"The name of Monapia first occurs in Pliny, and must be
unquestionably identified with the Isle of Man; though the
name of the latter would dispose us at first to consider it as
representing Mona. But the Mona of the Romans, which was
attacked by Suetonius Paulinus and Agricola, was certainly
Anglesea."
_E. H. Bunbury,
History of Ancient Geography.,
chapter 24, section 2, foot-note._
MONASTERY.
MONASTICISM.
CONVENT.
ABBEY.
PRIORY.
"Monasticism was not the product of Christianity; it was the
inheritance of the Church, not its invention; not the
offspring, but the adopted child. The old antagonism between
mind and matter, flesh and spirit, self and the world has
asserted itself in all ages, especially among the nations of
the East. The Essenes, the Therapeutæ, and other Oriental
mystics, were as truly the precursors of Christian asceticism
in the desert or in the cloister, as Elijah and St. John the
Baptist. The Neoplatonism of Alexandria, extolling the
passionless man above him who regulates his passions,
sanctioned and systematized this craving after a life of utter
abstraction from external things, this abhorrence of all
contact with what is material as a defilement. Doubtless the
cherished remembrance of the martyrs and confessors, who in
the preceding centuries of the Christian era had triumphed
over many a sanguinary persecution, gave a fresh impulse in
the fourth century to this propensity to asceticism,
stimulating the devout to vie with their forefathers in the
faith by their voluntary endurance of self-inflicted
austerities. … The terms monastery, originally the cell or
eave of a solitary, laura, an irregular cluster of cells, and
cœnobium, an association of monks, few or many, under one roof
and under one control, mark the three earliest stages in the
development of monasticism.
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In Syria and Palestine each monk originally had a separate
cell; in Lower Egypt two were together in one cell, whence the
term 'syncellita,' or sharer of the cell, came to express this
sort of comradeship; in the Thebaid, under Pachomius of
Tabenna, each cell contained three monks. At a later period
the monks arrogated to themselves by general consent the title
of 'the religious,' and admission into a monastery was termed
'conversion' to God. … The history of monasticism, like the
history of states and institutions in general, divides itself
broadly into three great periods, of growth, of glory, and of
decay. … From the beginning of the fourth century to the
close of the fifth, from Antony the hermit to Benedict of
Monte Casino, is the age of undisciplined impulse of
enthusiasm not as yet regulated by experience. … Everything
is on a scale of illogical exaggeration, is wanting in
balance, in proportion, in symmetry. Because purity,
unworldliness, charity, are virtues, therefore a woman is to
be regarded as a venomous reptile, gold as a worthless pebble;
the deadliest foe and the dearest friend are to be esteemed
just alike. Because it is right to be humble, therefore the
monk cuts off hand, ear, or tongue, to avoid being made
bishop, and feigns idiocy, in order not to be accounted wise.
Because it is well to teach people to be patient, therefore a
sick monk never speaks a kind word for years to the brother
monk who nursed him. Because it is right to keep the lips from
idle words, therefore a monk holds a large stone in his mouth
for three years. Every precept is to be taken literally, and
obeyed unreasoningly. Therefore monks who have been plundered
by a robber run after him to give him a something which has
escaped his notice. Self-denial is enjoined in the gospel.
Therefore the austerities of asceticism are to be simply
endless. One ascetic makes his dwelling in a hollow tree,
another in a cave, another in a tomb, another on the top of a
pillar, another has so lost the very appearance of a man, that
he is shot at by shepherds, who mistake him for a wolf. The
natural instincts, instead of being trained and cultivated,
are to be killed outright, in this abhorrence of things
material. … The period which follows, from the first
Benedict to Charlemagne, exhibits monasticism in a more mature
stage of activity. The social intercourse of the monastery,
duly harmonized by a traditional routine, with its
subordination of rank and offices, its division of duties, its
mutual dependence of all on each other, and on their head,
civilized the monastic life; and, as the monk himself became
subject to the refining influences of civilization, he went
forth into the world to civilize others. … Had it not been
for monks and monasteries, the barbarian deluge might have
swept away utterly the traces of Roman civilization. The
Benedictine monk was the pioneer of civilization and
Christianity in England, Germany, Poland, Bohemia, Sweden,
Denmark. The schools attached to the Lerinensian monasteries
were the precursors of the Benedictine seminaries in France
and of the professional chairs filled by learned Benedictines
in the universities of mediæval Christendom. With the
incessant din of arms around him, it was the monk in his
cloister, even in regions beyond the immediate sphere of
Benedict's legislation, even in the remote fastnesses, for
instance of Mount Athos, who, by preserving and transcribing
ancient manuscripts, both Christian and pagan, as well as by
recording his observations of contemporaneous events, was
handing down the torch of knowledge unquenched to future
generations, and hoarding up stores of erudition for the
researches of a more enlightened age. The first musicians,
painters, farmers, statesmen, in Europe, after the downfall of
Imperial Rome under the onslaught of the barbarians, were
monks."
_I. Gregory Smith,
Christian Monasticism,
introduction._
"The monastic stream, which had been born in the deserts of
Egypt, divided itself into two great arms. The one spread in
the East, at first inundated everything, then concentrated and
lost itself there. The other escaped into the West, and spread
itself by a thousand channels over an entire world which had
to be covered and fertilised." Athanasius, who was driven
twice by persecution to take refuge among the hermits in the
Thebaid, Egypt, and who was three times exiled by an imperial
order to the West, "became thus the natural link between the
Fathers of the desert and those vast regions which their
successors were to conquer and transform. … It was in 340
that he came for the first time to Rome, in order to escape
the violence of the Arians, and invoke the protection of Pope
Julius. … He spread in Rome the first report of the life led
by the monks in the Thebaid, of the marvellous exploits of
Anthony, who was still alive, of the immense foundations which
Pacome was at that time forming upon the banks of the higher
Nile. He had brought with him two of the most austere of these
monks. … The narratives of Athanasius … roused the hearts
and imaginations of the Romans, and especially of the Roman
women. The name of monk, to which popular prejudice seems
already to have attached a kind of ignominy, became
immediately an honoured and envied title. The impression
produced at first by the exhortations of the illustrious
exile, was extended and strengthened during the two other
visits which he made to the Eternal City. Some time
afterwards, on the death of St. Anthony, Athanasius, at the
request of his disciples, wrote the life of the patriarch of
the Thebaid; and this biography, circulating through all the
West, immediately acquired there the popularity of a legend,
and the authority of a confession of faith. … Under this
narrative form, says St. Gregory of Nazianzus, he promulgated
the laws of monastic life. The town and environs of Rome were
soon full of monasteries, rapidly occupied by men
distinguished alike by birth, fortune and knowledge, who lived
there in charity, sanctity, and freedom. From Rome the new
institution, already distinguished by the name of religion, or
religious life, par excellence, extended itself over all
Italy. It was planted at the foot of the Alps by the influence
of a great bishop, Eusebius of Vercelli. … From the
continent the new institution rapidly gained the isles of the
Mediterranean, and even the rugged rocks of the Gargon and of
Capraja, where the monks, voluntarily exiled from the world,
went to take the place of the criminals and political victims
whom the emperors had been accustomed to banish thither. …
Most of the great leaders of the cenobitical institution had,
since St. Pacome, made out, under the name of Rule,
instructions and constitutions for the use of their immediate
disciples; but none of these works had acquired an extensive
or lasting sway. In the East, it is true, the rule of St.
Basil had prevailed in a multitude of monasteries, yet
notwithstanding Cassianus, in visiting Egypt, Palestine, and
Mesopotamia, found there almost as many different rules as
there were monasteries.
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In the West the diversity was still more strange. Each man
made for himself his own rule and discipline, taking his
authority from the writings or example of the Eastern Fathers.
The Gauls especially exclaimed against the extreme rigour of
the fasts and abstinences, which might be suitable under a
fervid sky like that of Egypt or Syria, but which could not be
endured by what they already called Gallican weakness; and
even in the initial fervour of the monasteries of the Jura,
they had succeeded in imposing a necessary medium upon their
chiefs. Here it was the changing will of an abbot; there a
written rule; elsewhere, the traditions of the elders, which
determined the order of conventual life. In some houses
various rules were practised at the same time, according to
the inclination of the inhabitants of each cell, and were
changed according to the times and places. They passed thus
from excessive austerity to laxness, and conversely, according
to the liking of each. Uncertainty and instability were
everywhere. … A general arrangement was precisely what was
most wanting in monastic life. There were an immense number of
monks; there had been among them saints and illustrious men;
but to speak truly, the monastic order had still no existence.
Even where the rule of St. Basil had acquired the necessary
degree of establishment and authority—that is to say, in a
considerable portion of the East—the gift of fertility was
denied to it. … In the West also, towards the end of the
fifth century, the cenobitical institution seemed to have
fallen into the torpor and sterility of the East. After St.
Jerome, who died in 420, and St. Augustine, who died in 430,
after the Fathers of Lerins, whose splendour paled towards
450, there was a kind of eclipse. … Except in Ireland and
Gaul, where, in most of the provinces, some new foundations
rose, a general interruption was observable in the extension
of the institution. … If this eclipse had lasted, the
history of the monks of the West would only have been, like
that of the Eastern monks, a sublime but brief passage in the
annals of the Church, instead of being their longest and
best-filled page. This was not to be: but to keep the promises
which the monastic order had made to the Church and to the
new-born Christendom, it needed, at the beginning of the sixth
century, a new and energetic impulse, such as would
concentrate and discipline so many scattered, irregular, and
intermittent forces; a uniform and universally accepted rule;
a legislator inspired by the fertile and glorious past, to
establish and govern the future. God provided for that
necessity by sending St. Benedict into the world."
_Count de Montalembert,
The Monks of the West,
volume 1, pages 381-387 and 512-515._
"The very word monastery is a misnomer: the word is a Greek
word, and means the dwelling-place of a solitary person,
living in seclusion. … In the 13th century … a monastery
meant what we now understand it to mean—viz., the abode of a
society of men or women who lived together in common—who were
supposed to partake of common meals; to sleep together in one
common dormitory; to attend certain services together in their
common church; to transact certain business or pursue certain
employments in the sight and hearing of each other in the
common cloister; and, when the end came, to be laid side by
side in the common graveyard, where in theory none but members
of the order could find a resting-place for their bones. When
I say 'societies of men and women' I am again reminded that
the other term, 'convent,' has somehow got to be used commonly
in a mistaken sense. People use the word as if it signified a
religious house tenanted exclusively by women. The truth is
that a convent is nothing more than a Latin name for an
association of persons who have come together with a view to
live for a common object and to submit to certain rules in the
ordering of their daily lives. The monastery was the common
dwelling-place; the convent was the society of persons
inhabiting it; and the ordinary formula used when a body of
monks or nuns execute any corporate act—such as buying or
selling land—by any legal instrument is, 'The Prior and
Convent of the Monastery of the Holy Trinity at Norwich;' 'the
Abbot and Convent of the Monastery of St. Peter's,
Westminster;' 'the Abbess and Convent of the Monastery of St.
Mary and St. Bernard at Lacock,' and so on. … A monastery in
theory then was, as it was called, a Religious House. It was
supposed to be the home of people whose lives were passed in
the worship of God, and in taking care of their own souls, and
making themselves fit for a better world than this hereafter.
… The church of a monastery was the heart of the place. It
was not that the church was built for the monastery, but the
monastery existed for the church. … Almost as essential to
the idea of a monastery as the church was the cloister or
great quadrangle, inclosed on all sides by the high walls of
the monastic buildings. … All round this quadrangle ran a
covered arcade, whose roof, leaning against the high walls,
was supported on the inner side by an open trellis work in
stone—often exhibiting great beauty of design and
workmanship—through which light and air was admitted into
the arcade. … The cloister was really the living place of
the monks. Here they pursued their daily avocations, here they
taught their school. … 'But surely a monk always lived in a
cell, didn't he?' The sooner we get rid of that delusion the
better. Be it understood that until Henry II. founded the
Carthusian Abbey of Witham, in 1178, there was no such thing
known in England as a monk's cell, as we understand the term.
It was a peculiarity of the Carthusian order, and when it was
first introduced it was regarded as a startling novelty for
any privacy or anything approaching solitude to be tolerated
in a monastery. The Carthusian system never found much favour
in England. … At the time of the Norman Conquest it may be
said that all English monks were professedly under one and the
same Rule—the famous Benedictine Rule. The Rule of a
monastery was the constitution or code of laws, which
regulated the discipline of the house, and the Rule of St.
Benedict dates back as far as the 6th century, though it was
not introduced into England for more than 100 years after it
had been adopted elsewhere. … About 150 years before the
Conquest, a great reformation had been attempted of the French
monasteries, … the reformers breaking away from the old
Benedictines and subjecting themselves to a new and improved
Rule.
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These first reformers were called Cluniac monks, from the
great Abbey of Clugni, in Burgundy, in which the new order of
things had begun. The first English house of reformed or
Cluniac monks was founded at Lewes, in Sussex, 11 years after
the Conquest. … The constitution of every convent, great or
small, was monarchical. The head of the house was almost an
absolute sovereign, and was called the Abbot. His dominions
often extended, even in England, over a very wide tract of
country, and sometimes over several minor monasteries which
were called Cells. … The heads of these cells or subject
houses were called Priors. An Abbey was a monastery which was
independent. A priory was a monastery which in theory or in
fact was subject to an abbey. All the Cluniac monasteries in
England were thus said to be alien priories, because they were
mere cells of the great Abbey of Clugni in France, to which
each priory paid heavy tribute."
_A. Jessopp,
The Coming of the Friars,
chapter 3._
ALSO IN:
_E. L. Cutts,
Scenes and Characters of the Middle Ages,
chapter 6._
_J. Bingham,
Antiquity of the Christ. Ch.,
book 7, chapter 3, sections 11-14._
_I. G. Smith,
Christian Monasticism, 4-9th Centuries._
See, also,
CŒNOBIUM;
LAURAS;
MENDICANT ORDERS;
BENEDICTINE;
CISTERCIAN;
CARMELITE,
and AUSTIN CANONS.
MONASTERIES, The English, Suppression of.
See ENGLAND: A. D. 1535-1539.