Chapter XX: The Monastery of St. Aliquis: The Activities of Its Inmates. Monastic Learning.
After a monk has taken the great vow "renouncing my parents, my brothers, my friends, my possessions, and the vain and empty glory of this world ... and renouncing also my own will for the will of God, and accepting all the hardships of the monastic life," how is he to be employed? For, as St. Benedict with great sagacity has written, "Idleness is the enemy of the soul." The ancient hermits devoted their entire time to contemplation, hoping for visions of angels; but it is recorded too often that they had only visions of the devil. "Therefore," continues the holy Rule, "at fixed times the brothers ought to be employed with manual labor, and again at fixed times in sacred reading." Thus, in general, the monks of St. Aliquis are busied with two great things, work in the fields and study, with the copying or actual writing of profitable books.
Bequests to Monasteries
The monastery being passing rich, its administration constitutes a great worldly care. Ever since the institution came into existence, about the time that Heribert rendered the region fairly safe by erecting his fortress, the monks have been adding to their property. Church foundations never die. Mortmain prevents them from crumbling. Income is obtainable from many sources, but probably the best lands have come to the abbey through the reception of new members. Few novices are received unless they make a grant of their entire possessions to the institution, and, while most younger sons and peasants have little enough to give, every now and then the abbey receives a person of considerable wealth. Besides such acquisitions, there is no better way for laymen to cancel arrears with the recording angel than by gifts of land or money to an abbey. Some of these gifts come during lifetime, sometimes on one's deathbed. Noblemen complain that the monks thus defraud them of their possessions. "When a man lies down to die," bewails the epic poem "Hervis de Metz," "he thinks not of his sons. He summons the black monks of St. Benedict and gives them his lands, his revenues, his ovens, and his mills. The men of this age are impoverished and the clerics daily grow richer." Often, too, a person when on his deathbed will actually "take the habit" and be enrolled as a monk, thus, of course, conveying to the abbey all his possessions. This, we are told, is "the sweetest way for a human conscience to settle its case with God."
Property thus comes to an abbey from every direction. No gifts are refused as "tainted money." Giving to Heaven is invariably a pious deed, and ordinarily justifies whatever oblique means were used to get the donation. So the monks of St. Aliquis have been accumulating tillage lands, meadows, vineyards, and often the rentals for lands held by others. These rentals are payable in wheat, barley, oats, cattle and also in pasture rights. Some donations are given unconditionally, some strictly on condition that the income be used in providing alms for the poor, lodgings and comforts for the sick, or saying special masses for the repose of the soul of the benefactor. Abbot Victor has therefore to supervise many farms, forests, mills, etc., scattered for many miles about. He also receives the tithe (church tax) for five or six parish churches in the region, on condition that he appoint their priests and support them out of part of this income.
For these lands the abbot owes feudal service, and over them he exercises feudal suzerainty, possessing, therefore, an overlord and also vassals, just as did the nobles who held these same fiefs before they passed to the abbey. He is, accordingly, a regular seigneur, receiving and doing homage, bound to do justice to his vassals, and able to call them to arms whenever the secular need arises. By church law he cannot, of course, lead them in person to battle, but has to accept Conon as his advocate; and it is as advocate (or, as called elsewhere, vidame) of the abbey of St. Aliquis, able to lead its numerous retainers into the field and act in military matters as the abbot's very self-sufficient lieutenant and champion, that the baron owes much of his own importance.[96] For example, he gets one third of all the fees payable to the abbey for enforcing justice among its dependents, and when he is himself in a feud he will sometimes attempt to call out the abbot's vassals to follow his personal banner, even if the quarrel is of not the least concern to the monks.
Nevertheless, such an overpowerful champion is usually necessary to a monastery. Despite the fear of excommunication, unscrupulous lords frequently seize upon abbey lands or even pillage the sacred buildings, trusting to smooth over matters later by a gift or a pilgrimage. The temptation presented by a rich, helpless monastery is sometimes almost irresistible.
Monastic Industries and Almsgiving
In nonmilitary matters, however, the monks control everything. They direct the agriculture of hundreds of peasants. They maintain real industries, manufacturing far more in the way of church ornaments, vestments, elegant woolen tapestries, elaborate book covers, musical instruments, enameled reliquaries, as well as carvings in wood, bronze, and silver, than they can possibly use for their own church. All this surplus is sold, and the third prior has just returned from Pontdebois to report his success in disposing of a fine bishop's throne, which Brother Octavian, who has great skill with his chisel, has spent three whole years in making. The monks also maintain a school primarily for lads who expect to become clerics, but which is open also to the sons of nobles, and, indeed, of such peasants as can see any use in letting hulking boys who do not expect to enter the Church learn Latin and struggle with pothooks and hangers.
The monks, too, have another great care and expense—the distribution of alms, even more lavishly than at the castle. The porter is bound always to keep small loaves of bread in his lodge, ready to give to the itinerant poor. Every night swarms of travelers, high and low, have to be lodged and fed by the guest master, with none turned away unless he demands quarters a second night—when questions will be asked.[97] In bad years the monasteries are somehow expected to feed the wretched by thousands. All this means a great drain upon the income, even if the monks themselves live sparely.
There is often another heavy demand made on the abbot's revenues. Having so many and such varied parcels of land, he is almost always involved in costly lawsuits—with rival church establishments claiming the property, with the heirs of donors who refuse to give up their expected heritages, with creditors or debtors in the abbey's commercial transactions and with self-seeking neighboring seigneurs. "He who has land has trouble" is an old proverb to which Victor cheerfully subscribes. He is not so litigious as many abbots; but his time seems consumed with carnal matters which profit not the soul.
The activities in a large, well-ordered monastery are ample enough to give scope to the individual genius of about all the brethren, although every abbey is likely to have its own special interests. Some South French monasteries make and export rare cordials and healing drugs. Others boast of their horticulture, the breeding of cattle, or the manufacture of various kinds of elegant articles, as already noted. However, the mere cultivation of the fields, where the brethren toil side by side with the lay helpers, although also acting as overseers, consumes the energies of much of the convent. The remainder of the time of most monks is devoted to forms of learning. The great establishment of Cluny sets the proper example. There every brother, at least while he is young, must practice humility by digging, pulling weeds, shelling beans, and making bread. But this work is largely for discipline.[98] If he has the least inclination he will soon be encouraged to devote himself to copying manuscripts, studying books, perfecting himself in Latin, and finally, in actually writing original Latin works himself.
Manuscript Copying and Study
All day long, save at the times for chanting the offices, the older brethren and many of the younger are in the little alcoves round the cloister, conning or copying huge volumes of parchment or vellum, or whispering together over some learned problem. All the formal literature is in Latin. It was, until recently, something of a disgrace to prove oneself unclerkly by using the vulgar tongue, "Romance" being accounted fit only for worldly noblemen and jongleurs.[99]
A PIECE OF FURNITURE SERVING AS A SEAT AND A READING DESK
Restored by Viollet-Le-Duc from a thirteenth-century manuscript. At the left of the writing table is placed an inkstand; near the seat is a circular lectern which holds the chandelier and can be turned at the will of the reader.
At St. Aliquis, as in every convent, monks still are wont to argue among themselves, "How far is it safe to study pagan rather than Christian writers?" Undoubtedly Horace, Ovid, and Livy are a delight to any student who can read Latin. What wealth of new ideas! What marvelous vigor of language! What vistas of a strange, wonderful world are opened to the imagination! Unfortunately, however, all these authors died worshiping demons; their souls are in hell, or at least in limbo, its uppermost and least painful compartment. Did not Pope Gregory I write to a bishop who was fond of classical studies, "It behooves not that a mouth consecrated to the praise of God should open for those of Jupiter"? Did not Odilon, abbot of Cluny, renounce his beloved Virgil (the most favored of all heathen writers) after a warning dream, beholding therein a wondrous antique vase, which as he reached to grasp it, proved full of writhing serpents? Nevertheless, the pagan authors are so seductive that the monks persist in studying them, although always with a guilty feeling that "stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant."
In the monastery school advanced instruction is given to the younger monks, as well as to the very few laymen who have been through the primary instruction in the trivium—grammar, rhetoric, and dialectics (the art of reasoning) all taught, of course, in Latin. Apt pupils are then encouraged to continue under one or two monks of superior learning in the quadrivium—astronomy, arithmetic, geometry, and music. Systematic instruction is hardly ever given in anything else, although odds and ends of certain other sciences can be absorbed around St. Aliquis.
Books of Learning
The fundamental textbooks are Donatus's grammar for instruction in Latin, and then for almost everything savoring of real learning, Latin translations of Master Aristotle. For a long time the monks have had to content themselves with the logical Works of the famous Grecian, explaining the processes of argumentation, but by 1200 they can enjoy the enormous advantage of using Latin versions of the Physics, the Metaphysics, and the Ethics—the great works of The Master of Those Who Know (to quote Dante, writing eighty years later). Some of these books have come directly from the Greek, but others have been distorted by passing through an Arabic version that in turn has been made over into Latin. There are also various Arabic commentaries of considerable value. Curious it doubtless is that Heaven, who has denied salvation alike to Greek and to Moslem, should suffer unbelievers to possess a worldly wisdom surpassing that of good Christians, but the Bible truly says, "The children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light." On all secular matters, indeed, Aristotle is a final authority. "Thus says Aristotle" is the best way to silence every hostile argument. Only very rarely can a man hope by his own cogitations to overthrow the dicta of this wonderful sage of Athens.
A great deal of the monkish student's time is taken up with abstract problems of philology and logic. Nevertheless, the abbey contains many parchments widening to one's knowledge of the world. For example, you can read in Vincent de Beauvais's Mirror of Nature a minute account of the universe and all things within it. You can learn the astonishing fact that the world is a kind of globe suspended at the center of the cosmos. Many other wonderful things are described—as, for example, lead can be transmuted into gold, and all kinds of wonders which defy ordinary experience, but which are not to be doubted, since God can, of course, do anything. Or one can turn to Hugues de St. Victor's treatise On Beasts and Other Things and learn all about the habits of animals—concerning how stags can live nine hundred years and how the dove "with her right eye contemplates herself, and with her left eye God." There are books also on medicine, parts of which contain sober wisdom, worthy of attention by the murderous physicians, but elsewhere giving such directions as that since autumn is "the melancholy season," people should then eat more heartily than in summer and should refrain from love affairs.
As for the more abstract sciences, in music the monks know the four principal and the four secondary sounds—the do, re, mi, of the scales, the seven modulations and the five strings of the viol. In geometry they can, with the aid of a stick, "lying on the ground find the height of walls and towers." In arithmetic they can multiply and divide with great facility and keep accounts like a king's treasurer. In astronomy they understand the motion of the planets and their qualities—Saturn, which is "proud, wise, and ambitious," and Mars, "malevolent and bad, provoking strife and battles," and how the sun is hung in the midst of the planets, three above and three below, and much more similar wisdom; although one must proceed carefully in astronomy, for its connection with astrology is close, and from astrology to the black art is not a long journey.
Scientific Studies and Chronicle Writing
The good monks have perhaps made their best progress in botany and geology. Some of the brethren have gathered collections of curious minerals, of herbs, and also of dried bird and animal skins; although the interest seems to be in the healing qualities of various substances rather than in the nature of the things themselves. Thus it is certain that figs are good for wounds and broken bones; aloes stops hair from falling; the root of mandrake will make women love you; and plenty of sage in a garden somehow protects the owner from premature death. As for geology, that consists of the collecting and arranging of curious stones. It is of course settled in Genesis that the world was made in a very few days. The infidel Avincenna has indeed advanced the theory that mountains are caused by the upheaval of the earth's crust and by action of water. One must hesitate, however, about believing this. It seems hardly compatible with Holy Writ.
On the other hand, the books on animals unhesitatingly tell about remarkable creatures which are mentioned in Aristotle or in Pliny or by the Arabs. Unicorns, phœnixes, and dragons are well understood, likewise sea monsters, as, for example, great krakens, which drag down ships with their tentacles, sirens or mermaids, and finally "sea bishops" (probably a kind of seal) which piously "bless" their human victims before devouring them.
Besides the study of these older books, the monks are writing certain books themselves. The most important is the great chronicle, begun some years ago by the learned Brother Emeri. It commences with the creation of the world and Adam and Eve, tells about the Greeks and Romans and Charlemagne and his heirs, and then in much greater detail gives the recent history of the Duchy of Quelqueparte, the happenings at the abbey, and also much about the barons of St. Aliquis. Emeri is now dead, but the chronicle is continued from year to year. It is really a compendium of varied learning. From it, for example, you learn all about the wars of Julius Cæsar, the Crusades, the great lawsuit of ten years ago over some of the abbey lands, the feud between Conon and Foretvert, and how in 1216 a two-headed calf was born on a neighboring barony, and in 1217 a meteor struck near Pontdebois.
The Latin in this chronicle is, on the whole, very good, sometimes almost equal to Livy's, and the story is embellished by constant citations not merely of Virgil and Horace, but of Homer and Plato. One would suppose from this that the authors were familiar with Greek. Such, however, is by no means the case. All the quotations from Greek authors and many of their Latin ones are taken from commonplace books. Nevertheless, the narrative seems the more elegant for this borrowed learning. The monks are proud of their chronicle and never fail to boast how much more complete, accurate, and erudite it is than similar works compiled at the rival institutions.
When the monks are not actually studying, they are often copying. St. Aliquis has more than two hundred volumes in its library. Parchment is very expensive, but very durable. When the abbot sees his way to procure material for another volume, he is likely to send to some friendly convent to borrow a book which his monks do not yet possess. Then some of the most skillful brethren are put to work making a copy, if possible more beautiful than the original. In from six months to a year the work will probably be finished, although, if a duplicate is to be made of a work already on hand, there will be less haste and the process may extend over years.[100]
Copying is an excellent means of propitiating Heaven. St. Bernard said emphatically, "Every word which you write is a blow which smites the devil," and Cassiodorus, much earlier, asserted: "By the exercise of the mind upon the Holy Scriptures you convey to those who read a kind of moral instruction. You preach with the hand, converting the hand into an organ of speech—thus, as it were, fighting the arch-fiend with pen and ink."
Parchment, we have said, is a costly article. To provide a single book scores of sheep must die. A new style of writing material, however, is just coming into vogue. Paper, a substance made of linen cloth, now is being produced in small quantities in France, although, as usual, it seems to have been an invention of the Arab Infidels. Some day, perhaps, paper will become so plentiful and cheap that books can be multiplied in vast numbers, but as yet practically everything has to be on parchment, which is certainly far less destructible than paper, whatever the cost.[101]
Elegant Manuscripts and Binding
In the cloister alcoves a dozen copyists are pursuing their task with infinite patience. Their question is not "how fast?" but "how well?"—for they are performing "a work unto God." As a rule, they write their sheets in two columns, making their characters either in roundish minuscule or in squarer Gothic. The initials are in bright colors—some with a background of gold. Here and there may be painted in a brilliant miniature illustration. The work of the best copyists is beautifully legible. The scribes put their heart and soul into their productions. They expect the volumes will be memorials to their faithfulness and piety scores of years after they are departed.
When the sheets are completed, the book is bound in leather much the same as in other ages, although sometimes the sides are of wood. In any case, there are likely to be metal clasps and bosses of brass upon the covers. A few of the most precious volumes are adorned with plates of silver or carved ivory. So year by year the library grows. It need not be remarked that every copy is read and reread with devoted thoroughness. What the learning of the Feudal Age, therefore, lacks in breadth is somewhat compensated for by intensity. The older and more studious monks know almost by heart all the facts in their entire collection. The younger brethren revere them as carrying in their own heads practically everything significant in the way of worldly wisdom.[102]
Thus we catch some glimpse of the superficial and material side of a typical monastic establishment. Into its spiritual and intellectual atmosphere we cannot find time to penetrate. Our present duty is to "return to the world" and to examine the oft-mentioned but as yet unvisited Good Town of Pontdebois.