Templars--a hospitaller and military order, which had no connection
with the monastic orders, and which for a long time devoted all its
energies to defending the holy places by prayer and force of arms--St.
Norbert, the reformer of the regular canons of the St. Augustine
order, founded the Premonstrants in Picardy; Stephen of Muret, a
contemplative cenobite of Limoges, founded the order of Grandmont
in his province; another Frenchman, Aimeric Malefaye, Patriarch
of Antioch, being alarmed at the relaxation of discipline in the
monasteries of Asia Minor, introduced some useful reforms into the
establishment upon Mount Carmel; while Stephen Harding, third abbot
of the Cistercians, an active propagator of the rules which Robert de
Molême drew up under the title of “Charte de Charité,” entrusted to
his pupil, St. Bernard, the destinies of the new communities which
sprang from this glorious cradle. It was in the middle of the twelfth
century that there appeared upon the scene one of the brightest lights
of the Church, namely, St. Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux (Fig. 254),
which he founded, and which was called _the third_ daughter of the
Cistercians. He was an admirable orator, a savant of the first rank, a
brilliant writer, and an eminent statesman; he had under his control
all the interests and secrets of Christendom and of the sovereign
papacy, and he never used them for purposes of worldly ambition. He
sent forth vast armies of Crusaders to the East, but he adhered to his
character of monk and apostle, by devoting his energies to combating
the Oriental heretics by verbal arguments; to preventing schisms;
to appeasing the scholastic quarrels, in which the famous Abelard
was one of the disputants; to aiding with his counsels the popes and
the monarchs; and to pouring forth, from diocese to diocese, from
council to council, and from synod to synod, that fervid and powerful
eloquence which won him all hearts. The death of the illustrious
abbot of Clairvaux, in 1153, was a terrible blow to the Church, and
an irreparable loss for monastic institutions; for there was no one
to take his place or to continue his work of reformation in the
monasteries of the Benedictine order.
[Illustration: Fig. 256.--A Beguin.--From an Engraving in the
“Histoire de l’Origine des Béguines Belges,” by Hallman.]
Amongst the contemporary monks, who were founders or reformers of
abbeys, we need only mention the Danish Archbishop Eckel, Felix of
Valois, John of Matha, the Englishman Gilbert of Sempringham, the Liége
priest Lambert Begh or Lebègue, who created the Beguin convents (Figs.
255 and 256), of which there are so many in the Netherlands, and which
were pious retreats where the Beguins lived in common without taking
the vows. But the eminent reputation of these austere personages sinks
into comparative insignificance before the touching legend of Heloisa,
the unfortunate wife of Abelard, who quitted the convent of Argenteuil,
near Paris, to immure herself in “the Paraclete,” a house which she had
founded in Champagne, to await and receive there the mortal remains of
her beloved lord.
[Illustration: Fig. 257.--Carved Ivory Chaplet of Beads and
Girdle of an Abbess (Sixteenth Century). Collection of M. Achille
Jubinal.]
Following her example, many women of equal endowments sought in mental
labour and in devotional exercises an aliment for their moral activity;
and, when the great St. Dominic commenced his apostleship (1170–1221),
he found them ready to receive his teaching. He accordingly created,
under the St. Augustine rule, in unison with the preaching brothers,
afterwards called Dominicans (Fig. 258), a congregation of preaching
sisters known by the same title, namely, Dominicaines.
[Illustration: Fig. 258.--The most famous Members of the
Dominican Order.--1. Hugh de St. Cher, Cardinal of St. Sabine,
the most learned theologian of his time, who died March 19,
1263. 2. St. Antoninus, Archbishop of Florence, 1389–1459. 3.
John Dominicus (the blessed), Cardinal of Ragusa, 1360–1419.
4. Pope Innocent V., born in Savoy, died June 22, 1276. 5. St.
Dominic, founder of the Order of Preachers (1170–1221). 6. Pope
St. Benedict XI., born at Treviso (1240–1304).--From a Fresco of
the Crucifixion, by Fra Angelico, in the Convent of St. Mark at
Florence (Fifteenth Century).--From a copy belonging to M. H.
Delaborde.]
The vulgar tongue was absolutely prohibited in the Dominican houses,
Latin alone being used for conversation. The principal European
languages were, however, taught for preaching purposes: including
the southern idioms, familiar to St. Dominic and St. Raymond, whose
eloquence had so deep an effect in Languedoc and Provence, as well
as in a part of Spain (1175–1275); and the northern idioms of the
Sclaves and the Tartars, which a preaching brother of Breslau, St.
Hyacinthus (1183–1257), used to some purpose in a successful mission
that ended in the establishment of two monasteries, at Cracow and
at Kiew. In these still barbarous regions, St. Hedwige, the wife of
a duke of Poland, who died in 1243, founded at Trebnitz a convent
of the Cistercian order, and at about the same period a queen of
Castille created one at Valladolid (Fig. 259). At this epoch, also,
the Sisterhood of St. Clare, founded in 1218 by St. Clare, at the
suggestion of St. Francis of Assisi, failed in its attempts to extend
the order beyond Italy.
[Illustration: Fig. 259.--Maria de Molina, Queen of Castille
(1284–1321), handing to the Cistercian Nuns the Charter of
Foundation for their convent.--Bas-relief from her Tomb at
Valladolid.--From an Engraving in the “Iconografia Española” of
M. Carderera.]
[Illustration: Fig. 260.--St. Thomas in a Council of Prelates
and Doctors held at Anagni in 1256, and presided over by Pope
Alexander IV., defending the attack made upon the monastic
orders by the University of Paris, and successfully refuting the
assertions of William of St. Amour. The saint, of whom the back
only is seen, is in the foreground, with St. Bonaventura at his
right. Near the Pope are seated the Cardinals Hugh de Saint-Cher
and Jean des Ursins, and next to them the Bishop of Messina, the
famous Albert the Great, the heads of orders, the deputies of
King Louis IX., &c.--From a Painting in the Louvre, by Benozzo
Gozzoli (Fourteenth Century), termed the “Triumph of St. Thomas
of Aquinas.”]
The poor and docile religious militia organized by St. Francis of
Assisi under the name of Minors or Franciscans (1208), at that time set
the world an edifying example of Christian humility and self-denial.
The chief characteristic of the Franciscans was their complete
renunciation of all worldly goods. This mendicant order increased
so rapidly that their saintly founder was able to gather round him,
in his monastery of Assisi, five thousand delegates from religious
houses which had been built in nine years from the founding of the
order. There were occasionally some unfortunate quarrels between the
secular clergy and the monastic orders. One of the most notorious
was that which broke out between the University of Paris and the
mendicant orders. The university was in the habit of suspending its
lectures when it had any dispute with the government. The Dominicans
and the Franciscans having refused to submit to this practice, their
priests were deprived of their professorial chairs, and all their monks
excluded from the university. A doctor, William of St. Amour, published
a violent diatribe against the mendicant orders. The quarrel lasted a
long time, and Popes Innocent IV. and Alexander IV. supported the cause
of the monks in several bulls issued upon this subject (Fig. 260). The
university, in the end, consented to reopen its doors to them, but only
on the condition that they should always occupy the lowest rank, and in
the public disputations not urge their views until the other doctors
had had their say. It may be imagined how this petty restriction was
put up with by these humble monks, when we remember that among those
whom the doctors treated with so much contumely were such men as Roger
Bauer, Duns Scotus, and St. Bonaventura among the Franciscans; and
Albert the Great, Vincent of Beauvais, and St. Thomas of Aquinas among
the Dominicans. It was the last-mentioned of these who defended the
mendicant orders from the attacks of William of St. Amour.
Towards the close of the thirteenth century, and during two-thirds
of the fourteenth, many reforms took place in the monastic orders,
especially in that of the minor brothers (Fig. 261), who changed their
name with each change of rules. The new orders, however, obtained but a
slight celebrity, and lasted only a short time, with the exception of
that of Mercy, for the ransom of the captives--an eminently charitable
work, instituted by St. Nolasque, a Languedoc crusader, who died in
1256. We must not, however, forget to mention St. Bridget, the inspired
Scandinavian (1302–1372), who, during a journey to Jerusalem, conceived
the idea of founding the order of St. Saviour, which she established in
Sweden; nor Gerhard Groot, surnamed the Great (1340–1384), founder, in
Holland, of the Brethren of the Common Life, who devoted their time to
the teaching of the poor, and whose chief occupation was to copy the
books of the Fathers and of other ecclesiastical writers.
[Illustration: Fig. 261.--St. Anthony of Padua, a Franciscan
Friar, anxious to demonstrate to a heretic, who asked him to
perform a miracle, the truth of the Holy Sacrament of the
Altar, commands a mule to adore the Eucharist. The mule, though
ravenously hungry, refuses the oats that his master is sifting,
and kneels down at the bidding of the saint.--Miniature from
the “Heures” of Anne of Brittany (Manuscript of the Fifteenth
Century), National Library, Paris.]
The disorder prevalent in that century extended unfortunately
to the Church; the priests--notably the monks and the regular
canons--gradually laid on one side the spirit of holy meditation, the
habits of prayer, seclusion, and pious works. Young men were admitted
into the abbeys without having gone through the period of novitiate;
the monks were not compelled to be resident, and many members of
a chapter or of a congregation were never or rarely present at the
services. An increase of the penalties for breach of discipline failed
to suppress these abuses, and in some churches and communities, those
monks who attended the services were provided with counters, each of
which, when given up in the chapel, entitled the holder to a small sum
of money. Leave of absence was also granted quarterly and half-yearly,
on condition that the rest of the year should be passed in residence.
Different abbeys formed mutual communities for prayer and good works,
which bound them closely together; while, at the end of the thirteenth
century, several diocesan chapters had drawn up new constitutional
codes, which were to be read each year, and adopted for guidance; but
the external troubles were always reacting upon the internal quiet of
the religious houses. The abuses which had crept into many of them,
in reference to the distribution of the property belonging to the
monks in each monastery, also added fresh elements of discord; for the
laymen often retained possession of these portions and diminished by so
much the resources of the community, which none the less continued to
shelter the needy, to feed the hungry, and to bestow alms.
Whilst Battista Spagnuolo, of Mantua, General of the Carmelite
Order, and one of the most celebrated Latin poets of the fifteenth
century, vainly endeavoured to reform his ill-disciplined monks, St.
Bernardine of Sienna (1380–1446), more fortunate if not more gifted,
set a practical example by joining the order of St. Francis, with
the intention of introducing the needed reforms. He founded three
hundred houses of the Brethren of the Stricter Observance, which
were urgently needed at a period when Europe was being devastated by
three scourges--the plague, famine, and the sword. At about the same
epoch, St. Colette of Corbie succeeded, by the exercise of an angelic
sweetness, in correcting the abuses which had found their way into
the convent of the St. Clare and many other female congregations,
more recently formed under the Franciscan rules; St. Francis, of
Romagna, instituted the Collatine order (1425), and St. Jeanne de
Valois, daughter of Louis XI. (1464–1505), founded the community of the
Sisterhood of the Annunciation, at Bourges, where her husband, the Duke
of Orleans, had banished her, previous to repudiating the marriage.
This virtuous princess was guided by the counsels of the Calabrian, St.
Francis of Paula, the celebrated founder of the order of the Minimi
(1416–1507), who, when summoned to France by Louis XI., and resident
in Touraine under the eye of that most suspicious and mistrustful
of monarchs, had so far won his confidence as to induce the king to
prepare for death like a Christian.
The Barnabites, and other religious institutions of more or less
importance, which had principally in view the conversion of heretics by
preaching, date from the close of the fifteenth century, and the origin
of many of them was due to the spirit of morality and philanthropy
then in vogue. Thus the first house of the Penitents, founded at Paris
in 1496 by a Gray Friar under the name of Tisseran, afterwards became
celebrated for its wholesome example amid the dissolute morals of the
sixteenth century.
[Illustration: Fig. 262.--St. Theresa, the Reformer of the
Carmelites, who died in 1582.--From a Portrait of the period
engraved in the “Iconografia Española” of M. Carderera.]
[Illustration: Fig. 263.--The Great Martyrdom of Nangasaki (Sept.
10, 1622), in which twenty-two missionaries and native Christians
were burnt to death, and thirty others, including several women
and children, beheaded, in presence of a vast crowd.--From a
Japanese water-colour Drawing of the period, preserved in the
Gésu Convent at Rome.--Pope Pius IX. commemorated this event by
the beatification of two hundred and five martyrs, which was
decreed at Rome on the 7th of July, 1867.]
A great literary event, though only indirectly connected with the
history of the monastic orders, nevertheless enables us to form an
accurate judgment as to the intellectual character of the religious
houses during the last thirty-five years of the fifteenth century,
and the first years of the sixteenth: we refer to the invention of
printing. Whatever may have been the causes that induced these houses
to encourage the extension of printing, the action of each community
is made manifest by its achievements in that vast laboratory which
typographical art had founded, in the stead of a few cells and studies
where the human hand had been wearily transcribing manuscript after
manuscript.
In an obscure monastery at Subiaco, near Rome, two printers from
Mayence, Sweynheym and Pannartz, guests of the monks, published the
first edition of Lactantius, followed by several other valuable
works of ecclesiastical authors (1465–1467); in the monastery of
St. Eusebius, within the walls of Rome, George Laver, of Würzburg,
printed many publications, about 1470. Several clerks brought up in
the episcopal schools of Metz, Liége, Mayence, and Tuscany--Adam Rot,
Paul Leenen, Ulric Zell, and Jacob Caroli--superintended in person
printing-offices at Rome, Cologne, and Florence, which were worthy
rivals of those which were being established in every direction by
ordinary traders. Colard Mansion, a clerk belonging to a community at
Bruges, who was specially entrusted with the copying of manuscripts
(1414–1473) conceived the idea of substituting for the tedious process
of the pen and the engraving pencil the rapidity of movable types
and screw printing-presses. The Brethren of the Common Life, his
colleagues, who were settled at Rhingau, near Mayence, at Val St.
Marie, Nuremberg, at Cologne, and at Rostock, imitated the example of
Colard Mansion, and from mere calligraphists became master-printers
(1474–1479). Two theological doctors of the Sorbonne, William Fichet
and Jehan de la Pierre, also induced three skilful German workmen,
Ulric Gering, Martin Crantz, and Michael Friburger, to come to Paris,
where they provided them with a place to set up their presses and to
establish a workshop (1470). This was the origin of printing in Paris.
Two years later, William Caxton obtained leave to print in England,
beneath the roof of Westminster Abbey; while in Switzerland, a canon
of Munster (in Argovia), Hélias Hélye (1472, 1473), had some small
presses at work. Soon after this, the Dominicans, the Carthusians, and
the Carmelites established large printing workshops at Pisa, Parma,
Genoa, and Metz (1476–1482); the Franciscans, surnamed _Frères
Conférenciers_, who had a settlement near Gaude, in Holland, also
opened a printing-office; and lastly, such celebrated orders as those
of Cluny and Cîteaux, branches of the Benedictines, sent for workmen to
their houses in Burgundy, at Clervaux, in Champagne, and Montserrat in
Catalonia, to print the principal liturgical books, which were termed
the books of common prayer.
The members of the Order of Jesus, founded in Paris by the Spanish
nobleman St. Ignatius Loyola, on his return from a pilgrimage to the
Holy Land (1534), from this period devoted themselves closely to the
work of social regeneration--an undertaking which, looked at in all
its different phases, seemed as if it could only be brought about by
means of religious reform. While St. Francis Xavier, the friend and
companion of St. Ignatius, made use of the influence of the Order of
Jesus to convert the idolatrous peoples in the Indian Ocean (Fig.
263), the Jesuit clerks, a learned and highly intellectual body, in a
short time obtained a hold over the whole world, forming one vast army
which answered as one man to the commands of the Holy See, and whose
representatives were everywhere to be met with, in the professorial
chairs, in the schools, in the affairs of State, and more especially in
the various domains of literature, science, and art. Thus the sixteenth
century, during which Luther and Calvin made such an onslaught upon
the Catholic Church and the monastic orders, gave birth to a new
religious order, which, though the most recent, was the most powerful
and invincible of them all. Luther, who had worn the cowl in the
monastery of the Augustines at Erfurt, and Calvin, who had been canon
in the chapter of Noyon, urged the Huguenots to make away with the
monasteries; but their number only seemed to increase whenever one of
them was destroyed by the sacrilegious hands of the heretics.
[Illustration: Fig. 264.--Seal of the Monastery of St. Louis of
Poissy, belonging to the Order of Preaching Brothers of the St.
Dominic rule.--St. Louis, with a halo round his head, is covering
with the folds of his cloak the people who are imploring him for
protection.]
CHARITABLE INSTITUTIONS.
Christian Charity in the First Centuries of the Church.--The
Eastern Empresses.--The Holy Roman Ladies.--Olympiade, Melanie,
Marcella, and Paula.--Charity at the Court of the Franks.--St.
Margaret of Scotland and Matilda of England.--Hedwige of
Poland.--Origin of the Lazar-houses.--The Lazarists in France
and in England.--Progress and Vicissitudes of the Order of
St. Lazarus.--The Foundations of St. Louis.--The Order of
Mercy founded by St. Nolasque.--St. Catherine of Sienna and
St. Francis.--Bernardin Obrégon.--Jean de Dieu.--Philippe de
Néri.--Antoine Yvan.
At Christ’s coming, the Greco-Roman civilisation had reached the
last stages of corruption, and the slavery of the vast majority of
men failed to satisfy the thirst for supremacy which devoured the
small section of privileged leaders in ancient society. The barbarian
peoples, on their part, recognised no other power than that of brute
force, nor any other pleasures than those of sanguinary orgies. To
transform this condition of society, which toiled only for money
and sensual enjoyment, Christ gave forth these touching and sublime
words, “Blessed are the poor in spirit: blessed are the pure in heart”
(_Beati pauperes spiritu: beati mundo corde_). To the savage
spirit of the barbarian who deified brute force Christ opposed the
reverence for all that is weak and feeble by clothing himself with all
manner of infirmities: “Come, ye blessed of my Father; I was poor, I
was sick, I was in prison, and ye comforted me; inasmuch as ye have
done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it
unto me.”
In these powerful words was contained the germ of modern civilisation;
wherever the Gospel reaches a feeling of tenderness and respect for the
poor and the weak must go hand in hand with the spirit of chastity,
self-denial, and devotion. Two words unknown to the old world sum up
this transformation--humility and charity. The rich, the high-born,
and even the offspring of royalty, from the moment they believe in the
divine word, are found tending the sick in hospitals, and the proof
of true belief in the Messiah is ever the same as that which He gave
to attest his divine mission to John’s disciples: “Unto the poor the
Gospel is preached.”
[Illustration: Fig. 265.--Hospitality.--Jesus Christ, represented
as a Pilgrim, being received by two Preaching Brothers of the
Order of St. Dominic.--Fresco-painting by Fra Angelico in St.
Mark’s Convent at Florence (Fifteenth Century).]
From the first days of Christianity we find the great apostle of
the Gentiles recommending the giving of alms, and stimulating the
generosity of the faithful. “If the amount collected,” he says, “makes
it worth while, I will come myself and take it to our brethren.” The
apostles appointed deacons to distribute the alms. One of those who
reflected the greatest honour on this appointment was St. Laurentius,
the noble martyr. He had seen his bishop, his spiritual father, led out
to execution, and he became entrusted with the care of the property of
his church (Fig. 266). The prefect of the prætorium said to him, “I
know that you have gold and silver vessels for your sacrifices; let me
have these treasures, which the prince requires for maintaining his
troops.” The holy deacon replied, “I know that our church is rich; I
will let you have all its most valuable contents, but you must give me
three days to put everything in order.” He made use of this delay to
bring together the poor whom he maintained, and divided the silver and
gold amongst them. The prefect came upon the appointed day, and St.
Laurentius, pointing to the crowd of halt and poor, said with a saintly
pride, which he afterwards expiated by his martyrdom, “Here are the
treasures which I promised you; the real gold is the divine light which
illuminates these poor men, the disciples and brethren of Jesus Christ.”
[Illustration: Fig. 266.--Pope Sixtus II. handing to St.
Laurentius, in 258, the Treasures of the Church, to be
distributed amongst the Poor.--Fresco, painted by Fra Angelico,
in the Chapel of Nicholas V. in the Vatican (Fifteenth Century).]
Thus Christian charity began in the days of the apostles, and went
on increasing even amidst persecution; but it did not reach its full
expansion until the conversion of the Emperor Constantine at length
obtained for the Church peace and liberty.