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This cry found a voice in the experience of Luther himself. This is what drove him into the monastery, and this was the underlying quest of his life as a monk and as a teacher in the university, through monasticism to get to heaven. It was only when he had found Christ, and realized that his sins had been taken away through the atoning work of the Son of God, that he found peace.
Among those whose achievements we shall study later are The Venerable Bede, Boniface, Abelard, Thomas Aquinas, Roger Bacon, Fra Angelico, Savonarola, Luther, Erasmus, all these, and many others who have been leaders in various branches of human activity, were monks. The strength of monasticism lay in its appeal to many different classes of persons.
During the Christian period of European history by far the most important of all epidemics, as it was indeed the earliest, was monasticism. This takes front rank because of its extent, the degree to which it prepared the ground for subsequent outbreaks, and because of its indirect, and, I think, too little noticed, social consequences.
From the oriental deserts of the Thebaid, where Saint Anthony had early practised the austerities of monkish life, Saint Martin drew his inspiration for the monasticism of the West. But it was not until the last of the IV century that he founded, near Poitiers, the first great monastery in France. The success of this form of pious life, if not altogether edifying, was immediate.
Eastern and Western monasticism seemed to teach the same lesson, that private property was not in any sense a sacred thing. Rather it seemed to be an obstacle to the perfect devotion of man's being to God; and community of possession and life began to boast itself to be the more excellent following of Christ.
Dreariness and fear are not the proper manifestations of that perfect love which casteth out fear. The influence of monasticism upon the doctrine of atonement for sin was, in many respects, prejudicial to the best interests of religion. The monks are largely responsible for the theory that sin can be atoned for by pecuniary gifts.
His magnificent collection of manuscripts, rescued from the ruins of Italian libraries, "supplied material for the pens of thousands of monastic scribes." If we leave out Jerome, it is to Cassiodorus that the honor is due for joining learning and monasticism.
There were warrior saints and saintly warriors; and those grand old figures which sleep cross-legged in the cathedral aisles were something higher than only one more form of the beast of prey. Monasticism represented something more positive than a protest against the world. We believe it to have been the realisation of the infinite loveliness and beauty of personal purity.
Monasticism has many forms: College Settlements, Zionism, Deaconesses' Homes, Faith Cottages, Shakerism, Mormonism, are all manifestations of the impulse to get away from the world, and still benefit the world by standing outside of it. This desire to get away from the world and still mix in it shows that monasticism is not quite sincere we want society no less than we want solitude.
It must be said that writers favorable to monasticism take an unfair advantage of these admissions, which simply testify to a spirit of candor and a love of truth, but do not contain the final conclusions of these historians.
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