Part 6 (1/2)
No new principle seems to be disclosed by the Benedictine rules. The command to labor had been emphasized even in the monasteries of Egypt.
The Basilian code contained a provision enforcing manual labor, but the work was light and insufficient to keep the mind from brooding. The monastery that was to succeed in the West must provide for men who not only could toil hard, but who must do so if they were to be kept pure and true; it must welcome men accustomed to the dangerous adventures of pioneer life in the vast forests of the North. The Benedictine system met these conditions by a unique combination and application of well-known monastic principles; by a judicious subordination of minor matters to essential discipline; by bringing into greater prominence the doctrine of labor; by tempering the austerities of the cell to meet the necessities of a severe climate; and lastly, by devising a scheme of life equally adaptable to the monk of sunny Italy and the rude Goth of the northern forests.
It was the splendid fruition of many years of experiment amid varying results. ”It shows,” says Schaff, ”a true knowledge of human nature, the practical wisdom of Rome and adaptation to Western customs; it combines simplicity with completeness, strictness with gentleness, humility with courage and gives the whole cloister life a fixed unity and compact organization, which, like the episcopate, possessed an unlimited versatility and power of expansion.”
_The Struggle against Barbarism_
No inst.i.tution has contributed as much to the amelioration of human misery or struggled as patiently and persistently to influence society for good as the Christian church. In spite of all that may be said against the followers of the Cross, it still remains true, that they have ever been foremost in the establishment of peace and justice among men.
The problem that confronted the church when Benedict began his labors, was no less than that of reducing a demoralized and brutal society to law and order. Chaos reigned, selfishness and l.u.s.t ruled the hearts of Rome's conquerors. The West was desolated by barbarians; the East dismembered and worn out by theological controversy. War had ruined the commerce of the cities and laid waste the rural districts. Vast swamps and tracts of brush covered fields once beautiful with the products of agricultural labor. The minds of men were distracted by apprehensions of some frightful, impending calamity. The cultured Roman, the untutored Goth and the corrupted Christian were locked in the deadly embrace of despair. ”Constantly did society attempt to form itself,” says Guizot, ”constantly was it destroyed by the act of man, by the absence of the moral conditions under which alone it can exist.”
But notwithstanding failures and discouragements, the work of reconstructing society moved painfully on, and among the brave master builders was Benedict of Nursia. ”He found the world, physical and social, in ruins,” says Cardinal Newman, ”and his mission was to restore it in the way,--not of science, but of nature; not as if setting about to do it; not professing to do it by any set time, or by any series of strokes; but so quietly, patiently, gradually, that often till the work was done, it was not known to be doing. It was a restoration rather than a visitation, correction or conversion. The new world he helped to create was a growth rather than a structure.”
But the chaos created by the irruption of the barbarous nations at this period seriously affected the moral character and influence of the clergy and the monks. The church seemed unequal to the stupendous undertaking of converting the barbarians. The monks, as a cla.s.s, were lawless and vicious. Benedict himself testifies against them, and declares that they were ”always wandering and never stable; that they obey their own appet.i.tes, whereunto they are enslaved.” Unable to control their own desires by any law whatsoever, they were unfitted to the task before them. It was imperative, then, that unity and order should be introduced among the monasteries; that some sort of a uniform rule, adapted to the existing conditions, should be adopted, not only for the preservation of the monastic inst.i.tution, but for the preparation of the monks for their work. Therefore, although the Christianity of that time was far from ideal, it was, nevertheless, a religion within the grasp of the reckless barbarians; and subsequent events prove that it possessed a moral power capable of humanizing manners, elevating the intellect, and checking the violent temper of the age.
Excepting always the religious services of the Benedictine monks, their greatest contribution to civilization was literary and educational[E].
The rules of Benedict provided for two hours a day of reading, and it was doubtless this wise regulation that stimulated literary tastes, and resulted in the collecting of books and the reproduction of ma.n.u.scripts.
”Wherever a Benedictine house arose, or a monastery of any one of the Orders, which were but offshoots from the Benedictine tree, books were multiplied and a library came into existence, small indeed at first, but increasing year by year, till the wealthier houses had gathered together collections of books that would do credit to a modern university.”
There was great danger that the remains of cla.s.sic literature might be destroyed in the general devastation of Italy. The monasteries rescued the literary fragments that escaped, and preserved them. ”For a period of more than six centuries the safety of the literary heritage of Europe,--one may say of the world,--depended upon the scribes of a few dozen scattered monasteries.”
[Footnote E: Appendix, Note E.]
The literary services of the earlier monks did not consist in original production, but in the reproduction and preservation of the cla.s.sics.
This work was first begun as a part of the prescribed routine of European monastic life in the monastery at Vivaria, or Viviers, France, which was founded by Ca.s.siodorus about 539. The rules of this cloister were based on those of Ca.s.sian, who died in the early part of the fifth century. Benedict, at Monte Ca.s.sino, followed the example of Ca.s.siodorus, and the Benedictine Order carried the work on for the seven succeeding centuries.
Ca.s.siodorus was a statesman of no mean ability, and for over forty years was active in the political circles of his time, holding high official positions under five different Roman rulers. He was also an exceptional scholar, devoting much of his energy to the preservation of cla.s.sic literature. His magnificent collection of ma.n.u.scripts, rescued from the ruins of Italian libraries, ”supplied material for the pens of thousands of monastic scribes.” If we leave out Jerome, it is to Ca.s.siodorus that the honor is due for joining learning and monasticism.
”Thus,” remarks Schaff, ”that very mode of life, which, in its founder, Anthony, despised all learning, became in the course of its development an asylum of culture in the rough and stormy times of the migration and the crusades, and a conservator of the literary treasures of antiquity for the use of modern times.”
Ca.s.siodorus, with a n.o.ble enthusiasm, inspired his monks to their task.
He even provided lamps of ingenious construction, that seem to have been self-tr.i.m.m.i.n.g, to aid them in their work. He himself set an example of literary diligence, astonis.h.i.+ng in one of his age.
Putnam is justified in his praises of this remarkable character when he declares: ”It is not too much to say that the continuity of thought and civilization of the ancient world with that of the middle ages was due, more than to any other one man, to the life and labors of Ca.s.siodorus.”
But the monk was more than a scribe and a collector of books, he became the chronicler and the school-teacher. ”The records that have come down to us of several centuries of medieval European history are due almost exclusively to the labors of the monastic chroniclers.” A vast fund of information, the value of which is impaired, it is true, by much useless stuff, concerning medieval customs, laws and events, was collected by these unscientific historians and is now accessible to the student.
At the end of the ninth century nearly all the monasteries of Europe conducted schools open to the children of the neighborhood. The character of the educational training of the times is not to be judged by modern standards. A beginning had to be made, and that too at a time ”when neither local nor national governments had a.s.sumed any responsibilities in connection with elementary education, and when the munic.i.p.alities were too ignorant, and in many cases too poor, to make provision for the education of the children.” It is therefore to the lasting credit of Benedict, inspired no doubt by the example of Ca.s.siodorus, that he commanded his monks to read, encouraged literary work, and made provision for the education of the young.
The Benedictines rendered a great social service in reclaiming deserted regions and in clearing forests. ”The monasteries,” says Maitland, ”were, in those days of misrule and turbulence, beyond all price, not only as places where (it may be imperfectly, but better than elsewhere) G.o.d was wors.h.i.+pped,... but as central points whence agriculture was to spread over bleak hills and barren downs and marshy plains, and deal its bread to millions peris.h.i.+ng with hunger and its pestilential train.”
Roman taxation and barbarian invasions had ruined the farmers, who left their lands and fled to swell the numbers of the homeless. The monk repeopled these abandoned but once fertile fields, and carried civilization still deeper into the forests. Many a monastery with its surrounding buildings became the nucleus of a modern city. The more awful the darkness of the forest solitudes, the more the monks loved it. They cut down trees in the heart of the wilderness, and transformed a soil bristling with woods and thickets into rich pastures and ploughed fields. They stimulated the peasantry to labor, and taught them many useful lessons in agriculture. Thus, they became an industrial, as well as a spiritual, agency for good.
The habits of the monks brought them into close contact with nature.
Even the animals became their friends. Numerous stories have been related of their wonderful power over wild beasts and their conversations with the birds. ”It is wonderful,” says Bede, ”that he who faithfully and loyally obeys the Creator of the universe, should, in his turn, see all the creatures obedient to his orders and his wishes.” They lived, so we are told, in the most intimate relations with the animal creation. Squirrels leaped to their hands or hid in the folds of their cowls. Stags came out of the forests in Ireland and offered themselves to some monks who were ploughing, to replace the oxen carried off by the hunters. Wild animals stopped in their pursuit of game at the command of St. Laumer. Birds ceased singing at the request of some monks until they had chanted their evening prayer, and at their word the feathered songsters resumed their music. A swan was the daily companion of St.
Hugh of Lincoln, and manifested its miraculous knowledge of his approaching death by the most profound melancholy. While all the details of such stories are not to be accepted as literally true, no doubt some of this poetry of monastic history rests upon interesting and charming facts.
A fuller discussion of the permanent contributions which the monk made to civilization is reserved for the last chapter. I have somewhat antic.i.p.ated a closer scrutiny of his achievements in order to present a clearer view of his life and labors. His religious duties were, perhaps, wearisome enough. We might tire of his monotonous chanting and incessant vigils, but it is gratifying to know that he also engaged in practical and useful employments. The convent became the house of industry as well as the temple of prayer. The forest glades echoed to the stroke of the axe as well as to hymns of praise. Yes, as Carlyle writes of the twelfth century, ”these years were no chimerical vacuity and dreamland peopled with mere vaporous phantasms, but a green solid place, that grew corn and several other things. The sun shone on it, the vicissitudes of seasons and human fortunes. Cloth was woven and worn; ditches were dug, furrowed fields ploughed and houses built.”