Causes of Variations in Monasticism

     
     
      Prominent among the causes producing variations in the monastic type was the influence of climatic conditions and race characteristics.
      The monasticism as well as the religion of the East has always differed from the monasticism and the religion of the West. The Eastern mind is mystical, dreamy, contemplative; the Western mind loves activity, is intensely practical. Representatives of the Eastern faiths in the recent Parliament of Religions accused the West of materialism, of loving the body more than the soul. They affected to despise all material prosperity, and gloried in their assumed superiority, on account of their love for religious contemplation. This radical difference between the races of the East and West is clearly seen in the monastic institution. Benedict embodied in his rules the spirit and active life of the West, and hence, the monastic system, then in danger of dying, or stagnating, revived and spread all over Europe. Again, the hermit life was ill-adapted to the West. Men could not live out of doors in Europe and subsist on small quantities of food as in Egypt. The rigors of the climate in Europe demanded an adaptation to new conditions.
      But aside from the differences between Eastern and Western monasticism, the Christian institution passed through a variety of changes. The growth of monasticism from the hermit stage to the cloistral life has already been described. To what shall the development of the community system be attributed? No religious institution can remain stationary, unaffected by the changing conditions of the society in which it exists. The progress of the intellect, and the development of social, political and industrial conditions, effect great transformations in religious organizations.
      The monastic institution grew up amid the radical changes of European society. In its early days it witnessed the invasion of the barbarians, which swept away old political divisions and destroyed many of the heritages of an ancient civilization. Then the process of reconstruction slowly began. New states were forming; nations were crystallizing. The barbarian was to lay the foundations of great cities and organize powerful commonwealths out of wild but victorious tribes. The monk could not remain in hiding. He was brother to the roving warrior. The blood in his veins was too active to permit him to stand still amid the mighty whirl of events. Without entirely abandoning his cloistral life, he became a zealous missionary of the church among the barbarians, a patron of letters and of agriculture, in short a stirring participant in the work of civilization.
      Next came the crusades. Jerusalem was to be captured for Christ and the church. The monk then appeared as a crusade-preacher, a warrior on the battle-field, or a nurse in the military hospital.
      The rise of feudalism likewise wrought a change in the spirit and position of the monks. The feudal lord was master of his vassals. “The genius of feudalism,” says Allen, “was a spirit of uncontrolled independence.” So the abbot became a feudal lord with immense possessions and powers. He was no longer the obscure, spiritual father of a little family of monks, but a temporal lord also, an aristocrat, ruling wide territories, and dwelling in a monastery little different from the castle of the knight and often exceeding it in splendor. With wealth came ease, and hard upon the heels of ease came laziness, arrogance, corruption.
      Then followed the marvelous intellectual awakening, the moral revival, the discoveries and inventions of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The human mind at last had aroused itself from a long repose, or turned from a profitless activity into broad and fruitful fields. The corruption of the monasteries meant the laxity of vows, the cessation of ministration to the poor and the sick. Then arose the tender and loving Francis, with his call to poverty and to service. The independent exercise of the intellect gave birth to heresies, but the Dominicans appeared to preach them down.
      The growth of the secular spirit and the progress of the new learning were too much for the old monasticism. The monk had to adapt himself to a new age, an age that is impatient of mere contemplation, that spurns the rags of the begging friar and rebels against the fierce intolerance of the Dominican preaching. So, lastly, came the suave, determined, practical, cultured Jesuit, ready to comply, at least outwardly, with all the requirements of modern times. Does the new age reject monastic seclusion? Very well, the Jesuit throws off his monastic garb and forsakes his cloister, to take his place among men. Are the ignorance and the filth of the begging friars offensive? The Jesuit is cultured, affable and spotlessly clean. Does the new age demand liberty? “Liberty,” cries the Jesuit, “is the divine prerogative, colossal in proportion, springing straight from the broad basin of the soul's essence!”
      Such in its merest outlines is the story of the development of the monastic type and its causes.