which were generally adopted in France, just as the rules of St.
Isidore, Bishop of Seville, and those of St. Augustine of Ireland,
were followed in the British Isles. These three codes, very similar in
their general principles, varied from each other in many particulars,
for they were applicable to monks living in different countries. In
the communities which adhered to the rules of St. Colomba, as in all
the great Benedictine monasteries, prayer, mental culture, and manual
labour were the invariable occupations of cloister life (Fig. 241). The
rules drawn up by St. Colomba and his imitators, St. Isidore and St.
Augustine, thus remained in force down to the eighth century, in spite
of the new system of education and religious teaching inaugurated so
zealously throughout Gaul by the Anglo-Saxon monk, St. Boniface; in
spite, too, of the industrial and artistic, rather than scientific and
contemplative, turn which St. Eloi gave to the studies of the monks
in his abbey of St. Martin at Limoges, and in the other monasteries
founded or reorganized by him. That illustrious Bishop of Noyon, Master
of the Mint to King Clotaire II., afterwards treasurer, goldsmith,
and minister to Dagobert I. (568–659), was at great pains to make the
cultivation of art an important feature in monastic life.
It would be incorrect to suppose that the interior of a monastery in
the seventh century presented the same appearance of asceticism and
penance that were afterwards characteristic of certain communities
subject to the most austere regulations. In the country districts the
monasteries possessed vast domains which yielded wheat, rye, oats, hay,
vegetables, and fruits; and on which were produced wine, beer, cider,
and hydromel; they were tilled by numerous labourers in bands of tens
and hundreds, who while at work sang hymns and prayers--a veritable
religious militia, grouped beneath the banner of faith in the populous
centres and in the neighbourhood of the towns. These monasteries
were generally schools in which the monks gave gratuitous education,
vast workshops in which they followed and taught every branch of
trade--carving in wood, ivory, bronze, silver, and gold; painting on
vellum, glass, wood, and metal; weaving tapestry, embroidering church
ornaments and vestments; damask work, and enamelling of shrines,
tabernacles, diptychs and triptychs, church furniture, and book-covers;
the cutting of precious stones to prepare them for setting; the making
of arms and instruments of music, illuminating, copying of manuscripts,
&c. The whole life of a monk or nun was passed in the exercise of one
description of art, or perhaps even in executing a single work which
required miraculous patience.
[Illustration: Fig. 241.--The Abbey of St. Riquier, near
Abbeville, founded in 799 by St. Angilbert, who gave it its
triangular shape in honour of the Trinity.--From a Drawing in a
very old Manuscript engraved in the Dissertation of Paul Petau,
“De Nithardo” (4to, 1612).]
As the regular associations became permanently settled in the towns,
they began to construct for their use dormitories, cells, workshops,
granaries or sheds for their provisions, and built handsome churches
with long cloisters and vast chapter-rooms. Each community made a point
of having within its own boundary a library, a study, a lecture-room,
schools, a cemetery, some shady walks for meditation, as well as a
fruit and kitchen garden, the cultivation of which was a healthy and
agreeable recreation. In this vast aggregation of monastic buildings
and appurtenances (Fig. 244), we have a holy city in the heart of
the secular town, a retreat for the peaceful, the devout, and the
abstinent, amidst the troubles and vanities of the world.
[Illustration: Fig. 242.--Abbatial Ring and Cross (front and
back) of St. Waudru, patroness of Mons, who died in 670. The
cross is in silver, with gold relief, and studded with precious
stones.--Relics preserved in the Church of St. Waudru, at Mons.]
[Illustration: Fig. 243.--The Offering of a Child to an
Abbot.--From a Miniature in a Manuscript published at the Close
of the Thirteenth Century (Burgundian Library, Brussels).]
[Illustration: Fig. 244.--Priory of the Benedictines at
Canterbury (Twelfth Century), plan in relief drawn by Edwin, a
monk, about the year 1530.--A, belfry; B, fountain; C, cemetery;
D, reservoir, with conduit pipes; E, Canterbury Cathedral;
F, vestry; G, crypt; H, chapter-house; I, prior’s house; J,
infirmary and annexes; K, kitchen-garden, with well, pumps, and
water-pipes; L, cloister; M, cellar; N, dormitory; O, refectory;
P, kitchens; Q, parlour; R, house for the guests and the poor; S,
water-closets; T, baths; U, granary; V, bakehouse and brewery;
X, the chief entrance; Y, Z, fortified wall of the abbey and
the city.--From an Engraving in vol. i. of the “Architecture
Monastique,” by M. Albert Lenoir.]
The endowment of each monastery was generally made up of the property
belonging to the monks who had fixed their abode there. If the novice
was an adult, he was obliged to distribute all his goods to the poor,
or to make a solemn grant of them to the abbey, before he could be
admitted to the minor orders. If he was a child whose parents devoted
him to the service of God (Fig. 243), the parents either made no
gift to the community which received the young novice, or they ceded
the income of the lands and the property by deed of transfer to the
monastery. Enriched by these successive donations, the monasteries,
especially those which had acquired a wide renown for learning or
piety, acquired still more wealth through the largesses of princes,
great nobles, and bishops, through the economical management of the
abbots, and the annual produce of the agricultural and commercial
labour of the monks. To the various arts and trades which were at first
carried on by the monks with a view to do honour to the cause of
religion, those of the West afterwards added others of a more lucrative
and worldly character. In the sixth century we find that they spun
and wove their own silk; that they possessed numerous receipts for
preparing liqueurs and drugs; that they practised medicine, surgery,
and the veterinary art. Pepin the Short, suffering from incurable
dropsy, went first to the monastery of St. Martin at Tours, and
afterwards to the abbey of St. Denis, that “the servants of God” might
give him relief by means of their skill as well as by their prayers.
The Church was very sorely tried during the reign of Charles Martel,
and monastic institutions were also exposed to many difficulties. In
order to win back the secular clergy to the habits of communal life,
the wisest of the bishops grouped around them the clergy who had
remained faithful to their cause, and laid down a code of regulations
for their guidance.
Charlemagne, in the Capitularies, added the following excellent
amendments to the rules of monastic institutions:--“Young men destined
to monastic life must first pass their novitiate, and then remain in
the monastery to learn the rules, before they are sent forth to fulfil
their duties outside. Those who give up the world in order to avoid the
king’s service shall be compelled to serve God in good faith, or else
to resume their former occupation. All clerks shall be required to make
their choice between clerical life in conformity with the canons, and
monastic life in conformity with the regulations. The abbeys shall not
receive too large a number of serfs, so that the villages may not be
depopulated; no community shall have more members than can be properly
looked after by one superior. Young women shall not take the veil until
they are of an age to choose their own career in life. Laymen are to be
disqualified for governing the interior of a monastery, nor shall they
fill the post of archdeacon.” Charlemagne and Louis the Good-natured
became members of the royal monastery of St. Denis under the title of
“conscript brothers” (_fratres conscripti_)--an academical rather
than a religious title, but one which nevertheless admitted them to
certain liturgical privileges. The Emperor Lothair, in imitation of his
father and ancestor, also got himself invested with this title by the
monastery of St. Martin-lez-Metz.
The Norman invasion, the feudal wars, the encroachment of the great
vassals, and even of the kings, upon ecclesiastical domains and rights,
impoverished the monastic orders, whose lands remained untilled for
want of hands, and their schoolrooms often empty for want of teachers
and scholars. While the Normans burnt and pillaged the monasteries,
fortified though many of them were, in the country districts, the
urban abbeys, nearly always protected by the diocesan power, preserved
some remnants of their former splendour.
[Illustration: Fig. 245.--Foundation of the secular abbeys of
Mons, Maubeuge, and Nivelles. The canonesses meeting at Nivelles,
where Walcand, Bishop of Liége (810 to 832 or 836), promises to
give them a code of rules.--From the “Chroniques de Hainaut,”
Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century, in the Burgundian Library,
Brussels.]
There existed between the principal abbeys of the same order a
spirit of unity, a brotherly zeal to render help and service, and a
reciprocal interchange of learned and skilful clerks, who went from
one community to another to give it the benefit of their learning or
manual ability. It was in this way that the conventual churches and
buildings were erected and kept in repair; that they became rich in
paintings, statues, and mosaics; that the treasury was filled, and the
library founded and maintained. Rupert, a monk of the Abbey of St.
Gall (Switzerland), before his elevation to the bishopric of Metz, a
learned linguist, poet, and man of letters; Tutilo, his contemporary at
St. Gall, a carver, painter, and sculptor; Regino, Abbot of Prüm, an
excellent musician, author of a Treatise on Harmony, are of themselves
a proof that arts and letters were hidden in the cloisters. At this
epoch of barbarism and ignorance, the Church organized what was
good, strengthened the shattered foundations of the social edifice,
established new monastic institutions and reformed the old, grouped
around her the irresolute, lawless, and undisciplined minds (Fig. 245),
selling the principles of order and peace in opposition to those of
violence and disorder engendered by war.
[Illustration: Fig. 246.--Seal of the Abbey of St. Denis, in the
Twelfth Century, in the National Archives, Paris.--The saint is
clad in his episcopal garb. It is, no doubt, as the apostle of
Gaul that the motto gives him the title of archbishop.]
Never was the monastic order more numerous or better organized, and at
no period, perhaps, were works of mental intelligence cultivated more
ardently or successfully in certain privileged monasteries, than at
this time.
Canterbury, Monte-Cassino, St. Maur, St. Denis (Fig. 246), St. Martin
of Tours, St. Gall, Remiremont, Aix-la-Chapelle, Cologne, Trèves, St.
Trudon, St. Arnulph, St. Clement, and St. Martin of Metz, the Messinà
and the Gorza basilica, were cited as so many foci of light whence
radiated in every direction the good doctrines set forth in certain
remarkable works of art, as well as in learned literary compositions.
[Illustration: Fig. 247.--The Clergy, with the Cross and the Holy
Images, going in procession before the Emperor.--From a Miniature
taken from a Manuscript of the Fourth Century (Library of M.
Ambroise Firmin-Didot).]
In the libraries, which composed the principal wealth of the religious
houses, the _cartularies_ of the diocese were preserved with
great care. The charters of institution, and the patrimonial titles of
the chief abbeys, are both the proof and the reward for the services
rendered to civilisation by the monastic establishments: one abbey
was given a domain on the condition that it put the waste lands into
cultivation; another received its lands with the understanding that it
opened asylums and places of hospitality for the poor and sick, for
pilgrims and for strangers; while a host of documents taken from the
cartularies relate to the instruction of the clerks, the education
of the novices, the splendour of public worship, and the duty of the
ecclesiastical vassals when the suzerain raised the _ban_ and the
_arrière-ban_, &c., together with all the details of monastic
life which are connected with the various social movements of each
territorial district (Fig. 247).
Outside the abbeys there lived a population whose manual labour was
necessary to their inmates, and profitable to the material interests of
the house. Women, even when doing penance, and under religious vows,
were strictly forbidden to enter the monasteries. The aged mother of an
eminent monk, John of Gorze, unwilling to separate herself altogether
from her son, took up her abode just outside the walls of his abbey,
where she spent her time in making cloaks for the monks.
It was around the abbatial close, perhaps beneath the shelter of a
second walled enclosure, not so strong nor so high as the first, but
still capable of resisting the attacks of the marauders which were so
frequent in those days of feudal disorder, that were built the shops,
the stalls, and the sheds which served for the sale of the crops, the
cattle, and the agricultural and other produce of the abbatial domain
(Fig. 248). On the anniversary of the festival of the saint to whom
the monastery was dedicated there was a fair--sometimes several--which
attracted large crowds.
St. Romuald, the founder of the Camaldolite order; St. Mayeul, Abbot
of Cluny, and the reformer of the Abbey of St. Denis; St. Dunstan,
the resolute Archbishop of Canterbury, who reformed the clergy of
the British Isles; Adalbert, son of a Duke of Lorraine and nephew of
Hugh Capet, who was elected Bishop of Metz, after having been monk
at Gorze; St. Cadroé, descended from the Kings of Scotland, Abbot of
Vaussey and contemporary of Adalbert, with whom he was associated
in the reformation of the abbeys in the north-east of France, were
among the leading figures who, in the tenth century, represented the
reformed monachism. Unfortunately, their wholesome influence could not
make itself everywhere felt; it was a period of disorder, of pitiless
and bitter wars, of usurpations of every kind. Upon every side misery
reigned supreme; the serfs attached to the domains of the canonical
churches and to the monasteries left them to find some more certain
means of livelihood. The Cathedral of Metz was in this way deprived of
eight hundred serfs, who were heads of families. The only independent
voices raised on behalf of these victims of oppression came from the
great abbeys, such as Stavelo, St. Arnulph, Cluny, &c., to which
monarchs and popes, under the pretext of dedicating churches (Fig.
249) which had been recently built or restored, repaired in secret to
consult, with many members of the higher clergy, as to the political
affairs of Christendom.
[Illustration: Fig. 248.--North View of the Abbey of St.
Germain-des-Prés, as it still existed in the Seventeenth
Century.--A, outer gates; B, houses in the enclosure; C, church
square; D, church; E, Lady chapel; F, sacristy; G, small
cloister; H, great cloister; I, library; K, dormitory; L,
refectory; M, kitchen; N, dormitory of the Superior; O, offices;
P, inner courtyard; Q, houses for the wine-presses; R, bakehouse;
S, stables; T, garden; V, infirmary; X, infirmary garden; Y,
lavatory; Z, dormitory for the guests. 1, abbey palace; 2,
abbey garden; 3, courtyard; 4, outer courtyard; 5, officers’
apartments; 6, stables; 7, barns; 8, houses in the abbatial
enclosure; 9, bailiff’s house; 10, outer gates; 11, bailiwick
prisons.--Fac-simile of an Engraving in the “Histoire de St.
Germain-des-Prés,” by Dom Bouillart, in folio: 1724.]
[Illustration: Fig. 249.--Dedication of the Church belonging
to the Monastery of St. Martin-des-Champs, Paris, destroyed
by the Normans and rebuilt by King Henry I. The artist has
represented--1st, the ancient Church of St. Samson dedicated to
St. Martin; 2nd, the counts and barons who signed the charter
for the re-establishment of the monastery; 3rd, the archbishops
and bishops who were present at the dedication of the new
church.--Fac-simile of an Engraving from Don Meurier’s work,
“Historia Monasterii regalis Sancti Martini” (4to, Paris, 1636).]
[Illustration: Fig. 250.--The Small Cloister of the Chartreuse at
Pavia, with the cupola of the church in the background (close of
the Fourteenth Century).]
The two Councils of Rheims and of Mayence (1049), devoted exclusively
to disciplinarian reforms, are characteristic of the state of
monastic institutions at this period, just as the journey of Pope Leo
IX. through France and Germany indicates the exact condition, the
resources, the manners, and the habits of the religious houses. The
illustrious pontiff, when visiting these houses, made them splendid
presents, promised them important privileges, and instituted minute
inquiries into the studies pursued within their walls. At the Abbey of
Gorze, in 1149, he even went so far as to note with his own hand the
nocturn responses in the “Office de Saint-Gorgon.”
[Illustration: Fig. 251.--Saint-Jean des Vignes, an Abbey of
Regular Canons at Soissons (1076), the entrance-gate guarded
by a barbican and bastilles.--From an Engraving in vol. i. of
“Architecture Monastique,” by M. Albert Lenoir.]
At about the same period, William, Abbot of St. Bénigne de Dijon,
re-established in several dioceses the monastic rules and studies;
Sigebert, a monk in the monastery of Gemblours, came to Metz to teach
the Holy Scriptures, philosophy, and the dead languages; St. William of
Hirsange reformed the cloister discipline in Germany; St. Robert, Abbot
of Molême, founded the Cistercian order; St. Gualbert, the order of
Vallombrosa, in the Apennines; St. Bruno, the Carthusian order, which
he established both in the neighbourhood of Grenoble and in Calabria.
It is impossible to depict the profound disorder which reigned in the
religious houses during the eleventh century, owing to the social
disturbance which had followed the terrors of the year 1000. There were
but a few solitary monasteries, remote from the troubles and vanities
of the world, which still adhered to the rules (Fig. 251), and the
monastic schools were nearly everywhere closed, and the notes of song
had ceased to be heard in the churches, when, in the year 1095, the
inspired voice of a monk, Peter the Hermit, summoned the Christian
peoples to the Holy War. At this voice, which seemed to come down from
heaven, the whole world was stirred up to deeds of energy; the young
were inspired with a current of warlike and adventurous ideas which
converged upon one single object--the deliverance of the holy places.
The difficulty of managing both the spiritual and temporal affairs of
a monastery or cathedral church had led to the appointment of a sort
of steward or lay administrator, termed an _avowee_, who was paid
out of the dues which he received from the vassals of the community.
He generally levied on each household a loaf of bread, a denier, a
measure of oats, wheat, or barley, if the land grew cereals; a measure
of wine, beer, or cider if the produce of the domains was grapes,
hops, or apples. The avowee was arbiter in all disputed cases, and
himself fixed the remuneration, before and after giving his decision,
which the two parties to the suit had to pay him. He presided over
judicial duels, and ordeal by boiling water or fire. He had a right
to one head of stock at all cattle fairs, and he also received a
draught or a saddle-horse, according as the district bred the one kind
or the other. The avowee of a cathedral or a monastery always held a
distinguished position in society; barons, dukes, and counts did not
disdain to accept these functions--which they often abused, it must be
added, by keeping for their own use the sums which they had received
for the monastery. The usurpations of every kind which the avowees
committed had been flagrant enough during the investiture dispute, but
they increased enormously during the Crusades, owing to the absence of
so many bishops, archdeacons, abbots, and priors, who had started for
Palestine after loading their domains with mortgages, and even raising
money upon the sacred vessels of their church.
The Crusades, notwithstanding, had the unquestionable advantage of
sifting the clergy, and of removing from the cloisters a large number
of clerks who were less fitted for study and seclusion than for the
hardships of the battle-field. The monks who remained in Europe shut up
in their cloisters were nearly all acting in obedience to some special
aptitude, and they formed that band of artists, architects, painters,
sculptors, and musicians, calligraphists, savants, translators,
philosophers, rhetoricians, and preachers, which shed so much lustre
upon the monasteries during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
By their direct action, as well as by their example, ecclesiastical
architecture made vast progress, and the wonderful wealth of decoration
which accompanied it, suddenly burst forth in the erection of those
holy-chapels which seem like shrines of chiselled stone, in which the
relics brought back from the Crusades were deposited (Fig. 252). It
was under these influences that most of the great abbeys (Fig. 253)
were restored, that painting upon glass attained its full perfection,
that the Roman tongue reached the solitude of the cloister, and the
beautiful literature of the ancient classics, which had for centuries
been relegated to the dust of the monastic libraries, once more saw the
light, and lent the aid of all its charms to combat the invasion of
the vulgar idiom which the inhabitants of the communes had everywhere
substituted for the Latin language.
[Illustration: Fig. 252.--Reliquary of the Holy Thorn, preserved
in the Convent of the Augustine Sisters at Arras.--Carved
brasswork of the Thirteenth Century.]
[Illustration: Fig. 253.--Refectory in the Priory of St. Martin
des Champs, Paris (now part of the Conservatoire des Arts et
Métiers), the work of Pierre de Montereau, architect to St. Louis
(Thirteenth Century).--Archæological Restoration by M. Alfred
Lenoir.]
[Illustration: Fig. 254.--St. Bernard taking possession, with
the Cistercian Monks, of the Abbey of Clairvaux. At the foot of
the engraving is inscribed: “St. Bernard, Chaplain of the Virgin
Mary, was descended from the house of the Kings of Burgundy.”
He was, as a matter of fact, related through his mother, Aleth
(diminutive for Elizabeth), to the first house of the Dukes of
Burgundy.--“Chroniques abrégées de Bourgogne,” a Manuscript
of the Fifteenth Century, in the Library of M. Ambroise
Firmin-Didot.]
[Illustration: Fig. 255.--The Great Beguin Convent at Ghent,
called the Convent of St. Elizabeth, founded in the Twelfth
Century, and which now occupies the same site as in 1234, when
the Countess Jane gave a code of rules to the community.--General
View taken from the “Ghent Churches,” by Baron Kervyn de
Volkaersbeke, reproducing the Engraving of P. J. Goetghebuer.]