of the good and ill, the baseness and nobleness, the foulness and purity, the love and hate, the pride, passion, truth, falsehood, fierceness, and [pg 387] tenderness, that battle in the restless heart of man." ”

“ Legere, orare, laborare—study, prayer, and labour—was the daily work of the monk; and if it was not always the task of the individual it certainly was of the community. Of course the sacred volume was the primary object of their study; but almost all branches of human learning are aids to the study and right understanding of Scripture, and were cultivated for that purpose.
Then again, monasticism was, as we have seen, intended to be self-sufficing. It was a world of its own, a city of God, producing for itself all that is needed in the physical and moral order. ”

“ Then the monk resumed: “If thy intention is to perform that which thou hast promised, I implore Jesus Christ to direct thy steps, and grant thee the victory; but if the enterprise thou hast commenced is only to turn to the shame and misfortunes of Christians, if thou art not, with the help of God, determined to finish it, if thou hast deceived the holy Catholic Church, divine justice will fall heavily on thy family and on thy kingdom, and the blood which the news of thy expedition has caused to flow will rise up against thee.” ”

“ The monks were the fiercest champions of orthodoxy, and the intellectual giants of that age, like Jerome and St. Augustine, were in their ranks. The monk rather than the priest was the apostle of the Middle Ages who taught men and nations the simple Christian life of the Gospel. In monasticism were developed the germs of many humanitarian institutions through which Christianity expressed itself in a most practical manner. The monastery offered a home to the poor and unfortunate, and gave hope and refuge to both the religious invalid, who was sick of the world, and to the religious fanatic. ”

“ There are some other sacred things besides monasteries and prayers. Human life itself is holy; so are the commonplace duties of the untitled household and factory saints.
"God is in all that liberates and lifts,
In all that humbles, sweetens, and consoles."
Modern monasticism has forsaken the column of St. Simeon Stylites and the rags of St. Francis. It has given up the ancient and fantastic feats of asceticism, and the spiritual extravagances of the early monks. The old monasticism never could have arisen under a religious system controlled by natural and healthful spiritual ideas. ”

“ For a few moments the monk and the young man stood in silence, till at length the monk spoke.
"You have told me, my son, that your heart often troubles you in being more Roman than Christian; that you sometimes doubt whether the Church on earth be other than a fiction or a fable. But look around us. Who are these, this great multitude who praise and pray continually in this temple of the upper air? These are they who have come out of great tribulation, having washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. ”

“ 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 monkish historians, to whom we owe our knowledge of this great man, have overlaid his history with mythical stories, and have given him a character and policy to suit their own purposes. In their eagerness to secure the name of the greatest statesman of the age in support of their pretensions against the secular clergy, they have drawn him as a youth of miraculous gifts, of severe monkish asceticism, whose claim to greatness consisted in the establishment of the Benedictine rule. ”

“ Here and there a monk, fresh from his Desert-Laura, hurtles through the eclipse-light of history like the stone from a catapult,—rules a church with iron rods, organizes, denounces, intrigues, executes, keeps an unarmed soldiery to do his behests, and hurls ecclesiastic thunders at kings and emperors with the grand audacity of a commission presumedly divine, while Greeks cringe, and Jews blaspheme, and heathen flee into, or away from, conversion; and the Church itself canonizes this spiritual father, this Sphinx-son of an instinct and a stone! ”

“ Nuns and monks of the Middle Ages, those who knew monasticism better than it ever could be known in these modern days, dreaded these larvæ more than anything else, and they had methods of destroying them and repelling the beguilements of evil spirits better than we have, for the contemplative orders were more kindred to those earlier times than to-day. Monasticism of today takes another turn. Love of God is eternal, but we must love God in the idiom and spirit of our time. ”

“ Of the three monastic vows that dominated monasticism throughout the Middle Ages—poverty, chastity, obedience—the first two only were observed by the primitive anchorites; the third came in with the cœnobite life. A movement in this direction was originated by the gathering of admiring disciples round the cell of some famous anchorite. When these men had their own cells they were set well apart out of earshot of one another. Still, here we see an approach to the idea of a grouping of monks together. ”

“ The existence of monasticism in non-Christian religions implies that whatever impetus the ascetic impulses in human nature received from Christian teaching, there is some broader basis for monastic life than the tenets of any creed. Biblical history and Christian theology furnish some explanation [pg 355] of the rise of Christian monasticism, but they do not account for the monks of ancient India. The teachings of Jesus exerted a profound influence upon the Christian monks, but they cannot explain the Oriental asceticism that flourished before the Christ of the New Testament was born. ”