No institution has contributed as much to the amelioration of human
misery or struggled as patiently and persistently to influence society
for good as the Christian church. In spite of all that may be said
against the followers of the Cross, it still remains true, that they
have ever been foremost in the establishment of peace and justice among
men.
The problem that confronted the church when Benedict began his
labors, was no less than that of reducing a demoralized and brutal
society to law and order. Chaos reigned, selfishness and lust ruled the
hearts of Rome's conquerors. The West was desolated by barbarians; the
East dismembered and worn out by theological controversy. War had
ruined the commerce of the cities and laid waste the rural districts.
Vast swamps and tracts of brush covered fields once beautiful with the
products of agricultural labor. The minds of men were distracted by
apprehensions of some frightful, impending calamity. The cultured
Roman, the untutored Goth and the corrupted Christian were locked in
the deadly embrace of despair. “Constantly did society attempt to form
itself,” says Guizot, “constantly was it destroyed by the act of man,
by the absence of the moral conditions under which alone it can exist.”
But notwithstanding failures and discouragements, the work of
reconstructing society moved painfully on, and among the brave master
builders was Benedict of Nursia. “He found the world, physical and
social, in ruins,” says Cardinal Newman, “and his mission was to
restore it in the way,—not of science, but of nature; not as if
setting about to do it; not professing to do it by any set time, or by
any series of strokes; but so quietly, patiently, gradually, that often
till the work was done, it was not known to be doing. It was a
restoration rather than a visitation, correction or conversion. The new
world he helped to create was a growth rather than a structure.”
But the chaos created by the irruption of the barbarous nations at
this period seriously affected the moral character and influence of the
clergy and the monks. The church seemed unequal to the stupendous
undertaking of converting the barbarians. The monks, as a class, were
lawless and vicious. Benedict himself testifies against them, and
declares that they were “always wandering and never stable; that they
obey their own appetites, whereunto they are enslaved.” Unable to
control their own desires by any law whatsoever, they were unfitted to
the task before them. It was imperative, then, that unity and order
should be introduced among the monasteries; that some sort of a uniform
rule, adapted to the existing conditions, should be adopted, not only
for the preservation of the monastic institution, but for the
preparation of the monks for their work. Therefore, although the
Christianity of that time was far from ideal, it was, nevertheless, a
religion within the grasp of the reckless barbarians; and subsequent
events prove that it possessed a moral power capable of humanizing
manners, elevating the intellect, and checking the violent temper of
the age.
Excepting always the religious services of the Benedictine monks,
their greatest contribution to civilization was literary and
educational[E]. The rules of Benedict provided for two hours a day of
reading, and it was doubtless this wise regulation that stimulated
literary tastes, and resulted in the collecting of books and the
reproduction of manuscripts. “Wherever a Benedictine house arose, or a
monastery of any one of the Orders, which were but offshoots from the
Benedictine tree, books were multiplied and a library came into
existence, small indeed at first, but increasing year by year, till the
wealthier houses had gathered together collections of books that would
do credit to a modern university.” There was great danger that the
remains of classic literature might be destroyed in the general
devastation of Italy. The monasteries rescued the literary fragments
that escaped, and preserved them. “For a period of more than six
centuries the safety of the literary heritage of Europe,—one may say
of the world,—depended upon the scribes of a few dozen scattered
monasteries.”
[Footnote E: Appendix, Note E.]
The literary services of the earlier monks did not consist in
original production, but in the reproduction and preservation of the
classics. This work was first begun as a part of the prescribed routine
of European monastic life in the monastery at Vivaria, or Viviers,
France, which was founded by Cassiodorus about 539. The rules of this
cloister were based on those of Cassian, who died in the early part of
the fifth century. Benedict, at Monte Cassino, followed the example of
Cassiodorus, and the Benedictine Order carried the work on for the
seven succeeding centuries.
Cassiodorus was a statesman of no mean ability, and for over forty
years was active in the political circles of his time, holding high
official positions under five different Roman rulers. He was also an
exceptional scholar, devoting much of his energy to the preservation of
classic literature. His magnificent collection of manuscripts, rescued
from the ruins of Italian libraries, “supplied material for the pens of
thousands of monastic scribes.” If we leave out Jerome, it is to
Cassiodorus that the honor is due for joining learning and monasticism.
“Thus,” remarks Schaff, “that very mode of life, which, in its
founder, Anthony, despised all learning, became in the course of its
development an asylum of culture in the rough and stormy times of the
migration and the crusades, and a conservator of the literary treasures
of antiquity for the use of modern times.”
Cassiodorus, with a noble enthusiasm, inspired his monks to their
task. He even provided lamps of ingenious construction, that seem to
have been self-trimming, to aid them in their work. He himself set an
example of literary diligence, astonishing in one of his age.
Putnam is justified in his praises of this remarkable character when
he declares: “It is not too much to say that the continuity of thought
and civilization of the ancient world with that of the middle ages was
due, more than to any other one man, to the life and labors of
Cassiodorus.”
But the monk was more than a scribe and a collector of books, he
became the chronicler and the school-teacher. “The records that have
come down to us of several centuries of medieval European history are
due almost exclusively to the labors of the monastic chroniclers.” A
vast fund of information, the value of which is impaired, it is true,
by much useless stuff, concerning medieval customs, laws and events,
was collected by these unscientific historians and is now accessible to
the student.
At the end of the ninth century nearly all the monasteries of Europe
conducted schools open to the children of the neighborhood. The
character of the educational training of the times is not to be judged
by modern standards. A beginning had to be made, and that too at a time
“when neither local nor national governments had assumed any
responsibilities in connection with elementary education, and when the
municipalities were too ignorant, and in many cases too poor, to make
provision for the education of the children.” It is therefore to the
lasting credit of Benedict, inspired no doubt by the example of
Cassiodorus, that he commanded his monks to read, encouraged literary
work, and made provision for the education of the young.
The Benedictines rendered a great social service in reclaiming
deserted regions and in clearing forests. “The monasteries,” says
Maitland, “were, in those days of misrule and turbulence, beyond all
price, not only as places where (it may be imperfectly, but better than
elsewhere) God was worshipped,... but as central points whence
agriculture was to spread over bleak hills and barren downs and marshy
plains, and deal its bread to millions perishing with hunger and its
pestilential train.” Roman taxation and barbarian invasions had ruined
the farmers, who left their lands and fled to swell the numbers of the
homeless. The monk repeopled these abandoned but once fertile fields,
and carried civilization still deeper into the forests. Many a
monastery with its surrounding buildings became the nucleus of a modern
city. The more awful the darkness of the forest solitudes, the more the
monks loved it. They cut down trees in the heart of the wilderness, and
transformed a soil bristling with woods and thickets into rich pastures
and ploughed fields. They stimulated the peasantry to labor, and taught
them many useful lessons in agriculture. Thus, they became an
industrial, as well as a spiritual, agency for good.
The habits of the monks brought them into close contact with nature.
Even the animals became their friends. Numerous stories have been
related of their wonderful power over wild beasts and their
conversations with the birds. “It is wonderful,” says Bede, “that he
who faithfully and loyally obeys the Creator of the universe, should,
in his turn, see all the creatures obedient to his orders and his
wishes.” They lived, so we are told, in the most intimate relations
with the animal creation. Squirrels leaped to their hands or hid in the
folds of their cowls. Stags came out of the forests in Ireland and
offered themselves to some monks who were ploughing, to replace the
oxen carried off by the hunters. Wild animals stopped in their pursuit
of game at the command of St. Laumer. Birds ceased singing at the
request of some monks until they had chanted their evening prayer, and
at their word the feathered songsters resumed their music. A swan was
the daily companion of St. Hugh of Lincoln, and manifested its
miraculous knowledge of his approaching death by the most profound
melancholy. While all the details of such stories are not to be
accepted as literally true, no doubt some of this poetry of monastic
history rests upon interesting and charming facts.
A fuller discussion of the permanent contributions which the monk
made to civilization is reserved for the last chapter. I have somewhat
anticipated a closer scrutiny of his achievements in order to present a
clearer view of his life and labors. His religious duties were,
perhaps, wearisome enough. We might tire of his monotonous chanting and
incessant vigils, but it is gratifying to know that he also engaged in
practical and useful employments. The convent became the house of
industry as well as the temple of prayer. The forest glades echoed to
the stroke of the axe as well as to hymns of praise. Yes, as Carlyle
writes of the twelfth century, “these years were no chimerical vacuity
and dreamland peopled with mere vaporous phantasms, but a green solid
place, that grew corn and several other things. The sun shone on it,
the vicissitudes of seasons and human fortunes. Cloth was woven and
worn; ditches were dug, furrowed fields ploughed and houses built.”