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

by P. L. Jacob

A great literary event, though only indirectly connected with the history of the monastic orders, nevertheless enables us to form an accurate judgment as to the intellectual character of the religious houses during the last thirty-five years of the fifteenth century, and the first years of the sixteenth: we refer to the invention of printing. Whatever may have been the causes that induced these houses to encourage the extension of printing, the action of each community is made manifest by its achievements in that vast laboratory which typographical art had founded, in the stead of a few cells and studies where the human hand had been wearily transcribing manuscript after manuscript.

In an obscure monastery at Subiaco, near Rome, two printers from Mayence, Sweynheym and Pannartz, guests of the monks, published the first edition of Lactantius, followed by several other valuable works of ecclesiastical authors (1465–1467); in the monastery of St. Eusebius, within the walls of Rome, George Laver, of Würzburg, printed many publications, about 1470. Several clerks brought up in the episcopal schools of Metz, Liége, Mayence, and Tuscany—Adam Rot, Paul Leenen, Ulric Zell, and Jacob Caroli—superintended in person printing-offices at Rome, Cologne, and Florence, which were worthy rivals of those which were being established in every direction by ordinary traders. Colard Mansion, a clerk belonging to a community at Bruges, who was specially entrusted with the copying of manuscripts (1414–1473) conceived the idea of substituting for the tedious process of the pen and the engraving pencil the rapidity of movable types and screw printing-presses. The Brethren of the Common Life, his colleagues, who were settled at Rhingau, near Mayence, at Val St. Marie, Nuremberg, at Cologne, and at Rostock, imitated the example of Colard Mansion, and from mere calligraphists became master-printers (1474–1479). Two theological doctors of the Sorbonne, William Fichet and Jehan de la Pierre, also induced three skilful German workmen, Ulric Gering, Martin Crantz, and Michael Friburger, to come to Paris, where they provided them with a place to set up their presses and to establish a workshop (1470). This was the origin of printing in Paris. Two years later, William Caxton obtained leave to print in England, beneath the roof of Westminster Abbey; while in Switzerland, a canon of Munster (in Argovia), Hélias Hélye (1472, 1473), had some small presses at work. Soon after this, the Dominicans, the Carthusians, and the Carmelites established large printing workshops at Pisa, Parma, Genoa, and Metz (1476–1482); the Franciscans, surnamed Frères Conférenciers, who had a settlement near Gaude, in Holland, also opened a printing-office; and lastly, such celebrated orders as those of Cluny and Cîteaux, branches of the Benedictines, sent for workmen to their houses in Burgundy, at Clervaux, in Champagne, and Montserrat in Catalonia, to print the principal liturgical books, which were termed the books of common prayer.

The members of the Order of Jesus, founded in Paris by the Spanish nobleman St. Ignatius Loyola, on his return from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land (1534), from this period devoted themselves closely to the work of social regeneration—an undertaking which, looked at in all its different phases, seemed as if it could only be brought about by means of religious reform. While St. Francis Xavier, the friend and companion of St. Ignatius, made use of the influence of the Order of Jesus to convert the idolatrous peoples in the Indian Ocean (Fig. 263), the Jesuit clerks, a learned and highly intellectual body, in a short time obtained a hold over the whole world, forming one vast army which answered as one man to the commands of the Holy See, and whose representatives were everywhere to be met with, in the professorial chairs, in the schools, in the affairs of State, and more especially in the various domains of literature, science, and art. Thus the sixteenth century, during which Luther and Calvin made such an onslaught upon the Catholic Church and the monastic orders, gave birth to a new religious order, which, though the most recent, was the most powerful and invincible of them all. Luther, who had worn the cowl in the monastery of the Augustines at Erfurt, and Calvin, who had been canon in the chapter of Noyon, urged the Huguenots to make away with the monasteries; but their number only seemed to increase whenever one of them was destroyed by the sacrilegious hands of the heretics.

Fig. 264.—Seal of the Monastery of St. Louis of Poissy, belonging to the Order of Preaching Brothers of the St. Dominic rule.—St. Louis, with a halo round his head, is covering with the folds of his cloak the people who are imploring him for protection.

CHARITABLE INSTITUTIONS.

Christian Charity in the First Centuries of the Church.—The Eastern Empresses.—The Holy Roman Ladies.—Olympiade, Melanie, Marcella, and Paula.—Charity at the Court of the Franks.—St. Margaret of Scotland and Matilda of England.—Hedwige of Poland.—Origin of the Lazar-houses.—The Lazarists in France and in England.—Progress and Vicissitudes of the Order of St. Lazarus.—The Foundations of St. Louis.—The Order of Mercy founded by St. Nolasque.—St. Catherine of Sienna and St. Francis.—Bernardin Obrégon.—Jean de Dieu.—Philippe de Néri.—Antoine Yvan.

At Christ’s coming, the Greco-Roman civilisation had reached the last stages of corruption, and the slavery of the vast majority of men failed to satisfy the thirst for supremacy which devoured the small section of privileged leaders in ancient society. The barbarian peoples, on their part, recognised no other power than that of brute force, nor any other pleasures than those of sanguinary orgies. To transform this condition of society, which toiled only for money and sensual enjoyment, Christ gave forth these touching and sublime words, “Blessed are the poor in spirit: blessed are the pure in heart” (Beati pauperes spiritu: beati mundo corde). To the savage spirit of the barbarian who deified brute force Christ opposed the reverence for all that is weak and feeble by clothing himself with all manner of infirmities: “Come, ye blessed of my Father; I was poor, I was sick, I was in prison, and ye comforted me; inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”

In these powerful words was contained the germ of modern civilisation; wherever the Gospel reaches a feeling of tenderness and respect for the poor and the weak must go hand in hand with the spirit of chastity, self-denial, and devotion. Two words unknown to the old world sum up this transformation—humility and charity. The rich, the high-born, and even the offspring of royalty, from the moment they believe in the divine word, are found tending the sick in hospitals, and the proof of true belief in the Messiah is ever the same as that which He gave to attest his divine mission to John’s disciples: “Unto the poor the Gospel is preached.”