Much of the corruption of the regular clergy was to be attributed to the impostors and malefactors who found shelter and safety in their ranks. The assumption of the tonsure alone was sufficient to insure immunity to the most notorious outlaw. The slave, impatient under the lash of a cruel master or apprehensive of the consequences of inexcusable faults, acquired security and freedom in the shadow of the towers of the abbey. The identity of the criminal and the fugitive, the schemes of the hypocrite and the knave, were effectually disguised by the cowl of the friar. The humane and beneficent privilege of sanctuary was abused by the reception and shelter of every class of dangerous and disreputable offenders against the public peace. Association with persons of this abandoned character could not fail to be demoralizing, even to those of the fraternity who observed their vows, and must have still further corrupted the idle and the dissolute who had already embraced the alluring and luxurious routine of conventual life.
The incapacity, arrogance, and debauchery of the clergy at length grew intolerable, even to a bigoted and priest-ridden people. The translation of the Bible by Wyclif, the teachings of John Huss and Jerome of Prague, paved the way for the exercise of private judgment and the privilege of independent thought. All over Europe a reaction took place. It was least felt in Italy, where the masses had for ages been familiar with the impostures and crimes of the Papacy. It was most marked in England, where the grievances imposed on the laity by their religious instructors had become insufferable, and the wealth of the kingdom had been absorbed by the creatures of Rome. The heresies of France for a time threatened the existence of the hierarchy, and were only suppressed by a crusade and the diabolical energy of the Inquisition. Reverence for every form of belief had been shaken by the universal prevalence of sacerdotal iniquity. In Provence and Languedoc priests were insulted by the mob and lampooned by minstrels. Their services were rejected with contempt, their gestures were mocked, their vices satirized with pitiless severity. The English populace, exasperated beyond measure by their wrongs, occasionally proceeded to acts of violence. In some towns an ecclesiastic was hardly safe on the streets. No clerk dared to commit himself or his cause to the verdict of a jury. A handful of worshippers was lost in the nave of the cathedral, where thousands once had congregated. Women went unshriven rather than trust themselves in the confessional, whose precincts, from being the abode of religious advice and consolation, had grown dangerous to the preservation of feminine honor. In 1746 a remonstrance was made to the Primate of England against the participation of women in pilgrimages, as the cities of France, Lombardy, and the Rhine were filled with courtesans, who had abused these opportunities for the exhibition of religious zeal. The authority of the ecclesiastical tribunals was openly defied, their proceedings derided, their judges insulted, their subordinate officers maltreated. In London, towards the close of the fifteenth century, it was a serious matter to attempt to serve a process of the Consistorial Court. The power for evil of this once formidable engine of persecution, which had exercised an offensive censorship over every community, had become hopelessly impaired.
Of such a character were the religious instructors of the people of Western Christendom for five hundred years. The original austerity of the monastic orders had disappeared. In no instance had it actually survived the first century dating from the institution of any ecclesiastical fraternity. With it had departed by far the greater portion of its capacity for usefulness. The daily lives of the secular priesthood presented disgusting examples of human depravity. Among the laity, the rich, at least, were secure from damnation; for by a judicious and liberal offering and the deposit of a schedule of their sins under the altar-cloth of a compassionate saint, in a few hours the sheet was found to be blank and the generous penitent, by the immediate intercession of his patron, was absolved from the consequences of his transgressions without the delay or the exposure of confession. The foundation of a religious house was often derived from the fears or the repentance of a wealthy and superstitious sinner. An immense tract of unimproved land was conveyed to a colony of monks. In the most sequestered spot, far removed from the turmoil, the vanities, and the temptations of the world, an unpretending structure, composed of wattled boughs and thatched with straw or rushes, was constructed. The surrounding forest was stocked with game. A neighboring lake or streamlet furnished a supply of fish. In many fraternities, however, such food was forbidden, for the austerity of discipline sometimes permitted nothing but a meagre diet of herbs and pulse washed down with water. The obligations of their profession as well as the necessity of sustenance required that a portion of their time should be spent in the cultivation of the soil. A number of the brethren labored in the fields while the others attended to the domestic and sacred duties enjoined by their monastic vows. In some monkish abodes the voice of praise was never silent. Relays of choristers occupied the chapel without intermission day or night. The summons to devotion were frequent. To preserve decorum, spies were appointed to report irregularities of conduct within the monastery. No monk was permitted to leave its precincts without a companion, that each might restrain the other from the indulgence in sinful thoughts and carnal recreations. In the cloister the recluse was constantly reminded of the requirements and obligations of his profession by the fervent exhortations of his superior and the enforced observance of silence, meditation, and prayer. By self-infliction of grievous penances,—scourging, fasting, wearing of shirts of haircloth or mail, immersion in water of icy coldness,—worldly temptations and sensual desires were effectually suppressed, and mind and body were devoted to the ostensible and original objects of monachal life,—the service and the glorification of God.
In time their modest and contracted habitations became too small to accommodate the increasing numbers or to satisfy the ambitious zeal of the pious brethren. The wealth derived from the assiduous cultivation of their lands, the profits of their trade, the contributions of royal visitors, and the generosity of their founders enabled them to erect buildings whose imposing proportions and exquisite ornamentation are the delight and the despair of modern architects. The church dedicated to a certain saint was founded on the day preserved by tradition as the date of his birth. A vigil was maintained, and when the first rays of the sun reddened the horizon the work was commenced. As the point where that luminary appeared was taken for the east, on account of the constantly varying position of the sun in the heavens there are but few ecclesiastical edifices constructed during the Middle Ages whose walls correspond with the four cardinal points of the compass. In the ranks of the religious brotherhoods were to be found artisans of every description, whose professional efforts were prompted and encouraged by the inspiring spirit of religious devotion. Such were the dimensions of these magnificent structures that the chapels of many abbeys—such as St. Albans, Southwell, St. Ouen, Durham, Canterbury—are now cathedral churches of some of the richest dioceses of France and England. The architectural splendor of Westminster is familiar to every traveller. The buildings included in the great Cistercian Abbey of Tinterne, which were enclosed by a wall, were distributed over thirty-four acres. The symmetry and beauty of the Gothic temples of Normandy are unimpaired and unrivalled after the revolutions of more than seven centuries. The ecclesiastical jurisdiction of some sees extended over as many as seven thousand mansi, or cottages of serfs; those who only received the tribute of two thousand were so numerous as to be comparatively insignificant.
All the possessions of the clergy were exempt from taxation. Tithes, at first limited to a tenth of the products of the soil, were, by ecclesiastical artifice and Papal rapacity, extended and made to include the entire yield of every crop, the increase of every herb, the labor of every artisan. Without taking into account the territorial area in the hands of the See of Rome at the period of the Reformation, the monastic guilds and corporations had absorbed half of the livings of Great Britain. The revenues of some religious foundations in that country were not less than fifty thousand pounds sterling, reckoning voluntary donations alone. In the thirteenth century the English clergy bore to the laity the ratio of one to four hundred in number, while their lands amounted to thirty-three per cent. of the entire real property of the kingdom. In Spain during the same period the proportion of ecclesiastics was one to seven, and fifty per cent. of the landed possessions under Christian control belonged to them. The pressing necessities of grasping and irreverent princes, who did not scruple to appropriate under various pretexts the riches of the ecclesiastical order, alone prevented the eventual exclusion of the laity of Europe from all ownership of or jurisdiction over the soil.
No religious service could be more solemn, no spectacle more awe-inspiring, than the celebration of a Church festival in one of the grand old abbey chapels in mediæval times. The edifice itself was the ideal of architectural beauty. Through the elegant designs of painted windows, the light, in iridescent hues, shone in tempered radiance over the richly sculptured tombs of prelate and crusader and the checkered pavement brilliant with its graceful patterns of tile and marble mosaic. The walls of nave and transept were hung with tapestry, embroidered sometimes with representations of scriptural events, sometimes with the figures of departed abbots or the portraits of a line of famous kings. The altar, before whose holy presence constantly burned rows of waxen tapers, glittered with ornaments bestowed by the hand of opulent piety and massive reliquaries set with priceless gems. The resounding notes of the Gregorian chant filled the air; the officiating monks in splendid vestments, the pomp of crucifix and incense, added to the impressiveness of the ceremonial and imparted to the scene a striking representation of divine worship which could hardly be paralleled in Rome itself. Truly, in its palmy days the monastery was an important adjunct to Papal power and grandeur!
From the consideration of the manifold vices and flagrant corruption with which the life of monastic institutions was tainted, it becomes a pleasure to enumerate the benefits that these establishments conferred upon humanity. First in importance is the fact that they were the depositories of learning during the Dark Ages. The requirements of the sacred profession, whose dogmas they were designed to uphold and propagate, demanded the possession of some degree of knowledge. The standard of intelligence was far higher in the monastery than in the chapter house of the cathedral or in the episcopal palace. Many of the secular clergy could neither read nor write; their exposition of the sacraments was pronounced in an incoherent jargon, and a canon who understood grammar was an object of general wonder and respect. The lewd and profane character of the discourses from the pulpit was often such that it would not be tolerated for an instant by the fastidious delicacy of a modern audience. The enjoyment of abundant leisure, the praiseworthy impulse of accumulating information which might prove of advantage, both in disseminating the truths of the Gospel and in magnifying the importance of their order, actuated a certain number of the inmates of every cloister to the transcription of books, to the study of authors, to the illumination of missals. Some wrote poems in Latin. Others, like Hrotswitha, the German nun of Gandersheim, composed dramas in imitation of the classics. These literary efforts, while often coarse in sentiment, immoral in tendency, and crude in execution, seem prodigies of learning when we recall the dense atmosphere of ignorance in which they were produced. In the abbey were preserved contemporaneous records not only of all transactions in which that institution was concerned, but also many details of affairs of national interest, which furnished in after ages invaluable data to the historian. In many convents there existed schools where novices as well as the children of the peasantry could receive rudimentary instruction. Books, among which is mentioned the Fables of Æsop, were chained to tables in the halls for the benefit of those pupils. The great impulse given to intellectual progress by Wyclif’s incomplete translation of the Bible in the fourteenth century is indicated by the ludicrous complaint of an old monkish chronicler, who lamented that “Women are now grown more versed in the New Testament than learned clerks.” Coincident with that auspicious event, the monopoly of letters, so long enjoyed and perverted by the clergy, came to an end. In cases where the interests of religion were thought to be imperilled, the monks did not hesitate to obstruct the path of knowledge. Through their influence the study of physics and of law was forbidden in the twelfth century to the students of the University of Montpellier. In contradistinction to this spirit of offensive bigotry, it must not be forgotten that the first printing-presses used in Europe were placed in monasteries.
The seclusion of monasticism encouraged to a considerable extent the love of the arts. In beauty of design and completeness of finish the efforts of the Gothic architect have never been surpassed. Bookmaking was carried to an advanced state of perfection. From unwieldy volumes with wooden leaves, bound in leaden covers, manuscripts developed into the exquisite specimens of calligraphic and decorative elegance so prized by modern collectors. Some were written in gold and silver letters on purple vellum. The illuminations—whence was derived the first inspiration of modern painting—were often the work of years. The bindings were of carved ivory or of the precious metals, not infrequently enriched with jewels. Those volumes destined for the service of the altar sometimes enclosed a reliquary and became doubly precious, as well by reason of the sacred memento they contained as on account of their costly materials and the labor expended upon them. The art of the sculptor owes much to the diligence and skill displayed by the mediæval wood-carver, whose handiwork is visible in the stalls and altar-screens of Gothic cathedrals. The embroidered vestments wrought by nuns during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries are marvels of ornamentation, patience, and dexterity. Constant practice in the choir led to a considerable advance in the knowledge of poetry and music. Nor were philosophical pursuits, despite their confessed antagonism to the Church, altogether neglected. The name and acquirements of Pope Sylvester II. were to his contemporaries as well as to posterity long suggestive of a compact with the Devil and the practice of magic. Modern science, in its indiscriminate censure of monasticism, should not forget that the great natural philosophers of the Middle Ages, Albertus Magnus and Roger Bacon, belonged to the orders of mendicant friars, for the one was a Franciscan and the other a Dominican.
In the monastery was dispensed not only medical aid, so far as the rudeness and ignorance of the superstitious practitioner allowed, but also unstinted and gratuitous hospitality. The conventual establishment was at once the hospital and the hotel of mediæval society. In the thinly peopled districts usually selected by its founders, no public provision was made for the relief of the sufferings of the invalid or the necessities of the traveller, and both found within its walls a generous and cordial greeting. Its sanctuary covered the trembling victim of feudal oppression with the mantle of its comfort and protection. Its towers, secure in their sacred character, passed unscathed through the wreck of dynasties and the perils of revolutionary violence. The substantial walls of donjon and barbican went down under the assaults of Norman, Saxon, Dane, and Lombard, but the abbey, defenceless save in the immunity afforded by the holy calling of its inmates, remained unchanged amidst these scenes of universal disorder and ruin, the depository of ancient learning, the refuge of the remnant of those elegant social courtesies which had survived the fall of imperial greatness, the asylum of the persecuted, the home of the arts, the preserver of civilization in a martial and unenlightened age.
While Rome was the centre of ecclesiastical and temporal power, Constantinople was the undisputed seat of the refinement and culture of Christian Europe. The transfer of the government of the Empire to the confines of Asia had not, however, destroyed the prestige which the Eternal City had obtained by her glorious achievements in arts, in arms, in literature, in politics, during so many centuries. The new capital of the Cæsars could not properly be called a Roman city. Its population, after the first fifty years following its foundation, was more Greek than Latin, but its most distinctive features were always Asiatic. The ordinary idiom of its citizens was that of Ionia and Attica. The despotism of its court, the manners of its people, bore the pronounced stamp of the Orient. Its society was cosmopolitan, and the relations it maintained through the channels of trade with remote countries constantly filled its thoroughfares with picturesque and barbaric costumes. The brutality of the West, the vices of the East, the superstitions of Africa, the cruelty of Italy, found a congenial home on the shores of the Bosphorus. The successors of Constantine claimed and exercised prerogatives wholly inconsistent with the security of the community or the principles of equity. They interposed their authority to annul the sentences of judicial tribunals. They inflicted frightful tortures without the warrant of law or precedent. They imposed taxes which impoverished even the wealthiest of their subjects. They permitted their flatterers to extort ransoms, traffic in justice, and dispose of employments without even the decorous pretext of concealment. The mutual hatred existing between the bloodthirsty factions of the capital, the ancient enmity of the nobles, the jealousy of rival princes, which had more than once caused disastrous riots, the tumultuous fury of the rabble, induced the emperors to habitually distrust the fidelity of those statesmen whose birth and education best qualified them to direct the policy of a great empire. As a necessity, therefore, eunuchs were intrusted with the management of affairs of state and filled the responsible offices of the imperial household. Surrounded by a crowd of dependents and flatterers, these monsters were the fountain of all honor and the recipients of all homage; while the sovereign of the East, shorn of his actual power, was left to the society of monks and parasites. An excessive love of pomp and of magnificent attire was a marked trait of the Byzantine character. The imperial train often included more than twenty thousand servants, the majority of whom were eunuchs. The eunuch was the most conspicuous personage in the government, in the hierarchy, in commercial adventure, in social amusement, in political intrigue. He discharged the functions of a general often with credit, sometimes with consummate skill. His secretive habits and demeanor admirably fitted him for the tortuous paths and insidious methods of diplomatic intercourse. He was a power in the Byzantine hierarchy. Members of his caste were exalted to high positions in the ecclesiastical order. Some attained to the supreme dignity of Patriarch, an office for centuries of greater importance than that of Bishop of Rome. Others controlled the wealthiest sees of the Eastern Church. Monastic life seemed to possess a peculiar attraction for them, and many convents in Constantinople were peopled exclusively by the victims of man’s deliberate cruelty. Some of these institutions contained nearly a thousand inmates. The prominent part taken by this odious class in establishing the standard of modern orthodoxy, through its influence on the ladies of the imperial household in the early days of Christianity, is familiar to every reader of Church history. The insatiable avarice and rapacity of the eunuch impelled him to the accumulation of wealth through the legitimate channels of foreign commerce and domestic enterprise, as well as by the more questionable means of servility and corruption. His ships were known in every port of the Mediterranean. He was identified with the largest mercantile establishments of the capital. In every social assembly he was conspicuous, in every conspiracy his concealed but powerful hand was felt. His equipage was the gayest, his train the most imposing on the streets. In the circus he took precedence of haughty patricians, whom he far eclipsed in splendor of costume. Ever with an eye to his own aggrandizement, he whispered treason in the ears of the nobles and instigated the rabble to revolt. The sentiments of gratitude, of sympathy, of charity, were unknown to him. The frightful punishments inflicted by the court on political offenders were notoriously suggested by his malignant genius. With the loss of his procreative power seemed to have vanished every trace of honor, of justice, of humanity, of loyalty, of devotion. He was execrated by the Byzantine populace, whose feelings were expressed by the current saying, “If you have a eunuch, kill him; if you have none, buy one and kill him!”