The plan of my work required that questions relating to the religious communities should be examined at some length but it did not allow me to give to this matter all the development of which it is susceptible. Indeed, it would be possible, in my opinion, in writing the history of religious communities, to give side by side that of the nations among whom these communities arose, so as to show in detail a truth we have now proved, viz. that the establishment of religious institutions, besides the superior and divine object which they have had in view, has been at all times the fulfilment of a social and religious necessity. Although my strength does not enable me to aspire to such an enterprise, by which the courage may well be daunted, even by contemplating the immense extent of such a work, I wish to suggest the idea of it here; perhaps a man may be found with sufficient capacity, learning, and leisure, to undertake it, and enrich our age with this new monument of history and philosophy. By conceiving the plan in this point of view, and making it subordinate to this unity of object, whereof the foundation, which shows itself in well-known facts, is discovered in obscure and conjectured in hidden ones, there would be no difficulty in giving all desirable variety to this work. The subject itself leads to variety; for it invites the writer to descend to extremely interesting particulars, which will be like the episodes of a grand and unique poem. The disposition of men's minds, now become favorable to religious institutions, thanks to the deceptions which are the consequence of vain theories, and to the lessons of experience, which destroy the calumnies invented by philosophy, render the road every day more easy. The path is already sufficiently beaten; it is only required to enlarge and extend it, in order to conduct a greater number of men towards the region of truth.
Having pointed out this, it only remains for me to state here, in conclusion, divers facts which could not be given in the text, and which I have preferred to collect in a note. As these facts belonged to the same subject, it appeared to me proper to collect them apart, while leaving the reader to pay full attention to the observations which form the body of my work.
There were known among the pagans, under the name of ascetics, persons who devoted themselves to abstinence and the practice of the austere virtues; so that, even before Christianity, there already existed the idea of those virtues which have been since exercised in Christianity. The lives of the philosophers are full of examples which prove the truth of my assertion. Yet it will be understood that, deprived of the light of faith and the aid of grace, the pagan philosophers afforded but a very faint shadow of what was afterwards realized in the lives of the Christian ascetics. We have stated that the monastic life is founded on the Gospel, inasmuch as the Gospel contains asceticism. From the foundation of the Church we see the monastic life established under one form or another. Origen tells us of certain men, who, in order to reduce their bodies into subjection, abstained from eating meat and from all that had life. (Origen, Contr. Celsum, lib. v.) Tertullian makes mention of some Christians who abstained from marriage, not because they condemned it, but in order to gain the kingdom of heaven. (Tertul. De Cult. Femin. lib. ii.)
It is remarkable, that the weaker sex participated in a singular manner in that strength of mind which Christianity communicated for the exercise of the heroic virtues. In the early ages of the Church there were already reckoned, in great numbers, virgins and widows consecrated to the Lord, bound by a vow of perpetual chastity; and we see that special care was taken in the ancient Councils of the Church of that chosen portion of her flock. It is one of the objects of the solicitude of the Fathers to regulate discipline on this point in a proper manner. The virgins made their public profession in the church; they received the veil from the hands of the bishop, and, for greater solemnity, they were distinguished by a kind of consecration. This ceremony required a certain age in the person who was consecrated to God; we also observe that discipline has been very different on this point. In the East they received persons seventeen years old, and even sixteen, as we learn from St. Basil (Epist. can. 18); in Africa at twenty-five, as we see from the fourth canon of the third Council of Carthage; in France at forty, as appears from the nineteenth canon of the Council of Agde. Even when the virgins and widows dwelt in the houses of their fathers, they did not cease to be reckoned among ecclesiastical persons; they received the support of the Church by this title, in cases of necessity. If they violated their vow of chastity, they were excommunicated, and could not return to the communion of the faithful, except by submitting to public penance. (For these details, see the thirty-third canon of the third Council of Carthage, the nineteenth canon of the Council of Ancyra, and the sixteenth canon of that of Chalcedon.)
In the first three centuries, the state of the Church, subject to an almost continual persecution, must naturally have hindered persons who loved the ascetic life, men or women, from assembling in the towns to observe it in common. Some think that the propagation of the ascetic life in the desert is in great part due to the persecution of Decius, which was very cruel in Egypt, and made a great number of Christians retire into the deserts of the Thebais, or other solitudes in the neighbourhood. Thus commenced the establishment of that method of life which, in the end, was to gain so prodigious an extension. St. Paul, if we are to believe St. Jerome, was the founder of the solitary life.
It appears that some abuses were introduced into the monastic life from the earliest ages, as we see certain monks detested at Rome in the time of Jerome. Quousque genus detestabile monacorum urbe non pellitur, says the saint by the mouth of the Romans in a letter to Paula; but the reputation of the monks, which had perhaps been compromised by the Sarabaïtes and the Gyrovagues, a kind of vagabonds whose last care was the practice of the virtues of their state, and who indulged in gluttony and other pleasures with shameful licentiousness, was soon restored. St. Athanasius, St. Jerome himself, St. Martin, and other celebrated men, among whom St. Bennet distinguished himself in a particular manner, renewed the splendor of the monastic life by the most eloquent apology, that which consisted in giving, as they did, the most sublime example of the most austere virtues.
It is remarkable that, in spite of the multiplication of monks in the east and west, they were not divided into different orders, so that, during the first six centuries, all, as Mabillon observes, were considered as forming one institute. There was something noble in this unity, which, as it were, formed all the monasteries into one family; but it must be acknowledged that the diversity of orders afterwards introduced was essentially calculated to attain the various and numerous objects which successively attracted the attention of religious institutions.
The discipline, by virtue whereof no new order could be instituted without the previous approbation of the sovereign Pontiff, it may be said, was very necessary, considering the ardor which afterwards urged many persons to establish new institutions; so that, without this prudent check, disorder would have been introduced in consequence of the exaggerated transports which urged some imaginations to exceed all bounds.
Some people take delight in relating the excesses into which some individuals of the mendicant orders fell; and they borrow the narratives of Matthew Paris, without forgetting the lamentations of St. Bonaventura himself. I wish not to excuse evil, wherever it is found; but I will observe, that the circumstances of the times when the mendicant orders were established, and the kind of life they were obliged to embrace, in order to fulfill the purpose for which they were intended, as I have pointed out in the text, rendered almost inevitable those evils which pious men sincerely deplored, and which the enemies of the Church lament with no less affectation than exaggeration.