The ultimate monastic ideal was the purification of the soul, but
when translated into definite, concrete terms, the immediate aim of the
monk was to live a life of poverty, celibacy and obedience. Riches,
marriage and self-will were regarded as forms of sinful gratification,
which every holy man should abandon. The true Christian, according to
monasticism, is poor, celibate and obedient. The three fundamental
monastic vows should therefore receive special consideration.
1. The Vow of Poverty. The monks of all countries held the
possession of riches to be a barrier to high spiritual attainments. In
view of the fact that an inordinate love of wealth has proved
disastrous to many nations, and that it is extremely difficult for a
rich man to escape the hardening, enervating and corrupting influences
of affluence, the position of the monks on this question is easily
understood. The Christian monks based their vow of poverty upon the
Bible, and especially upon the teachings of Christ, who, though he was
rich, yet for our sakes became poor. He said to the rich young man,
“Sell all that thou hast and give to the poor.” In commissioning the
disciples to preach the gospel He said: “Provide neither gold, nor
silver, nor brass in your purses; nor scrip for your journey, neither
two coats, nor shoes.” In the discourse on counting the cost of
discipleship, He said: “So therefore, whosoever he be of you that
renounceth not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.” He promised
rewards to “every one that left houses, or brethren, or sisters, or
father, or mother, or children, or lands for my name's sake.” “It is
easier,” He once said, “for a camel to go through a needle's eye than
for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.” He portrayed the pauper
Lazarus as participating in the joys of heaven, while the rich Dives
endured the torments of the lost. As reported in Luke, He said,
“Blessed are ye poor.” He Himself was without a place to lay His head,
a houseless wanderer upon the earth.
The apostle James cries to the men of wealth: “Go to now, ye rich
men, weep and howl, for your miseries that shall come upon you.” John
said: “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If
any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.”
Whatever these passages, and many others of like import, may
signify, it is not at all strange that Christians, living in times when
wealth was abused, and when critical Biblical scholarship was unknown,
should have understood Christ to command a life of poverty as an
indispensable condition of true holiness.
There are three ways of interpreting Christ's doctrine of wealth.
First, it may be held that Jesus intended His teachings to be literally
obeyed, not only by His first disciples but by all His followers in
subsequent years, and that such literal obedience is practicable,
reasonable and conducive to the highest well-being of society.
Secondly, it has been said that Jesus was a gentle and honest
visionary, who erroneously believed that the possession of riches
rendered religious progress impossible, but that strict compliance with
His commands would be destructive of civilization. Laveleye declares
that “if Christianity were taught and understood conformably to the
spirit of its Founder, the existing social organism could not last a
day.” Thirdly, neither of these views seems to do justice to the spirit
of Christ, for they fail to give proper recognition to many other
injunctions of the Master and to many significant incidents in his
public ministry. Exhaustive treatment of this subject is, of course,
impossible here. Briefly it may be remarked, that Jesus looked upon
wealth as tending oftentimes to foster an unsocial spirit. Rich men are
liable to become enemies of the brotherhood Jesus sought to establish,
by reason of their covetousness and contracted sympathies. The rich man
is in danger of erecting false standards of manhood, of ignoring the
highest interests of the soul by an undue emphasis on the material.
Wealth, in itself, is not an evil, but it is only a good when it is
used to advance the real welfare of humanity. Jesus was not intent upon
teaching economics. His purpose was to develop the man. It was the
moral value and spiritual influence of material things that concerned
him. Professor Shailer Mathews admirably states the true attitude of
Jesus towards rich men: “Jesus was a friend neither of the working man
nor the rich man as such. He calls the poor man to sacrifice as well as
the rich man. He was the Son of Man, not the son of a class of men. But
His denunciation is unsparing of those men who make wealth at the
expense of souls; who find in capital no incentive to further
fraternity; who endeavor so to use wealth as to make themselves
independent of social obligations, and to grow fat with that which
should be shared with society;—for those men who are gaining the world
but are letting their neighbors fall among thieves and Lazarus rot
among their dogs.”
Jesus was therefore not a foe to rich men as such, but to that
antisocial, abnormal regard for wealth and its procurements, which
leads to the creation of class distinctions and impedes the full and
free development of our common humanity along the lines of brotherly
love and cooeperation. A Christian may consistently be a rich man,
provided he uses his wealth in furthering the true interests of
society, and realizes, as respects his own person, that “a man's life
consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth.” The
error of monasticism consists in making poverty a virtue and an
essential condition of the highest holiness. It is true that some
callings preclude the prospect of fortune. The average clergyman cannot
hope to amass wealth. The resident of a social settlement may possess
capacities that would win success in business, but he must forego
financial prospects if he expects to live and labor among the poor. In
so far as the monks deliberately turned their backs on the material
rewards of human endeavors that they might be free to devote themselves
to the service of humanity, their vow of poverty was creditable and
reasonable. But they erred when they exalted poverty as of itself
commending them in a peculiar degree to the mercy of God.
2. The Vow of Celibacy. “The moral merit of celibacy,” says Allen,
“was harder to make out of the Scripture, doubtless, since family life
is both at the foundation of civil society and the source of all the
common virtues.” The monks held that Christ and Paul both taught and
practiced celibacy. In the early and middle ages celibacy was looked
upon by all churchmen as in itself a virtue. The prevailing modern idea
is that marriage is a holy institution, in no sense inferior in
sacredness to any ecclesiastical order of life. He who antagonizes it
plays into the hands of the foes to social purity and individual
virtue.
The ideas of Jerome, Ambrose, and all the early Fathers, respecting
marriage, are still held by many ecclesiastics. One of them, in
defending the celibacy of existing religious orders, says: “Celibacy is
enjoined on these religious orders as a means to greater
sanctification, greater usefulness, greater absorption in things
spiritual, and to facilitate readier withdrawal from things earthly.”
He gives two reasons for the celibacy of the priesthood, which are all
the more interesting because they substantially represent the opinions
held by the Christian monks in all ages: First, “That the service of
the priest to God may be undivided and unrestrained.” In support of
this, he quotes I. Cor., 7: 32, 33, which reads: “But I would have you
free from cares. He that is unmarried is careful for the things of the
Lord, how he may please the Lord: but he that is married is careful for
the things of the world, how he may please his wife.” And secondly,
“Celibacy,” according to Trent, “is more blessed than marriage.” He
also quotes the words of Christ that there are “eunuchs for the kingdom
of heaven's sake.” He then adds: “It is desirable that those called to
the ministry of the altar espouse a life of continence because holier
and more angelic.”
It is generally admitted that the vow of celibacy was not demanded
of the clergy in primitive Christian times. It was only after many
years of bitter debate and in response to the growing influence of the
monastic ideal, that celibacy finally came to be looked upon as the
highest form of Christian virtue, and was enforced upon the clergy. As
in the case of the vow of poverty, there certainly can be no reasonable
objection to the individual adoption of celibacy, if one is either
disinclined to marriage or feels that he can do better work unmarried.
But neither Scripture nor reason justifies the imposition of celibacy
upon any man, nor the view that a life of continence is holier than
marriage. It may be reverently said that God would be making an
unreasonable demand upon mankind, if the holiness He requires
conflicted with the proper satisfaction of those impulses He himself
has deeply implanted in human nature.
3. The Vow of Obedience. The monks were required to render absolute
obedience to the will of their superiors, as the representatives of
God. Dom Guigo, in his rules for the Carthusian Order, declares:
“Moreover, if the Prior commands one of his religious to take more
food, or to sleep for a longer time, in fact, whatever command may be
given us by our Superior, we are not allowed to disobey, lest we should
disobey God also, who commands us by the mouth of our Superior. All our
practices of mortification and devotion would be fruitless and of no
value, without this one virtue of obedience, which alone can make them
acceptable to God.”
Thus a strict and uncomplaining obedience, not to the laws of God as
interpreted by the individual conscience, but to the judgment and will
of a brother man, was demanded of the monks.
“Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs but to do and die.”
They were often severely beaten or imprisoned and sometimes
mutilated for acts of disobedience. While the monks, especially the
Friars and Jesuits, carried this principle of obedience to great
extremes, yet in the barbarous ages its enforcement was sadly needed.
Law and order were words which the untamed Goth could not comprehend.
He had to be taught habits of obedience, a respect for the rights of
others, and a proper appreciation of his duty to society for the common
good. But while, at the beginning, the monastic vow of obedience helped
to inculcate these desirable lessons, and vastly modified the ferocity
of unchecked individualism, it tended, in the course of time, to
generate a servile humility fatal to the largest and freest personal
development. In the interests of passive obedience, it suppressed
freedom of thought and action. Obedience became mechanical and
unreasoning. The consequence was that the passion for individual
liberty was unduly restrained, and the extravagant claims of political
and ecclesiastical tyrants were greatly strengthened.
Such was the monastic ideal and such were some of the means employed
to realize it. The ascetic spirit manifests itself in a great variety
of ways, but all these visible and changing externals have one common
source. “To cherish the religious principle,” says William E.
Channing,” some have warred against their social affections, and have
led solitary lives; some against their senses, and have abjured all
pleasure in asceticism; some against reason, and have superstitiously
feared to think; some against imagination, and have foolishly dreaded
to read poetry or books of fiction; some against the political and
patriotic principles, and have shrunk from public affairs,—all
apprehending that if they were to give free range to their natural
emotions their religious life would be chilled or extinguished.”
“We read history,” said Wendell Phillips, “not through our eyes but through our prejudices.” Yet if it were possible entirely to lay aside one's prepossessions respecting monastic history, it would still be no easy task to estimate the influences of the monks upon human life.
In every field of thought and activity monasticism wrought good and evil. Education, industry, government and religion have been both furthered and hindered by the monks. What Francis Parkman said of the Roman Catholic Church is true of the monastic institution: “Clearly she is of earth, not of heaven; and her transcendently dramatic life is a type of the good and ill, the baseness and nobleness, the foulness and purity, the love and hate, the pride, passion, truth, falsehood, fierceness, and tenderness, that battle in the restless heart of man.”
A careful and sympathetic survey of monastic history compels the conclusion that monasticism, while not uniformly a blessing to the world, was not an unmitigated evil. The system presents one long series of perplexities and contradictions. One historian shuts his eyes to its pernicious effects, or at least pardons its transgressions, on the ground that perfection in man or in institutions is unattainable. Another condemns the whole system, believing that the sum of its evils far outweighs whatever benefits it may have conferred upon mankind. Schaff cuts the Gordian knot, maintaining that the contradiction is easily solved on the theory that it was not monasticism, as such, which has proved a blessing to the Church and the world. “It was Christianity in monasticism,” he says, “which has done all the good, and used this abnormal mode of life as a means of carrying forward its mission of love and peace.”
To illustrate the diversities of opinion on this subject, and incidentally to show how difficult it is to present a well-balanced, symmetrically fair and just estimate of the monastic institution as a whole, contrast the opinions of four celebrated men. Pius IX. refers to the, monks as “those chosen phalanxes of the army of Christ which have always been the bulwark and ornament of the Christian republic as well as of civil society.” But then he was the Pope of Rome, the Arch-prelate of the Church. “Monk,” fiercely demands Voltaire, “Monk, what is that profession of thine? It is that of having none, of engaging one's self by an inviolable oath to be a fool and a slave, and to live at the expense of others.” But he was the philosophical skeptic of Paris. “Where is the town,” cries Montalembert, “which has not been founded or enriched or protected by some religious community? Where is the church which owes not to them a patron, a relic, a pious and popular tradition? Wherever there is a luxuriant forest, a pure stream, a majestic hill, we may be sure that religion has left there her stamp by the hand of the monk.” But this was Montalembert, the Roman Catholic historian, and the avowed champion of the monks. “A cruel, unfeeling temper,” writes Gibbon, “has distinguished the monks of every age and country; their stern indifference, which is seldom mollified by personal friendship, is inflamed by religious hatred; and their merciless zeal has strenuously administered the holy office of the Inquisition.” But this was Gibbon, the hater of everything monastic. Between these extreme views lies a wide field upon which many a deathless duel has been fought by the writers of monastic history.
The variety of judgments respecting the nature and effects of monasticism is partly due to the diversity in the facts of its history. Monasticism was the friend and the foe of true religion. It was the inspiration of virtue and the encouragement of vice. It was the patron of industry and the promoter of idleness. It was a pioneer in education and the teacher of superstition. It was the disburser of alms and a many-handed robber. It was the friend of human liberty and the abettor of tyranny. It was the champion of the common people and the defender of class privileges. It was, in short, everything that man was and is, so varied were its operations, so complex was its influence, so comprehensive was its life.
Of some things we may be certain. Any religious institution or ideal of life that has survived the changes of twelve centuries, and that has enlisted the enthusiastic services and warmest sympathies of numerous men and women who have been honorably distinguished for their intellectual attainments and moral character, must have possessed elements of truth and moral worth. A contemptuous treatment of monasticism implies either an ignorance of its real history or a wilful disregard of the deep significance of its commendable features.
It is also certain that while the methods of monasticism, judged by their effects upon the individual and upon society, may be justly censured, it is beyond question that many monks, groping their way toward the light in an age of ignorance and superstition, were inspired by the purest motives. “Conscience,” observes Waddington, “however misguided, cannot be despised by a reflecting mind. When it leads one to self-sacrifice and moral fortitude we cannot but admire his spirit, while we condemn his sagacity and method.”