The Rise of the Mediaeval Church And Its Influence on the...

Outline: I.—Monasticism before the Crusades. II.—Effect of the Crusades on monasticism. III.—Origin of the begging orders. IV.—Rise and influence of the Dominicans. V.—Origin and power of the Franciscans. VI.—Wide-spread results of mediæval monasticism. VII.—Sources.

1. The order of Grammont, founded by Stephen of Tigerno in 1073 with the sanction of Gregory VII., spread rapidly over France as a reform society. The order lived under an oral rule until 1143, when it was written out by Stephen of Lisiac. Revised under Innocent III., the rule lasted until the seventeenth century. The order included more lay than spiritual brethren, also had three women's cloisters, and was generally recognised as a reform organisation.[510:3]

4. The Cistercians, founded at Citeaux near Dijon in Burgundy in 1098 by Robert of Molesme, a Benedictine abbot, who, despairing of reforming the loose and frivolous life of the old order, resolved to found a new one for the purpose of leading a life of austere asceticism. The order spread rapidly and reached its culmination in the thirteenth century, when its cloisters numbered eight hundred.[511:1] In opposition to the wealthy monasteries about them, the Cistercians had unpretentious buildings, simple furniture, plain clothing, no pictures, images, or decorations, and a brief, unpretentious ritual. The greatest man in the order was St. Bernard[511:2] and under his leadership heretics like Abélard, Arnold of Brescia, and the Cathari were crushed, and the Second Crusade was preached.[511:3]

5. The order of Prémontré founded by St. Norbert in 1121—the only German originator of a monastic order after Bruno and who was converted from a rich worldly canon to a pious monk,—combined the life of monk and canon, soon spread through all countries, and had at one time a thousand abbeys for males and five hundred for females. The rules were those of Augustine, the religious practices were as severe, flesh was altogether forbidden as food, and fasts and scourgings were frequent. Norbert dressed himself in plain sheep skins and walked about barefooted among the poor people preaching and teaching. In 1126 he was appointed Archbishop of Magdeburg, where he carried on the reforms so dear to his heart.

6. The Gilbertines, an order originated in 1148 by Gilbert, an English ecclesiastic of noble origin, and intended at first for women only but later opened to men, planted many cloisters throughout England with poorhouses, hospitals, and orphanages attached.[512:1]

8. The Humiliati, founded by John Oldratus, a nobleman of Milan (died 1159), included men and women in the same house. This order was the outgrowth of the pietistic-socialistic movement in northern Italy and was a pronounced forerunner of the begging orders.

The Crusades produced two new forms of monasticism—the military orders and the convents of women established on the basis of useful activity and not idle contemplation. The military orders were a peculiar union of monk and knight whose purpose was, through charity and war, to protect pilgrims to the Holy Land, to care for the sick and to feed and house the tired and hungry.

1. The order of St. John had its origin in a hospital founded in 1065 at Jerusalem for sick pilgrims of both sexes by Maurus, a rich man of Amalfi. A master and lay brethren conducted it. In 1099, after the victory of the First Crusade, many knights joined it, hence to the hospital duties was now added armed protection for pilgrims. Soon a new and larger hospital was built near the church of St. John the Baptist from which the order was named. In 1121 Raymond de Puy gave the brotherhood a fixed rule which required the vows of monasticism, ascetic practices, and the duty of armed protection.[513:1] The order had two thousand members by 1160 and had received great wealth from Popes, princes, and private persons. Soon many affiliated branches were planted on land and on islands of the sea. In the thirteenth century the total income of the order was eighteen times as great as that of the King of France. After 1187 the order withdrew to Ptolemais and kept up the contest with the Saracens for a century when in 1291 it again withdrew first to the Isle of Cyprus, then in 1309 to the Isle of Rhodes, and, finally, in 1350 to the Isle of Malta where it remained until disbanded in 1797 by Napoleon.

2. Two companions of Godfrey of Bouillon in 1118 united with seven other knights to protect and guide pilgrims to the Holy Land. To the three monastic vows which they took was added a fourth, namely, to fight the "infidels." King Baldwin II. gave them a residence in the Temple of Solomon, hence the order came to be called the Templars.[513:2] The membership soon increased and a rule was drawn up. St. Bernard championed the order and Pope Honorius II. favoured it. Burghers soon joined the knights, but the hospital duties were obscured by the feats of arms. They withdrew in 1291 to Cypress and then to France where through royal and papal favours they soon numbered twenty thousand knights and possessed vast wealth. Under Philip IV. of France they were disbanded and robbed in 1307.

3. The Teutonic Knights date from the Third Crusade and derived their name from a German hospital founded in 1128 at Jerusalem, which fell in 1187. The intense sufferings at the siege of Acre in 1190 led some of the German merchants to revive the work of the hospital by making tents out of the sails of their ships and caring for the sick. In 1200 these hospital attendants organised themselves as a military order, adopted monastic vows, promised to help the sick and wounded, bound themselves to fight the Mohammedans and pagans, and were soon favoured by the Pope and Emperor. At first the members were all Germans of honourable birth but later priests and burghers were admitted. The order became powerful and wealthy and in 1237 absorbed the order of Brothers of the Sword. The order removed first to Venice in 1291, and then to Marienburg in 1309 to wage a crusade against the pagan Prussians. Napoleon in 1809 suppressed the order. In Spain to fight the Moors were organised the order of Calatrava, the order of Aleontera, and the order of Montesta. In Portugal appeared the order of Christ and the order of Avis.

This rapid multiplication of orders and their marvellous increase of wealth was followed by equally rapid degeneration and decay, so that the original purpose of the monastic organisation was lost after a few generations. The Popes granted them many exemptions. The members of these various orders became more estranged from the humbler classes and were in consequence unpopular, suspected, and hated. The vows of poverty were eluded; the narrow cell became a grand cloister; the deserts became parks, and the hermits, princely abbots; and the inmates of the monastery changed into a worldly aristocracy under a religious name. The promise of chastity was forgotten, the abbeys became centres of corruption and the nunneries almost houses of prostitution.[515:1] Monasticism resembled feudalism in which the abbot and his monks lived riotously and waged war upon their neighbours. Such men as Gilbert, the Abbot of Gemblours, confessed with shame that monachism had become an oppression and a scandal—a hissing and a reproach to all men.[516:1] St. Bernard said in 1147 of the region of the Count of Toulouse.

The churches are without people, the people are without priests, the priests without the reverence due them, and the Christians without Christ. The churches are regarded as synagogues, the sanctuary of the Lord is no longer holy; the sacraments are no longer held sacred; feast days are without solemnity; men die in their sins and their souls are hurried to the dread tribunal, neither reconciled by penance nor fortified by the holy communion.[516:2]

The old form of monasticism, at its best, thought only of the salvation of its own members and not of the world. Here, then, was an opportunity for a great revolution and also a crying need for it. Everywhere monasteries were rapidly obtaining exemptions from the bishops and subjecting themselves to the successor of St. Peter. While this strengthened the Pope, it stimulated conventual degeneracy, relaxed monastic discipline, denationalised monasticism, aroused popular hostility, and spread the report that a little gold would purchase any privilege.[516:4] Under these conditions it was perhaps natural that the inmates of monasteries were frequently recruited from the worst and most vicious classes. Such motives as sickness, poverty, crime, mortal danger, dread of hell, and desire of heaven would not furnish the best class of devotees.[517:1] In one French cloister the inmates were all professional highway robbers. Furthermore, the name monk was rendered still more despicable by the crowds of tramps palming themselves off as monks. Bearded, tonsured, and dressed in the religious habit, they swarmed throughout all parts of Christendom, begging, stealing, deceiving, and peddling false relics, and were often taken in crime and slain without mercy.[517:2] The secular priests hated the monks and the people mistrusted and despised both.[517:3] The intense speculative spirit of the age tended to create disbelief in the Church and to produce new sects which the Papacy tried in vain to suppress by force.

The secular clergy were also in bad condition—the upper clergy wealthy, powerful, immoral, and worldly; the lower clergy characterised by sloth and incapacity. The need of reformation was generally recognised, but who would do it? "The Church had made no real effort at internal reform; it was still grasping, licentious, covetous, and a strange desire for something—they knew not exactly what—began to take possession of men's hearts and spread like an epidemic from village to village and from land to land."[517:4] Heresy, likewise, was making rapid strides and was propagated by sects whose austere lives and serviceable conduct were popular because in such a striking contrast to those of the monks and clergy.

The general purpose of the begging orders, which grew out of these conditions, was (1) to reform the Church from within and not by revolution; (2) to avoid the evils and corruptions of wealth by making poverty an object of admiration and sanctification; (3) to send their members out to save the Church and the world instead of shutting them up in monasteries for the selfish purpose of saving their own souls; (4) to supervise the whole system and to keep the order in a harmonious working condition by a rigidly organised monarchial government; and (5) to set on foot a great reformatory home movement which would win the Church away from the corrupting idols back to a purer and more primitive Christianity.[518:1] The two prominent begging orders were both Romanic in origin and not Germanic.

(2) Arnold of Brescia (c. 1100-1155), a priest and follower of Abélard, assailed the Pope's temporal power, attacked the wealth of the clergy, urged the secularisation of ecclesiastical property, and led a popular revolt in Rome for a republic. He was hanged, burned, and his ashes were thrown into the Tiber.[518:2]

(3) Gerach of Reichersberg (1093-1169), a German monk and canon of Augsburg, left his position disgusted at the irregularity of the lives of the canons, went to Rome in 1125, and was officially appointed by Honorius II. to reform the canonry. As the head of the canonry of Reichersberg (1132) he became an active and rigorous reformer.[519:1]

(4) Foulques de Neuilly (died 1202), an obscure, ignorant priest, whose mighty conviction of the sins of the world and the Church made him a great preacher, was licensed by Innocent III. as a missionary. He converted thousands from wayward lives, reclaimed lost women and founded a convent for them at Paris, denounced the clergy without mercy, and struck at every evil in the Church. His reformation, however, was lost in the crusading zeal and he himself helped to preach the Fourth Crusade.[519:2]

Among the movements laying the foundations for the begging orders were (1) the "Poor Men," or Arnoldists, who were founded in Italy after the death of Arnold of Brescia[519:3]; (2) the "Poor Men of Lyons"[519:4]; and (3) the "Poor Catholics," who were founded by Duran de Husce, a Spaniard and disciple of St. Dominic. These "Poor Catholics" based their organisation on poverty and self-abnegation, sought to convert heretics, and were approved by Innocent III. although fought by the clergy. They appear to have been lost in the forcible effort to exterminate heresy.[519:5]

(4) The Beghards and Beguins were founded in the Netherlands about 1180. At first companies of women were formed in the Belgian cities to care for the sick, to perform other acts of charity, and to aid the widows and orphans of the Crusaders. They lived together in a common house, led a pious life according to a few simple rules, but took no vows. They were called Beguins. Early in the thirteenth century similar companies of men were formed and called Beghards. Members could leave the order at will, marry or enter any occupation after leaving. These orders had their own little houses, each one distinct in its organisation, which were frequently endowed by rich burghers. The inmates were also given to hand labour and did not neglect education, although their chief work was soul saving and charity. They spread rapidly from the Netherlands to Germany, to France, to Italy, and to Bohemia and Poland. As these associations increased, their members began to wander through the countries, begging and performing acts of mercy. After the middle of the thirteenth century, charges of heresy were made against them and they were persecuted by the Church.[520:1]

(5) The Carmelites, one of the mendicant orders, according to its legendary history was founded by Elijah on Mount Carmel. The first disciples were Jonah, Micah, and Obadiah; and the wife of Obadiah was the first abbess. Even Pythagoras, Mary, and Jesus were considered members. The real origin, however, seems to lie in the fact that Phocas, a Greek monk from Patmos, in 1185 saw the ruins of a monastery on Mount Carmel and there an association of hermits was formed. The Patriarch of Jerusalem in 1209 gave the association a rule and in 1224 this rule was confirmed by Honorius III. The order played an active part during the Crusades until 1238, when it was removed to Sicily and later to England and France, where it followed the custom and became a mendicant order in 1247.

The founder of the Dominicans, or Black Friars, was Dominic de Guzman, born in 1170 in old Castile of noble ancestry. Many miraculous tales were told about his mother and his infancy.[521:1] At the age of seven he was given over to his uncle, who was archpresbyter at Gumyel de Ycan. At the age of fourteen he entered the University of Palencia,[521:2] where he remained ten years as a "laborious, devout, abstemious" student. Theology was his chief subject and he became a distinguished theologian. While a student, it was said that he sold his clothes to feed the poor in a time of famine, and on another occasion he offered to redeem a sad woman's brother from slavery by taking his place. At the age of twenty-four (1194), after having studied ten years at the University, he became a canon of the Bishop of Osma, where he helped to introduce the rules of St. Augustine. Soon he was made sub-prior of the chapter, became very active in ecclesiastical affairs, excelled in asceticism, which was inspired no doubt by reading Cassian's famous work on monasticism, and became a zealous and eloquent missionary among the Mohammedans and Jews of the neighbourhood.

In 1203 he went with the Bishop of Osma to southern France to secure a bride for the King's son. In this diplomatic venture they were successful, but the bride died before she could go to Spain. Here it was that Dominic got his first view of the aggressive Albigensian heretics.[521:3] From southern France he accompanied the Bishop of Osma to Rome, where the bishop begged Innocent III. to permit him to go as a missionary to the Huns, or the Saracens, but the request was refused. The task of converting the heretics of southern France had been intrusted to the Cistercians, but they had utterly failed to accomplish it. As Dominic and the bishop were returning to France, they met at Montpellier three of these Cistercian abbots, who had been sent out by the Pope to superintend the duties intrusted to their order. The pomp and splendour of the abbots called forth this bold rebuke from Dominic: "It is not by the display of pomp and power, cavalcades of retainers and richly houseled palfreys, nor by gorgeous apparel, that the heretics win proselytes; it is by zealous preaching, by apostolic humility, by austerity and seeming holiness. Zeal must be met by zeal, humility by humility, false sanctity by real sanctity, preaching falsehood by preaching truth."[522:1] The abbots were advised to send out for the great work men who were imbued with apostolic poverty and zeal. The abbots accepted the advice and joined Dominic and his companion in their new conception of missionary work, but apparently their labours were checked in 1208 by the crusade waged against the Albigenses.