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All these abbeys seem to have been formed on a single plan: a cruciform church symbolized the source of all their inspiration, its choir extending towards the east, whence the Light had come; the nave, or main body of the church, was entered by the great western door, and the arms of the cross, the transepts, extended to the north and south.
The knight, whose conscience revolted against his conduct but who could not bring himself to a complete renunciation of the world, believed that heaven would condone his faults or crimes if in some way he could make friends with the dwellers in the cloister. To this end, he founded abbeys and sustained monasteries by liberal gifts of gold and land.
But the forests of Domrémy those were the glories of the land: for, in them abode mysterious powers and ancient secrets that towered into tragic strength. "Abbeys there were, and abbey windows, dim and dimly seen as Moorish temples of the Hindoos," that exercised even princely power both in Lorraine and in the German Diets.
I am not prepared to say they were true to their first principles no corporate society ever was, and least of all a religious corporation but at starting the Cistercians were decidedly opposed to the alienating of tithes and appropriating them to the endowment of their abbeys, and this was probably one among other causes why the Cistercians prospered so wonderfully as they did during the first hundred years or so after their first coming here; people believed that the new order was not going to live by robbing parsons, as the older orders had done without remorse.
To show the extraordinary reverence and high value attached to this symbol, it is only necessary to remember that, from the fourth century, when Theon of Alexandria lectured on Geometry, and onwards, all Seals of Colleges, Abbeys, Monasteries, and other religious communities, as well as of ecclesiastical persons, have been made invariably of this form, and they continue to be made so to this day.
He died thus, absolute master of his master, less a prime minister than an all-powerful minister, exercising in full and undisturbed liberty the authority and the power of the King; he was superintendent of the post, Cardinal, Archbishop of Cambrai, had seven abbeys, with respect to which he was insatiable to the last; and he had set on foot overtures in order to seize upon those of Citeaux, Premonte, and others, and it was averred that he received a pension from England of 40,000 livres sterling!
Martin; and, three years later, they appeared at Orleans. In 857 they burned the churches of Paris, and carried away as captive the abbot of St. Denis. As pagans they had no scruple about attacking churches and abbeys, to which fugitives resorted for safety and for the hiding of their treasures.
But Spaniards and Germans came as mere greedy and besotten and savage mercenaries: the scum of their countries, careless of Italian sights and deeds, thinking only of torturing for hidden treasure, or swilling southern wines; and they returned to Spain and to Germany, to persecutions of Moriscos and plundering of abbeys, as savage and as dull as they had arrived.
In the vicinity of cathedrals and abbeys, in districts where dowagers and elderly maiden ladies most do congregate, and in "Those back-streets to peace so dear," there is always to be found a great number of kindly-disposed people, who have wherewithal to make life flow smoothly, leisure to listen to tales of wo, and the ability and inclination liberally to relieve.
In this manner alone had the King some chance of ensuring protection and security to the cultivators of the soil; and, in fact, for several ages the possessions of these Abbeys were each a sort of Goshen, enjoying the calm light of peace and immunity, while the rest of the country, occupied by wild clans and marauding barons, was one dark scene of confusion, blood, and unremitted outrage.
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