OF RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS IN THE HISTORY OF THE WEST.
Let us now examine religious institutions, such as they appear in the
West, but laying aside those which, although established in various
parts of the West, were only a sort of ramification of the Eastern
monasteries. We observe that the religious establishments among us
added to the Gospel spirit, the principle of their foundation, a
new character, that of conservative, restorative, and regenerative
associations. The monks of the West were not content with sanctifying
themselves; from the first they influenced society. The light and
life which their holy abodes contained, labored to enlighten and
fertilize the chaos of the world. I do not know in history a nobler
or more consoling spectacle than that which is presented to us by the
foundation, existence, and development of the religious institutions
of Europe. Society had need of strong efforts to preserve its life
in the terrible crisis through which it had to pass. The secret of
strength is in the union of individual forces, in association; and it
is remarkable that this secret has been taught to European society as
if by a revelation from heaven. Every thing shakes, falls to pieces,
and perishes. Religion, morality, public authority, laws, manners,
sciences, and arts--every thing has sustained immense losses, every
thing goes to ruin; and judging of the future fate of the world
according to human probabilities, the evils are so great and numerous
that a remedy appears impossible.
The observer who, fixing his eyes upon those desolate times,
finds there St. Bennet giving life to and animating the religious
institutions, organizing them, giving them his wise rule and stability,
imagines that he sees an angel of light issuing from the bosom of
darkness. Nothing can be imagined better calculated to restore to
dissolved society a principle of life capable of reorganizing it, than
the extraordinary and sublime inspiration which guided this man. Who
does not know what at that time was the condition of Italy--I should
rather say, of the whole of Europe? What ignorance, what corruption,
what elements of social dissolution! What desolation everywhere! and it
is amid this deplorable state of things that the holy solitary appears,
the child of an illustrious family of Norcia, resolved to combat the
evil which threatens to invade the world. His arms are his virtues; the
eloquence of his example gives him an irresistible ascendency; elevated
above the whole age, burning with zeal, and yet full of prudence and
discretion, he founds that institution which is to remain amid the
revolution of ages, like the pyramids unmoved by the storms of the
desert.
What idea has there been more grand, more beneficent, more full of
foresight and wisdom? At a time when knowledge and virtue had no
longer an asylum, when ignorance, corruption, and barbarism rapidly
extended their conquests, was it not a grand idea to raise a refuge
for misfortune, to form a sacred deposit for the precious monuments
of antiquity, and to open schools of knowledge and virtue, where men
destined one day to figure in the vortex of the world might come
for instruction? When the reflecting man fixes his attention on the
silent abode of Monte Cassino, where the sons of the most illustrious
families of the empire are seen to come from all parts to that
monastery; some with the intention of remaining there for ever, others
to receive a good education, and soon to carry back to the world a
recollection of the serious inspirations which the holy founder had
received at Subiaco; when the monasteries of the order are seen to
multiply everywhere, to be established as great centres of activity
in all places--in the plains, in the forests, in the most uninhabited
countries; he cannot help bending, with profound veneration, before
the extraordinary man who has conceived such grand designs. If we are
unwilling to acknowledge in St. Bennet a man inspired by Heaven, at
least we ought to consider him as one of those geniuses who, from time
to time, appear on earth to become the tutelary angels of the human
race.
Not to acknowledge the powerful effect of such institutions would
be to show but little intelligence. When society is dissolved, it
requires not words, not projects, not laws, but strong institutions, to
resist the shock of the passions, the inconstancy of the human mind,
and the destructive power of events; institutions which raise the
mind, pacify and ennoble the heart, and establish in society a deep
movement of reaction and resistance to the fatal elements which lead
it to destruction. If there exists, then, an active mind, a generous
heart, a soul animated by a feeling of virtue, they will all hasten to
seek a refuge in the sacred asylums; it is not always granted to them
to change the course of the world, but at least, as men of solitude
and sacrifice, they labour to instruct and calm their own minds, and
they shed a tear of compassion over the senseless generations who are
agitated by great disasters. From time to time they succeed in making
their voices heard amid the tumult, to alarm the hearts of the wicked
by accents which resemble the formidable warnings of Heaven; thus they
diminish the force of the evil while it is impossible to prevent it
entirely; by constantly protesting against iniquity, they prevent its
acquiring prescriptive right; in attesting to future generations, by a
solemn testimony, that there were always, amid darkness and corruption,
men who made efforts to enlighten the world and to restrain the torrent
of vice and crime, they preserve faith in truth and virtue, and they
reanimate the hopes of those who are afterwards placed in similar
circumstances. Such was the action of the monks in the calamitous times
of which we speak; such was their noble and sublime mission to promote
the interests of humanity.
Perhaps it will be said that the immense properties acquired by the
monasteries were an abundant recompense for their labors, and perhaps
also a proof that their exertions were little disinterested. No doubt,
if we look at things in the light in which certain writers have
represented them, the wealth of the monks will appear as the fruit of
unbounded cupidity, of cruelty, and perfidious policy; but we have the
whole of history to refute the calumnies of the enemies of religion;
and impartial philosophy, while acknowledging that all that is human
is liable to abuse, takes care to assume a higher position, to regard
things _en masse_, and to consider them in the vast picture where so
many centuries have painted their features. It therefore despises the
evil, which is only the exception, while it contemplates and admires
the good, which is the rule.
Besides the numerous religious motives which brought property into
the hands of the monks, there is another very legitimate one, which
has always been regarded as one of the justest titles of acquisition.
The monks cultivated waste lands, dried up marshes, constructed
roads, restrained rivers within their beds, and built bridges over
them; that is to say, in countries which had undergone another kind
of general deluge, they renewed, in some measure, what the first
nations had done to restore the revolutionized globe to its original
form. A considerable portion of Europe had never received cultivation
from the hands of men; the forests, the rivers, the lakes, the thorny
thickets, were as rough as they had been left by the hands of nature.
The monasteries which were founded here and there may be regarded as
the centres of action, which the civilized nations established in the
new countries, the faces of which they proposed to change by their
powerful colonies. Did there ever exist a more legitimate title for the
possession of large properties? Is not he who reclaims a waste country,
cultivates it, and fills it with inhabitants, worthy of preserving
large possessions there? Is not this the natural course of things? Who
knows how many cities and towns arose and flourished under the shadow
of the abbeys?
Monastic properties, besides their substantial utility, had another,
which perhaps has not been sufficiently noticed. The situation of a
great part of the nations of Europe, at the time we speak of, much
resembled the state of fluctuation and inconstancy in which nations are
found, who have not yet made any progress in the career of civilization
and refinement. The idea of property, one of the most fundamental in
all social organization, was but little rooted. Attacks on property at
that time were very frequent, as well as attacks on persons. The man
who is constantly compelled to defend his own, is also constantly led
to usurp the property of others; the first thing to do to remedy so
great an evil, was to locate and fix the population by means of the
agricultural life, and to accustom them to respect for property, not
only by reasons drawn from morality and private interest, but also
by the sight of large domains belonging to establishments regarded
as inviolable, and against which a hand could not be raised without
sacrilege. Thus religious ideas were connected with social ones, and
they slowly prepared an organization which was to be completed in more
peaceable times.
Add to this a new necessity, the result of the change which took place
at that time in the habits of the people. Among the ancients, scarcely
any other life than that of cities was known; life in the country, that
dispersion of an immense population, which in modern times forms a
new nation in the fields, was not known among the ancients; and it is
remarkable that this change in the mode of life was realized exactly
when the most calamitous circumstances seemed to render it the most
dangerous and difficult. It is to the existence of the monasteries
in fields and in retired places that we owe the establishment and
consolidation of this new kind of life, which, no doubt, would have
been impossible without the ascendency and the beneficial influence of
the powerful abbeys. These religious foundations joined all the riches
and the power of feudal lords with the mild and beneficent influence of
religious authority.
How much does not Germany owe to the monks! Did they not bring her
lands into cultivation, make her agriculture flourish, and cover her
with a numerous population? How much are not France, Spain, and England
indebted to them! It is certain that this latter country would never
have reached the high degree of civilization of which she now boasts,
if the apostolic labors of the missionaries who penetrated thither
in the sixth century had not drawn her out of the darkness of gross
idolatry. And who were these missionaries? Was not the chief of them
Augustine, a monk full of zeal, sent by a Pope who had also been a
monk, St. Gregory the Great? Where do you find, amid the confusion of
the middle ages, the great writers of knowledge and virtue, except
in those solitary abodes whence issue St. Isidore, the Archbishop of
Seville; the holy abbot St. Columbanus; St. Aurelian, Bishop of Arles;
St. Augustine, the Apostle of England; that of Germany, St. Boniface;
Bede, Cuthbert, Auperth, Paul, monks of Monte Cassino; Hincmar of
Rheims, brought up at the monastery of St. Denis; St. Peter Damiens,
St. Ives, Lanfranc, and so many others, who form a generation of
distinguished men, resembling in no respect the other men of their time.
Besides the service rendered to society by the monks in religion and
morals, they conferred inestimable benefits on letters and science.
It has already been observed more than once, that letters took refuge
in the cloisters, and that the monks, by preserving and copying the
ancient manuscripts, prepared the materials which were one day to
assist in the restoration of human learning. But we must not limit
their merit to that of mere copyists. Many of them advanced far in
science, many ages in advance of the times in which they lived. Not
content with the laborious task of preserving and putting into order
the ancient manuscripts, they rendered the most eminent service
to history by compiling chronicles. Thereby, while continuing the
tradition of the most important branches of study, they collected
the contemporary history, which, perhaps, without their labor would
have been lost. Adon, Archbishop of Vienne, brought up in the Abbey
of Ferrière, writes a universal history, from the beginning of the
world to his own time; Abbon, monk of St. Germain-des-Prés, composes
a Latin poem, in which he relates the siege of Paris by the Normans;
Aymon of Aquitaine writes the history of the French in four books;
St. Ives publishes a chronicle of their kings; the German monk Witmar
leaves us the chronicle of Henry I., of the Kings Otho and Henry II.,
which is much esteemed for its candor, and has been published many
times; Leibnitz has used it to throw light on the history of Brunswick.
Adhemar is the author of a chronicle, which embraces the whole time
from 829 to 1029. Glaber, monk of Cluny, has composed a much-esteemed
history of the events which happened in France from 980 to his own
time; Herman, a chronicle which embraces the six ages of the world
down to the year 1054. In fine, we should never finish if we were to
mention the historical labors of Sigebert, Guibert, Hugh, Prior of St.
Victor, and so many other illustrious men, who, rising above their
times, applied themselves to labors of this kind; of which we cannot
easily appreciate the difficulty and the high degree of merit, we who
live in an age when the means of knowledge are become so easy, when
the accumulated riches of so many ages are inherited, and when we
find on all sides wide and well-beaten paths. Without the existence
of religious institutions, without the asylum of the cloisters, these
eminent men would never have been formed. Not only had the sciences
and letters been lost sight of, but ignorance was so great, that
seculars who knew how to read and write were very rare. Surely such
circumstances were not well adapted to form men of merit enough to do
honor to advanced ages. Who has not often paused to contemplate the
distinguished triumvirate, Peter the Venerable, St. Bernard, and the
Abbot Suger? May it not be said that the twelfth century is elevated
above its rank in history, by producing a writer like Peter the
Venerable, an orator like St. Bernard, and a statesman like Suger?
These ages show us another celebrated monk, whose influence on the
progress of knowledge has not been rated at its just value by many
critics who love only to point out defects: I mean Gratian. Those who
have declaimed against him, eager to look for his mistakes, should
have placed themselves in the position of a compiler in the thirteenth
century, at a time when all resources were wanting, when the lights of
criticism were yet to be created; they would then have seen whether
the bold enterprise of the monk was not attended with more success
than there was reason to hope for. The profit which was drawn from the
collection of Gratian is incalculable. By giving in a small compass
a great part of what was most precious in antiquity with respect to
civil and canon law; by making an abundant collection of texts from the
holy fathers, applied to all kinds of subjects, he awakened a taste
for that species of research; he created the study of them; he made an
immense step towards satisfying one of the first necessities of modern
nations, the formation of civil and ecclesiastical codes. It will be
said that the errors of Gratian were contagious, and that it would have
been better to have recourse directly to the originals; but to read
the originals it was necessary to know them; it was necessary to be
informed of their existence, to be excited by the desire of explaining
a proposed difficulty, to have acquired a taste for researches of that
kind; all this was wanting before Gratian; all this was brought out by
his enterprise. The general favor with which his labors were received
is the most convincing proof of their merit; and if it be objected that
this favor was owing to the ignorance of the time, I will reply, that
we owe a tribute of gratitude to any one who throws a ray of light on
the darkness, however feeble and wavering this ray may be.