For our purpose, it is important to note that Pachomius considered that attention should be paid to the education of the inmates of the community. Classes were to be held for those whose early instruction had been neglected, whilst no one was to be allowed to remain who did not learn to read and was not familiar, at the very least, with the Book of Psalms and the New Testament.[8]
A third stage in the evolution of monasticism is associated with the name of St. Basil of Caesarea. Instead of founding his monastery in some remote district, he built it near a town and received into it not only solitaries who had become convinced of the dangers of living alone, but also the poor, the oppressed, the homeless, and those who, for various reasons, had become weary of life in the outer world and sought an asylum for their remaining days. Not only men but also women and children were received by Basil: so great was his success that he ultimately established in different centres several industrial coenobitic communities.
The reception of children by Basil naturally brought forward the question of their education. These children fell into one or other of two classes; in the one class were those who, like the infant Samuel, were offered by their parents for the cloistral life from a tender age; in the other class were those who were subsequently to return to the world. St. Basil organised schools for the former of these classes; children were to be admitted to them when they were five or six years of age; details with regard to the mode of their instruction were prescribed; general rules of discipline were laid down.[9] Under certain circumstances, children who were not destined for the monastic life could also be received in these schools.[10] In addition to teaching the elements of grammar and rhetoric and the facts of scripture history, Basil provided for a number of trades to be learned and practised as soon as the children were able to profit by the course. Among the trades recommended were weaving, tailoring, architecture, woodwork, brass work, and agriculture.[11]
Cassian was the first to transplant the rules of the Eastern monks into Europe. He founded two monasteries in the neighbourhood of Marseilles for men and women respectively. In 420 he wrote De Institutis Renuntiatium, in which he records the rules to be observed in the institutions he had founded. The code of rules here enunciated constituted the law of monasticism in Gaul till it gave place to the regulations of Benedict. Cassian in his youth had studied the works of Greek learning, but in his later years he showed a great distrust of pagan literature and strongly opposed its study. He considered that the fascination of such literature distracted the soul, and desired that even the memory of the classical writings should be eradicated from his mind. The underlying conception of the rule of Cassian was that the monastery was a school in which a future stage of existence was the dominating and controlling thought.
Reference must next be made to Cassiodorus (479?-575)—the great Italian statesman turned monk—who did much to develop study among ecclesiastics and to make the cloister the centre of literary activity. He founded a monastery at Vivarium in Bruttium, which he endowed with his Roman library containing a magnificent collection of manuscripts, and to which he himself retired at the age of sixty. During the remaining years of his life he devoted himself to literary work; of his numerous writings the most important is his Institutiones Divinarum et Saecularium Lectionum. A more important work accomplished by Cassiodorus than the writings he produced was his organisation of the monastery scriptorium. This served as a model for the series of Benedictine monasteries which subsequently came into existence. Hence to Cassiodorus must be assigned the honour of realising that the multiplication of manuscripts was a recognised employment of monastic life. Consequently, he conferred a boon of the greatest value upon the human race. As Hodgkin expresses it, there was in existence an accumulated store of two thousand years of literature, sacred and profane, the writings of Hebrew prophets, of Greek philosophers, of Latin rhetoricians, perishing for want of men with leisure and ability to transcribe them. Were it not for the labours of the monks it is highly conceivable that these treasures would have been irretrievably lost to the world.[12]
The number of the monastic institutions rapidly increased. Gradually the evils arising from a lack of definite control and from the want of a code of rules to check individualising tendencies, began to manifest themselves. To St. Benedict of Nursia is due the more adequate organisation of monastic life. In addition to the laws of chastity, poverty, and obedience required from the professed monk, he recognised the importance of labour not only for self-support but also as a duty towards God. The code of rules, drawn up by him for the use of the monasteries under his care, was found to meet a great need of the religious communities of the time, with the result that the Benedictine rules became almost universally accepted by all monastic establishments.
Of these rules, the one that exercised a profound influence upon educational development is headed Concerning Daily Manual Labour.[13] It runs:—
“Idleness is the enemy of the soul: hence brethren ought at certain seasons to occupy themselves with manual labour and again at certain hours with holy reading. Between Easter and the calends of October let them apply themselves to reading from the fourth hour until the sixth hour.... From the calends of October to the beginning of Lent let them apply themselves to reading until the second hour. During Lent let them apply themselves to reading from morning until the end of the third hour, and in these days of Lent let them receive a book apiece from the library and read it straight through. These books are to be given out at the beginning of Lent.”
The great importance of this rule arises from the fact that whilst monks were becoming very numerous, books were very few. Hence in order that the requisite number of copies might be available, writing had to be taught; in order that the monks might be able to read the books, it is conceivable that in some cases reading also would have to be taught. Moreover, the copying of manuscripts was considered to comply with the regulation as to manual labour prescribed by the Benedictine rules. Consequently wherever a Benedictine monastery came into existence, there books were multiplied, and a library gradually developed. As the years went on, the Benedictine labours in the intellectual world increased. Mabillon remarks, “Almost alone, the order of St. Benedict for several years, maintained and preserved letters in Europe. There were frequently no other masters in our monasteries, and frequently the cathedral schools drew theirs from the same source.”[14]
The purpose of this digression has been to show that by the time that the monks entered upon their mission in this country, the idea of monasticism was firmly established on the continent. The monastic houses consisted of communities of men or of women who, leaving the outer world behind them, dedicated their lives to the worship and the praise of God. They concentrated their attention upon the world to come, and, as far as possible, they endeavoured to anticipate it in the present stage of existence. Labour, either physical or mental, was one of their special obligations. Limiting ourselves to intellectual labour, we note that to some was entrusted the instruction of the children who were brought to them and of those members of the community who still needed education; to others was assigned work in the scriptorium; to others was allotted the task of giving instruction in singing and of making due preparation for the musical part of the monastic services; others, according to their capacity, continued their studies, and, by the chronicles which they wrote, enable posterity to reconstruct the history of their days.