Monastic order

“ We owe the preservation of the earliest Latin hymns to monastic practice. When the founders of monasticism in the west, Caesarius and Aurelian who were famous bishops of Arles (6th C.) , and Benedict (d. 543) , founder of the Benedictine Order, organized the regulations and routine for the communities under their charge, they incorporated Latin hymns already existing into the daily worship of the monastery. [1] These were sung at the services of the canonical hours and were known as hour hymns or office hymns.
A continuity can be traced, although faintly, from primitive Christian observances. ”

“ The monastic orders formed too large and important a class not to share fully in the responsibility of the Church for good or for evil. Great as were their unquestioned services to religion and culture, they were peculiarly exposed to the degrading tendencies{35} of the age, and their virtues suffered proportionally. ”

“ This type became more and more rigid and austere as the gathering shadows of the Dark Ages mantled on the minds of men. The gloomy asceticism of the monastic orders also left its impress on the art of the period, especially in the East, where the Basilian monks too faithfully illustrated the stern, austere judgments of their founder concerning the person of Christ. ”

“ A careful and sympathetic survey of monastic history compels the conclusion that monasticism, while not uniformly a blessing to the world, was not an unmitigated evil. The system presents one long series of perplexities and contradictions. ”

“ To live in the service of God, in the religious denunciation of the world, and in the abnegation of the joys of life—that is the universal reply. In the early Church this position was very strongly emphasised and led, in consequence, to the rise of monasticism. Hence it may be said that the monastic ideals simply expressed the highest ideals of the Church, and the history of monasticism becomes a vital part of the history of the mediæval Church. ”

“ Forgetting the inevitable cost of human freedom, and lightly passing over the iniquities of the monastic system, they fondly dwell upon the departed glory of the ancient abbeys. They recall with sadness the days when the monks chanted their songs of praise in the chapels, or reverently bent over their books of parchment, bound in purple and gold, not that they might "winnow the treasures of knowledge, but that they might elicit love, compunction and devotion." ”

“ The spirit of monasticism is the same to-day as in the days of Augustine—the growing need of the Church that the few should sacrifice themselves for the many, and, by their self-effacement, further the spiritual and material work of Christ on earth. Undoubtedly the civilisation of England from the earliest times is largely due to monastic influence. The monks promoted the love of architecture and art in every form ”

“ Controversialists have fought ad nauseam over the truth or falsehood of the “scandalous comperta” of Henry VIII’s commissioners, without understanding that for nearly three hundred years before the Dissolution the comperta and injunctions in the registers give a picture of English monasticism coloured by no ulterior motive. Even after a large number of the registers have been published, historians are still content to paint monastic life in the later middle ages from the monastic rule, ignoring the evidence of practice which is always necessary to supplement the evidence of theory. ”

“ What a contemplation for the mind, and what endless food for thought, is the reverberation of God upon the human wall!
CHAPTER II—THE CONVENT AS AN HISTORICAL FACT
From the point of view of history, of reason, and of truth, monasticism is condemned. Monasteries, when they abound in a nation, are clogs in its circulation, cumbrous establishments, centres of idleness where centres of labor should exist. Monastic communities are to the great social community what the mistletoe is to the oak, what the wart is to the human body. ”

“ 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. ”

“ All this was a reaction from St Benedict’s reconstruction of the monastic life—a reaction which in the matter of austerities and individualistic piety has made itself increasingly felt in the later manifestations of the monastic ideal in the West.
11. New Kinds of Religious Orders.—Up to this point we have met only with monasticism proper; and if the term were taken strictly, the remainder of this article would be concerned only with the later history of the institutes already spoken of; for neither canons regular, friars, nor regular clerks, are in the strict sense monks. ”

“ The great characteristic of the monastic revival of the Middle Ages lay in the manifold and distinct spheres of [Pg 186] activity which life offered inside the religious community. The studious, the educational, the philanthropic, and the agricultural element, all to some extent made part of the old monastic system. But through the foundation of a number of different orders which from the outset had separate aims, tastes which were widely dissimilar, and temperaments that were markedly diverse, met with encouragement in the religious settlement. ”

“ Century after century the lives of thousands fulfilled the monastic spirit, and often so perfectly as to belie humanity’s repute for frailty. Their virtues shunned encomium. Record was made of those whose mind and energy organized and wrought, or whose piety and love of God burned so hotly that others were enkindled. But legion upon legion of tacit lives are registered only in the Book with seven seals.
Monastic abuses have usually spoken more loudly than monastic regularity. In Christian monasticism there is an energy of renovation which constantly cries against corruption. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Well, I must tell you that I am not a very great believer in monastic systems. They have great merits, and also great defects. There should be a perfect balance between the monastics and the householders. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Monastic life, no less than the schools of Alexandria, was influential in creating a divinity which gave as great authority to dogmas that are the result of intellectual deductions, as those based on direct and original declarations. And these deductions were often gloomy, and colored by the fears which were inseparable from a belief in divine wrath rather than divine love. The genius of monasticism, ancient and modern, is the propitiation of the Divinity who seeks to punish rather than to forgive. ”

“ One would think, after reading their endless essays, that the symbols of Masonry were loved and preserved by all the world—except by the Masons themselves. Often these writers imply, if they do not actually assert, that our order begged, borrowed, or cribbed its emblems from Kabbalists or Rosicrucians, whereas the truth is exactly the other way round—those impalpable fraternities, whose vague, fantastic thought was always seeking a local habitation and a body, making use of the symbols of Masonry the better to reach the minds of men. ”

“ To understand the monastic institution one must not only study the isolated anchorite seeking a victory over a sinful self in the Egyptian desert or the monk in the secluded cloister, but he must also trace the fortunes of ascetic organizations, involving multitudes of men, vast aggregations of wealth, and surviving the rise and fall of empires. Almost every phase of human life is encountered in such an undertaking. Attention is divided between hermits, beggars, diplomatists, statesmen, professors, missionaries and pontiffs. ”

“ In the 14th century, the monastic system was still in its full vigour, the power of the ecclesiastical orders and brotherhoods was revered by the people, and the hierarchy was still formidable to the temporal power. ”

“ Fifty years later its plight would seem to have been worse. Only two houses, Abingdon and Glastonbury, could be really called monastic. “In the middle of the tenth century the Rule of St.{40} Benedict, the standard of monasticism in Western Christendom, was, according to virtually contemporary authority, completely unknown in England. ”

“ Towards the end of the 18th century a tendency crept in, in some quarters, to relax the monastic observances in favour of study; but the constitutions of 1770 show that a strict monastic régime was maintained until the end. The course of Maurist history and work was checkered by the ecclesiastical controversies that distracted the French Church during the 17th and 18th centuries. ”

“ Their apparent endeavour (at least until the day of Francis of Assisi) is to renew a life from which their contemporaries have fallen away. And yet through all there was unconscious innovation and progress.
The greater part of the fervent piety of the Middle Ages dwelt in cloisters, when not drawn forth unwillingly to serve the Lord in the world. Mediaeval saints were, or yearned to be, monks or nuns. Consequently monastic reforms, as well as attempts to raise the condition of the secular clergy, emanated from within monasticism. ”

“ When the patient was of the higher nobility, he was often put in charge of a monk or of several religious, and confined in a portion of his own or a kinsman’s castle and cared for for years. There are traditions of similar care for the peasantry who were connected with monastic establishments, and sometimes small houses were set apart for their use on the monastery grounds. ”

“ Still, as will be explained later, the general agreement of the life led in all the monastic establishments is so marked, that it has been found possible to sketch a picture of that life which, without being perhaps actually exact in every particular for any one individual house, is sufficiently near to the truth in regard to all the houses in general. ”

“ As they were so largely the work of monks, obviously they would set forth only what would strike the monastic eye, an eye often intense with its inner vision, but not wide open to the occurrences of life. ”

“ To the half-century which preceded the Conquest of England we can trace the beginnings of twenty important monasteries and six nunneries, not counting priories and smaller foundations, a movement165 for which contemporaries could find no parallel short of the palmy days of monasticism in Roman Egypt. In course of time the monastic ideal reacted upon the secular clergy, and the monastic schools raised the level of learning throughout the duchy, until provincial councils succeeded in establishing the celibacy of the priesthood and the stricter discipline of Rome. ”

“ When a prioress’ negligence lets the sheepfold fall into disrepair, so that the young lambs die of the damp, it is made a charge against her to the bishop, together with more spiritual crimes. The routine of the farm goes on side by side with the routine of the chapel. These account rolls give us the material basis for the complicated structure of monastic life. This is how nuns won their livelihood; this is how they spent it.
[Pg 131]
CHAPTER IV MONASTIC HOUSEWIVES
Every monastic house may be considered from two points of view, as a religious and as a social unit. ”

“ Archbishop Rigaud's Register; Engelbert of Cologne; Popular Credences
The preceding sketches of monastic qualities and personalities illustrate the ideals of monasticism. That monastic practices should fall away, corruptions enter, and when expelled inevitably return, was to be expected. The cause lay in those qualities of human nature which may be either power or frailty. The acquisitive, self-seeking, lusting qualities of men lie at the base of life, and may be essential to achievement and advance. ”

“ It is not for us to point out the faults of those men. Who are we, to judge of their vices or their sins? It is a sufficient proof that the monastic system was a necessary phase of Christianity that the monastic system existed. ”

“ New relics, perpetually sent from that endless mint of superstition, and magnified by lying miracles, invented in convents, operated on the astonished minds of the multitude. And every prince has attained the eulogies of the monks, the only historians of those ages, not in proportion to his civil and military virtues, but to his devoted attachment towards their order, and his superstitious reverence for Rome.
The sovereign pontiff, encouraged by this blindness and submissive disposition of the people, advanced every day in his encroachments on the independence of the English churches. ”

“ The Jesuit is cultured, affable and spotlessly clean. Does the new age demand liberty? "Liberty," cries the Jesuit, "is the divine prerogative, colossal in proportion, springing straight from the broad basin of the soul's essence!"
Such in its merest outlines is the story of the development of the monastic type and its causes.
The Fundamental Monastic Vows
The ultimate monastic ideal was the purification of the soul, but when translated into definite, concrete terms, the immediate aim of the monk was to live a life of poverty, celibacy and obedience. ”