dignities in the church, not excepting the triple crown; nay, for a long period, even to the highest civil employments, whether as regents, foreign envoys, or ministers of state. The wealthiest monasteries and abbeys, in former times, were in Germany; of which one of the most splendid and powerful was that of Fulda, situated near the town of the same name in Franconia. Every candidate for admission into this princely brotherhood was required, it is said, to prove his nobility; the monks elected their abbot from among themselves, and that dignitary, by right of his office, became Arch-Chancellor to the Empress, and Prince-Bishop of the diocese of Fulda, and claimed precedence over all the other abbots both of Germany and France. Clugni, on the confines of Burgundy, was another ancient and celebrated monastery, the edifices of which had the appearance, it is said, of a well-built city; and so ample were they, that three crowned heads, with their respective courts, once lodged within the precincts, without moving a single monk from his apartments. Under these circumstances, and knowing what we do of human nature, can we wonder that leisure, and wealth, and ambition, and, above all, that' most subtle and dangerous power, the power of wielding at pleasure the fears and superstitions of an ignorant people, corrupted the religious houses; or that this corruption gradually became general, and in the end, and in some cases, extreme?

No one needs seek for stronger language, in which to describe or denounce the vices of the monks of the tenth and eleventh centuries, than may be found in the confessions of monks themselves and other Catholic writers of that day, in the bulls of popes and decrees of councils on this subject, and in the instructions given to commissioners appointed to visit and reform particular communities. Baronius, a learned Italian of the sixteenth century, does not hesitate, though a Catholic, thus to characterize the age in question, having reference particularly to the degeneracy of ecclesiastics. "We now enter on a period, which for its sterility of every excellence may be denominated iron; for its luxuriant growth of vice, leaden; for its dearth of writers, dark." The regular clergy, as the monks are called to distinguish them from the common or secular priesthood, must come in for their share in the condemnation; by whom not only all strictness of discipline, but even the external appearance of religion and decency, were in too many cases enVOL. XIX. -3D S. VOL. I. NO. I. 9

tirely sunk and lost in a life of sloth, voluptuousness, and total self-abandonment.*

Before proceeding, however, unqualifiedly to condemn all Religious Houses, on account of the acknowledged disorders. and abuses into which they in general fell, we are bound to consider and fairly weigh the mitigating circumstances in the case as urged by apologists for these institutions.

In the first place, it is contended, that the monks of this period were generally rude, illiterate, and licentious, not because they were monks, but because they were men, and lived in an age of general and almost universal barbarism and misrule. Again, it is said, that though some religious houses became extremely corrupt, extreme corruption was never general, and that there was no time when some houses could not be found in which, owing to the character of the Superior, or the fraternity, a comparative strictness and purity prevailed. Furthermore, we are reminded of the reformers, who occasionally arose among the monks themselves, even in the very midnight of the Dark Ages, and of the extensive revivals of religion they effected, not only in their own, but also in many neighbouring or affiliated communities. In this connexion, if we had space, particular and honorable mention might be made of the labors of Benedict, abbot of Aniane, in the ninth century, of Odo, abbot of Clugni, in the tenth century, and of the founders of the Congregations of the Carthusiansand the Camaldules, in the eleventh century;- all men, whose sincerity and piety, whatever we may think of some of their opinions and measures, are as little to be questioned as those of Luther or any of his coadjutors. Above all, the apologists of monachism may say, and with some truth, that in its worst state, bad as the monks were, they were as a general rule much better than the secular clergy; and bad as the monasteries were, they afforded, nevertheless, the best refuge and asylum which virtue and religion had in those days, and were indeed holy and tranquil retreats compared with the

* Gibbon's anecdote should be referred, we suppose, to times like these, who says: "I have somewhere heard or read the frank confession of a Benedictine abbot, My vow of poverty has given me a hundred thousand crowns a year; my vow of obedience has raised me to the rank of a sovereign prince.'" The historian adds in his peculiar manner, "I forget the consequence of his vow of chastity." -Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. VI. p. 255.

castles of the Barons and feudal lords, where, as every one knows, the most unbridled sensuality and ferocity reigned.

Again, though it is not denied that these institutions occasioned some political evils, particularly the formation of so large a class of what political economists call non-producers, and the locking up of so large a portion of real property in mortmain, that is, in the hands of perpetual corporations, it is alleged by their apologists, that in other respects they were of great service to society and the state. In the first place, the monasteries were always particularly remarkable for their hospitalities, it being a rule with them, more or less religiously observed, that the wayworn and the hungry were never to be turned from their doors; and even the gentry who travelled, regarded them, it is said, as a sort of houses of public entertainment. Many of the great families had foundations, or corodies, as they were denominated, in the abbeys, on which their old or decayed servants or dependents were placed, and comfortably supported for the remainder of their days, instead of being turned adrift to starve, or to depend on parish collections. "And as for their distributions of charity," says Collier, a Protestant, writing, in 1714, on the dissolutions of the English monasteries, "it may be guessed from one instance. While the religious houses were standing, there were no provisions of Parliament to relieve the poor; no assessment upon the parish for that purpose. But now this charge upon the kingdom amounts, at a modest computation, to eight hundred thousand pounds per annum."* Agriculture, also, was greatly indebted to the monks; for, though the lands bestowed upon them were generally speaking, it is said, the refuse of the soil, it was by the unceasing and regular toil of centuries brought into the highest state of cultivation and productiveness. And as the abbots were justly accounted the most indulgent of landlords, and as they commonly spent almost the whole of their income in the neighbourhood, we are not surprised to find, that, wherever a convent flourished, a thriving village was sure to grow up around it, and the village, in process of time, to become a considerable town. Then,

* Ecclesiastical History of Great Britain, Vol. II. p. 165. We are aware that the validity of this argument, as well as the statements on which it rests, have been contested by modern writers, and particularly by Mr. Bulwer.

too, though the revenues of some of the religious houses were large, they were required to furnish their full quota both of money and men for the public service in peace and in war. Probably it was in view of the certainty with which these subsidies could be depended on, and the ease with which they could be collected, that the Emperor Charles the Fifth said, when he heard of the sequestration of the English abbeys, "Now has Henry killed the hens that laid golden eggs.'

Above all, let it not be forgotten, at least in this country, that the monastic institutions formed what Sir James Mackintosh has styled, not inaptly, "the grand democratic element of the middle age." It opened a way, and almost the only one, by which the gifted and active in humble life could raise themselves to the highest places in society. Adrian the Fourth was a poor English boy, who on being cast off by his friends had for some time to beg his bread from door to door. Afterwards, obtaining a situation in the monastery of St. Rufus, in Provence, as a menial servant, he so far recommended himself in this capacity by his abilities and prudence, that he was soon admitted to the order, elected abbot on the first vacancy, then created cardinal-bishop of Albano, and finally, in 1154, placed on the papal throne, the only Englishman, we believe, who ever attained to that distinction.

But the favorite topic in apologies for the monks of the Middle Ages has always been their important service to the cause of letters.

The first monks were not only illiterate themselves, but condemned learning altogether, on the fanatical ground that God has no need of man's wisdom;-forgetting as Dr. South has pointedly said, that he has still less need of man's ignorance. A long course of leisure and retirement, however, induced their successors, as a relief from the tediousness of absolute inaction, to betake themselves to study and speculation; and in this manner, it would seem, monasteries gradually became the seats and the seminaries of learning;-a poor learning, it is true, but the best that was to be had in those days.* Thither,

*Mr. Berington, in speaking of the tenth century, Literary History of the Middle Ages, pp. 188, 189, says: "What regularity of manners and what remains of literature, if the word may yet be used, were still in existence, were found within the walls of convents; where there were some men, at least, of application, of whom not a few devoted their talents to the composition of Annals and Histories

therefore, the sons of the nobility, and others intended for the church or the law, repaired for education, great numbers being attracted sometimes to one place and sometimes to another by the fame of some distinguished teacher, like the Venerable Bede, Alcuin, or Abelard. But, the reputation of these conventual schools began as early as the twelfth and thirteenth centuries to be eclipsed by the rising Universities of Paris, Oxford, and Cambridge; after which it gradually became unfashionable to study at the monasteries, and the business of education there fell into neglect; the attention of such of the monks as were studiously inclined being turned to the composition of those ponderous tomes of scholastic subtilty, the wonder and the jest of modern times.

The world is also under considerable obligations to the monks of the Middle Ages for the care with which they preserved, and the industry with which they labored to multiply copies of the Scriptures, and the ancient classics, though in this respect they have been eulogized by most writers, and particularly by Warton,* in terms which to us seem very extravagant. Several of the great abbeys had their apartment, called the scriptorium, where many of the younger inmates of the house were constantly busied in transcribing, not only the service which partook largely of the characteristic rudeness of the times, but which are still valuable for their air of candor and of truth. Other monks employed themselves in what they called Treatises of Morality which generally consisted of passages strung together from the writings of the Latin fathers, the canons of the councils and the decrees of Popes; while they who were esteemed best qualified, were engaged in the arduous task of education. But though the doors of the schools were open to all, their pupils, at this time, were seldom any other than the young men who were destined for the monastic life. These were initiated in the elements of all knowledge which were contained in the Trivium [Grammar, Dialectics, and Rhetoric,] and Quatervium, [Music, Arithmetic, Geometry, and Astronomy,] denominated the liberal arts; but we know what were the absurd and disgusting precepts within which they were contracted; in which no space was left for classical erudition; for ethics properly so called; for natural history, or philosophical experiment. And if it ever happened in the narrow circle to which they were restricted, that a genius of more than common powers advanced beyond the confines of his contemporaries, he was suspected of a secret intercourse with the world of spirits, and his acquirements were registered with the theories of the black art."

* History of English Poetry, Vol. I. pp. cxliv-cxlviii. Warton was a Protestant. Berington, a Catholic, is less eulogistic See his Literary History of the Middle Ages, pp. 189-194.