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 74 THE DECLINE AND FALL [Chap xxxvn yards of Italy ; and his victorious disciples, who passed the Alps, the Ehine, and the Baltic, required, in the place of wine, an adequate compensation of strong beer or cyder. Their man- The candidate who aspired to the virtue of evangelical poverty abjured, at his first entrance into a regular community, the idea, and even the name, of all separate or exclusive possession. 51 The brethren were supported by their manual labour ; and the duty of labour was strenuously recommended as a penance, as an exercise, and as the most laudable means of securing their daily sustenance. 52 The garden and fields, which the industry of the monks had often rescued from the forest or the morass, were diligently cultivated by their hands. They performed, without reluctance, the menial offices of slaves and domestics ; and the several trades that were necessary to provide their habits, their utensils, and their lodging, were exercised within the precincts of the great monasteries. The monastic studies have tended, for the most part, to darken, rather than to dispel, the cloud of superstition. Yet the curiosity or zeal of some learned solitaries has cultivated the ecclesiastical, and even the profane, sciences ; and posterity must gratefully acknowledge that the monuments of Greek and Koman literature have been preserved and multiplied by their indefatigable pens. 53 But the more humble industry of the monks, especially in Egypt, was contented with the silent, sedentary, occupation of making wooden sandals or of twisting the leaves of the palm-trees into mats and baskets. The superfluous stock, which was not con- sumed in domestic use, supplied, by trade, the wants of the community ; the boats of Tabenne, and the other monasteries 51 Such expressions as my book, my cloak, my shoes (Cassian. Institut. 1. iv. c. 13) were not less severely prohibited among the Western monks (Cod. Eegul. part ii. p. 174, 235, 288), and the Kule of Columbanus punished them with six lashes. The ironical author of the Ordres Monastiques, who laughs at the foolish nicety of modern convents, seems ignorant that the ancients were equally absurd. 52 Two great masters of ecclesiastical science, the P. Thomassin (Discipline de l'Eglise, torn. iii. p. 1090-1139) and the P. Mabillon (Etudes Monastiques, torn. i. p. 116-155), have seriously examined the manual labour of the monks, which the former considers as a merit, and the latter as a duty. 53 Mabillon (Etudes Monastiques, torn. i. p. 47-55) has collected many curious facts to justify the literary labours of his predecessors, both in the East and West. Books were copied in the ancient monasteries of Egypt (Cassian. Institut. 1. iv. c. 12) and by the disciples of St. Martin (Sulp. Sever, in Vit. Martin, c. 7, p. 473). Cassiodorius has allowed an ample scope for the studies of the monks ; and we shall not be scandalized, if their pen sometimes wandered from Chrysostom and Augustin to Homer and Virgil.