Glimpses of the Dark Ages; Or, Sketches of the Social Condition of Europe from the Fifth to the Twelfth Century

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. THE MONASTERY. Monachism was so closely interwoven with the church system of the middle ages, that it may be thought a review of its history and tendencies should have been included in the former chapter: but it exerted so much influence peculiar to itself, and presents so many illustrations of the state of mediaeval society, as to claim distinct consideration. SECTION I. EISE OF SION-ACHIStt. Monachism did not spring from pure Christianity, but was engrafted upon the system, after it had been grievously corrupted. It is evidently one of the great offshoots of that ascetic principle which is indigenous in human nature, and of which the developments may be traced in the Jewish Essenes, the Greek Cynics, the Alexandrian Platonists, the British Druids, and the Eastern Brahmins. The practice of a monastic life, in its connexion with the church, commenced in Egypt, in the third century. The storms of persecution drove many into the deserts, where they sought to carry out the ascetic principles, which, even at that time, were so strongly advocated by Cyprian and others. The spirit of self-righteousness, which had led to the phari- saism of the Jews, and had produced no little of pharisaism among Christians, douhtless helped on the result; to which, perhaps, the contemplative hahits of the east, the preference of quietude to activity, and the notion, that the height of religious excellence consists in the absorption of the mind by spiritual meditation, in some measure contributed. The founders of monachism were, in fact, hermits, who sought the cavern and the den, the ruins of sepulchres, and the dreariest spots of the desert, as scenes favourable to piety and communion with Heaven. That they were ignorant, deluded, and superstitious, is apparent enough; hu...