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Updated: May 29, 2025
But in the abbey at that time was a cloister-monk named Friar John of the Trenchermen, young, gallant, frisky, lusty, nimble, quick, active, bold, resolute, tall, wide-mouthed, and long-nosed; a fine mumbler of matins, a fair runner through masses, and a great scourer of vigils to put it short, a true monk, if ever there was one since the monking world monked a monkery.
"And after him shall come a dreadful dead man," ran the prophecy, "and with him a royal G of the best blood in the world, and he shall have the crown and shall set England on the right way and put out all heresies." His interpretation of this was that, "Monkery being extinguished above eighty or ninety years, and the Lord General's name being Monk, is the dead man.
The atmosphere of operose indolence, prolonged through centuries and centuries, stifles; nor can antiquity and influence impose upon a mind which resents monkery itself as an essential evil. That Monte Cassino supplied the Church with several potentates is incontestable. That mediæval learning and morality would have suffered more without this brotherhood cannot be doubted.
Meat being forbidden, the godly brethren have a contract for fish to be brought up every day by the post-carriage from the distant Soverato. And what happens, I asked, when none are caught? "Eh bien, nous mangeons des macaroni!" Such a diet would never suit me. Let me retire to a monkery where carnivorous leanings may be indulged.
How had she discovered his plan? 'Ay where are they? Besotted boy! Have you not seen enough of monkery this afternoon, that you must try still to make that poor girl even such a one as yourselves? Ay, you may root out your own human natures if you will, and make yourselves devils in trying to become angels: but woman she is, and woman she shall live or die!
However, this study did not at any time permanently affect his vigorous striving after holiness. When Catholics explain Luther's failure as a monk by such assertions, they involve themselves in self-contradiction. By their own principles monkery is not a natural life; yet, when a monk fails in his monkery, they fault him for not being natural.
And having healed and consoled one, he deliberately turns from the green world, with its trees and flowers, its dawn and sunset, its winds and waters, and shuts himself in a monkery which has a back garden, a pond and some ducks.
Luther had grasped the fundamental idea in monkery quite well: flight from the secular life as a means to become exceptionally holy. He sought quiet for meditation and devotion, but no physical ease and earthly comforts. He knew of the rigors of cloister-life.
My father loved and cherished me; but his domestic calamity, his frequent absences from Florence, and, subsequently, his pursuit of Isabella, interfered with the customary course of education, and saved me from the despotism of a regular tutor, and from the debasing tyranny, the selfish and vulgar profligacy, of those institutions of monkery called public academies.
After entering the cloister, he was still at liberty for a year and a half to retrace his fatal step. But his first impressions were favorable; monkery really seemed to bring him heart's ease and peace, and there was no one to disabuse his mind of the delusion.
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