The two Councils of Rheims and of Mayence (1049), devoted exclusively to disciplinarian reforms, are characteristic of the state of monastic institutions at this period, just as the journey of Pope Leo IX. through France and Germany indicates the exact condition, the resources, the manners, and the habits of the religious houses. The illustrious pontiff, when visiting these houses, made them splendid presents, promised them important privileges, and instituted minute inquiries into the studies pursued within their walls. At the Abbey of Gorze, in 1149, he even went so far as to note with his own hand the nocturn responses in the “Office de Saint-Gorgon.”
Fig. 251.—Saint-Jean des Vignes, an Abbey of Regular Canons at Soissons (1076), the entrance-gate guarded by a barbican and bastilles.—From an Engraving in vol. i. of “Architecture Monastique,” by M. Albert Lenoir.
At about the same period, William, Abbot of St. Bénigne de Dijon, re-established in several dioceses the monastic rules and studies; Sigebert, a monk in the monastery of Gemblours, came to Metz to teach the Holy Scriptures, philosophy, and the dead languages; St. William of Hirsange reformed the cloister discipline in Germany; St. Robert, Abbot of Molême, founded the Cistercian order; St. Gualbert, the order of Vallombrosa, in the Apennines; St. Bruno, the Carthusian order, which he established both in the neighbourhood of Grenoble and in Calabria.
It is impossible to depict the profound disorder which reigned in the religious houses during the eleventh century, owing to the social disturbance which had followed the terrors of the year 1000. There were but a few solitary monasteries, remote from the troubles and vanities of the world, which still adhered to the rules (Fig. 251), and the monastic schools were nearly everywhere closed, and the notes of song had ceased to be heard in the churches, when, in the year 1095, the inspired voice of a monk, Peter the Hermit, summoned the Christian peoples to the Holy War. At this voice, which seemed to come down from heaven, the whole world was stirred up to deeds of energy; the young were inspired with a current of warlike and adventurous ideas which converged upon one single object—the deliverance of the holy places.
The difficulty of managing both the spiritual and temporal affairs of a monastery or cathedral church had led to the appointment of a sort of steward or lay administrator, termed an avowee, who was paid out of the dues which he received from the vassals of the community. He generally levied on each household a loaf of bread, a denier, a measure of oats, wheat, or barley, if the land grew cereals; a measure of wine, beer, or cider if the produce of the domains was grapes, hops, or apples. The avowee was arbiter in all disputed cases, and himself fixed the remuneration, before and after giving his decision, which the two parties to the suit had to pay him. He presided over judicial duels, and ordeal by boiling water or fire. He had a right to one head of stock at all cattle fairs, and he also received a draught or a saddle-horse, according as the district bred the one kind or the other. The avowee of a cathedral or a monastery always held a distinguished position in society; barons, dukes, and counts did not disdain to accept these functions—which they often abused, it must be added, by keeping for their own use the sums which they had received for the monastery. The usurpations of every kind which the avowees committed had been flagrant enough during the investiture dispute, but they increased enormously during the Crusades, owing to the absence of so many bishops, archdeacons, abbots, and priors, who had started for Palestine after loading their domains with mortgages, and even raising money upon the sacred vessels of their church.
The Crusades, notwithstanding, had the unquestionable advantage of sifting the clergy, and of removing from the cloisters a large number of clerks who were less fitted for study and seclusion than for the hardships of the battle-field. The monks who remained in Europe shut up in their cloisters were nearly all acting in obedience to some special aptitude, and they formed that band of artists, architects, painters, sculptors, and musicians, calligraphists, savants, translators, philosophers, rhetoricians, and preachers, which shed so much lustre upon the monasteries during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. By their direct action, as well as by their example, ecclesiastical architecture made vast progress, and the wonderful wealth of decoration which accompanied it, suddenly burst forth in the erection of those holy-chapels which seem like shrines of chiselled stone, in which the relics brought back from the Crusades were deposited (Fig. 252). It was under these influences that most of the great abbeys (Fig. 253) were restored, that painting upon glass attained its full perfection, that the Roman tongue reached the solitude of the cloister, and the beautiful literature of the ancient classics, which had for centuries been relegated to the dust of the monastic libraries, once more saw the light, and lent the aid of all its charms to combat the invasion of the vulgar idiom which the inhabitants of the communes had everywhere substituted for the Latin language.
Fig. 252.—Reliquary of the Holy Thorn, preserved in the Convent of the Augustine Sisters at Arras.—Carved brasswork of the Thirteenth Century.
