MORES CATHOLICI; OR, AGES OF FAITH. 66 THE TENTH BOOK. CHAPTER I. HE ancients used to say, as we find from the Gorgias of Plato, that it was not lawful to break off in the middle of a narrative, and leave it without a head, lest it should wander about spectre-like in that condition. In accordance with this Athenian fancy, which happens here to coincide with graver motives, we must proceed to place, as it were, the head on our last history, by commemorating a particular class of persons, who in a stili more peculiar manner fulfilled the divine prophecy, "Sedebit populus meus in pulchritudine pacis, in tabernaculis fiduciæ, et in requie opulenta,"* and whose lives seem to have been especially foreshown by the same great voice, declaring, Opus justitiæ pax: cultus justitiæ silentium et securitas usque in sempiternum.” My theme pursuing then, I have to speak of the multitudes whose steps the cloister guarded during ages of faith; for without an intimate acquaintance with their lives and customs, our history would be incomplete, and as it were headless; since, after all, it was chiefly in monasteries that peace found its sincerest worshippers, and the most devoted ministers to dispense and propagate it on earth; for it was within their walls that all we have hitherto seen of peace and of pacific influence existed in the fullest perfection. Now lest any one should imagine that an inquiry into the spirit and manners of this separate world, (for the monastic life, in fact, constituted a world in itself,) would lead us aside to consider things of secondary importance to the general society of men, let us begin by observing the immense and universal character of these great institutions: for this people, so peculiarly seated in the beauty and plenitude of peace, was not confined to * Is. xxxii. MIA OL any one locality or nation; it was spread over the whole earth, and no place was left without the tranquillizing influence of its philosophy and of its manners. Without attempting to trace the progress of the monastic orders, some estimate of their diffusion may be formed from the incidental notices respecting them, which occur in any of the local historians of the middle ages. In the cloistral community of Oryrynchus were 10,000 monks. They served besides twelve parish-churches for the people, whose manners were so formed by them, that the whole city seemed one church. In Hermopolis were 500 monks; at Nitria their number amounted to 5000; at Cellia to 2000. But confining our view to the Western Church we find that in the monastery of St. Finnian. at Clonard, in Ireland, in which St. Columbkill studied, there were at one time 3000 monks. The abbey of Bangor, near Carrickfergus, founded about the year 555, and restored by St. Malachias after its destruction by the Danes, of which St. Bernard says, 66 a place truly holy, and fruitful in saints, most plentifully producing fruit to God," from which came St. Columban and St. Galli, contained before the death of its founder, St. Comgal, 4000 monks. In Bangor, in Wales, there were eight divisions, each of 300 monks. In the year 900, there were more than 1000 monks in the abbey of St. Sylvester, at Nonantula. The abbey of Jumiège soon after its foundation by St. Philibert and Queen Bathilde, contained 900 monks; many bishops, clerks, and noble laics, retiring thither to renounce the world. In the abbey of Fulda, under Raban Maur, there were more than 370 monks, when Count Erlafried sent thither for monks to place in Hirschau.* In the twelfth century, under St. Peter the Venerable, there were in the monastery of Cluny nearly 400 monks, besides an immense number of guests, and a multitude of poor. In the twelfth century, Orderic Vitalis says, "that the venerable Hugo, abbot of Cluny, during the sixty-four years of his rule, admitted more than 10,000 monks into the ranks of the Lord's host." The same author relates that on the day of his own ordination at Rouen, the army of Christ was augmented by nearly 700 clerks, who received different orders.‡ Brother Jordan of Saxony, the second general of the Dominicans, gave the habit to more than a thousand men, whom he alone had gained to the order. In the thirteenth century, we find in Milan 140 friars in the Dominican, and 100 in the Franciscan convent.§ In the same city, at that time, there were sixty hermits of St. Augustin, and thirty Carmelites.|| The proportions were about the same elsewhere: when Mabillon visited the abbeys of Einsiedeln and St. Gall, there were 100 monks in each, besides novices. Before the revolution of 1524, eighteen monasteries and churches were in the single town of Eisenach, which were destroyed in one day. From these few statements it is evident, that the relig+ Lib. xi. *Trithem. in Chronic. Hirsch. § Gualvanei de la Flamma, Hist. Med. ap. Mur. Rer. It. Script. xi. + Ibid. Iter Germanicum. ious orders embraced an immense part of the population, and, therefore, we should certainly be unable to form any just estimate of the number of men who loved and enjoyed peace in the middle ages, if we did not take into account these immense and widely-spread communities of the professed pacific. We have seen what dark calamitous times afflicted the Holy Church while reaping the immortal fruits of faith. In the year 480, when St. Benedict was born, the aspect of Europe was deplorable. Italy groaned under the yoke of Odoacre, Spain and Aquitaine under that of Alaric, both of them Arian princes, that is, at enmity with truth, the fountain of peace. Gallacia was subject to the Arian Suevi; Childeric, king of the Francs, was an idolator. The Burgundians, who were Arians, occupied not a small part of Gaul; and Germany, with a part of Britian, were ignorant of the true God. This was, nevertheless, the moment when the holy institute of St. Benedict arose, which was founded about the year 529, on Mount Cassino, where, according to the remark of Mabillon, there was provided a safe asylum against human misery.* Long afterwards the state of Europe, in regard to peace, continued to be calamitous. Gaul, in particular, was ruled with a rod of iron; and Europe generally, in the seventh century, was so distracted, that Pope Agatho, in the name of the Roman Synod, claiming indulgence for the diminished literary glory of the Western Church, uses these affecting, and, as Mabillon says, truly golden words. "Since in our regions the fury of different nations rages daily, at one time conflicting, at another traversing, at another ravaging our whole life is full of solicitude-Et sola est nostra substantia fides nostra, cum qua nobis vivere summa est gloria." But all the while, where the evil perhaps was greatest, under the terrible sceptres of Childebert, Clotaire I., Chilperic, Clotaire II., and Dagobert I., warlike kings, for whom the French, at that time still ferocious, envinced an astonishing sympathy, and a fidelity unalterable; there were existing the peaceful multitudes to whom monasteries gave both peace and the means of its propagation. Even secular historians remark, that while the spirit of discord pervaded countries, as in Ireland, arming the natives against each other, immense multitudes of the inhabitants of those countries enjoyed and worshipped peace in the seclusion of monasteries: for though to many unknown, these tranquil communities existed in the midst of the disorders and troubles of the worldly life. The true lovers of peace were, however, generally led to discover them, like St. Augustin, who says, "I was astonished when I heard them speak of this great Monk Anthony, of whom I had known nothing till that hour. I was filled with amaze, hearing of his recent memory and his miracles so near our time in testimony to the faith of the Catholic Church. Then the conversation turned upon the multitude of monasteries, and the solitary holy men of the desert, of whom we had known nothing. There was a monastery at Milan, full of good men, without the walls of the city, under the care of St. Am * Mabillon, Præfat. in 1 Sæc. Benedic. ii. brose, and we did not know of its existence."* Thus too, no doubt, it was in Gaul, while cruel Merovingians reigned. Then when the gloom had passed, under the Carlovingians, cities yielded in importance and influence to abbeys, which were like great castles, fortified, containing all things requisite for a regular and pacific life. In the work entitled, "Gallia Christiana," one is astonished to see the prodigious number of abbeys and convents in the cities of France. Hence an ancient writer cries "Felix regio Francorum, Parens fœcunda tantorum "If any thing," says one historian, "could reconcile the eyes of humanity to the pictures offered by the first ages of our monarchy, it would be without doubt those spontaneous unions of pacific men, who fled from a corrupted and desolated society, in order to meditate on a better world, to preserve kindled for future generations the torch of truth."‡ But what Christian land was left without this happiness? "The drama of history," says a recent historian of Ireland, speaking of very early times," begins to assume an entirely different character. Instead of the ferocious strife of kings and chieftains, we have the pure and peaceful triumphs of religion. Illustrious saints of both sexes pass in review before our eyes; the cowl and veil eclipse the glory even of the regal crown, and instead of the grand and festive halls of Tara and Emania, the lonely cell of the fasting penitent becomes the scene of fame." So that, in fact, during the most disturbed periods of the middle ages, no warrior could ever reduce men who really loved peace to the dilemma in which Cæsar places the people of Marseilles, saying "At enim contagia beil Dira fugant: dabitis pœnas pro pace petita; Ei nihil esse meo discetis tutius ævo, For, in consequence of the foundations of faith, subjects as the sons of a great family were always at liberty to choose and follow either peace or its opposite. "Gista, widow of Earl Godwin, had seven sons," says Orderic Vitalis, "Suenon, Tostic, Herald, Guorth, Elfgar, Leofwin, and Vulvod; all were earls distinguished by great personal beauty and merits, though their ends were different. Elfgar and Vulvod, who loved God, lived holily and happily; the first, a pilgrim and monk, died at Rheims in the true faith; the other died honorably at Salisbury. The five others, devoted to arms, perished in different places by the sword."|| Confess. Lib. viii. 6. Anonym. Carthusianis de Religion. Origine ap. Martene Vet. Script. Collect. tom. vi. § Lucan, iii. Lib. iù. The prodigious number of disciples which each worshipper of peace drew after him from the first moment of his conversion, is a fact which sufficiently indicates the attractions possessed by this society distinct from that of the world, though ever in the midst of it. The blessed youth Francis de Paula, for instance, in 1435, retires into a cave in a desert place, and lo! Balthazar, Bernardino, Paulus, Francis, Antonius, Andrew, Archangelo, Nicholaus, Angelo, Nicholas a Nucito, John and Florentinus follow him.* How should we be detained, if we were to speak of the multitudes leading the pacific life in the more celebrated regions in monastic history? Such, for example, as Suabia, which the historians of St. Gall style "the land of the saints." St. Peter Damian says, "That the whole world was full of monks;" that is, of men who loved, enjoyed, and propagated peace. Places of monastic retreat existed almost from the beginning of the Church.§ There were monks in Gaul before the time of St. Martin; for there were some in the island of St. Barbara above the confluence of the Arar and the Rhone, who received the Christians that fled from the persecution of Septimus Severus.]] How many arose in Sicily in the earlier times may be witnessed in the histories of that island, where the ancient Greek monasteries were rebuilt by Counts Robert and Roger, on the expulsion of the Sarassins, as were the six Benedictine abbeys founded there by St. Gregory the Great, out of his own patrimony.** Mount Ætna, that had been formerly devoted to the vain worship of the Gentiles, was in the first Christian ages covered with monasteries for the worship of the one true God.++ Calabria-which was the first part of Italy, after Rome, to embrace the Christian faith, St. Paul having preached at Rhegium, and which produced so many martyrs in early and modern times,—became another Egypt in regard to monasteries. It is delightful to survey in local histories the celebrated monasteries of this region, so abundantly endowed, and producing such wise and holy men, who threw in the shade those old Pythagorean days among that illustrious people; to visit this cradle of St. Benedict, St. Basil, and St. Bernard, this mother of hermits dwelling amidst her rocks and woods, and odoriferous hills. In the fourth and fifth centuries, the Italian monasteries were built chiefly in Milan, Rome, Ravenna, Nola, in Campagna, and in the islands of the Etruscan sea.§§ How prodigiously these were multiplied in later times, may be estimated from the number of monasteries visited by Ferdinand Ughelli, the Florentine monk and abbot of the Tria Fontana, at Rome, when he was composing his great work, the "Italia Sacra." But, extending our view over Europe, let us recall the names and site of a few of the most eminent of these great asylums of pacific men in ages of faith. The tracks of the Great Benedict lead from Subiaco to blest Cassino's holy hill, both such places of divine peace. Passing over these, Italy for many ages gloried in her abbeys of Pomposa, in *Chronic. Ord. Minimorum. Eckehard IV. in Lib. Benedict. § Murat. Antiq. It. lxv. Mab. Præf, in iii. sæc. + Italia Sacra, tom. ix. 175. tt ii. 1155. Lib. vi. Epist. 15. Sicilia Sacra, i. 22, ** Id. ii. SS Murat. Antiq. It. lxv. |