A Short History of Monks and Monasteries

by Alfred Wesley Wishart

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."