No More Learning

No monk save
the cellarer, the temporal officer of the abbey, might have charge of it.
If monks went, as in harvest-time, to work at the granges, they might
pass the night there only in cases of absolute necessity. No churchyards
were to be made or burials take place at granges. Such places, in fact,
were intended for the support, not for the residence of the community;
and their care was entrusted to the conversi or lay-brothers.
The conversus or laicus barbatus was by no means a peculiarly Cistercian
institution ; but it was in this order that his position was most clearly
defined. In a self-supporting community, far from populous places, it
was necessary to have workmen on the spot. Although the Rule prescribed
manual labour to its followers, the prime duty of a monk was prayer and
his proper place was the cloister, not the field or workshop. Thus, when
Alberic undertook the rule of Citeaux, he and his monks decided to
receive conversi, whom they would treat as themselves in life and death,
save that they were not to be admitted as monks. The hire of workmen,
however, was also contemplated; and hired artificers and labourers are
mentioned in the early statutes. We have no means of estimating how
many conversi Cîteaux supported at first, or how many were sent out to
la Ferté in 1113. It is certainly probable that this consecration of labour
received some stimulus from non-Cistercian sources. The community of
Thiron, established in the diocese of Chartres about 1114, consisted
largely of men who were encouraged by Bernard of Abbeville to exercise
in their monastery the trades to which they had been trained ; and the
enlistment of these tirones in the service of God appears to have given
Thiron its name. But there can be no doubt that, with the rapid develop-
ment of Cistercianism after the foundation of Clairvaux and Morimond
in 1115, conversi entered the order in large numbers. They were admitted
purely as labourers; they took the vows, but were prohibited from learning
to read or write. They were lodged in the cellarer's building on the west
side of the cloister, which frequently, as at Fountains, Ourscamp, and
Vauclair, testifies to the very ample accommodation which their numbers
required. Their simple offices, consisting of repetitions of prescribed
prayers, were said in the nave of the church, before they went out, early
in the morning, to the workshops and granges. At the granges, they had
intervals at the canonical hours for devotions, led by their appointed
overseers. Their chapter-meeting was held every Sunday by the abbot or
his deputy. From the early Usus Conversorum, which prescribes their
manner of life, it is clear that they were intended mainly for field-work,
and that batches of them resided temporarily on the granges; while the
directions for their habit had field-work mainly in view. There can be
little doubt, however, that they made themselves useful in the various
CH. XX.
43-2


## p. 676 (#722) ############################################

676
Growth of Cistercianism
offices and workshops which, as at Clairvaux, filled the outer court of the
monastery ; and, if Cistercian architecture, the natural consequence and
appropriate expression of the devotion of the order to ideals which excluded
all Aattery of the senses, cannot be proved to owe anything to the brain
of the conversus, it was certainly aided by his hands.
One principle, laid down in the preamble to the Charter of Charity,
was the necessity of episcopal consent to the establishment of a Cistercian
house in any diocese. In this, no doubt, the collisions between the exempt
Cluniacs and the ordinary authority were remembered. The order, how-
ever, was exempted in process of time from diocesan authority; and the
later statutes uphold its freedom from episcopal visitation. Relations
between bishops and Cistercian monasteries were generally friendly: the
Cistercian abbot received benediction from the local diocesan or his suf-
fragan, and bishops on their primary visitation tours claimed the right
of a night's hospitality as guests in the houses where they could not sit
as judges. The secluded sites of Cistercian abbeys brought them seldom,
in the ordinary course of things, into conflict with parochial authorities.
Their own churches were entirely reserved for the purposes of their com-
munities; the parish altars, found in many Benedictine and Augustinian
churches, had no place in their naves. The examples of St Benedict gave
no precedent for the possession of appropriated parish churches or tithes,
and the founders of the order rejected such gifts. Although their suc-
cessors abandoned this principle, the appropriation of churches and tithes
was less eagerly sought by the Cistercian order than by others; and, at
the suppression, Fountains, the best endowed of English Cistercian houses,
derived a mere fraction of its income from this source.
The call of the Cistercian order to men to save their souls by retire-
ment from the world to a life of voluntary abstinence and prayer in
uninhabited valleys had an extraordinary power. Cîteaux, by virtue of
its compact organisation, and with the aid of the missionary zeal and
ubiquitous energy of St Bernard, outstripped all other congregations in
the rapidity of its growth. In 1120 it set foot in Italy, at Tiglieto in
Liguria, founded from la Ferté; while Morimond made its first step
eastwards to Bellevaux in Franche-Comté. In 1123 and 1127 Morimond
established two important colonising centres in Germany, Camp in the
diocese of Cologne and Ebrach in Franconia ; from Camp the movement
spread into the central and north-western districts of Germany, while the
first daughter of Ebrach was Reun in Styria. Meanwhile, in 1128, through
l'Aumône in the diocese of Chartres, a daughter of Cîteaux, the Cistercians
reached England at Waverley in Hampshire ; and the same house in 1131
sent another colony to Tintern, quickly followed in 1132 by Rievaulx, of
the family of Clairvaux. In the previous year Clairvaux had established
houses in Franche-Comté and the dioceses of Geneva and Mayence. In
1132 she founded Moreruela in the kingdom of Leon, the earliest monas-
tery of the order in Spain. Rievaulx in 1136 became the mother of the


## p. 677 (#723) ############################################

Cistercian foundations in Europe
677
first Scottish house at Melrose. Clairvaux reached Flanders at les Dunes
and Portugal at Alofoễs in 1138, and founded Whitland in South Wales
in 1140. In 1142 Irish Cistercianism began at Mellifont, which, through
the friendship of Malachy O'Morgair for Bernard, joined the family of
Clairvaux; and in 1143 the same family was increased by two Swedish
houses, at Alvastra and Nydala. In 1144 Denmark was entered by Cîteaux
at Herrevad ; and in 1146 and 1147 two English monasteries of the line
of Clairvaux, Fountains and its daughter Kirkstead, colonised Lysa and
Hovedö in Norway. Hungary, Poland, and Bohemia received their earliest
colonists from monasteries of the line of Morimond in 1142 and 1143;
and in 1150 Clairvaux founded a house at Cabuabbas in Sardinia.
Many other monasteries were founded during this period; and, apart
from the great activity of Clairvaux and Morimond, the younger houses,
especially in England, were very prolific. Waverley and Rievaulx produced
large families; and Fountains, which, after its secession from St Mary's
at York in 1132, joined the order in 1135, owned no less than eight
daughters at the beginning of 1151. In Ireland also Mellifont owned
five daughter-houses within eight years of its foundation. Progress in
the German and Austrian provinces, through Morimond and its offshoots,
was remarkable. Throughout the Spanish peninsula the line of Clairvaux
spread, monopolising Portugal, Gallicia, and Leon ; while the Gascon
foundations of Morimond colonised Navarre and Castile, and shared
Aragon and Catalonia with the children of Clairvaux, who eventually
reached Valencia and Majorca, as the Christian arms advanced against
the Moors. In Italy progress was slower ; but all the chief houses estab-
lished their lines in various parts of the country, and that of Clairvaux
grew with fair rapidity. St Bernard himself was present at the foundation
of Chiaravalle in Lombardy in 1136, and the first abbot of the monastery
of SS. Vincenzo ed Anastasio at Rome, Bernard of Pisa, was raised to
the Papacy in 1145 as Eugenius III. From 1145 to 1153 the Church
was virtually ruled from Clairvaux; and with the deaths of St Bernard
and Eugenius in 1153, the great age of Cistercian activity ended.
At the end of 1151 the order numbered 330 monasteries; and the
general chapter of 1152 passed a decree that no more were to be founded.
Nevertheless, at St Bernard's death on 20 August 1153, the number had
risen to 343. Three more were founded within the next month; and the
increase, though at a less phenomenal rate, was so steady that, by the
end of the thirteenth century, this total of 346 was more than doubled.
With the exception of Cîteaux itself, these houses had come into being
in little more than forty years. It should be remembered, however, that
the process of colonisation was aided by the accession of houses like
Fountains, which had begun life by initiating reform on their own lines.
The monastery of Savigny, soon after the time of its foundation about
1112, had become the head of a reformed congregation, much on the
lines of Cîteaux. In 1147 Savigny, with twenty-seven daughter-houses in
CH. XX.


## p. 678 (#724) ############################################

678
Canons regular
France and the British Isles, was united bodily to the Cistercian order and
affiliated to Clairvaux. In the same year the sinall congregation of Obasine
in the Limousin was united to Citeaux; and later, in 1162, the monastery
of Dalon in the same district, with six daughters, joined the line of
Pontigny. The wisdom of Cistercian polity was shewn in these cases by
the fact that the abbots of the chief monasteries of these affiliated con-
gregations remained the visitors of their daughter-houses, and some
indulgence was allowed to existing practices not in harmony with Cis-
tercian customs. Although, in the bull of Eugenius III which united the
Savigniac houses to the order of Cîteaux, they are identified with those
of the obedience of Thiron, Thiron and its daughters, among which were
Kelso and Arbroath in Scotland, remained apart, and eventually were
referred to habitually as Benedictine, differing only from Benedictine
monks in their grey habit. Similarly, the congregation of Val-des-Choux
in Burgundy, founded in 1193, had much in common with the Cistercians
and wore a white habit; but their customs were largely derived by their
founder, a conversus of the Charterhouse of Louvigny, from Carthusian
sources, and their priories were subordinated to the parent house on the
Cluniac model. Of some thirty priories, three were in Scotland; and the
beautiful remains of Pluscarden in the diocese of Moray shew considerable
influence, both in plan and architecture, from Cistercian houses.
The immediate influence of Cîteaux affected the movement which took
place during the first half of the twelfth century among regular canons.
The attempt to enforce a rule of life upon clerks, of which we have seen
the beginning, was hampered by the secular preferences both of themselves
and of the monks who sought to emulate their comparative freedom from
restraint. In 1059 Nicholas II, at the instigation of Peter Damian, held
a council at which the duty of the common life and the renunciation of
private property were made obligatory upon corporations of canons; and
in 1063 these principles were reasserted by Alexander II, who introduced
canons of the reformed congregation of San Frediano at Lucca into his
metropolitan church of St John Lateran. We have signs of the influence
of these reforms in England, in indications of provisions for the common
life at Beverley and Southwell in the time of the Confessor, and in the
establishment of the Lotharingian system of communal chapters at Exeter
and Wells. Mentions of the Rule of St Augustine begin to appear soon
after the council of 1063. This Rule, founded upon the famous letter of
St Augustine to a congregation of religious women, was supposed to
embody the principles upon which he had constituted the common life of
his clerks at Hippo. The English churches which have been mentioned
never received it; and the normal cathedral and collegiate chapters of
canons, both here and abroad, consisted of secular clerks, holding separate
prebends of varying value, possessing their own houses, and, if they chose
to reside in person, receiving additional allowances from the common


## p. 679 (#725) ############################################

Augustinian canons
679
fund. But the Augustinian reform had its result, early in the twelfth
century, in the frequent substitution of regular for secular canons in
churches where the canonical life had fallen into decay, and in the founda-
tion of communities of clerks on what was really a monastic basis, although
the Rule which they followed was lighter and admitted of a more liberal
interpretation than that of St Benedict. The Rule was enforced upon
all canons regular by Innocent II in 1139; but, before this date, houses
had come into existence in large numbers in England and France. In
France Ivo, Bishop of Chartres, who had received a monastic training at
Bec under Lanfranc, promoted the formation of such bodies. In England
canons regular of St Augustine seem to have appeared first in 1106 at
St Botolph's, Colchester; the order spread within the next few years, and
in 1133 the priory church of Carlisle was converted into the cathedral
church of a new diocese.
Augustinian, like Benedictine, houses were autonomous communities
following their own local customs. As among Benedictines, so here, certain
centres of activity, such as the famous house of Saint-Victor at Paris,
Saint-Ruf at Avignon, and the Holy Cross at Coimbra, which adopted
the customs of Saint-Ruf, formed local congregations with common
observances, and occasionally, as in the congregations of Saint-Victor
and Arrouaise, with distinctive habits. Some communities from the first
appear to have sought a quasi-monastic seclusion ; but one powerful
reason for the establishment of communities of clerks had been the forma-
tion of centres from which neighbouring parish churches could be served.
There is abundant evidence in Domesday Book of the presence in England
of small “minsters” of secular clerks on these lines. Some of these dis-
appeared, some were continued as secular colleges, and some in process of
time adopted the Augustinian Rule; the continuance of the system in
Augustinian houses is indicated by the number of parish churches which,
in many instances, formed a prominent factor in their early endowments.
In later times, ecclesiastical legislation leaned to the natural view that
the dispersion of canons in appropriated churches was incompatible with
the maintenance of divine service in their monasteries. From the begin-
ning of the thirteenth to the middle of the fourteenth century the practice,
although it survived in certain privileged cases, or where custom was too
strong to be checked by legislation, was largely discontinued and was
discouraged by diocesan authorities. It revived in England during the
dearth of priests caused by the great pestilence of 1349, and was very
general during the fifteenth century ; but by that time the distinction
between canons and monks was almost obliterated, and it is probable
that the institution of a canon to the vicarage of a church meant little
more than that the endowment of the vicarage was ear-marked for his
maintenance in his monastery, and that the cure of souls was served for
a small wage by a stipendiary chaplain. The privilege, however, of serving
parish churches, though generally withdrawn from Augustinians by Canon
CH. XX.


## p. 680 (#726) ############################################

680
The Premonstratensian Order
Law, was constantly maintained by the order of Prémontré, which laid
the strictest interpretation upon the Rule.
The founder of the Premonstratensian order, Norbert, a native of
Xanten, underwent the experience, so usual at that epoch, of sudden
conversion from a worldly life to evangelical penitence. As a secular canon
at Xanten, and afterwards as an inmate of regular houses, his austerities
and exhortations made him unpopular. Surrendering his benefices and
despoiling himself of worldly goods, he journeyed to Saint-Gilles in
Languedoc, and there obtained from Gelasius II a general licence to
preach repentance. Travelling northward again with a few disciples, he
found a friend in Bartholomew, Bishop of Laon, who offered him the
church of Saint-Martin in his episcopal city. The canons of Saint-Martin,
however, refused to conform to his strict way of life; and Bartholomew,
unwilling to lose his services, gave him his choice of a site in the diocese
on which he might found a new church. The place was found in 1120
at Prémontré, over which the Cistercian owners relinquished their claims.
Here he and his followers determined to adopt the Rule of St Augustine,
with a severity of observance strongly coloured by customs derived from
Cîteaux. The constitution of the new order was on the model of the
Charter of Charity, with its system of a limited monarchy, affiliated
houses, and chapters-general at the parent monastery. In the white habit,
in simplicity of dress, ritual, and architecture, in abstinence from flesh-
meat and in long fasts, it followed the Cistercian example. Norbert and
Bernard of Clairvaux, though not without differences of opinion, were
closely united in friendship; and, if Bernard rejected Norbert's views on
the reign of Anti-Christ as a present fact, they found common ground
in their opposition to the more obvious danger represented by Abailard.
Some twenty years after the order of Prémontré had come into being,
Laurence of Liège likened the two orders to the cherubim, spreading out
their wings in the midst of the tabernacle on either side of the mercy-seat,
and to the two witnesses of the Apocalypse, sent by God at the end of
the world, and clothed in the sackcloth of penitence. The repression of
the heresy of Tanchelin at Antwerp by Norbert brought the order into
the Low Countries ; and his promotion to the archbishopric of Magde-
burg in 1126 ensured its success in Germany. In 1127, when Honorius II
confirmed the order in its possessions, it had nine abbeys, Prémontré,
Saint-Martin at Laon, Saint-Michael at Antwerp, two in the diocese of
Münster, and one in each of the dioceses of Soissons, Liège, Mayence, and
Metz. By 1144, ten years after Norbert's death, the nine had grown to
seventy. Some nine years later, the order was to be found in almost every
country in Europe and had reached Palestine. The eventual number of
its houses is somewhat variously stated, and some estimates appear to be
extravagant. The first English monastery, Newhouse in Lincolnshire,
was colonised from Licques in the Boulonais in 1143; and eventually the
order could count some thirty houses in England and Wales. The estab-


## p. 681 (#727) ############################################

Double monasteries
681
lishment of dependent priories, a natural consequence of the connexion
of the canons with parish churches, marks a point of divergence from
Cistercian custom. There were also several cathedral churches with
Premonstratensian chapters, of which we have one British example at
Whithorn in Galloway.
In another respect also this order, in its early days, presented a
contrast to Cîteaux. The Fontevraldine experiment of monasteries
combining monks with nuns was never contemplated by the Cistercians.
Women, indeed, soon embraced the Cistercian interpretation of the Rule
of St Benedict; and Stephen Harding founded the first Cistercian nunnery
in 1120, at Tart in the diocese of Langres. Such nunneries took their
place in the line of affiliation; but abbesses were not admitted to chapters-
general, and, in time, the nunneries of certain countries held their own
general chapters. In England no affiliation between Cistercian nunneries
can be traced: these small and poor houses, like Benedictine nunneries,
sprang up independently; their connexion with the order was simply
their adoption of Cistercian customs ; and, like Benedictine nunneries
again, their visitors were the diocesan bishops. Where the original link
to the main order was closer, the alliance tended to become little more
than nominal ; and the difficulty of supervision is illustrated by the fact
that it was possible in 1210 for the Infanta Constance to usurp the
functions of an abbot in the nunnery of las Huelgas at Burgos, founded
by her father Alfonso VIII, blessing and instructing novices and hearing
confessions. It was perhaps to meet the problems of the effective super-
vision of nunneries and the proper provision for them of priestly ministra-
tions that the order of Prémontré, at its beginning, admitted women to
its houses. It may be noticed, however, that the statute of the general
chapter of 1138, which forbade the admission of women, appears to deal
primarily with lay-sisters or conversae, and refers to separate nunneries
of “ singing sisters. ” Be this as it may, the custom of receiving women
did not last long. Of the very few Premonstratensian nunneries in
England, Irford in Lincolnshire appears to have been always regarded
as a dependent cell of the abbey of Newhouse; and similarly the obscure
nunnery at Guyzance in Northumberland was under the charge of the
canons of Alnwick. The nuns of Swine in Yorkshire, regarded as a
Cistercian house, were served by Premonstratensian canons during a con-
siderable period.
The double system was also attempted by Augustinian canons. It is
found for a short time in one small Yorkshire house, Marton in the forest
of Galtres ; but here the nuns, who followed Cistercian customs, were
transferred to Moxby, not far away. Again, it played a part. in the early
constitution of the congregation of Arrouaise, which had some houses in
England, and preserved a separate, though somewhat nominal, existence
until the later part of the fifteenth century. In this instance, as in that
of Prémontré, the system was not long-lived. Its success, however, was
CH, XX.


## p. 682 (#728) ############################################

682
The Order of Sempringham. Military Orders
achieved in England, though upon a small scale, by the order of
Sempringham, which was founded for nuns in 1131 by Gilbert, rector of
Sempringham in Lincolnshire. He endeavoured without success in 1147
to induce the chapter-general of Cîteaux to receive his nuns into its order.
St Bernard and Eugenius III, however, interested themselves in his
venture; and it was with the aid of St Bernard that the Gilbertine
statutes were compiled. Canons, following the Rule of St Augustine, and
conversi, dwelling in a separate cloister, formed after this date an integral
portion of each convent. Before Gilbert's death in 1188, thirteen houses
had been founded, all in the dioceses of Lincoln and York. Subsequently,
the number grew to twenty-six; but, although the double constitution
of most of the earlier houses continued until the suppression, all but two
of those established after 1188 were for canons only. The prior of the
canons in each house, where they were limited to a maximum of thirteen,
was the head of the monastery, in direct contrast to the Fontevraldine
arrangement. The order was exempt from episcopal visitation and held
its chapter-general yearly at Sempringham ; but the office of master or
general was not attached to the headship of one particular monastery,
and might fall by election on any prior or canon who was placed on the
list of suitable candidates. Outside England, the order possessed no house,
with the exception of one short-lived establishment in Scotland ; and its
English houses were few outside Lincolnshire and Yorkshire. Cistercian
nunneries to which conversi were attached were numerous in the same
districts; and there are indications that for some of these, like Swine,
already mentioned, a constitution resembling that of Sempringham may
have been intended. In some, a monk or canon was frequently put in
charge of affairs, with the title of master or warden.
At the Council of Troyes in 1128, St Bernard provided the initial
suggestions for the Rule adopted by the Knights Templars, a community
- established at Jerusalem ten years earlier for the defence of pilg
The older military order, the Knights of the Hospital of St John of
Jerusalem, had some years earlier adopted a Rule modelled on that of
St Augustine, which in 1114 had been introduced into the chapter of the
church of the Holy Sepulchre. Military orders, while adopting the three
substantial vows, were not strictly monastic; the business of the knights
was warfare against infidels and heathen, and the preceptories or com-
manderies in which they were dispersed in Europe and the East were
either castles or small manor-houses with little likeness to monasteries.
In 1147 the castle of Calatrava in Castile, captured from the Moors, was
given to the Templars. They were unable to hold it, and for some years
it was defended by Cistercians, chiefly conversi, from the Abbey of Fitero
in Navarre. This was the origin of the Knights of Calatrava, whose order
was approved by Alexander III in 1164, and in 1187 was submitted to
the visitation of the Abbot of Morimond. From Calatrava arose the


## p. 683 (#729) ############################################

Military Orders and Orders of canons
683
Knights of Alcántara, formed by the reconstitution on Cistercian lines of
an order founded earlier at Pereyro in the diocese of Ciudad Rodrigo.
The Portuguese order, known from 1181 as the Knights of Avis, was
under the visitation of the Cistercian Abbot of Tarouca; in 1213 it was
subordinated to Calatrava, but re-established its independence after the
victory of Aljubarrota in 1385. Two other Portuguese orders, those of
the Wing of St Michael and of Christ, the latter founded in 1317, were
under the jurisdiction of the Abbot of Alcobaça ; while the Valencian
Knights of Montesa in 1316 received their constitution from Calatrava
and were submitted to Cistercian abbots. On the other hand, the Knights
of Santiago, founded in 1171, adopted the Rule of St Augustine, which
was also the model for the northern order of the Teutonic Knights and
the order, which they absorbed, of the Knights of the Sword in Livonia.
Various congregations of hospitallers, which afforded lodging to pilgrims
on European roads, and in some cases had originally a semi-military
character, such as the canons of Saint-Antoine in the diocese of Vienne
and of Altopascio near Lucca, and the canons and knights of the united
hospitals of the Holy Spirit at Montpellier and Santo Spirito in Sassia
at Rome, followed the Augustinian Rule.
It may be noted here that the same Rule, applicable to many diverse
communities, was employed by St Dominic in the constitution of the order
of Friars Preachers, and was followed by the order of Hermits known
popularly as Austin friars. Some orders also, which are occasionally
reckoned among friars, were in practice hardly to be differentiated from
Austin canons. Such was the Trinitarian order for the redemption of
captives, founded at the close of the twelfth century by St John of Matha
and St Felix of Valois ; the minister and brethren of their chief English
house, St Robert's at Knaresborough, were regarded as Austin canons,
and were allowed to hold and serve parish churches. Likewise, the Bons-
hommes of Ashridge and Edington, of whose ultimate origin nothing is
known, were not friars, as is sometimes said, but Austin canons; their
name appears again in the fifteenth century in Portugal, with customs
and a blue habit derived from the secular canons of San Giorgio in Alga
at Venice, and was applied later to the Minims in France. Originally
they were apparently a congregation which, observing the Rule of
St Augustine, maintained a certain individuality in habit and customs.
From the days of Benedict of Aniane to the epoch of the Cistercian
movement, the ideal at which monastic reformers aimed was uniformity
of practice by means of the congregational system. In France and Italy,
at frequent intervals, the customs of individual monasteries had been
extended to others, until groups of houses, sometimes attaining to large
numbers, had been formed. To speak of such groups as orders is hardly
accurate; medieval references to the orders of Thiron or Arrouaise may
be found, but the term can only be loosely applied to congregations whose
CH. XX.


## p. 684 (#730) ############################################

684
Orders and Congregations
polity was incomplete and the members of which had no very binding
connexion with the house whose customs they followed. On the other hand,
the congregations of Cluny and Cîteaux, with their definite organisation,
became orders in the true sense of the word ; Prémontré, Sempringham,
the orders of hermits and anchorites who adopted the cenobite life in a
modified form, were more than ordinary congregations. The history of
the Cistercian order shews clearly how a body with a complete political
system was capable of absorbing congregations whose constitution was
less sharply defined. Nevertheless, these orders, governed by their own
statutes, had no actual rule of their own. Their object was the strict
observance of the Rule of St Benedict or of St Augustine; and outside
them were the numerous monasteries which followed both these Rules,
without ties which bound them to any congregation. The abbey of
Saint-Denis might receive the customs of Cluny for a time; its great
abbot, Suger, might undertake its reform as the result of the objurgations
of St Bernard ; but it remained a Benedictine house, without entering
the Cluniac or Cistercian systems. Great English abbeys like Peterborough
and Ramsey might enter into an alliance of mutual fraternity; the customs
of Westminster might be nearly identical with those of St Augustine's
at Canterbury; but such monasteries were autonomous bodies. It was
also among these houses that the most influential and well-endowed
monasteries were to be found in the later Middle Ages. If the wealth of
Cluny was great, few of its dependencies could boast more than a modest
income. Cistercian abbevs, to judge from the revenues of English houses
at the suppression, were seldom well-to-do; and even Fountains or Furness
could not compare in income with the great Benedictine houses. The
riches of Augustinian canons, many of whose monasteries were small and
poor, were certainly not excessive; and their ecclesiastical and political
importance was small in proportion to their numbers. But such com-
munities as Cirencester and Bridlington greatly exceeded any Premon-
stratensian house in wealth. While the papal grant of the use of the
mitre to abbots and priors was a privilege which might be conferred
irrespective of orders, it was to the heads of prominent autonomous houses
that it usually fell. Again, though in the early days of the English parlia-
ment Cistercian and Premonstratensian abbots were summoned side by
side with Benedictines and Augustinians, the eventual body of spiritual
peers, in addition to the bishops, consisted, with some four exceptions,
of the chief Benedictine abbots.
Speaking generally, Benedictine and Augustinian houses were subject
to episcopal control. The local bishop confirmed elections of abbots and
priors, and held periodical visitations. A few important monasteries were
subject immediately to the Pope and had quasi-episcopal jurisdiction
within their own liberties ; in England, St Augustine's at Canterbury,
St Alban's, St Edmund's at Bury, Westminster, and Evesham, of the
Benedictines, and of the Augustinians, Waltham and St Botolph's at


## p. 685 (#731) ############################################

The Fourth Lateran Council, 1215
685
Colchester, enjoyed exemption. The exercise of control, whether by papal
legates or bishops, over monasteries in which the abbot or prior was
supreme, was always a difficult problem. The head of the house was a
constant factor in its administration; the visitor was an occasional
intruder, not always welcome, and sometimes resented by communities
which, like St Mary's at York and Glastonbury, attempted more than
once to assert that they were exempt. His injunctions had statutory
force; but bishops often found that, between visitations, their most careful
provisions for the good order of a monastery had been treated as a dead
letter.
The famous injunctions addressed by Innocent III to the Abbot and
convent of Subiaco, and preserved in the body of the Canon Law, give a
comprehensive view of the breaches of monastic order which visitors dis-
covered early in the thirteenth century; and their time-honoured language
was employed again and again, during the next three centuries, to clothe
similar ordinances where they were necessary. To remedy such irregu-
larities, Innocent III, at the Lateran Council of 1215, resorted to an
application of the congregational system. Reform which could not be
successfully effected by the ordinarius loci might be achieved by a closer
association of monasteries. Triennial chapters for Benedictines and
Augustinians respectively were established in every kingdom or separate
province, at which, on the model of Cistercian chapters-general, statutes
were to be drawn up and reforms undertaken, under the presidency of
abbots elected by the assembly. Visitors were to be appointed by the
chapters, not to supersede the ordinary visitor, but to ensure the super-
vision of monasteries by a central authority of their own.
At the same time, while the help of Cistercian abbots was recommended
in the formation of provincial chapters, no attempt at a subversion of
the autonomy of monasteries was contemplated. A federal bond was
established in each province, for the sake of greater uniformity; but
there was no permanent president or general of the federation, no affilia-
tion to any particular house whose abbot was endowed with primacy.
No effort was made to check local customs. The provincial chapter added
a new feature to the recognised order of things; the best prospect of its
success was the hope that its meetings might do something to raise and
maintain at a high level the standard of life prescribed by both Rules.
It is possible to criticise the constitutions of Cluny and Cîteaux as foreign
to the principle of self-government implied in the Rule of St Benedict.
The decree of the Lateran Council, on the other hand, contained no
revolutionary element.
Of the internal state of Benedictine and Augustinian houses in England
during the thirteenth century we have abundant information in the
episcopal registers of its second half; while the Regestrum Visitationum
of Eudes Rigaud, in the middle of the century, gives a detailed picture
of the life of Norman monasteries. The evidential value of episcopal
CH. XX.


## p. 686 (#732) ############################################

686
Monasticism in the thirteenth century
injunctions has often been disputed, on the ground of the formal language
in which they are cast, and in the absence of reports of the visitations
after which they were issued.
More material is available now than formerly
for the critical study of their texts; and it is impossible to avoid the
conclusion that their language refers to faults which had actually been
discovered in the monasteries to which they were addressed. Precautionary
injunctions to a monastery against abuses from which it was entirely free
exist only in imaginations which picture medieval institutions as superior
to the ordinary rules of common sense. There is abundant proof that
these injunctions were composed, as Rigaud wrote of the typical series
directed to the monks of Saint-Ouen at Rouen in December 1949,
secundum ea que inventa fuerunt per visitacionem nostram ibidem.
The decrees of the Lateran Council were followed within little mo
more
than a quarter of a century by the statutes of Gregory IX for the reform
of the Benedictine order. These, involving detailed regulations on points
of discipline and prescribing fixed penalties for their breach, were certainly
not very sedulously regarded. Rigaud, in his visitations, frequently found
that monasteries were without copies of them; and in 1253 the Abbot
and convent of Jumièges, complaining to Innocent IV that they found
the difficulties in maintaining the order of their house much increased by
the rigid wording of the Gregorian statutes, were dispensed from observing
their contents, so far as they were not of the substance of the Rule.
Such a permission might lend itself to a very liberal interpretation. Any
attempt, indeed, to curb laxness of discipline in monasteries by hard-and-
fast legislation was impossible. The natural tendency of establishments
of old foundation was to that type of life which the monks of Fountains
in 1132 had found inadequate for their spiritual needs at York. It was
only here and there that visitors discovered monasteries which were in a
really scandalous condition. Selby, in the second half of the thirteenth
century, under the rule of unsatisfactory abbots, was anything but a
pattern of a respectable and God-fearing life to the neighbouring parts
of Yorkshire. Some of the nunneries of the diocese of Rouen had suc-
cumbed to the temptations to which undefended communities of women
were peculiarly liable. Other instances could be cited ; but the typical
faults of monasteries were failures to comply with the standard demanded
by the Rule. Heads of houses, moved by family considerations or other
inducements, admitted unsuitable persons to the novitiate and profession.
Accounts were negligently rendered; the common seal of the house was
not securely kept; slackness in the services of the church was observable;
silence was not kept in cloister and the common buildings; fasting and
the prohibition of meat were constantly disregarded. The conduct of the
scattered cells or priories attached to the greater abbeys was a difficult
problem. These, for the most part, were small establishments without
conventual buildings, committed to the charge of a prior and one or two
monks, whose main duty was that of looking after the local estates of


## p. 687 (#733) ############################################

I
Causes of the decline of discipline
687
their house and collecting their fruits. Such, with few exceptions, were
the numerous priories in England possessed by French monasteries. Some-
times, in direct contravention of the Rule, a single religious without a
companion was in charge of a priory; and, even where the requisite pair
of monks was in residence, fasts were not kept and flesh-meat was in
general use.
Monastic rules, however, are counsels of perfection ; and St Benedict
had foreseen that his disciples would have to reckon with the constant
recalcitrance of human nature. It was inevitable that some monasteries
should sink into decay and abandon discipline altogether, and that small
breaches of the Rule should become habitual in others. Of the crowds
of men and women who locked into monasteries during the periods of
Cluniac and Cistercian reform, many were doubtless prompted by a me
temporary emotion to escape from the world to refuges in the quiet of
which they hoped to save their souls, while to others the comparative
ease of a life of prayer may have outweighed its prospective hardships.
It was certain, at any rate, that no monastery could hope to be without
some unfit persons, whom it would tax the energy of the abbot to control.
Where the abbot himself was ineffective or engrossed with temporal
affairs, the sin of acedia was sure to make headway. Grumbling and
internal discord were a sure evidence of decline; if, as Rigaud found,
the custom of making open complaints in chapter had fallen into disuse,
private animosities Hourished instead; and where, as at Bardney, in the
last years of the thirteenth century, a convent was openly at war with a
tactless and overbearing abbot, and the strife became matter of common
talk, or where, as at Fountains in the same period, the house was so
deeply in debt that the Crown found it necessary to appoint an official -
receiver, the reputation of a monastery was seriously injured.
The growth of the mendicant orders in the thirteenth century diverted
popular enthusiasm from the monastic orders proper. While the Cister-
cians continued, year after year, to found new monasteries, their rate of
progress was much slower than it had been at first; and the other orders
were much less active. They had become part of the established condition
of things; and the benefactions which had placed them in possession of
lands and churches were less numerous than formerly, and were being
diverted into other channels. The popularity of the friars was not likely
to leave the conduct of the older orders without criticism : it is significant
that the two visitors of monasteries at this time from whom we have the
most ample records, Archbishops Rigaud and Peckham, were both Fran-
ciscans whose zeal in commenting upon monastic abuses can hardly, with
the best intentions, have been free from the prejudices of their early
training
By this time, great and far-reaching reforms like those of Cluny and
Cîteaux were no longer to be contemplated. The unsettled state of society
which had contributed to their success was at an end ; with the growth
CH. XX.


## p. 688 (#734) ############################################

688
Later Orders in Italy
of national institutions and sentiment, the development of another world-
wide order, breaking down the barriers of race under the protection of
a universal Church, was as impossible as a new crusade. The old quarrel
between the keys and the sword was to enter upon a new phase as a
merely political contest, the points at issue in which were to be debated
by jurists and publicists, and were not to be decided by the missionaries
of religion. Henceforward, new orders were of a purely local character,
and their outposts beyond the country in which they took birth were
few. Reform, moreover, acquired a tendency to lay stress on certain
definite points, such as strict enclosure and the change of heads of houses
at regularly recurring intervals, which indicate a movement in a different
direction from that of the older reforms.
From time to time, new movements, somewhat on the lines of Camaldoli
and Vallombrosa, achieved some success in Italy. In the early part of
the twelfth century the hermit John of Matera founded the order of
Pulsano in Apulia ; and his friend and companion, William of Vercelli,
the founder of Monte Vergine, became the first general of an order which,
with the encouragement of King Roger, was well received in Sicily. The
monasteries founded in Calabria and the Basilicata from Flora, the
retreat of the famous hermit Gioacchino (Joachim) before 1192, were
affected by the influence of the Cistercian monasteries in which he had
lived, and interpreted the Rule of St Benedict with such austerity that
Gregory IX forbade migrations from them to Cistercian houses, as in-
fringing the prohibition to monks to pass from one order to another of
less strict observance. The Rule of St Benedict was also adopted in 1231
at Monte Fano by Silvestro Gozzolini, the founder of the Silvestrines or
Blue Benedictines. Rather more than twenty years later, another order of
Benedictinised hermits gathered together under Peter of Morrone. After
his election to the Papacy in 1294, his monks took the name of Celestines.
During his short and inglorious tenure of his office as Pope, he introduced
Celestines into Monte Cassino, from which they were quickly removed by
Boniface VIII. The order, however, survived its founder and established
houses in France and Germany. All these orders were Neapolitan in
origin; but in 1313 another was born further north, at Acona in the
diocese of Arezzo, to which Bernardo Tolomei and two Sienese noblemen
retired. This was the beginning of the strict order of Monte Oliveto, the
name given to Acona from the olive-groves which recalled the memory
of our Lord's agony in Gethsemane. It had a considerable vogue in Italy,
and was permitted to receive members from other orders, the Carthusian
excepted.
A comprehensive attempt at monastic reform was made by the Cis-
tercian Benedict XII, formerly Abbot of Fontfroide in the diocese of
Narbonne. His constitutions for the Cistercian order, Fulgens sicut stella,
issued in July 1335, are chiefly remarkable for their regulations against
the indiscriminate use of flesh-meat, which had been introduced into certain


## p. 689 (#735) ############################################

The Benedictine Constitutions, 1336 and 1339
689
monasteries, on the plea of custom, upon certain days in the week. It
was now banished from the refectory, but permitted, with no very stringent
restrictions, in the common hall of the infirmary and at the abbot's table
in his lodging; while all flesh-meat was to be cooked in the special kitchen
attached to the infirmary. Benedict also attempted to check the con-
struction of private rooms or cells, which led to irregularities. A separate
lodging for the abbot had become, in all orders, a permissible transgression
of the Rule, due to the necessities of his office; and separate chambers in
the infirmary were a convenience that could not easily be disallowed.
The division of the dormitory into cubicles was absolutely prohibited ;
but the prohibition, if observed for a time, was soon disregarded. Clauses
against private allowances to monks and the distribution of dividends
between the abbot and convent were directed against the growth of pro-
prietas ; and safeguards were enforced for the financial administration of
monasteries.
The constitutions for Black monks (Benedictines and Cluniacs), issued
in 1336, and for Austin canons, in 1339, re-enacted the order for triennial
chapters, establishing thirty-nine Benedictine and twenty-two Augustinian
provinces. These constitutions formed the chief basis on which later
visitors of monasteries framed their enquiries. With regard to such
customs as the use of flesh-meat their provisions were cautious and lenient;
but cells in the dormitory, except for the old and infirm, were as strictly
forbidden as in Cistercian houses. The maintenance of the common life
and the expulsion of customs tending to the acquisition of private property
were insisted upon. Secular persons were, as far as possible, to be banished
from the company of the brethren; and monks and canons were not per-
mitted to go outside their monasteries without reasonable cause or without
a companion. The integrity of monastic property might not be broken
without the deliberation and consent of the whole or a majority of the
community; the danger of indiscriminate or improperly conducted sales
and leases of land was, as contemporary and later documents shew, one
that could not be too sedulously anticipated. While, especially in the
case of canons, residence outside monasteries on benefices or in priories
was recognised as part of the order of things, it was essential that the
numbers of each community should be kept up to their full strength.
For monasteries which might decay in observance or in financial resources,
regulations were made for bringing in new blood in the first case, and for
union with other houses in the second.
Most important are the long and full chapters providing for the
support of student monks and canons at universities. Each house of
twenty members was to send one ; each of above twenty, one or more,
according to its resources. Already the Benedictine house at Oxford,
Gloucester Hall, had been founded for English monks; and, after the
publication of these constitutions, the house for Durham monks came
into existence. At Cambridge, no special Benedictine college was founded
C. MED, H. VOL. V. CH. XX.


## p. 690 (#736) ############################################

690
State of learning in monasteries
till the next century; but monks from various East Anglian houses went
there earlier, and Benedictines from Norwich, for example, were to be
found at Edmund Gonville's Hall of the Annunciation. If these provisions
were adhered to, the ordinary monastery of any size would usually contain
a few monks who had made a study of theology or Canon Law under
qualified teachers; and in later years we frequently find abbots and priors
with university degrees, such as William Welles, Abbot of St Mary's,
York, who was one of the English envoys to the Council of Basle. Welles
and two other abbots of St Mary's with similar qualifications were
promoted to bishoprics ; St Albans, Gloucester, and other houses also
furnished bishops from among their abbots. On the other hand, fifteenth-
century visitors in England found this statute often neglected ; and in
1438 there occurs the case of a young monk of Spalding who, sent to the
university, found his means of support withheld, and was obliged to
maintain himself by pawning the books which he had borrowed for his
studies from the convent library. Similarly, the constitution which
ordained that a teacher should be provided in the monastery for novices
and others who wished to learn was often imperfectly observed. If there
were learned men in monasteries in the later Middle Ages, it is impossible
to avoid the conclusion that monasteries as a whole were not homes of
learning. The remarkable activity of monastic chroniclers ceases, with a
few exceptions, as the fourteenth century advances ; and, if libraries were
still enriched with manuscripts and churches with splendid office-books
like the Westminster and Sherborne missals, there is no indication that
the gifts of writing and illuminating were general. The detailed reports
of visitations of monasteries by Bishop Alnwick of Lincoln (1436-1449)
leave the impression that learning in religious houses was somewhat de-
ficient. In only three houses was a monk or canon invited to deliver the
visitation sermon; and it is significant that when some monks at Bardney
wished to draw up a charter, for which they had fraudulently procured
the common seal, none of them knew how to do it, and the blank parch-
ment had to be sent to a notary in Lincoln. Neither the Benedictine
constitutions nor visitation documents contain information which warrants
the supposition, often stated as a fact, that monasteries undertook the
education of the children of the neighbourhood. Both are explicit upon the
undesirability of admitting secular persons into a monastery ; episcopal
visitors sedulously strove to limit the admission of children as boarders
in nunneries, which was a source of pecuniary profit to the house, as such
children generally came from well-to-do families, and afforded more dis-
traction to the nuns than benefit to their young lodgers. So far as the
maintenance and education of poor children in the almonries of monasteries
was concerned, the custom was gradually falling into disuse in the fifteenth
century. Alnwick found, in more than one instance, that their numbers
were smaller than those which monasteries could afford to support; and
the few maintained at Leicester simply acted as errand-boys for the canons.


## p. 691 (#737) ############################################

Evidence of visitation documents
691
Visitation reports and injunctions also disclose that the Benedictine
constitutions were constantly transgressed by convents in need of ready
inoney. The bad habit of granting corrodies or allowances in money and
victuals to secular persons was forced upon monasteries by patrons who
wished to provide for clerks or old servants at a minimum of expense to
themselves. But corrodies could also be sold to applicants, and thus a
convent was often burdened with a number of lodgers and pensioners
who had paid a lump sum for their privileges and became the actual
profiters by the speculation. Property suffered by sales and disadvan-
tageous leases ; timber was cut down and sold before it was ready for
felling. In these circumstances, monastic finance became a difficult
problem ; the status domus often shewed a deficit, and efforts to cut down
expenses, where habits of life had become fixed, were unavailing. The
evidence shews that the management of finance constantly fell into the
hands of a few, who did much as they chose; a masterful abbot or prior
could obtain possession of the purse of the convent, or a weak one could
leave it to the control of obedientiaries who squandered money and
rendered few or no accounts. Petitions for the appropriation of churches
contain statements of poverty brought about by the decay of property,
rises in prices, heavy taxation, and the exercise of the duty of hospitality
to all and sundry, a duty which was profitable where a monastery was
a centre of pilgrimage, but irksome where it merely was a resort of casual
travellers. But there is no doubt that poverty was the result of careless
finance, and, as was natural, brought general negligence and other evils
in its train. Even in well-managed and prosperous monasteries, the state
of things offered a strange contrast to the requirements of the Rule. The
appropriation of a considerable part of the common fund to the abbot,
who kept a large household of knights, squires, and grooms, and had his
own staff of obedientiaries chosen from the monks, his frequent journeys
to London and his manor-houses, were incentives to his monks to live
luxuriously, to acquire private property, and to stray outside their house
at pleasure. Too much stress may be laid upon the faults of individuals;
for a visitor's business was to lay stress on such faults, and he did not
waste time in praising cloistered virtue. It was rarely in England that
a great monastery was found in such a lamentable state of disorder as
existed at Ramsey in 1437, though serious irregularities in smaller houses
were not uncommon. It may certainly, however, be said that the patriarchs
of western monachism, if they could have visited such eminent houses as
Westminster, Durham, or Glastonbury in the fourteenth or fifteenth
centuries, would hardly have concluded that they were fulfilling their
vocation.
In England, however, from which these general considerations are
drawn, conditions were comparatively favourable. If the Benedictine
constitutions were not carefully observed, triennial chapters of monks and
canons were held, and there was no general call for monastic reform. The
CH. XX.
44-2


## p. 692 (#738) ############################################

1
692
The later days of monasticism
pestilences of the fourteenth century worked havoc in many houses and
depreciated the value of their property; at this date it seems certain
that the great mortality among Cistercian conversi eliminated this element
from the order, and necessitated the leasing of granges to farmers or their
cultivation by hired labour. On the other hand, during the Hundred
Years' War, the wisdom of Cistercian polity was exemplified; while
Cluniac priories, in common with the small alien cells, were seized by the
Crown as members of a foreign order, Cistercian abbeys, with their less
exacting bond to Cîteaux, were left untouched. The orthodox Lancastrian
kings favoured monasteries, and, even in suppressing alien priories and
granting them to non-monastic foundations, they were careful to dis-
tinguish between conventual priories, which were preserved, and those
which were merely manors belonging to foreign houses. The Wars of the
Roses, if they did not encourage monastic discipline, at any rate spared
monasteries. Even in face of the serious charges laid to the account of
the monks of St Albans by Archbishop Morton, it cannot be said that,
in the period immediately preceding the suppression, decline was more
evident than it had been at a much earlier date. Abbots were still regulars;
the custom, so disastrous in other countries, of granting abbeys in com-
mendam, never prevailed in England to any noticeable extent. At the
same time, the foundation of monasteries, rare in the fourteenth century,
ceased altogether in the fifteenth. Of the few monasteries founded after
the beginning of the reign of Edward III, the most important were the
seven Charterhouses added to the two previously existing. William de
la Pole hesitated over the form of his proposed foundation at Hull,
which his Michael
gave
to the Carthusians. It was in the
prayers
this strictest of orders, living apart from the world in silence and poverty,
that the courtiers of the last Plantagenet kings saw the best assurance
of salvation. The last monasteries of any importance to be founded in
England were Henry V's Charterhouse of Shene and the double house of
nuns and canons of the Brigitine order at Syon.
In France, the disasters of the Hundred Years' War, with the prevalence
of anarchy, not only destroyed monastic discipline, but left monasteries
incapable of recovery. Similarly, in Italy and Germany, disturbed by
party factions and intestine warfare, and shaken by the strife of Pope and
Emperor and by the great schism in the Church, monastic life was at a
low ebb, the Benedictine constitutions were a dead letter, and monasteries
ruled by commendatory abbots were virtually secularised. Enthusiasts,
however, were not wanting in Italy who sought to establish congregations
on lines of strict observance of the Benedictine Rule. Carthusians and
Olivetans still set an example of discipline; and Cistercians seem for a
time to have remained superior to the general apathy. The small order
of Corpus Christi, founded at Gualdo in Umbria in 1318, established the
abbey of Santa Maria dei Campi near Foligno in 1373, to which its
priories were subordinated. Approved by Gregory XI and by Boniface IX
son
of


## p. 693 (#739) ############################################

Development of the congregational system
693
it was affiliated to the Cistercians in 1393. Twenty years later it was
freed from this nominal dependence, and, preserving Cistercian customs,
remained independent until, late in the sixteenth century, it was merged
in the order of Monte Oliveto.
The ruin and revival of the older monasteries is well illustrated by
the history of the abbey of Santa Giustina at Padua, which in 1407
contained only three religious. Gregory XII gave it in commendam to
the Cardinal of Bologna, who attempted to restore it with the aid of
Olivetans. The old monks, however, were brought back by the influence
of the Venetian republic; and in 1408 Lodovico Barbo, Prior of the canons
of San Giorgio in Alga, was appointed Abbot, became a Benedictine,
and reinforced the house with two of his canons and two Camaldolese
from Murano. From this germ began the reformed congregation of Santa
Giustina, which, coming into life in 1421, held its first chapter-general
in 1424, and gradually included the older Benedictine monasteries of Italy
within its limits. This congregation, which, after the union of Monte
Cassino with it in 1504, adopted the title Cassinese, marks the beginning
of modern monasticism. Its fundamental principle was essentially different
from that of the provincial federations ordered by the Benedictine con-
stitutions. Its chapters were not mere assemblies of a consultative body
charged with the preservation of unity between bodies which, for all
practical purposes, were self-ruling; they were meetings of a central
executive which controlled the congregation as though it were a single
monastery. So far, it resembled the Cluniac system ; but that system,
with a permanent autocrat at its head, was open to abuse, especially in
an age when the custom of granting the dignity of abbot in commendam
to some wealthy ecclesiastic who was not even a monk had done so much
to disorganise regular observance. The congregation changed its president,
abbots, and other officers at every chapter. Thus not only the individuality
of monasteries was suppressed, but their right of free election was taken
away; the supremacy of the abbot over the Benedictine house was practi-
cally abandoned, and the abbots became merely the obedientiaries of the
general chapter.
While the congregational system involved this important change in
the Benedictine system of government, it supplied an adequate method
for dealing with the critical condition of monastic life in an age which
called for wholesale reform. Its rise was contemporary with the conciliar
movement; and it was the Pope elected by the Council of Constance
who, at the request of Albert of Austria, sent commissaries to reform the
monasteries in his dominions. From this source came the reform of Melk
in the diocese of Passau, which, beginning in 1418, spread to other
Austrian houses. Neither Melk, however, nor Castel in the diocese of
Eichstädt, which set the example of reform in Bavaria, organised con-
gregations on the strict model; and their position with regard to the
monasteries which imitated them resembled that of the so-called heads
CH. XX.


## p. 694 (#740) ############################################

694
The Congregation of Windesheim
of congregations at an earlier date. The reform of Bursfeld in the duchy
of Brunswick led in 1464 to the establishment of the first regular congre-
gation in Germany.
One of the most remarkable reforms of this later period sprang from
the house of canons regular at Windesheim near Zwolle in Friesland. Its
founder, Florens Radewin, was a disciple of Gerhard Groot of Deventer;
he after 1374 had gathered round him a body of clerks who, without
formal monastic organisation, were called the Brethren of the Common
Life and are famous in the annals of Christian mysticism. After Gerhard's
death in 1384 his work was carried on by Radewin; and the foundation
of Windesheim shortly afterwards fulfilled his ultimate aims. In 1395
a congregation was formed consisting of Windesheim and three other
houses ; and statutes were promulgated in 1402. In this union the auto-
nomy of the constituent members was respected; the prior-superior of
Windesheim was merely a moderator, nor was the expedient of annual
or triennial elections of priors adopted. The congregation, however, held
tenaciously to uniformity of habit and customs, and was slow to admit
monasteries which did not readily conform to its rules. It was only by
a compromise on the question of habit that the monastery of Neuss, with
some allied houses, was united to Windesheim in 1430. Its influence,
however, worked wonders in the Low Countries and in Germany; and
one of its sons, Johann Busch, was among the most prominent reformers
of claustral discipline in his age. Of the difficulties with which he had to
contend and the stern determination with which he met them he has left
us a full record. In house after house of canons and nuns, in which the
substantial vows were neglected or wholly abandoned, he met with fear,
suspicion, or active hostility. His efforts, however, attended with not
a little danger, had at least a temporary success, and were undertaken
with the concurrence of diocesan authorities who recognised the importance
of the restoration of order in the cloister. The congregation of Windes-
heim maintained the high spiritual ideals of its founder ; in some of its
houses a Carthusian severity of life was pursued. Groenendael in Brabant,
of which the famous mystic Jan Ruysbroek had been prior in the fourteenth
century, joined its stricter observance in 1448; and the reputed author
of the Imitatio Christi was a canon of its monastery at Kempen.
The house of Jesus of Bethlehem at Syon, already mentioned, belonged
to an order, established in Sweden in the middle of the fourteenth century,
which was in part an Augustinian reform. The order of the Saviour,
founded by the Swedish princess St Bridget, was the last attempt at a
community of both sexes in one monastery. Side by side with a cloister
of sixty nuns there was another, in which thirteen priest-canons, four
deacons, and eight conversi lived. Thus, as in previous attempts of a
similar kind, the spiritual and temporal needs of the nuns were supplied
by a male convent; the abbess, as at Fontevrault, being the head of the
whole community. The order was approved by Urban V; and, although


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Fifteenth-century attempts at reform
695
its monasteries were not numerous, the magnificent endowment of Syon,
which at the suppression was among the most prosperous of English
houses, gives it a special importance.
No congregational movement was initiated by the Benedictines and
canons regular of England before the suppression; and the events of the
Reformation period put an end to the congregation of Bursteld in
Germany. In Spain, the gradual growth of a Benedictine congregation
proceeded from the priory of San Benito el Real at Valladolid, founded
by John I of Castile towards the close of the fourteenth century, which
attracted other monasteries into union with it. The congregation, with
its system of perpetual enclosure and frequent change of priors, was
recognised by Innocent VIII, and the Prior of Valladolid was made an
abbot by Alexander VI. If the Papacy throughout the fifteenth century
was more remarkable for political than for religious zeal, successive
Popes at any rate countenanced the restoration of order in monasteries.
Eugenius IV, in his early years one of the founders of the reformed house of
secular canons at San Giorgio in Alga, displayed an activity in furthering
reform which contrasted favourably with the divided efforts of the Council
of Basle to assert its authority against the Pope's. The zeal of Ambrogio
of Camaldoli, the faithful henchman of Eugenius, restored discipline in
his own order and was used to stir up the flagging energy of others. In
1444 Eugenius, acting upon information from France and Spain, urged
the Cistercian chapter-general to take measures to combat slackness. The
Cistercians had revised their constitutions in 1350 ; but growing disunion
was felt in their ranks, and in 1426 the forward spirits of the order in
Spain had formed a separate congregation under the headship of the
Abbot of Poblet, which was eventually recognised by one chapter-general
and disowned by the next. The arrest of decline was impossible; when,
in 1475, Sixtus IV revived the constitution of Benedict XII against the
promiscuous use of Hesh-meat, the power of dispensation permitted to
abbots led to the complete loss of that uniformity of practice which was
a substantive principle of the order. In 1485 came the decision of the
chapter-general to allow flesh-meat on three days a week in a separate
refectory as the general practice. This concession, however, was no avenue
to reform; and in 1487 Innocent VIII issued fresh constitutions for the
improvement of monasteries. Early in 1494 a number of French abbots
met at the college of the order in Paris and drew up articles of reform
which shew that its shortcomings were those habitual in monasteries of
other bodies. Monks roamed outside their houses in secular habits; within
the monastery they lived too comfortably; the gates were not closed
at the proper hours; there was unchecked communication with secular
persons, and women were allowed to enter the cloister. It is significant
of the strength of the opposition that these articles were quashed on
petition by the Parlement of Dijon, on the ground that they had not
been drawn up at Cîteaux, within its jurisdiction. The order was saved
CH. XX.


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696
The Reformation and monasticism
from extinction only by the perseverance of the Spanish congregation in
face of rebuffs, and by the activity of a group of new monasteries in the
Low Countries and western Germany. In 1497 a congregation was formed
in Tuscany and Lombardy; and, in the century following the Council of
Trent, the congregational system was extended to the whole order.
To the same period belongs the extension of the system to France;
for, although sporadic reforms had taken place there about the end of the
fifteenth century, like that of Chézal-Benoît in the diocese of Bourges,
recognised in 1516 as the head of a small congregation, the sufferings of
France during the long wars with England, and the civil strife of
Burgundians and Armagnacs, had vitally injured her religious life. The
growth, however, of later congregations is beyond the scope of this clfapter.
The Reformation, bringing complete extinction to the monasteries of
countries and provinces which rejected the papal authority, put an end
to the medieval monastic system. Monasticism, in the later centuries of
the Middle Ages, had lost touch with the main currents of progress ;
once the vital force at the back of ecclesiastical reform, it had now become
merely a department of ecclesiastical affairs which exercised little influence.
It had long lost the position in which it could control the Papacy and
command the reverence of the secular power. Such incidents as the sup-
pression of the Templars, the seizure of the alien priories in England,
the summary dissolution of small and inactive houses by papal bulls,
were evidences of monastic weakness and precedents for wholesale acts of
confiscation and destruction. While Henry VIII took advantage of his
breach with Rome to put an end to the English monasteries, the monas-
teries and military orders of Spain were equally at the mercy of the most
Catholic king, if it had been to his advantage to pursue the same line of
policy. The monastery, however, is an institution which in every age
meets a certain class of human needs. Though deprived of its old promi-
nence, it survived the troubles of the Reformation. Under the fostering
care of national congregations, it entered upon a new phase of existence;
and, if it was still subject to the inevitable alternation of lapse and revival,
such bodies as the congregation of Saint-Maur were still to exhibit a
pious fervour comparable to that of Cluny and Cîteaux in their best days,
and a learning which more than equalled the best traditions of Monte
Cassino and Saint-Victor. If the ordinary medieval monastery has been
somewhat overrated as a centre of learning and education, the later
achievements of Benedictinism in this direction have renewed the lustre
of the age when religious houses, in the midst of a chaotic society, were
chief among the formative influences of European civilisation.


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697
CHAPTER XXI.
ROMAN AND CANON LAW IN THE MIDDLE AGES.
I.
The age of the Crusades was also the age of the revival of legal
studies in Italy. These studies were devoted chiefly to two legal systems
closely related to each other not only in their historical origin and evo-
lution but also in their form and content. Neither the Civil Law nor the
Canon Law had originated in the medieval centuries immediately pre-
ceding the Italian legal renascence. Both of these systems were outgrowths
of the age of antiquity; both of them were integral parts of the civilisa-
tion which the Middle Ages inherited from the ancient world. The Civil
Law—the medieval Roman Law—was a system created by the ancient
Romans and transmitted by them to the peoples of the East and the
West; while the Canon Law, an adaptation and expansion of the
Roman Law to meet the purposes of the Christian Church, was in its
origins and earlier development not less a creation of the Roman legal
genius than the Civil Law itself.