§ 85.2. Benedict of Aniane (A.D. 821) was originally called Witiza and was the son of a Visigoth count. He had served as a soldier under Charlemagne. In attempting to save his brother he was himself almost drowned. His ambition was now directed to an ascetic life, in which his personal performances were most remarkable. On the river Anianus in Languedoc he founded in A.D. 779 the monastery of Aniane. He was the indispensable and all-powerful counsellor of Louis the Pious. In order to have him always near him, Louis founded for him the monastery of Inda or the Cornelius-Münster near Aachen. In the interests of his cloister reform he published in A.D. 817 a Codex regulorum in which he collected all the monastic rules previously known.
§ 85.3. The rule of the elder Benedict made no reference to Nunneries; but his sister Scholastica is regarded as the founder of the order of female Benedictines. Another form of female asceticism was developed after the model of the canonical life of the secular clergy in the institution of canonesses. The rule, which Louis the Pious at Aachen in A.D. 816 allowed them to draw up for themselves, is distinctly milder than that of the nuns. The ladies’ orders gradually became places of resort for the unmarried daughters of the nobles. The canonical age for taking the nun’s vows was twenty-five. The novitiate lasted three years. Besides the propria professio the paterna devotio was also regarded as binding. In regard to dress the adoption of the veil was the main thing; but in addition they wore the wreath as a symbol of virginity and the ring as token of spiritual marriage. At this time the cutting of the hair was only a punishment for unchaste nuns. The honourable position of the wife among the Germans secured special respect for the abbess, and obtained for the most famous nunneries exemption, civil prerogatives and proprietary, even princely rights. The frequent appearance of Double-Cloisters where monks and nuns, naturally in separate dwellings, under a common rule either of an abbess as often in England, or of an abbot, was also peculiarly German.
§ 85.4. The Greater Monasteries, formed as they were of a vast number of separate buildings for agriculture, cattle rearing, handicraft and arts of all kinds, for elementary teaching, for higher education, for hospitable entertainment, caring for the sick, etc., came by and by to attain the proportions of little towns. Frequently they were the centre around which cities were raised. The monastery of Vivarium in Calabria, Cassiodorus’ foundation, inspired Western monasticism with an enthusiasm for scholarly studies. The regulations of Monte Cassino were extended to all monasteries of the West. Columbanus’ monastery of Bobbio rooted out paganism and Arianism in northern Italy. The monasteries of Iona in Scotland and Bangor in Ireland gained high repute in the struggle of the Celtic church against the Roman. The English monastery of Wearmouth was a famous school of science. In France St. Denys near Paris and Old Corbei in Picardy gained a high reputation. In South Germany St. Gall, Reichenau, Lorsch and Hirschau, in Central Germany Fulda, Hersfeld and Fritzlar, and in North Germany New Corbei, a branch from Old Corbei, were main centres of Christian culture.
§ 85.5. In its new Western form also monasticism was still without the clerical character. But there was an ever-increasing tendency to draw the monastic and the clerical institutions more and more closely together. By means of celibacy and the introduction of the canonical life (§ [84, 4]) the clergy came to have the monkish character, and on the other hand, most of the monks, in the first instance for monastic and mission services, took clerical orders. By and by monks sought appointments as curates (§ [84, 2]), and thus rivalries arose between them and the clergy. The monasteries were wholly under the jurisdiction of the bishops in whose diocese they lay. The exemptions of this period were limited to security for the free election of the abbot, independent administration of property and gratuitous performance of consecrations by the bishop. In the Frankish empire, however, abbots were ordinarily appointed to vacancies by the court, and rich abbeys were also often bestowed upon distinguished noblemen in commendam, i.e., for temporary administration with the enjoyment of their revenues, or even to court and military officers as a reward for special services. Such lay abbots or abbacomites often stayed in the monasteries for months with their families, their huntsmen and their soldiers, and made them the scene of their drinking bouts, their field sports and their military exercises. The kings retained the richest abbacies to themselves or gave them to their sons and daughters, wives and concubines.
§ 85.6. The Stylites (§ [44, 6]) on account of the climate, could gain no footing, though attempts were indeed made, e.g. by Wulflaich (§ [78, 3]). In place of them we find male and female recluses, Reclusi (Inclusi) and Reclusæ, who shut themselves up in cells which they never quitted. Hermits of the Woods, unfettered by any rules, found great favour among the Germans. Their national melancholic temperament inclining them to solitude, their strong love of nature, their passionate delight in roaming unchecked through woods and mountains, contributed to make such a mode of life attractive. It was during the 6th century that this craze for hermit life reached its height in Germany, and its main seat was in Auvergne with its wild mountains, glens and gorges. But as the cell of the saint was often in later times developed into a monastery on account of the crowds of disciples that gathered round, the hermit life gradually passed over into a regulated cœnobite life. In Switzerland Meinard, son of a count of Zollern, was a hermit of this sort. In A.D. 861 he had been murdered by two robbers, and this was afterwards discovered, the legend says, by means of two ravens feeding upon the body of the murdered man. His cell in later times grew into the beautiful Benedictine abbey of Maria-Einsiedeln with its miracle-working image of the mother of God, which at this day is visited by more than a hundred thousand pilgrims yearly.
§ 86. The Property of Churches and Monasteries.
The inalienableness of church property being regarded as the first principle of its administration, it grew by enormous strides from year to year through donations and legacies, At the end of the 7th century there was in Gaul fully a third of the whole territory in the possession of the churches and monasteries, while the national exchequer was quite exhausted. In this emergency Charles Martel founded the benefice system, for which he also converted into money the abundant possessions of the church. His sons, however, Carloman and Pepin the Short, in consideration of the reorganization of the Frankish church effected by Boniface (§ [78, 5]), sought to avert the impoverishment of many churches and cloisters by a partial restitution so far as the neediness of the times would allow. Charlemagne and Louis the Pious did still more in this direction, so that partly by these means, partly by the continued donations of rich people, church property soon acquired its earlier proportions. Thus, e.g., the monastery of Luxeuil had in the 9th century an estate with 15,000 farm-houses upon it.—The administration of the property of churches and monasteries lay in the hands of the bishops and abbots. For defending and maintaining secular and legal rights there were ecclesiastical and monastic advocates, Advocati ecclesiæ.This institution, however, often degenerated into an agency for oppressing the peasants and plundering the property of their clients; for many advocates assumed arbitrary powers and dealt with the property of the church and its proceeds just as they chose.
§ 86.1. The Revenues of Churches and Monasteries.—The main sources of their growing wealth were donations and legacies. Princes often made bequests of enormous magnitude and rich people in private life vied with them. Occasions were never wanting; restoration from sickness, escape from danger, the birth of a child, etc., regularly won for the church whose patron saint had been helpful, some valuable present. The clergy also used all means in their power to encourage this prevailing readiness to bestow presents; and to this must in great measure be traced the beginnings of the forging of deeds. A peculiar form for bequeathing a gift was that of the Precaria, according to which the giver retained to himself for his lifetime the use of the goods which he gifted. Church property was farther greatly increased by the personal possessions of the clergy and the monks, which at the death of the former and at the conversio of the latter usually became part of the revenue of the church or cloister to which their owners belonged. Besides the proceeds of its own estates the church drew the tithes of all property and incomes of parishioners, the claim being enforced as a jus divinum by a reference to the Mosaic legislation and made a law of the empire by the injunction of Charlemagne. On the other hand the clergy were forbidden to exact payment for discharge of official duties, so called stole-dues, because they were performed by the priest dressed in the stola. The cathedral church was entitled to an annual tax, Honor cathedræ, levied upon all the churches of the diocese.The inferior clergy, on the other hand, often arrogated to themselves the right in accordance with a bad custom of grasping by violent plunder the possessions of their deceased bishop, Spolium.[241]
§ 86.2. The Benefice System.—In consequence of the vast gifts of the Merovingians to the churches and their ministrants, when Charles Martel assumed the government, the sources of crown revenue that hitherto seemed inexhaustible were almost completely dried up, while this prince, in order to deliver the country from the Saracens and in order to maintain his rule over against the innumerable petty tyrants who threatened to dismember the empire, required a yet fuller treasury than any of his predecessors. Out of these circumstances grew the Benefice System. The soldiers who had served the nation and princes had been as before rewarded by grants of lands. These, however, were no longer given as hereditary possessions but only for the lifetime of the receiver (Beneficium), and for this he was under obligation to supply a proportionate contingent for military service. When the crown lands had been well nigh exhausted, Charles Martel did not hesitate to lay claim to the church property. His son Carloman at the first Austrasian national Synod in A.D. 742 (§ [78, 5]) promised to restore the church property that had thus been alienated, but had soon to confess his inability to perform his promise. At the second Austrasian Synod at Lestines in A.D. 743 he therefore limited the immediate restitution to the most pressing cases of notoriously poor and needy churches and monasteries. He was driven to this by the absolutely needful claims of the civil and military departments. But the claim of the church to get back the property was secured by the beneficiary giving a Precarial letter and by the payment of an annual tax of a solidus for every farm house on the estate. The king also promised the full restoration on the death of the beneficiary, with express retention, however, of the right, if the needs of the times required it, to lease out again the vacant precariæ. Even Pepin at the Neustrian national Synod at Soissons in A.D. 744 granted similar concessions, but yet in the execution of them did not go so far as his brother.In A.D. 751 he caused a descriptio et divisio, i.e. an inventory of church property with an exact fixing of the limits of its various titles to be made.[242]—The annual tax referred to was transformed by Charlemagne into a second tithe, the so-called Nonæ. But even after the partial restitution effected by the descendants of Pepin there still remained upon the restored property the beneficial burdens that had been laid upon it, especially the obligation to supply and equip a certain number of soldiers, and this was thence transferred to the whole property of thechurch.—The benefice system, originating in the pressure of circumstances, continued to spread more and more, and formed the foundation of the entire social and civil organization of the Middle Ages.[243]