II. Monasticism in the West

This was wholly of eastern origin. In his Roman exile (341-343) Athanasius spread the news of the work of Anthony and Pachomius, and according to Palladius (Hia- toria Lausiaca, i.), a monk named Isi- 1. Begin- dore visited Rome about 350. Peter, nings in the successor of Athanasius, who took Italy, Gaul, refuge in Rome in 373, perhaps deter and Ger- mined the movement of ascetics many. toward the East already noted. The first western monasteries seem to have originated between 370 and 380; but the movement made slow progress, and was hindered rather than helped by the older institution of communities of consecrated virgins. During his Roman sojourn (382-385), Jerome labored for the promotion of monasticism; but when the daughter of his pupil Paula died in 385 as a result of her extreme asceticism, the populace broke out in violent opposition, and he was forced to leave Rome, Paula and her other daughter Eustochium following him to the East to end their lives in a convent at Bethlehem. Nevertheless, when Augustine was in Rome in 388, he found a number of monastic "abodes of the saints" there, and he states that the inmates of the Roman convents procured their livelihood by spinning and weaving. In northern Italy Ambrose was the most prominent promoter of monasticism; he founded in the suburbs of Milan a monastery modeled on the eastern type, though he maintained it from his own resources, which was a departure from the model. Eusebius of Vercella; deserves special mention as being, with Augustine, the first to organize a community life of a more or less monastic kind for the clergy (see Chapter). In southern Italy, Paulinus (q.v.), later bishop of Nola, was a pioneer of the new movement. It was for the monastery of Pinetum, probably near Terracina, that Rufinus translated the rule of Basil. By 412 Jerome was able to boast of "many convents of virgins and an innumerable multitude of monks" in Italy. In Gaul Martin of Tours (q.v.) forwarded the movement by founding, soon after 360, the monasteries of Ligugd near Poitiers and .Marmoutiers near Tours. In the south an association of hermits was founded at the beginning of the fifth century by Honoratus on the island of Lerins, and two others in Marseilles by Cassian about the same time (see Cassianus, Johannes), followed by a large number of others in the course of the century. The new institution soon took root in German soil, possibly owing to an impulse given by Athanasius during his exile at Treves. When the officer Pontitianus came from that city to Milan in 387, he told Augustine of the

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Vita Antonii, which he had come to know there, and of the hermits who lived in the vicinity of the city. It seems to have been planted in Spain by one Donatus from North Africa, where Augustine had been its most influential promoter, but where, as in Italy, it had encountered strong opposition.

In spite of the desire to imitate Egyptian and Palestinian models, divergences from them soon appear in western monastic institutions. Great freedom prevailed; each monastery followed its own rule; in some more than one was a. The observed, in others the directions of Rules. the abbot took the place of a written rule. Cassian, who was the first to undertake (in his De institutis cwwbiomm) the codi fication of these diverse systems, speaks strongly in favor of independent development in the West, on the ground of differences of climate, surroundings, and social order. The costume of the eastern monks he considered unsuitable to the West, and he op posed the use of the hair-shirt as both hindering the monks in their work and tempting them spiritual pride. He mitigated the rule as to food by allowing two meals, one at three o'clock and the other in the evening. He had the ancient ere- mitieal character of monasticism in mind, as is shown by his enjoining the monks to work alone in their cells and to avoid as far as possible all intercourse with the outside world. In a condensation by a later hand of the first four books of the Institute, the so-called "Rule of Cassian" served as a standard down to the ninth century; other rules employed were that of Basil in Rufinus' translation, that of Pachomius as rendered by Jerome, and that of Macarius. Convents of women frequently followed the so-called " Rule of St. Augustine "-really a treatise written by him on a special occasion for a community of African nuns. This was used by Ciesarius of Arles (q.v.; d. 542) as a basis for his own Regula ad virgams. We have several others of the sixth and seventh centuries which are independent of the Benedictine rule; but they were only local in their authority, while Benedict's spread far and wide from Monte Cassino (q.v.) until it drove out all the others. The Benedictine rule (see Benedict of Nursia and the Benedictine Order) was marked not so much by originality as by reasonable moderation and wise elasticity. It was intended to educate the monks in the principles of strict obedience, stability, and ordered work. It was due to Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus (q.v.) that systematic study formed a part of the plan. The most serious obstacle to its general adoption was found in the competition of the rule of the Celtic missionary Columban (q.v.), the founder of the abbeys of Luxeuil and Bobbio, which was used in many monasteries of France and northern Italy. But the stern rigorism off' this rule could not stand against the greater mildness of Benedict's, which Gregory II., Gregory III., and Boniface made the standard for the Frankish empire. Their work was continued by Charlemagne and Louis the Pious, with the help of Alcuin and Benedict of Aniane. As the number and importance of the monasteries increased, it became the interest of the bishops to see that they were brought under episcopal jurisdiction. The clerical character of the abbot made him in a sense dependent on the bishop, who, however, on his side, could not ordain any monk without the abbot's consent. Though the Benedictine rule prescribed the election of abbots by the monks, founders frequently reserved to themselves a right of nomination. From the sixth century the abbot was installed in his office by episcopal benediction. By the end of that century many monasteries sought to oppose a barrier to the encroachments of the `bishops by placing themselves under the special protection of kings or of the pope (see Exemption).

From the time of Boniface, western monasticism stood forth as the standard-bearer of civilization. Benedictine monks turned the forests into ploughed fields, brought the message of Chris- 3. Relation tianity to the north of Europe, and to Civiliza- handed down the ancient theology tion. and some part of ancient civilization. Monasteries were the central points of to the religious life of the day, and schools everywhere od arose in connection with them. Yet the assumption of the work of general civilization, together with the growth of possessions which made it possible for them to do so much, tended to secularize the monastic life. The first of many attempts to restore the ancient strictness is connected with the name of Benedict of Aniane (q.v.); for some that succeeded see Benedict of Nursia. Special notice must be given here to the reform of Cluny in the tenth and eleventh centuries, to which the cooperation of temporal princes and the patronage of popes gave a universal significance, and enabled it to reform not only its order but the Church at large (See Cluny, Abbey and Congregation of). The Cluniac reform, however, by the foundation of a separate congregation with the abbot of Cluny at its head, began the process of disintegration of western monasticism, which had been everywhere united under the rule of Benedict, first into congregations and then into separate orders. In the twelfth century the greatest influence was exercised by the new congregation of the Cistercians (q.v.), which took up the task of reform when the Cluniac congregation had been infected in its turn by worldliness. Their success was due in no small measure to their abandonment of the antiquated economic system of the older monasticism. They farmed their own land, and combined industrial activity with agriculture. While all these congregations still adhered to the rule of Benedict as a basis and merely developed it by their particular constitutions, the Premonstratensians (q.v.) were an order of clerics living by the rule of St. Augur. tine and attempting to combine monastic strictness with the duties of secular clergy. The reform movement of the eleventh century gave a powerful impulse to the crusades, and created, as a product of these, the knightly orders in which the temporal and spiritual ideals of the Middle Ages were singularly united. New orders and congregations multiplied to such an extent that a check was finally put upon their further increase by the (fourth) Lateran council of 1215 (canon aiv.).

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Monasticism took a novel form in the work of Francis of Assisi (q.v.). The old vow of poverty became an absolute renunciation of all possessions

not only by the individual but by the 4. The order. The cloistered retirement of Mendicant the existing orders gave place to a Orders. vigorous attempt to influence the life

of the day through preaching and the confessional. Western monasticism had been aristocratic down to the end of the twelfth century; it now became popular. A mighty spirit of new devotion went out from Assisi and took possession of the Church, breathing a fresh life into preaching, church music, art, and learning. Side by side with the Franciscan order arose the Dominican (see Dominic, Saint, and the Dominican Order), destined originally for the conversion of heretics, but soon conforming to the spirit of the Franciscan and becoming like it a mendicant order. These two associations, in the later Middle Ages, produced the chief representatives of scholastic theology, while the mysticism which flourished among them awoke the religious spirit of the individual and recast the ideal of the Christian life in a new form, which amounted to a reformation. The thirteenth century saw the development as mendicant orders of two communities which had begun as associations of anchorites, the Carmelites (q.v.) and the hermits of St. Augustine (see Augustinians). They were followed by other mendicant orders-the Servites, Hieronymites, Minims, Trinitarians, and the Order of Our Lady of Mercy. Worldliness, however, crept into these as it had into the cloister. The Franciscans were rent asunder by the controversy regarding the vow of poverty, and the breach between the extreme or "spiritual" party with the pope displayed oneedIore the old antinomy between monasticism and the Church in the world. The attempts at reform in the fifteenth century had 'only a temporary success, and in spite of the vast number of monasteries and religious brotherhoods of all sorts, monasticism seemed doomed to fall into a state of idle unprofitableness.

The age of the Counter-Reformation, however, brought new life to some of the older orders in the work of the Theatines and Capuchins (qq.v.), the Discalced Carmelites, and the French Cistercian reform of the Feuillants. But more importance at-

tached to the new foundations, espe- S. Later cially the Jesuits (q.v.), who developed Orders. a wholly new phase of monasticism.

Standing between the secular clergy and monasticism, they considered ascetic practises and renunciation of the world only mesas for the spread of the Church's dominion. Thus purpose is expressed in a new fourth vow, " to devote the life to perpetual service of our Lord Jesus Christ and the Roman Pontiff." A number of other new orders now arose which replaced the old monastic ideal of perfection and retirement from the world by adaptation to a variety of practical ends such as the education of the clergy, that of the laity in the confessional, the pulpit, and the school, and the care of the sick. The services of women were especially organized for the work of the Church. Most of these

new foundations took the freer and more elastic form of congregations; in some the vow was only for a time, or was simple instead of solemn. Only a few of these can be named here, such as the Ursulines (1535), the Piarists (1600), Vincent de Paul's great foundations of the Lazarists and Sisters of Mercy, and the Brothers of the Christian Schools (1681). Theological learning and popular devotion were promoted by the Oratory of Philip Neri (q.v.), and the French Oratory (1611). In the Trappists (q.v.) the old spirit of severe asceticism revived, on the basis of the Benedictine rule. The order of the Visitation (1610) is the only important foundation of the seventeenth century. The Jesuits found several imitators, of which the most prominent is the Redemptorist order founded by Alfonso Liguori (q.v.). The Reformation had largely diminished the sphere of influence of monasticism; but the effect of the French Revolution was still more radical. Its work was foreshadowed by that of Joseph II., who in 1782 suppressed in his dominions a number of contemplative orders and greatly reduced the numbers of the others, and was followed by the secularization of the German monasteries in 1803. With the revival of the Jesuits in 1814 began the restoration of Roman Catholic monasticism, pervaded, however, whether in the old orders as restored or in the new foundations, by the spirit of the Jesuits. The Benedictine order alone has been able to preserve an independent adherence to the ancient ideals, and at Solesmes (restored 1833), Beuron (1863), and Maredsous (1872) to achieve a remarkable work in many departments of learning.

According to the careful statistics of the Benediotine Baumgarten, which are in most eases brought down to 1901, the membership of the following orders may be given: Christian Brothers, 20,457; Franciscans, 16,458; Jesuits, 15,073; Capuchins, 9,464; Marists, 6,000; Benedictines, 4,565; Trappists, 4,538; Dominicans, 4,350; Lazarists, 3,304; Fathers of the Holy Ghost, 2,149; Carmelites, 2,000; Augustiniana, 1,858.

In the Protestant churches, before the nineteenth century, ascetic zeal was strong enough to impel

their members to a formal monastic 6. Monastic life only among the so-called °' Pre-

Attempts cisians " of the Reformed Church. under Prot- Thus Johannes Gennuvit, of Vennigen

estantism on the Ruhr (d. 1699), attempted to

restore the cloistered life. In 1728 John Conrad Beissel (see Communism, II., 5; Dunkers, I., 2), a German Pietist, who had emigrated to America and had joined the Dunkers (q.v.) in 1724, withdrew to live in solitude, and was joined by others who formed a community and adopted a habit something like that of the Capuchins. In the latter half of the nineteenth century the Highchurch movement in the Anglican communion brought about the foundation of a large number of quasi-monastic communities for both men and women. Most of them are modeled in their organization on the type of Roman Catholic monasticism, though as a rule without binding vows; and the main purpose of nearly all of them is missionary or charitable work, at home or abroad. See Abbey;

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Andrew and Philip, Brotherhood of; Asceticism; Methodists; Protestant Episcopalians.

(G. Grützmacher.)

Bibliography: A large part of the story of Monasticism is told in the literature under the articles referred to in the text dealing with the persons there mentioned and with the different orders. Consult also the literature under Asceticism. A -all group of books of first importance consists of: C. F. de Montalembert, Lee Moines de l'occident, 7 vols., Paris, 1880 siq., Eng. transl, Monks of the West from St. Benedict to St. Bernard, 6 vols.; London, 1895; Helyot, Orders monastiques: 0. Zöckler, Askew and M6ndltush 2 vols., Frankfort, 1897; J. S. Aseemani, Bibhdhew orientalis, vol. iii., Rome, 1728; and Heimbucher, Orden und Kongregationen. Consult further: M. R. A. Henrion, Histoire des ordres rsligie~ 2 vols., Paris, 1835; T. D. Fosbrooke, British Monachisrn; or, Manners and Customs of the Monks and Nuns of England, London, 1843; S. Fox, Monks and Monasteries: an Account of English Monasticism. ib. 1845; W. Dugdale, Monaeticon Anglicanwa, 8 vols., London, 1849; F. S. Merryweather, Bi3liornania in the Middle Ages, with Anecdotes Illustrating the Hist. of the Monadic Libraries of Great Britain, ib. 1849; W. J. Marigold, Ds monachatus originr3us d causis, Marburg, 1852; S. P. Day, Monastic I nadtutions: their Origin, Progress, Nature, and Tendency, London, 1858; W. Reeves. The Culden of the British l alanda, Dublin, 1873 (contains many documents); 0. D. T. Hill. English Monasticism, London, 1867 (deals particularly with Benedictine and Franciscan influence on art, literature, and common life); M. E. C. Walcott, Church Life and Work in Brplish Minaters, vol. if., ib. 1879; P. Ladewig, Poppo con Stablo und die Klodsrrejormen unter den eraten Saliern, Berlin, 1883; F. Suares, The Religious State, 3 vols., London, 1884; C. Kingsley, The Hermits: their Lives and Works, London, 1885; A. Lindner, Die Aufhebung den laden in Dsutechtirol, I nnebruok, 1888; E. Am6lineau, sun to dnobitisme primu%f dana la Haute-Ogypte, Cairo, 1887; idem, Histoire des monaWres de la Basao ggypts, Cairo, 1894; E. van Bertouch, Geschichte den OeMossonschaften, Wiesbaden, 1888; F. Herve-Basin, Les Grondea Ordres des femmes, Paris, 1889; F. C. Doyle, Principles of Religious Life, London, 1890; A. Hamaek, in GBA, 1891; I. G. Smith, Christian Monasticism from the Fourth to the Ninth Centuries, London, 1892; H. D. M. Spence, Cloister Life in the Days of Cwur de Lion, London, 1892; J. Berthier, L'ftat rdipiaus, La Selette. 1893; J. Sokolow, Zustand des Mostanaessns in den byzantinischen Kirche (88.¢-It04), Rum, 1894; E. Spreitsenhofer, Die Bntuncklung des alten Mbnchtums in Italien bit auf Benedikt, Vienna, 1894; T. Holds, Die kirchlichen Bruder sehaften and dos religifs Leben in modernen Katholisis nus, Erlangen, 1895; L. Eekenetein, woman under monasticism, Cambridge. 1898; Mrs. A. Jameson, Legends of the Monastic Orders, many editions, e.g., Boston, 1896; T. W. Allies, The Monastic Life from the Fathers of the Desert to Charlamagne, London 1890; F. C. Woodhouse, Monasticism. Ancient and Modern, its Principles, Origin, Development, Triumphs, Decadence, and Suppression, London, 1890; E. Mario, Ds studio camobio Constantino yolitano, Paris 1897; idem Les Moines de Constantinople (330-888), ib. 1897; U. Berlibre, Monaaticon beige, 2 vols., Bruges, 1897; W. Nissen, Die Regdung des %lostenoesens in Romderrsieha bis sun Ends des 8. Jahrhunderts, Hamburg, 1897; E. Preuschen, PaUadinus and Rufnus. Bin Beihap our Qudlenkunde des dlledm Mdnchtuma, Giessen, 1897; K. Hall, Enthuaiaamua and Bussgeuralt beim grsech ixhen M6nchtum, Leipsic. 1898 D. Bolter, Der Ursprung des MSndt-, Freiburg, 1900; A. Harnack, Monadi aiam: its Ideate and History, London, 1901; F. M. Keels, The Convents of Great Britain, London, 1902; H. J. Feasey, Monasticism: what is it f St. Lours, 1902; A. W. Wishart, A Short History of Monks and Monasteries, Trenton, 1902; J. 0. Hannsy, Spirit and Origin of Christian Monasticism, London, 1903 idem, The Wisdom of the Desert, London, 1904; J. Hoaark, Le Monachiame. Sari orsginea paiennea, Paris, 1903; W. Humphrey, Elements of Religious Life, London, 1903; J. Jaeger, %lodsrlebm im Mittdafer, Würzburg 1903; F. M. Steels, Anchoresses in the Wed, London, 1903; F. A. Gasquet, The Old English Bibles and Other Essays, London, 1897; idem, English Monastic Life, won, 194; rdem, Henry VIII. and the English Monasteries, new eel., New York, 1908; C. E. Hooykaas, Oust christdijks Ascots, Leyden, 1905; J. van Walter, Die eraten Wanderprediper Frankreichs. Studien sun Geschichte des M6nchtums, Leipsic 1908; E A. W. Budge, The Paradise or Garden of the Holy Fathers; being Histories of the Anchorites, Recluses, Monks, Comobitea, and awdie Fathers of the Deserts of Egypt ,860-.;00, compiled by Athanasius . . , Palladius . . , St. Jerome and Others, 2 vols., London and New York, 1909; A. Savine, English Monasteries on the Eve of the Dissolution, New York, 1910; S. Schiwiets, Des morpenlandische Mdnchtun, Mainz, 1904; Schaff, Christian Church, v. f., pp. 308-428; and, in general, the works on the history of the Church in all periods.