Page:Fountains Abbey.djvu/114

 Who were these men? Whence had they come? and why?

As for their origin, they belonged, so far as we can now discover, to the same class from which the ministry is still mainly recruited: to the great company of those who are neither rich nor poor, who neither earn their living by their hands nor inherit the means of living from their fathers, represented in mediaeval England by the gentry, as distinguished on the one side from the peasantry, and on the other side from the aristocracy.

As for their motive, each had his own. "What are you here for, Bernard?"—the great saint of the Cistercians had the question written on his wall. Ad quid venisti, Bernarde? To this inquiry the abbey might have returned as many as fifty different answers. Some of the white-gowned men came in pure love of God, deeming a life of continual prayer the most blessed of all lives, delighting in it