in every Christian mind, for the question as to the territorial
possessions of the two Churches had long been settled. Rome possessed
nearly all Italy, except the manufacturing and maritime States of
the peninsula; she also had Germany, a part of Switzerland, Bohemia,
Hungary, England, and Holland. The other Church was recognised by
France, French or Vaudois Switzerland, Savoy, Lorraine, Luxemburg,
the Metz district, Scotland, and Spain. The most respected of the
Christians, alarmed at a state of things which was so fatal to
religion, in vain attempted to stem the torrent. The only remedy lay
in the reformation of the clergy, and the Church’s independence of the
civil power. In the year 1469, a noble and pious woman, the Countess
Vio di Thiene, gave birth at Gaeta to a son, afterwards known as
Cajetan, who became cardinal-bishop, and was one of the greatest men
of the age. The Countess Vio di Thiene had resolved that the heir of
her noble house should be born, as was the Saviour of mankind, in a
stable. It was thus that in an actual manger this blessed infant first
obtained his indifference to the world, his love of simplicity, his
spirit of prayer and charity, his angelic modesty, which made him a
martyr of penitence, a hero of self-denial, and a model of humility.
When in 1505 Luther received the minor orders at the monastery of
the Augustines at Erfurt, and when, upon the occasion of a granting
of indulgences by Leo X. to the Dominicans (1517), he published the
programme of his anti-papal and anti-canonical propositions, he at
once found himself face to face with Cajetan, who was the leader and
promoter of the Catholic movement in opposition to the German pervert.
Cajetan conceived the happy idea of instituting a vast confraternity
of the regular clergy, with the view of re-establishing ecclesiastical
discipline. He was the ideal of the praying and working priest, without
family ties, with no close or continuous relations with the outside
world, and yet so brought up that while mixing with it he could
forward the interests of the Church. The Somasques, regular clergy
for the education of orphans (1528); the Barnabites, regular clergy
of St. Paul (1532); the Jesuits, regular clergy of the Company of
Jesus; the Crucifers, regular clergy ministering to the sick (1592);
the Scholopians, regular clergy for the poor of the Mother of God;
the Minorites, regular clergy of the minor order, and many other
institutions of the same kind, are the offspring of Cajetan’s creation,
and thus he has been called the patriarch of the clergy. The project
of the Council of Trent was the conception, and its preliminary
elaboration was the work, of Cajetan, and this famous council, which
was to have so much influence over the Christian world, raised the
moral dignity of the clergy, while it prepared the way for a general
reform of the Church.
[Illustration: Fig. 236.--Angels praying over a Skull.--Fragment
of a Bas-relief in the Cloister of the Chartreuse, at Pavia
(close of the Fourteenth Century).]
The instruction of the young men who were destined for the priesthood
also dates from the same epoch. It is true that there existed in Italy,
France, and Spain, schools of theology frequented by the clergy,
but the latter prepared themselves for holy orders without rule or
guidance, without any of those intellectual and moral resources which
a community can offer. Many of the pupils wore no tonsure nor even a
uniform ecclesiastical dress, they mixed in society, sometimes led a
dissipated life, and reached the solemn period of ordination without
having received any proper teaching. The Council of Trent, at the
instance of Cajetan, decided that each diocese should have a school
of ecclesiastics termed a _seminary_. St. Charles Borromeo,
Archbishop of Milan, the good Paul d’Arezzo, Archbishop of Naples, and
several Italian bishops, set Europe the example by establishing these
pious retreats in their dioceses; the Cardinal of Lorraine imitated
them by founding the seminary of Rheims, and two French bishops also
created seminaries at Carpentras and Bordeaux. These were the only
seminaries in France for more than eighty years, and they were so badly
managed, so little in harmony with the importance of their design, that
they were looked upon as attempts that had miscarried. The seminary of
Paris, the most famous of all those in France, was not created until
the middle of the seventeenth century, when it was founded by the
active and generous co-operation of two pious women, with the help of
St. Vincent de Paul and the Abbé Ollier, for ecclesiastical retreats
and for the establishment of the _Congregation de Saint-Sulpice_.
THE RELIGIOUS ORDERS.
The First Monks.--St. Anthony and his Disciples.--St. Pachomius
and St. Athanasius.--St. Eusebius and St. Basilius.--Cenobitism
in the East and in the West.--St. Benedict and the Benedictine
Code.--Monkish Dress.--St. Columba.--List of the Monasteries
in Charlemagne’s Time.--Services rendered by the Monks to
Civilisation, Arts, and Letters.--Reform of the Religious
Orders in the Twelfth Century.--St. Norbert.--St. Bernard.--St.
Dominic.--St. Francis of Assisi.--The Carmelites.--The
Bernardines.--The Barnabites.--The Jesuits.
During the early days of the Church, monastic life began in the
vast solitudes of the Thebais, in Upper Egypt. It soon extended to
Palestine, Syria, Mesopotamia, Asia Minor, and even beyond the limits
of the Roman Empire. St. Jerome, just before the Middle Ages, wrote,
“We daily receive troops of monks from India, Persia, and Ethiopia.”
The fearful austerities of the first ascetics in the East seem, at
first sight, excessive, but they are justified by their results,
and may be explained by the state of society at that epoch. A gross
sensualism was generally prevalent, and people lived only for pleasure.
The slaves, after having accomplished the work necessary for the
existence of the free men, further assisted in satiating the disordered
appetites of this society, which had exhausted all the refinements of
sensuality and luxury.
The old world, absorbed in the worship of material things, had no
taste for the culture of the mind, and in order to arouse it from its
intellectual torpor, it became necessary to impress the senses and the
imagination by excessive austerities. Greedy of novelty and anything
emotional, the people flocked to visit those wonderful anchorites,
who made a study of martyrdom, some shutting themselves up in a den
where they could neither stand upright nor lie down; others lying
motionless day and night upon a narrow plank, upon the top of a
column, exposed to all weathers; all of them refusing meat, drink,
and sleep, or only taking just enough to keep body and soul together.
These men, who only thought of their body as a target for torture, in
order to give themselves up exclusively to penitentiary practices and
the contemplation of a future life, attracted general attention. As
tender-hearted for others as they were pitiless for themselves, they
took an interest in all suffering, they consoled the sorrowful, they
prayed for the recovery of the sick at the request of the relatives.
Their goodness found them a way to many hearts, and, with the eloquent
force of example, they inculcated upon the crowds the vanity of sensual
pleasures, they taught them to look to heaven rather than to earth;
and they reminded their audience of the immortality of the soul, of
its destinies in a better world, and of the duty of earning eternal
happiness by the exercise of Christian virtues; in their discourses,
as in their lives, they preached the Gospel. They were first listened
to, then contemplated with curiosity, and afterwards believed in.
People soon came to admire them, and from that moment imitating them
was a natural consequence--in a few years the deserts were peopled with
thousands of their disciples, who gave themselves up entirely to prayer
and to manual labour.
St. Anthony was the first of these Fathers of the desert who consented
to tear himself away from the austere charms of this solitude, and come
with a retinue of monks to reside in Alexandria, for the purpose of
combating the Arians, and inducing them to recognise the decisions of
the Council of Nice. After having won the admiration and respect of his
adversaries by his brilliant arguments against the philosophers of the
school of Alexandria, after holding his ground even against emperors,
he retired to the desert, upon Mount Colzin, with his disciples
Macarius and Amathas, and only left it to inspect the monasteries
which he had founded, and which contained more than fifteen thousand
cenobites.
St. Athanasius, one of the most illustrious pupils of St. Anthony,
continued to spread, by his discourses and his writings, the doctrines
of his master. He went to reside at Rome in 340, with several eminent
anchorites, and he then preached by example as well as by precept, and
became the indefatigable promoter of monastic institutions in Western
Europe.
At the same period, St. Pachomius, who had founded in the Thebais the
monastery of Tabennæ, compiled the first complete regulations that have
been handed down to us for the use of the cenobites, in which manual
labour as well as prayer was prescribed. Several celebrated doctors and
fathers of the Church, St. Gregory of Nazianzus, St. John Chrysostom,
St. Jerome (Fig. 237), and St. Cyril, practised asceticism.
[Illustration: Fig. 236*].--St. Anthony, a statuette in stone
of the Third Century, belonging to a gentleman of Cambrai. This
engraving, never before published, shows us what the holy doctors
thought of the great anchorite of Egypt. He is treading underfoot
the devil, who is represented by the unclean animal in the
flames. The closed book signifies that, without any study, solely
by hearing them read, he learnt the Holy Scriptures by heart;
and St. Jerome testifies that he expounded them with wisdom. The
triangular _tau_ is the Egyptian shape of the cross; the
bell signifies the power of driving away the evil spirit.]
St. Eusebius, Bishop of Vercelli, was the first Western prelate
who associated monastic and clerical life. His clergy passed their
existence in fasting, praying, reading, and labour. St. Ambrosius
says, “These clergy only changed their condition for a bishopric or
martyrdom.” At about the same period (352–360) St. Martin founded, in
the neighbourhood of Poitiers, the most ancient of the monasteries in
Gaul (_Monasterium Locociagense_), and twelve years afterwards,
the famous Abbey of Marmoutiers, which was so rich a nursery of holy
prelates and learned doctors. The sermons of St. Basilius, in the
kingdom of Pontus, his numerous monastic foundations, the rules which
he laid down, and which were forthwith adopted by all the Eastern
monks, bear witness to the strength of the Christian movement in Asia
towards the close of the fourth century.
[Illustration: Fig. 237.--St. Jerome in the desert: the saint
is holding in his hand a stone with which he is about to beat
his beast.--From a picture of the School of Andrea del Sarto
(Sixteenth Century), in the Louvre.]
The great monastery of Tabennæ, which at that time served as the
type for all conventual foundations, comprised a vast network of
small houses, built one after the other, and united under the supreme
control of one head. The religious administration of the monastery was,
moreover, entrusted to a prior or abbot, who was assisted by a deputy,
while the steward who was entrusted with the secular duties--the daily
expenditure, and the incidents connected with material life--also had
an assistant, who took his place when he was absent. The monastery
was thus divided into _houses_, each managed by a prior; each
house contained a certain number of chambers, or cells, and each cell
was always shared by three monks. It required three or four houses to
constitute the _tribe_, or monastery.
The great monasteries had from thirty to forty houses, with about
forty monks in each, making in all seven or eight hundred persons.
At the death of St. Pachomius, the order of Tabennæ numbered seven
thousand monks. Palladius says that catechumens preparing for baptism,
children, youths, and men of all ages were received there. All were
obliged to study the New Testament and the Psalter; three times a day
wholesome instruction was given to those who required it, and three
times a week the prior of each house assembled the monks who were
placed under his control to hold conversation with them, called a
_catechizing_, or argument, after which they discussed amongst
each other the questions that had been dealt with. The teaching of
the monks was not limited to this, it extended from beyond the walls
of the monastery to the faithful in the neighbouring district. Once
on Saturdays, and twice on Sundays, the prior explained to them the
mysteries of the faith, to say nothing of the catechisms and lessons,
of which the chief or general of the order himself took charge every
week. St. Pachomius and St. Orsevius did not confine themselves to the
mere development of the moral principles taken from Holy Scripture;
they entered upon an exegesis of them, giving their audience the
right of questioning, replying, and discussing their statements, and
afterwards answering all objections so made by writing. The study of
the Fathers of the Church was added to that of the holy books. The
prior sometimes authorised plain monks, who were learned or eloquent,
as was a certain Theodorus, to defend the truths of the Christian
religion against the profane and to establish a series of public
lectures.
The monastic discipline set up by St. Basilius was almost identical
with that of St. Pachomius; his monks discussed nearly every topic
amongst themselves. He merely instructed them not to try and override
each other in these debating tournaments, urging them to avoid
ostentation, empty words, and the inspirations of vanity; he even
directed them as to the intonation of voice, and the gestures most
becoming. In the monasteries founded by St. Basilius, many children
were taken as pupils, and sent back into the world when they were old
enough to select a profession and make their own way in life.
The convents for women are contemporaneous with the monasteries. The
virgins devoted to the Church, the young widows, and the deaconesses,
led a kind of life calculated to prepare them for habits of reclusion,
of contemplation, and asceticism. The sisters of St. Anthony and St.
Pachomius were placed by their venerable brothers at the head of
two communities of virgins, in Egypt and in Palestine. In Pontus and
Cappadocia St. Basilius founded several convents, and their number
increased so largely, that in the beginning of the fifth century,
one single convent (_cœnobium_) contained two hundred and fifty
virgins.
In Europe the convents for virgins increased no less rapidly. Two
religious houses for young women were opened at Rome in the days of
St. Anthony, and, no doubt, at his instigation. Eusebius, bishop of
Vercelli, founded an establishment of the same kind close to his
church; but the most remarkable of all these convents was that founded
at Milan by St. Ambrose, a religious asylum in which his sister,
Marcellina, and her faithful companion, Candida, took refuge.
Towards the end of the fourth century, a Roman lady, St. Paula, built
three convents and a monastery in Africa, the management of them being
undertaken by St. Jerome. St. Augustine also founded two religious
houses in his diocese of Hippona, one for cenobites, the other for
virgins, imposing on them the regulations of St. Anthony and St.
Pachomius, as to life in common and poverty. “There were at this time,”
says this illustrious father, “monks all over the world.” They were
called _monks_, from the Greek μóνος (alone), because of their
solitary life; and _cenobites_, from the Greek words κοινóς and
βíος (life in common). They abstained from meat and wine, living upon
bread and fruits, and being only allowed to eat cooked vegetables
on the Sunday. They were obliged to prepare their own food, and to
make their own clothing. Upon Sunday they took the communion with
the general congregation, and went back after the service into their
monastery.
[Illustration: Fig. 238.--History of St. Benedict.--On the left
are the monks of a neighbouring monastery, who have come to
seduce him from his hermitage in order to place him at their
head; but the austerity of his rule soon dissatisfies them, and
they resolve to rid themselves of him. On the right the monks
are offering him a cup of poison, but, on his making the sign of
the cross on the vase, it is shattered to pieces.--From a Fresco
by Spinello d’Arezzo (1390) in the Church of San Miniato, near
Florence.]
Before the monkish order had been in existence a century, in the
East as in the West, the monastic regulations underwent considerable
relaxation. The monks having become part of the clerical hierarchy
(by force of circumstances, for there was often a deficiency of
clergy), took precedence of the latter; their abbots, called
_archimandrites_ in the Eastern Church, were raised to the
priesthood and to the episcopate; they even took part in councils,
though these functions and duties interfered with their cenobitic life.
This manifest infraction of the primitive discipline, while it lowered
the moral position of the monks, rather increased than otherwise their
social influence, and gave them greater weight in the world. Their
piety, too, was only temporarily distracted from its original purpose,
for men of note like St. Honoratus, St. Maximus, St. Hilary, St.
Dalmatius, the two brothers Romanus and Lupicius, maintained the true
tradition of monkish life; and the famous abbeys of Lérins and Mount
Jura were built. The ascetics of Constantinople, too, were spoken of in
high terms, as keeping up a perpetual psalmody (401–405). In Palestine,
not far from Jerusalem, a multitude of hermits, under the guidance of
St. Euthymius, practised the most rigorous abstinence.
In Africa, St. Fulgentius, exiled by the Arians, was the promoter of
regular observances--that is, he preached strict obedience to monastic
rule (501–523); while in the West there were founded, in the midst of
the Romagnol Alps, in the towns of Arles and St. Maurice d’Agaune,
three model monasteries, the first superintendents of which were St.
Hilary, St. Cæsarius, and St. Severinus; and its principal benefactors,
Theodoric, King of the Goths, Theodoric the Great, and Sigismund,
King of Burgundy (504–522). In the monastery of Kildare, governed by
St. Bridget, and in the monastery founded by St. Colomba, in Ireland,
which was afterwards so justly called the _Isle of Saints_, the
teaching of Christian art, of the liturgy, of ecclesiastical lore and
profane literature, was unequalled in its perfection, and the fame of
it reached even to Gaul.
[Illustration: Fig. 239.--History of St. Benedict.--As his
disciples were attempting to put a stone in place for the
construction of their chapel, the devil placed himself upon it,
and the united efforts of several persons failed to dislodge
him; but St. Benedict having blessed the stone, the devil took
flight.--From a Fresco by Spinello d’Arezzo (1390), in the Church
of San Miniato, near Florence.]
Such was the general position of cenobitism when St. Benedict (Fig.
238), the future patriarch of the monks of the West, the supreme
legislator of the monastic order, abandoned his humble cell at Subiaco
(528) to found the immense abbey of Monte-Cassino (Fig. 239), which
was the glory of the age. The Benedictine rule, the result of profound
physiological and philosophical studies, a work of moral science,
of wisdom, and of piety, divided the monks’ time between prayer and
manual labour, to be succeeded by the cultivation or exercise of the
intellect whenever the glory of God, the interests of the monastery,
and the education of the people might require it. St. Benedict soon
had under his control an army of monks who spread throughout the whole
Christian world the rules of their illustrious chief. Amongst them
were St. Maurus and Cassiodorus, the former minister of Theodoric the
Great: one of them founded the monastery of St. Maur-sur-Loire, in
France; the other, that of Vivieri, in Calabria. Cassiodorus took great
pains to collect books of the Old and the New Testament, with their
commentaries. He went to great expense in collecting all the writings
of the Greek and Latin Fathers, of the Jewish historians as well as of
those of the Church, and the principal works on geography, grammar, and
rhetoric, and even the best treatises on medicine, so that the monks
attached to the infirmary might be fully capable of tending the sick.
The monastery of Vivieri contained one of the richest libraries of the
period. We find in the collection of the Institutions of Cassiodorus
the following remarkable homage paid to the calligraphist monks, who
were the greatest men of letters in that day: “I confess, my brethren,
that of all your physical labours, that of copying books has always
been the avocation most to my taste; the more so, as by this exercise
of the mind upon the Holy Scriptures, you convey to those who will read
what you have written a kind of oral instruction. You preach with the
hand, converting the fingers into organs of speech, announcing silently
to men a theme of salvation; it is as it were fighting the evil one
with pen and ink. For every word written by the antiquary, the demon
receives a severe wound. At rest in his seat, as he copies his books,
the recluse travels through many lands without quitting his room, and
the work of his hands has its influence in places where he has never
been.”
Those whom Cassiodorus calls _antiquaries_ were simply scribes--that
is to say, clerks or monks who deciphered the old manuscripts and
transcribed the books. In the monastery of St. Martin, at Tours,
calligraphy was the sole art practised. St. Fulgentius, a prelate
distinguished both for his learning and eloquence; St. Gregory, Bishop
of Agrigentum, no less celebrated; Mamertus Claudius, who was a regular
walking library, themselves copied manuscripts which they gave to the
Church. Calligraphy and illuminating were also favourite occupations
with many nuns, amongst whom may be cited St. Melanie the younger,
St. Cesarie, St. Harnilde, and St. Renilde, all Frenchwomen (Fig.
240), who, to use the language of the Christian annalist, wrote with
elegance, rapidity, and correctness.
From the time that the monks were raised to the clerical rank, after
first undergoing an examination, the clerks and monks studied together
just as they had before prayed and lived in common, a monastery being
a complete school of ecclesiastical research and administration.
At Monte-Cassino, at St. Ferréol, at St. Calais, at Tours, and in
many other flourishing abbeys in the sixth century, the monks, and
especially the novices, were instructed in religious and secular
subjects as well as in the duties of the priesthood.
The monastic dress was not in every case the same, for, though always
simple and coarse, it varied in shape and appearance with the statutes
of each order, and according to the necessities of climate. The
cenobites in Egypt wore the _lebitus_ or the _colobium_, the _pera_
or _melote_, and the _cuculla_. The _lebitus_ was a linen garment
with long sleeves open at the hands, and sometimes up to the wrist.
The _pera_, a jacket of goatskin, is spoken of in one of the epistles
of St. Paul, who alludes to it as especially worn by holy men and
prophets, when they were driven by threats of persecution into the
desert. The _cuculla_ covered the head, and came half-way over the
shoulders. St. Benedict, who borrowed it from the early monks, had
it so much lengthened as to envelop the whole body; but as in this
shape it would have embarrassed the monks in their manual labour, he
made it a garment only to be worn at ceremonials, and replaced it for
ordinary wear by the scapulary (_scapulum_), which covered the head
and the back. The Western monks also wore a short mantle--a sort of
cape, called a _maforte_, according to Sulpicius Severus. The Greeks
and Orientals adopted the pallium, which led to their being designated
_agmina palliata_ (an army in robes), when they assembled in large
numbers. Every Greek who devoted himself to the cenobitic life was
compelled to wear a black pallium.
[Illustration: Fig. 240.--St. Radegonde, Wife of King Clotaire
(Sixth Century), receiving the religious garb from the hands of
St. Médard, Bishop of Noyon.--“Histoire et Cronicque de Clotaire”
(16mo, Paris, Jean Mesnage, 1513).]
Pope Gregory the Great, who had been a Benedictine, was most ardent in
the establishment of monasteries, of which he himself founded a large
number. He was the chief promoter of two important missions which took
place in 585 and 596; the first in Gaul, consisting of missionaries
from Ireland, headed by St. Columba and St. Gall; the second in
Great Britain, with monks from the Abbey of St. Andrew, headed by
another monk, St. Augustine. This latter, who converted the Anglians
and their king, Ethelbert, was the first Archbishop of Canterbury.
Colomba founded the Abbey of Luxeuil, upon the southern side of the
Vosgian forests; while Gall, his disciple, much younger than himself,
penetrated into the country of the Helvetians, who were as deeply
sunk in barbarism as the Anglians, where he founded a monastery which
afterwards became famous under the name of its founder, and which owed
its celebrity to the variety of subjects which were taught there.