Chapter 22

Fig. 255.—The Great Beguin Convent at Ghent, called the Convent of St. Elizabeth, founded in the Twelfth Century, and which now occupies the same site as in 1234, when the Countess Jane gave a code of rules to the community.—General View taken from the “Ghent Churches,” by Baron Kervyn de Volkaersbeke, reproducing the Engraving of P. J. Goetghebuer.

Contemporaneously with the foundation in Palestine of the order of the Templars—a hospitaller and military order,which had no connection with the monastic orders, and which for a long time devoted all its energies to defending the holy places by prayer and force of arms—St. Norbert, the reformer of the regular canons of the St. Augustineorder, founded the Premonstrants in Picardy; Stephen of Muret, a contemplative cenobite of Limoges, founded the order of Grandmont in his province; another Frenchman, Aimeric Malefaye, Patriarch of Antioch, being alarmed at the relaxation of discipline in the monasteries of Asia Minor, introduced some useful reforms into the establishment upon Mount Carmel; while Stephen Harding, third abbot of the Cistercians, an active propagator of the rules which Robert de Molême drew up under the title of “Charte de Charité,” entrusted to his pupil, St. Bernard, the destinies of the new communities which sprang from this glorious cradle. It was in the middle of the twelfth century that there appeared upon the scene one of the brightest lights of the Church, namely, St. Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux (Fig. 254), which he founded, and which was calledthe thirddaughter of the Cistercians. He was an admirable orator, a savant of the first rank, a brilliant writer, and an eminent statesman; he had under his control all the interests and secrets of Christendom and of the sovereign papacy, and he never used them for purposes of worldly ambition. He sent forth vast armies of Crusaders to the East,but he adhered to his character of monk and apostle, by devoting his energies to combating the Oriental heretics by verbal arguments; to preventing schisms; to appeasing the scholastic quarrels, in which the famous Abelard was one of the disputants; to aiding with his counsels the popes and the monarchs; and to pouring forth, from diocese to diocese, from council to council, and from synod to synod, that fervid and powerful eloquence which won him all hearts. The death of the illustrious abbot of Clairvaux, in 1153, was a terrible blow to the Church, and an irreparable loss for monastic institutions; for there was no one to take his place or to continue his work of reformation in the monasteries of the Benedictine order.

Fig. 256.—A Beguin.—From an Engraving in the “Histoire de l’Origine des Béguines Belges,” by Hallman.

Amongst the contemporary monks, who were founders or reformers of abbeys, we need only mention the Danish Archbishop Eckel, Felix of Valois, John of Matha, the Englishman Gilbert of Sempringham, the Liége priest Lambert Begh or Lebègue, who created the Beguin convents (Figs. 255 and 256), of which there are so many in the Netherlands, and which were piousretreats where the Beguins lived in common without taking the vows. But the eminent reputation of these austere personages sinks into comparative insignificance before the touching legend of Heloisa, the unfortunate wife of Abelard, who quitted the convent of Argenteuil, near Paris, to immure herself in “the Paraclete,” a house which she had founded in Champagne, to await and receive there the mortal remains of her beloved lord.

Fig. 257.—Carved Ivory Chaplet of Beads and Girdle of an Abbess (Sixteenth Century). Collection of M. Achille Jubinal.

Following her example, many women of equal endowments sought inmental labour and in devotional exercises an aliment for their moral activity; and, when the great St. Dominic commenced his apostleship (1170–1221), he found them ready to receive his teaching. He accordingly created, under the St. Augustine rule, in unison with the preaching brothers, afterwards called Dominicans (Fig. 258), a congregation of preaching sisters known by the same title, namely, Dominicaines.

Fig. 258.—The most famous Members of the Dominican Order.—1. Hugh de St. Cher, Cardinal of St. Sabine, the most learned theologian of his time, who died March 19, 1263. 2. St. Antoninus, Archbishop of Florence, 1389–1459. 3. John Dominicus (the blessed), Cardinal of Ragusa, 1360–1419. 4. Pope Innocent V., born in Savoy, died June 22, 1276. 5. St. Dominic, founder of the Order of Preachers (1170–1221). 6. Pope St. Benedict XI., born at Treviso (1240–1304).—From a Fresco of the Crucifixion, by Fra Angelico, in the Convent of St. Mark at Florence (Fifteenth Century).—From a copy belonging to M. H. Delaborde.

The vulgar tongue was absolutely prohibited in the Dominican houses, Latin alone being used for conversation. The principal European languages were, however, taught for preaching purposes: including the southern idioms, familiar to St. Dominic and St. Raymond, whose eloquence had so deep an effect in Languedoc and Provence, as well as in a part of Spain (1175–1275); and the northern idioms of the Sclaves and the Tartars, which a preaching brother of Breslau, St. Hyacinthus (1183–1257), used to some purpose in asuccessful mission that ended in the establishment of two monasteries, at Cracow and at Kiew. In these still barbarous regions, St. Hedwige, the wife of a duke of Poland, who died in 1243, founded at Trebnitz a convent of the Cistercian order, and at about the same period a queen of Castille created one at Valladolid (Fig. 259). At this epoch, also, the Sisterhood of St. Clare, founded in 1218 by St. Clare, at the suggestion of St. Francis of Assisi, failed in its attempts to extend the order beyond Italy.

Fig. 259.—Maria de Molina, Queen of Castille (1284–1321), handing to the Cistercian Nuns the Charter of Foundation for their convent.—Bas-relief from her Tomb at Valladolid.—From an Engraving in the “Iconografia Española” of M. Carderera.

Fig. 260.—St. Thomas in a Council of Prelates and Doctors held at Anagni in 1256, and presided over by Pope Alexander IV., defending the attack made upon the monastic orders by the University of Paris, and successfully refuting the assertions of William of St. Amour. The saint, of whom the back only is seen, is in the foreground, with St. Bonaventura at his right. Near the Pope are seated the Cardinals Hugh de Saint-Cher and Jean des Ursins, and next to them the Bishop of Messina, the famous Albert the Great, the heads of orders, the deputies of King Louis IX., &c.—From a Painting in the Louvre, by Benozzo Gozzoli (Fourteenth Century), termed the “Triumph of St. Thomas of Aquinas.”

The poor and docile religious militia organized by St. Francis of Assisi under the name of Minors or Franciscans (1208), at that time set the world an edifying example of Christian humility and self-denial. The chief characteristic of the Franciscans was their complete renunciation of all worldly goods. This mendicant order increased so rapidly that their saintly founder was able to gather round him, in his monastery of Assisi, five thousand delegates from religious houses which had been built in nine years from the founding of the order. There were occasionally some unfortunate quarrels between the secular clergy and the monastic orders. One of the mostnotorious was that which broke out between the University of Paris and the mendicant orders. The university was in the habit of suspending its lectures when it had any dispute with the government. The Dominicans and the Franciscans having refused to submit to this practice, their priests were deprived of their professorial chairs, and all their monks excluded from the university. A doctor, William of St. Amour, published a violent diatribe against the mendicant orders. The quarrel lasted a long time, and Popes Innocent IV. and Alexander IV. supported the cause of the monks in several bulls issued upon this subject (Fig. 260). The university, in the end, consented to reopen its doors to them, but only on the condition that they should always occupy the lowest rank, and in the public disputations not urge their views until the other doctors had had their say. It may be imagined how this petty restriction was put up with by these humble monks, when we remember that among those whom the doctors treated with so much contumely were such men as Roger Bauer, Duns Scotus, and St. Bonaventura among the Franciscans; and Albert the Great, Vincent of Beauvais, and St. Thomas of Aquinas among the Dominicans. It was the last-mentioned of these who defended the mendicant orders from the attacks of William of St. Amour.

Towards the close of the thirteenth century, and during two-thirds of the fourteenth, many reforms took place in the monastic orders, especially in that of the minor brothers (Fig. 261), who changed their name with each change of rules. The new orders, however, obtained but a slight celebrity, and lasted only a short time, with the exception of that of Mercy, for the ransom of the captives—an eminently charitable work, instituted by St. Nolasque, a Languedoc crusader, who died in 1256. We must not, however, forget to mention St. Bridget, the inspired Scandinavian (1302–1372), who, during a journey to Jerusalem, conceived the idea of founding the order of St. Saviour, which she established in Sweden; nor Gerhard Groot, surnamed the Great (1340–1384), founder, in Holland, of the Brethren of the Common Life, who devoted their time to the teaching of the poor, and whose chief occupation was to copy the books of the Fathers and of other ecclesiastical writers.

Fig. 261.—St. Anthony of Padua, a Franciscan Friar, anxious to demonstrate to a heretic, who asked him to perform a miracle, the truth of the Holy Sacrament of the Altar, commands a mule to adore the Eucharist. The mule, though ravenously hungry, refuses the oats that his master is sifting, and kneels down at the bidding of the saint.—Miniature from the “Heures” of Anne of Brittany (Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century), National Library, Paris.

The disorder prevalent in that century extended unfortunately to the Church; the priests—notably the monks and the regular canons—gradually laid on one side the spirit of holy meditation, the habits of prayer, seclusion,and pious works. Young men were admitted into the abbeys without having gone through the period of novitiate; the monks were not compelledto be resident, and many members of a chapter or of a congregation were never or rarely present at the services. An increase of the penalties for breach of discipline failed to suppress these abuses, and in some churches and communities, those monks who attended the services were provided with counters, each of which, when given up in the chapel, entitled the holder to a small sum of money. Leave of absence was also granted quarterly and half-yearly, on condition that the rest of the year should be passed in residence. Different abbeys formed mutual communities for prayer and good works, which bound them closely together; while, at the end of the thirteenth century, several diocesan chapters had drawn up new constitutional codes, which were to be read each year, and adopted for guidance; but the external troubles were always reacting upon the internal quiet of the religious houses. The abuses which had crept into many of them, in reference to the distribution of the property belonging to the monks in each monastery, also added fresh elements of discord; for the laymen often retained possession of these portions and diminished by so much the resources of the community, which none the less continued to shelter the needy, to feed the hungry, and to bestow alms.

Whilst Battista Spagnuolo, of Mantua, General of the Carmelite Order, and one of the most celebrated Latin poets of the fifteenth century, vainly endeavoured to reform his ill-disciplined monks, St. Bernardine of Sienna (1380–1446), more fortunate if not more gifted, set a practical example by joining the order of St. Francis, with the intention of introducing the needed reforms. He founded three hundred houses of the Brethren of the Stricter Observance, which were urgently needed at a period when Europe was being devastated by three scourges—the plague, famine, and the sword. At about the same epoch, St. Colette of Corbie succeeded, by the exercise of an angelic sweetness, in correcting the abuses which had found their way into the convent of the St. Clare and many other female congregations, more recently formed under the Franciscan rules; St. Francis, of Romagna, instituted the Collatine order (1425), and St. Jeanne de Valois, daughter of Louis XI. (1464–1505), founded the community of the Sisterhood of the Annunciation, at Bourges, where her husband, the Duke of Orleans, had banished her, previous to repudiating the marriage. This virtuous princess was guided by the counsels of the Calabrian, St. Francis of Paula, the celebrated founder of the order of the Minimi (1416–1507), who, whensummoned to France by Louis XI., and resident in Touraine under the eye of that most suspicious and mistrustful of monarchs, had so far won his confidence as to induce the king to prepare for death like a Christian.

The Barnabites, and other religious institutions of more or less importance, which had principally in view the conversion of heretics by preaching, date from the close of the fifteenth century, and the origin of many of them was due to the spirit of morality and philanthropy then in vogue. Thus the first house of the Penitents, founded at Paris in 1496 by a Gray Friar under the name of Tisseran, afterwards became celebrated for its wholesome example amid the dissolute morals of the sixteenth century.

Fig. 262.—St. Theresa, the Reformer of the Carmelites, who died in 1582.—From a Portrait of the period engraved in the “Iconografia Española” of M. Carderera.

Fig. 263.—The Great Martyrdom of Nangasaki (Sept. 10, 1622), in which twenty-two missionaries and native Christians were burnt to death, and thirty others, including several women and children, beheaded, in presence of a vast crowd.—From a Japanese water-colour Drawing of the period, preserved in the Gésu Convent at Rome.—Pope Pius IX. commemorated this event by the beatification of two hundred and five martyrs, which was decreed at Rome on the 7th of July, 1867.

A great literary event, though only indirectly connected with the history of the monastic orders, nevertheless enables us to form an accurate judgment as to the intellectual character of the religious houses during the last thirty-five years of the fifteenth century, and the first years of the sixteenth: we refer to the invention of printing. Whatever may have been the causes that induced these houses to encourage the extension of printing, the action of eachcommunity is made manifest by its achievements in that vast laboratory which typographical art had founded, in the stead of a few cells and studies where the human hand had been wearily transcribing manuscript after manuscript.

In an obscure monastery at Subiaco, near Rome, two printers from Mayence, Sweynheym and Pannartz, guests of the monks, published the first edition of Lactantius, followed by several other valuable works of ecclesiastical authors (1465–1467); in the monastery of St. Eusebius, within the walls of Rome, George Laver, of Würzburg, printed many publications, about 1470. Several clerks brought up in the episcopal schools of Metz, Liége, Mayence, and Tuscany—Adam Rot, Paul Leenen, Ulric Zell, and Jacob Caroli—superintended in person printing-offices at Rome, Cologne, and Florence, which were worthy rivals of those which were being established in every direction by ordinary traders. Colard Mansion, a clerk belonging to a community at Bruges, who was specially entrusted with the copying of manuscripts (1414–1473) conceived the idea of substituting for the tedious process of the pen and the engraving pencil the rapidity of movable types and screw printing-presses. The Brethren of the Common Life, his colleagues, who were settled at Rhingau, near Mayence, at Val St. Marie, Nuremberg, at Cologne, and at Rostock, imitated the example of Colard Mansion, and from mere calligraphists became master-printers (1474–1479). Two theological doctors of the Sorbonne, William Fichet and Jehan de la Pierre, also induced three skilful German workmen, Ulric Gering, Martin Crantz, and Michael Friburger, to come to Paris, where they provided them with a place to set up their presses and to establish a workshop (1470). This was the origin of printing in Paris. Two years later, William Caxton obtained leave to print in England, beneath the roof of Westminster Abbey; while in Switzerland, a canon of Munster (in Argovia), Hélias Hélye (1472, 1473), had some small presses at work. Soon after this, the Dominicans, the Carthusians, and the Carmelites established large printing workshops at Pisa, Parma, Genoa, and Metz (1476–1482); the Franciscans, surnamedFrères Conférenciers, who had a settlement near Gaude, in Holland, also opened a printing-office; and lastly, such celebrated orders as those of Cluny and Cîteaux, branches of the Benedictines, sent for workmen to their houses in Burgundy, at Clervaux, in Champagne, and Montserrat in Catalonia, to print the principal liturgical books, which were termed the books of common prayer.

The members of the Order of Jesus, founded in Paris by the Spanish nobleman St. Ignatius Loyola, on his return from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land (1534), from this period devoted themselves closely to the work of social regeneration—an undertaking which, looked at in all its different phases, seemed as if it could only be brought about by means of religious reform. While St. Francis Xavier, the friend and companion of St. Ignatius, made use of the influence of the Order of Jesus to convert the idolatrous peoples in the Indian Ocean (Fig. 263), the Jesuit clerks, a learned and highly intellectual body, in a short time obtained a hold over the whole world, forming one vast army which answered as one man to the commands of the Holy See, and whose representatives were everywhere to be met with, in the professorial chairs, in the schools, in the affairs of State, and more especially in the various domains of literature, science, and art. Thus the sixteenth century, during which Luther and Calvin made such an onslaught upon the Catholic Church and the monastic orders, gave birth to a new religious order, which, though the most recent, was the most powerful and invincible of them all. Luther, who had worn the cowl in the monastery of the Augustines at Erfurt, and Calvin, who had been canon in the chapter of Noyon, urged the Huguenots to make away with the monasteries; but their number only seemed to increase whenever one of them was destroyed by the sacrilegious hands of the heretics.

Fig. 264.—Seal of the Monastery of St. Louis of Poissy, belonging to the Order of Preaching Brothers of the St. Dominic rule.—St. Louis, with a halo round his head, is covering with the folds of his cloak the people who are imploring him for protection.

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