[34] Chepstow Guide.
[35] “It may almost be said,” remarks the same writer, “that the last happy moments Gray knew in this world were spent upon the Wye; for, a few months after, we find him a prey to ill health and despondency—complaining of an incurable cough, of the irksomeness of his employment at Cambridge, and of ‘mechanical low spirits.’ He died in the course of the following summer, æt. 55.”—P. M. August, 1835.—See his Life by Mason.
[36] The historian of the abbey here quoted has probably made some mistake in the name; as it was to Neath Abbey, not Tinterne, that King Edward retreated.—See Append.
[37] In 1210, when King John summoned all the ecclesiastics and religious orders to meet him at London, he levied fines, which were computed to amount to £100,000. The White or Cistercian Monks alone paid £40,000 of silver additional; and their order, for a time, became so much reduced, that it was dispersed throughout all the other monasteries of England. From this condition, however, they speedily recovered; and of the seventy-five religious houses of this order that flourished at the Dissolution, thirty-six were superior monasteries.—Ecclesiast. Hist.
[38] 1287.—Conventus Ecclesiæ Beatæ Mariæ de Tynterna intravit dictam ecclesiam ad celebrandum in nova ecclesia. Et quinto nonas Octobris in anno sequenti Conventus intravit in choro, et prima missa celebrata fuit ad magnum altare. Dedicacio Ecclesiæ Tynterniæ, 28 die Jullii. F. littera.—Will. de Worc.
[39] Citeaux—now Gilly-les-Citeaux—so famous for its abbey. “L’abbaye de Citeaux,” says a French tourist, “chef d’ordre d’où dependaient 3,600 couvents de deux sexes, fut fondée par Saint Robert, Abbé de Molesme en 1098. Saint Bernard y prit l’habit en 1113, et y jeta la même année, les fondements de l’abbaye de la Ferté sur Gròne; de celle de Pontigny en 1114; de celles de Clairvaux et de Morimont en 1115, appelées les quatre filles de Citeaux.” Yet Citeaux, afterwards so famous, was a miserable desert at the arrival of St. Robert and his disciples:—“Qui locus (Cistercium) et pro nemorum, et spinarum tunc temporis opacitate accessui hominum insolitus, a solis feris inhabitabatur. Ad quem Viri Dei venientes locumq. tantó religione quam animo jamque conceperant et propter quam illuc advenerant, habiliorem quanto secularibus despicabiliorem et inaccessibilem intelligentes, nemorum et spinarum densitate prescissa et remota, Monasterium ibidem construere cœperunt.—Mon. Angl. art. Cister. v. iv. 695.
[40] Quia etiam beatum Benedictum non in civitatibus, nec in Castellis aut in villis, sed in locis à frequentia hominum et populi semotis, Cœnobia construisse sancti viri illi sciebant, idem se æmulari promittebant. Et sicut ille monasteria constructa per duodenos monachos adjuncto patre disponebat, sic se acturos confirmabant.—Monast. Angl. ii.; art. Cisterc.
Exuti ergo veterem hominem, novum se induisse gaudent: et quia nec in regula nec in vita Sancti Benedicti eundem doctorem tegebant possedisse ecclesias, vel altaria seu oblationes aut sepulturas vel decimas aliorum hominum seu furnos vel molendinos aut villas aut rusticos, nec etiam fæminas monasterium ejus intrâsse, nec mortuos ibidem excepta sorore sua sepelisse, ideo hæc omnia abdicaverunt, dicentes—ubi beatus Benedictus docet ut monachus à secularibus actibus se faciat alienum, &c., &c.—Monast. Angl. iv. 699.
[41] It is added that, when Cœur-de-Lion was about to start for the Holy Land (A.D. 1191), Folgius, a bold confessor of the church, exhorted the monarch to dismiss his three daughters before joining the Crusade. “Hypocrite!” said the king, “well thou knowest that I have no daughters.” “My liege,” rejoined the confessor, “you have three—Pride, Avarice, and Luxury.” “Aha!” exclaimed Richard, “why, then, the Templars shall have Pride—the Cistercians, Avarice—and as for Luxury, let my bishops and clergy share her among them, and then they will all be well provided for until my return.”—Thomas’s Tinterne.
[42] They became so powerful at last, that they were said to “govern all Christendom;” but, if they did not govern, they had at least an influence in every government and kingdom of Europe. Cardinal de Vetri says, they neither wore skins nor shirts; never ate flesh, except in sickness; and abstained from fish, eggs, milk, and cheese; lay on straw-beds in tunics or cowls; rose at midnight to prayer; spent the day in labour, reading, and prayer; and in all they did, exercised a continual silence.—See Monast. Angl.