Monks, Popes, and their Political Intrigues

by John Alberger

CHAPTER VI. THE MONASTIC VOW OF POVERTY

The monachal vows which we have considered in the foregoing chapters were assumed by all the religious orders prior to the thirteenth century. At that period orders were inaugurated to assist in the administration of the public affairs of the church. As these orders assumed obligations incompatible with the observance of silence and seclusion, the vows imposing them were not enjoined. But the vow of poverty, which will be the subject of the present chapter, and the vow of celibacy and obedience, which will hereafter be considered, were assumed by all the religious orders, both antecedent and subsequent to the thirteenth century.

The vow of poverty embraced an unqualified abjuration of all right to acquire or hold individual property, but granted the privilege of owning property in a corporate capacity. This privilege was, however, variously restricted by the terms of different monastic charters. The Carmelites and the Augustines were permitted to hold such an amount of real estate as would be sufficient for their support; the Dominicans were limited to the possession of personal property; while the Franciscans were not allowed to hold either real estate or personal property.

The vow of poverty assumed by the monks was adopted either from the instigations of an artful policy, to acquire wealth with the reputation of despising it, or from a conviction that poverty was a blessing and wealth an evil. If the first hypothesis is correct, the assumption of the vow was exceedingly reprehensible; if the second, it was absolutely absurd.

A condition of poverty, abstractly considered, is a matter of neither praise nor censure. It is sometimes a source of degredation; often of crime, and always of inconvenience and embarrassment. Its general tendency is to weaken in man his inborn sense of personal independence; to debase his mind with notions of fictitious inferiority; to degrade his social dignity by inducing sycophantic and obsequious habits; and to lead him to sacrifice his conscious equality to the demands of artificial rank. The incessant toil imposed by poverty on the energies of the poor obdurates their nature; and, allowing no interval for mental culture, permits nothing to interrupt or soften its tendency. The mortifying difficulties experienced by this class of society to obtain, by honest labor, a subsistence for themselves and their natural dependents, have sometimes led them to become depredators upon society, when their constitutional principles, unwarped by indigence, would have secured their obedience to law and their labors for the public good. Graces have been lost in brothels, and talents extinguished on scaffolds, which, had tolerable means protected against the cravings of hunger, might have added lustre to the female character, and heroes, statesmen and scholars to the scroll of fame. Poverty begetting despair, and despair destroying hope, the incentive to action, the powers of genius sunk into the torpidity of stupefaction, and the strength of a lion slumbered in the inactivity of a sloth. The chill which poverty breathes over the mind is as unfriendly to the unfolding of the intellectual germs, as the icy atmosphere of winter is to the fructification of vegetable seed. The poet or philosopher, hoveled in penury, without books or scientific instruments, with spare meals and gloomy forebodings, never creates his brightest gem, nor solves his profoundest problem. However sweetly Burns may sing or Otway melt, or however importantly other sons of indigence may have contributed to the augmentation of the volume of science and literature, yet the world has never heard their sweetest song, nor read their brightest period; for the groan of penury has marred the harmony of the one, and the tear of want has dimmed the lustre of the other.

As a condition of poverty is, in the abstract, a subject of neither praise nor blame, so also is a condition of wealth. Wealth, however, is the ablest means of advancing individual and social progress, as well as the sole remedy for the evils of poverty. If it cannot be adduced as a ground of esteem or of respectability, or as an apology for the ignorance, stupidity, pomposity, vanity and vulgarity with which it may adventitiously be associated, yet, as it amplifies the means of beneficence, and protects the weakness of human nature against temptation arising from indigence, its honest acquisition is always consistent with the severest principles of rectitude; and its pursuit is recommended by the honorable pride of personal responsibility, the motives of prudence and forecast, and the consideration of every domestic and social obligation. Without its aid the world would have remained in a state of primal barbarism; the commercial intercourse of nations, the first element of civilization and the principal source of national prosperity, power and greatness, would never have been known; agricultural, manufacturing, mechanical and mining interests, unstimulated by the lucrative traffic of supplying a foreign demand for surplus domestic production, would never have been extensively developed; the knowledge, the exotic luxuries, and the improvements in the comforts and conveniences of civilized life derived from international trade, could never have been obtained; the great bond of the amity of nations, and the power created by the pecuniary advantages of exchanging with one-another the products of their different climates, and which, by dissipating mutual prejudices, suspicion, vanity and self-conceit, has united them in friendly and beneficial intercourse, would never have existed; and, as the first altars were erected for the exposure of merchandise for sale, as the first offerings were the currency by which goods were purchased, penalties satisfied, salaries paid, and amity and friendship expressed; and, as the first temples were market-houses built for the accommodation of the traffic of the caravans, and to protect the goods against plundering barbarians, who understood not the conventional rights of property, had it not been for the fact that in the pursuit of wealth, communities felt the importance of establishing convenient centres of trade and modes of exchange, the ceremonies of religion would never have been invented. ( See Heeron's Historical Researches, translated by Bancroft).

As neither a condition of poverty nor a condition of wealth is a subject of praise nor censure; but, as the former inflicts on humanity its worst evils, and the latter confers on it incalculable advantages, a vow of poverty can have no innate sanctity to commend it, but must have all constituents that can render it objectionable. When it is further considered that there is a modifying reciprocity incessantly acting between the conditions of the different members of the human family, making the prosperity of one advantageous to all, and the indigence of one disadvantageous to all, we may find not only a selfish, but also a patriotic incentive in availing ourselves of any pecuniary right of our being. No one can be indigent without decreasing the wealth of another, nor opulent without contributing to the subsistence of others, nor industrious without adding to the sum of national wealth, nor indolent without consuming that for which he renders no equivalent. Now, as the vow of poverty is inconsistent with the virtues and obligations created by the mutual dependence and reciprocal influence of the condition and circumstances of mankind on each other; as it fosters all the evils that demoralize the social state; as it multiplies the number of paupers, discourages industry, sanctifies pernicious influences, and burdens society with the support of indolent and useless members, it is at variance with the interests of man and the prosperity of government.

National wealth is the aggregate of individual wealth. The greater is the amount of individual wealth in a nation, and the more equally it is distributed among the inhabitants, the less are the evils of poverty, the more independent and responsible are the citizens, the more energetically are the agricultural, mineral, manufacturing, and commercial interests developed, the more generally and intimately are the interests of the people interwoven with the fabric of the government, the greater will be the nation's prosperity, the more formidable its arms, the more peaceful its internal condition, and the more durable its prosperity.

A reformatory institution, to be efficacious, must be adapted to the nature of man and his social condition. Its principles must be his principles. Its measures must tend to aid his fullest development. To accomplish this object it must seek to abolish all restrictions on his rights, to remove whatever vitiates his sense of independence, to incite his industry by making labor honorable and its rewards certain, and to annul the immunities, exemptions, privileges and monopolies which degrade the masses by indigence and invidious distinctions, and corrupt the few by luxury and fictitious dignity. But the monachal institution, which sanctions poverty, the most prolific source of crime; which denounces individual wealth, the great element of civilization, and of individual and national improvement; which inculcates indolence, the parasite that feeds on the vitals of society; which discourages the avocations of industry, the parent of personal independence and responsibility; and which aims at a monopoly of wealth, itself the source of political inequality, of despotic government and of popular servitude—can advance no claim to a magnanimous mission. To esteem it a virtue to be poor, pleasing to infinite intelligence to renounce the best means of self-improvement, criminal to protect human integrity against the assaults originating in a condition of poverty, are ideas of such an absurd nature that the inference can scarcely be avoided, that the source whence they originated must have been utterly destitute, not only of moral principle, but of common sense.

But whenever conduct becomes enigmatical, and principles are avowed contradictory to human reason, passion and interests, an ordinary knowledge of the craft of ambition is apt to suggest a suspicion, that these singular abnegations have not sprung from a sanctity that has elevated the avowers above human nature, but from the injustice of their designs and the profundity of their dissimulation. Conscious that candor would be defeat, they have endeavored to accomplish objects by pretending to oppose them. The church never being too strongly fortified in holiness not to practise the advantageous vices of the world, has invariably been betrayed into the adoption of this crafty policy; but, always fanatical, she has never been discreet. Not only has she denied her real designs, but, in order to conceal them, has imposed vows of such an absurd and inconsistent import, as could not fail to reveal the hypocrisy and craft that dictated them. The vow of poverty was not assumed to become indigent, but to become opulent. It was a financial manoeuvre, designed to facilitate the routine of business; and it proved a very efficacious means of self-emolument. It won a reputation for the holy beggars, that humbled imperial dignity at their feet, Theodosius refused sustenance until a monk who had anathematized him, nullified it by absolution. The Empress of Maximus, in her own palace, at her own table, esteemed it a high honor to be permitted to wait as a servant on St. Martin of Tours. While the assumption of unnatural vows invested the mendicant monks with the credit and importance of supernatural beings, and elevated them above the dignity of emperors and empresses, it opened to their avarice the treasures of the world, and enabled them not only to fill their coffers with the people's money, but to win their blessing in the act of defrauding them. Such was the haughty indifference of the Abbot Pambo, who seemed to imagine, with his church, that he was the owner of the wealth of the world, that when Malaria, a rich sinner, presented him a donation of plate for his monastery, and intimated that its weight was about three hundred pounds, replied: "Offer you this to me or to God? If to God, who weighs the mountains in a balance, he need not be informed of the weight of your plate." The real design and value of the monastic vows was once forcibly expressed by a Benedictine monk, who remarked: "My vow of poverty has given me one hundred thousand crowns a year; my vow of obedience has raised me to the rank of a sovereign prince." An incident occurred in Paris, in relation to two ecclesiastical dignitaries which illustrates the cupidity and unapostolic character of the church. Innocent IX, and St. Thomas Aquinas having met together in Paris, and a capacious plate, piled with gold, the proceeds of the sale of indulgences, being brought into the room in which they were seated, the enraptured Pope exclaimed: "Behold, the days are past when the church could say, gold and silver have I none." But the saint truthfully remarked: "The days are also past when the church could say to the paralytic, arise and walk." Prætaxtatus, a Pagan philosopher, viewing the princely revenues of the church, declared that if he could become bishop of Rome, it might even remove his scruples about believing in Christianity. Assuming the strongest possible obligations to maintain a perpetual condition of absolute poverty, the monks yet found it compatible with the principles and teachings of the church, to convert their religious organizations into a financial corporation, and to conceal its character and design under a veil of angelic piety. The wealth which they apparently scorned, they unscrupulously amassed; the power which they scoffed at as profane, they attempted to monopolize; to whatever they seemed the most indifferent, they the most sedulously labored to acquire; and whatever they professed with their lips they violated in their practice. This consummate hypocrisy might be condemned by the profane sceptic, but the means crowned the end with too high a degree of success not to be justified by the piety of the religious orders.