§ 61. THE REVIVAL OF MOXASTICISM. 319
swered the last objection by quoting Ps. 76 : 11, and declar ing the vow to be in itself well pleasing to God.1
It is unfair to any institution to base our judgment of its merits and utility upon its perversions. The ideal Benedic tine and Franciscan monk, we should be glad to believe, was a man who divided his time between religious exercises and some useful work, whether it was manual labor or teaching or practical toil of some other kind. There were, no doubt, multitudes of worthy men who corresponded to this ideal. But there was another ideal, and that ideal was one from which this modern age turns away with unalloyed repugnance. The pages of Voragine and the other retailers of the con ventual life are full of repulsive descriptions which were believed in their day, and presented not only a morbid view of life but a view utterly repulsive to sound morality and to the ideal. A single instance will suffice. In the curious legend of St. Brandon the Irish saint, whose wanderings on the ocean have been connected with America, we have it reported that he found an island whereon was an abbey in which twenty-four monks lived. They had come from Ireland and had been living on the island eighty years when they wel comed St. Brandon and his twelve companions. In all this time they had been served from above every week day with twelve loaves of bread, and on Sabbaths with double that number, and they had the same monotonous fare each day, bread and herbs. None of them had ever been sick. They had royal copes of cloth of gold and went in processions. They celebrated mass with lighted tapers, and they said even song. And in all those eighty years they had never spoken to one another a single word ! What an ideal that was to set up for a mortal man ! Saying mass, keeping silence, going in processions with golden copes day in and day out for eighty long years, every proper instinct of nature thus buried, the gifts of God despised, and life turned into an
., II. 12; Migne, 158, 1161 sqg.
320 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1049-1294.
indolent, selfish seclusion ! And yet Voragine, himself an archbishop, relates that " Brandon wept for joy of their holy conversation." 1
Gifts of lands to monastic institutions were common, es pecially during the Crusades. He who built a convent was looked upon as setting up a ladder to heaven.2 Battle Abbey, or the Abbey of St. Martin of the Place of Battle, as the full name is, was built by William the Conqueror on the battle-field of Hastings and finally dedicated by Anselm,1094. The Vale Royal in Cheshire, the last Cistercian home founded in England, was established by Edward I. in fulfilment of a vow made in time of danger by sea on his return from Pales tine. He laid the first stone, 1277, and presented the home with a fragment of the true cross and other relics.
Most of the monastic houses which became famous, began with humble beginnings and a severe discipline, as Clairvaux, Citeaux, Hirschau, and the Chartreuse. The colonies were planted for the most part in lonely regions, places difficult of access, in valley or on mountain or in swamp. The Franciscans and Dominicans set a different example by going into the cities and to the haunts of population, howbeit also choosing the worst quarters. The beautiful names often assumed show the change which was expected to take place in the surroundings, such as Bright Valley or Clairvaux, Good Place or Bon Lieu, the Delights or Les Delices (near Bourges), Happy Meadow or Felix Pr£, Crown of Heaven or Himmehkrone, Path to Heaven or Voie du Oiel.s Walter Map, writing in the last part of the twelfth century, lingers on the fair names of the Cistercian convents, which,
1 Temple Classics ed., vol. VII.
2 Qui claustra construct vd delapsa reparat coelum ascensurus scalam sibi facit, quoted by Hurter, IV. 450. The Norman convent Les deux Amoureux got its name and foundation from the disappointed love of a poor knight and a young lady whose father refused her to the lover except 01 condition of his carrying her to the top of a distant hill. The knight made the attempt and fell dead on accomplishing the task, she quickly following him.
3 See Montalembert, I. G6.