Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 29, 2025
The following is the explanation of this oracular absurdity: "Monkery being extinguished above eighty or ninety years, and the Lord General's name being Monk, is the dead man. In France and Germany astrologers met even more encouragement than they received in England. In very early ages, Charlemagne and his successors fulminated their wrath against them in common with sorcerers.
And when the doctrines in regard to the uselessness of monkery, the unscripturalness of spiritual lordship, and the rights of Christian liberty now began to spread among the people subject to the foundation, they immediately applied them to deliverance from all dependence; from the duty of paying rents and tithes. If the one, said they, is an invention of man, so is the other.
I will not limit certainly the degree of disgust which some people will feel towards it, but do they feel less towards the notion of monks, or, again, of miracles? Now Church history is made up of these three elements miracles, monkery, Popery.
"They said as how the vicar had got you to go into a monkery that he might spend your money to pay for his fripperies in the church, his candles, and that smoky stuff, and his pictures and gold-embroidered dresses, and flags and crosses, and all they singing men and women, and dressing up the little boys, as if God cared for such things, or they could make us love Him and serve Him better, for that's my notion of what religion should do.
Well, he went on, with the most provoking good-nature, 'you are in a fair road, my handsome youth; I wish you joy of your fellow-workmen, and of your apprenticeship in the noble art of monkery.
That day, July 17, 1505, when the young master of arts, regardless of his father's anger and disappointment, sought salvation within the walls of a monastery, was the beginning of a religious experiment which had momentous consequences for the world. Luther later declared that "if ever a monk got to heaven through monkery," he was assuredly among those who merited salvation.
Religious orders of monks and nuns. One who has read of the vestal virgins of old will recognize at once where monkery originated. In the city of Rome there still stands an old heathen temple built by Marcus Agrippa and dedicated in the year B.C. 27 to all the gods. In the year A.D. 610 it was reconsecrated by Pope Boniface IV. to "the blessed Virgin and all the saints."
Solomon discovered that much study is a weariness of the flesh; Aristophanes complained of the multitude and indignity of authors in his time; and the famed preacher, Geyler von Kaisersberg, in the age of prevalent monkery and Benedictine plodding, mentioned erudition and madness, on equal footing, as the twin results of books: "Libri quosdam ad scientiam, quosdam ad insaniam deduxere."
There was then in the abbey a claustral monk, called Friar John of the funnels and gobbets, in French des entoumeures, young, gallant, frisk, lusty, nimble, quick, active, bold, adventurous, resolute, tall, lean, wide-mouthed, long-nosed, a fair despatcher of morning prayers, unbridler of masses, and runner over of vigils; and, to conclude summarily in a word, a right monk, if ever there was any, since the monking world monked a monkery: for the rest, a clerk even to the teeth in matter of breviary.
What gasconading rascals those saints must have been, if they first boasted these exploits or invented these miracles. These legends, however, were no more than monkish extravagances, over which one laughed inwardly; there were, besides, priestly matters, and the priestcraft of the book was far worse than its monkery.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking