The Rise of the Mediaeval Church / And Its Influence on the Civilization of Western Europe from the First to the Thirteenth Century

by Alexander Clarence Flick

Monasticism, the story of which is one of the strangest problems in Church history and is enshrouded in legend, originated outside the Church, but soon became the dominant factor in the Church. It was not the product of Christianity so much as an inheritance—an adopted child. It supported the orthodox faith,[198:1] upheld the papal theory, monopolised ecclesiastical offices, helped to mould the Church constitution, and supplied the great standing army of the Popes. It was a determining factor in European civilisation. The monk was the ideal man of the Middle Ages. He stood for the highest morality and best culture of that period. As a missionary he planted the Church over Western Europe. He stood between the laity and the hierarchy, as the friend of the former and the champion of the latter. He created the system of public charity and had a marked influence on industry and agriculture. Before

long a monk sat in the chair of St. Peter and sought to rule the Church. The first series of great ecclesiastical reforms was produced by the hermits in the fourth century, the Benedictines in the sixth, the Clugniacs in the eleventh, and the Begging Orders in the thirteenth. Monasticism, therefore, was a very important institution in the rise of the Church.

Monasticism originated in antiquity and was based on a general principle broader than any creed. It grew out of that mystical longing for an uninterrupted inner enjoyment of the soul—out of a passion for self-brooding, and out of an abnormal view of the seclusion necessary for the cultivation of the true religious life, which would save the soul from sin. It was simply an effort to explain the riddle of existence and to comprehend the true relations of God, man, and the world. Every great religion has expressed itself in some form of monasticism. Centuries before Jesus there were monks and crowded convents among the Hindoos. The sacred writings of the ancient Hindoos (2400 B.C.) reveal many legends about holy hermits, and give ascetic rules.[199:1] Buddha, who founded his faith possibly six centuries B.C., enjoined celibacy on his priests.[199:2] Alexander the Great found monasticism flourishing in the East. In Greece the "Pagan Jesuits," the Pythagoreans, were a kind of ascetic order.[199:3] Plato, with his powerful appeal for the ideal life, had a marked influence upon the ascetic views of the early Christians, and Neo-Platonism became a positive force

in Christendom during the third and fourth centuries. The priestesses of Delphic Apollo, Achaian Juno, and Scythian Diana were virgins.[200:1] In Judea the ancient Nazarites[200:2] afford an example. The Essenes seem to be the direct forerunners of Christian monasticism.[200:3] In addition there were conspicuous individual examples in Jewish history like that of Elisha, Elijah, Samuel, and John the Baptist.[200:4] In Rome the name of vestal virgin was a proverb. In Egypt, the priests of Serapis were ascetics,[200:5] the priestesses of Ceres were separated from their husbands,[200:6] and the Therapeutæ were rigid monks who lived about the time of Jesus.[200:7]

These influences and examples, coupled with Platonic philosophy, and the interpretation put upon the teachings and lives of Jesus and His Apostles, produced Christian monasticism. Jesus Himself was unmarried, poor, and had not "where to lay his head." He commanded the rich young man to sell his property for the poor,[200:8] and said: "Take no thought for the morrow what ye shall eat and what ye shall drink, or wherewithal ye shall be clothed." St. John and probably other Apostles were celibates.[200:9] The

Apostles likewise taught that following Jesus meant "forsaking father, mother, brethren, wife, children, houses and lands."[201:1] They urged Christians to crucify the flesh, and disparaged marriage,[201:2] and they too were poor and homeless like their Master.[201:3]

The supreme question asked by earnest Christians in all ages has been this: "What is the true, the ideal Christian life?"[201:4] At every step of her progress the Church has given a different answer to the important query. Yet in all this divergent opinion there is plainly seen one common conviction. To live in the service of God, in the religious denunciation of the world, and in the abnegation of the joys of life—that is the universal reply. In the early Church this position was very strongly emphasised and led, in consequence, to the rise of monasticism. Hence it may be said that the monastic ideals simply expressed the highest ideals of the Church, and the history of monasticism becomes a vital part of the history of the mediæval Church.

It must be remembered, too, that the old belief that the Church was poor, pure, and wholly spiritual until the time of Constantine is a false tradition. The secularisation and materialisation of the Church was so noticeable as to cause complaint as early as the third century. The Church Fathers unanimously deplore the precocious decay of the Christian world.[201:5] To the minds of many, therefore, the only way to escape

the damning effects of contamination with the Roman world, the only way to elude the evils in the Church itself, and the only sure way of leading the ideal Christian life was to flee from villages and cities to the mountains and deserts. "They fled not only from the world, but from the world within the Church." When Christianity was drawn from the catacombs to the court of the Cæsars, it lost its power to regenerate souls. That memorable alliance hindered neither the ruin of the Empire, nor "the servitude and mutilation of the Church."[202:1] Associated with the power that so long sought to destroy her, the Church was brought face to face with the tremendous task of transforming and replacing the Empire. At the same time the Church made a desperate attempt, though in vain, to keep alive the spiritual torches of apostolic Christianity. The solution of that great problem, however, was left to the monks.

The philosophy which prevailed among many of the early Christians held that the material world is all evil, and that the spiritual world is the only good. Gnosticism, which permeated Christendom in the second century, declared that the body is the seat of evil and hence that it must be abused in order to purify the soul within.[202:2] Montanism advocated an excessive puritanism, and prescribed numerous fasts and severities, which paved the way for asceticism. Other groups of Christian philosophers exercised similar influences.[202:3] The Church itself commended fasting and other practices for the cultivation of