[95] These complaints are identical with those actually made by a worldly monk who visited the venerable abbey of Cluny.
Chapter XX: The Monastery of St. Aliquis: The Activities of Its Inmates. Monastic Learning.
After a monk has taken the great vow "renouncing my parents, my brothers, my friends, my possessions, and the vain and empty glory of this world ... and renouncing also my own will for the will of God, and accepting all the hardships of the monastic life," how is he to be employed? For, as St. Benedict with great sagacity has written, "Idleness is the enemy of the soul." The ancient hermits devoted their entire time to contemplation, hoping for visions of angels; but it is recorded too often that they had only visions of the devil. "Therefore," continues the holy Rule, "at fixed times the brothers ought to be employed with manual labor, and again at fixed times in sacred reading." Thus, in general, the monks of St. Aliquis are busied with two great things, work in the fields and study, with the copying or actual writing of profitable books.
Bequests to Monasteries
The monastery being passing rich, its administration constitutes a great worldly care. Ever since the institution came into existence, about the time that Heribert rendered the region fairly safe by erecting his fortress, the monks have been adding to their property. Church foundations never die. Mortmain prevents them from crumbling. Income is obtainable from many sources, but probably the best lands have come to the abbey through the reception of new members. Few novices are received unless they make a grant of their entire possessions to the institution, and, while most younger sons and peasants have little enough to give, every now and then the abbey receives a person of considerable wealth. Besides such acquisitions, there is no better way for laymen to cancel arrears with the recording angel than by gifts of land or money to an abbey. Some of these gifts come during lifetime, sometimes on one's deathbed. Noblemen complain that the monks thus defraud them of their possessions. "When a man lies down to die," bewails the epic poem "Hervis de Metz," "he thinks not of his sons. He summons the black monks of St. Benedict and gives them his lands, his revenues, his ovens, and his mills. The men of this age are impoverished and the clerics daily grow richer." Often, too, a person when on his deathbed will actually "take the habit" and be enrolled as a monk, thus, of course, conveying to the abbey all his possessions. This, we are told, is "the sweetest way for a human conscience to settle its case with God."
Property thus comes to an abbey from every direction. No gifts are refused as "tainted money." Giving to Heaven is invariably a pious deed, and ordinarily justifies whatever oblique means were used to get the donation. So the monks of St. Aliquis have been accumulating tillage lands, meadows, vineyards, and often the rentals for lands held by others. These rentals are payable in wheat, barley, oats, cattle and also in pasture rights. Some donations are given unconditionally, some strictly on condition that the income be used in providing alms for the poor, lodgings and comforts for the sick, or saying special masses for the repose of the soul of the benefactor. Abbot Victor has therefore to supervise many farms, forests, mills, etc., scattered for many miles about. He also receives the tithe (church tax) for five or six parish churches in the region, on condition that he appoint their priests and support them out of part of this income.
For these lands the abbot owes feudal service, and over them he exercises feudal suzerainty, possessing, therefore, an overlord and also vassals, just as did the nobles who held these same fiefs before they passed to the abbey. He is, accordingly, a regular seigneur, receiving and doing homage, bound to do justice to his vassals, and able to call them to arms whenever the secular need arises. By church law he cannot, of course, lead them in person to battle, but has to accept Conon as his advocate; and it is as advocate (or, as called elsewhere, vidame) of the abbey of St. Aliquis, able to lead its numerous retainers into the field and act in military matters as the abbot's very self-sufficient lieutenant and champion, that the baron owes much of his own importance.[96] For example, he gets one third of all the fees payable to the abbey for enforcing justice among its dependents, and when he is himself in a feud he will sometimes attempt to call out the abbot's vassals to follow his personal banner, even if the quarrel is of not the least concern to the monks.