§ 34. Irv^ence and Effect of Monasticis7n.
The influence of monasticism upon the world, from Anthony and Benedict to Luther and Loyola, is deeply marked in all branches of the history of the church. Here, too, we must distinguish light and shade. The operation of the monastic institution has been to some extent of diametrically opposite kinds, and has accordingly elicited the most diverse iudo-ments. "It is impossible," says Dean Milman,' "to survey monachism in its general influence, from the eai»liest period of its inworking into Christianity, without being astonished and perplexed with its diametrically opposite effects. Here it is the undoubted parent of the blindest ignorance and the most ferocious bigotry, sometimes of the most debasing li-
\j ecutiousness ; there the guardian of learning, the author of civilization, the propagator of humble and peaceful religion." The apparent contradiction is easily solved. It is not monasticism, as such, which has proved a blessing to the church and the world ; for the monasticism of India, which for throe thousand years has pushed the practice of mortification to all the excesses of delirium, never saved a single soul, nor pro-
'"^ dueed a single benefit to the race. It was Christianiiy_hiJmo- -^ iiasticism which has done all the good, and used this abi ' rma.'
y ' nist of (aucient) Christianity, Am. ed., p. 432.
§ 34. INFLUENCE AND EFFECT OF MONASTIC ISM. 175
mode of life as a means for carrying forward its mission of Iovg and peace. In proportion as monasticism was animated and controlled by the spirit of Christianity, it proved a blessing ; while separated from it, it degenerated and became a fruitful source of evil.
At the time of its origin, when we can view it from the most favorable point, the monastic life formed a healthful and necessary counterpart to the essentially corrupt and doomed social life of the Graeco-Roman empire, and the preparatory school of a new Christian civilization among the Komanic and Germanic nations of the middle age. Like the hierarchy and the papacy, it belongs with the disciplinary institutions, which the spirit of Christianity uses as means to a higher end, and, after attaining that end, casts aside. For it ever remains the great problem of Christianity to pervade Hke leaven and sane tify all human society in the family and the state, in science and art, and in all public life. The old Roman world, which was based on heathenism, was, if the moral portraitures of Salvianus and other writers of the fourth and lifth centuries are even lialf true, past all such transformation ; and the Christian morality therefore assumed at the outset an attitude of downright hostility toward it, till she should grow strong enough to venture upon her regenerating mission among the new and, thoflgh barbarous, yet plastic and germinal nations of the middle age, and plant in them the seed of a higher civilization.
Monasticism promoted the downfall of heathenism and the victory of Christianity in the Roman empire and among the barbarians. It stood as a warning against the worldliness, frivolity, and immorality of the great cities, and a mighty call to repentance and conversion. It offered a quiet refuge to souls weary of the world, and led its earnest disciples into the sanctuary of undisturbed communion with God. It was to invalids a hospital for the cure of moral diseases, and at tho Bame time, to healthy and vigorous enthusiasts an arena for the exercise of heroic virtue.' It recalled the original unity
' Chateaubriand commends the monastic institution mainly u ader the first view. " If there are refuges for the health of the body, ah ! permit religion to have eucb also for the health of the soul, which is still more subject to sickness, and the in
176 THIRD PEKIOD. A.D. oil- 590.
und equality of the Iminan race, by })laciiig ricli and poor, liigb and low upon the same level. It i onduced to the abolition, or at least the mitigation of slavery.' It showed hospitality to the wayfaring, and liberality to the poor and needy. It waa an excellent school of meditation, self-discipline, and spiritual exercise. It sent forth most of those catholic missionaries, wlic, inured to all hardship, planted the standard of the cross among the barbarian tribes of Northern and Western Europe, and afterward in Eastern Asia and South America. It was a prolific seminary of the clergy, and gave the church many of her most eminent bishops and popes, as Gregory I. and Gregory YII. It produced saints like Anthony and Bernard, and trained divines like Chrysostom and Jerome, and the long succession of schoolmen and mystics of the middle ages. Some of the profoundcst theological discussions, like the tracts of Anselm, and the Summa of Thomas Aquinas, and not a few of the best books of devotion, like the "Imitation of Christ," by Thomas a Kempis, have proceeded from the solemn quietude of cloister life. Sacred hymns, unsurpassed for sweetness, like the Jesu dulcis memoria^ or tender emotion, like the Stabat mater dolorosa, or terrific grandeur, like the Dies irce, dies ilia, were conceived and sung by medioeval monks for all ages to come. In patristic and antiquarian learning the Benedictines, so lately as the seventeenth century, have done extraordinary service. Finally, monasticism, at least in the West, promoted the cultivation of the soil and the education of the people, and by its industrious transcriptions of the Bible, the works of the church fathers, and tlie ancient classics, earned for itself, before the Reformation, much of the credit of the modern civilization of Europe. The traveller in France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Eng-
lirinities of which arc so much more sad, so much more tedious and diflicult to cure !" Moutalcmbert (1. c. i 25) objects to this view as poetic and touching but false, and represents monastic.^m as an arena for the Iiealtliiest and strongest soids which the world has ever produced, and quotes the passage of ('hrysostom : "Come and see the tents of the soldiers of (Jhrist ; come and sec their order of battle ; they figlif every d:iy, and every day they defeat and immolote the passions which assail us."
' The abbot Isidore of Pelusium wrote to a slaveholder, Ep. 1. i. 142 (cited bj Ncauder) : " I did not think that the man who loves Christ, and knows the graw which makes ua all free, would still hold sla res."