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THE MONASTICISM OF THE MIDDLE AGES.

By Pbofessob David S. Schaff, D.D.

[Reprinted from the Reformed Church Review, Vol. VII, No. 1, Jan., 1903.]

THE MONASTICISM OF THE MIDDLE AGES.

The Middle Ages furnish no more imposing phenomenon
than monasticism. At the side of the absolute papacy, the
crusades, the universities, the cathedrals and scholasticism, it
stands forth as one of their distinctive features. And with all
those other movements the activity of the monk was efficiently
associated. He was, with the popes, the chief promoter of the
crusades. He was among the great builders. He furnished the
chief teachers to the universities and numbered in his order
the profoundest of the schoolmen. The most brilliant periods
of the papacy and the glory of monasticism were contempora
neous. "When monasticism was experiencing its deepest
humiliation, the Middle Ages were drawing to a close and its
august institutions crumbling under the impact of the atmos
phere of a new order of things.
If it be compared with the monachism of the earlier period
of the church, the mediaeval institution will be found to equal
it in the number of its great monks and to exceed it in useful
activity. Among the distinguished Fathers of the Post-Nicene
period who advocated monasticism were Gregory of Egypt,
Athanasius, Basil, Gregory of Eyssa, Ambrose, Augustine and
Jerome. , In the Middle Ages the list is certainly as imposing.
There we have Anselm, Albertus Magnus, Bonaventura,
Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus among the schoolmen, St.
Bernard and Hugo de St. "Victor, Eckart and Tauler among the
mystics, Hildegard and Joachim of Floris among the seers, the
authors of Dies irce and Stabat mater and Adam de St. Victor
among the hymnists, Anthony of Padua, Bernardino of Siena,
Bertholdt of Kegensburg and Savonarola among the preachers
and, in a class by himself, Francis d' Assisi. i
92

93 The Monasticism of the Middle Ages.
Of the five epochs in the history of monasticism two belong
to the Middle Ages proper. The appearance of the hermit and
the development of the eremite mode of life belong to the
fourth century. Benedict of Nursia of the sixth century, and
his well-systematized rule marks the second epoch. The de
velopment of the Society of Jeus in the sixteenth century marks
the last epoch. /The two between are represented by the mon
astic revival starting from the convent of Cluny as a center in
the tenth and eleventh centuries and the rise and spread of the
mendicant orders in the thirteenth century. Cluny was the
chief reforming force of "Western Europe for more than a cen
tury until Gregory VII., proceeding out of Cluny, began in
1050 to regenerate the papacy and set it on an altogether new
career of prominence in the affairs of the church and the
world. After that time Cluny still continued for a while to be
the rival of Pome as a religious force. And then the sister
order of the Cistercians continued to influence piety and the
cause of civilization for a considerable time after Cluny itself
had lost its original energy. In the course of its history, Cluny
furnished three popes, Gregory VII., Urban II. and Paschal
II. and the antipope Anacletus II. Gelasius, driven from
Kome in 1118, found refuge within its walls and there he died
lying on ashes and there he was buried. The cardinals who
elected his successor, Calixtus II., met in its halls. Kings
joined with popes in doing it honor. Four of its abbots were
canonized. Its basilica was the finest in the "West after St.
Peters. There the long and tender poem so full of Chris
tian hope was probably written, Urbs Zion, from which "Jeru
salem the Golden" and other kindred hymns are taken. There
Abaelard, wearied and humbled, found his last refuge and a
kindly treatment, overlooking all errors and sins, from Peter
the Venerable. Its rule stimulated such men as William of
Hirschau in 1077, who made Hirschau in Swabia the model
convent of southern Germany.
The Cluniacs belonged to one of the four main monastic
families of the Middle Ages, the' Benedictines. So did the

The Monasticism of the Middle Ages. 94
Cistercians, whose first convent in the marshes of Citeaux,
founded in 1098, became the center of large groups of convents
throughout Western Europe. To them Bernard, afterwards
abbot and founder of Clairvaux, belonged. With wealth and
fame the monks of Cluny became lax in the observance of their
rule. And the carta charitatis, the rule of love, adopted by
Stephen Harding and the monks of Citeaux, once more empha
sized the strict observance of the rule of St. Benedict, which
combined manual work with services of piety. They effected
a more compact organization of its houses than was in vogue
among the Cluniacs. The attack of St. Bernard upon the loose
habits of Cluny is famous in the annals of monasticism. He
held up the simple life at Citeaux, though to be sure, as he said,
there was no excess of spirituality among the Cistercians, "who
tilled their bellies with beans and their minds with pride."
Nevertheless, (the Cluniacs were to be condemned for their self-
indulgence in meat and drink, their small talk and jocularity.
Dish was added to dish at the table, eggs were served, cooked
in many forms and more than one kind of wine was drunk at a
sitting. Candelabras and altar cloths were elaborate. Gold and
silver were freely used. One of their number, he (Bernard)
had seen attended by a retinue of sixty horsemen. In spite of
this arraignment Peter the Venerable, the noble abbot of
Cluny, was not angered, but wrote back that he and Bernard
belonged to the same Master, were the soldiers of one king and
confessors of one faith. As different paths led to the same land
so different conventual customs might lead to the Jerusalem
above. Cluniacs and Cistercians should admonish one another
in love.
The other three main families of mediaeval monks were the
Augustinians, the Carmelites and the two great Mendicant
orders. The history of the Carmelites, founded in 1156 on Mt.
Carmel during the Crusades, has been marked by much internal
division and bitter controversies with other orders. As against
the Dominicans they used to claim special right to the rosary,
but Pius IX. and especially Leo XIII. in his frequent encycli-

95 ' The Monasticism of the Middle Ages.
cals, from 1883 on, commending the use of the rosary, has
emphatically ascribed its first use and the revelation of it to
Dominic. There is no doubt, however, about thetscapulary as
being a distinct institution of the Carmelite order. That outer
garment, given by Mary, insures the wearer deliverance from
purgatory the first Saturday succeeding his death. So at least
John XXII. solemnly declared in 1322 in the famous bull
Sabbatina. The Augustinians had a character between the secular cleric
and the strict monastic. This is true of the Augustinian
canons, not of the Augustinian friars to whom John of Stau-
pitz and Luther belonged. < The so-called rule of St. Augustine,
which they both followed, appeared first in the twelfth cen
tury. It served the purpose of the priests belonging to the
large churches or forming the cathedral chapters. These
clerics, at first living apart though ministering in the same
church, felt strongly the tendency to a communal life in which
all should sleep in a common dormitory and eat at the same
table and have a common dress. "We find here and there groups
so living together in the twelfth century, and they came to be
called canons regular in distinction from the canons secular,
a distinction which, Denifle says, does not appear before that
century, as in fact the terms themselves do not appear before
that time. There was no close organization between these dif
ferent groups of canons. The Augustinian friars lived in con
vents strictly as monks.
Augustine left no rule, and the rule which is ascribed to him
was a fiction. His example, however, gave a pattern for the
semi-monastic communities of canons. He had his clergy
living under one roof and eating at one table. The Premon-
strants and other orders adopted the Augustinian rule.
The Carmelites, Augustinians and the numerous other orders
followed the monastic impulse of the age. The two great
Mendicant orders, the Franciscans and the Dominicans, gave
a new monastic and religious impulse to their age. Scarcely
ever in religious history has so powerful an impetus been given

The Monasticism of the Middle Ages. 96
to the religious life as was given by them, say from 1210, the
date of St. Francis' first rule. In their first period they
quickly obtained the esteem of scholars, princes, popes and
people. Dante praised them. Men, like Grosseteste of Eng
land, welcomed their advent as the dawn of a new day. Louis
IX., the Crusader, would have divided his body between them.
It is true that it is matter of doubt whether thfe good services
which they rendered in their first years are not more than
counterbalanced by the ill activity and example of their latter
years before the Peformation. They came to be the chief rep
resentatives of obscurantism. They offered obstruction to all
progress. Their convents became synonyms of idleness and
useless living and they aroused the well-merited hostility of the
secular clergy by their extravagant assumption of privileges,
conferred of pope though they were. )
There can, however, be no question that (the appearance of
Francis d' Assisi and Dominic of Spain was one of the moment
ous epochs of the Middle Ages. Monasticism was started on
a new career and the two orders fulfilled well the double mis
sion of strengthening the papacy and counteracting the hereti
cal sects which were making their appearance through Western
Europe. \ It is, however, not to be understood that the methods
adopted by the Franciscans were in the mind of the good
founder of the Franciscan order. That order was manipulated
by the papacy even while Francis was still living and a
character given to it which was against his mind. It was the
purpose neither of Francis nor of Dominic to revive existing
orders nor to revive the rigor of rules half obeyed. They were
heralds of new methods to meet new conditions. Francis was
bent on leavening, the world, upon transforming society,
by new obedience to what he regarded as the simplest rules
of the Gospel on the part of the people as well as a clerical
class. It is probable he had it not in mind to form an
order. ;' The devotion of these two orders, especially the
Franciscans, to practical ministries in society was so novel
a phenomenon that people looked on in amazement and

97 The Monasticism of the Middle Ages.
the old monks resisted. From the day when St. Anthony
went to the desert, the monkish ideal was to flee into
solitude. The monk wanted to get away from men and
their corruptions. The Black and Gray Friars, as the new
monastics were called, went into the beaten pathways of the
great world and the busy market places of the cities. They
made open warfare upon the world without, as well as upon the
sin within their own bosoms. They had an ear for the com
plaints and an eye to the struggles of the tempted and op
pressed. "Of one thing," says Trevelyan in his "England in
the Age of Wycliffe," "the friar was never accused. He is
never taunted with living at home in his cloister and allowing
souls to perish for want of food." Of course, he is speaking
of the more degenerate days.
Passing away from the history to general characteristics, the
mediaeval convent appears as a very different institution from
the cell of the ancient anchoret. The spirit is still ascetic but
not altogether morbid. The monk is not always a recluse,
dwelling in inaccessible seclusion. He does not abandon him
self wholly to an artificial scheme of religious ritual carried
on apart from the world's utilities. Thomas Aquinas (d.
1274) distinctly combines the active with the contemplative
in the monk's life. It must be remembered, however, that
he wrote after the establishment of the Franciscan and Domin
ican orders. The mediaeval monks were the Puritans and the
Methodists of their day; the Pietists and Evangelicals. All
of these classes of Christians have this in common, that each
stood in his age for an efficient religion.
The times were favorable for the development of monastic
communities. If this is the age of the laic, that was the age
of the monk. Society was unsettled and turbulent. The con
vent offered an asylum of rest and of meditation. Bernard in
his de conversione, calls his monks "the order of the Peaceful."
Feud and war ruled without. Every baronial residence was a
fortress. The convent was the scene of brotherly cooperation.
It furnished to the age the ideal of a religious household on
7

The Monasticism of the Middle Ages. 98
earth, j The epitaphs of monks betray the feeling of the time.
Pacificus, "the peaceful"; tranquilla pace serenus, "in quiet
and undisturbed repose"; fraternce pads amicus, "friend of
brotherly peace" — such were some of them.
/ There were in reality only two careers in the Middle Ages,
the career of the soldier and the career of the monk. It would
be difficult to say which held out the most attractions and
rewards, even for the present life. The well-ordered convent
offered an incessant drill, exercise following exercise with the
regularity of clockwork ; and though the enemy was not drawn
up in visible array on open field he was a constant reality.
Barons, counts, princes joined the colonies of the spiritual
militia, hoping thereby to work out more efficiently the prob
lem of their salvation and to fight their conflict with the devil.
The Third Lateran Council, 1179, bears witness to the tend
ency to restrict admission to the monastic vow to the higher
classes by forbidding the practice of receiving money from
persons desiring admission. The monk proved to be stronger
than the knight and the institution of chivalry paled before the
institution of monasticism. ;
By drawing to themselves the best spirits of the time, the
/'convent became in their good days hearthstones of piety and
the chief centers of missionary and civilizing agency, from
the tenth well into the thirteenth century. When there was
little preaching, the convent preached the most powerful ser
mon, calling men's thoughts away from riot and bloodshed to
the state of brotherhood and religious reflection. The motto
aratro et cruce, "by the cross and the plow," stood in their case
for a reality. \ The monk was a pioneer in cultivating fields,
and after the most scientific fashion then known, and taught
agriculture, the culture of the vine and fish, and the breeding
of cattle. He built roads, trained architects, painters and
sculptors, wrestled with the deep problems of theology and
philosophy, copied manuscripts, and when the universities
arose the convent furnished them with their most renowned
teachers. ) The work done by men like William of Hirschau,

99 The Monasticism of the Middle Ages.
Bruno and Eorbert of Germany, Bernard and Peter the Vener
able of France and St. Francis of Italy' cannot be left out in any
account of the onward progress of mankind. Much as we may
decline to believe that monasticism is a higher form of Chris
tian life, we must give credit to these men or deny to a series of
centuries all progress and good whatsoever.
So popular did the monastic life become that religion seemed
to be in danger of running out into monkery and society of
being transmuted into an aggregation of convents. The Fourth
Lateran Council under Innocent III., 1215, met the demand
for measures to repress the luxuriant increase of distinct orders,
and in its thirteenth canon forbade the establishment of new
orders. But no council was ever more ignorant of the imme
diate future. Innocent was scarcely in his grave before the
Franciscans and Dominicans received full papal sanction at the
hands of his successor, Honorius III.
It was in the eleventh and twelfth centuries that the im
portant change went on, whereby all monks received priestly
ordination. Before that, it was the exception for a monk to be
a priest. Extreme unction, however, had been performed in
the convent and also absolution administered by unordained
monks. This Dr. Lea has sufficiently shown. With the de
velopment of the strict theory of clerical sacerdotalism, these
functions were forbidden to the unconsecrated monk, as by the
Ninth Ecumenical Council, 1123. The synod of Xismes,
thirty years earlier, 1096, thought it answered objections to the
new custom by pointing to Gregory the Great, Gregory of
Tours and St. Augustine as cases of monks who had priestly
ordination. The movement in the convents to take a more
active part in social affairs was resisted by cecumenical coun
cils, as for example, the Tenth, of 1139, which forbade monks
becoming physicians and jurists.
Such demands and. prohibitions did not indicate any depre
ciation of the monastic life. On the contrary, it was praised
a? the highest form of earthly existence. The convent was com
pared to the land of Canaan and described as the shortest and

The Monasticism of the Middle Ages. 100
surest road to heaven. The secular life, even the life of the
secular priest, was compared to Egypt. The passage to the
•cloister was known by the dignified term conversion and the
monks as converts. Bishop Otto of Freising, of the imperial
family of the Hohenstaufen, in the course of a protracted
panegyric of the monastic life, says that the monks "spend
their lives like angels, in heavenly purity and holiness of life
and conscience. They live together, one in heart and soul, give
themselves at one time to sleep, lift up as by one impulse their
lips in prayer and their voice in reading. They join together
night and day in work with such unwearied diligence that they
look upon it as godless, except during the few hours given to
rest on hard beds, to allow time to pass by without occupying
themselves with divine things. Yes, they go so far, that while
they are refreshing the body at the table, they listen to the read
ing of the Scriptures, showing that even then they care more
for the interests of the soul than for those of the body. They
.give up their own wills, their earthly possessions and their
parents, and, following the command of the Gospel and Christ,
constantly bear their cross by mortifying the flesh, being all the
while full of heavenly homesickness."
There are probably no more attractive descriptions of earthly
peace in the writings of the mediawal writers than the descrip
tions we have of Bernard's convent of Clairvaux. In his "Life
¦of St. Bernard" William, abbot of St. Thierry, describing a
visit to Clairvaux, says he saw "there a new heaven and a new
•earth. The golden age seemed to have revisited the world. At
the first glance, as you enter, after descending the hill, you
could feel that God was in the place, and the silent valley
bespoke, in the simplicity of its buildings, the genuine humility
of the poor of Christ dwelling there. The silence of the noon
was as the silence of the midnight, broken only by chants and
the noise of garden and field implements. ISTo one was idle.
And yet, though there were such a number in the valley, each
seemed to be a solitary." The novice Peter de Eoya wrote
from Clairvaux that "there the monks had found a Jacob's

101 The Monasticism of the Middle Ages.
ladder. Their song seems to be little less than angelic and
much more than human. It seems to me that I am hardly
looking on men when I see them in the gardens with hoe, m the
field with forks and rakes and sickles, in the wood with axe,
clad in disordered garments— but that I am looking on a race
of fools without speech or sense, the reproach of mankind.
However, my reason assures me that their life is hid with
Christ in the heavens." .This enthusiastic advocacy of the
monastic life may be explained in part by two causes, the tur
bulent conditions of society in that day and the lack of careers
to serve as a stimulus to human enterprise, but only in part.
There was underlying all the sincere quest of the soul after
religious satisfaction.
There is scarcely a letter of Anselm in which the superior
advantages of monasticism are not emphasized. It was not
essential, he declared, for one to become a monk to reach salva
tion, but who, he writes, "can attain salvation in a safer or
nobler way, he who seeks to love God alone or he who joins the
love of the world with the law of God?" He loses no oppor
tunity of urging laymen to take the vow. He appeals to his
kinsmen to become his kinsmen in the spirit, conspiritiiales as
well as consanguine!. Bernard was not satisfied until he had
all his brothers behind cloistral walls, and finally declined
longer to see his married sister until she gave promise to take
the veil. Kings and princes desired to be clad in the monastic
habit as they met death. Even that great foe of the papacy,
Frederick II., it is said, died clad in the garb of the Cister
cians. At Morimond, Otho, son of the Margrave of Austria,
stopped over night with fifteen companions, and was so im
pressed by the sound of the bells and the devotions of the monks
that they prayed to be received into the brotherhood. Henry,
son of Louis VI., was so moved by what he saw at Clairvaux
that he determined to take the vow.
Severe enough were the conventual rules for those who prac
ticed them, i St. Bernard, it is said, prayed standing day and
night, and his knees, made infirm by fasting, and his feet by

The Monasticism of the Middle Ages. 102
standing, were no longer able to sustain his body. His diet
was bread and milk or a concoction of herbs. The monk's
treatment of the natural relationships of life followed tho
abnormal pattern set by the old anchorets. The attitude of
Bernard to his sister has been spoken of. Francis d'Assisi,
not only treated his father with what we would regard as con
duct imworthy of any son as he went forth into the monastic
life, but is loudly praised for aiding Clara, the founder of the
Sisters of St. Damian, and her sister to escape from their un
willing parents that they might take the vow. .
The miraculous belonged to the monk's daily food. He was
surrounded by spirits. Visions and revelations were frequent.
Companies of devils were roaming about at all hours of the
day and night, in the air and on foot, to deceive the unwary
and to shake the faith of the vigilant. Peter the Venerable
gives a graphic picture of how these restless foes pulled the
bedclothes off from sleeping monks and, chuckling, carried
them to a distance, how they impudently stood by making fun
while the modest monastic attended to the necessities of nature,
and how they threw the faithful to the ground, as at night they
went about through convent precincts making "holy thefts of
prayer." Caesar, of Heisterbach, in his book on miracles, joins
with Peter in recording the pranks and misdemeanors of these
fell foes of the mediaeval recluse.
\ The assaults of the devil were especially directed to induce
tne monk to abandon his sacred vow. \ Writing to a certain
Helinand, Anselm mentions the four kinds of assault he was
wont to make. The first was the assault through lusts of the
pleasures of the world, when the novice, having recently entered
the convent, began to feel the monotony of its retired life. In
the second he pushed the question why the monk had chosen
that form of life rather than the life of the parish priest. In
the third, he pestered him with the question why he had not
put off till late in life the assximption of the vow, in the mean
time having a good time, and yet in the end getting all the
benefits and the reward of monkery. And last of all, the devil

103 The Monasticism of the Middle Ages.
argued why the monk had bound himself at all by a vow, seeing
it was possible to serve God just as acceptably without a v0^
Anselm answered the last objection by quoting Ps. 76 : 1 an
declaring the vow to be in itself well pleasing to God.
It was well understood that convent walls did not of them
selves make men holy. Jerome, Gregory of Xyssa and espe
cially Augustine had said the same before. Ivo of Chartres
(d. 1116) condemns the monks who are filled with the leaven
of pride and boast of their ascetic practices, referring to such
passages as Eom. 14: 17 and I. Tim. 4: 8. The solitudes of
the mountains and forests, he says, will not make men holy,
who do not carry about with them rest of soul, the Sabbath of
the heart and elevation of mind. Peter the Venerable wrote
to a hermit that his separation from the world would not profit
unless he built a strong wall against evil in his own heart and
that that wall was Christ the Saviour. Without this protec
tion, retirement to solitude, mortifications of the body and
journeyings to distant lands, instead of availing, would bring
new temptations, only more violent. Every mode of life, lay
and cleric, conventual and eremitic, has peculiar temptations
of its own.
Gifts of lands to the monastic institutions, especially during
the crusades, were common. He who built a convent was
looked upon as setting up a ladder of ascent to heaven. Most
of the monastic houses which attained fame began with humble
beginnings, and severe discipline. The colonies were placed
often in lonely regions, places difficult of access in valley or on
mountain or in swamp. So it was with Chartreuse, with
Citeaux, with the convents along the wild frontiers of north
eastern Germany. The Franciscans set a different example by
going into the cities and haunts of population. The beautiful
names, often assumed, showed the change which was expected
to take place in the surroundings, such as Bright Valley, Good
Place, Happy Meadow, Crown of Heaven, and Path to Heaven.
Walter Mapes, the Englishman, writing in the last of the
twelfth century, lingers on the fair names of the Cistercian con-

The Monasticism of the Middle Ages. 104
vents which, he says, "contain in themselves a divine and
prophetic element, such as House of God, Gate of Salvation,"
etc. With wealth, came the great abbeys of stone, exhibiting the
highest architecture of the day. The establishments of
Citeaux, Cluny, the Grande Chartreuse and the great houses
of England were on an elaborate scale. Xo pains or money
were spared in their erection and equipment. Stained glass,
sculpture, embroidery, rich vestments were freely used. A
well-ordered house had many parts, chapel, refectory, calefac
tory, scriptorium, hospital. Xot one structure, but an aggrega
tion of buildings, was required by the larger establishments.
Cluny in 1245 was able to accommodate, at the same time,
the pope, the King of France and the Emperor of Constanti
nople, together with their retinues. ) Matthew Paris says Dun
fermline Abbey, Scotland, was ample enough to entertain, at
the same time, three sovereigns without inconvenience the one
to the other. The latest conveniences were introducd into
these houses, the latest news there retailed. A convent was,
upon the whole, a pretty good place to be, from the standpoint
of worldly well-being. What the modern club house is to the
city, that the mediaeval convent was apt to be, so far as material
appointments went. In its vaults, the rich deposited their
valuables. To its protection the oppressed fled for refuge.)
There, as at Westminster, St. Denis and Dunfermline kings
and princes chose to be buried. And there, while living, they
were often glad to abide, as the most notable place of comfort
and ease they could find on their journeys.
( The conventual establishment was intended to be a self-suffi
cient corporation, a sort of socialistic community doing all its
own work and supplying all its own stuffs and food. The
altruistic principle was supposed to rule. They had their
orchards and fields and owned their own cattle. Some of them
gathered honey from their own hives, had the fattest fish ponds,
sheared their own wool, made their own wine and brewed their
own beer. In their best days the monks set a good example

105 The Monasticism of the Middle Ages.
of thrift. The list of the minor officials in a convent was com
plete from the cellarer, to look after the cooking, and the c a
berlain, to look after the dress of the brethren, to the can or
to direct the singing, and the sacristan, to care for the enure
ornaments. The custom began in the eleventh century ot
associating lay brethren with the monasteries, so that these
institutions might, in all particulars, be completely independ
ent. Xor, it may be said, was the convent always indifferent
to the poor. But the tendency was for it to center attention
upon itself rather than to seek the regeneration of those around
about its walls.
Like many other ideals, the ideals of peace, virtue and happy
contentment and the ideal of holiness aimed at by the convent
were not reached, or if approached in the first moments of over
flowing ardor, were soon forfeited. For the method of monasti
cism is radically wrong. Here and there, no doubt, the cloister
was "the audience chamber of God." Contemporary history
gives the names, to say the least, of no better men than the
names of monks. But arrogance, idleness and loose morals
invariably followed prosperity. If Otto of Freising gives un
stinted praise to the cloisteral communities, his contemporary,
Anselm of Havelberg condemns the idleness and gossip of
monks which he found within and without convent walls.
Elizabeth of Schonau and Hildegard of Bingen, prophetesses
of the convent in the tweKth century, rebuked much that was
far from being ideal in the lives of monks and nuns. There is
a chronique scandaleuse of the monastery as dark and repulsive
as the chronique scandaleuse of the papacy during the por-
nocracy and under the last popes of the Middle Ages.* The
convent of Brittany over which Abaelard was placed as abbot,
and of which he tells us in his biography, reveals a rude and
shocking state of things. After 1300 things got to be worse.
Teachers of the universities like William of St. Amour (d.
1270) had scathing words for monkish arrogance and profli-
* Albert Hauck gives a number of instances of the moral degeneracy
of German convents in his " Kirchengeschichte Deutschlands," Vol. IV.
pp. 401 sqq.

The Monasticism of the Middle Ages. 106
gacy. Did not a bishop during the Avignon captivity of the
papacy declare that from personal examination he knew a con
vent where all the nuns had carnal intercourse with demons ?
The revelations of St. Bridget of Sweden (d. 1375), approved
at the councils of Constance and Basel, reveal the same low
condition of monastic virtue. Xicolas of Clemanges (d. 144-0),
wrote vigorous protests against the decay of the orders and
describes their decay in darkest colors, their waste, gluttony,
idleness and profligacy. He says a girl going into a convent
might as well,.be regarded as an abandoned woman at once. It
was true, as Caesar of Heisterbach had said in a homily several
centuries before, "religion brought riches and riches destroyed
religion." • Pure as the motives of the founders and a multitude
of the inmates of convents undoubtedly were at the first, the
ideal was a one-sided one and involved the fruitful germ of
selfishness, the care for oneself by seclusion of self from one's
fellowmen. If the institution of monasticism came to be the
synonym for superstition and the irreconcilable foe to human
progress, it was because there is something pernicious in that
method of attempting to secure holiness. (/The monks crushed
out the heretical sects and set themselves against the renais
sance. They became the chief champions of the papacy and
Franciscans were the active promoters of rebellion and discord
against Frederick II., against whom and whose house the pa
pacy had declared irreconcilable war. They became the pope's
agents in England and elsewhere for extorting papal revenue
and for weakening the power of the episcopate. Chaucer's
description of the prior was taken from the life of his age —
" He was a lord full fat and in good point."
And yet we would do wrong to forget the services which the
monastery did at a certain period in the history of mediaeval
Europe or to deny the holy propose of their founders. It will
not do for one age to condemn another for the methods it pur
sued in meeting its own problems. Xor would it be generous
to deny the great obligation of the church at the present time
to the monasteries for preserving the older literature both

107 The Monasticism of the Middle Ages.
classic and ecclesiastical and preparing theological volumes,
hymns and rituals which still contribute to our thought and
church service. A contemplation of the imposing spectacle of
mediaeval monasticism should stir the church to humbleness of
spirit and to zeal in the prosecution of her work to-day. We
study the movements of the past, not to find fault, but to learn
and become better equipped for grappling with the problems
of our own time.
Lane Seminary, Cincinnati, O.

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