Beacon Lights of History, Volume 3 part 1: The Middle Ages

Moreover, these three vows seem to have been called for by the condition of society, and the prevalence of destructive views. Here Basil,—one of the commanding intellects of his day, and as learned and polished as he was pious,—like Jerome after him, proved himself a great legislator and administrator, including in his comprehensive view both Christian principles and the necessities of the times, and adapting his institution to both.

One of the most obvious, flagrant, and universal evils of the day was devotion to money-making in order to purchase sensual pleasures. It pervaded Roman life from the time of Augustus. The vow of poverty, therefore, was a stern, lofty, disdainful protest against the most dangerous and demoralizing evil of the Empire. It hurled scorn, hatred, and defiance on this overwhelming evil, and invoked the aid of Christianity. It was simply the earnest affirmation and belief that money could not buy the higher joys of earth, and might jeopardize the hopes of heaven. It called to mind the greatest examples; it showed that the great teachers of mankind, the sages and prophets of history, had disdained money as the highest good; that riches exposed men to great temptation, and lowered the standard of morality and virtue,—"how hardly shall they who have riches enter into the kingdom of God!" It appealed to the highest form of self-sacrifice; it arrayed itself against a vice which was undermining society. And among truly Christian people this new application of Christ's warnings against the dangers of wealth excited enthusiasm. It was like enlisting in the army of Christ against his greatest enemies. Make any duty clear and imperious to Christian people, and they will generally conform to it. So the world saw one of the most impressive spectacles of all history,—the rich giving up their possessions to follow the example and injunctions of Christ. It was the most signal test of Christian obedience. It prompted Paula, the richest lady of Christian antiquity, to devote the revenues of an entire city, which she owned, to the cause of Christ; and the approbation of Jerome, her friend, was a sufficient recompense.

The vow of Chastity was equally a protest against one of the characteristic vices of the day, as well as a Christian virtue. Luxury and pleasure-seeking lives had relaxed the restraints of home and the virtues of earlier days. The evils of concubinage were shameless and open throughout the empire, which led to a low estimate of female virtue and degraded the sex. The pagan poets held up woman as a subject of scorn and scarcasm. On no subject were the apostles more urgent in their exhortations than to a life of purity. To no greater temptation were the converts to Christianity subjected than the looseness of prevailing sentiments in reference to this vice. It stared everybody in the face. Basil took especial care to guard the monks from this prevailing iniquity, and made chastity a transcendent and fundamental virtue. He aimed to remove the temptation to sin. The monks were enjoined to shun the very presence of women. If they carried the system of non-intercourse too far, and became hard and unsympathetic, it was to avoid the great scandal of the age,—a still greater evil. To the monk was denied even the blessing of the marriage ties. Celibacy became a fundamental law of monachism. It was not to cement a spiritual despotism that Basil forbade marriage, but to attain a greater sanctity,—for a monk was consecrated to what was rightly held the higher life. This law of celibacy was abused, and gradually was extended to all the clergy, secular as well as regular, but not till the clergy were all subordinated to the rule of an absolute Pope. It is the fate of all human institutions to become corrupt; but no institution of the Church has been so fatally perverted as that pertaining to the marriage of the clergy. Founded to promote purity of personal life, it was used to uphold the arms of spiritual despotism. It was the policy of Hildebrand.

The vow of Obedience, again, was made in special reference to the disintegration of society, when laws were feebly enforced and a central power was passing away. The discipline even of armies was relaxed. Mobs were the order of the day, even in imperial cities. Moreover, monks had long been insubordinate; they obeyed no head, except nominally; they were with difficulty ruled in their communities. Therefore obedience was made a cardinal virtue, as essential to the very existence of monastic institutions. I need not here allude to the perversion of this rule,—how it degenerated into a fearful despotism, and was made use of by ambitious popes, and finally by the generals of the Mendicant Friars and the Jesuits. All the rules of Basil were perverted from their original intention; but in his day they were called for.

About a century later the monastic system went through another change or development, when Benedict, a remarkable organizer, instituted on Monte Cassino, near Naples, his celebrated monastery (529 A. D.), which became the model of all the monasteries of the West. He reaffirmed the rules of Basil, but with greater strictness. He gave no new principles to monastic life; but he adapted it to the climate and institutions of the newly founded Gothic kingdoms of Europe. It became less Oriental; it was made more practical; it was invested with new dignity. The most visionary and fanatical of all the institutions of the East was made useful. The monks became industrious. Industry was recognized as a prime necessity even for men who had retired from the world. No longer were the labors of monks confined to the weaving of baskets, but they were extended to the comforts of ordinary life,—to the erection of stately buildings, to useful arts, the systematic cultivation of the land, to the accumulation of wealth,—not for individuals, but for their monasteries. Monastic life became less dreamy, less visionary, but more useful, recognizing the bodily necessities of men. The religious duties of monks were still dreary, monotonous, and gloomy,—long and protracted singing in the choir, incessant vigils, an unnatural silence at the table, solitary walks in the cloister, the absence of social pleasures, confinement to the precincts of their convents; but their convents became bee-hives of industry, and their lands were highly cultivated. The monks were hospitable; they entertained strangers, and gave a shelter to the persecuted and miserable. Their monasteries became sacred retreats, which were respected by those rude warriors who crushed beneath their feet the glories of ancient civilization. Nor for several centuries did the monks in their sacred enclosures give especial scandal. Their lives were spent in labors of a useful kind, alternated and relieved by devotional duties.

Hence they secured the respect and favor of princes and good men, who gave them lands and rich presents of gold and silver vessels. Their convents were unmolested and richly endowed, and these became enormously multiplied in every European country. Gradually they became so rich as to absorb the wealth of nations. Their abbots became great personages, being chosen from the ranks of princes and barons. The original poverty and social insignificance of monachism passed away, and the institution became the most powerful organization in Europe. It then aspired to political influence, and the lord abbots became the peers of princes and the ministers of kings. Their abbey churches, especially, became the wonder and the admiration of the age, both for size and magnificence. The abbey church of Cluny, in Burgundy, was five hundred and thirty feet long, and had stalls for two hundred monks. It had the appointment of one hundred and fifty parish priests. The church of Saint Albans, in England, is said to have been six hundred feet long; and that of Glastonbury, the oldest in England, five hundred and thirty. Peterborough's was over five hundred. The kings of England, both Saxon and Norman, were especial patrons of these religious houses. King Edgar founded forty-seven monasteries and richly endowed them; Henry I. founded one hundred and fifty; and Henry II. as many more. At one time there were seven hundred Benedictine abbeys in England, some of which were enormously rich,– like those of Westminster, St. Albans, Glastonbury, and Bury St. Edmunds,—and their abbots were men of the highest social and political distinction. They sat in Parliament as peers of the realm; they coined money, like feudal barons; they lived in great state and dignity. The abbot of Monte Cassino was duke and prince, and chancellor of the kingdom of the Two Sicilies. This celebrated convent had the patronage of four bishoprics, sixteen hundred and sixty-two churches, and possessed or controlled two hundred and fifty castles, four hundred and forty towns, and three hundred and thirty-six manors. Its revenues exceeded five hundred thousand ducats, so that the lord-abbot was the peer of the greatest secular princes. He was more powerful and wealthy, probably, than any archbishop in Europe. One of the abbots of St. Gall entered Strasburg with one thousand horsemen in his train. Whiting, of Glastonbury, entertained five hundred people of fashion at one time, and had three hundred domestic servants. "My vow of poverty," said another of these lordly abbots,—who generally rode on mules with gilded bridles and with hawks on their wrists,—"has given me ten thousand crowns a year; and my vow of obedience has raised me to the rank of a sovereign prince."

Among the privileges of these abbots was exemption from taxes and tolls; they were judges in the courts; they had the execution of all rents, and the supreme control of the income of the abbey lands. The revenues of Westminster and Glastonbury were equal to half a million of dollars a year in our money, considering the relative value of gold and silver. Glastonbury owned about one thousand oxen, two hundred and fifty cows, and six thousand sheep. Fontaine abbey possessed forty thousand acres of land. The abbot of Augia, in Germany, had a revenue of sixty thousand crowns,– several millions, as money is now measured. At one time the monks, with the other clergy, owned half of the lands of Europe. If a king was to be ransomed, it was they who furnished the money; if costly gifts were to be given to the Pope, it was they who made them. The value of the vessels of gold and silver, the robes and copes of silk and velvet, the chalices, the altar-pieces, and the shrines enriched with jewels, was inestimable. The feasts which the abbots gave were almost regal. At the installation of the abbot of St. Augustine, at Canterbury, there were consumed fifty- eight tuns of beer, eleven tuns of wine, thirty-one oxen, three hundred pigs, two hundred sheep, one thousand geese, one thousand capons, six hundred rabbits, nine thousand eggs, while the guests numbered six thousand people. Of the various orders of the Benedictines there have been thirty-seven thousand monasteries and one hundred and fifty thousand abbots. From the monks, twenty-one thousand have been chosen as bishops and archbishops, and twenty- eight have been elevated to the papal throne.

From these things, and others which may seem too trivial to mention, we infer the great wealth and power of monastic institutions, the most flourishing days of which were from the sixth century to the Crusades, beginning in the eleventh, when more than one hundred thousand monks acknowledged the rule of Saint Benedict. During this period of prosperity, when the vast abbey churches were built, and when abbots were great temporal as well as spiritual magnates, quite on an equality with the proudest feudal barons, we notice a marked decline in the virtues which had extorted the admiration of Europe. The Benedictines retained their original organization, they were bound by the same vows (as individuals, the monks were always poor), they wore the same dress, as they did centuries before, and they did not fail in their duties in the choir,—singing their regular chants from two o'clock in the morning. But discipline was relaxed; the brothers strayed into unseemly places; they indulged in the pleasures of the table; they were sensual in their appearance; they were certainly ignorant, as a body; and they performed more singing than preaching or teaching. They lived for themselves rather than for the people. They however remained hospitable to the last. Their convents were hotels as well as bee-hives; any stranger could remain two nights at a convent without compensation and without being questioned. The brothers dined together at the refectory, according to the rules, on bread, vegetables, and a little meat; although it was noticed that they had a great variety in cooking eggs, which were turned and roasted and beaten up, and hardened and minced and fried and stuffed. It is said that subsequently they drank enormous quantities of beer and wine, and sometimes even to disgraceful excess. Their rules required them to keep silence at their meals; but their humanity got the better of them, and they have been censured for their hilarious and frivolous conversation,—for jests and stories and puns. Bernard accused the monks of degeneracy, of being given to the pleasures of the table, of loving the good things which they professed to scorn,—rare fish, game, and elaborate cookery.

That the monks sadly degenerated in morals and discipline, and even became objects of scandal, is questioned by no respectable historian. No one was more bitter and vehement in his denunciations of this almost universal corruption of monastic life than Saint Bernard himself,—the impersonation of an ideal monk. Hence reforms were attempted; and the Cluniacs and Cistercians and other orders arose, modelled after the original institution on Monte Cassino. These were only branches of the Benedictines. Their vows and habits and duties were the same. It would seem that the prevailing vices of the Benedictines, in their decline, were those which were fostered by great wealth, and consequent idleness and luxury. But at their worst estate the monks, or regular clergy, were no worse than the secular clergy, or parish priests, in their ordinary lives, and were more intelligent,—at least more learned. The ignorance of the secular clergy was notorious and scandalous. They could not even write letters of common salutation; and what little knowledge they had was extolled and exaggerated. It was confined to the acquisition of the Psalter by heart, while a little grammar, writing, and accounts were regarded as extraordinary. He who could write a few homilies, drawn from the Fathers, was a wonder and a prodigy. There was a total absence of classical literature.

But the Benedictines, idle and worldly as they were, guarded what little literature had escaped the ruin of the ancient civilization. They gave the only education the age afforded. There was usually a school attached to every convent, and manual labor was shortened in favor of students. Nor did the monks systematically and deliberately shut the door of knowledge against those inclined to study, for at that time there was no jealousy of learning; there was only indifference to it, or want of appreciation. The age was ignorant, and life was hard, and the struggle for existence occupied the thoughts of all. The time of the monks was consumed in alternate drudgeries and religious devotions. There was such a general intellectual torpor that scholars (and these were very few) were left at liberty to think and write as they pleased on the great questions of theology. There was such a general unanimity of belief, that the popes were not on the look-out for heresy. Nobody thought of attacking their throne. There was no jealousy about the reading of the Scriptures. Every convent had a small library, mostly composed of Lives of the saints, and of devout meditations and homilies; and the Bible was the greatest treasure of all,—the Vulgate of Saint Jerome, which was copied and illuminated by busy hands. In spite of the general ignorance, the monks relieved their dull lives by some attempts at art. This was the age of the most beautiful illuminated manuscripts. There was but little of doctrinal controversy, for the creed of the Church was settled; but pious meditations and the writings of noted saints were studied and accepted,—especially the works of Saint Augustine, who had fixed the thinking of the West for a thousand years. Pagan literature had but little charm until Aristotle was translated by Arabian scholars. The literature of the Church was puerile and extravagant, yet Christian,—consisting chiefly of legends of martyrs and Lives of saints. That literature has no charm to us, and can never be revived, indeed is already forgotten and neglected, as well it may be; but it gave unity to Christian belief, and enthroned the Christian heroes on the highest pedestal of human greatness. In the monasteries some one of the fraternity read aloud these Lives and Meditations, while the brothers worked or dined. There was no discussion, for all thought alike; and all sought to stimulate religious emotions rather than to quicken intellectual activity.

About half the time of the monks, in a well-regulated monastery, was given to singing and devotional exercises and religious improvement, and the other half to labors in the fields, or in painting or musical composition. So far as we know, the monks lived in great harmony, and were obedient to the commands of their superiors. They had a common object to live for, and had few differences in opinion on any subject. They did not enjoy a high life, but it was free from distracting pleasures. They held to great humility, with which spiritual pride was mingled,—not the arrogant pride of the dialectician, but the self-satisfied pride of the devotee. There was no religious hatred, except towards Turks and Saracens. The monk, in his narrowness and ignorance, may be repulsive to an enlightened age: he was not repulsive to his own, for he was not behind it either in his ideas or in his habits of life. In fact, the more repulsive the monk of the dark ages is to this generation, the more venerated he was by bishops and barons seven hundred years ago; which fact leads us to infer that the degenerate monk might be to us most interesting when he was most condemned by the reformers of his day, since he was more humane, genial, and free than his brethren, chained to the rigid discipline of his convent. Even a Friar Tuck is not so repulsive to us as an unsocial, austere, narrow-minded, and ignorant fanatic of the eleventh century.

But the monks were not to remain forever imprisoned in the castles of ignorance and despair. With the opening of the twelfth century light began to dawn upon the human mind. The intellectual monk, long accustomed to devout meditations, began to speculate on those subjects which had occupied his thoughts,—on God and His attributes, on the nature and penalty of sin, on redemption, on the Saviour, on the power of the will to resist evil, and other questions that had agitated the early Fathers of the Church. Then arose such men as Erigena, Roscelin, Berenger, Lanfranc, Anselm, Bernard, and others,—all more or less orthodox, but inquiring and intellectual. It was within the walls of the cloister that the awakening began and the first impulse was given to learning and philosophy. The abbey of Bec, in Normandy, was the most distinguished of new intellectual centres, while Clairvaux and other princely abbeys had inmates as distinguished for meditative habits as for luxury and pride.

It was at this period, when the convents of Europe rejoiced in ample possessions, and their churches rivalled cathedrals in size and magnificence, and their abbots were lords and princes,—the palmy age of monastic institutions, chiefly of the Benedictine order,—that Saint Bernard, the greatest and best representative of Mediaeval monasticism, was born, 1091, at Fontaine, in Burgundy. He belonged to a noble family. His mother was as remarkable as Monica or Nonna. She had six sons and a daughter, whom she early consecrated to the Lord. Bernard was the third son. Like Luther, he was religiously inclined from early youth, and panted for monastic seclusion. At the age of twenty-three he entered the new monastery at Citeaux, which had been founded a few years before by Stephen Harding, an English saint, who revived the rule of Saint Benedict with still greater strictness, and was the founder of the Cistercian order,—a branch of the Benedictines. He entered this gloomy retreat, situated amid marshes and morasses, with no outward attractions like Cluny, but unhealthy and miserably poor,—the dreariest spot, perhaps, in Burgundy; and he entered at the head of thirty young men, of the noble class, among whom were four of his brothers who had been knights, and who presented themselves to the abbot as novices, bent on the severest austerities that human nature could support.

Bernard himself was a beautiful, delicate, refined young man,– tall, with flaxen hair, fair complexion, blue eyes from which shone a superhuman simplicity and purity. His noble birth would have opened to him the highest dignities of the Church, but he sought only to bear the yoke of Christ, and to be nailed to the cross; and he really became a common laborer wrapped in a coarse cowl, digging ditches and planting fields,—for such were the labors of the monks of Citeaux when not performing their religious exercises. But his disposition was as beautiful as his person, and he soon won the admiration of his brother monks, as he had won the affection of the knights of Burgundy. Such was his physical weakness that "nearly everything he took his stomach rejected;" and such was the rigor of his austerities that he destroyed the power of appetite. He could scarcely distinguish oil from wine. He satisfied his hunger with the Bible and quenched his thirst with prayer. In three years he became famous as a saint, and was made Abbot of Clairvaux,—a new Cistercian convent, in a retired valley which had been a nest of robbers.

But his intellect was as remarkable as his piety, and his monastery became not only a model of monastic life to which flocked men from all parts of Europe to study its rules, but the ascetic abbot himself became an oracle on all the questions of the day. So great was his influence that when he died, in 1153, he left behind one hundred and sixty monasteries formed after his model. He became the counsellor of kings and nobles, bishops and popes. He was summoned to attend councils and settle quarrels. His correspondence exceeded that of Jerome or Saint Augustine. He was sought for as bishop in the largest cities of France and Italy. He ruled Europe by the power of learning and sanctity. He entered into all the theological controversies of the day. He was the opponent of Abelard, whose condemnation he secured. He became a great theologian and statesman, as well as churchman. He incited the princes of Europe to a new crusade. His eloquence is said to have been marvellous; even the tones of his voice would melt to pity or excite to rage. With a long neck, like that of Cicero, and a trembling, emaciated frame, he preached with passionate intensity. Nobody could resist his eloquence. He could scarcely stand upright from weakness, yet he could address ten thousand men. He was an outspoken man, and reproved the greatest dignitaries with as much boldness as did Savonarola. He denounced the gluttony of monks, the avarice of popes, and the rapacity of princes. He held heresy in mortal hatred, like the Fathers of the fifth century. His hostility to Abelard was direful, since he looked upon him as undermining Christianity and extinguishing faith in the world. In his defence of orthodoxy he was the peer of Augustine or Athanasius. He absolutely abhorred the Mohammedans as the bitterest foes of Christendom,—the persecutors of pious pilgrims. He wandered over Europe preaching a crusade. He renounced the world, yet was compelled by the unanimous voice of his contemporaries to govern the world. He gave a new impulse to the order of Knights Templars. He was as warlike as he was humble. He would breathe the breath of intense hostility into the souls of crusaders, and then hasten back to the desolate and barren country in which Clairvaux was situated, rebuild his hut of leaves and boughs, and soothe his restless spirit with the study of the Song of Songs. Like his age, and like his institution, he was a great contradiction. The fiercest and most dogmatic of controversialists was the most gentle and loving of saints. His humanity was as marked as his fanaticism, and nothing could weaken it,—not even the rigors of his convent life. He wept at the sorrows of all who sought his sympathy or advice. On the occasion of his brother's death he endeavored to preach a sermon on the Canticles, but broke down as Jerome did at the funeral of Paula. He kept to the last the most vivid recollection of his mother; and every night, before he went to bed, he recited the seven Penitential Psalms for the benefit of her soul.