Page:The history of medieval Europe.djvu/148

 H2 THE HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE The motives of those becoming monks soon ceased to be entirely religious. The chaotic conditions of the period of ZTZ. barbarian invasion, loss of property, friends, and Motives in. . entering a home, the impossibility of earning a livelihood, monastery ^ exartl pi e f others, the comparative quiet, security, and perhaps even comfort of a monastery — all these conditions might impel one to withdraw from the world which had become so unattractive. Jerome wrote to one of his female friends at the time of the sack of Rome by Alaric, " Dearest daughter in Christ, will you marry amid such scenes as these?" In that same year, when St. Patrick escaped from slavery in Ireland to the coasts of Gaul, "he journeyed through the desert" for four weeks, and was doubtless glad to end his wanderings and find a refuge at last in a monastery. But the city of God had to go on, though the Roman Empire had become a wilderness; nay, it had to convert Good and lands that Rome had never conquered. After a bad monks SCO re of years spent in Gallic monasteries Patrick went back as a missionary to the land to which he had before been carried away as a slave, and labored for thirty years more in spreading Christianity through Ireland. This shows us that monasticism was already preparing men for service, and not merely turning out freak saints like Antony and Symeon. However, the chief advocates of monastic life in that age themselves complain of persons who want to become monks, but not to suffer hardships, or who wander about doing as they please, yet pretending to be ascetics. In short, monasticism had grown so popular that both good and bad were entering the field. The triumph of Christianity hastened the decline of classical art, literature, philosophy, and science, which it Transition was eventually to replace by a theology, a liter- ca°?o C Cnris- atur e» and an art of its own. Many Christians, tian culture especially ascetics, felt that ancient art and poetry were dangerous, closely connected as they were with pagan mythology, and appealing as they did to the sense of beauty and the passion of love. Yet for a long time