Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 11, 2025
But monasticism, in any of its forms, ceased to have a salutary influence on society when the darkness of the Middle Ages was dispersed. It is peculiarly a Mediaeval institution. As a Mediaeval institution, it conferred many benefits on the semi-barbarians of Europe.
There have been many schools and periods in which one half of this dual life of man has been unduly emphasized to the detriment of the other. Often in the East and often too in the first, pre-Benedictine phase of Christian monasticism there has been an unbalanced cultivation of the contemplative life, resulting in a narrow, abnormal, imperfectly vitalized a-social type of spirituality.
Paul of Thebes, Hilarion of Gaza, and even the great Antony are only characters in the novels of the day. Now, however, there was in the East a real movement towards monasticism. All parties favoured it. The Semiarians were busy inside Mount Taurus; and though Acacians and Anomoeans held more aloof, they could not escape an influence which even Julian felt.
Quite as often, however, they discovered that he had 'got round' them, and discovered the other side, the side of secret nobility. Conceiving of St Francis as primarily the founder of the Franciscan Order, Mr Adderley opens his narrative with an admirable sketch of the history of Monasticism in Europe, which is certainly the best thing in the book.
In the general relaxation of the religious life the charity and devotion of the brethren of the Charter-house had won the reverence even of those who condemned monasticism. After a stubborn resistance they had acknowledged the royal Supremacy and taken the oath of submission prescribed by the Act.
Then, too, the custom had a particular purpose: Because they were foreigners, not Israelites, it is apparent that their father wished to distinguish them by certain marks from their countrymen, so that they might not relapse into the impiety of their countrymen. Such an end is lawful. But for monasticism far different ends are taught.
At the opening of the sixteenth century, the word "Catholic" meant the same in England as in every other country of western or central Europe belief in the seven sacraments, the sacrifice of the Mass, and the veneration of saints; acceptance of papal supremacy and support of monasticism and of other institutions and practices of the medieval Church.
Our purpose is not to write a history of monasticism, and therefore we do not intend entering into details on this point, interesting though they are. But we may add that, gradually, the old monasteries from the Norman invasion chiefly as well as the new ones which were established, were placed under the rule of the various congregations, acknowledged by the Holy See.
At any rate, it was left for the Christian Church to give to monasticism the character of an epidemic, to treat the purely social and domestic virtues as a positive hindrance to the religious life, seriously to disturb national well-being, and to come perilously near destroying civilisation. The origin of ascetic practices has already been indicated in a previous chapter.
If monasticism had created and nurtured the nation on its first becoming Christian, it gave to the people a second birth holier than the first, because consecrated by martyrdom. Henceforth, divided clans and antagonistic septs were to be unknown among them: only Catholic Irishmen were to remain ranked around the successors of "the saints" of old, all determined to be what they were, or die.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking