MONASTIC LIFE.
The venerable Bede has given us a very striking picture of Monastic enormities, in his epistle to Egbert. From this we learn that many young men who had no title to the monastic profession, got possession of monasteries; where, instead of engaging in the defence of their country, as their age and rank required, they indulged themselves in the most dissolute indolence.
We learn from Dugdale, that in the reign of Henry the Second, the nuns of Amsbury abbey in Wiltshire were expelled from that religious house on account of their incontinence. And to exhibit in the most lively colors the total corruption of monastic chastity, bishop Burnet informs us in his “History of the Reformation,” that when the nunneries were visited by the command of Henry the VIII. “whole houses almost, were found whose vows had been made in vain.”
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When we consider to what oppressive indolence, to what a variety of wretchedness and guilt, the young and fair inhabitants of the cloister were frequently betrayed, we ought to admire those benevolent authors who, when the tide of religious prejudice ran very strong in favor of monastic virginity, had spirit enough to oppose the torrent, and to caution the devout and tender sex against so dangerous a profession. It is in this point of view that the character of Erasmus appears with the most amiable lustre; and his name ought to be eternally dear to the female world in particular. Though his studies and constitution led him almost to idolize those eloquent fathers of the church who have magnified this kind of life, his good sense and his accurate survey of the human race, enabled him to judge of the misery in which female youth was continually involved by a precipitate choice of the veil. He knew the successful arts by which the subtle and rapacious monks inveigled young women of opulent families into the cloister; and he exerted his lively and delicate wit in opposition to so pernicious an evil.
In those nations of Europe where nunneries still exist, how many lovely victims are continually sacrificed to the avarice or absurd ambition of inhuman parents! The misery of these victims has been painted with great force by some benevolent writers of France.
In most of those pathetic histories that are founded on the abuse of convents, the misery originates from the parent, and falls upon the [p91] child. The reverse has sometime happened; and there are examples of unhappy parents, who have been rendered miserable by the religious perversity of a daughter. In the fourteenth volume of that very amusing work, Les Causes Celebres, a work which is said to have been the favorite reading of Voltaire, there is a striking history of a girl under age, who was tempted by pious artifice to settle herself in a convent, in express opposition to parental authority. Her parents, who had in vain tried the most tender persuasion, endeavored at last to redeem their lost child, by a legal process against the nunnery in which she was imprisoned. The pleadings on this remarkable trial may, perhaps, be justly reckoned amongst the finest pieces of eloquence that the lawyers of France have produced. Monsieur Gillet, the advocate for the parents, represented, in the boldest and most affecting language, the extreme baseness of this religious seduction. His eloquence appeared to have fixed the sentiments of the judges; but the cause of superstition was pleaded by an advocate of equal power, and it finally prevailed. The unfortunate parents of Maria Vernal (for this was the name of the unfortunate girl) were condemned to resign her forever, and to make a considerable payment to those artful devotees who had piously robbed them of their child.
When we reflect on the various evils that have arisen in convents, we have the strongest reason to rejoice and glory in that reformation by which the nunneries of England were abolished. Yet [p92] it would not be candid or just to consider all these as the mere harbors of licentiousness; since we are told that, at the time of their suppression, some of our religious houses were very honorably distinguished by the purity of their inhabitants. “The visitors,” says Bishop Burnet, “interceded earnestly for one nunnery in Oxfordshire, where there was great strictness of life, and to which most of the young gentlewomen of the country were sent to be bred; so that the gentry of the country desired the king would spare the house: yet all was ineffectual.”