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Probably some sailors, after growing weary of cutting throats on the high seas, and other acts of piracy, assumed the easy and dignified position of monks, and endowed their monasteries with their wealth; but then it may be questioned whether they were likely to have been able to read, much less to write.
Formerly all prisons and all monasteries had a bell called Muta, reserved for melancholy occasions. Ursus had reached the corner which he had found so convenient for his watch, and whence he had been able, during a great part of the day, to keep his eye on the prison. The strokes followed each other at lugubrious intervals. A knell makes an ugly punctuation in space.
It is not outside knowledge they have. And when it is understood that anyone can enter a monastery thieves and robbers, murderers and sinners of every description, can enter, are even urged to enter monasteries, and try to live the holy life; and many of them do, either as a refuge against pursuit, or because they really repent it will be conceded that the discipline of the monks, if obtained in a different way to elsewhere, is very effective.
At ten o'clock the first night, we reached Montreuil, where we supped; the next day we breakfasted at Abbeville, dined at Amiens, and supped that evening at Clermont. The road between Calais and Paris is too well known to interest by description. Most of the abbeys and monasteries, which present themselves to the eye of the traveller, have either been converted into hospitals or manufactories.
In the monasteries and convents, the poor man's son might wear the Abbot's ring and in the assemblies and councils of the realm, the poor clerk of former days, might speak with all the authority of a Bishop to sway the destinies of both Church and State. One of the greatest evils of feudalism was that it fostered to excess the warlike spirit. Of its very nature, the system was a complex one.
The monasteries had, until now, been the centers of learning. But now the two great universities of Oxford and Cambridge were taking their place. Men no longer went to the monasteries to learn, but to the universities; and this was one reason, perhaps, why the land had become filled with so many idle monks.
The monasteries growing more and more careless, the number of paupers continued to multiply, and this method received successive expansions, till at length, when the Reformation was concluded, it terminated, after many changes of form, in the famous Act of Elizabeth.
In Wessex the double monastery of Wimborne was the most important of its time, and most famed for its literary activity. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, it was founded by Cuthburg, sister of Ine, king of Wessex. The author of S. Lioba's Life describes the arrangement at Wimborne. He says that there were two monasteries there, one for clerks and the other for women.
The monasteries were taken by storm, they were sacked, gutted, battered with warlike instruments, blown up with gunpowder; you may see the marks of the blast against the new tower here. Never was such a plunder.
Just how many goats were required to the finishing of a sculptured crystal would be determined by the elaboration of the design! Unfortunately Animal Rescue Leagues had not invaded the monasteries of the eleventh century. In sculpturing glass, the ingenuous Theophilus is quite at his best.
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