pelle. The wars and troubles of the ninth century revived, however, the confusion, which was not finally removed till the rise of the celebrated congregation of Cluny under Odo. The rule of St. Benedict used to be called kar' ¿oxy, the rule, the holy rule, both by councils and chapters. Mabillon proves against Maresham, that the first monks of England followed this rule, which St. Boniface introduced into Germany, Kero, a monk of St. Gall, translating it into the barbarous idiom of that people. The one name of monks, therefore, began to be distinguished into various branches at the end of the ninth century, when the congregation of Cluny, on account of customs superinduced to the rule of St. Benedict, began to be called the order of Cluny, the chief features being the subjection of other monasteries to the abbot of Cluny. In the eleventh century succeeded the congregation of Camaldoli, founded by St. Romuald; that of Vallambrosa by St. John Gualbert, that of Cisteaux by St. Robert, and many others which were all subject to the rule of St. Benedict; so that until the thirteenth century, and the rise of the Mendicant orders, there was but one order of monks; for though there were the titles of Cluny, Camaldoli, and others, yet these were all confederated in the union of one rule. The habits indeed were different; the ancient Benedictines wearing black, whence they were called the black monks; the Cistercians at first grey, and afterwards white. Hence St. Bernard, in his Apology to the Abbot William, says, "Unum ordinem professione teneo, ceteros caritate;" but there was still but one genius of the ancient monastic order, and one object with them all. What now was in general the fundamental character of all monastic rules? It was an adaptation to the end of procuring a pacific life in common for men, whose years were to be spent in contemplating or in announcing their benignant Lord Jesus Christ, either as being born or nursed, or as teaching, or fasting, or preaching, or laboring, or dying, or rising again, or ascending to heaven, or coming again to judgment. When a Benedictine monk first subscribed his engagement, he laid the instrument on the altar, repeating, "Suscipe me, Domine, secundum eloquium tuum, et vivam; et non confundas me ab expectatione mea!" These words having been thrice repeated by the assembled brethren, the newly professed prostrated himself at the feet of each monk in succession, beseeching him to pray for him, and as he was raised by each he received the kiss of peace. "The rule of St. Benedict," says Michelet, contrasting it with that of St. Columban, which soon perished through its excess of mysticism," is a rule of good sense, a rule of labor, grave and practical." As the above terms of subscription indicate, it is a rule conformable to the word of God. Similarly again, in the rule of St. Francis there is nothing but what is prescribed in the holy Scriptures, as the blessed Cæsarius de Spira shows. The seraphic father only says, "The rule and life of the friars minor consists in observing the holy Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, living in obedience, without property, and in chastity." Præfat. in I. Sæc. Bened. 8. † Ap. Goldast. Rer. Alem. ii. 1. Bernardine, general of the Capuchins, says, in his apology to Cardinal Sanseverino, "The perfection of the seraphic and evangelic rule consists not in syllables or sentences, but in spirit and in truth."* The order of the bare-footed Carmelites offered, as St. Theresa said, "these three steps to Christian perfection, pov"In correction, erty in common, retreat from the world, and manual labor." and admonition, and discipline," say the Præmonstratensian statutes, "all is to be done according to the rule, ' Cum dilectione hominum et odio vitiorum.'"+ John Andræa, a most eminent lawyer, when in Rome, examined the statutes of the Carthusians, and then said, that he had never read or heard of any drawn up with greater discretion, sobriety, humility, or charity than these; and soon afterwards with his patrimony he built the Carthusian monastery of Bologna. "On entering a religious order," says Father Judde, “a man finds that the rule has only developed what he had long been accustomed to read in his own heart." Thus before the constitutions of St. Ignatius, St. Francis Xavier governed in India nearly in the same manner as the holy founder did in Europe. The first fathers, on receiving the constitutions, found that they had themselves had the same thoughts.§ A modern French author,|| alluding to the reform instituted by St. Benedict of Aniane, produces some of the minute articles which were designed for the domestic regulation of monasteries, respecting habits and diet, and then complains that these are miserable prescriptions, quite foreign to a religious sentiment or moral institution. But he should have observed, that these precepts began by enforcing attention to the original rules which had extorted his praise, and though to a professor before a promiscuous assembly these minute articles might seem trifling, to any experienced superior, who had to govern a number of men living in one house, they would probably appear a necessary part of the material element of a religious community. The prescribing a particular diet for each. season, the prohibition of indiscriminate bleeding, and the providing peculiar indulgences for the sick or delicate, or even the regulating the hours of opening and shutting the gates by the alternation of certain months, furnish weak grounds for the conclusion that the monastic institution had lost its grandeur, and had become full of puerilities and servitude. The superiors of religious houses knew perfectly well the distinction which this historian seems to propose as the result of his own philosophy. "Habetis dilectissimi: you have here, my beloved, according to your request, certain customs which we observe, in which are many mean and minute things, which perhaps ought not to be written, unless because your love was resolved to judge nothing, but to embrace whatever was prepared." So speaks Father Guigo, prior of the Carthusians, at the end of his "Customs," about forty-four years after the foundation of the order by St. Bruno. Indeed, the fourth chapter of the first book of * Annales Capucinorum, ad an. 1536. Statuta Ord. Præmon. c. vi. Guizot this collection, treating on the spirit and end of this order, supplies an admirable answer to such objections. Richard of St. Victor, while showing that the discipline of the body is useless without the discipline of the mind, observes, that "where exterior discipline is wanting, the interior certainly cannot be maintained."* "Every power," says St. Thomas, " which can be ordained to action requires habit by which it may be well disposed to act, and therefore habit is necessary to the will, which is an intellectual power." The object of the monastic regulations was to produce habit. The wisest politicians have admitted that the best way of learning how to govern a state well was to study the constitution of religious orders. Their soul, indeed, was obedience, without which, as the historian of the Carthusians says, "not even the desert could yield peace," and therefore St. Bruno renounced that sweet solitude at the voice of the sovereign pontiff. But for men humble and gentle, as even the profane historian remarks, "the service of the Church was a true liberty." The services and practices of religion exalt and ennoble, and correspond with those lofty sentiments of the dignity of our origin, which are found in the writings of the great men who collected the traditions of antiquity, while those of the world seem often invented, in order to degrade and humiliate men, while, by flattering the passions, they reconcile them to the vileness and absurdity of the offices required. "Why should monastic obedience seem grievous ?" asks a master of novices. "What a hard obedience do unhappy men render in the world, without any consolation or fruit from it " The motto of the congregation of the Oratoire might have been that of all the religious houses," Ici l'on obéit sans dépendre, et l'on gouverne sans commander." The monastic rules excluded despotism. "For no superior or subject," says Peter of Blois, "is it lawful to follow his own will; for the legislator of monks prescribed, as if by a general edict, that all should follow the rule as their master; and from this law neither the abbot nor the prior is excepted." In point of fact, too, the government of monks was full of indulgence and condescension. Seldom could they address their superior in words like those of Eurylochus in the name of his companions to Ulysses, complaining of his iron nature in ordering them to wander all the night long William of Jumiège says of Robert, abbot of St. Evroul, who established a monastery on the shores of Calabria, that "he disdained his own body, but supplied all who were subject to him with food and clothing in abundance, while endeavoring to maintain their hearts under a regular discipline."†† Ric. St. Vict. Allegoria Tabernaculi Foed. + Q. L. Art. v. § Orderic Vit. Hist. Nor. Lib. iii. "It is not for me," says Peter the Venerable, abbot of Cluny, "to deter novices, and by my probation of a year cause them to be rejected for ever. It is `not for me to refuse to supply meat and drink, and clothing, and other necessaries, according to the diversity of infirmities, climate, and times, lest, while I do not render to man what is man's, he cannot render to God what is God's. Nor shall charity give place here to the dictates of a proud superstition."* "Nothing is contrary to the rules," he says again, "which is done from charity; if we change or modify some minor regulations, we do it for the good of others; and we broadly reply to those who accuse us of innovation, that charity justifies and calls for such dispensations."+ The cloister, notwithstanding the strictness of its discipline, did not furnish an exception to the result which a modern author ascribes to the organization of society in the middle ages, saying, in allusion to it, "Jamais l'individu n'a tant vécu." We find that the monastic superiors followed the method of Pythagoras, who used to adopt a different mode of discipline with different persons. When Abaris the Scythian came from the Hyperboreians, advanced in age, a priest of Apollo, and versed in sacred things, though rude and uncultivated in Greek discipline, he did not lead him about first through various contemplations, but dispensed with the long silence and the long hearing, and at once admitted him to familiarity with his doctrines. The priors of the middle ages acted thus. When Count Guigo was admitted into the monastery of Cluny, the holy Abbot Hugo, knowing that he had been brought up delicately from a boy, and was accustomed to have only soft furs or silk next his skin, granted him a dispensation from wearing the usual coarse woollen vest; for he foresaw that he who was first in the secular warfare would no less desire to contend with the best in the spiritual, and so the event proved."§ St. Adalhard, in the ninth century, though the names of the brethren were inscribed in his heart, yet had always a certain number of them written on a tablet, which he held in his hand, that he might sedulously examine and study the manners of each, as thinking that he would have to answer for them in judgment. Therefore, knowing what was peculiarly expedient for each, he provided what was conductive to their salvation.|| Orderic Vitalis says of Theodoric the first abbot of Ouche, in the eleventh century, "he admitted men of different ages and degrees to conversion under the rule of the holy Father Benedict. He led humbly to follow a better life in the school of Christ, Goufroi, Rainaud, Foulques, and some other learned grammarians. He treated with goodness the old man Riculphe, and the country priest Roger, the gardener Durand, and some other simple disciples. He trained also to the art of reading well, singing and writing, and other useful works, proper for the servents of God, Herbert and Berenger, Goscelin and Rodulphe, Gislebert, Bernard * S. Pet. Ven. Epist. Lib. i. 28. Jamblich de Pyth. Vit. 19. S Bibliothec. Cuniacens. 459. + Ibid Vita S. Adalhardi Mab. Acta S. Ord. Ben. iv. 1. Richard, and Guillaume, and many other young men of good dispositions; in fine, many of the peasants seeing such zeal and sanctity, found also their salvation there."* St. Bernard advising Turstin, archbishop of York, to hold what he holds, and exhibit a monk in the episcopal dignity, adds, "that if some latent cause should compel him, or the Lord Pope indulge his desire of quiet, he advises him not to be deterred by reported asperity of food or clothing or poverty, provided he may pass where he can hope to find greater purity; and moreover that in houses of this kind souls are in such a manner consulted for, that according to age and weakness a fitting care of bodies is never denied."† St. Bernard furnishes a remarkable instance of the forbearance of monastic superiors in his own conduct towards Nicolaus, the notary, a cheat and impostor, who left the Cistercians under him, carrying off books and money; having frequently forged letters in his name, from having possession of his seal. St. Bernard says that he had long known the man, but had waited for his conversion or open declaration of treachery.‡ It was characteristic, however, of all monastic rules to imply a state of life from which no doubt men of the luxurious habits belonging to the modern civilization recoil with a kind of horror, as from an austerity which neither reason nor religion sanction; though a little consideration would lead any unprejudiced mind to a conclusion widely different from theirs, so clear is the truth observed by St. Augustin, that it "is eaiser for those who love God to retrench their cupidities than it is for those who love the world to satisfy them." "We are apt enough," says a late historian, "to ridicule the austere observances of some orders; yet we› may be assured that without such austerities monastic piety could not long subsist. Those who live on the luxuries of nature will receive the yoke of the passions."|| Having already alluded to the belief and practice of men in ages of faith in this respect, I shall now pass on hastily; only observing, by the way, that even the ancient philosophers practiced acts of self-denial to teach them patience and endurance, as Socrates was known to have done. Homer, as Cardan remarks, nakes his Ulysses not courageous, for he prefers Ajax to him; not strong or swift, for he makes Achilles superior to him; not rich, for he gives the first place to Priam; not powerful, for he subjects him to Agamemnon: but he ascribes to him the virtue of endurance.** Not alone with the mysterious depths of religion, but also with all that is great and heroic among men, was the austerity of the cloistral life in harmony and hence it was a popular saying of the middle ages, as we learn from Hugo of St. Victor, "That a soldier and a monk wear the same cloth."++ The mild and delicious graces of faith would never have been seen in the world, if there had not been also witnessed, as Hugo of St. Victor * Lib. iii. : + Epist. 319. Europe in Mid. Ages, vol. ii. + De Claustro Animæ, Lib. ii. 18. 1 |