First of all, the monasteries kept before the minds both of parish priests and of their people the ideal of an unambitious, self-denying, studious, meditative, religious life. No doubt many of the monks and nuns fell short of their own ideal, and there were occasional scandals; we find notices in the registers of the bishops of their intervention in such cases. But the lives of the majority were sufficiently respectable to maintain the credit of the institution, and there were always some whose lives were exemplary. We may produce an evidence of the general feeling on the subject from the report of the commissioners of Henry VIII., who were sent to inquire into the state of the smaller monasteries, with a view to their suppression. The report stated that there were all sorts of abuses and scandals in the smaller houses, and recommended that they should be suppressed, and that their inhabitants should be transferred to “the great solemn monasteries of this realm, wherein—thanks be to God—religion is right well kept and observed.” As to their report against the smaller houses; they had been employed on purpose to make out a case against them, and the world has long since come to the conclusion that their adverse testimony is not to be believed.
If we are right in these enlightened days in thinking that fine public buildings for the housing of parliaments, municipal corporations, and the like civil institutions of the nation tend to give dignity to the national life; and that galleries of sculpture and painting, and museums of art, exercise an elevating influence on the popular mind; it can hardly be denied that the religious houses, with their stately groups of buildings, their sublime churches, and the numerous beautiful works of sculpture, painting, embroidery, and goldsmiths’ work which they contained, must have had a similar influence upon the religious sentiment and the æsthetic education of the people. A mediæval town was greatly the richer, religiously and intellectually, for having a great monastery in its suburb. The half-dozen religious houses—great and small—in a rural county had a religious, civilizing, elevating influence over the whole country-side. Even their empty ruins have not lost all their influence. The stately relics of the Yorkshire abbeys give added interest and dignity to the great northern county. What would the Isle of Ely be without the solemn grandeur of its cathedral church?
There is not enough left of any one of our own monasteries to enable the visitor to its mournful ruins to realize how each was a little town, protected by its walls and gate towers; with the roofs and chimneys of its numerous domestic buildings, and the trees of its gardens and orchards appearing over the walls; and the towers of its great church forming the centre of the architectural group, as it was the centre of the life of the inhabitants. We have, therefore, borrowed an illustration from Clugny, the parent and prototype of the houses of the Reformed Benedictine Orders.
The “Religious” and the upper classes of society were more in touch than at first sight appears. The great families kept up friendly relations[407] with the houses which their ancestors had founded, of which they were still the patrons, and from time to time benefactors. People of the upper classes, in travelling, usually sought hospitality at the religious houses, and were entertained by the abbot, while their people were cared for in the guest house. The monks and nuns were largely taken from these classes.
Abbey of Cluny, as it was.
Throughout the Middle Ages the monks—especially the Benedictines—continued to cultivate learning, both secular and religious. The chroniclers of the greater monasteries were the only historians of the time, and their collections of books were the libraries of the nation. Some of the great monasteries served the purpose of the great public schools of modern times, and the nunneries especially were—as they are still in Continental countries—the schools of the daughters of the gentry.
Long after they had ceased to be the pioneers leading the way in reducing the waste lands under cultivation, the monks continued to set an example to the lay gentry and landowners in enterprising scientific agriculture and horticulture; and in the refinement of domestic economy they were ages ahead of the rest of the community; they utilized streams for water power, for irrigation, and for sanitation; they sought out pure water for domestic use, and brought it long distances by conduits. The Church, regular and secular, was a liberal landlord. Not a few of its tenants, seated generation after generation on its manors, grew into knightly and noble families.
The monasteries exercised a most important direct influence upon the parochial clergy and their people owing to the fact that they were the patrons of a large proportion of the parishes; and nominated the vicars who were to teach and minister to the people of those parishes. In many cases where a monastery adjoined a town, the convent had the patronage of all the vicarages in the town in its hands; and their bias would lead them to appoint men of a “religious” tone of character.