THE RELIGIOUS ORDERS.

The First Monks.—St. Anthony and his Disciples.—St. Pachomius and St. Athanasius.—St. Eusebius and St. Basilius.—Cenobitism in the East and in the West.—St. Benedict and the Benedictine Code.—Monkish Dress.—St. Columba.—List of the Monasteries in Charlemagne’s Time.—Services rendered by the Monks to Civilisation, Arts, and Letters.—Reform of the Religious Orders in the Twelfth Century.—St. Norbert.—St. Bernard.—St. Dominic.—St. Francis of Assisi.—The Carmelites.—The Bernardines.—The Barnabites.—The Jesuits.

During the early days of the Church, monastic life began in the vast solitudes of the Thebais, in Upper Egypt. It soon extended to Palestine, Syria, Mesopotamia, Asia Minor, and even beyond the limits of the Roman Empire. St. Jerome, just before the Middle Ages, wrote, “We daily receive troops of monks from India, Persia, and Ethiopia.”

The fearful austerities of the first ascetics in the East seem, at first sight, excessive, but they are justified by their results, and may be explained by the state of society at that epoch. A gross sensualism was generally prevalent, and people lived only for pleasure. The slaves, after having accomplished the work necessary for the existence of the free men, further assisted in satiating the disordered appetites of this society, which had exhausted all the refinements of sensuality and luxury.

The old world, absorbed in the worship of material things, had no taste for the culture of the mind, and in order to arouse it from its intellectual torpor, it became necessary to impress the senses and the imagination by excessive austerities. Greedy of novelty and anything emotional, the people flocked to visit those wonderful anchorites, who made a study ofmartyrdom, some shutting themselves up in a den where they could neither stand upright nor lie down; others lying motionless day and night upon a narrow plank, upon the top of a column, exposed to all weathers; all of them refusing meat, drink, and sleep, or only taking just enough to keep body and soul together. These men, who only thought of their body as a target for torture, in order to give themselves up exclusively to penitentiary practices and the contemplation of a future life, attracted general attention. As tender-hearted for others as they were pitiless for themselves, they took an interest in all suffering, they consoled the sorrowful, they prayed for the recovery of the sick at the request of the relatives. Their goodness found them a way to many hearts, and, with the eloquent force of example, they inculcated upon the crowds the vanity of sensual pleasures, they taught them to look to heaven rather than to earth; and they reminded their audience of the immortality of the soul, of its destinies in a better world, and of the duty of earning eternal happiness by the exercise of Christian virtues; in their discourses, as in their lives, they preached the Gospel. They were first listened to, then contemplated with curiosity, and afterwards believed in. People soon came to admire them, and from that moment imitating them was a natural consequence—in a few years the deserts were peopled with thousands of their disciples, who gave themselves up entirely to prayer and to manual labour.

St. Anthony was the first of these Fathers of the desert who consented to tear himself away from the austere charms of this solitude, and come with a retinue of monks to reside in Alexandria, for the purpose of combating the Arians, and inducing them to recognise the decisions of the Council of Nice. After having won the admiration and respect of his adversaries by his brilliant arguments against the philosophers of the school of Alexandria, after holding his ground even against emperors, he retired to the desert, upon Mount Colzin, with his disciples Macarius and Amathas, and only left it to inspect the monasteries which he had founded, and which contained more than fifteen thousand cenobites.

St. Athanasius, one of the most illustrious pupils of St. Anthony, continued to spread, by his discourses and his writings, the doctrines of his master. He went to reside at Rome in 340, with several eminent anchorites, and he then preached by example as well as by precept, and became the indefatigable promoter of monastic institutions in Western Europe.

At the same period, St. Pachomius, who had founded in the Thebais themonastery of Tabennæ, compiled the first complete regulations that have been handed down to us for the use of the cenobites, in which manual labour as well as prayer was prescribed. Several celebrated doctors and fathers of the Church, St. Gregory of Nazianzus, St. John Chrysostom, St. Jerome (Fig. 237), and St. Cyril, practised asceticism.

Fig. 236*—St. Anthony, a statuette in stone of the Third Century, belonging to a gentleman of Cambrai. This engraving, never before published, shows us what the holy doctors thought of the great anchorite of Egypt. He is treading underfoot the devil, who is represented by the unclean animal in the flames. The closed book signifies that, without any study, solely by hearing them read, he learnt the Holy Scriptures by heart; and St. Jerome testifies that he expounded them with wisdom. The triangulartauis the Egyptian shape of the cross; the bell signifies the power of driving away the evil spirit.

St. Eusebius, Bishop of Vercelli, was the first Western prelate who associated monastic and clerical life. His clergy passed their existence in fasting, praying, reading, and labour. St. Ambrosius says, “These clergy only changed their condition for a bishopric or martyrdom.” At about thesame period (352–360) St. Martin founded, in the neighbourhood of Poitiers, the most ancient of the monasteries in Gaul (Monasterium Locociagense), and twelve years afterwards, the famous Abbey of Marmoutiers, which was so rich a nursery of holy prelates and learned doctors. The sermons of St. Basilius, in the kingdom of Pontus, his numerous monastic foundations, the rules which he laid down, and which were forthwith adopted by all the Eastern monks, bear witness to the strength of the Christian movement in Asia towards the close of the fourth century.

Fig. 237.—St. Jerome in the desert: the saint is holding in his hand a stone with which he is about to beat his beast.—From a picture of the School of Andrea del Sarto (Sixteenth Century), in the Louvre.

The great monastery of Tabennæ, which at that time served as the type for all conventual foundations, comprised a vast network of small houses, built one after the other, and united under the supreme control of one head. The religious administration of the monastery was, moreover, entrusted to a prior or abbot, who was assisted by a deputy, while the steward who was entrusted with the secular duties—the daily expenditure, and the incidents connected with material life—also had an assistant, who took his place when he was absent. The monastery was thus divided intohouses, each managed by a prior; each house contained a certain number of chambers, or cells, and each cell was always shared by three monks. It required three or four houses to constitute thetribe, or monastery.

The great monasteries had from thirty to forty houses, with about fortymonks in each, making in all seven or eight hundred persons. At the death of St. Pachomius, the order of Tabennæ numbered seven thousand monks. Palladius says that catechumens preparing for baptism, children, youths, and men of all ages were received there. All were obliged to study the New Testament and the Psalter; three times a day wholesome instruction was given to those who required it, and three times a week the prior of each house assembled the monks who were placed under his control to hold conversation with them, called acatechizing, or argument, after which they discussed amongst each other the questions that had been dealt with. The teaching of the monks was not limited to this, it extended from beyond the walls of the monastery to the faithful in the neighbouring district. Once on Saturdays, and twice on Sundays, the prior explained to them the mysteries of the faith, to say nothing of the catechisms and lessons, of which the chief or general of the order himself took charge every week. St. Pachomius and St. Orsevius did not confine themselves to the mere development of the moral principles taken from Holy Scripture; they entered upon an exegesis of them, giving their audience the right of questioning, replying, and discussing their statements, and afterwards answering all objections so made by writing. The study of the Fathers of the Church was added to that of the holy books. The prior sometimes authorised plain monks, who were learned or eloquent, as was a certain Theodorus, to defend the truths of the Christian religion against the profane and to establish a series of public lectures.

The monastic discipline set up by St. Basilius was almost identical with that of St. Pachomius; his monks discussed nearly every topic amongst themselves. He merely instructed them not to try and override each other in these debating tournaments, urging them to avoid ostentation, empty words, and the inspirations of vanity; he even directed them as to the intonation of voice, and the gestures most becoming. In the monasteries founded by St. Basilius, many children were taken as pupils, and sent back into the world when they were old enough to select a profession and make their own way in life.

The convents for women are contemporaneous with the monasteries. The virgins devoted to the Church, the young widows, and the deaconesses, led a kind of life calculated to prepare them for habits of reclusion, of contemplation, and asceticism. The sisters of St. Anthony and St. Pachomiuswere placed by their venerable brothers at the head of two communities of virgins, in Egypt and in Palestine. In Pontus and Cappadocia St. Basilius founded several convents, and their number increased so largely, that in the beginning of the fifth century, one single convent (cœnobium) contained two hundred and fifty virgins.

In Europe the convents for virgins increased no less rapidly. Two religious houses for young women were opened at Rome in the days of St. Anthony, and, no doubt, at his instigation. Eusebius, bishop of Vercelli, founded an establishment of the same kind close to his church; but the most remarkable of all these convents was that founded at Milan by St. Ambrose, a religious asylum in which his sister, Marcellina, and her faithful companion, Candida, took refuge.

Towards the end of the fourth century, a Roman lady, St. Paula, built three convents and a monastery in Africa, the management of them being undertaken by St. Jerome. St. Augustine also founded two religious houses in his diocese of Hippona, one for cenobites, the other for virgins, imposing on them the regulations of St. Anthony and St. Pachomius, as to life in common and poverty. “There were at this time,” says this illustrious father, “monks all over the world.” They were calledmonks, from the Greek μóνος (alone), because of their solitary life; andcenobites, from the Greek words κοινóς and βíος (life in common). They abstained from meat and wine, living upon bread and fruits, and being only allowed to eat cooked vegetables on the Sunday. They were obliged to prepare their own food, and to make their own clothing. Upon Sunday they took the communion with the general congregation, and went back after the service into their monastery.

Fig. 238.—History of St. Benedict.—On the left are the monks of a neighbouring monastery, who have come to seduce him from his hermitage in order to place him at their head; but the austerity of his rule soon dissatisfies them, and they resolve to rid themselves of him. On the right the monks are offering him a cup of poison, but, on his making the sign of the cross on the vase, it is shattered to pieces.—From a Fresco by Spinello d’Arezzo (1390) in the Church of San Miniato, near Florence.

Before the monkish order had been in existence a century, in the East as in the West, the monastic regulations underwent considerable relaxation. The monks having become part of the clerical hierarchy (by force of circumstances, for there was often a deficiency of clergy), took precedence of the latter; their abbots, calledarchimandritesin the Eastern Church, were raised to the priesthood and to the episcopate; they even took part in councils, though these functions and duties interfered with their cenobitic life. This manifest infraction of the primitive discipline, while it lowered the moral position of the monks, rather increased than otherwise their social influence, and gave them greater weight in the world. Their piety, too, was only temporarily distracted from its original purpose, for men of notelike St. Honoratus, St. Maximus, St. Hilary, St. Dalmatius, the two brothers Romanus and Lupicius, maintained the true tradition of monkish life; and the famous abbeys of Lérins and Mount Jura were built. The ascetics of Constantinople, too, were spoken of in high terms, as keeping up a perpetual psalmody (401–405). In Palestine, not far from Jerusalem, a multitude ofhermits, under the guidance of St. Euthymius, practised the most rigorous abstinence.

In Africa, St. Fulgentius, exiled by the Arians, was the promoter of regular observances—that is, he preached strict obedience to monastic rule (501–523); while in the West there were founded, in the midst of the Romagnol Alps, in the towns of Arles and St. Maurice d’Agaune, three model monasteries, the first superintendents of which were St. Hilary, St. Cæsarius, and St. Severinus; and its principal benefactors, Theodoric, King of the Goths, Theodoric the Great, and Sigismund, King of Burgundy (504–522). In the monastery of Kildare, governed by St. Bridget, and in the monastery founded by St. Colomba, in Ireland, which was afterwards so justly called theIsle of Saints, the teaching of Christian art, of the liturgy, of ecclesiastical lore and profane literature, was unequalled in its perfection, and the fame of it reached even to Gaul.

Fig. 239.—History of St. Benedict.—As his disciples were attempting to put a stone in place for the construction of their chapel, the devil placed himself upon it, and the united efforts of several persons failed to dislodge him; but St. Benedict having blessed the stone, the devil took flight.—From a Fresco by Spinello d’Arezzo (1390), in the Church of San Miniato, near Florence.

Such was the general position of cenobitism when St. Benedict (Fig. 238), the future patriarch of the monks of the West, the supreme legislator of the monastic order, abandoned his humble cell at Subiaco (528) to found the immense abbey of Monte-Cassino (Fig. 239), which was the glory of the age. The Benedictine rule, the result of profound physiological and philosophical studies, a work of moral science, of wisdom, and of piety, divided the monks’ time between prayer and manual labour, to be succeeded by the cultivation or exercise of the intellect whenever the glory of God, the interests of the monastery, and the education of the people might require it. St. Benedict soon had under his control an army of monks who spread throughout the whole Christian world the rules of their illustrious chief. Amongst them were St. Maurus and Cassiodorus, the former minister of Theodoric the Great: one of them founded the monastery of St. Maur-sur-Loire, in France; the other, that of Vivieri, in Calabria. Cassiodorus took great pains to collect books of the Old and the New Testament, with their commentaries. He went to great expense in collecting all the writings of the Greek and Latin Fathers, of the Jewish historians as well as of those of the Church, and the principal works on geography, grammar, and rhetoric, and even the best treatises on medicine, so that the monks attached to the infirmary might be fully capable of tending the sick. The monastery of Vivieri contained one of the richest libraries of the period. We find in the collection of the Institutions of Cassiodorus the following remarkable homagepaid to the calligraphist monks, who were the greatest men of letters in that day: “I confess, my brethren, that of all your physical labours, that of copying books has always been the avocation most to my taste; the more so, as by this exercise of the mind upon the Holy Scriptures, you convey to those who will read what you have written a kind of oral instruction. You preach with the hand, converting the fingers into organs of speech, announcing silently to men a theme of salvation; it is as it were fighting the evil one with pen and ink. For every word written by the antiquary, the demon receives a severewound. At rest in his seat, as he copies his books, the recluse travels through many lands without quitting his room, and the work of his hands has its influence in places where he has never been.”

Those whom Cassiodorus callsantiquarieswere simply scribes—that is to say, clerks or monks who deciphered the old manuscripts and transcribed the books. In the monastery of St. Martin, at Tours, calligraphy was the sole art practised. St. Fulgentius, a prelate distinguished both for his learning and eloquence; St. Gregory, Bishop of Agrigentum, no less celebrated; Mamertus Claudius, who was a regular walking library, themselves copied manuscripts which they gave to the Church. Calligraphy and illuminating were also favourite occupations with many nuns, amongst whom may be cited St. Melanie the younger, St. Cesarie, St. Harnilde, and St. Renilde, all Frenchwomen (Fig. 240), who, to use the language of the Christian annalist, wrote with elegance, rapidity, and correctness.

From the time that the monks were raised to the clerical rank, after first undergoing an examination, the clerks and monks studied together just as they had before prayed and lived in common, a monastery being a complete school of ecclesiastical research and administration. At Monte-Cassino, at St. Ferréol, at St. Calais, at Tours, and in many other flourishing abbeys in the sixth century, the monks, and especially the novices, were instructed in religious and secular subjects as well as in the duties of the priesthood.

The monastic dress was not in every case the same, for, though always simple and coarse, it varied in shape and appearance with the statutes of each order, and according to the necessities of climate. The cenobites in Egypt wore thelebitusor thecolobium, theperaormelote, and thecuculla. Thelebituswas a linen garment with long sleeves open at the hands, and sometimes up to the wrist. Thepera, a jacket of goatskin, is spoken of in one of the epistles of St. Paul, who alludes to it as especially worn by holy men and prophets, when they were driven by threats of persecution into the desert. Thecucullacovered the head, and came half-way over the shoulders. St. Benedict, who borrowed it from the early monks, had it so much lengthened as to envelop the whole body; but as in this shape it would have embarrassed the monks in their manual labour, he made it a garment only to be worn at ceremonials, and replaced it for ordinary wear by the scapulary (scapulum), which covered the head and the back.The Western monks also wore a short mantle—a sort of cape, called amaforte, according to Sulpicius Severus. The Greeks and Orientals adopted the pallium, which led to their being designatedagmina palliata(an army in robes), when they assembled in large numbers. Every Greek who devoted himself to the cenobitic life was compelled to wear a black pallium.

Fig. 240.—St. Radegonde, Wife of King Clotaire (Sixth Century), receiving the religious garb from the hands of St. Médard, Bishop of Noyon.—“Histoire et Cronicque de Clotaire” (16mo, Paris, Jean Mesnage, 1513).

Pope Gregory the Great, who had been a Benedictine, was most ardent in the establishment of monasteries, of which he himself founded a large number. He was the chief promoter of two important missions which took place in 585 and 596; the first in Gaul, consisting of missionaries from Ireland, headed by St. Columba and St. Gall; the second in Great Britain, with monks from the Abbey of St. Andrew, headed by another monk, St. Augustine. This latter, who converted the Anglians and their king, Ethelbert, was the first Archbishop of Canterbury. Colomba founded the Abbey of Luxeuil, upon the southern side of the Vosgian forests; whileGall, his disciple, much younger than himself, penetrated into the country of the Helvetians, who were as deeply sunk in barbarism as the Anglians, where he founded a monastery which afterwards became famous under the name of its founder, and which owed its celebrity to the variety of subjects which were taught there.

St. Colomba was the first to draw up a complete set of monastic rules, which were generally adopted in France, just as the rules of St. Isidore, Bishop of Seville, and those of St. Augustine of Ireland, were followed in the British Isles. These three codes, very similar in their general principles, varied from each other in many particulars, for they were applicable to monks living in different countries. In the communities which adhered to the rules of St. Colomba, as in all the great Benedictine monasteries, prayer, mental culture, and manual labour were the invariable occupations of cloister life (Fig. 241). The rules drawn up by St. Colomba and his imitators, St. Isidore and St. Augustine, thus remained in force down to the eighth century, in spite of the new system of education and religious teaching inaugurated so zealously throughout Gaul by the Anglo-Saxon monk, St. Boniface; in spite, too, of the industrial and artistic, rather than scientific and contemplative, turn which St. Eloi gave to the studies of the monks in his abbey of St. Martin at Limoges, and in the other monasteries founded or reorganized by him. That illustrious Bishop of Noyon, Master of the Mint to King Clotaire II., afterwards treasurer, goldsmith, and minister to Dagobert I. (568–659), was at great pains to make the cultivation of art an important feature in monastic life.

It would be incorrect to suppose that the interior of a monastery in the seventh century presented the same appearance of asceticism and penance that were afterwards characteristic of certain communities subject to the most austere regulations. In the country districts the monasteries possessed vast domains which yielded wheat, rye, oats, hay, vegetables, and fruits; and on which were produced wine, beer, cider, and hydromel; they were tilled by numerous labourers in bands of tens and hundreds, who while at work sang hymns and prayers—a veritable religious militia, grouped beneath the banner of faith in the populous centres and in the neighbourhood of the towns. These monasteries were generally schools in which the monks gave gratuitous education, vast workshops in which they followed and taught every branch of trade—carving in wood, ivory, bronze, silver,and gold; painting on vellum, glass, wood, and metal; weaving tapestry, embroidering church ornaments and vestments; damask work, and enamelling of shrines, tabernacles, diptychs and triptychs, church furniture, and book-covers; the cutting of precious stones to prepare them for setting; the making of arms and instruments of music, illuminating, copying of manuscripts, &c. The whole life of a monk or nun was passed in the exercise of one description of art, or perhaps even in executing a single work which required miraculous patience.

Fig. 241.—The Abbey of St. Riquier, near Abbeville, founded in 799 by St. Angilbert, who gave it its triangular shape in honour of the Trinity.—From a Drawing in a very old Manuscript engraved in the Dissertation of Paul Petau, “De Nithardo” (4to, 1612).

As the regular associations became permanently settled in the towns, theybegan to construct for their use dormitories, cells, workshops, granaries or sheds for their provisions, and built handsome churches with long cloisters and vast chapter-rooms. Each community made a point of having within its own boundary a library, a study, a lecture-room, schools, a cemetery, some shady walks for meditation, as well as a fruit and kitchen garden, the cultivation of which was a healthy and agreeable recreation. In this vast aggregation of monastic buildings and appurtenances (Fig. 244), we have a holy city in the heart of the secular town, a retreat for the peaceful, the devout, and the abstinent, amidst the troubles and vanities of the world.

Fig. 242.—Abbatial Ring and Cross (front and back) of St. Waudru, patroness of Mons, who died in 670. The cross is in silver, with gold relief, and studded with precious stones.—Relics preserved in the Church of St. Waudru, at Mons.

Fig. 243.—The Offering of a Child to an Abbot.—From a Miniature in a Manuscript published at the Close of the Thirteenth Century (Burgundian Library, Brussels).

Fig. 244.—Priory of the Benedictines at Canterbury (Twelfth Century), plan in relief drawn by Edwin, a monk, about the year 1530.—A, belfry; B, fountain; C, cemetery; D, reservoir, with conduit pipes; E, Canterbury Cathedral; F, vestry; G, crypt; H, chapter-house; I, prior’s house; J, infirmary and annexes; K, kitchen-garden, with well, pumps, and water-pipes; L, cloister; M, cellar; N, dormitory; O, refectory; P, kitchens; Q, parlour; R, house for the guests and the poor; S, water-closets; T, baths; U, granary; V, bakehouse and brewery; X, the chief entrance; Y, Z, fortified wall of the abbey and the city.—From an Engraving in vol. i. of the “Architecture Monastique,” by M. Albert Lenoir.

The endowment of each monastery was generally made up of the property belonging to the monks who had fixed their abode there. If the novice was an adult, he was obliged to distribute all his goods to the poor, or to make a solemn grant of them to the abbey, before he could be admitted to the minor orders. If he was a child whose parents devoted him to the service of God (Fig. 243), the parents either made no gift to the community which received the young novice, or they ceded the income of the lands and the property by deed of transfer to the monastery. Enriched by these successive donations, the monasteries, especially those which had acquired a wide renown for learning or piety, acquired still more wealth through the largesses of princes, great nobles, and bishops, through the economical management of the abbots, and the annual produce of the agricultural and commercial labour of the monks. To the various arts and trades which were at first carried on by the monks with a view to do honour to thecause of religion, those of the West afterwards added others of a more lucrative and worldly character. In the sixth century we find that they spun andwove their own silk; that they possessed numerous receipts for preparing liqueurs and drugs; that they practised medicine, surgery, and the veterinary art. Pepin the Short, suffering from incurable dropsy, went first to the monastery of St. Martin at Tours, and afterwards to the abbey of St. Denis, that “the servants of God” might give him relief by means of their skill as well as by their prayers.

The Church was very sorely tried during the reign of Charles Martel, and monastic institutions were also exposed to many difficulties. In order to win back the secular clergy to the habits of communal life, the wisest of the bishops grouped around them the clergy who had remained faithful to their cause, and laid down a code of regulations for their guidance.

Charlemagne, in the Capitularies, added the following excellent amendments to the rules of monastic institutions:—“Young men destined to monastic life must first pass their novitiate, and then remain in the monastery to learn the rules, before they are sent forth to fulfil their duties outside. Those who give up the world in order to avoid the king’s service shall be compelled to serve God in good faith, or else to resume their former occupation. All clerks shall be required to make their choice between clerical life in conformity with the canons, and monastic life in conformity with the regulations. The abbeys shall not receive too large a number of serfs, so that the villages may not be depopulated; no community shall have more members than can be properly looked after by one superior. Young women shall not take the veil until they are of an age to choose their own career in life. Laymen are to be disqualified for governing the interior of a monastery, nor shall they fill the post of archdeacon.” Charlemagne and Louis the Good-natured became members of the royal monastery of St. Denis under the title of “conscript brothers” (fratres conscripti)—an academical rather than a religious title, but one which nevertheless admitted them to certain liturgical privileges. The Emperor Lothair, in imitation of his father and ancestor, also got himself invested with this title by the monastery of St. Martin-lez-Metz.

The Norman invasion, the feudal wars, the encroachment of the great vassals, and even of the kings, upon ecclesiastical domains and rights, impoverished the monastic orders, whose lands remained untilled for want of hands, and their schoolrooms often empty for want of teachers and scholars. While the Normans burnt and pillaged the monasteries, fortified thoughmany of them were, in the country districts, the urban abbeys, nearly always protected by the diocesan power, preserved some remnants of their former splendour.

Fig. 245.—Foundation of the secular abbeys of Mons, Maubeuge, and Nivelles. The canonesses meeting at Nivelles, where Walcand, Bishop of Liége (810 to 832 or 836), promises to give them a code of rules.—From the “Chroniques de Hainaut,” Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century, in the Burgundian Library, Brussels.

There existed between the principal abbeys of the same order a spirit of unity, a brotherly zeal to render help and service, and a reciprocal interchange of learned and skilful clerks, who went from one community to another to give it the benefit of their learning or manual ability. It was in this way that the conventual churches and buildings were erected and kept in repair; that they became rich in paintings, statues, and mosaics; that the treasury was filled, and the library founded and maintained.Rupert, a monk of the Abbey of St. Gall (Switzerland), before his elevation to the bishopric of Metz, a learned linguist, poet, and man of letters; Tutilo, his contemporary at St. Gall, a carver, painter, and sculptor; Regino, Abbot of Prüm, an excellent musician, author of a Treatise on Harmony, are of themselves a proof that arts and letters were hidden in the cloisters. At this epoch of barbarism and ignorance, the Church organized what was good, strengthened the shattered foundations of the social edifice, established new monastic institutions and reformed the old, grouped around her the irresolute, lawless, and undisciplined minds (Fig. 245), selling the principles of order and peace in opposition to those of violence and disorder engendered by war.

Fig. 246.—Seal of the Abbey of St. Denis, in the Twelfth Century, in the National Archives, Paris.—The saint is clad in his episcopal garb. It is, no doubt, as the apostle of Gaul that the motto gives him the title of archbishop.

Never was the monastic order more numerous or better organized, and at no period, perhaps, were works of mental intelligence cultivated more ardently or successfully in certain privileged monasteries, than at this time.

Canterbury, Monte-Cassino, St. Maur, St. Denis (Fig. 246), St. Martin of Tours, St. Gall, Remiremont, Aix-la-Chapelle, Cologne, Trèves, St. Trudon, St. Arnulph, St. Clement, and St. Martin of Metz, the Messinà and the Gorza basilica, were cited as so many foci of light whence radiated in every direction the good doctrines set forth in certain remarkable works of art, as well as in learned literary compositions.

Fig. 247.—The Clergy, with the Cross and the Holy Images, going in procession before the Emperor.—From a Miniature taken from a Manuscript of the Fourth Century (Library of M. Ambroise Firmin-Didot).

In the libraries, which composed the principal wealth of the religious houses, thecartulariesof the diocese were preserved with great care. The charters of institution, and the patrimonial titles of the chief abbeys, are both the proof and the reward for the services rendered to civilisation by the monastic establishments: one abbey was given a domain on the condition that it put the waste lands into cultivation; another received its lands with the understanding that it opened asylums and places of hospitality for the poor and sick, for pilgrims and for strangers; while a host of documentstaken from the cartularies relate to the instruction of the clerks, the education of the novices, the splendour of public worship, and the duty of the ecclesiastical vassals when the suzerain raised thebanand thearrière-ban, &c., together with all the details of monastic life which are connected with the various social movements of each territorial district (Fig. 247).

Outside the abbeys there lived a population whose manual labour was necessary to their inmates, and profitable to the material interests of the house. Women, even when doing penance, and under religious vows, were strictly forbidden to enter the monasteries. The aged mother of an eminent monk, John of Gorze, unwilling to separate herself altogether from her son, took up her abode just outside the walls of his abbey, where she spent her time in making cloaks for the monks.

It was around the abbatial close, perhaps beneath the shelter of a second walled enclosure, not so strong nor so high as the first, but still capable of resisting the attacks of the marauders which were so frequent in those days of feudal disorder, that were built the shops, the stalls, and the sheds which served for the sale of the crops, the cattle, and the agricultural and other produce of the abbatial domain (Fig. 248). On the anniversary of the festival of the saint to whom the monastery was dedicated there was a fair—sometimes several—which attracted large crowds.

St. Romuald, the founder of the Camaldolite order; St. Mayeul, Abbot of Cluny, and the reformer of the Abbey of St. Denis; St. Dunstan, the resolute Archbishop of Canterbury, who reformed the clergy of the British Isles; Adalbert, son of a Duke of Lorraine and nephew of Hugh Capet, who was elected Bishop of Metz, after having been monk at Gorze; St. Cadroé, descended from the Kings of Scotland, Abbot of Vaussey and contemporary of Adalbert, with whom he was associated in the reformation of the abbeys in the north-east of France, were among the leading figures who, in the tenth century, represented the reformed monachism. Unfortunately, their wholesome influence could not make itself everywhere felt; it was a period of disorder, of pitiless and bitter wars, of usurpations of every kind. Upon every side misery reigned supreme; the serfs attached to the domains of the canonical churches and to the monasteries left them to find some more certain means of livelihood. The Cathedral of Metz was in this way deprived of eight hundred serfs, who were heads offamilies. The only independent voices raised on behalf of these victims of oppression came from the great abbeys, such as Stavelo, St. Arnulph,Cluny, &c., to which monarchs and popes, under the pretext of dedicating churches (Fig. 249) which had been recently built or restored, repaired in secret to consult, with many members of the higher clergy, as to the political affairs of Christendom.

Fig. 248.—North View of the Abbey of St. Germain-des-Prés, as it still existed in the Seventeenth Century.—A, outer gates; B, houses in the enclosure; C, church square; D, church; E, Lady chapel; F, sacristy; G, small cloister; H, great cloister; I, library; K, dormitory; L, refectory; M, kitchen; N, dormitory of the Superior; O, offices; P, inner courtyard; Q, houses for the wine-presses; R, bakehouse; S, stables; T, garden; V, infirmary; X, infirmary garden; Y, lavatory; Z, dormitory for the guests. 1, abbey palace; 2, abbey garden; 3, courtyard; 4, outer courtyard; 5, officers’ apartments; 6, stables; 7, barns; 8, houses in the abbatial enclosure; 9, bailiff’s house; 10, outer gates; 11, bailiwick prisons.—Fac-simile of an Engraving in the “Histoire de St. Germain-des-Prés,” by Dom Bouillart, in folio: 1724.

Fig. 249.—Dedication of the Church belonging to the Monastery of St. Martin-des-Champs, Paris, destroyed by the Normans and rebuilt by King Henry I. The artist has represented—1st, the ancient Church of St. Samson dedicated to St. Martin; 2nd, the counts and barons who signed the charter for the re-establishment of the monastery; 3rd, the archbishops and bishops who were present at the dedication of the new church.—Fac-simile of an Engraving from Don Meurier’s work, “Historia Monasterii regalis Sancti Martini” (4to, Paris, 1636).

Fig. 250.—The Small Cloister of the Chartreuse at Pavia, with the cupola of the church in the background (close of the Fourteenth Century).

The two Councils of Rheims and of Mayence (1049), devoted exclusivelyto disciplinarian reforms, are characteristic of the state of monastic institutions at this period, just as the journey of Pope Leo IX. through France and Germany indicates the exact condition, the resources, the manners, and the habits of the religious houses. The illustrious pontiff, when visiting these houses, made them splendid presents, promised them important privileges, and instituted minute inquiries into the studies pursued within their walls.At the Abbey of Gorze, in 1149, he even went so far as to note with his own hand the nocturn responses in the “Office de Saint-Gorgon.”

Fig. 251.—Saint-Jean des Vignes, an Abbey of Regular Canons at Soissons (1076), the entrance-gate guarded by a barbican and bastilles.—From an Engraving in vol. i. of “Architecture Monastique,” by M. Albert Lenoir.

At about the same period, William, Abbot of St. Bénigne de Dijon, re-established in several dioceses the monastic rules and studies; Sigebert, a monk in the monastery of Gemblours, came to Metz to teach the Holy Scriptures, philosophy, and the dead languages; St. William of Hirsange reformed the cloister discipline in Germany; St. Robert, Abbot of Molême, founded the Cistercian order; St. Gualbert, the order of Vallombrosa, in the Apennines; St. Bruno, the Carthusian order, which he established both in the neighbourhood of Grenoble and in Calabria.

It is impossible to depict the profound disorder which reigned in the religious houses during the eleventh century, owing to the social disturbance which had followed the terrors of the year 1000. There were but a few solitary monasteries, remote from the troubles and vanities of the world, which still adhered to the rules (Fig. 251), and the monastic schools were nearlyeverywhere closed, and the notes of song had ceased to be heard in the churches, when, in the year 1095, the inspired voice of a monk, Peter the Hermit, summoned the Christian peoples to the Holy War. At this voice, which seemed to come down from heaven, the whole world was stirred up to deeds of energy; the young were inspired with a current of warlike and adventurous ideas which converged upon one single object—the deliverance of the holy places.

The difficulty of managing both the spiritual and temporal affairs of a monastery or cathedral church had led to the appointment of a sort of steward or lay administrator, termed anavowee, who was paid out of the dues which he received from the vassals of the community. He generally levied on each household a loaf of bread, a denier, a measure of oats, wheat, or barley, if the land grew cereals; a measure of wine, beer, or cider if the produce of the domains was grapes, hops, or apples. The avowee was arbiter in all disputed cases, and himself fixed the remuneration, before and after giving his decision, which the two parties to the suit had to pay him. He presided over judicial duels, and ordeal by boiling water or fire. He had a right to one head of stock at all cattle fairs, and he also received a draught or a saddle-horse, according as the district bred the one kind or the other. The avowee of a cathedral or a monastery always held a distinguished position in society; barons, dukes, and counts did not disdain to accept these functions—which they often abused, it must be added, by keeping for their own use the sums which they had received for the monastery. The usurpations of every kind which the avowees committed had been flagrant enough during the investiture dispute, but they increased enormously during the Crusades, owing to the absence of so many bishops, archdeacons, abbots, and priors, who had started for Palestine after loading their domains with mortgages, and even raising money upon the sacred vessels of their church.

The Crusades, notwithstanding, had the unquestionable advantage of sifting the clergy, and of removing from the cloisters a large number of clerks who were less fitted for study and seclusion than for the hardships of the battle-field. The monks who remained in Europe shut up in their cloisters were nearly all acting in obedience to some special aptitude, and they formed that band of artists, architects, painters, sculptors, and musicians, calligraphists, savants, translators, philosophers, rhetoricians, and preachers, which shed so much lustre upon the monasteries duringthe twelfth and thirteenth centuries. By their direct action, as well as by their example, ecclesiastical architecture made vast progress, and the wonderful wealth of decoration which accompanied it, suddenly burst forth in the erection of those holy-chapels which seem like shrines of chiselled stone, in which the relics brought back from the Crusades were deposited (Fig. 252). It was under these influences that most of the great abbeys (Fig. 253) were restored, that painting upon glass attained its full perfection, that the Roman tongue reached the solitude of the cloister, and the beautiful literature of the ancient classics, which had for centuries been relegated to the dust of the monastic libraries, once more saw the light, and lent the aid of all its charms to combat the invasion of the vulgar idiom which the inhabitants of the communes had everywhere substituted for the Latin language.

Fig. 252.—Reliquary of the Holy Thorn, preserved in the Convent of the Augustine Sisters at Arras.—Carved brasswork of the Thirteenth Century.

Fig. 253.—Refectory in the Priory of St. Martin des Champs, Paris (now part of the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers), the work of Pierre de Montereau, architect to St. Louis (Thirteenth Century).—Archæological Restoration by M. Alfred Lenoir.

Fig. 254.—St. Bernard taking possession, with the Cistercian Monks, of the Abbey of Clairvaux. At the foot of the engraving is inscribed: “St. Bernard, Chaplain of the Virgin Mary, was descended from the house of the Kings of Burgundy.” He was, as a matter of fact, related through his mother, Aleth (diminutive for Elizabeth), to the first house of the Dukes of Burgundy.—“Chroniques abrégées de Bourgogne,” a Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century, in the Library of M. Ambroise Firmin-Didot.

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