CONCLUDING WORDS
Altogether apart from the outrageously scandalous way in which the
suppression of the English monasteries was carried out--a fact that any
historian worth his salt is now bound to admit--it is a wholesome sign
of the times to find that English Churchmen are gradually coming round
to a general acceptance of the religious and social blessings that came
to this country through monasticism during the many centuries in which
it played so important a part in the national life. This is certainly
the estimate formed by those amongst us who study the history of the
vowed religious life with sober devoutness. There are few churchmen of
the immediate past whose judgments can be followed with more implicit
trust than the late Dean of St. Paul’s; and there are none among our
living churchmen, who, from patient research, are more capable of
uttering a reliable opinion on monasticism than the present Dean of
Durham.
Dr. Church penned a beautiful and comprehensive chapter on the
discipline of a Norman monastery in his _Life of St. Anselm_. From it
we borrow a single paragraph:
“In an age when there was so much lawlessness, and when the idea
of self-control was so uncommon in the ordinary life of man, the
monasteries were schools of discipline; and there were no others. They
upheld and exhibited the great, then almost the original, idea, that
men needed to rule and govern themselves; that they could do it, and
that no use of life was noble and perfect without this ruling. It was
hard and rough discipline, like the times, which were hard and rough.
But they did good work then, and for future times, by impressing on
society the idea of self-control and self-maintained discipline. And
crude as they were, they were capable of nurturing noble natures,
single hearts, keen and powerful intellects, glowing and unselfish
affections.”
Dean Kitchin, when commenting on the division of administration among
the obedientiaries or office-holding monks of St. Swithun’s, writes:
“It must never be forgotten that this organisation of offices within
the convent was useful in its best days. Where in the whole world of
the thirteenth century can we meet with so completely framed and active
a system as that of a Benedictine House? Not, certainly, in the feudal
castle, with its fierce warrior-lord and turbulent horde of ‘devils,
not men,’ as the English Chronicle calls them; not in the mediæval
city, with powers and privileges still uncertain and precarious, though
there was here, perhaps, a nearer parallel than elsewhere; not even in
King’s courts, which came and went, and had not yet developed their
complete _chancellerie_, nor had learnt the importance of ministers
and departments of administration. In a well-ordered monastery, with
its eighteen or twenty obedientiaries, life went on smoothly and
prosperously. There only were the divisions of time fully understood,
and the importance of time appreciated; there only were the departments
of work, the directions of industry, carefully marked out; there
too the main principle of official responsibility began early to be
asserted.”
As to “the stories of corruption and immorality on which sinful minds
have ever fastened greedily,” writes the Dean in another place, “they
have attracted far more than a fair amount of notice and attention, and
have given the excuse for those interested and truthless persons, who,
in the Reformation time and in later days too, have thought to honour
God by blackening wholesale the monastic character. _Deo per mendacium
gratificari_ is still far too often the guiding line of many a polemic,
who tries to win his battle by flinging dirt in the faces of his
opponents.... In these respects the brethren at St. Swithun’s may look
the world in the face without fear.”
It is not within the province of an English Churchman to deal with
the maintenance of monasticism on our shores by those of the Roman
obedience, save to say that its flickering stealthy flame survived
continuously in glimmers of light in spite of bitter and now obsolete
statutes; and further to note that the oppressive action that drove
large numbers of “religious” men and women from France to England a
century ago has been renewed in recent days. Those most competent
to judge have no hesitation in believing that the various orders
of religious men and women of the Roman communion in this country
are doing an inestimable service--educational, charitable, and
spiritual--to those of their own faith. Our best literary critics
recognise too the genuine work that not a few are doing in elucidating
history, and in other ways adding to the general sum of human
knowledge; whilst all Englishmen can well afford to be proud of the
attainments and researches of Dr. Gasquet, the abbot-president of the
English Benedictines.
With regard to the marvellous growth of community life in the Church of
England during the past half-century, it is only necessary to consult
the pages of the _Official Year Book_. In the issue for 1904, seven
closely-printed pages are occupied with terse accounts of the houses
and work of Sisterhoods living under the vowed life, whose members are
the very salt of the Church in their devotion to the religious life and
to the discharge of corporal works of mercy.
As to Brotherhoods, the growth has been steady; whilst certain rash
attempts to establish communities of men have had but an ephemeral
existence, others (notably the Cowley Fathers, the Order of the
Resurrection at Mirfield, and the Society of the Sacred Mission) are
doing a noble and apparently an abiding work.
_Explicit_
J. PALMER, PRINTER, CAMBRIDGE.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
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Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.