Saint Bernard — Monastic Institutions (ii)

by John Lord, LL. D.  


        It was at this period, when the convents of Europe  
     rejoiced in ample possessions, and their churches rivalled  
     cathedrals in size and magnificence, and their abbots  
     were lords and princes,——the palmy age of the monastic  
     institutions, chiefly of the Benedictine order,——that  
     Saint Bernard, the greatest and best representative of  
     Mediæval monasticism, was born, 1091, at Fontaine, in   
     Burgundy.  He belonged to a noble family.  His mother  
     was as remarkable as Monica or Nonna.  She had six  
     sons and a daughter, whom she early consecrated to the  
     Lord.  Bernard was the third son.  Like Luther, he was  
     religiously inclined from early youth, and panted for  
     monastic seclusion.  At the age of twenty-three he  
     entered the new Monastery at Citeaux, which had been  
     founded a few years before by Stephen Harding, an Eng-  
     lish saint, who revived the rule of Saint Benedict with  
     still greater strictness, and was the founder of the Cis-  
     tercian order,——a branch of the Benedictines.  He   
     entered this gloomy retreat, situated amid marshes and  
     morasses, with no outward attraction like Cluny, but  
     unhealthy and miserably poor,——the dreariest spot, per-  
     haps, in Burgundy; and he entered at the head of thirty  
     young men, of the noble class, among whom were four of  
     his brothers who had been knights, and who presented  
     themselves to the abbot as novices, bent on the severest  
     austerities that human nature could support.  
        Bernard himself was a beautiful, delicate, refined  
     young man,——tall, with flaxen hair, fair complexion,  
     blue eyes from which shone a superhuman simplicity  
     and purity.  His noble birth would have opened to him  
     the highest dignities of the Church, but he sought only   
     to bear the yoke of Christ, and to be nailed to the cross;  
     and he really became a common laborer wrapped in a  
     coarse cowl, digging ditches and planting fields,——for  
     such were the labors of the monks of Citeaux when not  
     performing their religious exercises.  But his disposition  
     was as beautiful as his person, and he soon won the ad-  
     miration of his brother monks, as he had won the affec-  
     tion of the knights of Burgundy.  Such was his physical  
     weakness that "nearly everything he took his stomach  
     rejected;" and such was the rigor of his austerities that  
     he destroyed the power of appetite.  He could scarcely  
     distinguish oil from wine.  He satisfied his hunger with  
     the Bible, and quenched his thirst with prayer.  In  
     three years he became famous as a saint, and was made  
     Abbot of Clairvaux,——a new Cistercian convent, in a  
     retired valley which had been a nest of robbers.  
        But his intellect was as remarkable as his piety, and  
     his monastery became not only a model of monastic life,  
     to which flocked men from all parts of Europe to study  
     its rules, but the ascetic abbot himself became an oracle   
     on all the questions of the day.  So great was his influ-  
     ence that when he died, in 1153, he left behind one  
     hundred and sixty monasteries formed after his model.  
     He became the counsellor of kings and nobles, bishops  
     and popes.  He was summoned to attend councils and  
     settle quarrels.  His correspondence exceeded that of  
     Jerome or Saint Augustine.  He was sought for as  
     bishop in the largest cities of France and Italy.  He  
     ruled Europe by the power of learning and sanctity.  
     He entered into all the theological controversies of the  
     day.  He was the opponent of Abélard, whose con-  
     demnation he secured.  He became a great theologian  
     and statesman, as well as churchman.  He incited the  
     princes of Europe to a new crusade.  His eloquence is  
     said to have been marvellous; even the tones of his  
     voice would melt with pity or excite to rage.  With a  
     long neck, like that of Cicero, and a trembling, ema-  
     ciated frame, he preached with passionate intensity.  
     Nobody could resist his eloquence.  He could scarcely  
     stand upright from weakness, yet he could address ten  
     thousand men.  He was an outspoken man, and re-  
     proved the greatest dignitaries with as much boldness as  
     did Savonarola.  He denounced the gluttony of monks,  
     the avarice of popes, and the rapacity of princes.  He  
     held heresy in mortal hatred, like the Fathers of the fifth   
     century.  His hostility yo Abélard was direful, since  
     he looked upon him as undermining Christianity and  
     extinguishing faith in the world.  In his defence of  
     orthodoxy he was the peer of Augustine or Athan-  
     asius.  He absolutely abhorred the Mohammedans as  
     the bitterest foes of Christendom,——the persecutors of  
     pious pilgrims.  He wandered over Europe preaching  
     a crusade.  He renounced the world, yet was compelled  
     by the unanimous voice of his contemporaries to govern  
     the world.  He gave a new impulse to the order of  
     Knights Templar.  He was as warlike as he was hum-  
     ble.  He would breath the breath of intense hostility  
     into the souls of the crusaders, and then hasten back to the  
     desolate and barren country in which Clairvaux was  
     situated, rebuild his hut of leaves an boughs, and  
     sooth his restless spirit with the study of the Song of  
     Songs.  Like his age, and like his institution, he was  
     a great contradiction.  The fiercest and most dogmatic  
     of controversialists was the most gentle and loving of  
     saints.  His humanity was as marked as his fanaticism,  
     and nothing could weaken it,——not even the rigors of  
     his convent life.  He wept at the sorrows of all who  
     sought his sympathy or advice.  On the occasion of his  
     brother's death he endeavored to preach a sermon on  
     the Canticles, but broke down as Jerome did at the  
     funeral of Paula.  He kept to the last the most vivid   
     recollection of his mother; and every night, before he  
     went to bed, he recited the seven Penitential Psalms  
     for the benefit of her soul.   
        In his sermons and exhortations Bernard dwelt  
     equally on the wrath of God and the love of Christ.  
     Said he to a runaway Cistercian, "Thou fearest watch-  
     ings, fasts, and manual labor, but these are light to  
     one who thinks on eternal fire.  The remembrance  
     of the outer darkness takes away all horror from soli-  
     tude.  Place before thine eyes the everlasting weeping  
     and gnashing of teeth, the fury of those flames which  
     can never be extinguished " (the essence of the theol-  
     ogy of the Middle Ages,——the fear of Hell, of a physi-  
     cal and eternal Hell of bodily torments, by which fear  
     those ages were controlled).  Bernard, the loveliest im-  
     personation of virtue which those ages saw, was not  
     beyond their ideas.  He impersonated them, and there-  
     fore led the age and became its greatest oracle.  The  
     passive virtues of the Sermon on the Mount were united  
     with the fiercest passions of religious intolerance and  
     the most repulsive views of divine vengeance.  That  
     is the soul of monasticism, even as reformed by Hard-  
     ing, Alberic, and Bernard in the twelfth century,——  
     less human than in the tenth century, yet more intel-  
     lectual.  
        The monks of Citeaux, of Morimund, of Pontigny, of  
     Clairvaux, amid the wastes of a barren country, wit  
     their white habits and perpetual vigils and haircloth  
     shirts and root dinners and hard labors in the field  
     were yet the counsellors and ministers of kings and the  
     creators of popes, and incited the nations to the most  
     bloody and unfortunate wars in the whole history of  
     society,——I mean the Crusades.  Some were great in-  
     tellectual giants, yet all repelled scepticism as life repels  
     death; all dwelt on the sufferings of the cross as a door   
     through which the penitent and believing could surely  
     enter heaven, yet based the justice of the infinite Father  
     of Love on what, when it appeals to consciousness,  
     seems to be the direst injustice.  We cannot despise  
     the Middle Ages, which produced such beatific and ex-  
     alted saints, but we pity those dismal times when the  
     great mass of the people had so little pleasure and com-  
     fort in this life, and such gloomy fears of the world to  
     come; when life was made a perpetual sacrifice and  
     abnegation of all the pleasures that are given us to  
     enjoy,——to use and not to pervert.  Hence monasticism  
     was repulsive, even in its best ages, to enlightened  
     reason, and fatal to all progress among nations, although  
     it served a useful purpose when men were governed by  
     fear alone, and when violence and strife and physical  
     discomfort and ignorance and degrading superstitions   
     covered the fairest portion of the earth with a funereal  
     pall for more than a thousand years.  

        The thirteenth century saw a new development of  
     monastic institutions in the creation of the Mendicant  
     Friars,——especially the Dominicans and Franciscans,——  
     monks whose mission it was to wander over Europe as  
     preachers, confessors, and teachers.  The Benedictines  
     were too numerous, wealthy, and corrupt to be reformed.  
     They had become a scandal; they had lost the confi-  
     dence of good men.  There were needed more active  
     partisans of the Pope to sustain his authority; the  
     new universities required abler professors; the cities  
     sought more popular preachers; the great desired   
     more intelligent confessors.  The Crusades had created  
     a new field of enterprise, and had opened to the eye of  
     Europe a wider horizon of knowledge.  The universi-   
     ties which had grown up around the cathedral schools  
     had kindled a spirit of inquiry.  Church architecture  
     had become lighter, more cheerful, and more symbolic.  
     The Greek philosophy had revealed a new method.  
     The doctrines of the Church, if they did not require a  
     new system, yet needed, or were supposed to need, the  
     aid of philosophy, for the questions which the school-  
     men discussed were so subtile and intricate that only  
     the logic of Aristotle could make them clear.  
        Now the Mendicant orders entered with a zeal which  
     has never been equalled, except by the Jesuits, into all   
     the inquiries of the schools, and kindled a new religious  
     life among the people, like the Methodists of the last  
     century.  They were somewhat similar to the Temper-  
     ance reformers of the last fifty years.  They were popu-  
     lar, zealous, intelligent, and religious.  So great were  
     their talents and virtues that they speedily spread over  
     Europe, and occupied the principal pulpits and the most  
     important chairs in the universities.  Bonaventura,  
     Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus  
     were the great ornaments of these new orders.  Their  
     peculiarity——in contrast with the old orders——was, that  
     they wandered from city to city and village to village  
     at the command of their superiors.  They had convents,  
     like the other monks; but they professed absolute  
     povert, went barefooted, and submitted to increased  
     rigors.  Their vows were essentially those of the Bene-  
     dictines.  In less than a century, however, they too had  
     degenerated, and were bitterly reproached for their  
     vagabond habits and the violation of their vows.  Their    
     convents had also become rich, like those of Bene-  
     dictines.  It was these friars whom Chaucer ridiculed,  
     and against whose vices Wyclif declaimed.  Yet they  
     were retained by the popes for their services in behalf   
     of ecclesiastical usurpation.  It was they who were  
     especially chosen to peddle indulgences.  Their history   
     is an impressive confirmation of the tendency of all  
     human institutions to degenerate.  It would seem that  
     the mission of the Benedictines had been accomplished  
     in the thirteenth century, and that of the Dominicans  
     and Franciscans in the fourteenth.  
        But monasticism, in any of its forms, ceased to have  
     a salutary influence on society when the darkness of the  
     Middle Ages was dispersed.  It is peculiarly a Mediæ-  
     val institution.  As a Mediæval institution, it conferred  
     many benefits on the semi-barbarian of Europe.  As  
     a whole, considering the shadows of ignorance and  
     superstition which veiled Christendom, and the evils   
     which violence produced, its influence was beneficent.  
        Among the benefits which monastic institutions con-  
     ferred, at least indirectly, may e mentioned the coun-  
     teracting influence they exerted against the turbulence  
     and tyranny of baronial lords, whose arrogance and ex-  
     tortion they rebuked; they befriended the peasantry;  
     they enabled the poor boys to rise; they defended the  
     doctrine that the instructors of mankind should be  
     taken from all classes alike; they were democratic in  
     their sympathies, while feudal life produced haughti-  
     ness and scorn; they welcomed scholars from the   
     humblest ranks; they beheld in peasants' children souls  
     which could be ennobled.  Though abbots were chosen  
     generally from the upper classes, yet the ordinary   
     monks sprang from the peasantry.  For instance, a  
     peasant's family is deprived of its head; he has been  
     doomed to misery and hardship.  No aristocratic tears  
     are shed for them; they are no better than dogs or  
     cattle.  The mother is heartbroken.  Not one of her  
     children can ordinarily rise from their abject position;  
     they can live and breathe the common air, and that is   
     all.  They are unmolested in their mud huts, if they   
     will toil for the owner of their village at the foot of  
     the baronial castle.  But one of her sons is bright and  
     religious.  He attracts the attention of a sympathetic   
     monk, whose venerable retreat is shaded with trees,  
     adorned with flowers, and seated perhaps on the side  
     of a murmuring stream, whose banks have been made  
     fertile by industry and beautiful with herds of cattle  
     and flocks of sheep.  He urges the afflicted mother to  
     consecrate him to the service of the Church; and the  
     boy enters the sanctuary and is educated according to  
     the fashion of the age, growing up a well-trained,   
     austere, and obedient member of the fraternity, whose  
     spirit is dominated by its superiors in all activities.  
     He passes from office to office.  In time he becomes the  
     prior of his convent,——possibly its abbot, the equal of  
     that proud baron in whose service his father lost his  
     life, the controller of innumerable acres, the minister of  
     kings.  How, outside the Church, could he thus have  
     arisen?  But in the monastery he is enabled, in the  
     most aristocratic age of the world, to rise to the highest  
     of worldly dignities.  And he is a man of peace and  
     not of war.  He hates war; he seeks to quell dissen-  
     sions and quarrels.  He believes that there is a higher   
     than the warrior's excellence.  Monachism recognized  
     what feudalism did not,——the claims of man as man.  
     In this respect it was human and sympathetic.  It    
     furnished a retreat from misery and oppression.  It  
     favored contemplative habits and the passive virtues,  
     so much needed in turbulent times.  Whatever faults  
     the monks had, it must be allowed that they allevi-  
     ated sufferings, and presented the only consolation that  
     their gloomy and iron age afforded.  In an imperfect  
     manner their convents answered the purpose of our  
     modern hotels, hospitals, and schools.  It was benev-  
     olence, charity, and piety which the monks aimed to  
     secure, and which they often succeeded in diffusing   
     among people more wretched and ignorant than them-  
     selves.   
     
     
     
     
                              AUTHORITIES.  

        Saint Bernard's Works, especially the Epistles; Mabillon; Hélyot's His-  
     toire des Ordres Monastiques; Dugdale's Monasticon; Döring's Geschichte  
     der Monchsorden; Montalembert's Les Moines d'Occident; Milman's Latin  
     Chritianity; Morison's Life and Times of Saint Bernard; Lives of the  
     English Saints; Stephen Harding; Histoire d'Abbaye de Cluny, par M. P.  
     Lorain; Neander's Church History; Butler's Lives of the Saints; Vaughan's  
     Life of Thomas Aquinas; Digby's Ages of Faith.    

from Beacon Lights of History, by John Lord, LL. D.,
Volume III, Part I: The Middle Ages, pp. 158 - 168
©1883, by John Lord.
©1921, By Wm. H. Wise & Co., New York