CHURCH OF AUSTIN FRIARS
Twenty-two years later, when there had been upward of a hundred thousand persons buried in the new church-yard, Sir Walter Manny, now grown old and near his end, bought ten acres more, which he gave to the ground, and established here a House of Carthusians, called the Salutation. At first he thought of making a college for a warden, a dean, and twelve secular priests. On the advice, however, of Simon Sudbury, Bishop of London, he abandoned that project and established a House of Carthusians.
The Cistercian Order was founded by one Stephen Harding, originally a monk of Sherborne. He is said by William of Malmesbury to have left his convent and to have gone into France, where he practised "the Liberal arts" until he fell into repentance, and was received into the monastery of Molesmes, in Burgundy. Here he found a little company of the brethren who were not content with the Rule of the House, but desired instruction and a rule more in accordance with their Founder's intention. They seceded, therefore, and established themselves at Citeaux, then entirely covered with woods. This is their manner of life set forth by the Chronicler:
Certainly many of their regulations seem severe, and more particularly these: they wear nothing made with furs or linen, nor even that finely spun linen garment which we call Staminium;[8] neither breeches, unless when sent on a journey, which at their return they wash and restore. They have two tunics with cowls, but no additional garment in winter, though, if they think fit, in summer they may lighten their garb. They sleep clad and girded, and never after matins return to their beds; but they so order the time of matins that it shall be light ere the lauds[9] begin; so intent are they on their rule, that they think no jot or tittle of it should be disregarded. Directly after these hymns they sing the prime, after which they go out to work for stated hours. They complete whatever labor or service they have to perform by day without any other light. No one is ever absent from the daily services, or from complines, except the sick. The cellarer and hospitaller, after complines, wait upon the guests, yet observing the strictest silence. The abbat allows himself no indulgence beyond the others—everywhere present—everywhere attending to his flock; except that he does not eat with the rest, because his table is with the strangers and the poor. Nevertheless, be he where he may, he is equally sparing of food and speech; for never more than two dishes are served either to him or to his company; lard and meat never but to the sick. From the Ides of September till Easter, through regard for whatever festival, they do not take more than one meal a day, except on Sunday. They never leave the cloister but for purpose of labor, nor do they ever speak, either there or elsewhere, save only to the abbat or prior. They pay unwearied attention to the canonical[10] services, making no addition to them except for the defunct. They use in their divine service the Ambrosian chants[11] and hymns, as far as they were able to learn them at Milan. While they bestow care on the stranger and the sick, they inflict intolerable mortifications on their own bodies, for the health of their souls.
When we consider this death in life, this, suppression of everything which makes life, this annihilation of aims, ambitions, and natural affections, this destruction of love, emotion, and passion, this mere monotony of breathing, this wearisome futility and vanity, this endless iteration of Litanies; when we remember that hundreds of thousands in every Christian country, men and women, voluntarily entered upon this life, knowing beforehand what it was, and that they patiently endured it, we can in some measure realize the intensity and the reality of the torments which they believed to be provided for the vast majority of mankind. There grew up, in the course of years, rich monks and luxurious monks; but in the early days of each order there was the austerity of the Rule. And though here and there we find a brother who rises to a spiritual level far above the letter of his Order, the religion of the ordinary brother was little more than the fear of Hell, with a sense of gratitude to the Saints for snatching him out of the flames.
Most of the brethren, again, of the new and more austere Orders, until they became rich, were simple and illiterate. They wanted a rule of life which should give them no chance of committing sin; like women, they desired to be ruled in everything, even the most trivial. At dinner, for instance, they were enjoined to drink with both hands, and to incline the head when served; in church they were not to clinch their hands or to stretch out their legs; the whole day was mapped out for them as it is for boys at school. From primes (the daybreak service) till tierce, spiritual exercises; from tierce till sext, and from nones till vespers, manual labors; once every day private prayer at the altar; silence in the cell; to ask for what was wanted after nones; no conversation in the chapter, the cloisters, or the church; from November till Easter conversation on the customs of the Order; afterwards on the Gospels, and so on. The effect on the common nature would be to produce a breathing machine, incapable of thought, of action, of judgment, with no affections, emotions, or passions. The holy brotherhood becomes a troop of slaves engaged upon a round of trivial duties, kept at a low stage of vitality by scanty food and short sleep. They cease after a while to desire any change; they go on in meekness and submission to the end, their piety measured by their regularity. Now and then among them is found one who frets under the yoke. Either he wants new austerities, like Stephen Harding, or he rises in mad revolt, and before he can be suppressed commits such dreadful sins of rebellion and blasphemy as leave little doubt that after all his pains and privations his chances in the next world are no better than those of the foul-mouthed ruffler outside, whose life has been one long sin, whose death will be caused by a knife in a drunken fray, whose body will be carried in the black cart with the bell to Pardon Church-yard, and whose soul, most certainly, will be borne to its own place by the hands of the Devil to whom it belongs.
CHRIST'S HOSPITAL, FROM THE CLOISTERS