Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 16.djvu/740

Rh 712 MONACHISM away with without wrong to any one, and good religious can be put in their place. At present we think the best thing to be done is to dismiss all the unprofessed youths from their monasteries.&quot; As this formal document showed the current of high ecclesiastical opinion, so the lay view took expression in the EpistolsR Obscurorum Virorum of Ulrich von Hutten, which was to the Dominicans of the 16th century almost what the Provinciates of Pascal were to the Jesuits of the 1 7th ; while they came also under the more delicate scalpel of Erasmus s wit. Not that the objections were wholly new, for it is evident from Thomas Aquinas s defence of monachism against its detractors that they were nearly all used in the 13th century. The interests involved were, however, too vast and complicated, the supposed impolicy of an admission on so large a scale of the charges alleged against monachism by the men of the New Learning too serious, to allow of any such sweeping measure of reform as that proposed by the cardinals being carried out. A certain amount of discouragement shown towards the older societies ; the enactment of some partial corrections by the council of Trent, not touching any principle whatever, but apparently saying something because public feeling looked for something to be said ; and, above all, the crea tion of a new type of order, the famous Company of the JESUITS (1534), represent the total action taken by the Roman Church during the actual crisis of the Refor mation. Apart from such direct revolts from the Latin obedience as those in Bern, Zurich, Denmark, and Sweden, which at once involved the monasteries in the general overthrow of the old system of things religious, the most remarkable proceedings in the reaction against monachism were those taken in England, at a time when no breach with the Roman Curia was thought of. So far back as the 13th century Kings John and Edward I., and yet again in 1337 Edward III., had confiscated the &quot;alien priories,&quot; as those houses were called which were depend encies of foreign monasteries, and the last named let out their lands and tenements until the peace with France in 1361, when he restored their estates; and similar raids were made on them both in his reign and in that of Richard II. Henry IV. showed them more favour; but in 1410 the House of Commons proposed the confiscation of all the temporalities held by bishops, abbots, and priors, petition ing the crown to employ their revenues in paying a standing army of knights and soldiers, in augmenting the incomes of some of the nobles and gentry, in endowing a hundred hospitals, and in making small yearly payments to the secular clergy. This fact attests the unpopularity of the church and the religious orders at the time, and, though the large scheme was dropped, yet in 1416 parlia ment dissolved all the alien priories, and vested their estates in the crown. They were for the most part applied to ecclesiastical purposes; but some portion, at any rate, passed into private hands, and was permanently alienated. Hence there was nothing to create surprise, much less opposition, when Cardinal Wolsey in 1523 obtained bulls from the pope authorizing the suppression of forty small monasteries and the application of their revenues to educational foundations, on the plea that these lesser houses were quite useless, and not homes of either religion or learning, whereas a learned clergy was imperatively needed to combat the new religious opinions which were making rapid way. And that the monasteries had been subject to serious vicissitudes all along appears from the fact that only about one half of all the founda tions known to have been made in England were in existence at the date of the dissolution. There is little reason to trust the charges of immorality brought against the monks when Henry VIII. had once resolved on the j tillage of the monasteries, seeing how the path opened by Wolsey could be followed up. The characters of the king himself, of Cromwell, his chief agent in the disso lution, and of Layton, Legh, and others of the visitors appointed to inquire into the condition of the houses, are such as to deprive their statements of all credit ; and, besides, the earlier Act of dissolution, granting the smaller monasteries to the king, limits the charges of misconduct to them, expressly acquitting the larger houses. Never theless, when the appetite for plunder had increased with the first taste of booty, accusations of precisely the same sort were brought up against the great monasteries, though in no instance has any verifiable proof been pre served. 1 But there can be no reasonable doubt (especially in view of the visitations of Archbishop Warham and other pre-Reformation prelates), that the religious houses, viewed simply as corporate estates, had been very badly managed for a considerable time, were heavily encumbered, and a weight round the neck of financial progress in England ; and that, as spiritual agencies, they had mainly outlived their usefulness, so that, lamentable as were the circum stances of their destruction, and scandalous as was the waste of the property seized, there is little reason to sup pose that any practical benefit would have flowed from their continuance, whatever might have been the advantages of an honest and economical measure of reform, or even of transfer to other purposes on the principle of cy pres. 2 The negative evidence of the effeteness of the older orders supplied by their very small share in the counter- Reformation, which lay virtually in the hands of the Jesuits alone, is reinforced by the reports made by the emissaries of the new company to their superiors, which attest that the accusations of the German reformers against both the secular and regular clergy on the score of ignor ance and dissoluteness were only too well founded. Accordingly several new societies were instituted during Later the latter half of the 16th century, aiming at putting new societiei wine into the old bottles of the Carmelites, Cistercians, Augustinians, Dominicans, and Benedictines ; but none of them proved of much importance. A larger measure of success attended some established on an active basis, such as the Fathers of Christian Doctrine, a catechizing order erected by Pius V. in 1571 ; two communities for tending the sick, one founded in Italy by Camillo de Lelli in 1584, the other, the Brothers of Charity, by John of God at Granada in 1538, but not formally sanctioned till 1572; and still more prosperity attended the Ursuline Nuns, a community chiefly devoted to the education of young girls, founded at Brescia by Angela de Merici in 1537, and confirmed by Paul III. in 1544. Yet, with the single exception of the Jesuits, no new society could be said to have laid hold in any degree of the popular mind, nor were the attempts to revivify the elder bodies continued. It remained for two newer still to rehabilitate the waning respect for monachism of all kinds, and that by borrowing one chief feature of the Jesuit organization, the abandon ment of that principle of isolation from the outer world which lies at the root of true monachism. 3 Of these the 1 A full examination of the case against the monasteries will be found in Dixon, History of the Church of England, vol. i. pp. 324- 383. 2 The number of houses suppressed and overthrown by the two Acts of 1536 and 1538 was as follows: 186 Benedictine houses, 173 Augus tinians, 101 Cistercians, 33 Dominican, Franciscan, Carmelite, and Austin friaries, 32 Pnemonstratensians, 28 Knights Hospitallers, 25 Gilbertines, 20 Cluniacs, 9 Carthusians, 3 Fontevraud, 3 Minoresses, 2 Bouhommes, 1 Brigittine ; total, 616. Their aggregate revenues were valued at 142,914, 12s. 9d. annually. 3 Soon after the Jesuits rose into note and popularity, a very curious and little known extension of their institute was made in Flanders. Two English ladies, acting with the sympathy and counsel if not at the recommendation of F. Gerard, rector of the Jesuit college at Liege, founded a community which they named Jesuitesses, adopting