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

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It was Dunstan's chief aim to subjugate the Anglo-Saxon church to the
power of Rome, and to correct existing abuses by compelling the clergy
and the monks to obey the rule of celibacy. He was a fervent believer in
the efficacy of the Benedictine vows, and in the value of clerical
celibacy as a remedy for clerical licentiousness. Naturally, Protestant
writers, who hold that papal supremacy never was a blessing in any
country or in any age, and who think that clerical celibacy has always
been a fruitful source of crime and sin, condemn the reforms of Dunstan
in the most unqualified terms. A statement of a few of the many and
perplexing facts may assist us to form a fairly just judgment of the
man and his work.

The principle of sacerdotal celibacy appeared early in the history of
Christianity, and for many centuries it was the subject of sharp
contention. Roman Catholics themselves have been divided upon it. In
every Christian country, from the Apostolic period onward, there were
priests and teachers who opposed the imposition of this rule upon the
clergy, and, on the other hand, there were those who practiced and
advocated celibacy as the indispensable guarantee of spiritual power
and purity.

What the rule of celibacy was at this period, in England, seems
uncertain. Lingard maintains that marriage was always permitted to the
clergy in minor orders, who were employed in various subordinate
positions, but that those in higher orders, whose office it was to
minister at the altar and to offer the sacrifice, were expressly bound
to a life of the strictest continence. During the invasion of the Danes,
when confusion reigned, many priests in the higher orders had not only
forsaken their vows of chastity, but had plunged into frightful
immoralities; and married clerks of inferior orders were raised to the
priesthood to fill the ranks depleted by war. These promoted clerks were
previously required to separate from their wives, but apparently many of
them did not do so. Consequently, from several causes, the married
priests became a numerous body, and since the common opinion seems to
have been that a married priest was disgracing his office, this body was
regarded as a menace to the welfare of the church and the state.

Lea, in his elaborate "History of Sacerdotal Celibacy," holds that the
rule of celibacy was only binding on the regulars, or monks, and that
the secular priesthood was at liberty to marry. But from several other
passages in his work it seems that he also recognizes the fact that,
while marriage was common, it was in defiance of an ancient canon. "It
is evident," he says, "that the memory of the ancient canons was not
forgotten, and that their observance was still urged by some ardent
churchmen, but that the customs of the period had rendered them
virtually obsolete, and that no sufficient means existed of enforcing
obedience. If open scandals and shameless bigamy and concubinage could
be restrained, the ecclesiastical authorities were evidently content.
Celibacy could not be enjoined as a law, but was rendered attractive by
surrounding it with privileges and immunities denied to him who yielded
to the temptations of the flesh."

Throughout Western Christendom the law of celibacy was openly and
shamefully trampled upon, and every reformer seemed to think that the
very first step toward any improvement in clerical morals was to be
taken by enforcing this rule.

When Dunstan commenced his reforms, the clergy were guilty of graver
sins than that of living in marriage relations. Adultery, bigamy,
swearing, fighting and drinking were the order of the day. The
monasteries were occupied by secular priests with wives or concubines.
All the chroniclers of this period agree in charging the monks and
clergy with a variety of dissipations and disorders.

It is quite clear, therefore, that in Dunstan's view he was doing the
only right thing in trying to correct the existing abuses by compelling
the priests to adopt that celibate life without which it was popularly
believed the highest holiness and the largest usefulness could not be
attained. In the light of this purpose and this common opinion of his
time, Dunstan and his mission should be judged.

Dunstan was aided in his work by King Edgar the Pacific, who, by the
way, was himself compelled to go without his crown seven years for
violating the chastity of a nun. Oswald, the Bishop of Worcester, and
Ethelwold, the Bishop of Winchester, were also zealously engaged in the
task of reform.

A law was enacted providing that priests, deacons and sub-deacons should
live chastely or resign. As a result of this law, many priests were
ejected from the monasteries and from their official positions. Strict
monks were put in their places. A strong opposition party was created,
and the ejected clergy aroused such discontent that a civil war was
barely averted. This state of things continued until the Norman
invasion, when the monks and secular clergy joined forces in the common
defence of their property and ecclesiastical rights.

It would seem that many writers, misled by legends for which Dunstan
must not be held responsible, and blinded by religious prejudice, have
unjustly charged him with hypocrisy and even crime. All his methods may
not be defensible when estimated in the light of modern knowledge, and
even his ideal may be rejected when judged by modern standards of
Christian character, but he must be considered with the moral and
intellectual life of his times in full view. He was a champion of the
oppressed, a friend of the poor, an unflinching foe of sinful men in the
pulpit or on the throne. His will was inflexible, his independence noble
and his energy untiring. In trying to bring the Anglo-Saxon church into
conformity to Rome he was actuated by a higher motive than the merely
selfish desire for ecclesiastical authority. He regarded this harmony as
the only remedy for the prevailing disorders. He believed, like many
other churchmen of unquestioned purity and honesty, that it was
necessary to compel temporal authorities to recognize the power of the
church in order to overcome that defiance of moral law which was the
chief characteristic of the kings and princes in that turbulent period.

What the Anglo-Saxon church might have been if the rule of celibacy had
not been forced upon her, and if she had not submitted to Roman
authority in other matters, is a theme for speculation only. The fact
is that Dunstan found a church corrupt to the core and left it, as a
result of his purifying efforts, with some semblance, to say the least,
of moral influence and spiritual purity. Some other kind of
ecclesiastical polity than that advocated by Dunstan might have achieved
the same results as his, but the simple fact is that none did. In so far
as Dunstan succeeded in his monastic measures, he laid the foundations
of an ecclesiastical power which afterwards became a serious menace to
the political freedom of the Anglo-Saxon race. The battle begun by him
raged fiercely between the popes, efficiently supported by the monks,
and the kings of England, with varying fortunes, for many centuries. But
perhaps, under the plans of that benign Providence who presides over the
destiny of nations, it was essentially in the interests of civilization,
that the lawlessness of rulers and the vices of the people should be
restrained by that ecclesiastical power, which, in after years, and at
the proper time, should be forced to recede to its legitimate sphere and
functions.

Another celebrated reformatory movement was begun by St. Bruno, who
founded the Carthusian Order about the year 1086. Ruskin says: "In
their strength, from the foundation of the order at the close of the
eleventh century to the beginning of the fourteenth, they reared in
their mountain fastnesses and sent out to minister to the world a
succession of men of immense mental grasp and serenely authoritative
innocence, among whom our own Hugh of Lincoln, in his relations with
Henry II. and Coeur de Lion, is to my mind the most beautiful sacerdotal
figure known to me in history."

Bruno, with six companions, established the famous Grand Chartreuse in a
rocky wilderness, near Grenoble, in France, separated from the rest of
the world by a chain of wild mountains, which are covered with ice and
snow for two-thirds of the year.

Until the time of Guigo (1137), the Grand Chartreuse was governed by
unwritten rules. Thirteen monks only were permitted to live together,
and sixteen converts in the huts at the foot of the hill. The policy of
this monastery was at first opposed to all connection with other
monasteries. But applications for admission were so numerous that
colonies were sent out in various directions, all subject to the mother
house. The Carthusians differed in many respects from other orders. The
rules of Dom Guigo indicate that the chief aim was to preclude the monks
from intercourse with the world, and largely with each other, for each
monk had separate apartments, cooked his own food, and so rarely met
with his brethren, that he was practically a hermit. The clothing
consisted of a rough hair shirt, worn next the skin, a white cassock
over it, and, when they went out, a black robe. Fasting was observed at
least three days a week, and meat was strictly forbidden. Respecting
contact with women Dom Guigo says: "Under no circumstances whatever do
we allow women to set foot within our precincts, knowing as we do that
neither wise man, nor prophet, nor judge, nor the entertainer of God,
nor the sons of God, nor the first created of mankind, fashioned by
God's own hands, could escape the wiles and deceits of women."

Blistering and bleeding, as well as fasting, were employed to control
evil impulses. On the whole, the austerities were as severe as human
nature in that wild and cold region could endure. Yet the prosperity
that rewarded the piety and labors of the Carthusian monks proved more
than a match for their rigorous discipline, and in the middle of the
thirteenth century we read charges of laxity and disorder.

The Carthusians settled in England in the twelfth century, and had a
famous monastery in London, since called the Charterhouse. The order was
in many respects the most successful attempt at reform, but as has been
said, "the whole order, and each individual member, is like a
petrifaction from the Middle Ages." Owing to its extremely solitary
ideal and its severe discipline, it was unfitted to secure extensive
control, or to gain a permanent influence upon the rapidly-developing
European nations. Its chief contributions to modern civilization were
made by the gift of noble men who passed from the seclusion of the cell
into the active life of the world, thus practically proving that the
monks' greatest usefulness was attained when loyalty to their vows
yielded to a broader ideal of Christian character and service.

Thus the months passed into years and the years into centuries. Man was
slowly working out his salvation. Painfully, laboriously he emerged out
of barbarism into the lower forms of civilization; wearily he trudged
on his way toward the universal kingdom of righteousness and peace.

There were many other attempts at reform which may not even be
mentioned, but one character deserves brief consideration,--Bernard of
Clairvaux,--the fairest flower of those corrupt days. The order to which
he belonged was the Cistercians, so named because their mother house was
at Citeaux (Latin, _Cistercium_), in France. Its members are sometimes
called the "White Monks," because of their white tunics. Their
buildings, with their bare walls and low rafters, were a rebuke to the
splendid edifices of the richer orders. Austere simplicity characterized
their churches, liturgy and habits. Gorgeousness in decoration and
ostentation in public services were carefully avoided. They used no
pictures, stained glass or images. Once a week they flogged their sinful
bodies. Only four hours' sleep was allowed. Seeking out the wildest
spots and most rugged peaks they built their retreats, beautiful in
their simplicity and furnishing some of the finest examples of monastic
architecture. The order spread into England, where the first
Cistercians were characterized by devoutness and poverty. After a while
the hand of fate wrote of them as it had of so many, "none were more
greedy in adding farm to farm; none less scrupulous in obtaining grants
of land from wealthy patrons." In general, the order was no better and
no worse than the rest, but its chief glory is derived from the luster
that was shed upon it by Bernard.

[Illustration: SAINT BERNARD]

This illustrious counselor of kings and Catholic saint was born in
Burgundy in 1091. When about twenty years of age he entered the
monastery at Citeaux with five of his brothers. His genius might have
secured ecclesiastical preferment, but he chose to dig ditches, plant
fields and govern a monastery. He entered the cloister at Citeaux
because the monks were few and poor, and when it became crowded because
of his fame, and its rule became lax because of the crowds, he left the
cloister to found a home of his own. The abbot selected twelve monks,
following the number of apostles, and at their head placed young
Bernard. He led the twelve to the valley of Wormwood, and there, in a
cheerless forest, he established the monastery of Clairvaux, or Clear
Valley. His rule was fiercely severe because he himself loved hardships
and rough fare. "It in no way befits religion," he writes, "to seek
remedies for the body, nor is it good for health either. You may now and
then take some cheap herb,--such as poor men may,--and this is done
sometimes. But to buy drugs, to hunt up doctors, to take doses, is
unbecoming to religion and hostile to purity." His success in winning
men to the monastic life was almost phenomenal. It was said that
"mothers hid their sons, wives their husbands, and companions their
friends, lest they be persuaded by his eloquent message to enter the
cloister." "He was avoided like a plague," says one.

Bernard's monks changed the whole face of the country by felling trees
and tilling the ground. Their spiritual power rid the valley of Wormwood
of its robbers, and the district grew rich and prosperous. Thus Bernard
became the most famous man of his time. He was the arbiter in papal
elections, the judge in temporal quarrels, the healer of schisms and a
powerful preacher of the crusades. He was the embodiment of all that was
best in the thought of his age. His weaknesses and faults may largely be
explained by the fact that no man can rise entirely above the spirit of
his times and absolutely free himself from all pernicious tendencies.
"As an advocate for the rights of the church, for the immunities of the
clergy, no less than for the great interests of morality, he was fierce,
intractable, unforgiving, haughty and tyrannical." There was, however,
no note of insincerity in his work or writings, and no tinge of
hypocrisy in fervent zeal. He was brave, honest and pure; controlled
always by a consuming passion for the moral welfare of the people.

Our chief interest in Bernard relates to his monastic work which shed
undying luster on his name. Vaughan, in his "Hours with the Mystics,"
says of him: "His incessant cry for Europe is, Better monasteries, and
more of them. Let these ecclesiastical castles multiply; let them cover
and command the land, well garrisoned with men of God, and then, despite
all heresy and schism, theocracy will flourish, the earth shall yield
her increase, and all people praise the Lord.... Bernard had the
satisfaction of improving and extending monasticism to the utmost; of
sewing together, with tolerable success, the rended vesture of the
papacy; of suppressing a more popular and more scriptural Christianity
for the benefit of his despotic order; of quenching for a time, by the
extinction of Abelard, the spirit of free inquiry, and of seeing his
ascetic and superhuman ideal of religion everywhere accepted as the
genuine type of Christianity."

But in spite of Dunstans, Brunos and Bernards, the monastic institution
keeps on crumbling. The edifice will not stand much more propping and
tinkering. While we admire this display of moral force, this commendable
struggle of fresh courage and new hope against disintegrating forces,
the conviction gains ground that something is radically wrong with the
institution. There is something in it which fosters greed and desperate
ambition. "Is it not a shame," we feel compelled to ask, "that so much
splendid, chivalrous courage and magnificent energy should be expended
in trying to prevent a structure from falling, which, it seems, could
not possibly have been saved?" But while the decay could not be stayed,
we must admire the noble aims and pious enthusiasm of the reformers who
sought to preserve an institution which to them seemed the only hope of
a sinful world.

Dr. Storrs, in his life of Bernard, says: "His soon-canonized name has
shone starlike in history ever since he was buried; and it will not
hereafter decline from its height or lose its luster, while men continue
to recognize with honor the temper of devoted Christian consecration, a
character compact of noble forces, and infused with self-forgetful love
for God and man."

_The Military Religious Orders_

The life of Bernard forms an appropriate introduction to a consideration
of the Military Religious Orders. Although weary with labor and the
weight of years, he traveled over Europe preaching the second crusade.
"To kill or to be killed for Christ's sake is alike righteous and alike
safe," this was his message to the world. In spite of the opposition of
court advisers, Bernard induced Louis VII. and Conrad of Germany to take
the crusader's vow. He gave the Knights Templars a new rule and kindled
afresh a zeal for the knighthood. Although the members of the Military
Orders were not monks in the strict sense of the word, yet they were
soldier-monks, and as such deserve to be mentioned here.

At the basis of all monastic orders, as has been pointed out, were the
three vows of obedience, celibacy and poverty. Certain orders, by adding
to these rules other obligations, or by laying special stress on one of
the three ancient vows, produced new and distinct types of monastic
character and life.

The Knights of the Hospital assumed as their peculiar work the care of
the sick. The Begging Friars, as will be seen later, were distinguished
by the importance which they attached to the rule of poverty; the
Jesuits, by exalting the law of unquestioning obedience. In view of the
warlike character of the Middle Ages it is strange the soldier-monk did
not appear earlier than he did. The abbots, in many cases, were feudal
lords with immense possessions which needed protection like secular
property, but as this could not be secured by the arts of peace, we find
traces of the union of the soldier and the monk before the distinct
orders professing that character. The immediate cause of such
organizations was the crusades. There were numerous societies of this
character, some of them so far removed from the monastic type as
scarcely to be ranked with monastic institutions. One list mentions two
hundred and seven of these Orders of Knighthood, comprising many
varieties in theory and practice. The most important were three,--the
Knights of the Hospital, or the Knights of St. John; the Knights
Templars; and the Teutonic Knights. The Hospitallers wore black mantles
with white crosses, the Templars white mantles with red crosses, and the
Teutonic Knights white mantles with black crosses. The mantles were in
fact the robe of the monk adorned with a cross. The whole system was
really a marriage of monasticism and chivalry, as Gibbon says: "The
firmest bulwark of Jerusalem was founded in the Knights of the Hospital
and of the Temple, that strange association of monastic and military
life. The flower of the nobility of Europe aspired to wear the cross and
profess the vows of these orders; their spirit and discipline were
immortal."

A passage in the Alexiad quoted in Walter Scott's "Robert of Paris"
reads: "As for the multitude of those who advanced toward the great city
let it be enough to say, that they were as the stars in the heaven or
as the sand of the seashore. They were in the words of Homer, as many as
the leaves and flowers of spring." This figurative description is almost
literally true. Europe poured her men and her wealth into the East. No
one but an eye-witness can conceive of the vast amount of suffering
endured by those fanatical multitudes as they roamed the streets of
Jerusalem looking for shelter, or lay starving by the roadside on a
bed of grass.

The term Hospitallers was applied to certain brotherhoods of monks and
laymen. While professing some monastic rule, the members of these
societies devoted themselves solely to caring for the sick and the poor,
the hospitals in those days being connected with the monasteries.

About the year 1050 some Italian merchants secured permission to build a
convent in Jerusalem to shelter Latin pilgrims. The hotels which sprang
up after this were gradually transformed into hospitals for the care of
the sick and presided over by Benedictine monks. The sick were carefully
nursed and shelter granted to as many as could be accommodated. Nobles
abandoned the profession of arms and, becoming monks, devoted
themselves to caring for the unfortunate crusaders in these inns. The
work rapidly increased in extent and importance. In the year 1099,
Godfrey de Bouillon endowed the original hospital, which had been
dedicated to St. John. He also established many other monasteries on
this holy soil. The monks, most of whom were also knights, formed an
organization which received confirmation from Rome, as "The Knights of
St. John of Jerusalem." The order rapidly assumed a distinctly military
character, for, to do its work completely, it must not only care for the
sick in Jerusalem, but defend the pilgrim on his way to the Holy City.
This ended in an undertaking to defend Christendom against Mohammedan
invasion and in fighting for the recovery of the Holy Sepulcher.

After visiting some of these Palestinian monasteries, a king of Hungary
thus describes his impressions: "Lodging in their houses, I have seen
them feed every day innumerable multitudes of poor, the sick laid on
good beds and treated with great care. In a word, the Knights of St.
John are employed sometimes like Martha, in action, and sometimes like
Mary, in contemplation, and this noble militia consecrate their days
either in their infirmaries or else in engagements against the enemies
of the cross."

The Knights Templars were far more militant than the Knights of St.
John, but they also were actuated by the monastic spirit. Bernard tried
to inspire this order with a strong Christian zeal so that, as he said,
"War should become something of which God could approve." The success
which attended its operations led as usual to its corruption and
decline. Beginning with a few crusaders leagued together for service and
living on the site of the ancient Temple at Jerusalem, it soon widened
the scope of its services and became a powerful branch of the crusading
army. It was charged by Philip IV. of France, in 1307, with the most
fearful crimes, to sustain or to deny which accusations many volumes
have been composed. Five years later the order was suppressed and its
vast accumulations transferred to the Knights of St. John. "The horrible
fate of the Templars," says Allen, "was taken by many as a beginning and
omen of the destruction that would soon pass upon all the hated
religious orders. And so this final burst of enthusiasm and splendor in
the religious life was among the prognostics of a state of things in
which monasticism must fade quite away."

Wondrous changes have taken place in those dark and troubled years since
Benedict began his labors at Monte Cassino, in 529. The monk has prayed
alone in the mountains, and converted the barbarian in the forest. He
has preached the crusades in magnificent cathedrals, and crossed stormy
seas in his frail bark. He has made the schools famous by his literary
achievements, and taught children the alphabet in the woodland cell. He
has been good and bad, proud and humble, rich and poor, arrogant and
gentle. He has met the shock of lances on his prancing steed, and
trudged barefoot from town to town. He has copied manuscripts in the
lonely Scottish isle, and bathed the fevered brow of the pilgrim in the
hospital at Jerusalem. He has dug ditches, and governed the world as the
pope of the Church. He has held the plow in the furrow, and thwarted the
devices of the king. He has befriended the poor, and imposed penance
upon princes. He has imitated the poverty and purity of Jesus, and aped
the pomp and vice of kings. He has dwelt solitary on cold mountains,
subsisting on bread, roots and water, and he has surrounded himself with
menials ready to gratify every luxurious wish, amid the splendor of
palatial cloisters. Still there are new types and phases of monasticism
yet to appear. The monk has other tasks to undertake, for the world is
not yet sufficiently wearied of his presence to destroy his cloister and
banish him from the land.

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