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Cassianus, the type of monastic asceticism, and St. Nicholas, the type of genial, active, unselfish, laborious Christianity. St. Cassianus enters Heaven, and Christ says to him, 'What hast thou seen on earth, Cassianus? 'I saw', he answered, 'a peasant floundering with his wagon in a marsh'. 'Didst thou help him? 'No. 'Why not? 'I was coming before Thee, said St.
Here you are, assuming the guardianship of a boy concerning whom you know nothing, when you might as well have handed him over to one of the orphanages for the poor, or have paid for his care and education with some of the monastic brethren established near Rouen, but no! you being eccentric, feel as if you were personally responsible to God for the child, simply because you found him lost and alone, and therefore you have him with you.
Hardly was it founded when Henry himself immediately destroyed it, and, as we shall see later, Bisham affords one of the most curious and instructive examples of the way in which that large monastic revenue, which it was certainly intended to keep in the hands of the Crown, and which, had it been so kept, would have given to England the strongest Central Government in Europe, drifted into the hands of the squires, multiplied perhaps by ten the wealth of their class, and transformed the Government of England into that oligarchy which was completed in the seventeenth century, and which, though permeated and transformed by Jewish finance, is standing in a precarious strength to this day.
In the monastic institution of the sixth and seventh centuries Mr. Belloc sees the power which re-created North and Western Europe. And it had far more to do. It found a district utterly wrecked, perhaps half depopulated, and having lost all but a vague memory of the old Roman order; it had to remake, if it could, of all this part of a Europe. No other instrument was fitted for the purpose.
And yet to look out from the shady porch of one of the quiet cells upon the teeming vale of the Arno and the clustered towers of Florence must have deepened the sense of monastic quietude. The chapel, or rather the church, which is of great proportions and designed by Andrea Orcagna, the primitive painter, refines upon the consecrated type or even quite glorifies it.
Perhaps, had it not been for the influx among us of French and Italian experts, commencing with our Anglo-Gallic relations under the Plantagenets, and the palmy days of the monastic orders, culinary science would not have arrived at the height of development which it has attained in the face of great obstacles. Perchance we should not have progressed much beyond the pancake and oatmeal period.
Alban, the protomartyr of England, and the saint was greatly honoured at Glastonbury, where, as we have seen, Dunstan was in residence, and, as a natural consequence, every department of the monastic life was quickened by his presence.
But this Romanesque church is also connected with monastic institutions, whose extensive buildings join the church at the north or south. The church is wedded to monasticism; one supports the other, and both make a unity exceedingly efficient in the Middle Ages.
On entering the order certain vows were taken by the members, but they were not those which were usually imposed by monastic orders, for of these, which are three, celibacy, poverty, and obedience, the Culdees were bound to none except the third.
The monastic system had been founded by Antony, an illiterate youth, in the year 305, by the establishment on Mount Cobyim, near the Red Sea, of a colony of ascetics, who renounced all the business and pleasures in life as the price of eternal happiness. A long series of hermits, monks, and anachorets propagated the system and, patronised by Athanasius, it spread to all parts of the world.
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