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Updated: May 11, 2025
But Christianity in the hands of degenerate Romans and Gothic barbarians made many mistakes in its efforts to save so priceless a thing as a human soul. Among other things, it instituted monasteries and convents, both for men and women, in which they sought to escape the contaminating influences which had degraded them. If Paganism glorified the body, monasticism despised it.
Monasticism was at a discount, and the ranks of the religious orders were chiefly filled, the old Benedictine and Augustinian foundations by gentlemen of good family who wanted the easy life of a sort of bachelor squire, and the friaries were recruited by the sort of men who would in modern times be dissenting teachers of the lower stamp.
However, it occurred to me to compare the discomforts and straits of monasticism, which I feared I should be unable to support, with the wants of those who remain in the world. Then it became clear to me that all the joys and pleasures of the world turn to discomforts and bring sorrow. For the world is like salt water.
The Scripture-sayings regarding fasting, sexual continence, chastity, crucifying the flesh, etc., are made to stand sponsor for this bastard offspring of the brain of Christian mystics. With excellent discrimination Mosheim has traced the origin of monasticism to the early Christian fathers.
This work Hutten actually dedicated to Pope Leo himself. But what distinguished this knight and Humanist above all the others who were contending on behalf of learning and against the oppressions and usurpations of the Church and monasticism, were his thoroughly German sympathies, and his zeal for the honour and independence of his nation.
A careful and sympathetic survey of monastic history compels the conclusion that monasticism, while not uniformly a blessing to the world, was not an unmitigated evil. The system presents one long series of perplexities and contradictions.
As the social experiments of modern times reveal the hidden laws of social and religious progress, it will be found that in spite of its glaring deficiencies, monasticism was a magnificent attempt to realize the ideal of Christ in individual and social life. As such it merits neither ridicule nor obloquy.
Add to this the violence so often done to the conscience, the forced vocations, feudalism bolstered up by the cloister, the right of the first-born pouring the excess of the family into monasticism, the ferocities of which we have just spoken, the in pace, the closed mouths, the walled-up brains, so many unfortunate minds placed in the dungeon of eternal vows, the taking of the habit, the interment of living souls.
And so this final burst of enthusiasm and splendor in the religious life was among the prognostics of a state of things in which monasticism must fade quite away." Wondrous changes have taken place in those dark and troubled years since Benedict began his labors at Monte Cassino, in 529. The monk has prayed alone in the mountains, and converted the barbarian in the forest.
But universal sympathy now environed them; their very custodian ministered to their wants; and the Emperor ordered them to be removed to the Castle of Gradisca, on the confines of Italy, where a milder atmosphere prevailed. How much had occurred while these years of arbitrarily imposed monasticism crept heavily by, to excite the speculative thought and kindle the sympathies of educated men!
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