Curiosities of Christian History Prior to the Reformation

by James Paterson

After the Council of Trosley in 909 expressed a resolution as to the disorderly life carried on in monasteries, where lay abbots, with wives and children, soldiers and dogs, occupied the cloisters of monks and nuns, some wealthy chiefs sought after new foundations. Duke William of Auvergne invited Berno, abbot of Beaune, to take charge of a new institution at Cluny. Berno began with twelve monks, and soon showed his skill in reforms. He required his monks at the end of meals to gather up and swallow all the crumbs of bread. This rule was complained of; but a dying monk one day exclaimed in horror that he saw the devil was holding up in accusation against him a bag of crumbs which he had been unwilling to swallow. This glimpse of the future terrified the other monks into submission. The monks of Cluny were also obliged to observe periods of perfect silence, and this was also complained of; for they dare not shout, even if they saw their horses stolen, or if they were seized and carried to prison by the Northmen. The monks were bled five times a year, as their only safeguard against disease; and when once two monks entreated the abbot to allow them to take some medicine, he told them angrily that they would never recover, and sure enough they died after taking it. Cluny soon obtained much reputation, and bred saints and attracted great wealth. Popes, kings, and emperors consulted the abbot as if he were an oracle. One abbot was called the “archangel of monks”; another, named Odilo, was called “King Odilo of Cluny.” To be the abbot of Cluny came to be a higher station than an archbishop or even a Pope. At the end of the twelfth century there were no less than two thousand monasteries affiliated with that of Cluny as head centre.

ST. DUNSTAN, MONK AND ARCHBISHOP (A.D. 953).

Monastic life in England had been at a low ebb when St. Dunstan was born at Glastonbury, in Wiltshire, of noble parentage, in 925. He was an excellent musician, as well as a painter and worker in brass and iron, which accomplishments recommended him to the Court of King Edmund about 933. He was so ingenious that he was accused of magic arts; and it was an item of evidence against him that his harp, when hanging on the wall, twanged of itself. He was banished from Court, and lived for a time in a small cell at Glastonbury. One night the devil appeared to him in the shape of a beautiful woman; but he, knowing better, plucked a red-hot pair of tongs from the fire, and seized her or him by the nose till the fiend roared and bellowed. It was thought this legend was founded on the fact that a lady of wealth who greatly admired Dunstan made him her heir, and he built the abbey of Glastonbury with her money, and became the first abbot thereof. He built also other monasteries. After many reverses of his Court favour, he at length was made Bishop of Worcester, then of London, and next Archbishop of Canterbury; and he died and was buried there in 987, though his body was afterwards carried off clandestinely by the monks of Glastonbury to lie in their own abbey. On one occasion he is said to have gained a victory over his opponents by exhibiting a crucifix which spoke on his side; and another time, after arguments, he ended by committing the cause of the Church to God, and immediately the floor of the room fell where his enemies stood, while his own friends remained unharmed, owing to the firmness of the beam supporting their side.

THE MONKS OF ST. BERNARD (A.D. 952).

The monastery of St. Bernard was founded about 962 by a famous saint of that name, at the head of a pass of the Alps, about 8,131 feet above the sea. It is a massive building and exposed to tremendous storms. The chief building accommodates eighty travellers, with stabling and storerooms. Here live a community devoted to works of benevolence, in a desolate region where seldom a week passes without a fall of snow, and which lies eight feet deep all the year round, and often more. No wood grows within two leagues, and all fuel is brought from a forest four leagues distant, and forty horses are kept to fetch it. Ten or twelve brethren are always on duty, for travellers pass nearly every day, notwithstanding all the perils; and five or six dogs are kept in the hospice. When a traveller reaches a certain house not far from the summit, a servant and dog issue from the monastery to conduct the stranger. The dog is the only guide, and nothing is seen of it except its tail, which directs the cavalcade. These dogs are a cross between the Newfoundland and the Pyrenean. This hospice soon became famous, and attracted many donations and grew wealthy. In 1480 it possessed ninety-eight benefices of the Church, and attained its greatest prosperity; but its resources are now greatly reduced.

A CHANCELLOR BECOMES A MONK (A.D. 946).

About 946 Turketul, who had been chancellor to King Edward, as well as to his son Edmund and his other son Edred, had occasion to pass through Croyland, when three old monks invited him to stay overnight in that monastery. They took him to prayers, showed their relics, told their wants, and begged him to act as their advocate with the King. The hospitality of that night made a great impression on the chancellor, who expressed to the King his wish to go there and turn monk himself some early day. The King was amazed, yet could not thwart his faithful servant, and at last consented and fixed a day to accompany the new monk to his destination; and meanwhile the chancellor gave away all his manors to the King, giving one-tenth to the monastery. The day arrived, and also the King, and his old servant, who, after laying aside his lay habit and receiving the benediction of the bishop, became abbot of Croyland. Many learned men soon joined and became priests or monks in the same house. The abbot employed them in school-keeping, and made a point of going every day to inspect the progress of each pupil, taking with him a servant, who carried figs or raisins, nuts or walnuts, apples or pears, to distribute as rewards. Turketul made great improvements at Croyland during his rule, which continued till 975, and the monastery became wealthy and powerful. He presented a great bell to the monastery, called Guthlac, and it and some others, soon afterwards added, made up the best peal of bells in all England of that day. A great fire destroyed this famous monastery in 1091.

DEATHBED OF ABBOT TURKETUL, OF CROYLAND (A.D. 975).

In 975 Abbot Turketul, of Croyland, caught a fever, and on the fourth day, lying on his bed, he assembled forty-seven monks and four lay brethren in his chamber, and called his steward to state the position and treasures of the convent. There were numerous most precious relics, which the Emperor Henry and other kings and nobles, desiring to obtain the goodwill of Turketul, had bestowed upon him while he was chancellor. Among these he chiefly reverenced the thumb of the blessed Apostle Bartholomew (a gift of the Emperor), so that he always carried it about with him, and crossed himself with it in all perils and in storm or lightning. He greatly reverenced likewise some of the hairs of the holy mother of God, Mary, which the King of France had given him, enclosed in a golden box. Also a bone of St. Leodegarius, bishop and martyr, a gift of the Prince of Aquitaine, and many other relics. The steward also produced the whole of the gold and silver vessels, which he and the treasurer preserved entirely for the wants of the monastery. As the fever increased, Turketul communicated in the sacred mysteries of Christ, and embracing with both arms the cross which his attendants had brought from the church before the convent, he kissed it so frequently with many sighs, tears, and groans, and so devout were the sayings which he addressed to each of the wounds of Christ, that he excited to copious tears all the brethren who stood around him. On the day before his death he delivered a short discourse to his brethren who were present on the observance of order, on brotherly love, on guarding against negligence. He also, in a prophetic admonition, cautioned them thus: “Guard well your fire”—which some interpreted to mean love, and others the conflagration of the building, which afterwards actually took place. Then bidding them a last farewell, he from the bottom of his heart besought God for them all. And then the vital powers failed, and languor oppressed him till he passed from this world to the Father—from the toils of the abbey to Abraham’s bosom. He was buried in his own church which he had built from the foundations near the great altar in the sixty-eighth year of his age and the twenty-seventh of his monkhood. The great fire took place one hundred years later.