42
“Being Good”
Whatdo you mean by “being good”?
The Teutons thought “being good” meant being brave.
The Athenians thought whatever was beautiful was “good.”
The Stoics thought “not caring” was “being good.”
The Epicureans thought having a good time was “being good.”
The martyrs thought “being good” meant suffering and dying for Christ’s sake.
Ever since the time of the martyrs, Christians who wanted to be very, very good indeed, went off into the wilderness and lived by themselves. They wished to be far away from other people, so that they could spend all their time praying and thinking holy thoughts. This, they believed was “being good.”
One of the strangest of these men who wanted to get away from others was named St. Simeon Stylites. He built for himself a pillaror column fifty feet high, and on the top of it he lived with room only to sit but not to lie down. There on the top he lived for many years, day and night, winter and summer, while the sun shone on him and the rain rained on him, and he never came down at all. He could be reached only by a ladder, which his friends used to bring him food. High up out of the world, he thought he could best lead a holy life. That was his idea of “being good” although we should think such a person simply crazy.
In the course of time, however, men who wanted to lead holy lives, instead of living alone as they had done at first, gathered in groups and built themselves homes. These men were called monks, and the house where they lived was known as a monastery or abbey. The head monk of such an abbey was called an abbot, and he ruled over the other monks like a father over his children, giving them orders and punishing them when he thought they needed it.
In the five hundreds there lived an Italian monk named Benedict. He believed very strongly that one must work if he was to be holy, that work was a necessary part of being holy. He thought, also, that monks should have no money of their own, for Christ had said in the Bible, “If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor.” SoBenedict started a club or order of monks for those people who would agree to three things:
The first thing they were to agree to was to have no money.
The second thing was to obey.
The third thing was not to marry.
Monks who joined this club were called Benedictines.
Now, you might think there would have been hardly any one who would promise for life three such things as to have no money, to obey the abbot—no matter what he told them to do—and never to marry. Nevertheless, there were a great many men in every country of Europe who did become Benedictines.
Usually the monks lived in little bare rooms like prison cells, and ate their very simple meals together at a single table in a room called the refectory. They prayed at sunrise and sunset, and many times during the day besides, and they even woke up at midnight to say their prayers. But praying was not all they had to do. Work of every kind they were obliged to do, and they did it joyfully, whether the work was scrubbing floors or digging in the garden.
Oftentimes the monastery was situated in a barren or swampy spot on land that had been given the monks because it was no good, or even worse than no good, dangerously unhealthy.But the monks set to work and drained off the water, tilled the soil, and made the waste places bloom like the rose. Then they raised vegetables for their table, fodder for their horses and cattle and sheep. Everything they ate or used or needed, they raised or made.
But they did not only the rougher hand-work; they did fine hand-work, too. Printing had not been invented at this time; all books had to be written by hand, and the monks were the ones who did this. They copied the old books in Latin and Greek. Sometimes one monk would slowly read the book to be copied, and several other monks at one time would copy what he dictated. In this way a number of copies would be made.
Monk writing a manuscript.
Monk writing a manuscript.
The pages of the books were not made of paper but of calfskin or sheepskin, called vellum, and this vellum was much stronger and lasted much longer than paper.
These old books which the monks wrote were called “manuscripts,” which means “hand-written.” Many of these may now be seen in museums and libraries. Some of these manuscriptshave been beautifully hand-printed with loving care and the initial letters and borders ornamented with designs of flowers and vines and birds and pictures in red and gold and other colors. If the monks hadn’t done this copying, many of the old books would have been lost and unknown to us.
The monks also kept diaries, writing down from day to day and year to year an account of the important things that happened. These old diaries, or chronicles, as they were called, tell us the history of the times. As there were then no newspapers, if these chronicles had not been written we should not know what went on at that time.
The monks were the best educated people of those days, and they taught others—both young and old—the things they themselves knew. The monasteries were also inns for travelers, for any one who came and asked for lodging was received and given food and a place to sleep, whether he had any money to pay or not.
The monks helped the poor and needy. The sick, too, came to the monastery to be treated and taken care of, so that a monastery was often something like a hospital, too. Many people who had received such help or attention made rich gifts to the monasteries, so they became very wealthy, although the monks could own not so much as a spoon for themselves.
So you see the monks were not merely holy men; they were most useful citizens. They were in many ways more nearly everything that Christ would have wished than perhaps any one large group of men has ever been since. They were really “Good for Something.”