Though there were many good points in monachism, the Fathers were not slow to point out its defects. Chrysostom lamented that Christian virtue which ought to dwell in cities had fled into deserts. Vigilantius observed, “If all Christian men shut themselves up in cloisters and withdrew into deserts, who shall preach the Gospel and call sinners to repentance?” There was one Roman monk named Jovinian, sometimes called a prototype of Luther, and obviously before his time, who was uncompromising in his denunciations of the whole system. “There is,” he said, “one and the same Divine life springing from fellowship with the Redeemer, in which all genuine Christians share, and a higher stage cannot exist.” But in spite of all cavils the system held its ground down to the time of Luther. As Neander remarks: “The more the monks occupied themselves with their temptations, instead of looking from themselves to the Lord, so much the more those temptations increased, many of which they could easily have overcome if they had been willing to forget themselves in an activity of a calling that would have laid under requisition all the powers of their nature; on which account they felt the need of occupying by manual labour, such as basket-making and other handicrafts, the senses and lower powers of their nature.”
ST. BENEDICT AT MONTE CASSINO (A.D. 528).
St. Benedict was born in 480, and gave a fresh impetus to monkish communities and devised better laws. After some experience in other places, he selected one of the heights of the Apennines for the great capital of the monastery orders—namely, Monte Cassino. He combined agriculture and woodcutting with exercises of piety, and introduced a more severe system of discipline. Many young nobles flocked to take up their abode. They acted as missionaries and almsmen to the poor. After fourteen years’ presiding over the monastery, he had a last interview with his sister Scholastica, whom he survived forty days. A violent fever seized him, and he ordered his sister’s tomb to be opened for him, and himself to be carried to the chapel of John the Baptist. Then, supported by his disciples, he insisted on standing and receiving the holy viaticum, and extending his arms and uttering his prayers, he died standing like a sentinel at his post. His influence lasted a thousand years; his relics were carefully guarded and taken to France. In the eleventh century one of his bones was sent from France to Monte Cassino, and there received with great enthusiasm.
THE REFORMERS OF MONKERY (A.D. 528-1226).
Though Benedict was a great reformer of the monks by introducing systematic labour into the spiritual life, and though his new order of things began with so fair a promise and had done wonders, yet the monks had by degrees yielded to the treacherous influences of fame, ease, and wealth. The Benedictine monasteries were filled with scholars, whose devotion was directed more to the preservation of classic texts than the performance of the Divine office; with luxurious monks, strangers to fasting and unused to vigils, revelling in the good things of life, and in their rich revenues; then abbots were lords and rulers living in princely state, and riding out on richly caparisoned palfreys. The old humility of the monastic life was lost; they took part in state intrigues, dictated laws to kings, shook the thrones of monarchs who had offended them, and began to aspire after worldly power and dominion. At last St. Francis arose in 1180, the founder of the Friars Minors, who discovered that there was nothing in the world really great and thoroughly satisfactory except poverty and self-humiliation, accompanied with efficient street preaching. St. Dominic also about the same time introduced mendicancy, or the absence of wealth, as part of the system of life. Yet in course of time both these last systems broke down, long before the period of the Reformation.
EARLY DIFFICULTIES OF MONASTERIES (A.D. 600).
When the Irish abbot Columban (who died 615) left the monastery of Bangor, where he had been reared, he became at the age of thirty consumed with a zeal to found a monastery of his own; and having obtained his abbot’s permission, he went off with twelve youths to France, and they betook themselves to an immense wilderness in Vosges, and chose the ruins of an old castle as a settlement. As the monks were obliged to till the adjoining land, they at first suffered greatly from hunger. At one time the monks had nothing to eat but the bark of trees and wild herbs; and what made matters worse, one of their number was sick, and the others could do nothing to relieve him. Three days they spent in prayer, seeking relief for their sick brother, when suddenly they saw a man standing at the door of the convent, whose horses were laden with sacks of provisions. The man told them that he had felt an indescribable impulse to go and assist with his means those who from love to Christ endured such privations in the wilderness. Another time they had for nine days suffered similar want, when the heart of another abbot moved him to send provisions. When a foreign priest once visited them and expressed surprise at their cheerfulness amid such trials, Columban only said, “If people faithfully serve their Creator, they will suffer no want; for in the Psalms it is said, ‘I have never seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.’ He who could satisfy five thousand men with five loaves can easily fill our barns with meal.”
ADVICE TO MONKS SETTLING IN A FOREST (A.D. 650).
When the Abbot Ebrolf settled with his monks in the seventh century in a thick forest inhabited by wild beasts and robbers, one of the robbers, struck with awe at the simplicity of the newcomers, said to them, “You have not chosen a suitable place for yourselves. The inhabitants of this forest live by robbery, and can endure nobody near them who seeks to support himself by the labour of his hands. This is no place for you.” The monk answered, “Know, my brother, that the Lord is with us; and since we are under His protection, we fear not the threatenings of men who can kill the body, but cannot kill the soul. Know that He will supply His servants abundantly with food even in a desert. And thou also, my friend, mayst be a partaker of these riches, if thou wilt renounce thy evil vocation and vow to serve the true and living God. Despair not of God’s goodness on account of the greatness of thy sins, but be assured the eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous, and His ears are open to their cry, and the face of the Lord is against them that do evil, to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth.” Upon this the robber departed, meditating upon these words, which to him were so extraordinary. The next morning he hastened back to the monks, carrying to the abbot a present, such as his poverty could furnish, of three coarse loaves and a honeycomb, and professing his willingness to join them and become a monk. After his example other robbers were from time to time persuaded either to become monks or to labour honestly for a livelihood with their own hands.
A MONK DENOUNCES THE FEROCITY OF LOMBARD KINGS (A.D. 749).