Part 7 (1/2)
Enough has now been said to enable the reader to understand something of the spirit and labors of the monks in an age characteristically barbaric. For five centuries, from the fifth to the tenth, the condition of Europe was deplorable. ”It may be doubted,” says an old writer, ”whether the worst of the Caesars exceeded in dark malignity, or in capriciousness of vengeance, the long-haired kings of France.” The moral sense of even the most saintly churchmen seems to have been blunted by familiarity with atrocities and crimes. Brute force was the common method of exercising control and administering justice. The barbarians were bold and independent, but cruel and superst.i.tious. Their furious natures needed taming and their rude minds tutoring. Even though during this period churches and monasteries were raised in amazing numbers, yet the spirit of barbarism was so strong that the Christians could scarcely escape its influence. The power of Christianity was modified by the nature of the people, whose characters it aimed to transform. The remarks of William Newton Clarke respecting the Christians of the first and second centuries are also appropriate to the period under review: ”The people were changed by the new faith, but the new faith was changed by the people.” Christianity ”made a new people, better than it found them, but they in turn made a new Christianity, with its strong points ill.u.s.trated and confirmed in their experience, but with weakness brought in from their defects.”
Yes, the work of civilizing the Germanic nations was a task of herculean proportions and of tremendous significance. Out of these tribes were to be constructed the nations of modern Europe. To this important mission the monks addressed themselves with such courage, patience, faith and zeal, as to ent.i.tle them to the veneration of posterity. With singular wisdom and unflinching bravery they carried on their missionary and educational enterprises, in the face of discouragements and obstacles sufficient to dismay the bravest souls. The tenacious strength of those wild forces that clashed with the tenderer influences of the cloister should soften our criticism of the inconsistencies which detract from the glory of those early ministers of righteousness and exemplars of gentleness and peace.
IV
_REFORMED AND MILITARY ORDERS_
The monastic inst.i.tution was never entirely good or entirely bad. In periods of general degradation there were beautiful exceptions in monasteries ruled by pure and powerful abbots. From the beginning various monasteries soon departed from their discipline by sheltering iniquity and laziness, while other establishments faithfully observed the rules. But during the eighth, ninth and tenth centuries there was a widespread decline in the spirit of devotion and a shameful relaxation of monastic discipline. Malmesbury, King Alfred, Alcuin, in England, and many continental writers, sorrowfully testified against the monks because of their vices, their revelings, their vain and gorgeous ornaments of dress and their waning zeal for virtue. The priests hunted and fought, prayed, preached, swore and drank as they pleased. ”We cannot wonder,” says an anonymous historian, ”that they should commit the more reasonable offence of taking wives.” Disorders were common everywhere; the monastic vows were sadly neglected. Political and religious ideals were lost sight of amid the prevailing confusion and wild commotion of those dark days. ”It is true,” says Carlyle, ”all things have two faces, a light one and a dark. It is true in three centuries much imperfection acc.u.mulates; many an ideal, monastic or otherwise, shooting forth into practice as it can, grows to a strange reality; and we have to ask with amazement, Is this your ideal? For alas the ideal has to grow into the real, and to seek out its bed and board there, often in a sorry way.”
This, then, may be accepted as the usual history of a monastery or a monastic order. First, vows of poverty, obedience and chast.i.ty zealously cherished and observed; as a result of loyalty to this ideal, a spirit of devotion to righteousness is created, and a pure, lofty type of Christian life is formed, which, if not the highest and truest, is sufficiently exalted to win the reverence of worldly men and an extra-ordinary power over their lives and affections. There naturally follow numerous and valuable gifts of land and gold. The monks become rich as well as powerful. Then the decline begins. Vast riches have always been a menace to true spirituality. Perhaps they always will be.
The wealthy monk falls a prey to pride and arrogance; he becomes luxurious in his habits, and lazy in the performance of duty. Vice creeps in and his moral ruin is complete. The transformation in the character of the monk is accompanied by a change in public opinion. The monk is now an eyesore; his splendid buildings are viewed with envy by some, with shame by others. Then arise the vehement cries for the destruction of his palatial cloister, and the heroic efforts of the remnant that abide faithful to reform the inst.i.tution. This has been the pathway over which every monastic order has traveled. As long as there was sufficient vitality to give birth to reformatory movements, new societies sprang up as off-shoots of the older orders, some of which adopted the original rules, while others altered them to suit the views of the reforming founder. ”For indeed,” says Trench, ”those orders, wonderful at their beginning, and girt up so as to take heaven by storm, seemed destined to travel in a mournful circle from which there was no escape.” These facts partly explain the reformatory movements which appear from the ninth century on.
The first great saint to enter the lists against monastic corruption was Benedict of Aniane (750-821 A.D.), a member of a distinguished family in southern France. The Benedictine rule in his opinion was formed for novices and invalids. He attributed the prevailing laxity among the monks to the mild discipline. As abbot of a monastery he undertook to reform its affairs by adopting a system based on Basil of Asia Minor and Pachomius of Egypt. But he leaned too far back for human nature in the West, and the conclusion was forced upon him that Benedict of Nursia had formulated a set of rules as strict as could be enforced among the Western monks. Accordingly he directed his efforts to secure a faithful observance of the original Benedictine rules, adding, however, a number of rigid and burdensome regulations. Although at first the monks doubted his sanity, kicked him and spat on him, yet he afterwards succeeded in gathering about three hundred of them under his rule. Several colonies were sent out from his monastery, which was built on his patrimonial estate near Montpellier. His last establishment, which was located near Aix-la-Chapelle, became famous as a center of learning and sanct.i.ty.
One of the most celebrated reform monasteries was the convent of Cluny, or Clugny, in Burgundy, about fifteen miles from Lyons, which was founded by Duke William of Aquitaine in 910. It was governed by a code based on the rule of St. Benedict. The monastery began with twelve monks under Bruno, but became so ill.u.s.trious that under Hugo there were ten thousand monks in the various convents under its rule. It was made immediately subject to the pope,--that is, exempt from the jurisdiction of the bishop. Some idea of its splendid equipment may be formed from the fact that it is said, that in 1245, after the council of Lyons, it entertained Innocent IV., two patriarchs, twelve cardinals, three archbishops, fifteen bishops, many abbots, St. Louis, King of France, several princes and princesses, each with a considerable retinue, yet the monks were not incommoded. It gave to the church three popes,--Gregory VII., Urban II. and Paschal II.
From his cell at Cluny, Hildebrand, who became the famous Gregory VII., looked out upon a world distracted by war and sunk in vice. ”In Hildebrand's time, while he was studying those annals in Cluny,” says Thomas Starr King, ”a boy pope, twelve years old, was master of the spiritual scepter, and was beginning to lead a life so shameful, foul and execrable that a subsequent pope said, 'he shuddered to describe it.'”
Connected with the monastery was the largest church in the world, surpa.s.sed only a little, in later years, by St. Peter's at Rome. Its construction was begun in 1089 by the abbot Hugo, and it was consecrated in 1131, under the administration of Peter the Venerable. It boasted of twenty-five altars and many costly works of art.
So great was the fame and influence of this establishment that numerous convents in France and Italy placed themselves under its control, thus forming ”The Congregation of Cluny.”
After the administration of Peter the Venerable (1122-1156), this ill.u.s.trious house began to succ.u.mb to the intoxication of success, and it steadily declined in character and influence until its property was confiscated by the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly, in 1799, and the church sold for one hundred thousand francs. It is now in ruin.
But in spite of every attempt at reform during the ninth and tenth centuries the decline of the continental monasteries continued. Many persons of royal blood, accustomed to the license of palaces, entered the cloister and increased the disorders. The monks naturally respected their blood and relaxed the discipline in their favor. The result was costly robes, instead of the simple, monastic garb, riotous living, and a general indifference to spirituality. Spurious monasteries sprang up with rich lay-abbots at their head, who made the office hereditary in their families. Laymen were appointed to rich benefices simply that they might enjoy the revenues. These lay-abbots even went so far as to live with their families in their monasteries, and rollicking midnight banquets were subst.i.tuted for the asceticism demanded by the vows. They traveled extensively attended by splendid retinues. Some of the monks seemed intent on nothing but obtaining charters of privileges and exemptions from civil and military duties.
In England the state of affairs was even more distressing than on the Continent. The evil effects of the Saxon invasion, the demoralization that accompanied the influx of paganism, and the almost complete destruction of the religious inst.i.tutions of British Christianity have already been noted. About the year 700, the island was divided among fifteen petty chiefs, who waged war against one another almost incessantly. Christianity, as introduced by Augustine, had somewhat mitigated the ferocity of war, and England had begun to make some approach toward a respect for law and a veneration for the Christian religion, when the Danes came, and with them another period of disgraceful atrocities and blighting heathenism. The Danish invasion had almost extirpated the monastic inst.i.tution in the northern districts.
Carnage and devastation reigned everywhere. Celebrated monasteries fell in ruins and the monks were slain or driven into exile. Hordes of barbaric warriors roamed the country, burning and plundering.
”At the close of this calamitous period,” says Lingard, in his ”History and Antiquities of the Anglo-Saxon Church,” ”the Anglo-Saxon church presented a melancholy spectacle to the friends of religion: 1. The laity had resumed the ferocious manners of their pagan forefathers. 2.
The clergy had grown indolent, dissolute and illiterate. 3. The monastic order had been apparently annihilated. It devolved on King Alfred, victorious over his enemies, to devise and apply the remedies for these evils.” The good king endeavored to restore the monastic inst.i.tution, but, owing to the lack of candidates for the monastic habit, he was compelled to import a colony of monks from Gaul.
The moral results of Alfred's reformatory measures, as well as those of his immediate successors, were far from satisfactory, although he did vastly stimulate the educational work of the monastic schools. He devoted himself so faithfully to the gathering of traditions, that he is said to be the father of English history. The tide of immorality, however, was too strong to be stemmed in a generation or two. It was a century and a half before there was even an approach to substantial victory over the disgraceful abuses among the clergy and the monks.
The churchman who is credited with doing most to distinguish the monks as a zealous and faithful body was Dunstan (924-988 A.D.), first Abbot of Glas...o...b..ry, then Bishop of Winchester, and finally Archbishop of Canterbury. He is the most conspicuous ecclesiastical personage in the history of those dark days, but his character and labors have given rise to bitter and extensive controversy.
It was Dunstan's chief aim to subjugate the Anglo-Saxon church to the power of Rome, and to correct existing abuses by compelling the clergy and the monks to obey the rule of celibacy. He was a fervent believer in the efficacy of the Benedictine vows, and in the value of clerical celibacy as a remedy for clerical licentiousness. Naturally, Protestant writers, who hold that papal supremacy never was a blessing in any country or in any age, and who think that clerical celibacy has always been a fruitful source of crime and sin, condemn the reforms of Dunstan in the most unqualified terms. A statement of a few of the many and perplexing facts may a.s.sist us to form a fairly just judgment of the man and his work.
The principle of sacerdotal celibacy appeared early in the history of Christianity, and for many centuries it was the subject of sharp contention. Roman Catholics themselves have been divided upon it. In every Christian country, from the Apostolic period onward, there were priests and teachers who opposed the imposition of this rule upon the clergy, and, on the other hand, there were those who practiced and advocated celibacy as the indispensable guarantee of spiritual power and purity.
What the rule of celibacy was at this period, in England, seems uncertain. Lingard maintains that marriage was always permitted to the clergy in minor orders, who were employed in various subordinate positions, but that those in higher orders, whose office it was to minister at the altar and to offer the sacrifice, were expressly bound to a life of the strictest continence. During the invasion of the Danes, when confusion reigned, many priests in the higher orders had not only forsaken their vows of chast.i.ty, but had plunged into frightful immoralities; and married clerks of inferior orders were raised to the priesthood to fill the ranks depleted by war. These promoted clerks were previously required to separate from their wives, but apparently many of them did not do so. Consequently, from several causes, the married priests became a numerous body, and since the common opinion seems to have been that a married priest was disgracing his office, this body was regarded as a menace to the welfare of the church and the state.
Lea, in his elaborate ”History of Sacerdotal Celibacy,” holds that the rule of celibacy was only binding on the regulars, or monks, and that the secular priesthood was at liberty to marry. But from several other pa.s.sages in his work it seems that he also recognizes the fact that, while marriage was common, it was in defiance of an ancient canon. ”It is evident,” he says, ”that the memory of the ancient canons was not forgotten, and that their observance was still urged by some ardent churchmen, but that the customs of the period had rendered them virtually obsolete, and that no sufficient means existed of enforcing obedience. If open scandals and shameless bigamy and concubinage could be restrained, the ecclesiastical authorities were evidently content.
Celibacy could not be enjoined as a law, but was rendered attractive by surrounding it with privileges and immunities denied to him who yielded to the temptations of the flesh.”
Throughout Western Christendom the law of celibacy was openly and shamefully trampled upon, and every reformer seemed to think that the very first step toward any improvement in clerical morals was to be taken by enforcing this rule.
When Dunstan commenced his reforms, the clergy were guilty of graver sins than that of living in marriage relations. Adultery, bigamy, swearing, fighting and drinking were the order of the day. The monasteries were occupied by secular priests with wives or concubines.