Dr. Reeves, in his very learned and valuable edition of Adamnan,* remarks, that If we may judge from the biographical records which have descended to us, primitive Irish ecclesiastics, and especially the superior class, commonly known as saints, were very impatient of contradiction and very resentful of injury' (Preface, p. lxxvii.); and these characteristics were fully exemplified by Columban both in his quarrels with the Frankish princes, and in his letters on the time of Easter and on the controversy of the 'Three Articles'—the latter a subject into which he plunged without, apparently, knowing anything about it, but with all the confidence of infallibility. It would seem that some late French writers have amused themselves by attributing to this saint all manner of profound and mysterious designs; that they have made him the chief of a secret conspiracy, a revolutionist in politics and in religion, a seventhcentury combination of Luther and Mazzini (ii. 472-4, 503); and we fully agree with M. de Montalembert in regarding such speculations as ridiculous nonsense. But that Columban's regard for Rome was far short of the Roman idea, and that in this respect he was only a representative of that independence which marked the whole character of the early Irish church, appears to us altogether unquestionable. There are, indeed, in his letters to popes some strange and hyperbolical expressions of respect; but when we look to the substance of those letters, we find an entire freedom of opinion and a sturdy resolution to maintain his own peculiar views; and, while he highly magnifies the dignity of the Roman see, he yet expressly places it below that of Jerusalem- the place of the Lord's resurrection' (Ep. v. sect. 18). M. de Montalembert quotes the passage, but significantly abstains from making any comment (ii. 467).

Columban is chiefly memorable on account of his monastic rule, of which M. de Montalembert gives an abstract (ii. 475-6). We are rather surprised to find that, among other characteristics, he speaks of it as being vaguer than the Benedictine rule; for, if we judge of the system by taking Columban's Penitential in connexion with the rule to which it is a necessary supplement, we should rather consider that Columban erred on the side of too great precision, by prescribing exact measures of obedience, or of punishment for disobedience, where Benedict had left the determination of such things to the discretion of the abbot. There

rather gives the substance of what Columban had learnt as to 'certain Catholics' elsewhere—perhaps the Egyptian monks of St. Pachomius, with whose arrangements as to psalmody the account of the practice of the 'Catholics' in question agrees pretty closely.

* Published by the Irish Archæological Society, Dublin, 1857.

is, for instance, nothing in the Benedictine code like that legislation which enacted six strokes as the penalty for omitting to make the sign of the cross on a spoon or a candle, six for coughing at the beginning of a psalm, and ten for spilling beer on the table of the refectory. M. de Montalembert denies, and with reason, the opinion of Mabillon and others, that Columban himself, in his Italian monastery, adopted the Benedictine rule instead of his own (ii. 474); but he tells us truly that in no long time the rule of Columban was generally superseded by the Benedictine, and he accounts for this by saying that the Benedictine discipline was in alliance with the Roman influence. No doubt this alliance must have shared in producing the result; for even in the seventh century the papacy had become a considerable power, and able to contribute much towards the spreading of such usages as it countenanced. But surely the difference of character between the two rules-the superior good sense and the greater elasticity of the Benedictine-contributed even more than the influence of Rome to the victory which the Benedictine system gained over the peculiar, and in many respects eccentric and ridiculous, regulations of Columban. Columban, as M. de Montalembert truly remarks, was the man who gave the greatest impulse to the monasticism of the seventh century; but he was without that foresight which is necessary for a legislator whose work is to endure for ages (ii. 478).

And now, having indicated the contents of the narrative part of these volumes, we may go back to the Introduction, in which the author has expressed his views of monachism in general. We cannot but think that he has regarded matters too exclusively from his own position; that, although he occasionally refers to other countries, he thinks almost solely of France. Everywhere, he says, monachism was suppressed in the eighteenth century; everywhere, if freedom of action be allowed, it revives in the nineteenth (viii.). But in order to justify the first part of this saying, he is obliged to forget the fact that in Italy, Spain, and Southern Germany, the monastic communities survived the eighteenth century; and there is the awkward fact that, among the people of Spain and of Italy at least, the tendency of the nineteenth century is not to be content with what they have,— to profit by the sad experience of others, and to be thankful that they may spare themselves the evils of the suppression and the labour of the restoration, but simply to get rid of monkery, without regard to what may follow. And what is the revival? So small, so partial, so strongly suggesting by its appearance the suspicion that in most cases it is merely theatrical, as to dis

pense

pense us from the necessity of seriously considering it. If M. de Montalembert's object were merely to obtain a fair recognition of the services formerly rendered by the monks to mankind, we should have little to say against him; but, since he declares his belief in a coming general restoration of monachism, and designs his book as a contribution towards that object, we are obliged to say that we think such a movement at once unlikely and undesirable.

M. de Montalembert tells us that, when he began his work, he had no idea what a monk really was. In the whole course of his education, whether at home or in public schools and colleges, no one of his tutors in history or religion had ever spoken of the religious orders; and when he first saw a monkish habit, it was on the stage of a theatre (xi.-xii.). Yet at that very time the Protestant Guizot was delivering those lectures to which M. de Montalembert so often pays deserved compliments for their author's just understanding and estimate of the middle ages in general, and of the monastic institutions in particular; while in Germany such Protestants as Voigt and Raumer had shown a full appreciation of the good of monachism in their historical works, and in England the Protestant Wordsworth had 'celebrated the glory of the monastic orders with a truth and an emotion, and had lamented their ruin with an eloquence, unsurpassed among modern poets' (cxii.). It would seem, therefore, that Protestants had mastered the subject of monachism while the youth of high royalist and high Catholic noble French families were trained in ignorance of it; and, if our ignorance as to these matters, when we began to read M. de Montalembert's book, was less than that with which the author entered on his preparation for it, he must not expect us to hail his accounts of the monks as new and startling revelations, or, for the love of medieval monachism as represented in his pages, to become converts to the church which kept her future champion so entirely in the dark with regard to it.

As to St. Bernard, in particular, M. de Montalembert tells us that, although all the world owns him to have been a great man, no one understands that his monastic profession was the secret of his greatness (iii.). We cannot tell on what this statement is founded; but here again it would seem that Protestant historians have apprehended the matter better than those writers with whom M. de Montalembert is more conversant; for it is, we believe, the common opinion of the more recent Protestant writers that Bernard ruled his age because he was the highest pattern of that kind of sanctity which it most admired, and that he was but little conscious of his almost unlimited and unequalled power.

But

But while we acknowledge that many monks were great men —nay, -nay, that in some of them, their greatness (or, at all events, their influence) was in no small degree due to their monastic character,—we protest against the fallacy of holding up these ornaments of monachism by way of answer to objections against the more ordinary specimens of the order. We protest against holding up monastic founders in reply to objections against their successors-against holding up monastic rules in reply to complaints that these rules were not observed; against telling us that because some monks were very active, none can ever have been lazy. It might, indeed, seem needless to expose such palpable fallacies; but they are repeated by one advocate of monasticism after another, and in the use of them Mr. Digby is followed by M. de Montalembert. Even as to the most eminent of monks, there may be room for questions whether their profession did not injure them in some respects while it benefited them in others? whether in different times and circumstances their energies would have taken the monastic form? whether, even in their own circumstances, they might not possibly have done still better under some other form? whether the monastic character would be any aid to them if they lived in our own day? And a main objection to monkery is, that, however well it may succeed in certain cases or for a limited time, it is mischievous if laid down as a rule for a great number and for a long succession of men ; when, instead of serving as a shape into which a few may cast their already excited feelings, it is made a mere outward law for multitudes, who have not that preparation of heart which would fit them to benefit by its good ;* that the great mass of ordinary men who come under its discipline will not apprehend whatever there may be in it of a higher and more spiritual kind, but, even if the severity of the prescribed obedience should be maintained, will sink into a dull and mechanical system of minute and trifling observances, while there will, of course, be the strongest temptation to evade the rule.

*One form of the mistake may be illustrated by a quotation from Caesarius of Heisterbach, a monastic writer of the thirteenth century. I have understood,' says one of the speakers in his Dialogues,' that some have come to our order with a good intention, and as very innocent youths, who in process of time looked back and were lost.' 'I,' answers Caesarius, have often heard such things. My Lord John, Archbishop of Trèves, a prudent man and well acquainted with the secrets of our order, used to say that it was rarely that boys or youths coming to the order with their consciences unburdened with the weight of sin, are fervent in their religion: nay, which is pitiable, they either live in the order lukewarmly and badly, or altogether leave it, because there is not in them the fear of an accusing conscience; they presume on their virtues, and so, when temptations arise, they make little resistance to them.'-1. i. c. 3, pp. 12-3, ed. Colon. Agr.

1599.

M. de

M. de Montalembert tells us that every one who believes in the mystery of the Incarnation ought to acknowledge in monachism the noblest effort which has ever been made to strive against the corruption of nature, and to approach to Christian perfection' (xv.)-a sentence in which (not to speak of other objections) it seems to be forgotten that such efforts to subdue nature are not peculiar to monachism or to Christianity. He tells us that monks are the very pith and marrow of the Church ; that they must be so, because the persecutors of the Church have always made them the especial objects of their fury. But is this argument sound? The heathen persecutors of the early Christians had no monks to persecute; and, if we come to later times, we may ask, Was it because the monks realised the Christian virtues too intensely that they became odious to those who hated Christianity? or may it not have been because they too commonly presented to such people an appearance which would have brought discredit on any religion? Is it merely from hatred of all good that the abolition of monachism is now desired by many who profess themselves faithful to the Roman Church and its doctrines?

In truth, monachism is no part of the Church's proper organiIt is older than Christianity, it is not peculiar to it, and did not arise within the Church until after those ages to which we are accustomed to look as the time of purest faith, and which Count de Montalembert himself would probably respect, not because they were early or pure, but because the Church was then unconnected with the State. Indeed, we may say that monkery was anti-ecclesiastical, like the Pharisaism of earlier days,* or like other fashions of religionism which have succeeded to its popularity. It was founded on personal pretension to holiness; it was knit together by other bonds than those of ecclesiastical communion; it made little of the orders of the Church, which it regarded as even incompatible with the highest degrees of sanctity; it taught a retirement which in many cases involved a withdrawal from the sacramental means of grace; it set itself in opposition, or assumed a superiority, to the ordinary rulers of the Church. Hence in the middle ages came the claims of exemption from the authority of bishops, and the close alliance with the Papacy; hence the contempt with which the regular clergy

*St. Athanasius, a zealous friend to monachism, is quoted by a Byzantine writer of the ninth century (whose chronicle has lately been published for the first time as a whole) as saying in all simplicity that the monks were the Pharisees of Christianity (Georgius Hamartolus, p. 249, ed. Muralt, Petropol. 1859). It would seem from the editor's note that the passage of Athanasius is not otherwise known.

looked