exercised over those intrusted to their care, it is perhaps scarcely
too much to conclude that they were mainly responsible for the laxity
of morals which is a characteristic of mediæval society. No one who
has attentively examined the records left to us of that society, can
call in question the extreme prevalence of the licentiousness which
everywhere infected it. Christianity had arisen as the great reformer
of a world utterly corrupt. How earnestly its reform was directed to
correcting sexual immorality is visible in the persistence with which
the Apostles condemned and forbade a sin that the Gentiles scarcely
regarded as a sin. The early church was consequently pure, and its
very asceticism is a measure of the energy of its protest against the
all-pervading license which surrounded it. Its teachings, as we have
seen, remained unchanged. Fornication continued to be a mortal sin,
yet the period of its unquestioned domination over the conscience of
Europe was the very period in which license among the Teutonic races
was most unchecked. A church which, though founded on the Gospel,
and wielding the illimitable power of the Roman hierarchy, could
yet allow the feudal principle to extend to the “jus primæ noctis”
or “droit de marquette,” and whose ministers in their character of
temporal seigneurs could even occasionally claim the disgusting right
themselves[890] was evidently exercising its influence not for good but
for evil.
There is no injustice in holding the church responsible for the
lax morality of the laity. It had assumed the right to regulate
the consciences of men and to make them account for every action
and even for every thought. When it promptly caused the burning of
those who ventured on any dissidence in doctrinal opinion or in
matters of pure speculation, it could not plead lack of authority to
control them in practical virtue. Its machinery was all-pervading,
and its power autocratic. It had taught that the priest was to be
venerated as the representative of God and that his commands were to
be implicitly obeyed. It had armed him with the fearful weapon of
the confessional, and by authorizing him to grant absolution and to
pronounce excommunication, it had delegated to him the keys of heaven
and hell. By removing him from the jurisdiction of the secular courts
it had proclaimed him as superior to all temporal authority. Through
ages of faith the populations had humbly received these teachings and
bowed to these assumptions, until they entered into the texture of the
daily life of every man. While thus grasping supremacy and using it to
the utmost possibility of worldly advantage, the church therefore could
not absolve itself from the responsibilities inseparably connected
with power, and chief among these responsibilities is to be numbered
the moral training of the nations thus subjected to its will. While
the corruption of the teachers thus had necessarily entailed the
corruption of the taught, it is not too much to say that the tireless
energy devoted to the acquisition and maintenance of power, privileges,
and wealth, if properly directed, under all the advantages of the
situation, would have sufficed to render mediæval society the purest
that the world has ever seen.
That the contrary was notoriously the case resulted naturally from
the fact that the church, after the long struggle which finally left
it supreme over Europe, contented itself with the worldly advantages
derivable from the wealth and authority which surpassed its wildest
dreams. If, then, it could secure a verbal submission to its doctrines
of purity, it was willing to issue countless commands of chastity
and to tacitly connive at their perpetual infraction. The taint of
corruption infected equally its own ministers and the peoples committed
to their charge, and the sacerdotal theory gradually came to regard
with more and more indifference obedience to the Gospel in comparison
with obedience to man and subservience to the temporal interests of
the hierarchy. As absolution and indulgence grew to be a marketable
commodity, it even became the interest of the traders in salvation to
have a brisk demand for their wares. When infraction of the Divine
precepts could be redeemed with a few pence or with the performance of
ceremonies that had lost their significance, it is not surprising if
priest and people at length were led to look upon the violation of the
Decalogue with the eye of the merchant and customer rather than with
the spirit of the great Lawgiver.[891]
The first impulse in the reaction of the sixteenth century was to recur
to the Gospel and to interpret its commands in accordance with the
immutable principles of human conscience rather than with the cunningly
devised subtleties of scholastic theology. The reformers thus stood
face to face with God, and, needing no intermediary to negotiate with
Him, vice and sin reappeared to them in all their hideous deformity and
attended with all their inevitable consequences.[892] For the first
time since primitive Christianity was absorbed in sacerdotalism, were
the doctrines of morality enforced as the primal laws of man’s being
and of human society, and the world was made to see, by the energetic
action of Puritan sects, that virtue was possible as the rule of life
in large communities. We may smile at the eccentricities of Puritanism,
but the rescue of modern civilization from the long heritage of ancient
vice, and the decency which characterizes modern society, may fairly be
attributed to the force of that fierce reaction against the splendid
corruptions of the mediæval church.
* * * * *
In considering, however, the influence of the regular clergy, or
monastic orders, we find a more complex array of motives and results.
The earlier foundations of the West, as we have seen, to a great
extent neutralized the inherent selfishness of monachism by the
regulations which prescribed a due proportion of labor to be mingled
with prayer. The duty which man owes to the world was to some extent
recognized as not incompatible with the duty which he owed to his
God, and civilization has had few more efficient instruments than the
self-denying work of the earnest men who, from Columba to Adalbert,
sowed the seeds of Christianity and culture among the frontier
lands of Christendom. When discipline such as these men inculcated
could be enforced, the benefits of monachism far outweighed its
evils. All the peaceful arts, from agriculture to music, owed to the
Benedictines their preservation or their advancement, and it would be
difficult to estimate exactly the influence for good which resulted
from institutions to which the thoughtful and studious could safely
retire from a turbulent and barbarous world. These institutions,
however, from their own inherent defects, carried in them the germs
of corruption. The claims to supereminent sanctity, which secured for
them the privileges of asylums, were inevitably used as means for the
accumulation of wealth wrung from the fears or superstition of the
sinner. With wealth came the abandonment of labor; and idleness and
luxury were the prolific parents of license. True-hearted men were
not wanting to combat the irrepressible evil. From Chrodegang to St.
Vincent de Paul, the history of monachism is full of illustrious names
of those who devoted themselves to the mission of reforming abuses and
restoring the ideal of the perfect monk, dead to the seductions of the
world, and living only to do the work which he deems most acceptable to
God. Many of these mistakenly assumed that exaggerated mortification
was the only gateway to salvation, and the only cure for the frightful
immorality which pervaded so many monastic establishments. Others,
with a truer insight into the living principles of Christianity, sought
to turn the enthusiasm of their disciples to account in works of
perennial mercy and charity, at a period when no other organizations
existed for the succor of the helpless and miserable.
Yet when we reflect how large a proportion of the wealth and intellect
of Europe was absorbed in the religious houses, it will be seen that
the system was a most cumbrous and imperfect one, which gave but a
slender return for the magnitude of the means which it involved. Still,
it was the only system existing, and possibly the only one which could
exist in so rude a structure of society, individualized to a degree
which destroyed all sense of public responsibility, and precluded all
idea of a state created for the well-being of its component parts.
Thus, the monastery became the shelter of the wayfarer, and the
dispenser of alms to the needy. It was the principal school of the
poor and humble; and while the Universities of Oxford and Paris were
devoting their energies to unprofitable dialectics and the subtle
disputations of Aristotelian logic, in multitudes of abbey libraries
quiet monks were multiplying priceless manuscripts, and preserving to
after ages the treasures of the past. When fanciful asceticism did not
forbid the healing of the sick, monks labored fearlessly in hospitals
and pest-houses, and distributed among the many the benefactions which
they had wrung from the late repentance of the few. As time wore on,
even the religious teaching of the public passed almost exclusively
into their hands, and to the followers of Dominic and Francis of Assisi
the people owed such insight as they could obtain into the promises of
the gospel. If the enthusiasm which prompted labors so strenuous did
not shrink from lighting the fires of persecution, we must remember
that religious zeal, accompanied by irresponsible power, has one
invariable history.
While thus, in various ways, the ascetic spirit led to institutions
which promoted the progress of civilization, in others it necessarily
had a directly opposite tendency. Nothing contributes more strongly
to the extension of knowledge and of culture than the striving for
material comfort and individual advancement in worldly well-being.
Luxury and ambition thus have their uses in stimulating the inquiring
and inventive faculties of man, in rendering the forces of nature
subservient to our use, and in softening the rugged asperities which
are incompatible with the regular administration of law. Every
instinct of human nature has its destined purpose in life, and the
perfect man is to be found in the proportionate cultivation of each
element of his character, not in the exaggerated development of those
faculties which are deemed primarily good, nor in the entire repression
of those which are evil only when their prominence destroys the balance
of the whole. The ascetic selected for eradication one group of human
aspirations, which was the most useful under proper discipline, and
not perhaps the worst even in its ordinary excess. Only those who have
studied the varied aspects of mediæval society can rightly estimate the
enormous influence which the church possessed, in those ages of faith,
to mould the average habits of thought in any desired direction. It
can readily be seen that if the tireless preaching of the vanity of
human things and the beatitude of mortification occasionally produced
such extravagances as those of the flagellants, the spirit which now
and then burst forth in such eruption must have been an element of no
little power in the forces which governed society at large, and must
have exercised a most depressing influence in restraining the general
advance of civilization. Not only did it thus more or less weigh down
the efforts of almost every man, but the ardent minds that would
otherwise have been leaders in the race of progress were the ones most
likely, under the pervading spirit of the age, to be the foremost in
maceration and self-denial; while those who would not yield to the
seduction were either silenced or wasted their wisdom on a generation
which believed too much to believe in them. When idleness was holy,
earnest workers had little chance.
The effect of monastic asceticism in moulding the character may be seen
in the admiring picture drawn by a disciple in the fifteenth century
of a shining light of the Carthusian order in the monastery of Vallis
Dei, near Seez in Normandy. He had every virtue, he was an earnest
reader and transcriber of MSS., and he practised mortifications even
greater than those prescribed by the severe rules of the order. He
rarely slept on the couch provided for each brother, but passed his
nights in prayer on the steps of the altar. In the hair shirt worn
next his skin he cultivated lice and maggots so assiduously that they
were often seen crawling over his face, and he scourged himself for
every unhallowed wandering thought. He had preserved his virginity
to old age, and his life had been passed in the church, yet in his
daily confessions he accused himself of every sin possible to man, and
he rigorously performed whatever penance was assigned to him. With
all this maceration, the flesh would still assert itself, and he was
tormented with evil desires which the sharp cords of the discipline
failed to subdue. His office of procureur of the abbey required him to
make frequent visits on business to the neighboring town, and he never
left the gates of his retreat without lamenting and expressing the
fear that he should not return to it the same as he left it.[893] If
we consider what might have been effected by the energies of thousands
of men such as this, had those energies not been absorbed in lifelong
asceticism, we may conceive in some measure the retardation of human
progress wrought by the influence of monachism.
Another result which may fairly be attributed to the ascetic teachings
of the church is the slow growth of population during the mediæval
period. Notwithstanding the gross and flagrant disregard of the rule,
it was impossible to immure in convents men and women by the hundred
thousand during successive generations without retarding greatly
the rate of increase of the species. The rudeness of the arts and
sciences, war, pestilence and famine were doubtless efficient causes,
yet were they less efficient than enforced celibacy. This is evident
when we see the rapid rate of growth established on the abrogation
or even relaxation of the rule. The suppression of the monastic
orders in France followed soon after the reforms by which Joseph II.
discouraged them throughout the Austrian empire, and the result is
visible in the enormous increase of European population which followed,
notwithstanding the fearful destruction of life in the Napoleonic
wars. It is calculated that in 1788 Europe numbered 144,561,000 souls,
which within fifty years had been augmented to 253,622,000, or about
seventy-five per cent. Of late years the birth-rate has decreased in
consequence of the severity of conscription in the military monarchies,
but the enormous growth in the half-century following the French
Revolution is the best commentary on the influences which for so many
ages kept the population almost stationary.[894]
* * * * *
It required the unbelief of the fifteenth century to give free rein
to the rising commercial energies and the craving for material
improvement that paved the way for the overthrow of ascetic
sacerdotalism. The fearful corruptions of the church, which indirectly
caused and accompanied that awakening of the human mind, will be
alluded to hereafter when we come to consider the movements leading to
the great Protestant Reformation. At present we must turn aside for a
moment to consider one or two external developments of the religious
activity of the Middle Ages.
XXII.
THE MILITARY ORDERS.
The Military Orders were the natural expression of the singular
admixture of religious and warlike enthusiasm, reacting on each
other, which produced and was fostered by the Crusades. When bishops
considered that they rendered a service acceptable to God in leading
vast hosts to slaughter the Paynim, it was an easy transition for
soldiers to turn monks, and to consecrate their swords to the bloody
work of avenging their Redeemer.
When the Hospitallers—Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes,
or of Malta—first emerged from their humble position of ministering
to the afflictions of their fellow-pilgrims, and commenced to assume
a military organization under Raymond du Puy, about the year 1120,
their statutes required the three ordinary monastic vows of poverty,
obedience, and chastity.[895] In fact, they were at first Benedictines;
but when they became numerous enough to form a separate body, they
adopted the rule of St. Augustin.
When the rule for the Templars—“Regula pauperum commilitonum sanctæ
civitatis”—was adopted in 1128, at the council of Troyes, it contained
no special injunction to administer a vow of celibacy, but the context
shows that such a condition was understood as a matter of course.[896]
Some little difficulty was evidently experienced at first, since, from
the nature of the case, novices had to be trained warriors who must
frequently have been bound by family ties, and whose education had not
been such as to fit them for the restraints of their new life. It is
probable also that the perpetual nature of the obligations assumed was
not easy to be enforced upon the fierce members of the brotherhood,
for, in 1183, Lucius III., in confirming the privileges of the order,
specially commands that no one who enters it shall be allowed to return
to the world.[897]
The history of these two orders is too well known to require it to
be traced minutely here. If, with the growth of their reputation and
wealth, the austere asceticism of their early days was lost, and if
luxury and vice took the place of religious enthusiasm and soldierly
devotion to the Cross, they but obeyed the universal law which in
human institutions is so apt to render corruption the consequence of
prosperity. One conclusion may be drawn, however, from the proceedings
by which the powerful order of the Temple was extinguished at the
commencement of the fourteenth century. Notwithstanding the open and
scandalous licentiousness of the order, it is a little singular that
the interminable articles of accusation against the members contain
no allusion to unchastity, while crimes most fantastic, practices
most beastly, and charges most frivolous are heaped upon them in
strange confusion.[898] As the object of those who conducted the
prosecution was to excite a popular abhorrence that would justify the
purposed spoliation, it is evident that the simple infraction of vows
of chastity was regarded as so venial a fault and so much a matter
of course that its proof could in no way serve the end of rousing
indignation against the accused.
It is somewhat remarkable that the same century which saw the
foundation of the orders of the Hospital and Temple also witnessed one
which, although bound by the rule of St. Augustin, and subjected to the
ordinary vows of obedience, property in common, and inability to return
to the world, yet allowed to its members the option of selecting either
marriage or celibacy, and even of contracting second marriages. This
was the Spanish Order of St. James of the Sword. What we have seen of
the want of respect paid by the Spanish church to asceticism may lessen
surprise at the founding of an order based upon such regulations, yet
it is difficult to understand how so great a violation of established
principles could be sanctioned by Alexander III., who confirmed the
order in 1175,[899] or by Innocent III. and Honorius III., who formally
approved its privileges.[900] Perhaps these military vassals of the
pope, to whom they were bound in implicit obedience as their head, were
too important a source of power and influence to be lightly rejected.
Perhaps, also, Honorius III. may have quieted his conscience when, in
confirming their charters in 1223, he commanded that their principal
care and watchfulness should be devoted to seeing that those who were
married preserved conjugal fidelity, and that those who elected a
single life maintained inviolable chastity.
The example was one of evil import in the Peninsula. The Council
of Valladolid in 1322 felt itself obliged to denounce under severe
penalties the practice of dowering children with the possessions of
the community, in which the military orders followed the precedent set
them by the church.[901] During the universal license of the fifteenth
century, when ascetic vows became a mockery, and the profligacy of
those who took them exposed all such observances to contempt, the
military orders formed no exception to the general shamelessness. In
1429 the council of Tortosa deplored the destruction and waste of
the temporal possessions of the religious knights from the general
concubinage in which they indulged, and to effect a cure it promulgated
regulations of peculiar severity, threatening with a liberal hand
the penalties of excommunication and degradation.[902] These proved
as powerless as usual, and not long after a more sensible remedy was
adopted by Eugenius IV. when he released the ancient and renowned Order
of Calatrava from the obligation of celibacy, for reasons which would
have led him to extend the privilege of marriage to the whole church,
had the purity of ecclesiastics been truly the object of the rule. He
recounts with sorrow the disorderly lives of the knights, and, quoting
the text which says that it is better to marry than to burn, he grants
the privilege of marriage because he deems it preferable to live with
a wife than with a mistress.[903] How could he avoid applying his own
reasoning to the church in general?
Similar arguments were employed to extend the same privilege to the
Orders of Avis and of Jesus Christ, of Portugal. The former was founded
in 1147 by Alfonso I., under the Cistercian rule, and chastity was one
of its fundamental obligations;[904] the latter was the continuation of
the order of the Temple, which, preserved in Portugal by the humanity
of King Dionysius, assumed in the fourteenth century the name of Jesus.
Both institutions became incurably corrupted; their preceptories were
dens of avowed and scandalous prostitution, and their promiscuous
amours filled the kingdom with hate and dissension. When at length,
in 1496, King Emanuel applied to Alexander VI. to grant the privilege
of marriage, in hopes of reforming the orders, it is interesting to
observe how instinctively the minds of men turned to this as the sole
efficient remedy for the immorality which all united in attributing to
the hopeless attempt to enforce a purity impossible in the existing
condition of society. Alexander assented to the request, and bestowed
on the orders the right of marriage on the same conditions as those
enjoined on the Knights of St. James of the Sword.[905] It is true that
Osorius doubts whether the benefits of the change were not exceeded by
its evils, as he states that it lowered the character of the orders,
opened the door to unworthy members, and led to the dissipation of
their property.[906]
There was another Portuguese order of a somewhat different character.
Twenty years after founding the Knights of Avis, Alfonso I., in 1167,
to commemorate his miraculous victory over the Moors at Santarem,
instituted the Order of St. Michael. The knights were allowed to marry
once; if widowed, they were obliged to embrace celibacy; and the Abbot
of Alcobaça, who was the superior of the Order, was empowered to
excommunicate them for irregularity of life, to compel them to give
up their mistresses. They were moreover bound to perform the same
religious exercises as lay brothers of the Cistercians. The Order is
interesting as forming a curious link between the secular, religious,
and military elements of the period.[907]