The term Hospitallers was applied to certain brotherhoods of monks and laymen. While professing some monastic rule, the members of these societies devoted themselves solely to caring for the sick and the poor, the hospitals in those days being connected with the monasteries.
About the year 1050 some Italian merchants secured permission to build a convent in Jerusalem to shelter Latin pilgrims. The hotels which sprang up after this were gradually transformed into hospitals for the care of the sick and presided over by Benedictine monks. The sick were carefully nursed and shelter granted to as many as could be accommodated. Nobles abandoned the profession of arms and, becoming monks, devoted themselves to caring for the unfortunate crusaders in these inns. The work rapidly increased in extent and importance. In the year 1099, Godfrey de Bouillon endowed the original hospital, which had been dedicated to St. John. He also established many other monasteries on this holy soil. The monks, most of whom were also knights, formed an organization which received confirmation from Rome, as "The Knights of St. John of Jerusalem." The order rapidly assumed a distinctly military character, for, to do its work completely, it must not only care for the sick in Jerusalem, but defend the pilgrim on his way to the Holy City. This ended in an undertaking to defend Christendom against Mohammedan invasion and in fighting for the recovery of the Holy Sepulcher.
After visiting some of these Palestinian monasteries, a king of Hungary thus describes his impressions: "Lodging in their houses, I have seen them feed every day innumerable multitudes of poor, the sick laid on good beds and treated with great care. In a word, the Knights of St. John are employed sometimes like Martha, in action, and sometimes like Mary, in contemplation, and this noble militia consecrate their days either in their infirmaries or else in engagements against the enemies of the cross."
The Knights Templars were far more militant than the Knights of St. John, but they also were actuated by the monastic spirit. Bernard tried to inspire this order with a strong Christian zeal so that, as he said, "War should become something of which God could approve." The success which attended its operations led as usual to its corruption and decline. Beginning with a few crusaders leagued together for service and living on the site of the ancient Temple at Jerusalem, it soon widened the scope of its services and became a powerful branch of the crusading army. It was charged by Philip IV. of France, in 1307, with the most fearful crimes, to sustain or to deny which accusations many volumes have been composed. Five years later the order was suppressed and its vast accumulations transferred to the Knights of St. John. "The horrible fate of the Templars," says Allen, "was taken by many as a beginning and omen of the destruction that would soon pass upon all the hated religious orders. And so this final burst of enthusiasm and splendor in the religious life was among the prognostics of a state of things in which monasticism must fade quite away."
Wondrous changes have taken place in those dark and troubled years since Benedict began his labors at Monte Cassino, in 529. The monk has prayed alone in the mountains, and converted the barbarian in the forest. He has preached the crusades in magnificent cathedrals, and crossed stormy seas in his frail bark. He has made the schools famous by his literary achievements, and taught children the alphabet in the woodland cell. He has been good and bad, proud and humble, rich and poor, arrogant and gentle. He has met the shock of lances on his prancing steed, and trudged barefoot from town to town. He has copied manuscripts in the lonely Scottish isle, and bathed the fevered brow of the pilgrim in the hospital at Jerusalem. He has dug ditches, and governed the world as the pope of the Church. He has held the plow in the furrow, and thwarted the devices of the king. He has befriended the poor, and imposed penance upon princes. He has imitated the poverty and purity of Jesus, and aped the pomp and vice of kings. He has dwelt solitary on cold mountains, subsisting on bread, roots and water, and he has surrounded himself with menials ready to gratify every luxurious wish, amid the splendor of palatial cloisters. Still there are new types and phases of monasticism yet to appear. The monk has other tasks to undertake, for the world is not yet sufficiently wearied of his presence to destroy his cloister and banish him from the land.
V
THE MENDICANT FRIARS
Abraham Lincoln only applied a general principle to a specific case when he said, "This nation cannot long endure half slave and half free." Glaring inconsistencies between faith and practice will eventually destroy any institution, however lofty its ideal or noble its foundation. God suffers long and is kind, but His forbearance is not limitless. Monasticism, as has been shown, was never free from serious inconsistency, from moral dualism. But the power of reform prolonged its existence. It was constantly producing fresh models of its ancient ideals. It had a hidden reserve-force from which it supplied shining examples of a living faith and a self-denying love, just at the time when it seemed as if the system was about to perish forever. When these fresh exhibitions of monastic fidelity likewise became tarnished, when men had tired of them and predicted the speedy collapse of the institution, forth from the cloister came another body of monkish recruits, to convince the world that monasticism was not dead; that it did not intend to die; that it was mightier than all its enemies. The day came, however, when the world lost its confidence in an institution which required such constant reforming to keep it pure, which demanded so much cleansing to keep it clean. Ideals that could so quickly lose their influence for good came to be looked upon with suspicion.