Military and religious life in the Middle Ages and at the period of the Renaissance

by P. L. Jacob

Fig. 236.—Angels praying over a Skull.—Fragment of a Bas-relief in the Cloister of the Chartreuse, at Pavia (close of the Fourteenth Century).

The instruction of the young men who were destined for the priesthood also dates from the same epoch. It is true that there existed in Italy, France, and Spain, schools of theology frequented by the clergy, but the latter prepared themselves for holy orders without rule or guidance, without any of those intellectual and moral resources which a community can offer. Many of the pupils wore no tonsure nor even a uniform ecclesiastical dress, they mixed in society, sometimes led a dissipated life, and reached the solemn period of ordination without having received any proper teaching. The Council of Trent, at the instance of Cajetan, decided that each diocese should have a school of ecclesiastics termed a seminary. St. Charles Borromeo, Archbishop of Milan, the good Paul d’Arezzo, Archbishop of Naples, and several Italian bishops, set Europe the example by establishing these pious retreats in their dioceses; the Cardinal of Lorraine imitated them by founding the seminary of Rheims, and two French bishops also created seminaries at Carpentras and Bordeaux. These were the only seminaries in France for more than eighty years, and they were so badly managed, so little in harmony with the importance of their design, that they were looked upon as attempts that had miscarried. The seminary of Paris, the most famous of all those in France, was not created until the middle of the seventeenth century, when it was founded by the active and generous co-operation of two pious women, with the help of St. Vincent de Paul and the Abbé Ollier, for ecclesiastical retreats and for the establishment of the Congregation de Saint-Sulpice.

THE RELIGIOUS ORDERS.

The First Monks.—St. Anthony and his Disciples.—St. Pachomius and St. Athanasius.—St. Eusebius and St. Basilius.—Cenobitism in the East and in the West.—St. Benedict and the Benedictine Code.—Monkish Dress.—St. Columba.—List of the Monasteries in Charlemagne’s Time.—Services rendered by the Monks to Civilisation, Arts, and Letters.—Reform of the Religious Orders in the Twelfth Century.—St. Norbert.—St. Bernard.—St. Dominic.—St. Francis of Assisi.—The Carmelites.—The Bernardines.—The Barnabites.—The Jesuits.

During the early days of the Church, monastic life began in the vast solitudes of the Thebais, in Upper Egypt. It soon extended to Palestine, Syria, Mesopotamia, Asia Minor, and even beyond the limits of the Roman Empire. St. Jerome, just before the Middle Ages, wrote, “We daily receive troops of monks from India, Persia, and Ethiopia.”

The fearful austerities of the first ascetics in the East seem, at first sight, excessive, but they are justified by their results, and may be explained by the state of society at that epoch. A gross sensualism was generally prevalent, and people lived only for pleasure. The slaves, after having accomplished the work necessary for the existence of the free men, further assisted in satiating the disordered appetites of this society, which had exhausted all the refinements of sensuality and luxury.

The old world, absorbed in the worship of material things, had no taste for the culture of the mind, and in order to arouse it from its intellectual torpor, it became necessary to impress the senses and the imagination by excessive austerities. Greedy of novelty and anything emotional, the people flocked to visit those wonderful anchorites, who made a study of martyrdom, some shutting themselves up in a den where they could neither stand upright nor lie down; others lying motionless day and night upon a narrow plank, upon the top of a column, exposed to all weathers; all of them refusing meat, drink, and sleep, or only taking just enough to keep body and soul together. These men, who only thought of their body as a target for torture, in order to give themselves up exclusively to penitentiary practices and the contemplation of a future life, attracted general attention. As tender-hearted for others as they were pitiless for themselves, they took an interest in all suffering, they consoled the sorrowful, they prayed for the recovery of the sick at the request of the relatives. Their goodness found them a way to many hearts, and, with the eloquent force of example, they inculcated upon the crowds the vanity of sensual pleasures, they taught them to look to heaven rather than to earth; and they reminded their audience of the immortality of the soul, of its destinies in a better world, and of the duty of earning eternal happiness by the exercise of Christian virtues; in their discourses, as in their lives, they preached the Gospel. They were first listened to, then contemplated with curiosity, and afterwards believed in. People soon came to admire them, and from that moment imitating them was a natural consequence—in a few years the deserts were peopled with thousands of their disciples, who gave themselves up entirely to prayer and to manual labour.

St. Anthony was the first of these Fathers of the desert who consented to tear himself away from the austere charms of this solitude, and come with a retinue of monks to reside in Alexandria, for the purpose of combating the Arians, and inducing them to recognise the decisions of the Council of Nice. After having won the admiration and respect of his adversaries by his brilliant arguments against the philosophers of the school of Alexandria, after holding his ground even against emperors, he retired to the desert, upon Mount Colzin, with his disciples Macarius and Amathas, and only left it to inspect the monasteries which he had founded, and which contained more than fifteen thousand cenobites.