Part 16 (1/2)
Wherever there is a luxuriant forest, a pure stream, a majestic hill, we may be sure that religion has left there her stamp by the hand of the monk.” But this was Montalembert, the Roman Catholic historian, and the avowed champion of the monks. ”A cruel, unfeeling temper,” writes Gibbon, ”has distinguished the monks of every age and country; their stern indifference, which is seldom mollified by personal friends.h.i.+p, is inflamed by religious hatred; and their merciless zeal has strenuously administered the holy office of the Inquisition.” But this was Gibbon, the hater of everything monastic. Between these extreme views lies a wide field upon which many a deathless duel has been fought by the writers of monastic history.
The variety of judgments respecting the nature and effects of monasticism is partly due to the diversity in the facts of its history.
Monasticism was the friend and the foe of true religion. It was the inspiration of virtue and the encouragement of vice. It was the patron of industry and the promoter of idleness. It was a pioneer in education and the teacher of superst.i.tion. It was the disburser of alms and a many-handed robber. It was the friend of human liberty and the abettor of tyranny. It was the champion of the common people and the defender of cla.s.s privileges. It was, in short, everything that man was and is, so varied were its operations, so complex was its influence, so comprehensive was its life.
Of some things we may be certain. Any religious inst.i.tution or ideal of life that has survived the changes of twelve centuries, and that has enlisted the enthusiastic services and warmest sympathies of numerous men and women who have been honorably distinguished for their intellectual attainments and moral character, must have possessed elements of truth and moral worth. A contemptuous treatment of monasticism implies either an ignorance of its real history or a wilful disregard of the deep significance of its commendable features.
It is also certain that while the methods of monasticism, judged by their effects upon the individual and upon society, may be justly censured, it is beyond question that many monks, groping their way toward the light in an age of ignorance and superst.i.tion, were inspired by the purest motives. ”Conscience,” observes Waddington, ”however misguided, cannot be despised by a reflecting mind. When it leads one to self-sacrifice and moral fort.i.tude we cannot but admire his spirit, while we condemn his sagacity and method.”
_The Effects of Self-Sacrifice Upon the Individual_
Christianity requires some sort of self-denial as the condition of true Christian disciples.h.i.+p. Self-love is to yield to a love of others. In some sense, the Christian is to become dead to the world and its demoralizing pleasures. But this primal demand upon the soul needs to be interpreted. What is it to love the world? What is it to keep the body in subjection? What are harmful indulgences? To give wrong answers to these questions is to set up a false ideal; the more strenuously such false ideal is followed, the more disastrous are the consequences. One's struggle for moral purity may end in failure, and one's efficiency for good may be seriously impaired by a perversion of the principle of self-abnegation. Unnatural severity and excessive abstinence often produce the opposite effect from that intended. Instead of a peaceful mind there is delirium, and instead of freedom from temptation there are a thousand horrible fiends hovering in the air and ready, at any moment, to pounce upon their prey. ”The history of ascetics,” says Martensen, ”teaches us that by such overdone fasting the fancy is often excited to an amazing degree, and in its airy domain affords the very things that one thought to have buried, by means of mortification, a magical resurrection.” In attempting to subdue the body, many necessary requirements of the physical organism were totally ignored. The body rebelled against such unnatural treatment, and the mind, so closely related to it, in its distraction, gave birth to the wildest fancies.
Men, who would have possessed an ordinarily pure mind in some useful occupation of life, became the prey of the most lewd and obnoxious imaginations. Then they fancied themselves vile above their fellows, and laid on more stripes, put more thorns upon their pillows, and fasted more hours, only to find that instead of fleeing, the devils became blacker and more numerous.
Self-forgetfulness is the key to happiness. The monk thought otherwise, and slew himself in his vain attempt to fight against nature. He never lifted his eyes from his own soul. He was always feeling his spiritual pulse, staring at his lean spiritual visage, and tearfully watching his growth in grace. An interest in others and a strong mind in a strong body are the best antidotes to religious despair and the temptations of the soul. Life in the monastery was generally less severe than in the desert's solitude. There was more and better food, shelter, and comfort, but there were many unnecessary and unnatural restrictions, even in the best days of monasticism. There were too many hours of prayer, too many needless regulations for silence, fasting and penance, to produce a healthy, vigorous type of religious life.
_The Effects of Solitude Upon the Individual_.
It has already been shown that some solitude is essential to our richest culture. Our higher nature demands time for reflection and meditation.
But the monks carried this principle to an extreme, and they overestimated its benefits. ”Ambition, avarice, irresolution, fear, and inordinate desires,” says Montaigne, ”do not leave us because we forsake our native country, they often follow us even to cloisters and philosophical schools; nor deserts, nor caves, nor hair s.h.i.+rts, nor fasts, can disengage us from them.”
Besides these pa.s.sions, which the monks carried with them, their solitary life tended to foster spiritual pride, contract sympathy, and engender an inhumane spirit. True, there were exceptions; but the sublime characters which survive in monastic history are by no means typical of its usual effects. Seclusion did not benefit the average monk. Indeed there is something wanting in even the loftiest monastic characters. ”The heroes of monasticism,” says Allen, ”are not the heroes of modern life. All put together, they would not furnish out one such soul as William of Orange, or Gustavus, or Milton. Independence of thought and liberty of conscience, they renounced once for all, in taking upon them the monastic vow. All the larger enterprises, all the broad humanities, which to our mind make a greater career, were rigidly shut off by a barrier that could not be crossed. All the warmth and wealth of social and domestic life was a field of forbidden fruit, to be entered only through the gate of unpardonable sin.”
Thus self-excluded from a normal life in society, often the subject of self-inflicted pain, it is no wonder that the monk impaired all the n.o.bler and manlier feelings of the soul, that he became strangely indifferent to human affection, that bigotry and pride often sat as joint rulers on the throne of his heart. He who had trampled on all filial relations would scarcely recognize the bonds of human brotherhood. He who heard not the prayer of his own mother would not be likely to listen to the cry of the tortured heretic for mercy. Man as man was not reverenced. It was the monk in man who was esteemed. As Milman puts it, ”Bigotry has always found its readiest and sternest executioners among those who have never known the charities of life.”
Nor is it a matter of surprise that the monk was spiritually proud. He was supposed to stand in the inner circle, a little nearer the throne of G.o.d than his fellow-mortals. When dead, he was wors.h.i.+ped as a saint and regarded as an intercessor between G.o.d and his lower fellow-creatures.
His hatred of the base world easily pa.s.sed over into a sense of superiority and ign.o.ble pride.
”True social life,” says Martensen, ”leads to solitude.” This truth the monks emphasized to the exclusion of the converse, ”true life in solitude leads back to society.” John Tauler, the mystic monk, realized this truth when he said: ”If G.o.d calls me to a sick person, or to the service of preaching, or to any other service of love, I must follow, although I am in the state of highest contemplation.” The hermits of the desert, and too often the monks of the cloister, escaped from all such services, and selfishly gave themselves up to saving their own souls by contemplation and prayer. Ministration to the needy is the external side of the inner religious life. It is the fruit of faith and prayer. The monk sought solitude, not for the purpose of fitting himself for a place in society, but for selfish, personal ends. Saint Bruno, in a letter to his friend Ralph le Verd, eulogizes the solitude of the monastic cell, and among other sentiments he gives expression to the following: ”I am speaking here of the contemplative life; and although its sons are less numerous than those of active life, yet, like Joseph and Benjamin, they are infinitely dearer to their Father.... O my brother, fear not then to fly from the turmoil and the misery of the world; leave the storms that rage without, to shelter yourself in this safe haven.”
Thus sinful and sorrowing humanity, needing the guidance and comfort that holy men can furnish, was forgotten in the desire for personal peace and future salvation.
Another baneful result of isolation was the strangulation of filial love. When the monk abandoned the softening, refining influence of women and children, one side of his nature suffered a serious contraction. An Egyptian mother stood at the hut of two hermits, her sons. Weeping bitterly, she begged to see their faces. To her piteous entreaties, they said: ”Why do you, who are already stricken with age, pour forth such cries and lamentations?” ”It is because I long to see you,” she replied.
”Am I not your mother? I am now an old and wrinkled woman, and my heart is troubled at the sound of your voices.” But even a mother's love could not cope with their fearful fanaticism., and she went away with their cold promise that they would meet in heaven. St. John of Calama visited his sister in disguise, and a chronicler, telling the story afterwards, said, ”By the mercy of Jesus Christ he had not been recognized, and they never met again.” Many hermits received their parents or brothers and sisters with their eyes shut. When the father of Simeon Stylites died, his widowed mother prayed for entrance into her son's cell. For three days and nights she stood without, and then the blessed Simeon prayed the Lord for her, and she immediately gave up the ghost.
These as well as numerous other stories of a similar character that might be quoted ill.u.s.trate the hardening influence of solitude. Instead of cheris.h.i.+ng a love of kindred, as a gift of heaven and a spring of virtue, the monk spurned it and trampled it beneath his feet as an obstacle to his spiritual progress. ”The monks,” says Milman, ”seem almost unconscious of the softening, humanizing effect of the natural affections, the beauty of parental tenderness and filial love.”
_The Monks as Missionaries_
The conversion of the barbarians was an indispensable condition of modern civilization. Every step forward had to be taken in the face of barbaric ignorance and cruelty. In this stupendous undertaking the monks led the way, displaying in their labors remarkable generals.h.i.+p and undaunted courage. Whatever may be thought of later monasticism, the Benedictine monks are ent.i.tled to the lasting grat.i.tude of mankind for their splendid services in reducing barbaric Europe to some sort of order and civilization. But again the mixture of good and evil is strangely ill.u.s.trated. It seems impossible to accord the monks unqualified praise. The potency of the evil tendencies within their system vitiated every n.o.ble achievement. Their methods and practical ideals were so at variance with the true order of nature that every commendable victory involved a corresponding obstacle to real social and religious progress. The justice of these observations will be more apparent as this inquiry proceeds.
_Monasticism and Civic Duties_
The withdrawal of a considerable number of men of character and talent from the exercise of civic duties is injurious to the state. The burdens upon those who remain become heavier, while society is deprived of the moral influence of those who forsake their civic responsibilities. When the monk, from the outside as it were, attempted to exert an influence for good, he largely failed. His ideals of life were not formulated in a real world, but in an artificial, antisocial environment. He was unable to appreciate the political needs of men. He could not enter sympathetically into their serious employments or innocent delights.
Controlled by superst.i.tion, and exalting a servile obedience to human authority, he became a very unsafe guide in political affairs. He could not consistently labor for secular progress, because he had forsaken a world in which secular interests were prominent.