the beauty of Absalom, the strength of Samson, the wealth of Croesus, the power of Augustus, what would it all avail you, when your flesh would be consigned to worms, and your soul to demons ?" soul to demons?" As when they tell men to address themselves in the words of Peter de Roya, who says, "O Peter, the things in which you delight are of the world. There will be a time when they will not be, but you will be."* And as when they entreat them to conclude with St. Augustin, "terrena calcare, cœlestia sitire." Which do you wish, they ask with him another time, to love temporal things, and to pass with them, or to love Christ, and with him to live for ever? But can I not love him in the world? some will say, to whom the monk replies as the spirit did to Dante, heaving forth a deep and audible sigh, "brother the world is blind, and thou in truth com'st from it." "It is true," as Richard of St. Victor says, "that in the sterile and arid desert of the world, the devout soul, while it labors for true joy, can fructify this barren soil, and bring forth even there something that will remain."+ But esteem not yourself to be of such perfection that you can associate with those who keep in the broad, while you walk in the narrow way." Then turning to depict the vanity of the former, they appeal to the calamities of life, and say to the sufferer, "thou most beauteous inn, why should hard-favor'd grief be lodged in thee? Et nunc quid tibi vis in via Ægypti, ut bibas aquam turbidam? et quid tibi cum via Assyriorum, ut bibas aquam fluminis ?" If it were ever so delightful, as St. Bernard says, "the world passes, et relinquere magis expedit quam relinqui." Of the rapid and imperceptible flight of time, even poets of the world, they add, remind you, when like Guillaume de Lorris, the Ennius of France, they remark, how, in a moment, three times are already past, which made the Gentile say, "Le tems que s'en va nuit et jour τα θνητα δ' οι νυν πρωτον ἡγουμαι σκιαν, "The world is called a desert," says Richard of St. Victor, "either because it is deserted and despised, or because it deserts and fails in itself. For daily with time pass the joys of time, and as many joys of days as days pass away and fail. The world, therefore, is always losing joy, and consequently the soul perfectly despiseth such fleeting joy, and endeavors to ascend by the desert to true and eternal joy."|| * S. Bern. Epist. 441. † Purg. xvi. In Cantic. Cant In Cantica C Eurip. Medea, 1223. They conclude with moving exhortations such as these of St. Jerome, “my friend, what is it that still retains you in the world? You, whose fine soul is not made for the world, how long will you bury yourself in these perishing habitations? How long will you remain prisoner in these cities, the worthy abodes of human vanity? Trust me, come and join your friend." Come after Come after me, and to their babblings leave the crowd. "Ah, be persuaded by me," says Petrus Cellensis," to leave the world of sorrow. The tumult will never cease until we be cast upon the shore like foam. Let thy mercy, O Lord, be upon us! What avails the ambition of honor, the delight of the flesh, the visitings of friends and relations, the offerings of subjects? Is not the soul chained down by these, so that it cannot fly away and find celestial bliss? We must either conquer these or be conquered by them. O human heart, why do you fear? why do you fly? There is nothing hard or bitter here, but a little bark and surface. The substance is sweetness and peace. O human heart, why fear to be called back? Why tremble to be repaired? You are willing and unwilling. O heart! wanting fervor, why do you not hasten to the Lord of hearts? Why do you collect all things but yourself?* After all, however, as St. Bernard says, "the conversion of souls was the work not of a human, but of a divine voice, for the hearing which no labor was necessary; since the labor wanting was rather to deafen the ears, that they might not hear it."t Goërres has devoted one portion of his great work to a treatise on the call of men in the middle ages to a monastic life, of which we shall presently relate instances. I shall take care not to involve myself in the mysterious depths of this subject, by inquiring how this call was made, and whether the result was spontaneous,— the fruit of that consideration to which the poet ascribes the expulsion of what offends, or, involuntary, the consequence of those peculiar graces which St. Augustin says God gives, without being excited by any previous disposition on our part. In either case, that Angel whose name expresses cure of God, and he who, according to St. Thomas, is the breath of the spirit of the Saviour which is to kill. Anti-Christ, contributed to the work, assisted doubtless by those who dissipate the darkness of spirits, who have received from God the charge of guarding men, who have joy on the conversion of sinners, who led Lot from the midst of the rereprobate, and who hereafter will make the final separation between the just and the unjust. The visible causes which led men to enter monasteries were many and various. As Cæsar of Heisterbach observes, "Conversion sometimes precedes and sometimes follows contrition." "For some," he adds, " are led from the first by the sole vocation of God, of whom Petrus Sutorus, the Carthusian, says, "Sunt qui blanditiis, sunt qui terrore vocantur : Et tamen hos omnes spiritus unus agit. Lib. 2. Epist. 12. De Conversione, 1. 2. Illust. Mir. Lib. ii. 1. Blanditiis Simon, flammis et fulgore Paulus, Qui fuit ex acri fulmine pulsus equo."* Whereas many who end well begin through an unworthy motive; for "others," says Cæsarius, "enter monasteries by the instinct of the malignant spirit, as those who come to steal, or to entice away some brother. Some are moved by a certain levity of mind; many by the ministry of others, that is, by the word of exhortation, the virtue of prayer, and the force of example. Necessity draws innumerable; as for instance, sickness, when men recover after a vow; poverty, when they seek a retreat; captivity, shame at others' faults, danger, fear, the prospect of doom hereafter, or the desire of the celestial country," all which he illustrates by examples. Then as to the form of conversion: "Some," he says, "come with pomp and troops of friends, others alone with humility. A knight named Walevanus came to Hemerode, entered the cloister on horseback, armed cap-a-pie, and, as our seniors, who were present, related to me, going up through the middle of the choir, in presence of all the wondering brethren, offered himself before the altar, placed his arms upon it, and then demanded the habit. Afterwards, through humility, he became a lay brother. Abbot Philip of Otterburg, on the contrary, being of noble parents, chose a different mode, as a canon of Utrecht who was present told me. Being converted at Paris during his studies, he left the school secretly, and being handsomely dressed, as became a youth of his condition, he changed clothes with a poor scholar whom he met on the way. On arriving at the abbey of Bonavallis, he applied for admission, but the brethren seeing his worn cap and old clothes, esteemed him one of the wandering scholars, and were very near rejecting him." Many clerks who come to monasteries follow this latter mode, and pretend through humility to be laics, and ask permission to tend the flocks.$ Certainly put what construction one will upon the motives, it is a wonderful page in the history of mankind which records the conversions of men to a monastic state during the ages of faith. Let us in the first place only observe who were the men. To such a question Valentio, a Benedictine monk, is represented answering thus: "To fashion my reply to your demand Is not to boast, though I proclaim the honors Of our profession: Four emperors, Forty-six kings, and one and fifty queens, Have changed their royal ermines for our sables; These cowls have clothed the heads of fourteen hundred And six kings' sons; of dukes, great marquises, And earls, two thousand and above four hundred * De Vita Carthus. ii. iii. 7. +Illust. Mir. Lib. i. 5. Illust. Mir. Lib. i. c. 38. § Id. i.. 39. An humble coronet of hair, left by "Dimisit comam capitis," says an ancient author of one who underwent this transformation, "et invenit coronam gloriæ reliquit vestimenta sæcularia, et suscepit stolam candidam; reliquit pompam hujus mundi, et indutus est loricam fidei." In the middle ages therefore it surprised no one on visiting a monastery to find a king among the hooded heads. In the abbey of St. Medard at Soissons, the kings Eude and Raoul were abbots. In a cloister of Armagh in the eighth century might be found Flaithhertach, an Irish king, who after a prosperous and peaceful reign of seven years, abdictated the crown, and spent the remainder of his life in monastic seclusion. In the monastery of Iona might be found his successor Nial II., brother of Hugh Allan IV., who in 734, after a happy reign of similar duration retired to the same religious peace. Many Irish abbeys beheld examples of this kind; and soon after the conversion of England, the AngloSaxon history mentions the names of more than thirty persons of both sexes, who left their thrones to consecrate themselves to God, in the solitude of a cloister. “Whatever may have been the circumstances of their time to facilitate such a * measure, it cannot be denied," says the count of Stolberg, "but that such a resolution in persons of that rank proves a deep sentiment of the vanity of greatness and terrestrial pleasure,—a serious meditation on what is visible and on what is invisible, on what is perishable and on what is eternal." In the abbey of Mount-Cassino might have been found St. Carloman, eldest son of Charles Martel, and the uncle of Charlemagne, to whom by his father's testament had fallen Austria, Suabia, and Thuringia, all which he resigned to his son Drogo; in the height of prosperity bidding adieu to the world in 785, resigning his dignity, leaving the guardianship of his children to Pepin, and retiring first to the monastery on Mount Soracte, where, being too much regarded on account of his contempt of royal majesty, he feared vain glory. So he fled thence by night with one companion, and repaired to this abbey. He applied at the gate in the usual manner, asking to speak with the abbot, and offering himself as a poor Frank, who sought to do penance for homicide. As such he was received, and here he remained long unknown, becoming the king of obedience and humility; so that he was appointed to tend a few sheep, which he used to lead forth to pasture and back again, having on one occasion to defend them from robbers. Here he died in odor of sanctity.S In the same monastery might be found Rachiz, king of the Longobards. After sparing Perugia at the prayer of Pope Zacharias, he was converted by him at Rome to a religious life, with his wife Tasia, and his daughter Rattruda. Here he became a monk; and there is a vineyard which is planted 1 * Shirley, The Grateful Servant. Annalista Saxo ap. Eccard. Corp. Hist. Med. Evi, i. + Life of Alfred, chap. iii. Chronic. S. Mon. Casin. c. vii. * near the monastery, that is called after him to this day. To the abbey of Prum came the Emperor Lothaire, son of Louis-le-Débounaire, where, after making the world tremble by his arms, he made the sacrifice of himself to God, by taking the habit; and in that house he died, where Dom Martene saw his tomb in the middle of the choir. What an impressive comment on the same lesson is furnished by a walk under the doge's palace at Venice, from which so many of those great princes passed to the tranquillity of a cloister. Of the great Urseolus we shall soon speak more fully; but besides him, observe how many took the same road to peace. Ursus Badoarius II. created in 912, a most holy duke, after twenty years' reign, put on the monastic habit in the monastery of St. Felix in Amiano, where he died in odor of sanctity. Vitalis Candianus, created in 978, put on the monastic habit. Tribunus Memius, created in 979, became a Benedictine monk. Otho Urseolus, created in 1009, fled into Greece, where he wished to become a monk. Olius Malipetrus, created in 1179, the conqueror, of Ptolomaide, who vanquished Saladin, after fourteen years of glorious dominion became a monk. Petro Ziani, created in 1205, after twenty-two years of glory, exchanged the ducal dignity for the habit of St. Benedict. Such names alone impose silence; but what would be the impression if we had before us their portraits, like that by Bellini of the Doge Leonard Loredano, whose eye of fire piercing from a bony orbit, does not overcome the expression of an imperturbable religious calm? Let us hear the monastic chroniclers. "In this monastery of Villiers," says its historian, "were many convertites, noble men, who came there to perfect their conversion. There were here, Gobert, count of Asperimont, Henry de Birbac, William de Donglebiert, and Oliver, of the noble house of Sombreffe. There were also here many famous knights, who having renounced the temporal for the celestial chivalry, now clothed their limbs in the monastic habit. Franc d'Exkenna, chatelain of Montigni, the lord of Bohenem, the lords Gerard de Greis, Henry de Brein, John de Salench, John de Roist, and Walter de Riklam. These four last knights assumed the habit of convertites. Theobald, Chatellain de Courtray, and lately a bold knight, became a monk, and at the same time another renowned son of chivalry, Franc de Lachem, a convertite."+"This year, 871," says another, "Eccericus from a knight is made our brother and obedient son, formerly a wild man, ferus homo." Such is the notice of his conversion in the annals of Corby in Saxony.§ The origin of the foundation of Hulne Abbey in Northumberland, the first of Carmelite friars in these kingdoms, presents another instance; for among the British barons who went to the holy war in the reign of King Henry III. were William de Vesey lord of Alnwick, and Richard Gray, who on visiting Mount * Id. c. 8. + Thesaurus Antiq. It. tom. v. Hist. Monast. Villariens. Lib. ii. Prolog. ap. Martene, Thes. Anec. iii. § Ap. Leibnitz, Script. Bruns. ii. |