Littell's Living Age/Volume 128/Issue 1647/A Monk's Daily Life
A MONK'S DAILY LIFE.
We have all some faint poetical, pictorial, or theatrical notion of monks. Ribera at the National Gallery shows us how they prayed with wan faces, half-darkened with the shadowing cowl. Sir Walter Scott has sketched them in a hundred picturesque ways before altars and beside graves. Novelists have given us many a good monk, and checkmated us with many a wicked one. In volume after volume we have had the murderous monk, the robber monk, the hermit monk, the bibulous monk, the felonious monk, and the poisoning monk, and yet, after all, we know very little how monks really lived, or how they spent their hours. We are apt to forget that the duties of monastic life were very varied—that there was scope in the abbey and the priory for intellects of all degrees—that there were as many sorts of employment within a monastery as there are in a modern factory, and that monastic establishments were, as a rule, admirably governed, and conducted in a business-like way.
Let us take, first, the sacristan. It was his duty to provide bread and wine, and wax lights for the high altar and the chantry chapels. He kept a tun of wine at a time in his exchequer, which was sometimes (as in Durham Cathedral) in the aisle of the church. He had to go his rounds daily, see to the great stained glass windows, and inspect the leaden roof; he had also to mind that the bells were sound, and the bell-ropes safe, and he attended the scrubbing and washing of the church. He spent many hours, we may be sure, on roof and tower, and in the dusty belfry among the bells, with none but the whirling martins witness of his peering watchfulness. The sacristan had also the responsible duty of nightly pacing nave and aisle, and locking up the keys of every shrine, which were required to be laid ready for the priests of each altar between seven and eight a.m. Severe punctilious men, no doubt, these sacristans were, with a due sense of the rich jewels and golden plate of the altars they locked up, and never tired of turning their torches or lanterns on dark corners where felons might lurk in ambush for gem-adorned pix or gilded chalice. To the sacristan the bishop, on his installation, always solemnly confided the great keys of the cathedral.
Then there was the chamberlain, sometimes a prebendary, who provided the linsey-wolsey shirts and sheets for the monks. He kept tailors at work, to make their woollen socks and underclothing; he was overseer over the dormitory, and kept it supplied with beds, linen, and towels; he found shoes and gowns for the monks; and provided for the accommodation of that ceaseless flood of guests who poured into monasteries in the ages before hotels.
The cellarer was a red-faced person, more busy with pots and pans than psalm-book or breviary; addicted to diving into subterranean cellars, and coming up repeating a holy text and wiping his blushing lips; he had charge of all the brimming granaries, bursting store-houses, and odorous cellars of the monastery. It was he who solemnly doled out flour to the bake-house, malt to the brewery, salt meat to the kitchen, cheese, wine, and beer to the refectory, hay to the stables, and wood to the ovens; and he had many obsequious, grumbling, and thirsty servants under him.
The hospitalarius (hostler) presided in the guest-hall, and attended to the wants of pilgrims, and, in deed, of all strangers.
To the almoner was confided the distribution of the loaves and other alms of the monastery to the jostling and quarrelling poor. Every cathedral was trustee for endless bequests of this kind. There was also the pittancer, who gave out all pittances or bequests for extra allowances and indulgences to the brotherhood, on the seven great festivals or the anniversaries of founders, when the convent held back its regular commons. To quote Mr. Valentine Green, the pittancer was, in academic phrase, "the furnisher of the gaudies." The pittancer had also a good deal of country riding, for all the live cattle of the convent were under his care.
The prior's chaplain had, besides his prayers, to act as steward to the prior. He received all the broad gold pieces paid to the prior by his tenants and purchased for him his fur robes, his pouches, shoes, and general raiment. He' had to look after the hall-furniture, and to see that the prior's servants were honest, diligent, and good-tempered. He sometimes kept the prior's plate and treasure, and, in such cases, always gave it out and personally received it again. He had the right to engage and pay off all the prior's gentlemen and yeomen, and it was his duty to discharge (when he could) all the prior's debts.
There was often attached to a monastery an officer who was called the master of the common room. His duty (in Durham Priory) was to provide figs, nuts, and spices to comfort and console the digestions of the monks when worn out by the prayers and austerities of Lent, and to keep constant fire in the common room, so that the brothers might warm themselves whenever they pleased. It was his duty to always have a hogshead of wine ready for the use of the brothers, especially for the "O Sapientia," or annual festival between Martinmas and Christmas, when the prior and convent were modestly feasted on cakes and ale.
But, leaving the farm-servants, the shepherds, the swineherds, the red-faced cooks, etc., we must pass to the convent barber. Whether he was as nimble, gossiping, and sly as Figaro; or whether he was subdued by the cloister gloom into a sort of mere humble ecclesiastic, quite chapfallen, without joke or jibe, except in surreptitious whispers to younger brothers, we know not, but this is certain, that all his avocations were not of the liveliest, for in some monasteries at least it was his province to act as undertaker and grave-digger to the whole convent. It was his special duty, we are told, for instance, when a grave and reverend prior died to put boots on the corpse and to wind it in a cowl. He had to remove the body, immediately after death, from the prior's lodgings to the terrible apartment in the infirmary called "the dead man's chamber." The night before a funeral, the barber with assistants helped to remove the body again from the dead man's chamber to a chapel opposite, where it was watched all night by the alms-children of the convent, who read David's Psalms over the waxen corpse, while the monks sat bowed at its feet mourning silently. The next morning there was a solemn funeral service in the chapter room, amid fumes of incense and waving censers, and then the sable procession moved on in funeral march, through the prior's parlour into the cemetery garth of the monastery, where many previous priors, good and bad, lay under their grand marble stones. The barber had to take due care to lay on the prior's cold breast a silver or wax en chalice, and his own bed was generally held over the body by four monks, up to the edge of the grave.
The tumbary had care of the tombs, and probably received and accounted for the offerings on the various shrines. This post was in the gift of the bishop.
The precentor or chanter was a very pope among the chorister-boys. He had the direction of the whole choral service. He provided the missals and anthem-books, and saw to the repair of the organs. He was also the librarian and registrar of the convent, penned warrants and letters for the chapter, and had custody of the abbey seal. The precentor had also the supervision of the scriptorium or transcribing-room (in Worcester, a glazed-in part of the cloister) where the novices copied MSS. There is at present, in the library of Benet College, Cambridge, a very fine manuscript Bible in folio on vellum, clearly and beautifully written, which was copied in Worcester scriptorium in the reign of Henry II. The salary of a precentor, prior to 1314, was about 40s. per annum.
At Worcester there was also a magister capellæ, who it is supposed presided over the priests of the chapels in the cathedral, particularly St. Mary's and the infirmary.
The bell-ringers were sometimes employed in cleaning the church, and taking care of the church-vestments and the church-plate. They slept over the vestry, or in some little rooms leading out of the aisles. It was the care of these men to brush those great masses of cloth-of-gold and rich coloured needlework which were worn by the abbots and bishops of the Middle Ages, and to polish those bowls and chalices that were sent by wagonloads to the goldsmith's furnace at the Reformation.
Of the social importance of the coquinarius or kitchener no one can dispute who knows how often, when other vices are checked, the old Adam breaks out in gluttony. That fact is seen every day among"temperance" missionaries. The coquinarius had to roast the venison haunch, devise the "subtleties" of the dessert for the abbot, and frame the marchpanes and scented delicacies of powdered almond in fashion in the Middle Ages. It appears from the records of Evesham Abbey that he also marketed and bought meat and fish for the convent. He probably also hired the inferior cooks, and ruled the whole hot region of the kitchen with a rod of iron, — the spit.
Those important officers — the stern sub-prior, the pompous sacristan, the red-faced cellarer, the polite chamberlain, the courteous hospitalarius, the mild almoner, the cheery pittancer, the jolly coquinarius, the mournful infirmarius (who superintended the sick monks, provided physic and all necessaries, and washed and dressed the bodies for burial), the enthusiastic precentor, the stately master of the chapel, and the watchful tumbarius were called obedientaries, and were the principal fixed officers of the monastery under the prior. Imagine any morning of the week, at the same hour, the sacristan counting out huge candles for a Candlemas festival, the chamberlain giving out robes to the monks, the almoner doling his alms to a hungry crowd, the pittancer buying his fowls and pigeons for a gaudy day, the coquinarius cutting up a fat deer, the infirmarius feeling the pulse of a sick brother, the barber shaving a long-locked novice, the tumbarius watching the repair of a knight's tomb, and our readers will see that the monk's life was neither a dull, a monotonous, nor an idle one, and that there was scope in a monastery for many tastes, tempers, and degrees of intellect.
The monk's life, we hold from these facts, was by no means necessarily an inactive one. If no student, and incapable of unceasing return to prayer and praise, the energetic monk had many openings for his surplus energy. He could sweep the church or toll the great bells; he could learn masonry, and study the structure of those beautiful arches which he helped to raise; or if of a financial turn there were the prior's accounts to keep and rents to regulate. He could cook, or brew, or wash, or dig, or build; he could work in the orchards or assist in the abhot's stables; he could drive the plough or wield the axe; he could visit the poor or tend the leper at the gate; he could lend the infirmary help, dig a grave, or make the robes of the brethren; he could fish for the convent, or tend the fowls and turkeys. For the studious in those wild times, the convent library must have been a foreshadow of paradise; there they could pore over the subtleties of Origen, or the glories of him of the golden mouth; they could spend years over the inexhaustible fathers; or could knot their brains with theological difficulties. The ambitious could study the various modes of attaining ecclesiastical power, and the enthusiast could think himself into trances such as had visited the saints of whom he read.
The monastery treasury, the novices' school, and the singing-school were frequently situated in the cloister, or very near where the dormitory door opened. The rap of the ferule and the cries of the boys, were less disturbing there in the long arched walk where the studious and the contemplative loved to pace till their feet hollowed out the very stones. The abbey treasure was sometimes stored over the gate-houses. The treasury was grated with iron and had a well-locked and bolted iron door. The chief furniture within was a table of green cloth for telling the money on, whether tenants' rents or pilgrims' gifts. In this treasury was kept the chapel-seal, the deeds and law-papers of the monastery, and also the deeds of gentlemen near the town who thought them safer there than in their own houses. The cloister porter prevented strangers interrupting the novices in their school, and the singing-classes in theirs. Prayers were read daily at six a.m. in the cloister school, except on Sundays and holidays.
The dormitory frequently opened on one side of the cloister. Here the tired monks came to dream of saints and martyrs, and sometimes no doubt of ghastly temptations that excelled even St. Anthony's wildest nightmares. Among the Benedictines at least every monk in the convent dormitory had a little chamber to himself, with a window towards the chapter-house. Each room contained a desk and supply of books.
The dormitory at Worcester was 120 feet long and 60 feet wide, a vaulted stone roof being supported by five large pillars. It was at first an open hall, presenting to the eye of the sub-prior, who was keeper of the dormitory, the whole range of beds at one view. In later ages the monks had their cells divided, in strict convents monks slept in all their day-clothes, not even removing their girdles. The spital or lodging for poor travellers and pilgrims was sometimes over one of the gates of the cloister.
The novices' dormitory also faced the cloister, and every novice had a chamber to himself. At each end of the long dormitory there were often a dozen cressets or fire-baskets burning, to light the monks when they arose more or less reluctantly. Every night, at a certain hour, the sub-prior's footsteps were heard on the stairs, it being the custom for him to see that every cell contained its monk, that peace and good-will prevailed, and that there was no dicing, carding, or brawling going on.
The sub-prior generally sat at dinner and supper with the brethren, and when supper was over, and the bell rang for grace, which was always repeated modestly by one of the novices, the sub-prior then rose and left the head of the table, and went to the chapter-house to meet the prior, and spend the time with him in prayer and devotion till six o'clock. At that hour a bell, no doubt much detested by the novices, rang, and all the doors of cells, frater-house, dormitory and cloister were at once locked, and the keys delivered to the sub-prior, not to be surrendered by him to the punctual janitor till seven o'clock the next morning.
The monks' dining-hall, sometimes called the loft, was above the convent cellar. The meal was served from the great kitchen in through the dresser-window. A novice mounted a pulpit and read from the Gospels while the brethren dined. Immediately after dinner the novices in some convents rose and went to the garden or the bowling-alley, where their master attended to preserve order and decorum. Then the older monks ascended add paced through the cloisters under the prior's lodgings to the quiet cemetery garth, where the dead lay, and there stood bareheaded for a space, praying softly among the grassy and mossy tombs for the souls of their past brethren. It was a pious custom, though no doubt among unworthy brothers and in lukewarm times, it sometimes became a mere burdensome formula.
Good monks must always have been numerous we know; still what a picture Chaucer gives us of the monks of Edward III.'s reign! What sensual, guzzling cattle he makes the monks and friars, and their greedy retainers the summoners. Stewards for the poor! Stomachs only for fat capon and stubble goose. How they canter about and philander and hawk, and bellow forth ribald jests; no more serving God than the lowest attorney does who grinds down the widow and orphan to make his bread. No devotion among them; no abnegation of self, only the pride of Belial and gross sensual indulgence. Servants of Christ, indeed! rather slaves of Asmodeus and Mammon.
Look at the monk in the Canterbury pilgrimage, who loved drinking, and had many a dainty horse in his stable; and when he rode, the jingling bells on his bridle sounded as clear and loud in the whistling wind as the bell of the monk's own chapel. This was the precious monk who let old things go, and who held fast and close to the mere world, the flesh, and the devil. The saying that "hunters are not holy men" he cared no more for than for a pullet hen. He was an arrant prick-spur, and had greyhounds swift of foot after the hare, and for them he spared no money. He was no sackcloth-wearing grimy monk. He was a dandy. His sleeves were trimmed at the hand with the finest fur in the land, and a curious pin of gold, fashioned like a love-knot, fastened the humbug's hood under his chin. His bald head shone like glass, his face glowed as if it had been anointed, for he was a fat lord and in good case, his deep-sunk eyes rolled in his head, that steamed as a furnace of lead. His boots were supple, his nut-brown palfrey was in first-rate order. He was not pale like a tormented ghost, this worthy monk, but loved a roast swan before any dish.
Nor is the friar who rode near this monk one whit nobler or purer. He, too, was riding in the district where he had license to beg. Many a marriage he had paid for at his own cost, and is hand-in-glove with half the rich franklins (gentlemen farmers) in his country, and also with many women. He was a licentiate of his order; pleasant was his absolution and easy his penance, and he used to boast that he had more power to confess than the curate himself. The great sign of repentance with him was a good gift: some silver to the poor friars was in his opinion worth all the tears ever shed. His tippet was stuffed full of pretty little presents for fair wives. He sang and played well. His neck was as white as a lily, he was stalwart as a champion, and in every town well he knew the taverns, and cared more for sly hostler and gay tapster than poor leper or shivering beggar. He cared not for such cattle, but preferred rich men and "sellers of vitaille;" and yet this rogue he could be courteous and deprecating, and was avowedly the best beggar in all his house. If a poor widow had only one shoe he would get a farthing out of her, on arbitration days. He was no poor cloisterer with threadbare cope, like a poor scholar, but he looked a very pope; his semicope was of double worsted, and for very wantonness he lisped —
To make his English sweet upon his tongue;
and when he harped and he sang his eyes twinkled in his head like stars on a frosty night.
Then how dark Chaucer's colours grow when he sketches that tool of the monks, the rascally summoner. Look at him, with his fire-red pimply cherubim head. His coarse brows are thick, and his beard scurvy and thin. Quicksilver, litharge, brimstone, borax, ceruse, and oil of tartar, nothing could cure those pimples. Right well loved this summoner onions, leeks, and garlic; and right well he relished the strong wines red as blood. Then he would shout as he were mad, and when the wine was well in his head not a word would he speak. Doubtless he had a few phrases that he had learned out of some decree, and as a jay can chatter, and aye "Quæstio quid juris" would he cry. Yet he was a good worthy fellow, and for a quart of wine would pardon many an offence. He had at his control the youth of the diocese, and was in their councils. This worthy summoner wore a garland on his head, as large as for a maypole, and he carried a big cake for a buckler.
Then, ye honest but misguided Ritualists, only read Chaucer's description of the pardoner (seller of indulgences) who rides beside the summoner. He was just fresh from Rome, and sang loudly the popular love-ditty, "Come, hither, love, to me," and to that ditty the summoner sang in deep chorus. The pardoner had yellow hair that hung smooth as flax over his shoulders. He wore no hood, but kept it in his wallet; and rode bare and dishevelled. His eyes stared like a hare's; he had got a handkerchief from Rome miraculously stained with the figure of Christ; his wallet lay on his lap, brimful of pardons hot from the pope. His voice was small as a goat's; he had no beard, his chin was smooth as it were new-shaven. Yet after all there was no pardoner like him from Berwick to Ware. In his mail he carried a pillow-case, which he said was Our Lady's veil, and he swore that he had a fragment of the sail of the boat in which Saint Peter went upon the sea of Galilee to meet Christ. He had a brass cross, full of sham stones, and in a glass he kept pigs' bones. With these remarkable relics, whenever he found a credulous poor person, he got more money in a day than the parson got in two months; and thus with flattery and humbug he made the parson and his people his puppets. But, after all, says the inimitable old poet, he was in church "a noble ecciesiast." He could read well a lesson or a story, and best of all he sang the offertory, for that was what brought in the silver, and therefore he sang merry and loud indeed.
That our poet's satire had a foundation in observed facts we cannot possibly doubt; though a satirical picture is far from being a representation of the whole truth.
The following extracts from the rules of the grey or Francisian friars serve very well to show the original high ideal of the order. The treatment of candidates' wives is perhaps somewhat monastic in its severity, but how can men know the charm of ties which they have never felt? The many possible abuses hinted at prove to us the evils to which the system had given rise.
- 1. They are to keep the holy gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ living in obedience, without anything they can call their own, and in chastity. Brother Francis promises obedience and respect to our Lord Pope N. and his successors canonically promoted, and to the Church of Rome. And the other brothers shall be obliged to obey Brother Francis, and his successors.
- 2. The provincial ministers alone shall receive candidates for admission into the order, and shall examine them diligently as to the Catholick faith and ecclesiastical sacraments. And if they believe all these things, and will faithfully confess and observe the same to the end, and that they have no wives, or if they have, their wives will also go into monasteries, or else they give them leave, having made a vow of continency, by the authority of the bishop of the diocese; and that the wives are of such an age as that there may be no cause to suspect them; let them pronounce to them the word of the holy gospel, viz., that they go and sell all that they have, and take care to bestow the same on the poor, which, if they cannot do, their goodwill shall suffice.
- 6. All the brothers are to be clad in mean habits, and may blessedly mend them with sacks and other pieces; whom I admonish and exhort that they do not despise or censure such men as they see clad in curious and gay garments, and using delicate meats and drinks, but rather let every one judge and despise himself.
- 8. The brethren are to be meek, peaceable, modest, mild, and humble.
- 9. They are not to ride unless some manifest necessity or infirmity oblige them.
- 10. Whatsoever house they go into they shall first say, "Peace be unto this house;" and according to the gospel, it shall be lawful for them to eat of all meats that are set before them.
- 11. I firmly enjoin all the brothers that they upon no account receive any money, either by themselves or by a third person. However, to supply the necessities of the sick, and for clothing of the other brothers, special care shall be taken by means only of the minister's particular friends, and the guardians, according to times and places, and cold countries, as they shall find necessity requires; saving always, as has been said, that they receive no money.
- 21. The brothers are strictly commanded to keep no suspicious company, or to be familiar with women, or to go into the monasteries of nuns, excepting those who have special license granted them from the See Apostolick. Nor that they do not become gossips of nuns or women, lest upon this account there arise any scandal among the brethren or upon the brothers.
The Benedictines were obliged to perform their devotion seven times within four-and-twenty hours. At cock-crowing, or the Nocturnals: this service was performed at two o'clock in the morning. The reason for pitching upon this hour was taken partly from David's saying, At midnight I will praise the Lord," and partly from a tradition of our Saviour's rising from the dead about that time. Matins: these were said at the first hour, or according to our computation, at six o'clock. At this time the Jewish morning sacrifice was offered. The angels likewise were supposed to have acquainted the women with our Saviour's resurrection about this time. The Tierce: which was at nine in the morning, when our Saviour was condemned and scourged by Pilate. The Sexte, or twelve at noon. The Nones, or three in the afternoon: at this hour it is said our Saviour gave up the ghost; besides which circumstance, it was the time for public prayer in the temple of Jerusalem. Vespers at six in the afternoon; the evening sacrifice was then offered in the Jewish temple, and our Saviour is supposed to have been taken down from the cross at this hour. The Compline: this service was performed after seven, when our Saviour's agony in the garden, it is believed, begun. The monks going to bed at eight had six hours to sleep before the Nocturne began; if they went to bed after that service it was not, as we understand, reckoned a fault, but after matins they were not allowed that liberty. At the tolling of the bell for prayers the monks were immediately to leave off their business; and herein the canon was so strict, that those who copied books, or were clerks in any business, and had begun a text-letter were not allowed to finish it. Those who were employed abroad about the business of the house were presumed to be present and excused other duties; and that they might not suffer by being elsewhere they were particularly recommended to the divine protection. The monks were obliged to go always two together; this was done to guard their conduct, and to prompt them to good thoughts, and furnish them with a witness to defend their behaviour. From Easter to Whitsuntide the primitive Church observed no fasts; at other times the religious were bound to fast till three o'clock on Wednesdays and Fridays, but the twelve days in Christmas were excepted in this canon. Every day in Lent they were enjoined to fast till six in the evening. During this solemnity they shortened their refreshment, allowed fewer hours for sleep, and spent more time in their devotions; but they were not permitted to go into voluntary austerities without leave from the abbot. They were not to talk in the refectory at meals, but hearken to the Scriptures read to them at that time. The septimarians, so called from their weekly offices of readers, waiters, cooks, etc., were to dine by themselves after the rest. Those who were absent about business had the same hours of prayer prescribed, though not the same length of devotion. Those sent abroad, and expected to return at night, were forbidden to eat till they came home; but this canon was sometimes waived.
In the case of monks there were many modes resorted to to evade the rules. The language of signs was adopted, and a perfect system of the motions of the hands was as thoroughly systematized in convents as among our modern deaf and dumb. A horizontal wave of the hand indicated a fish; a movement of the finger and thumb, like turning over a leaf, reading, etc.
From the laws of Worcester, Lincoln, and Gloucester, we gather that certain existing evils are implied by its being forbidden to monks to return to the refectory from the dormitory to drink and gossip. No woman was to be introduced into the infirmary without special license from the sub-prior. Immoderate potations were forbidden there, proving that they sometimes did take place in that locality. No brother was allowed, unless in presence of his officer, to eat elsewhere when he had once dined or supped in the refectory. Any brother who had a double pittance of food was allowed to sell or give it away without license from the sub-prior. There was always to be reading at meals, and no speaking but in a low voice, or in Latin; and on fish days no extra refreshments were to be taken out of the refectory except by the old or sick who had obtained dispensation. Monks being forbidden by the Council of Vienna (Clement V.) to hunt or hawk, no monk was to keep hunting dogs or birds of prey. All fine and showy dresses were prohibited as a scandal to religion, and unbecoming men of one brotherhood.
The almsmen of a convent were generally old servants of the monastery or disabled servants. There was usually a prior appointed to overlook these almsmen, who wore black gowns and hoods, given them every year on the Feast of St. John the Baptist. They carried large rosaries, and had the arms of the monastery broidered on their right shoulders.On their entry into their order these almsmen gave their beads to be consecrated, and then swore to sacredly observe all the secrets of the monastery.
The monk's service of the canonical hours originally consisted of eight divisions, four for night and four for day, but in the Saxon times they were reduced to seven, to follow Psalm cxix., verse 164 — "Seven times a day I praise thee," and partly perhaps to reduce the labour. At matins were said the Paternoster, Ave Maria, Credo, the Invitatorum of the day and its psalms. On double and semi-double feasts nine psalms with their antiphons and verses, with as many lessons and eight responses. Lauds consisted of a hymn, Te Deum, the psalms of the day, the Capitulum, hymn, canticles, and Benedictus with its antiphon. Prime, thirds, sixths, and nones had all their special differences. The choral regulations of Osmund, Bishop of Salisbury, who compiled a general rubric with all necessary details of the choral service, became generally used in English cathedrals, so that the Bishop of Salisbury claimed the privilege of acting as precentor to the college of bishops whenever the Archbishop of Canterbury celebrated divine service.
The rules of Sarum required all clerks, without exception, to wear black copes during the whole year, except on double feasts, when there were processions. On the vigil of Easter, when the "Gloria in Excelsis" burst forth, the clerks, after making their genuflexions, threw off their black copes, and appeared in white surplices. The same custom also prevailed at the vigil of Pentecost. At all single feasts from Easter to Michaelmas surplices were worn in choir and at all hours. The regulations of the choir were always to wear silk copes and red habits on both feasts of the Holy Cross, and at every feast of a martyr, also at all single feasts during Lent, and on the Passion and Palm Sunday.
It is probable, from various allusions in monkish chronicles, that the elder and superannuated monks were troublesome in convents, dictatorial, finding fault, and frequently missing "the daily sacrifice." For such misconduct the offender had to receive his pardon in chapter, prostrate before the dean and canons; and if guilty of disobedience and rebellion the offender was sometimes degraded from his state, and compelled to stand in humiliating penance at the door of the choir behind the dean, or in the choir amongst the lowest of the boys.The consumption of candles in the old cathedrals must have kept the wax-chandlers the most devout of men. In the Sarum rules we find such directions as the following "Among the 'duties of the treasurer,' he is to provide on Advent Sunday, both at vespers and matins, and at mass, four wax lights — namely, two above the altar, and two others on the step before the altar. The same on Palm Sunday. All other Sundays of the year, and whenever the choir is regulated and the Invitatorum is said by two, he is to supply two others; at mass and on all Sundays, four; on Christmas-day, at vespers, and at mass, eight each of a pound at least about the altar; and two before the image of the Blessed Mary. At matins the same, and six besides, on the elevation before the relics and crucifix, and the images there placed; and on the chandelier "corona" before the step, five of half a pound at least. Five also are to be placed on the wall behind the desk for reading the lessons. The same is to be observed mall double feasts, with processions, from Whitsuntide to the nativity of the Blessed Mary."
The punishment of monks guilty of any offence was severe, but if the whole convent was committing the same crime, as often happened, they escaped all harm. At the weekly chapter an accuser would often stand up and say, "I accuse Brother —— of ——." The accused monk made no answer, but at once left his seat and advanced to the abbot, bowing. The accuser then simply stated his charge. If guilty, the accused man at once asked pardon, and confessed his fault. If not guilty, he replied that he did not remember to have done what Brother —— affirmed. The accuser bowed and returned to his seat, and then called the witnesses. A reprimanded monk stood in a central place in the room, called "the judgment," and when the final sentence was pronounced he bowed and retired to his seat. If condemned to receive discipline, the culprit was sometimes stripped to the waist, seated in a chair, and then beaten with a rod. During the discipline the monks hung down their heads. A hand-bell, according to Du Cange, was sometimes hung behind the delinquent. For other offences convicted monks had to carry large lanterns for penance, stood with arms expanded in the form of the cross, or sat down on chairs in the middle of the choir, walked barefoot to the cross, repeated penitential psalms, and joined in penitentiary processions. For other offences monks were banished from the dinner-table, sent to coventry, and compelled to publicly prostrate themselves. For extreme faults a keeper was appointed to the prisoner, and whenever the bell rung for divine service the culprit had to remain prostrate at the gate of the convent, and bow to every one who passed. As the order left the church the prostration was renewed, and the monks, as they passed their abject brother, said each one, "Lord, have mercy upon you." After various disciplines at several chapters, promise of amendment, and the intercession of his brothers, the offender was at last pardoned. In some cases a monk was sent to board at another convent for a certain term. In the lesser excommunications the offenders had to fast on bread and water purposely defiled, or were kept in church during dinner till the abbot sent the prior to summon them.
Among the amusements of the monks we must include the Feast of Fools and the Feast of Asses, when there was much noisy buffoonery and inconsistent horseplay, and they acted those religious plays which presented vivid pictures of biblical events to the eyes of the poor. In these representations the monks' pent-up minds found, as it were, a secret way to the drama.
And now, after these brief scenes of monkish life, let us end with the last scene of all that ends "this strange eventful history." At the death of a monk the news of the event was at once forwarded to all neighbouring religious houses, of whatever order. The body was at once washed and clothed in the hood, cloak, and cowl, and carried to the church, the bearers singing psalms, and the bell tolling. There was no great delay about the funeral ceremonies; he was usually buried the day he died, after mass and before dinner. If it was found difficult to keep up the psalm-singing, the body was buried almost immediately.
The ceremonies observed during the day's vigil were numerous. A cross was placed at the head of the corpse, and lighted tapers stood at the head and feet on the breast was a chalice of wax or silver; the body was anointed on a stone table in the infirmary, and it was censed by the deacon. The abbot absolved the corpse after a sermon to the chapter, silence was preserved in the cloister, the grave and corpse were sprinkled with holy water, and a written absolution was placed on the breast of the deceased.
And so passed away the poor brother, in most cases only too well rid of this tearful and miserable world, and of an enslaved and unnatural if not altogether wasted life.
Whatever were the vices of those great armies of celibates who fought the battle of the Church during the Middle Ages, whatever their ambition, voluptuousness, gluttony, and avarice, their greatest enemy must own that we owe them much for the learning they hoarded, the education they encouraged, the charity they displayed, and the buildings they reared. Who can stand up and say that the builders of such churches as York Minster and Salisbury Cathedral were mere half-transmuted pagans? Was there no worship of the soul in the men who reared that pile and raised those towers—who hollowed those cloisters and carved those altars?
It is not for us to point out the faults of those men. Who are we, to judge of their vices or their sins? It is a sufficient proof that the monastic system was a necessary phase of Christianity that the monastic system existed. It was not the finger of a poor monk that could stop the rolling world. These convents were the fortresses of piety; their system was the reaction of sword-law, violence, and rapine. St. Bernard and King John, Rochester and Penn, St. Paul and Tiberius, Wesley and Wilkes, such are the typified reactions of every age. The very pastimes of these men were useful to ourselves. From the madness of alchemy sprang modern chemistry; from the dreams of astrology the certainties of astronomy. Faraday and Chaucer's "Cheat with the Alembec," Galeotti and Newton, had still something in common. To the monks' scholastic theology we owe the preservation of Aristotle; and the labours of their copiers saved Homer and Plato from the fate of Ennius and Sappho. Their ideal was too perfect for our nature yet. They were the first missionaries and the first colonizers—the defenders of the serf, the educators of the poor. The monk and the knight were necessary phases of a civilization dangerous and ridiculous only when their use was past. Every nation has given its art some peculiar attribute of divinity. That of the Mexican was terror, that of the Greek beauty, of the Egyptian repose, of the Assyrian power, of the monks love. Their faults were of their age. We should no more complain of St. Bernard preaching the crusade than we should of Elizabeth filling her prisons with the Jesuits, of Cromwell burning the priest, or Calvin drowning the Anabaptist.
For the majority of honest monks the convent was no doubt the whole world, and the cathedral a threshold of heaven. On that high altar, fifty years before, they had made their vow, by that altar they knelt on the eve of death; those huge windows, like the blazoned doors of paradise, had cast on their choir-books half a century of light and shadow. By this shrine they knelt the day when Brother Jerome died. In that cloister they used to pace together, and the greenest spot in the garth is where he lies, waiting for his old comrades in good works. Those great bells in the tower for them had the voices of friends.
Let us be satisfied by owning, then, that the monks were, after all, good and bad like other men, and that they led a more varied and useful life than has been generally imagined. It could not have been a wholly dissolute and selfish class from which such men as Chaucer's good parson sprang. When we read of the dregs of the convent, let us not forget those beautiful lines which paint a man who might have been a friend of Goldsmith's honest vicar.
A good man ther was of religioun,
That was a poure persone of a town:
But rich he was of holy thought and werk.
He was also a lerned man, a clerk,
That Cristes gospel trewely wolde preche.
Benigne he was, and wonder diligent,
And in adversite ful patient.
Wide was his parish, and houses fer asonder,
But he ne left nought for no rain ne thonder,
In sicknesse and in mischief to visite
The ferrest in his parish, moche and lite.
Upon his fete, and in his hand a staf,
This noble ensample to his shepe he yaf,
That first he wrought and afterwards he taught.
He was a shepherd and no mercenarie,
And though he holy were, and vertuous,
He was to sinful men not dispitious,
Ne of his speche dangerous ne digne,
But in his learning discrete and benigne.
To drawen folk to heaven, with fairenesse,
By good example was his besinesse:
But it were any persone obstinat,
What so he were of highe or low estat,
Him wolde he snibben sharply for the nones,
A better priest I trowe that nowther non is.
He waited after no pompe ne reverence,
Ne maked him no spiced conscience,
But Cristes lore, and his apostles twelve,
He taught, but first he folowed it himselve.