§ 61. THE REVIVAL OF MONASTlClSM. 815
Bishop Otto of Freising speaks of the monks as " spend ing their lives like angels in heavenly purity and holiness. They live together one in heart and soul, give themselves at one signal to sleep, lift up as by one impulse their lips in prayer and their voices in reading. . . . They go so far, that while they are refreshing the body at table, they listen to the reading of the Scriptures. . . . They give up their own wills, their earthly possessions, and their parents, and, following the command of the Gospel and Christ, constantly bear their cross by mortifying the flesh, being all the while full of heav enly homesickness."1
S The enthusiastic advocacy of the monastic life can only be explained by a desire to get relief from the turbu lence of the social world and a sincere search after holiness. There is scarcely a letter of Anselm in which he does not ad vocate its superior advantages. It was not essential to be come a monk to reach salvation, but who, he writes, " can attain to it in a safer or nobler way, he who seeks to love God alone or he who joins the love of the world with the love of God? " 2 He loses no opportunity to urge- laymen to take the vow. He appeals to his kinsmen according to the flesh to become his kinsmen in the Spirit.3 V
Bernard was not at peace till he had all his brothers and his married sister within cloistral walls.
1 Chronicle, VII. 35, where he passes a lengthy panegyric upon monks. For another pleasing description of a convent and its appointments, see the account which Ingulph, abbot of Croyland, gives of the burning of his abbey in 1091. He does not forget to mention that " the very casks full of beer in the cellar were destroyed." See Maitland, 286-292.
2 Ep.j II. 29 ; Migne, 158, 1182.
3 Ep., II. 28 ; Migne, 1180, conspirituales as well as consanguinei. A similar exhortation he directs to his two uncles. Ep., I. 45. See Hasse, Life of An selm, I. 93 sqq. Anselm, however, knew how to make an exception where a layman was devoting himself entirely to religious works. Visiting the Countess Matilda, shortly before her death, he recommended her not to take the veil, as she was doing more good in administering her estates than she might be able to do behind convent walls. Nevertheless he recommended her to have a nun's dress within reach so that she might put it on when dying.
316 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1049-1294.
Honorius of Autun, in his tract on the cloistral life,1 after declaring that it was instituted by the Lord himself, calls the convent a shore for those tired on the sea, a refuge for the traveller from the cold and anxieties of the world, a bed for the weary to rest on, an asylum for those fleeing from the turmoils of the state, a school for infants learning the rule of Christ, a gymnasium for those who would fight against vices, a prison career for the criminal from the broad way till he goes into the wide hall of heaven, a paradise with differ ent trees full of fruits and the delights of Scripture.
The monastic life was the angelic life. "Are ye not already like the angels of God, having abstained from mar riage," exclaimed St. Bernard, in preaching to his monks,2 and this was the almost universal representation of the age.
Kings and princes desired to be clad in the monastic habit as they passed into the untried scenes of the future. So Fred erick II., foe of the temporal claims of the papacy as he was, is said to have died in the garb of the Cistercians. So did Roger II. of Sicily, 1163, and Roger III., 1265. William of Nevers was clad in the garb of the Carthusian order before he expired. Louis VI. of France passed away stretched on ashes sprinkled in the form of a cross. So did Henry, son of Henry II. of Eng land, expire, laid on a bed of ashes, 1184. William the Con queror died in a priory with a bishop and abbot standing by.3
It was the custom in some convents, if not in all, to lay out the monks about to die on the floor, which was sometimes cov ered with matting. First they rapped on the death table. Waiting the approach of death, the dying often had wonder ful visions of Christ, the Virgin, and the saints. The imag ination at such times was very vivid, and the reports which
1 De vita claustrali, Migne, 172, 1247.
2 Sermo de diversis 37, quomodo non jam nunc estis sicut angeli Dei in ccelo, a nuptiis penitus abstinentes, etc. Migne, 183, 641. Comp. 184, 703 sq.
3 Ordericus Vitalis, VII. 14. For the case of Hugh of Grantmesnil, see Order, Vit., VII. 28.