THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
Vita Antonii, which he had come to know there, and of the hermits who lived in the vicinity of the city. It seems to have been planted in Spain by one Donatus from North Africa, where Augustine had been its most influential promoter, but where, as in Italy, it had encountered strong opposition.
In spite of the desire to imitate Egyptian and Palestinian models, divergences from them soon appear in western monastic institutions. Great freedom prevailed; each monastery followed its own rule; in some more than one was 2. The observed, in others the directions of Rules. the abbot took the place of a written rule. Cassian, who was the first to undertake (in his De institutis ccenobiorum) the codification of these diverse systems, speaks strongly in favor of independent development in the West, on the ground of differences of climate, surroundings, and social order. The costume of the eastern monks he considered unsuitable to the West, and he opposed the use of the hair-shirt as both hindering the monks in their work and tempting them to spiritual pride. He mitigated the rule as to food by allowing two meals, one at three o'clock and the other in the evening. He had the ancient eremitical character of monasticism in mind, as is shown by his enjoining the monks to work alone in their cells and to avoid as far as possible all intercourse with the outside world. In a condensation by a later hand of the first four books of the Institute, the so-called " Rule of Cassian " served as a standard down to the ninth century; other rules employed were that of Basil in Rufinus' translation, that of Pachomius as rendered by Jerome, and that of Macarius. Convents of women frequently followed the so-called " Rule of St. Augustine " — really a treatise written by him on a special occasion for a community of African nuns. This was used by Casarius of Aries (q.v.; d. 542) as a basis for his own Regula ad virgines. We have several others of the sixth and seventh centuries which are independent of the Benedictine rule; but they were only local in their authority, while Benedict's spread far and wide from Monte Cassino (q.v.) until it drove out all the others. The Benedictine rule (see Benedict of Ndrsia and the Benedictine Order) was marked not so much by originality as by reasonable moderation and wise elasticity. It was intended to educate the monks in the principles of strict obedience, stability, and ordered work. It was due to Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus (q.v.) that systematic study formed a part of the plan. The most serious obstacle to its general adoption was found in the competition of the rule of the Celtic missionary Columban (q.v.), the founder of the abbeys of Luxeuil and Bobbio, which was used in many monasteries of France and northern Italy. But the stern rigorism of this rule could not stand against the greater mildness of Benedict's, which Gregory II., Gregory III., and Boniface made the standard for the Frankish empire. Their work was continued by Charlemagne and Louis the Pious, with the help of Alcuin and Benedict of Aniane. As the number and importance of the monasteries increased, it became the interest of the bishops to see that they were brought under episcopal juris-
diction. The clerical character of the abbot made him in a sense dependent on the bishop, who, however, on his side, could not ordain any monk without the abbot's consent. Though the Benedictine rule prescribed the election of abbots by the monks founders frequently reserved to themselves a right of nomination. From the sixth century the abbot was installed in his office by episcopal benediction. By the end of that century many monasteries sought to oppose a barrier to the encroachments of the bishops by placing themselves under the special protection of kings or of the pope (see Exemption).
From the time of Boniface, western monasticism stood forth as the standard-bearer of civilization. Benedictine monks turned the forests into ploughed fields, brought the message of Chris- 3. Relation tianity to the north of Europe, and to Civiliza- handed down the ancient theology tion. and some part of ancient civilization. Monasteries were the central points of the religious life of the day, and schools everywhere arose in connection with them. Yet the assumption of the work of general civilization, together with the growth of possessions which made it possible for them to do so much, tended to secularize the monastic life. The first of many attempts to restore the ancient strictness is connected with the name of Benedict of Aniane (q.v.); for some that succeeded see Benedict op Nursia. Special notice must be given here to the reform of Cluny in the tenth and eleventh centuries, to which the cooperation of temporal princes and the patronage of popes gave a universal significance, and enabled it to reform not only its order but the Church at large Vsee Cluny, Abbey and Congregation or). The Cluniac reform, however, by the foundation of a separate congregation with the abbot of Cluny at its head, began the process of disintegration of western monasticism, which had been everywhere united under the rule of Benedict, first into congregations and then into separate orders. In the twelfth century the greatest influence was exercised by the new congregation of the Cistercians (q.v.), which took up the task of reform when the Cluniac congregation had been infected in its turn by worldliness. Their success was due in no small measure to their abandonment of the antiquated economic system of the older monasticism. They farmed their own land, and combined industrial activity with agriculture. While all these congregations still adhered to the rule of Benedict as a basis and merely developed it by their particular constitutions, the Premonstratensians (q.v.) were an order of clerics living by the rule of St. Augustine and attempting to combine monastic strictness with the duties of secular clergy. The reform movement of the eleventh century gave a powerful impulse to the crusades, and created, as a product of these, the knightly orders in which the temporal and spiritual ideals of the Middle Ages were singularly united. New orders and congregations multiplied to such an extent that a check was finally put upon their further increase by the (fourth) Lateran council of 1215 (canon xiv.).