great name of this heretical blot; but, since he was the first of those who were intimately connected with the sect known as the Friends of God,1 it is not clear how he can be acquitted of the dangerous doctrines laid to his charge. Moreover, he was formally condemned by Pope John XXII., in a bull issued in 1329, after Eckhart's death. But, whatever be his faults, he has the incontestable merit of having thrown the German language into scientific form.

1 Cf. Blunt's Dict. of Sects, etc., art. Friends of God. (TR.)

CHAPTER IV.

HISTORY OF RELIGIOUS ORDERS.

Holstenii Codex regular. monasticar., etc. The works of Helyot, Schmidt, Biedenfeld, and Henrion (German by Fehr, Vol. I., p. 748). There is also found a full and very interesting picture of religious life at this epoch in Hurter, Innocent III., Vol. III., p. 427-616; Vol. IV., p. 1–312. See also Cesare Cantù, Vol. VII., p. 149 sq., and compare Raumer, Hist. of the Hohenstaufens, Vol. IV., p. 320–436, and also Schröckh, Ch. H., Pt. XXVII.

§ 239. Introduction.

The fresh, vigorous life which had penetrated the religious orders toward the close of the preceding epoch still continued to animate them in the present, and to make their influence felt throughout the whole Church and in every phase of her development. The spirit of penance having been revived in the Western nations during the eleventh century, by the reformatory zeal of Gregory VII., was kept alive by the labors of the monks, who were to be seen in the life and bustle of the world, now fearlessly preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ before princes and bishops, now acting as mediators between hostile parties and adjusting their difficulties, and at all times and everywhere proving themselves the friends and protectors of the poor. The cloister was alike the refuge of penitent sinners and the home of science, to which quiet and retirement are so congenial. Here schools were founded and flourished, the arts cultivated, and artisans and mechanics taught their various crafts and trades. A cloister, therefore, was, on a small scale, the seat of a university—a sort of polytechnic institute and agricultural college. Moreover, the

1"The mere enumeration of the cloister libraries fills one with surprise and admiration. About the close of the eleventh century, the library of the monastery of Croyland, containing three thousand volumes, perished by fire. In 1248 the library of the abbey of Glastonbury contained four hundred volumes, among which were several of the Roman poets and historians. The catalogue

monasteries were governed by rules exhibiting such consum mate wisdom that their forms of government were in a meas ure adopted as models for political institutions just emerging into life and taking definite shape. So generally acceptable was monastic life to all classes, and so rapid and wide-spread its growth, that Innocent III. felt himself called upon to for bid the founding of new orders, and left to restless and aspir ing men only the choice of entering whichever of those al ready existing they might find most congenial to their tastes Still his prohibition did not prevent the founding of many new congregations, whose members went earnestly to work to counteract the influence of heretics, those dangerous ene mies of Church and State then as in all ages, and, as the event proved, achieved by their labors a most triumphant

success.

The secret of the strength and influence of the religious orders and congregations lay in the severity of their rules, their strict observance of them, and in the holiness of their founders. But unfortunately a spirit of laxity soon crept in, and the conspicuous contrast between their vow of poverty and their great wealth and vast possessions foreboded, and in matter of fact brought on, their speedy decline. Once introduced, the taste for refined and sensual enjoyments rapidly spread; the monastic state, heretofore so sacred and honored in the eyes of all, was regarded with indifference or excited contempt, and monks became either secretly vicious or openly scandalous.

THE CONGREGATION OF CLUGNY (cf. ? 199).

This congregation, the most celebrated of the past epoch, was also the most renowned of the present. Its members wore a black habit of the simplest possible cut. The disci

of the library of Prifling is not so rich in classical works, but among them a Homer is mentioned. About the same epoch, the cloister of Benedictbeuren boasted of the possession of a Lucian, a Horace, a Virgil, and a Sallust; and the monastery of St. Michael, near Bamberg, had among its collection the greater part of the Latin poets and the works of many other writers of Pagan and Christian antiquity." Hurter, Vol. III., p. 582; cf. Cantù, Vol. VII., p. 754.

pline of the monastery had been very dangerously relaxed during the abbacy of one Pontius, who died in 1122; but his successor, the learned and virtuous Peter the Venerable (A. D. 1122–1156), again restored it to its primitive rigor, and extended the reputation and the authority of the mother-house of Clugny until it had under it two thousand monasteries,1 chiefly in France. All these monasteries, which, as we have already remarked, were generally built on picturesque and commanding heights,2 were subject to the rule and under the government of Clugny, and recognized its abbot as their supreme monastic head. He was invariably chosen from the monks of his own convent, whence also the priors of the other convents were, as a rule, taken. A General Chapter assembled annually at Clugny, to enact laws and provide for the interests of the congregation. This congregation now, as in times past, continued to send forth popes and bishops to govern the Church, and in return the order enjoyed the protection and prospered under the influence of the pontiffs, but more particularly in France than elsewhere. But excessive wealth, as usual, blighted the life and blasted the growth of this great and noble order, and Clugny declined in consideration and influence, and finally gave place to rising congregations more fitted by their constitution and the fresh vigor of their youth to cope with the perils of the age.

§ 240. The Cistercian Order.

Relatio, qualiter incepit ordo Cisterciens. (Auberti Miraei Chron. Cisterc. ord., Coloniae, 1614). Henriquez, Regula, constitut. et privil. ord. Cist., Antverp., 1630. Holstenius-Brockie, 1. c., T. II., p. 365-468. Helyot, Vol. V., p. 346 sq. Hurter, Vol. IV., p. 164–206. Henrion-Fehr, Vol. I., p. 101 sq.

Robert, abbot of Molesme, growing dissatisfied with the relaxation and sloth into which excessive wealth had plunged 1 Wilkens, Peter the Venerable, Abbot of Clugny, being the biography of a monk, Lps. 1857.

2 In the Middle Ages everything had, so to speak, its special and distinctive type and its own appropriate names. Each order and congregation had a traditional location and a peculiar style of architecture. The sites preferred by each of the great orders is expressed in the following verses:

Bernardus valles, montes Benedictus amabat

Oppida Franciscus, celebres Ignatius urbes.

the Benedictine order, and still more so with the resistance which the monks offered to his measures of reform, founded, in 1098, a new congregation at Citeaux, near Dijon, in the bishopric of Châlons-sur-Marne. The pious abbot had a host of difficulties to contend against and overcome. The spirit which animated the new congregation of Citeaux was as different as possible from that which swayed the monks of Clugny, and an absolute self-denial, a severe simplicity in all that pertained to external worship, a full and unqualified submission to the authority of the bishop of the diocese, a complete renunciation of all worldly affairs, and, in fact, everything about them, down to the white habit, which had been substituted for the black, rendered the contrast more conspicuous and pronounced.

Robert died 1108, and 1119 his order was thrown into definite shape and its organization perfected by the adoption of the Charter of Love (Charta Charitatis), which directed that every act of its members should be done by the law of charity. It was approved in the same year by Calixtus II. Its rule was so severe that three abbots succeeded one another before any accession was made to the original twenty, and even some of these were frightened away by the austerity it enjoined.1 But, for all this, contemporaries recognized in the life led by the inmates of Citeaux the perfect antitype of the apostolic age, and when St. Bernard became one of their number, in 1113, the order had acquired a reputation which raised it far above the most illustrious congregations of that day.

Nearly three years later, he founded a new monastery of the same order in a wild and desert valley inclosed by mountains, in the diocese of Langres. The valley had formerly been the asylum of robbers, and was called the Valley of Wormwood (Vallis Absinthalis), but after it had been cleared, it received the name of the Clear Valley (Clara Vallis), and the new house was in consequence called Clairvaux. Bernard was at this time only five and twenty. He was con

1 Dalgairns, St. Stephen Harding, founder (?) (third abbot!—TR.) of the Order of Citeaux, Mentz, 1855.