MIRACLES OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 323 erwise inaccessible cell, the devil vainly tried to vex him by breaking the rope; that once Satan, assuming the form of a blackbird, nearly blinded him by flapping his wings; that once, too, the same tempter appeared as a beautiful Roman girl, to whose fascinations, in his youth, St. Benedict had been sensible, and from which he now hardly escaped by rolling himself among thorns. Once, when his austere rules and severity excited the resentment of the monastery over which he was abbot, the brethren-for monks have been known to do such things-attempted to poison him, but the cup burst asunder as soon as he took it into his hands. When the priest Florentius, being wickedly disposed, attempted to perpetrate a like crime by means of an adulterated loaf, a raven carried away the deadly bread from the hand of St. Benedict. Instructed by the devil, the same ecclesiastic drove from his neighborhood the holy man, by turning into the garden of his monastery seven naked girls; but scarcely had the saint taken to flight, when the chamber in which his persecutor lived fell in and buried him beneath its ruins, though the rest of the house was uninjured. Under the guidance of two visible angels, who walked before him, St. Benedict continued his journey to Monte Casino, where he erected a noble monastery; but even here miracles did not cease; for Satan bewitched the stones, so that it was impossible for the masons to move them until they were released by powerful prayers. A boy, who had stolen from the monastery to visit his parents, was not only struck dead by God for his fault, but the consecrated ground threw forth his body when they attempted to bury it, nor could it be made to rest until the consecrated bread was laid upon it. Two garrulous nuns, who had been excommunicated by St. Benedict for their perverse prating, chanced to be buried in the church. On the next administration of the sacrament, when the deacon commanded all those who did not communicate to depart, the corpses rose out of their graves and walked forth from the church. Volumes might be filled with such wonders, which edified the religious for centuries, exacting implicit belief, and being regarded as The character of of equal authority with the miracles of the Holy Scriptures. these miracles. ress of monas Though monastic life rested upon the principle of social abnegation, monasticism, in singular contradiction thereto, contained within itself the principle of organization. As early as A.D. 370, St. Basil, the Rise and progBishop of Cæsarea, incorporated the hermits and coenobites of tic orders. his diocese into one order, called after him the Basilian. One hundred and fifty years later, St. Benedict, under a milder rule, organized those who have passed under his name, and found for them occupation in suitable employments of manual and intellectual labor. In the ninth century, another Benedict revised the rule of the order, and made it more austere. Offshoots soon arose, as those of Clugni, A.D. 900; the Carthusians, A.D. 1084; the Cistercians, A.D. 1098. A favorite pursuit among 324 CIVILIZING AGENCY OF THE MONKS. them being literary labor, they introduced great improvements in the copying of manuscripts; and in their illumination and illustration are found the germs of the restoration of painting and the invention of cursive handwriting. St. Benedict enjoined his order to collect books. It has been happily observed that he forgot to say any thing about their nature, supposing that they must all be religious. The Augustinians were founded in the eleventh century. They professed, however, to be a restoration of the society founded ages before by St. Augustine. The influence to which monasticism attained may be judged of from The Benedic- the boast of the Benedictines that "Pope John XXII., who tines. died in 1334, after an exact inquiry, found that, since the first rise of the order, there had been of it 24 popes, near 200 cardinals, 7000 archbishops, 15,000 bishops, 15,000 abbots of renown, above 4000 saints, and upward of 37,000 monasteries. There have been likewise, of this order, 20 emperors and 10 empresses, 47 kings and above 50 queens, 20 sons of emperors, and 48 sons of kings; about 100 princesses, daughters of kings and emperors; besides dukes, marquises, earls, countesses, etc., innumerable. The order has produced a vast number of authors and other learned men. Their Rabanus set up the school of Germany. Their Alcuin founded the University of Paris. Their Dionysius Exiguus perfected ecclesiastical computation. Their Guido invented the scale of music; their Sylvester, the organ. They boast to have produced Anselm, Ildefonsus, and the Venerable Bede." We too often date the Christianization of a community from the conversion of its sovereign, but it is not in the nature of things that that should change the hearts of men. Of what avail is it if a barbarian chieftain drives a horde of his savages through the waters of a river by way of extemporaneous or speedy baptism? Such outward forms are of Civilization of little moment. It was mainly by the monasteries that to the Europe by the monks. peasant class of Europe was pointed out the way of civilization. The devotions and charities; the austerities of the brethren; their abstemious meal; their meagre clothing, the cheapest of the country in which they lived; their shaven heads, or the cowl which shut out the sight of sinful objects; the long staff in their hands; their naked feet and legs; their passing forth on their journeys by twos, each a watch upon his brother; the prohibitions against eating outside of the wall of the monastery, which had its own mill, its own bake-house, and whatever was needed in an abstemious domestic economy; their silent hospitality to the wayfarer, who was refreshed in a separate apartment; the lands around their buildings turned from a wilderness into a garden, and, above all, labor exalted and ennobled by their holy hands, and celibacy, forever, in the eye of the vulgar, a proof of separation from the world and a sacrifice to heaven-these were the things that arrested the attention of the barbarians of Europe, and led them on to civilization. ULTIMATE EFFECTS OF MONASTICISM. 325 In our own material age, the advocates of the monastery have plaintively asked, Where now shall we find an asylum for the sinner who is sick of the world-for the man of contemplation in his old age, or for the statesman who is tired of affairs? It was through the leisure procured by their wealth that the monasteries produced so many cultivators of letters, and transmitted to us the literary relics of the old times. It was a fortunate day when the monk turned from the weaving Their later intelof mats to the copying of manuscripts—a fortunate day lectual influence. when he began to compose those noble hymns and strains of music which will live forever. From the "Dies Ira" there rings forth grand poetry even in monkish Latin. The perpetual movements of the monastic orders gave life to the Church. The Protestant admits that to a resolute monk the Reformation was due. With these pre-eminent merits, the monastic institution had its evils. Through it was spread that dreadful materialization of relig- Their materialiion which, for so many ages, debased sacred things; through zation of religion. it that worse than pagan apotheosis, which led to the adoration-for such it really was-of dead men; through it were sustained relics and lying miracles, the belief in falsehoods so prodigious as to disgrace the common sense of man. The apostles and martyrs of old were forgotten; nay, even the worship of God was forsaken for shrines that could cure all diseases, and relics that could raise the dead. Through it was developed that intense selfishness which hesitated at no sacrifice either of the present or the future, so far as this life is concerned, in order to insure personal happiness in the next-a selfishness which, in the delusion of the times, passed under the name of piety; and the degree of abasement from the dignity of a man was made the measure of the merit of a monk. 326 AGE OF FAITH IN THE WEST. CHAPTER XV. THE AGE OF FAITH IN THE WEST. THE THREE ATTACKS: NORTHERN OR MORAL; WESTERN OR INTELLECTUAL; EASTERN OR MILITARY. THE NORTHERN OR MORAL ATTACK ON THE ITALIAN SYSTEM, AND ITS TEMPORARY REPULSE. Geographical Boundaries of Italian Christianity.-Attacks upon it. The Northern or moral Attack.—The Emperor of Germany insists on a reformation in the Papacy.-Gerbert, the representative of these Ideas, is made Pope.-They are both poisoned by the Italians. Commencement of the intellectual Rejection of the Italian System.-Originates in the Arabian doctrine of the supremacy of Reason over Authority.-The question of Transubstantiation.-Rise and development of Scholasticism.-Mutiny among the Monks. Gregory VII. spontaneously accepts and enforces a Reform in the Church. Overcomes the Emperor of Germany.-Is on the point of establishing a European Theocracy.-The Popes seize the military and monetary Resources of Europe through the Crusades. THE realm of an idea may often be defined by geometrical lines. of Latin Chris If from Rome, as a centre, two lines be drawn, one of which passes The geograph- eastward, and touches the Asiatic shore of the Bosphorus, ical boundaries the other westward, and crosses the Pyrenees, nearly all those tianity. Mediterranean countries lying to the south of these lines were living, at the time of which we speak, under the dogma, "There is but one God, and Mohammed is his prophet;" but the countries to the north had added to the orthodox conception of the Holy Trinity the adoration of the Virgin, the worship of images, the invocation of saints, and a devout attachment to relics and shrines. upon it. I have now to relate how these lines were pushed forward on Europe, Forces acting that to the east by military, that to the west by intellectual force. On Rome, as on a pivot, they worked; now opening, now closing, now threatening to curve round at their extremes and compress paganizing Christendom in their clasp; then, through the convulsive throes of the nations they had inclosed, receding from one another and quivering throughout their whole length, but receding only for an instant, to shut more closely again. It was as if from the hot sands of Africa invisible arms were put forth, enfolding Europe in their grasp, and struggling to join their hands to give to paganizing Christendom a fearful and mortal compression. There were struggles and resistances, but the portentous hands clasped at last. Historically, we call the pressure that was then made the Reformation. Not without difficulty can we describe the convulsive struggles of na THE PRESSURES UPON ROME. 327 tions so as to convey a clear idea of the forces acting upon them. I have now to devote many perhaps not uninteresting, certainly not uninstructive pages to these events. In this chapter I begin that task by relating the consequences of the state of things heretofore described-the earnestness of converted Germany and the immoralities of the popes. sist on a reform The Germans insisted on a reformation among ecclesiastics, and that they should lead lives in accordance with religion. This The Germans inmoral attack was accompanied also by an intellectual one, in the papacy. arising from another source, and amounting to a mutiny in the Church itself. In the course of centuries, and particularly during the more recent evil times, a gradual divergence of theology from morals had taken place, to the dissatisfaction of that remnant of thinking men who here and there, in the solitude of monasteries, compared the dogmas of theology with the dictates of reason. Of those, and the number was yearly increasing, who had been among the Arabs in Spain, not a few had become infected with a love of philosophy. Whoever compares the tenth and twelfth centuries together can not fail to remark the great intellectual advance which Europe was making. The ideas occupying the minds of Christian men, their very Reappearance turn of thought, had altogether changed. The earnestness of of philosophy. the Germans, commingling with the knowledge of the Mohammedans, could no longer be diverted from the misty clouds of theological discussion out of which Philosophy emerged, not in the Grecian classical vesture in which she had disappeared at Alexandria, but in the grotesque garb of the cowled and mortified monk. She timidly came back to the world as Scholasticism, persuading men to consider, by the light of their own reason, that dogma which seemed to put common sense at defiance -transubstantiation. Scarcely were her whispers heard in the ecclesiastical ranks when a mutiny against authority arose, and since it was necessary to combat that mutiny with its own weapons, the Church was compelled to give her countenance to Scholastic Theology. Lending himself to the demand for morality, and not altogether refusing to join in the intellectual progress, a great man, Hildebrand, brought on an ecclesiastical reform. He raised the papacy to its maximum of power, and prepared the way for his successors to seize the material resources of Europe through the Crusades. Such is an outline of the events with which we have now to deal. A detailed analysis of those events shows that there were three directions of pressure upon Rome. The pressure from the West The three pressand that from the East were Mohammedan. Their resultant ures upon Rome. was a pressure from the North: it was essentially Christian. While those were foreign, this was domestic. It is almost immaterial in what order we consider them; the manner in which I am handling the subject leads |