eminent and the most active was St. Jerome, 'that lion of Christian polemics; a lion at once inflamed and subdued—inflamed by zeal, and subdued by penitence' (i. 158). To this celebrated man our author pays the tribute of respect which is justly deserved by his abilities, his learning, and his labours in the cause of religion, while he does not affect to be blind to the fact that there was much of a less admirable kind in him. But perhaps it may be fairly asked whether this mixture of evil with good in Jerome has not something to do with the question as to the merits of monasticism. If, indeed, he were merely a monk who had been famous as a scholar or as a controversial theologian, we should consider his faults as only personal, and not as discrediting his profession. But when we consider that he was set forth as a pattern of a practical and very elevated Christian life, that in his own time he was the most revered exemplar of it, we may surely say that the idea of that life, however high its pretensions may have been, was very imperfectly Christian. For the case of Jerome is a proof that a man might pass through the severest monastic discipline, and might be regarded as having attained to a very lofty degree of monastic sanctity, without subduing his violent irritability, his imperious pride, his bitter envy; nay, perhaps, that the effect of the monastic training was even to exasperate these vices.

From Jerome we come to the more illustrious name of Augustine. That this great father was a monk we believe M. de Montalembert to be wrong in maintaining (i. 199); for the companions whom, when a bishop, he gathered around him for something like a monastic life were all clergy, whereas, in his time, and long after, monks were usually laymen; nor is there, in so far as we know, any trace of their having been bound to their manner of life by any vow; while the rule which passes under the name of St. Augustine, and which M. de Montalembert attributes to him (i. 206), is supposed by competent critics to have been really framed (chiefly from Augustine's writings, it is true) in the latter part of the eleventh century. We might, therefore, take exception to some expressions in the following passage; but we quote it not only for its eloquence, but for the justice with which our author characterises the great African father:

*

'The monastic institute, then, can claim the glory of him who has been declared [by Bossuet] to be the most renowned and the greatest of theologians, the father and the master of all preachers of the holy Gospel, and who takes his place between Plato and Bossuet, between

* Gieseler, II., ii. 282.

Cicero and St. Thomas of Aquino, in the first rank of those rare spirits who tower above the ages. It was among the exercises and the austerities of the cloistral life that this man specially formed himself -great alike in thought and in faith, in genius and in virtue, born to exercise the most legitimate sway over his own time and over all times. No doubt all is not perfect in the remains of him which we possess. The subtlety, the obscurity, the bad taste of an age of literary decline are to be found in them. But who has ever surpassed him in the immensity, the variety, the inexhaustible fertility of his labours, in the deep sensibility and the charming candour of his soul, in the glowing curiosity, the elevation, and the reach of his spirit ? From the midst of his innumerable works two masterpieces stand out, which will endure as long as Catholic truth itself the "Confessions,' in which repentance and humility have involuntarily put on the sublime adornment of genius, and which have made Augustine's inmost life the patrimony of all Christians; the "City of God," which is at once a triumphant apology for Christianity and a first essay in the true philosophy of history, which Bossuet alone was to surpass. His life, inflamed, devoured, by an inextinguishable ardour for good, is but one long struggle; first, against the learned follies and the shameful vices of the Manichaeans; then, against the blameable exaggerations of the Donatists, who carried their sanguinary rigorism to the length of schism, rather than acquiesce in the wise indulgence of Rome; then again, against the Pelagians, who claimed for human freedom the right to dispense with God; lastly, and always, against the remains of paganism, which struggled in Africa with the old Carthaginian obstinacy against the new and victorious religion of Rome. He died at the age of seventy-six, on the ramparts (?) of his episcopal city during its siege by the Vandals- a living image of that church which erected itself between the Roman empire and the barbaric world, to protect the ruin, and to purify the conquest.'*—i. 200-2.

But after Augustine and his contemporaries, the splendour of Western monachism too began speedily to pass away; and in the beginning of the sixth century it had greatly declined, when a revival was effected by Benedict of Nursia, with whom M. de Montalembert considers his history more properly to begin.

We need not follow the career of Benedict, from his withdrawal in boyhood to the cave near Subiaco,† to his death, after having founded

* This passage is followed by one on the subject of the views which Augustine at different times entertained as to the toleration of religious error-his later opinions, as is well known, having been in favour of such coercion as he had at an earlier time reprobated (i. 202-4). M. de Montalembert's language is curiously affected by his position as a member of a Church which, when triumphant, has never hesitated to persecute, while his own disposition is sincerely in favour of that tolerance which, in the present circumstances of his country, his Church is glad to profess.

Of this cave M. de Montalembert says, 'Tous y reconnaissaient le site sacré que le prophète Isaïe semble avoir montré d'avance aux cénobites par ces paroles d'une

founded the great monastery of Monte Cassino, and governed it by a rule which became the general law of Western Monachism. The spirit of that rule, we need hardly say, was especially distinguished from the spirit of the earlier Eastern Monachism by greater reasonableness, mildness, and elasticity. But the principle of obedience to superiors, which it laid down, seems to us to be quite deserving of the words in which it has been characterised by M. Guizot- The fatal present that the monks made to Europe, and which so long altered or enervated its virtues.' * According to M. Guizot, the idea of this obedience was copied from the worship of the imperial majesty,' and M. de Montalembert quotes these words with respectful reprobation:

No; it is not a production of social decline, nor a mark of religious slavery. It is, on the contrary, the triumph of that moral and spiritual liberty of which imperial Rome had lost all notion, which Christianity alone could have restored to the world, and of which the reign, propagated and assured above all by the children of St. Benedict, has rescued Europe from the anarchy, slavery, and decrepitude into which the Roman empire had precipitated it.

Without doubt, this passive and absolute obedience, in temporal matters, and under chiefs imposed from without, and who command according to the will of their interests or their passions, would constitute an intolerable servitude. But, besides that among the Benedictines it was always and for all to be the result of a free determination, it remains at once sanctified and tempered by the nature and the origin of the command. The Abbot holds the place of Christ; he can ordain nothing but what is conformable to the law of God. charge is that of a father of a family, that of a good shepherd. His life ought to be the mirror of his lessons. Charged with the awful mission of governing souls, he owes to God the strictest account of it, and almost in every page the rule enjoins on him never to lose sight of this fearful responsibility.'-ii. 51.

His

To us we confess that M. Guizot's derivation of the principle seems fanciful, but as to its character and effects we entirely agree with him. How such an obedience as would have been an intolerable slavery if required by any secular authority, can have become the very reverse when required by an abbot, we are altogether unable to understand. If the abbot was tyrannical, it was no consolation to his subject monks that they had voluntarily chosen the monastic life, and that perhaps they had shared in the mistake of electing him for their head. It is useless to tell us that abbots were solemnly charged to be guided in their re

d'une application si parfaitement exacte-Attendite ad petram de qua excisi estis, et ad CAVERNAM LACI de qua præcisi estis, (ii. 13). Unluckily other versions are less adapted to the monastic application than the Latin Vulgate. *Civilisation in France,' Lect. xiv. (vol. ii. p. 77, Hazlitt's translation).

quirements

quirements by the rule of Christian duty; for if solemn charges of this sort were enough to secure their own fulfilment, we should have heard nothing under the Christian law of bad kings or bishops, or monks, or clergy; and that many abbots were tyrants we have abundant evidence from monkish chronicles. Nor will the condition that the abbot's commands be agreeable to Christ's Law afford any safeguard; for who was to be the judge of this? Nay, was Benedict's rule itself unquestionably conformable to the Divine Law in every respect? The rule of monastic obedience, therefore, might impose much hardship on those who were subject to it, without allowing them any redress. But the chief objection to it is, that, even if willingly fulfilled, it made the grievous mistake of interposing a human will between the soul and God-of erecting a capricious standard as more perfect than that of the Gospel-of teaching that the highest religious life could not be led, except by submission to particular rules which professed to have improved on and developed the broad precepts of the New Testament. There was the pernicious error of teaching men and women to fancy that, instead of regarding themselves as directly answerable to God for their acts, they might throw their responsibility on some intermediate person or thing-on a monastic rule or a monastic superior—a doctrine which, by substituting a visible for an invisible authority, tended altogether to do away with the principle of faith. How the details of the rule · pressed on the Benedictines, we know from their frequent attempts to relax it by explaining it away in certain points. And as a witness against the principle of obedience illustrated in the 'Vita Patrum,' and incorporated in the Benedictine rule, we may even cite St. Bernard himself, who laughs at a monk as a modern Paul the Simple,' * because in the case of a disputed election to the Papacy he pleaded the duty of following his abbot in adhesion to the cause of which Bernard disapproved. † It is possible, therefore, that on this point the biographer of St. Bernard may find himself at issue with the Saint of Clairvaux himself.

6

The next great monastic hero is Pope Gregory the First-a man who takes his place with Leo the Great, with Nicolas I.,

*Paul the Simple was a famous Egyptian monk, for whom see the 'Historia Lausiaca,' gc. 23-4, in Rosweyd. We must, however, allow that in St. Bernard's own time, and later, the old Egyptian idea of monastic obedience continued to be enforced and illustrated by tales like those of the Vita Patrum.' Thus, in the Life of Stephen, Abbot of Öbaize, we are told of a monk, who, while drawing wine from a cask, was summoned to wait on his abbot, and obeyed at once, carrying the spigot in his hand. In reward for this obedience he not only found that none of the wine had run out during his absence, but the cask was fuller than before! Baluz. Miscellanea, iv. 153, 8vo. edit.

Bern. Ep. vii. c. 12.

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with Gregory VII., and with Innocent III., in the foremost rank of those Popes who have contributed to advance the power of their see, while he is perhaps the only one of them all that a Protestant, at least, can regard with any affection. For Englishmen, in particular, his name has an interest, on account of the mission which he set on foot to this island, and to which the revival of Christianity in the southern part of it is due. That Gregory was a monk is certain; we may still visit the monastery which he founded in honour of St. Andrew in his family mansion on the Cœlian Hill, and which, like many other religious houses, has since taken the name of its founder instead of that of its original patron. There we may see, in addition to older memorials of the connexion with England, some interesting monuments of English Romanists since the Reformation—especially that of Queen Mary's ambassador, Sir Edward Karne, who, after the accession of Elizabeth, preferring his religion to his country, lived and died at Rome; and in the monastic church the devout Romanist will find provided for his use a prayer, that the work of Gregory and Augustine may be repeated by the conversion of the noble English nation' from the errors of false doctrine and schism. But whether Gregory's monachism, and, consequently, that of the missionaries whom he sent forth to convert the English, was of the Benedictine kind, has been a matter of great and learned controversy. The Apostleship of the Benedictines in England' is maintained by Reynerius, in a formidable folio printed at Douay in 1626; and, for the glory of St. Benedict, the same doctrine has been strenuously upheld by the great Mabillon and other members of his order, although denied by Pagi* and other eminent writers of the Roman communion, as well as by many learned Protestants-who, indeed, are in such a matter to be regarded as the most impartial judges. M. de Montalembert, as might be expected, takes the Benedictine side of the question (ii. 90), and in this he is countenanced by so much of evidence and authority as is sufficient to render his opinion at least not improbable. We cannot, however, say as much of other passages in which he adheres to the traditional Roman views, with a lofty contempt of later criticism. We find him, for instance, reproducing the story of Gregory's having seen an angel on the top of Hadrian's Mole. He cites as genuine the privileges for monasteries at Autun, in which the direct subordination of the temporal to the spiritual power is, for the first time, precisely stated' t-documents which are altogether out of keeping with the time of Gre

* In Baron., ed. Mansi, t. x. p. 368.

tii. 133; Greg. Epp. xiii. 8, 9; Append. ad Epistolas, in Migne, lxvii. 1330-3. Vol. 110.-No. 219.

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