§61, THE REVIVAL OF MONASTICISM.
in France, and St. Francis in Italy, cannot be ignored in any true account of the onward progress of mankind. However much we may decline to believe that monasticisrn is a higher form of Christian life, we must give due credit to these men, or deny to a series- of centuries- all progress and good what soever,
*^The times were favorable for the development of monastic communities. If our own is the age of the laic, the mediae val period was the age of the monk. Society was unsettled and turbulent. The convent offered an asylum of rest and of meditation. Bernard calls his monks " the order of the Peaceful." Feud and war ruled without. Every baronial residence was a fortress. The convent was the scene of brotherhood and co-operation. It furnished to the age the ideal of a religious household on earth. The epitaphs of monks betray the feeling of the time, pacificus, "the peace ful " ; tranquilla pace serenus, " in quiet and undisturbed re pose " ; fraternce pads amicus, " friend of brotherly peace. 'V
The circumstances are presented by Caesar of Heisterbach under which a number of monks abandoned the world, and were " converted " — that is, determined to enter a con vent. Now the decision was made at a burial.1 Now it was due to the impression made by the relation of the wonderful things which occurred in convents. This was the case with a young knight, Gerlach,2 who listened to an abbot who was then visiting a castle, as he told his experiences within cloistral walls. Gerlach went to Paris to study, but could not get rid of the seed which had been sown in his heart, and entered upon the monastic novitiate. Sometimes the decision was made in consequence of a sermon.3 Cgesar of Heisterbach himself was "converted" by a description given by Gerard of Walberberg, abbot of Heisterbach, while they were on the way to Cologne during the troublous times of Philip of Swabia and Otto IV. Gerard described
1 Dial., I. 21 ; Strange ed. I. 28. 2 Dial., I. 18. 3 Dial, I. 24.
P>12 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1049-1294.
the appearance of the Virgin, her mother Anna, and St. Mary Magdalene, who descended from the mountain and re vealed themselves to the monks of Clairvaux while they were engaged in the harvest, dried the perspiration from their foreheads, and cooled them by fanning. Within three months Caesar entered the convent of Heisterbach.1
There were in reality only two careers in the Middle Ages, the career of the knight and the career of the monk. It would be difficult to say which held out the most attractions and rewards, even for the present life. The monk himself was a soldier. The well-ordered convent offered a daily drill, exercise following exercise with the regularity of clockwork; and though the enemy was not drawn up in visible array on open field, he was a constant reality.2 Barons, counts, princes joined the colonies of the spiritual militia, hoping thereby to work out more efficiently the problem of their salvation and fight their conflict with the devil. The Third Lateran, 1179, bears witness to the popularity of the conven tual life among the higher classes, and the tendency to restrict it to them, when it forbade the practice of receiving money as a price of admission to the vow.3 The monk proved to be stronger than the knight and the institution of chivalry decayed before the institution of monasticism which still survives.
By drawing to themselves the best spirits of the time, the convents became in their good days, from the tenth well into the thirteenth century, hearthstones of piety, and the chief
1 Dial., I. 17 ; Strange ed. I. 24.
2 See Church, Life of St. Anselm, chap. III. , The Discipline of a Nor man Monastery.
3 In England the gentry class was especially drawn upon. See Jessopp, p. 161. At Morimond, Otto son of the margrave of Austria stopped overnight with fifteen young nobles. The sound of the bells and the devotions of the monks made such an impression that they prayed to be received into the brotherhood. Henry, son of Louis VI., was so moved by what he saw on a visit to Clairvaux that he determined to take the vow. See Morison, Life of St. Bernard, p. 195.