Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 83.djvu/56

52 revealed with such skill to the work-a-day world. It is not unlikely that he would have entered the army as did his son, and have furnished a mark for Napoleon's cannon.

In a profession where, until recently, its members have preached, even if they have not practised, the neglect and abuse of the body, one would expect to find many examples of the feeble and sickly who have risen to eminence, or who, in the course of an active, strenuous life, from their very attitude toward the body, have brought on ill health and weakness. Yet among the great religious leaders there have been many examples of fine bodily presence and especially of phenomenal energy and endurance. In an age of over-indulgence it is difficult to know just what the asceticism of the medieval monks amounted to, but even where, by their devotion to a mistaken ideal, the bodily machinery was undoubtedly more or less damaged, they often showed that they possessed a wonderful vitality and fund of nervous energy.

Among religionists St. Bernard is described as being, in early life, a man of fine presence; in later years he is pictured as "most delicate," without flesh. Those who knew his labors "felt as if in him a lamb had been harnessed to pull a plow." He was extremely ascetic, suicidally so, it would seem, as his friends had at one time to rescue him from himself and place him in the hands of a shepherd who taught him a few items of common sense. Nevertheless he is reputed to have surpassed robust men in his endurance, a trait readily attributed by his biographers to superior spirituality. Though strong enough for his monastic work, Bernard was undoubtedly physically unfit to lead the crusade which he preached, else he would not have refused the post. On the surface at least he does not appear to lend much support to our present thesis.

According to his half-legendary history, Francis of Assisi was a dashing young man who was turned from a life of frivolity to the religious life by a severe illness. There is no doubt but that St. Francis abused his body and lived the unsanitary life. His conscience must have smote him, for when he came to die at forty-five he begged pardon of "Brother Ass, the body," for having neglected him so shamefully.

The fiery Savanarola did nothing by halves, and we are told that, like Bernard, he was so severe in his mortifications of the flesh that "his superiors were frequently obliged to curb his zeal." There is no record of any sickness and notwithstanding his asceticism he must have been anything but weakly to the day of his martyrdom.

Luther, as a monk, apparently damaged his health by the overzealous mortification of the flesh. In his post-monkish days he perhaps went to the other extreme. He was apparently a very vigorous, active man until forty, when, doubtless from his too generous living, a troop of ailments settled upon him.

In Erasmus we have another example of the scholar of the cloister.