A Short History of Monks and Monasteries written by Alfred Wesley Wishart

A >> Alfred Wesley Wishart >> A Short History of Monks and Monasteries

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21

Another interesting feature in the history of their educational
enterprises is the entrance of the Mendicants into England, where they
acted a leading part in the educational and political history of the
country. The Dominicans settled first at Oxford, in 1221. The
Franciscans, after a short stay at Canterbury, went to Oxford in 1224.
The story of how the two Gray friars journeyed from Canterbury to Oxford
runs as follows: "These two forerunners of a famous brotherhood, being
not far from Oxford, lost their way and came to a farmhouse of the
Benedictines. It was nearly night and raining. They gently knocked, and
asked admittance for God's sake. The porter gazed on their patched robes
and beggarly aspect and supposed them to be mimics or despised persons.
The prior, pleased with the tidings, invited them in. But instead of
sportively performing, these two friars insisted, with sedate
countenances, that they were men of God. Whereat the Benedictines in
jealousy, and displeased to be cheated out of their expected fun, kicked
and buffeted the two poor monks and turned them out of doors. One young
monk pitied them and smuggled them into a hay-loft where we trust they
slept soundly and safe from the cold and rain." The two friars finally
reached Oxford and were well received by their Dominican brothers. Such
was the simple beginning of a brilliant career that was profoundly to
affect the course of English history. Both at Cambridge and Oxford the
monastic orders exercised a remarkable influence. Traces of their labors
and power may still be seen in the names of the colleges, and in the
religious portions of the university discipline. They built fine
edifices and manned their schools with the best teachers, so that they
became great rivals of the regular colleges which did not have the funds
necessary to compete with these wealthy beggars. Another cause of their
rapid progress was the exodus of students from Paris to England. During
the quarrel at Paris, Henry III. of England offered many inducements to
the students, who left for England in large numbers. Many of them were
prejudiced in favor of the friars, and they naturally drifted to the
monastic college. The secular clergy charged the friars with inducing
the college students to enter the monasteries or to turn begging monks.
The pope, the king, and the parliament became involved in the struggle,
which grew more bitter as the years passed. After a while Wyclif
appeared, and when he began his mighty attack upon the friars the joy
with which the professors viewed the struggle can be appreciated.

_The Decline of the Mendicants_

The Mendicant friars won their fame by faithful and earnest labors. Men
admired them because they identified themselves with the lowest of
mankind and heroically devoted themselves to the poor and sick. These
"sturdy beggars," as Francis called his companions, were contrasted with
the lazy, rich, and, too often, licentious monks of the other orders.
Everywhere the friars were received with veneration and joy. The people
sought burial in their rags, believing that, clothed in the garments of
these holy beggars, they would enter paradise more speedily.

Instead of seeking the seclusion of the convent to save his own soul,
the friar displayed remarkable zeal trying to save mankind. He became
the arbiter in the quarrels of princes, the prime mover in treaties
between nations, and the indispensable counselor in political
complications. The pope employed him as his authorized agent in the most
difficult matters touching the welfare of the church. His influence upon
the common people is thus described by the historian Green: "The theory
of government wrought out in the cell and lecture-room was carried over
the length and breadth of the land by the Mendicant brother begging his
way from town to town, chatting with the farmer or housewife at the
cottage door and setting up his portable pulpit in village green or
market-place. The rudest countryman learned the tale of a king's
oppression or a patriot's hope as he listened to the rambling,
passionate, humorous discourse of the beggar friar."

By these methods the Mendicants were enabled to render most efficient
service to their patrons at Rome in their efforts to establish their
temporal power. They were, in fact, before the Reformation, just what
the Jesuits afterwards became, "the very soul of the hierarchy." Yes,
they were immensely, prodigiously successful. The popes hastened to do
them honor. Because the friars were such enthusiastic supporters of the
church, the popes poured gold and privileges into their capacious
coffers. Thankful peasants threw in their mites and the admiring noble
bestowed his estates.

The secular clergy, with envy and chagrin, awoke to the alarming fact
that the beggars had won the hearts of the people; their hatred was
increased by the fact that when the Roman pontiffs enriched these
indefatigable toilers and valiant foes of heresy, they did so at the
expense of the bishops and clergy, which, perhaps, was robbing Paul to
pay Peter.

Baluzii says: "No religious order had the distribution of so many and
such ample indulgences as the Franciscans. In place of fixed revenues,
lucrative indulgences were placed in their hands." So ill-judged was the
distribution of these favors that discipline was overturned. Many
churchmen, feeling that their rights were being encroached upon,
complained bitterly, and resolved on retaliation. It is just here that a
potent cause of the Mendicant's fall is to be found. He helped to dig
his own grave.

Having elevated monasticism to the zenith of its power, the Mendicant
orders, like all the other monastic brotherhoods, entered upon their
shameful decline. The unexampled prosperity, so inconsistent with the
original intentions of the founders of the orders, was attended by
corruptions and excesses. The decrees of councils, the denunciations of
popes and high ecclesiastical dignitaries, the satires of literature,
the testimony of chroniclers and the formation of reformatory orders,
constitute a body of irrefragable evidence proving that the lowest level
of sensuality, superstition and ignorance had been reached. The monks
and friars lost whatever vigor and piety they ever possessed.

It is again evident that a monk cannot serve God and mammon. Success
ruins him. Wealth and popular favor change his character. The people
slowly realize the fact that the fat and lazy medieval monk is not dead,
after all, but has simply changed his name to that of Begging Friar. As
Allen neatly observes: "Their gray gown and knotted cord wrapped a
spiritual pride and capacity of bigotry, fully equal to the rest."

Here, then, are the "sturdy beggars" of Francis, dwelling in palatial
convents, arrogant and proud, trampling their ideal into the dust. Thus
it came to pass in accordance with the principle stated at the beginning
of this chapter, that when the ideal became a cloak to cover up sham,
decay had set in, and ruin, even though delayed for years, was sure to
come. The poor, sad-faced, honest, faithful friar everybody praised,
loved and reverenced. The insolent, contemptuous, rich monk all men
loathed. So a change of character in the friar transformed the songs of
praise into shouts of condemnation. Those golden rays from the morning
sun of the Reformation are ascending toward the highest heaven, and
daybreak is near.

VI

_THE SOCIETY OF JESUS_

In many respects it would be perfectly proper to consider the Mendicant
orders as the last stage in the evolution of the monastic institution.
Although the Jesuitical system rests upon the three vows of poverty,
celibacy and obedience, yet the ascetic principle is reduced to a
minimum in that society. Father Thomas E. Sherman, the son of the famous
general, and a Jesuit of distinguished ability, has declared: "We are
not, as some seem to think, a semi-military band of men, like the
Templars of the Middle Ages. We are not a monastic order, seeking
happiness in lonely withdrawal from our fellows. Our enemies within and
without the church would like to make us monks, for then we would be
comparatively useless, since that is not our end or aim.... We are
regulars in the army of Christ; that is, men vowed to poverty, chastity
and obedience; we are a collegiate body with the right to teach granted
by the Catholic church[G]."

[Footnote G: Appendix, Note G.]

The early religious orders were based upon the idea of retirement from
the world for the purpose of acquiring holiness. But as has already been
shown, the constant tendency of the religious communities was toward
participation in the world's affairs. This tendency became very marked
among the friars, who traveled from place to place, and occupied
important university positions, and it reaches its culmination in the
Society of Jesus. Retirement among the Jesuits is employed merely as a
preparation for active life. Constant intercourse with society was
provided for in the constitution of the order. Bishop John J. Keane, a
Roman Catholic authority, says: "The clerks regular, instituted
principally since the sixteenth century, were neither monks nor friars,
but priests living in common and busied with the work of the ministry.
The Society of Jesus is one of the orders of clerks regular."

Other differences between the monastic communities and the Jesuits are
to be observed. The Jesuit discards the monastic gown, and is decidedly
averse to the old monastic asceticism, with its rigorous and painful
treatment of the body. While the older religious societies were
essentially democratic in spirit and government, the monks sharing in
the control of the monastic property and participating in the election
of superiors, the Jesuitical system is intensely monarchical, a
despotism pure and simple. In the older orders, the welfare of the
individual was jealously guarded and his sanctification was sought.
Among the Jesuits the individual is nothing, the corporate body
everything. Admission to the monastic orders was encouraged and easily
obtained. The novitiate of the Jesuits is long and difficult. Access to
the highest grades of the order is granted only to those who have served
the society many weary years.

[Illustration: IGNATIUS DE LOYOLA

AFTER GREATBACH'S ENGRAVING FROM THE WIERZ PRINT

BENTON: ALBERT BRANDT, PUBLISHER, 1900]

But in spite of such variations from the old monastic type, the Society
of Jesus would doubtless never have appeared, had not the way for its
existence been paved by previous monastic societies. Its aims and its
methods were the natural sequence of monastic history. They were merely
a development of past experiences, for the objects of the society were
practically the objects of the Mendicants; the vows were the same with a
change of emphasis. The abandonment of austerities as a means of
salvation or spiritual power was the natural fruit of past experiments
that had proved the uselessness of asceticism merely for the sake of
acquiring a spirit of self-denial. The extirpation of heresy undertaken
by Ignatius had already been attempted by the friars, while the
education of the young had long been carried on with considerable
success by the Benedictine and Dominican monks. The spirit of its
founder, however, gave the Society of Jesus a unique character, and
monasticism now passed out from the cell forever. The Jesuit may fairly
be regarded as a monk, unlike any of his predecessors but nevertheless
the legitimate fruit of centuries of monastic experience.

_Ignatius de Loyola, 1491-1556 A.D._

Inigo Lopez de Recalde, or Loyola, as he is commonly known, was born at
Guipuzcoa, in Spain, in 1491. He was educated as a page in the court of
Ferdinand the Catholic. He afterwards became a soldier and led a very
wild life until his twenty-ninth year. During the siege of Pamplona, in
1521, he was severely wounded, and while convalescing he was given lives
of Christ and of the saints to read. His perusal of these stories of
spiritual combat inspired a determination to imitate the glorious
achievements of the saints. For a while the thirst for military renown
and an attraction toward a lady of the court, restrained his spiritual
impulses. But overcoming these obstacles, he resolutely entered upon his
new career.

Sometime after he visited the sanctuary of Montserrat, where he hung his
shield and sword upon the altar of the Virgin Mary and gave his oath of
fealty to the service of God. A tablet, erected by the abbot of the
monastery in commemoration of this event, reads as follows: "Here,
blessed Ignatius of Loyola, with many prayers and tears, devoted himself
to God and the Virgin. Here, as with spiritual arms, he fortified
himself in sackcloth, and spent the vigil of the night. Hence he went
forth to found the Society of Jesus, in the year MDXXII."

After spending ten months in Manresa, Loyola went on a pilgrimage to the
Holy Land, intending to remain there, but he was sent home by the
Eastern monks, and reached Italy in 1524.

Now began his struggle for an education. At the age of thirty-three he
took his seat on the school-bench at Barcelona. In 1526 he entered the
University at Alcala. He was here looked upon as a dangerous innovator,
and was imprisoned six weeks, by order of the Inquisition, for preaching
without authority, since he was not in holy orders. After his release he
attended the University of Salamanca, but he finally took his degree of
Master of Arts at the University of Paris, in 1533.

During this period he was several times imprisoned as a dangerous
fanatic, but each time he succeeded in securing a verdict in his favor.
The hostility to Ignatius and his work forms a strange parallel to the
bitter antagonism which his society has always encountered.

Nine men, among whom was Francis Xavier, afterwards widely renowned, had
been chosen with great care, as the companions of Ignatius. He called
them together in July, 1534, and on August 15th of the same year he
selected six of them and bade them follow him to the Church of the
Blessed Virgin, at Montmartre, in Paris. There and then they bound
themselves to renounce all their goods, and to make a voyage to
Jerusalem, in order to convert the Eastern infidels; if that scheme
proved impracticable, they agreed to offer themselves to the sovereign
pontiff for any service he might require of them. War prevented the
journey to the Holy Land, and so, after passing through a variety of
experiences, Ignatius and his companions met at Rome, to secure the
sanction of Pope Paul III. for the new society. After a year and a half
of deliberation and discussion a favorable decision was reached, which
was, no doubt, partly facilitated by the growth of the Reformation. The
new society was chartered on September 27, 1540, for the "defence and
advance of the faith."

Ignatius was elected as the general of the order and entered upon his
duties, April 17, 1541. He soon prepared a constitution which was not
adopted until after his death, and then in an amended form. Loyola ended
his remarkable and stormy career, July 31, 1556.

_Constitution and Polity of the Order_

The _Institutum_, which contains the governing laws of the society, is a
complex document consisting of papal bulls and decrees, a list of the
privileges which have been granted to the order, ten chapters of rules,
decrees of the general congregations, the plan of studies (_ratio
studiorum_), and three ascetic writings, of which the Spiritual
Exercises of Ignatius constitute the chief part.

The society is distributed into six grades: novices, scholastics,
temporal coadjutors, spiritual coadjutors, professed of the three vows,
and professed of the four vows.

The professed form only a small percentage of the entire body, and
constitute a sort of religious aristocracy, from which the officers of
the society are selected. Only the professed of the fourth vow, who add
to the three vows a pledge of unconditional obedience to the pope,
possess the full rights of membership. This final grade cannot be
reached until the age of forty-five, so that if the candidate enters the
order at the earliest age permissible, fourteen, he has been on
probation thirty-one years when he reaches the final grade.

The society is ruled by a general, to whom unconditional obedience is
required. The provinces, into which the order is divided, are governed
by provincials, who must report monthly to the general. The heads of all
houses and colleges must report weekly to their provincials. An
elaborate system of checks and espionage is employed to ensure the
perfect working of this complex ecclesiastical machinery. Fraud or
evasion is carefully guarded against, and every possible means is
employed to enable the general to keep himself fully informed concerning
the minutest details of the society's affairs.

_The Vow of Obedience_

That which has imparted a peculiar character to the Jesuit and
contributed more than any other force to his success, is the insistence
upon unquestioning submission to the will of the superior. This emphasis
on the vow of obedience deserves, therefore, special consideration.
Loyola, in his "Spiritual Exercises," commanded the novice to preserve
his freedom of mind, but it is difficult for the fairest critic to
conceive of such a possibility in the light of Loyola's rule of
obedience, which reads: "I ought not to be my own, but His who created
me, and his too by whose means God governs me, yielding myself to be
moulded in his hands like so much wax.... I ought to be like a corpse,
which has neither will nor understanding, or like a small crucifix,
which is turned about at the will of him who holds it, or like a staff
in the hands of an old man, who uses it as may best assist or
please him."

As an example of the kind of obedience demanded of the Jesuit, Loyola
cited the obedience of Abraham, who, when he believed that Jehovah
commanded him to commit the crime of infanticide, was ready to obey. The
thirteenth of the rules appended to the Spiritual Exercises says: "If
the Church shall have defined that to be black which to our eyes appears
white, we ought to pronounce the thing in question black."

Loyola is reported as having said to his secretary that "in those who
offer themselves he looked less to purely natural goodness than to
firmness of character and ability for business." But that he did not
mean _independent_ firmness of character is clearly seen in the obvious
attempt of the order to destroy that noble and true independence which
is the crowning glory of a lofty character. The discipline is
marvelously contrived to "scoop the will" out of the individual. Count
Paul von Hoensbroech, who recently seceded from the society, has set
forth his reasons for so doing in two articles which appeared in the
"Preussische Jahrbuecher." A most interesting discussion of these
articles, in the "New World," for December, 1894, places the opinions of
the Count at our disposal. It is quite evident that he is no passionate,
blind foe of the society. His tone is temperate and his praises
cordially given. While recognizing the genius shown in the machinery of
the society and the nobility of the real aims of the Jesuitical
discipline, and while protesting against the unfounded charges of
impurity, and other gross calumnies against the order, Count Paul
nevertheless maintains that it "rests on so unworthy a depreciation of
individuality, and so exaggerated an apprehension of the virtue of
obedience, as to render it unfit for its higher ends." The uniform of
the Jesuit is not an external garb, but such freedom is insignificant in
the light of the "veritable strait-jacket," which is placed upon the
inward man. The unformed and pliable novice, usually between the ages of
sixteen and twenty, is subjected to "a skillful, energetic and
unremitting assault upon personal independence." Every device that a
shrewd and powerful intellect could conceive of is employed to break up
the personal will. "The Jesuit scheme prescribes the gait, the way to
hold the hands, to incline the head, to direct the eyes, to hold and
move the person."

Every novice must go through the "Spiritual Exercises" in complete
solitude, twice in his life. They occupy thirty days. The "Account of
the Conscience" is of the very essence of Jesuitism. The ordinary
confession, familiar to every Catholic, is as nothing compared with this
marvelous inquiry into the secrets of the human heart and mind. Every
fault, sin, virtue, wish, design, act and thought,--good, bad or
indifferent,--must be disclosed, and this revelation of the inner life
may be used against him who makes it, "for the good of the order."
Thus, after fifteen years of such ingenious and detailed discipline, the
young man's intellectual and moral faculties are moulded into Jesuitical
forms. He is no longer his own. He is a pliable and obedient, even
though it may be a virtuous and brilliant, tool of a spiritual
master-mechanic who will use him according to his own purposes, in the
interest of the society.

The Jesuits have signally failed to convince the world that the type of
character produced by their system is worthy of admiration. The
"sacrifice of the intellect"--a familiar watchword of the Jesuit--is far
too high a price to pay for whatever benefits the discipline may confer.
It is contrary to human nature, and hence to the divine intention, to
keep a human soul in a state of subordination to another human will. As
Von Hoensbroech says of the society: "Who gave it a right to break down
that most precious possession of the individual being, which God gave,
and which man has no authority to take away?"

It is true that no human organization has so magnificently brought to
perfection a unity of purpose and oneness of will. It is also true that
a spirit of defiance toward human authority is often accompanied by a
disobedience of divine law. But the remedy for the abuses of human
freedom is neither in the annihilation of the will itself, nor in its
mere subjection to some other will irrespective of its moral character.
Carlyle may have been too vehement in some of his censures of Jesuitism,
but he certainly exposed the fallaciousness of Loyola's views concerning
the value of mere obedience, at the same time justly rebuking the too
ardent admirers of the perverted principle: "I hear much also of
'obedience,' how that and kindred virtues are prescribed and exemplified
by Jesuitism; the truth of which, and the merit of which, far be it from
me to deny.... Obedience is good and indispensable: but if it be
obedience to what is wrong and false, good heavens, there is no name for
such a depth of human cowardice and calamity, spurned everlastingly by
the gods. Loyalty? Will you be loyal to Beelzebub? Will you 'make a
covenant with Death and Hell'? I will not be loyal to Beelzebub; I will
become a nomadic Choctaw rather, ... anything and everything is
venial to that."

_The Casuistry of the Jesuits_

It is often asserted, even by authoritative writers, that a Jesuit is
bound by his vows to commit either venial or mortal sin at the command
of his superior; and that the maxim, "The end justifies the means," has
not only been the principle upon which the society has prosecuted its
work but is also explicitly taught in the rules of the order. There is
nothing in the constitution of the society to justify these two serious
charges, which are not to be regarded as malicious calumnies, however,
because the slovenly Latin in one of the rules on obedience has misled
such competent scholars as John Addington Symonds and the historian
Ranke. Furthermore, judging from the doctrines of the society as set
forth by many of their theologians and the political conduct of its
representatives, the conclusion seems inevitable that while the society
may not teach in its rules that its members are bound to obedience even
to the point of sin, yet practically many of its leaders have so held
and its emissaries have rendered that kind of obedience.

Bishop Keane admits that one of the causes for the decline and overthrow
of the society was its marked tendency toward lax moral teaching. There
can be but little doubt that the Jesuits have ever been indulgent toward
many forms of sin and even crime, when committed under certain
circumstances and for the good of the order or "the greater glory
of God."

To enable the reader to form some sort of an independent judgment on
this question, it is necessary to say a few words on the subject of
casuistry and the doctrine of probabilism.

Casuistry is the application of general moral rules to given cases,
especially to doubtful ones. The medieval churchmen were much given to
inventing fanciful moral distinctions and to prescribing rules to govern
supposable problems of conscience. They were not willing to trust the
individual conscience or to encourage personal responsibility. The
individual was taught to lean his whole weight on his spiritual adviser,
in other words, to make the conscience of the church his own. As a
result there grew up a confused mass of precepts to guide the perplexed
conscience. The Jesuits carried this system to its farthest extreme. As
Charles C. Starbuck says: "They have heaped possibility upon possibility
in their endeavors to make out how far there can be subjective innocence
in objective error, until they have, in more than one fundamental point,
hopelessly confused their own perceptions of both[H]."

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21