The withdrawal of a considerable number of men of character and
talent from the exercise of civic duties is injurious to the state. The
burdens upon those who remain become heavier, while society is deprived
of the moral influence of those who forsake their civic
responsibilities. When the monk, from the outside as it were, attempted
to exert an influence for good, he largely failed. His ideals of life
were not formulated in a real world, but in an artificial, antisocial
environment. He was unable to appreciate the political needs of men. He
could not enter sympathetically into their serious employments or
innocent delights. Controlled by superstition, and exalting a servile
obedience to human authority, he became a very unsafe guide in
political affairs. He could not consistently labor for secular
progress, because he had forsaken a world in which secular interests
were prominent.
It may be true that in the early days of monasticism the monks
pursued the proper course in refusing to become Roman patriots. No
human power could have averted the ruin which overtook that corrupt
world. Perhaps their non-combatant attitude gave them more influence
with the conquerors of Rome, who were to become the founders of modern
nations.
In later years, the abbots of the principal monasteries occupied
seats in the legislative assemblies of Germany, Hungary, Spain,
England, Italy, and France. In many instances they stood between the
violence of the nobles and the unprotected vassal. Political monks,
inspired by a natural breadth of vision and a love of humanity, secured
the passage of wise and humane regulations. Palgrave says: “The mitre
has resisted many blows which would have broken the helmet, and the
crosier has kept more foes in awe than the lance. It is, then, to these
prelates that we chiefly owe the maintenance of the form and spirit of
free government, secured to us, not by force, but by law; and the altar
has thus been the corner-stone of our ancient constitution.”
Although there is much truth in the foregoing observation, yet on
the other hand, when the influence of the monastic ideal upon
civilization is studied in its deeper aspects, it cannot be justly
maintained that the final effects of monasticism minister to the
development of a normal civilization. Industrial, mental and moral
progress depend upon a certain breadth of mind and energy of soul.
Asceticism saps the vitality of human nature and confines the activity
of the mind within artificial limits. “Hence the dreary, sterile
torpor,” says Lecky, “that characterized those ages in which the
ascetic principle has been supreme, while the civilizations which have
attained the highest perfection have been those of ancient Greece and
modern Europe, which were most opposed to it.”
The monks did not hesitate to become embroiled in military quarrels,
or to incite the fiercer passions of men when it suited their purpose.
Their opposition to kings and princes was often not based on a love of
popular freedom, but on an indisposition to share power with secular
rulers. The legislative enactments against heretics, many of which they
inspired, clearly show that they neither desired nor tolerated liberty
of speech or conduct. They were the Almighty's vicars on earth, before
whom it was the duty of king and subject to bow down. Vaughan writes of
the period just prior to the Reformation: “The great want was freedom
from ecclesiastical domination; and from the feeling of the hour,
scarcely any price would be deemed too great to be paid for that
object.” The history of modern Jesuitism, against which the legislation
of almost every civilized nation has been directed, affords abundant
testimony to the inherent hostility of the monastic system, even in its
modified modern form, to every species of government which in any way
guarantees freedom of thought to its people. This stern fact confronts
the student, however much he may be inclined to yield homage to the
early monks. It must be held in mind when one reads this pleasing
sentence from Macaulay: “Surely a system which, however deformed by
superstition, introduced strong moral restraints into communities
previously governed only by vigor of muscle and by audacity of spirit,
a system which taught the fiercest and mightiest ruler that he was,
like his meanest bondman, a responsible being, might have seemed to
deserve a more respectful mention from philosophers and
philanthropists.”
The general effect of monasticism on the state is, therefore, not to
be determined by fixing the gaze on any one century of its history, or
by holding up some humane and patriotic monk as a representative
product of the system.