A Short History of Monks and Monasteries

The Effects of Self-Sacrifice Upon the Individual

Christianity requires some sort of self-denial as the condition of true Christian discipleship. Self-love is to yield to a love of others. In some sense, the Christian is to become dead to the world and its demoralizing pleasures. But this primal demand upon the soul needs to be interpreted. What is it to love the world? What is it to keep the body in subjection? What are harmful indulgences? To give wrong answers to these questions is to set up a false ideal; the more strenuously such false ideal is followed, the more disastrous are the consequences. One's struggle for moral purity may end in failure, and one's efficiency for good may be seriously impaired by a perversion of the principle of self-abnegation. Unnatural severity and excessive abstinence often produce the opposite effect from that intended. Instead of a peaceful mind there is delirium, and instead of freedom from temptation there are a thousand horrible fiends hovering in the air and ready, at any moment, to pounce upon their prey. "The history of ascetics," says Martensen, "teaches us that by such overdone fasting the fancy is often excited to an amazing degree, and in its airy domain affords the very things that one thought to have buried, by means of mortification, a magical resurrection." In attempting to subdue the body, many necessary requirements of the physical organism were totally ignored. The body rebelled against such unnatural treatment, and the mind, so closely related to it, in its distraction, gave birth to the wildest fancies. Men, who would have possessed an ordinarily pure mind in some useful occupation of life, became the prey of the most lewd and obnoxious imaginations. Then they fancied themselves vile above their fellows, and laid on more stripes, put more thorns upon their pillows, and fasted more hours, only to find that instead of fleeing, the devils became blacker and more numerous.

Self-forgetfulness is the key to happiness. The monk thought otherwise, and slew himself in his vain attempt to fight against nature. He never lifted his eyes from his own soul. He was always feeling his spiritual pulse, staring at his lean spiritual visage, and tearfully watching his growth in grace. An interest in others and a strong mind in a strong body are the best antidotes to religious despair and the temptations of the soul. Life in the monastery was generally less severe than in the desert's solitude. There was more and better food, shelter, and comfort, but there were many unnecessary and unnatural restrictions, even in the best days of monasticism. There were too many hours of prayer, too many needless regulations for silence, fasting and penance, to produce a healthy, vigorous type of religious life.

The Effects of Solitude Upon the Individual.

Besides these passions, which the monks carried with them, their solitary life tended to foster spiritual pride, contract sympathy, and engender an inhumane spirit. True, there were exceptions; but the sublime characters which survive in monastic history are by no means typical of its usual effects. Seclusion did not benefit the average monk. Indeed there is something wanting in even the loftiest monastic characters. "The heroes of monasticism," says Allen, "are not the heroes of modern life. All put together, they would not furnish out one such soul as William of Orange, or Gustavus, or Milton. Independence of thought and liberty of conscience, they renounced once for all, in taking upon them the monastic vow. All the larger enterprises, all the broad humanities, which to our mind make a greater career, were rigidly shut off by a barrier that could not be crossed. All the warmth and wealth of social and domestic life was a field of forbidden fruit, to be entered only through the gate of unpardonable sin."

Thus self-excluded from a normal life in society, often the subject of self-inflicted pain, it is no wonder that the monk impaired all the nobler and manlier feelings of the soul, that he became strangely indifferent to human affection, that bigotry and pride often sat as joint rulers on the throne of his heart. He who had trampled on all filial relations would scarcely recognize the bonds of human brotherhood. He who heard not the prayer of his own mother would not be likely to listen to the cry of the tortured heretic for mercy. Man as man was not reverenced. It was the monk in man who was esteemed. As Milman puts it, "Bigotry has always found its readiest and sternest executioners among those who have never known the charities of life."

Nor is it a matter of surprise that the monk was spiritually proud. He was supposed to stand in the inner circle, a little nearer the throne of God than his fellow-mortals. When dead, he was worshiped as a saint and regarded as an intercessor between God and his lower fellow-creatures. His hatred of the base world easily passed over into a sense of superiority and ignoble pride.

"True social life," says Martensen, "leads to solitude." This truth the monks emphasized to the exclusion of the converse, "true life in solitude leads back to society." John Tauler, the mystic monk, realized this truth when he said: "If God calls me to a sick person, or to the service of preaching, or to any other service of love, I must follow, although I am in the state of highest contemplation." The hermits of the desert, and too often the monks of the cloister, escaped from all such services, and selfishly gave themselves up to saving their own souls by contemplation and prayer. Ministration to the needy is the external side of the inner religious life. It is the fruit of faith and prayer. The monk sought solitude, not for the purpose of fitting himself for a place in society, but for selfish, personal ends. Saint Bruno, in a letter to his friend Ralph le Verd, eulogizes the solitude of the monastic cell, and among other sentiments he gives expression to the following: "I am speaking here of the contemplative life; and although its sons are less numerous than those of active life, yet, like Joseph and Benjamin, they are infinitely dearer to their Father.... O my brother, fear not then to fly from the turmoil and the misery of the world; leave the storms that rage without, to shelter yourself in this safe haven."

Thus sinful and sorrowing humanity, needing the guidance and comfort that holy men can furnish, was forgotten in the desire for personal peace and future salvation.

Another baneful result of isolation was the strangulation of filial love. When the monk abandoned the softening, refining influence of women and children, one side of his nature suffered a serious contraction. An Egyptian mother stood at the hut of two hermits, her sons. Weeping bitterly, she begged to see their faces. To her piteous entreaties, they said: "Why do you, who are already stricken with age, pour forth such cries and lamentations?" "It is because I long to see you," she replied. "Am I not your mother? I am now an old and wrinkled woman, and my heart is troubled at the sound of your voices." But even a mother's love could not cope with their fearful fanaticism., and she went away with their cold promise that they would meet in heaven. St. John of Calama visited his sister in disguise, and a chronicler, telling the story afterwards, said, "By the mercy of Jesus Christ he had not been recognized, and they never met again." Many hermits received their parents or brothers and sisters with their eyes shut. When the father of Simeon Stylites died, his widowed mother prayed for entrance into her son's cell. For three days and nights she stood without, and then the blessed Simeon prayed the Lord for her, and she immediately gave up the ghost.

These as well as numerous other stories of a similar character that might be quoted illustrate the hardening influence of solitude. Instead of cherishing a love of kindred, as a gift of heaven and a spring of virtue, the monk spurned it and trampled it beneath his feet as an obstacle to his spiritual progress. "The monks," says Milman, "seem almost unconscious of the softening, humanizing effect of the natural affections, the beauty of parental tenderness and filial love."

The Monks as Missionaries

The conversion of the barbarians was an indispensable condition of modern civilization. Every step forward had to be taken in the face of barbaric ignorance and cruelty. In this stupendous undertaking the monks led the way, displaying in their labors remarkable generalship and undaunted courage. Whatever may be thought of later monasticism, the Benedictine monks are entitled to the lasting gratitude of mankind for their splendid services in reducing barbaric Europe to some sort of order and civilization. But again the mixture of good and evil is strangely illustrated. It seems impossible to accord the monks unqualified praise. The potency of the evil tendencies within their system vitiated every noble achievement. Their methods and practical ideals were so at variance with the true order of nature that every commendable victory involved a corresponding obstacle to real social and religious progress. The justice of these observations will be more apparent as this inquiry proceeds.

Monasticism and Civic Duties

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.

The Agricultural Services of the Monks

Europe must ever be indebted to Benedict and his immediate followers for their services in reclaiming waste lands, and in removing the stigma which a corrupt civilization had placed upon labor. Benedict came before the world saying: "No person is ever more usefully employed than when working with his hands or following the plough, providing food for the use of man." Care was taken that councils should not be called when ploughing was to be done or wheat to be threshed. Benedict bent himself to the task of teaching the rich and the proud, the poor and the lazy the alphabet of prosperity and happiness. Agriculture was at its lowest ebb. Marshes covered once fertile fields, and the men who should have tilled the land spurned the plough as degrading, or were too indolent to undertake the tasks of the farm. The monks left their cells and their prayers to dig ditches and plough fields. The effect was magical. Men once more turned back to a noble but despised industry. Peace and plenty supplanted war and poverty. "The Benedictines," says Guizot, "have been the great clearers of land in Europe. A colony, a little swarm of monks, settled in places nearly uncultivated, often in the midst of a pagan population--in Germany, for example, or in Brittany; there, at once missionaries and laborers, they accomplish their double service, through peril and fatigue."

It is to be regretted that history throws a shadow across this pleasing scene. When labor came to be recognized as honorable and useful, along came the begging friars, creating, both by precept and example, a prejudice against labor and wealth. Rags and laziness came to be associated with holiness, and a beggar monk was held up as an ideal and sacred personage. "The spirit that makes men devote themselves in vast numbers," says Lecky, "to a monotonous life of asceticism and poverty is so essentially opposed to the spirit that creates the energy and enthusiasm of industry, that their continued coexistence may be regarded as impossible." But such a fatal mistake could not long captivate the mind, or cause men to forget Benedict and his industrial ideal. The blessings of wealth rightly administered, and the dignity of labor without which wealth is impossible, came to be recognized as necessary factors in the true progress of man.

The Monks and Secular Learning

For many centuries, as has been previously shown, the monks were the schoolmasters of Europe. They also preserved the manuscripts of the classics, produced numerous theological works, transmitted many pious traditions, and wrote some interesting and some worthless chronicles. They laid the foundations of several great universities, including those of Paris, Oxford and Cambridge. For these, and other valuable services, the monks merit the praise of posterity. It is, however, too much to affirm, as Montalembert does, that "without the monks, we should have been as ignorant of our history as children." It is altogether improbable that the human mind would have been unproductive in the field of historical writing had monasticism not existed during the middle ages. While, also, the monks should be thanked for preserving the classics, it should not be supposed that all knowledge of Latin and Greek literature would have perished but for them.

It is surprising that the literary men of the medieval period should have written so little of interest to the modern mind, or that helps us to an understanding of the momentous events amid which they lived. Unfortunately the monkish mind was concentrated upon a theology, the premises of which have been largely set aside by modern science. Their writings are so permeated by grotesque superstitions that they are practically worthless to-day. Their hostility to secular affairs blinded them to the tremendous significance of the mighty political and social movements of the age.

It is undeniable that the monks never encouraged a love of secular learning. They did not try to impart a love of the classics which they preserved. The spirit of monasticism was ever at war with true intellectual progress. The monks imprisoned Roger Bacon fourteen years, and tried to blast his fair name by calling him a magician, merely because he stepped beyond the narrow limits of monkish inquiry. Many suffered indignities, privations or death for questioning tradition or for conducting scientific researches.

So while it is true that the monks rendered many services to the cause of education, it is also true that their monastic theories tended to narrow the scope of intellectual activity. "This," says Guizot, "is the foundation of their instruction; all was turned into commentary of the Scriptures, historical, philosophical, allegorical, moral commentary. They desired only to form priests; all studies, whatsoever their nature, were directed to this result." There was no disinterested love of learning; no desire to become acquainted with God's world. In fact, the old hostility to everything natural characterizes all monastic history. Europe did not enter upon that broad and noble intellectual development which is the glory of our era, until the right arm of monasticism was struck down, the dread of heresy banished from the human mind, and secular learning welcomed as a legitimate and elevated field for mental activity.

Hamilton W. Mabie, in his delightful essay on "Some Old Scholars," describes this step from the gloom of the cloister to the light of God's world: "Petrarch really escaped from a sepulcher when he stepped out of the cloister of medievalism, with its crucifix, its pictures of unhealthy saints, its cords of self-flagellation, and found the heavens clear, beautiful, and well worth living under, and the world full of good things which one might desire and yet not be given over to evil. He ventured to look at life for himself and found it full of wonderful dignity and power. He opened his Virgil, brushed aside the cobwebs which monkish brains had spun over the beautiful lines, and met the old poet as one man meets another; and lo! there arose before him a new, untrodden and wholly human world, free from priestcraft and pedantry, near to nature and unspeakably alluring and satisfying."

The Dominicans and Jesuits set their faces like flint against all education tending to liberalize the mind. Here is a passage from a document published by the Jesuits at their first centenary: "It is undeniable that we have undertaken a great and uninterrupted war in the interests of the Catholic church against heresy. Heresy need never hope that the society will make terms with it, or remain quiescent ... No peace need be expected, for the seed of hatred is born within us. What Hamilcar was to Hannibal, Ignatius is to us. At his instigation, we have sworn upon the altars eternal war." When this proclamation is read in the light of history, its meaning stands forth with startling clearness. Almost every truth in science and philosophy, no matter how valuable it was destined to become as an agent in enhancing the well-being of the race, has had to wear the stigma of heresy.

It is an interesting speculation to imagine what the intellectual development of Europe would have been, had secular learning been commended by the monks, and the common people encouraged to exercise their minds without fear of excommunication or death. It is sad to reflect how many great thoughts must have perished still-born in the student's cloister cell, and to picture the silent grief with which many a brilliant soul must have repressed his eager imagination.

The Charity of the Monks

In the eleventh century, a monk named Thieffroy wrote the following: "It matters little that our churches rise to heaven, that the capitals of their pillars are sculptured and gilded, that our parchment is tinted purple, that gold is melted to form the letters of our manuscripts, and that their bindings are set with precious stones, if we have little or no care for the members of Christ, and if Christ himself lies naked and dying before our doors." This spirit, so charmingly expressed, was never quite absent from the monkish orders. The monasteries were asylums for the hungry during famines, and the sick during plagues. They served as hotels where the traveler found a cordial welcome, comfortable shelter and plain food. If he needed medical aid, his wants were supplied. During the black plague, while many monks fled with the multitude, others stayed at their posts and were to be found daily in the homes of the stricken, ministering to their bodily and spiritual needs. Many of them perished in their heroic and self-sacrificing labors.

Alms-giving was universally enjoined as a sure passport to heaven. The most glittering rewards were held out to those who enriched the monks with legacies to be used in relief of the poor. It was, no doubt, the unselfish activities of the monks that caused them to be held in such high esteem; the result was their coffers were filled with more gold than they could easily give away. Thus abuses grew up. Bernard said: "Piety gave birth to wealth, and the daughter devoured the mother." Jacob of Vitry complained that money, "by various and deceptive tricks," was exacted from the people by the monks, most of which adhered "to their unfaithful fingers." While Lecky eloquently praises the monks for their beautiful deeds of charity, "following all the windings of the poor man's grief," still he condones in the strongest terms the action of Henry VIII. in transferring the monastic funds to his own treasury: "No misapplication of this property by private persons could produce as much evil as an unrestrained monasticism."

It would be unjust, however, to censure the monks for not recognizing the evil social effects of indiscriminate alms-giving. While their system was imperfect, it was the only one possible in an age when the social sciences were unknown. It is difficult, even to-day, to restrain that good-natured, but baneful, benevolence which takes no account of circumstances and consequences, and often fosters the growth of pauperism. The monks kept alive that sweet spirit of philanthropy which is so essential to all the higher forms of civilization. It is easier to discover the proper methods for the exercise of generous sentiments, than to create those feelings or to arouse them when dormant.

Monasticism and Religion

The effect of the monastic ideal was to emphasize the sinfulness of man and his need of redemption. To get rid of sin--that is the problem of humanity. A quaint formula of monastic confession reads: "I confess all the sins of my body, of my flesh, of my bones and sinews, of my veins and cartilages, of my tongue and lips, of my ears, teeth and hair, of my marrow and any other part whatsoever, whether it be soft or hard, wet or dry." This emphasis on man's sinfulness and the need of redemption was sadly needed in Rome and all down the ages. "It was a protest," says Clarke, "against pleasure as the end of life ... It proved the reality of the religious sentiment to a skeptical age.... If this long period of self-torture has left us no other gain, let us value it as a proof that in man religious aspiration is innate, unconquerable, and able to triumph over all that the world hopes and over all that it fears."

Thus the monks helped to keep alive the enthusiasm of religion. There was a fervor, a devotion, a spirit of sacrifice, in the system, which acted as a corrective to the selfish materialism of the early and middle ages. Christian history furnishes many sad spectacles of brutality and licentiousness, of insolent pride and uncontrolled greed, masked in the garb of religion. Monasticism, by its constant insistence upon poverty and obedience, fostered a spirit of loyalty to Christ and the cross, which served as a protest, not only against the general laxity of morals, but also against the faithlessness of corrupt monks. Harnack says: "It was always monasticism that rescued the church when sinking, freed her when secularized, defended her when attacked. It warmed hearts that were growing cold, restrained unruly spirits, won back the people when alienated from the church." It may have been in harmony with divine plans, that religion was to have been kept alive and vigorous by excessive austerities, even as in later days it needed the stern and unyielding Puritan spirit, now regarded as too grim and severe, to cope successfully with the forces of tyranny and sin.

If it be true, as some are inclined to believe, that this age is losing a definite consciousness of sin, that in the reaction from the asceticism of the monks and the gloom of the Puritans we are in danger of minimizing the doctrine of personal accountability to God, then we cannot afford to ignore the underlying ideal of monasticism. In so far as monasticism contributed to a normal consciousness of human freedom and personal guilt, and maintained a grip upon the conscience of the sinner, it has rendered the cause of true religion a genuine and permanent service.

But the mistake of the monks was twofold. They exaggerated sin, and they employed unhealthy methods to get rid of it. Excessive introspection, instead of exercising a purifying influence, tends to distort one's religious conceptions, and creates an unwholesome type of piety. Man is a sinner, but he also has potential and actual goodness. The monks failed to define sin in accordance with facts. Many innocent pleasures and legitimate satisfactions were erroneously thought to be sinful. Honorable and useful aspirations that, under wise control, minister to man's highest development were selected for eradication. "Every instinct of human nature," says W.E. Channing, "has its destined purpose in life, and the perfect man is to be found in the proportionate cultivation of each element of his character, not in the exaggerated development of those faculties which are deemed primarily good, nor in the repression of those which are evil only when their prominence destroys the balance of the whole."

But the methods employed by the monks to get rid of sin afford another illustration of the fact that noble sentiments and holy aspirations need to be wisely directed. It is not enough for a mother to love her child; she must know how to give that love proper expression. In her attempt to guide and train her loved one she may fatally mislead him. The modern emphasis upon method deserves wider recognition than it has received.

The applause of the church that sounded so sweet in the ears of the monk, as he laid the stripes upon his body, proclaims the high esteem in which penance was held. But the monk cruelly deceived himself. His self-inflicted tortures developed within his soul an unnatural piety, "a piety," says White, "that became visionary and introspective, a theology of black clouds and lightning and thunder, a superstitious religion based on dreams and saint's bones." True penitence consists in high and holy purposes, in pure and unselfish living, and not in disfigurements and in misery. Dreariness and fear are not the proper manifestations of that perfect love which casteth out fear.

The influence of monasticism upon the doctrine of atonement for sin was, in many respects, prejudicial to the best interests of religion. The monks are largely responsible for the theory that sin can be atoned for by pecuniary gifts. It may be said that they did not ignore true feelings of repentance, of which the gold was merely a tangible expression, but the notion widely prevailed that the prayers of the monks, purchased by temporal gifts, secured the forgiveness of the transgressor. The worship of saints, pilgrimages to shrines, and reverence for bones and other relics, were assiduously encouraged.

Thus the monkish conception of salvation and of the means by which it is to be obtained were at variance with any reasonable interpretation of the Scriptures and the dictates of human reason. "It measured virtue," says Schaff, "by the quantity of outward exercises, instead of the quality of the inward disposition, and disseminated self-righteousness and an anxious, legal, and mechanical religion[K]."

The doctrine of future punishment reached its most repulsive and abnormal developments in the hands of the monks. A vast literature was produced by them, portraying, with vivid minuteness, the pangs of hell. Volcanoes were said to be the portals of the lower world, that heaved and sighed as human souls were plunged into the awful depths. God was held up as a fearful judge, and the saving mercy of Christ himself paled before the rescuing power of his mother. These fearful caricatures of God, these detailed, revolting descriptions of pain and anguish, could not but have a hardening effect upon the minds of men. "To those," says Lecky, "who do not regard these teachings as true, it must appear without exception, the most odious in the religious history of the world, subversive of the very foundations of Christianity."

Finally, the greatest error of monastic teaching was in its false and baneful distinction between the secular and the religious. Unquestionably the Christian ideal is founded on some form of world-renunciation. The teachings and example of Jesus, the lives of the Apostles, and the characters of the early Christians, exhibit in varying phases the ideal of self-crucifixion. The doctrine of the cross, with all that it signifies, is the most powerful force in the spread of Christianity. The spiritual nature of man needs to be trained and disciplined. But does this truth lead the Christian to the monastic method? Was the self-renunciation of Jesus like that of the ascetics, with their ecstasies and self-punishments? Is God more pleased with the recluse who turns from a needy world to shut himself up to prayer and meditation, than He is with him who cultivates holy emotions and heavenly aspirations, while pursuing some honorable and useful calling? The answer to these questions discloses the chief fallacy in the monastic ideal, the effect of which was the creation of an artificial piety. There is no special virtue in silence, celibacy, and abstinence from the enjoyment of God's gifts to mankind.

The crying need of Christianity to-day is a willingness on the part of Christ's followers to live for others instead of self. Men and women are needed who, like many of the monks and nuns, will identify themselves with the toiling multitudes, and who will forego the pleasures of the world and the prospects of material gain or social preferment, for the sake of ministering to a needy humanity. The essence of Christianity is a love to God and man that expresses itself in terms of social service and self-sacrifice. Monasticism helped to preserve that noble essence of all true religion. But a revival of the apostolic spirit in these times would not mean a triumph for monasticism. Stripped of its rigid vows of celibacy, poverty and obedience, monasticism is dead.

The spirit of social service, the insistence upon soul-purity, and the craving for participation in the divine nature, are the fruits of Christianity, not of monasticism, which merely sought to carry out the Christian ideal. But it is not necessary, in order to realize this ideal, to wage war on human nature. True Christianity is perfectly compatible with wealth, health and social joys. The realms of industry, politics and home-life are a part of God's world. A religious ideal based on a distorted view of social life, that involves a renunciation of human joy and the extinction of natural desires, and that prohibits the free exercise of beneficent faculties, as conditions of its realization, can never establish its right to permanent and universal dominion. The faithful discharge of unromantic, secular duties, the keeping of one's heart pure in the midst of temptation, and the unheralded altruism of private life, must ever be as welcome in the sight of God as the prayers of the recluse, who scorns the world of secular affairs.

True religion, the highest religion, is possible beyond the walls of churches and convents. The so-called secular employments of business and politics, of home and school, may be conducted in a spirit of lofty consecration to the Eternal, and so carried on, may, in their way, minister to the highest welfare of humanity. The old distinction, therefore, between the secular and the sacred is pernicious and false. There are some other sacred things besides monasteries and prayers. Human life itself is holy; so are the commonplace duties of the untitled household and factory saints.

"God is in all that liberates and lifts,
In all that humbles, sweetens, and consoles."

Modern monasticism has forsaken the column of St. Simeon Stylites and the rags of St. Francis. It has given up the ancient and fantastic feats of asceticism, and the spiritual extravagances of the early monks. The old monasticism never could have arisen under a religious system controlled by natural and healthful spiritual ideas. It has no attractions for minds unclouded by superstition. It has lost its hold upon the modern man because the ancient ideas of God and his world, upon which it thrived, have passed away.

Such are some of the effects of the monastic institution. Its history is at once a warning and an inspiration. Its dreamy asceticism, its gloomy cells, are gone. Its unworldly motives, its stern allegiance to duty, its protest against self-indulgence, its courage and sincerity, will ever constitute the potent energy of true religion. Its ministrations to the broken-hearted, and its loving care of the poor, must ever remain as a shining example of practical Christianity. In the simplicity of the monk's life, in the idea of "brotherhood," in the common life for common ends, a Christian democracy will always find food for reflection. As the social experiments of modern times reveal the hidden laws of social and religious progress, it will be found that in spite of its glaring deficiencies, monasticism was a magnificent attempt to realize the ideal of Christ in individual and social life. As such it merits neither ridicule nor obloquy. It was a heroic struggle with inveterate ignorance and sin, the history of which flashes many a welcome light upon the problems of modern democracy and religion.

Monastic forms and vows may pass away with other systems that will have their day, but its fervor of faith, and its warfare against human passion and human greed, its child-like love of the heavenly kingdom will never die. The revolt against its superstitions and excesses is justifiable only in a society that seeks to actualize its underlying religious ideal of personal purity and social service.

APPENDIX

NOTE A

Clerks Regular. This is a title given to certain religious orders founded in the sixteenth century. The principal societies are: the Theatines, founded by Cajetan of Thiene, subsequently Pope Paul IV.; and Priests of the Oratory, instituted by Philip Neri, of Florence. These two orders have been held in high repute, numbering among their members many men of rank and intellect.

Cloister, from the Latin, Claustra, that which closes or shuts, an inclosure; hence, a place of religious retirement, a monastery.

Hermit, or eremite, from the Greek, [Greek: herêmos], desolate, solitary. One who dwells alone apart from society, or with but few companions. Not used of those who dwell in cloisters.

Monastery, comes from the same source as monk. Commonly applied to a house used exclusively by monks. The term, however, strictly includes the abbey, the priory, the nunnery, the friary, and in this broad sense is synonymous with convent, which is from the Latin, convenire, to meet together.

Monk, from the Greek, [Greek: mhonos], alone, single. Originally, a man who retired from the world for religious meditation. In later use, a member of a community. It is used indiscriminately to denote all persons in monastic orders, in or out of the monasteries.

Nun, from nouna, i.e., chaste, holy. "The word is probably of Coptic origin, and occurs as early as in Jerome." (Schaff).

Regulars. Until the tenth century it was not customary to regard the monks as a part of the clerical order. Before that time they were known as religiosi or regulares. Afterwards a distinction was made between parish priests, or secular clergy, and the monks, or regular clergy.

For more detailed information on these and other monastic words, see The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia, and McClintock and Strong's Encyclopedia.