The monk Paul Diaconus was at Court in the time of King Rutchis (A.D. 744-749), and relates having himself seen that king after a banquet show the famous goblet which Albuin had made of the skull of Cummund, King of the Gepidi. As is known, Albuin had killed King Cummund in battle, and afterwards married his daughter Rosamund, and used on solemn occasions to drink out of his skull, which had been made into a cup. One day Albuin commanded that the goblet should be handed to the Queen, calling upon her to drink gaily with her father. This horrible outrage was at a later time cruelly avenged by Rosamund. Paul Diaconus, on seeing the goblet and remembering this brutal act of a former king, made this entry in his memoirs: “Lest this should seem incredible to any, take note that I speak the truth in Christ, for indeed I saw on a certain feast day King Rutchis holding this cup in his hand and showing it to his guests.”
ANOTHER BENEDICT TRIES TO MAKE THE MONKS WORK (A.D. 780).
Amid the growing demoralisation of monasteries, Benedict of Aniane, whose original name was Witïza, when a boy, was cup-bearer in the Court of Pepin, and continued with Charlemagne. In returning from Rome in 774, in the retinue of that king, he narrowly escaped drowning in attempting to save his brother. This turned his thoughts towards joining a monastery, which he soon entered, and at once excelled in all the austerities. He macerated his body by excessive fasting, clothed himself with rags, which soon swarmed with vermin, slept little and on the bare ground, never bathed, courted derision and insult like a madman, and expressed his fear of hell in loud outcries. On the death of his abbot Benedict became his successor, and built a little hermitage on the bank of the river Aniane. Some monks tried to live with him, but found the regimen too severe; others succeeded better. He and his monks resolved to build a monastery between them. They had no oxen to drag the materials, and they did the work themselves. The walls were of wood, the roof thatched with straw, the vestments were coarse, the vessels of wood, but all of their own making. They lived chiefly on bread and water, sometimes a little milk, and on Sundays a scanty allowance of wine. Yet it was noticed that they soon tended to greater luxury and splendour, for in 782 the wooden monastery was replaced by one more solid—marble and decorations and costly vessels. Charlemagne himself contributed, and exempted the building from all taxes; and he appointed Benedict and two others to collect and recast the rules of monasteries and nunneries. Benedict to the last helped to plough and dig and reap, and died in 821, aged seventy.
IMPROVEMENTS IN MONASTICISM (A.D. 780).
When Benedict, Abbot of Aniane, in Languedoc, born in 750, left the Court in early life, disgusted with its ways and bent on monastic labours, thought of founding a new monastery, he found the system then in vogue far too lax. He taught his monks to accustom themselves to earn a living by their own industry, and then do the utmost good with their earnings. When starving crowds came to his new settlement, he taught them to join in storing all the grain that could be spared till next harvest, and each made his portion support himself and supply a surplus, as a boon to the needy ones outside. The monastery was also turned into an industrial centre for library work. Louis the Pious thought so well of these improvements in discipline, that he drew up a code in 817 on the same principles, and circulated it throughout the Frankish Empire. Benedict used to say, “If it seem to you impossible to observe many of the commandments, then try only this one little commandment: ‘Depart from evil and learn to do good.’”
A MONK AT COURT WRITES HOME TO HIS OLD CONVENT (A.D. 750).
Paul Diaconus was for some time a monk at Monte Cassino, on the banks of the Moselle, and was sent to the Court of Charlemagne to use influence to obtain a pardon for his brother, then in banishment. The King treated him well, and Paul thus wrote to Theodomar, the abbot: “Although my body is separated by a vast distance, yet my affection for you can never suffer any diminution, nor can I hope to express in a letter, and within the brief limit of these lines, how constantly and profoundly I am moved by the thought of your affection and that of my elders and brethren. For when I consider the leisure, filled with sacred occupations, the delectable refuge of my dwelling, your pious and holy dispositions—when I think of the holy band of so many soldiers of Christ, zealous in all Divine offices, and the shining examples of special excellence in particular brethren, and the sweet converse we had on the perfections of our celestial home—I tremble, I gaze, I languish, I cannot restrain my tears, and my breast is rent with many sighs. I am living amongst Catholics and followers of Christian worship. I am well received. All show me abundant kindness for the love of our Father Benedict and for the sake of your own merits. But compared to your convent, this palace is a prison in contrast to the great serenity of your life; my life here seems only a continual storm. I am only detained in this country by the weakness of my body, but my whole soul goes out to you. Now I seem to be in the midst of your Divine songs, now to be sitting with you in the refectory, where the reading is even more satisfying than the bodily food. Now, methinks, I am watching each at his own special work, now inquiring into the health of the aged and sick, now wearing with my feet the tombs of the saints, who are dear to me as heaven itself.”
THE MONKS FIRST DRINKING WINE IN ENGLAND (A.D. 760).
Fuller, in his “Church History,” says that about 760 the bill of fare of monks was bettered generally in England, and more liberally indulged in their diet. It was first occasioned when Ceolwolphus, formerly King of Northumberland, but then a monk in the convent of Lindisfarne, or Holy Island, gave leave to that convent to drink ale and wine, anciently confined by Aidan, their first founder, to milk and water. Let others dispute whether Ceolwolphus thus dispensed with them by his new abbatical or old regal power, which he so resigned that in some cases he might resume it, especially to be king in his own convent. And indeed the cold, raw, and bleak situation of that place, with many bitter blasts from the sea and no shelter on the land, speaks itself to each inhabitant there. This local privilege, first justly indulged to the monks of Lindisfarne, was about this time extended to all the monasteries in England, whose primitive over-austerity in abstinence was turned now into a self-sufficiency that soon improved into plenty, that quickly depraved into riot, and that at last occasioned their ruin.
CHARLEMAGNE HAS HIS DOUBTS ABOUT MONKERY (A.D. 800).