XI. CENT. ous observance of their rule, began gradually to diminish, and who, in process of time, grew as negligent and dissolute as the rest of the Benedictines [e]. PART II. New mon astic or ders. XXVI. Besides these convents, that were founded upon the principles, and might be considered as branches of the Benedictine order, several other monastic societies were formed, which were distinguished by peculiar laws, and by rules of discipline and obedience, which they had drawn up for themselves. To many of those gloomy and fanatical monks, whose austerity was rather the fruit of a bad habit of body, than the result of a religious principle, the rule of Benedict appeared too mild; to others it seemed incomplete and defective, and not sufficiently accommodated to the exercise of the various duties we owe to the Supreme Being. Hence Stephen, a nobleman of Auvergne (who is called by some Stephen de Muret, from the place where he first erected the convent of his order) obtained, in the year 1073, from Gregory VII. the privilege of instituting a new species of monastic discipline. His first design was to subject his fraternity to the rule of St. Benedict; but he changed his intention, and composed himself the body of laws, which was to be their rule of life, piety, and manners. In these laws there were many injunctions, that showed the excessive austerity [e] The principal historian of the Cistertian order, in Ang. Manriques, whose Annales Cistertiensis, an ample and learned work, were published in four volumes folio, at Lyons, in the year 1642. After him we may place Piere le Nain, whose Essai de l'Histoire de l'Ordre des Citeaux, was printed in the year 1696, at Paris, in nine volumes in 8vo. The other historians, who have given accounts of this famous order, are enumerated by Fabricius, in his Biblioth. Latina medii ævi, tom. i. p. 1066. Add to these Helyot's Hist. des Ordres, tom. v. p. 341. and Mabillon, who, in the fifth and sixth volumes of his Annales Benedictine, has given a learned and accurate account of the origin and progress of the Cistertians. XI. PART II. austerity of their author. Poverty and obedience CENT. were the two great points which he inculcated with the warmest zeal, and all his regulations were directed to promote and secure them in this new establishment; for this purpose it was solemnly enacted, that the monks should possess no lands beyond the limits of their convent; that the use of flesh should be allowed to none, not even to the sick and infirm; and that none should be permitted to keep cattle, that they might not be exposed to the temptation of violating their frugal regimen. To these severe precepts many others of equal rigour were added; for this gloomy legislator imposed upon his fraternity the solemn observance of a profound and uninterrupted silence, and insisted so much upon the importance and necessity of solitude, that none but a few persons of the highest eminence and authority were permitted to pass the threshold of his monastery. He prohibited all intercourse with the female sex, and, indeed, excluded his order from all the comforts and enjoyments of life. His followers were divided into two classes, of which the one comprehended the clerks, and the other what he called the converted brethren. The former were totally absorbed in the contemplation of divine things, while the latter were charged with the care and administration of whatever related to the concerns and necessities of a present life. Such were the principal circumstances of the new institution founded by Stephen, which arose to the highest pitch of renown in this and the following century, and was regarded with the most profound veneration as long as its laws and discipline were observed; but two things contributed to its decline, and at length brought on its ruin; the first was, the violent contest which arose between the clerks and the converts, on account of the pre-eminence which the latter pretended M m 3 PART II. CENT. tended over the former; and the second was the XI. gradual diminution of the rigour and austerity of Stephen's rule, which was softened and mitigated from time to time, both by the heads of the order, and by the Roman pontiffs. This once famous monastic society was distinguished by the title of the Order of Grandmontains, as Muret, where they were first established, was situated near Grammont, in the province of Limoges [f]. The order of the Carthusians. XXVII. In the year 1084 [g], was instituted the famous order of Carthusians, so called from Chartreux, a dismal and wild spot of ground near Grenoble in Dauphine, surrounded with barrren mountains and craggy rocks. The founder of this monastic society, which surpassed all the rest in the extravagant austerity of their manners and discipline, was Bruno, a native of Cologn, and canon of the cathedral of Rheims in France. This zealous ecclesiastic, who had neither power to reform, nor patience to bear, the dissolute manners of his archbishop Manasse, retired from his church with six of his companions, and, having obtained the permission of Hugh, bishop of Grenoble, fixed his residence in the miserable desert already mentioned [h]. He adopted at first the [ƒ] The origin of this order is related by Bernard Guidon, whose treatise upon that subject is published in the Bibliotheca Manuscriptorum, Phil. Labbei, tom. ii. p. 275. For an account of the history of this celebrated society, see Jo. Mabillon, Annal. Bened. tom. v. p. 65. s. p. 99. tom. vi. p. 116. and Præf. ad Actor. SS. Ord. Bened. Sæc. vi. part II. Helyot. Hist. des Ordres, tom. vii. p. 409.— Gallia Christ. Monachor. Bened. tom. ii. p. 645.--Baluzii Vitæ Pontif. Avenionens. tom. i. p. 158. et Miscellanea, tom. vii. p. 486. p. 34. The life and ghostly exploits of Stephen, the founder of this order, are recorded in the Acta Sanctorum, tom. ii. Febr. p. 199. [g] Some place the institution of this order in the year 1080, and others in the year 1086. [h] The learned Fabricius mentions, in his Bibl. Lat. medii avi. tom. ii. p. 784. several writers who have composed the history XI. PART II. the rule of St. Benedict, to which he added a CENT. considerable number of severe and rigorous precepts; his successors, however, went still farther, and imposed upon the Carthusians new laws, much more intolerable than those of their founder, laws which inculcated the highest degrees of austerity that the most gloomy imagination could invent [i]. And yet, notwithstanding all this, it is remarkable, that no monastic society degenerated so little from the severity of their primitive institution and discipline as this of the Carthusians. The progress of their order was indeed less rapid, and their influence less extensive in the M m 4 history of Bruno and his order, but his enumeration is incomplete; since there are yet extant many histories of the Carthusians, that have escaped his notice. See Innocent. Massoni Annales Carthusian, published in the year 1687.-Petri Or'landi Chronicon. Carthusianum, and the elegant, though imperfect history of the order in question, which is to be found in Helyot's Hist. des Ordres, tom. vii. p. 366. Many important illustrations on the nature and laws of this famous society have been published by Mabillon, in his Annal. Benedict. tom. vi. p. 638.683. A particular and accurate account of Bruno has been given by the Benedictine monks in their Hist. Litter. de la France, tom. ix. p. 233; but a yet more ample one will be undoubtedly given by the compilers of the Acta Sanctorum, when they shall have carried on their work to the sixth of October, which is the festival consecrated to the memory of Bruno It was a current report in ancient times, that the occasion of Bruno's retreat, was the miraculous restoration of a certain priest to life, who, while the funeral service was performing, raised himself up and said, By the just judgment of God I am damned, and then expired anew. This story is looked upon as fabulous, by the most respectable writers, even of the Roman church, especially since it has been refuted by Launoy, in his treatise De causa Secessus Brunonis in Desertum. Nor does it seem to preserve its credit among the Carthusians, who are more interested than others in this pretended miracle. Such of them, at least, as affirm it, do it with a good deal of modesty and diffidence. The arguments on both sides are candidly and accurately enumerated by Cæs. Egass. du Boulay, in his Histor. Academ. Paris. tom. i. p. 467. [i] See Mabillon, Præf. ad Sac. vi. part II. Actor. SS. Ord. Bened. p. 37. CENT. the different countries of Europe, than the proXI. gress and influence of those monastic establishPART II. ments, whose laws were less rigorous, and whose The order of St. An manners were less austere. It was a long time before the tender sex could be engaged to submit to the savage rules of this melancholy institution; nor had the Carthusian order ever reason to boast of a multitude of females subjected to its jurisdiction; it was too forbidding to captivate a sex, which, though susceptible of the seductions of enthusiasm, is of a frame too delicate to support the severities of a rigorous self-denial [k]. · XXVIII. Towards the conclusion of this centhony of tury [], the order of St. Anthony of Vienne in Vienne. Dauphine, was instituted for the relief and support of such as were seized with grievous disorders, and particularly with the disease called St. Anthony's fire. All who were infected with that pestilential disorder repaired to a cell built near Vienne by the Benedictine monks of Grammont, in which the body of St. Anthony was said to repose, [k] The Carthusian nuns have not sufficiently attracted the attention of the authors who have written concerning this famous order; nay, several writers have gone so far as to maintain, that there was not in this order a single convent of nuns. This notion, however, is highly erroneous; as there were formerly several convents of Carthusian virgins, of which, indeed, the greatest part have not subsisted to our times. In the year 1368, there was an extraordinary law passed, by which the establishment of any more female Carthusian convents was expressly prohibited. Hence there remain only five at this day; four in France, and one in Bruges in Flanders. See the varietés Historiques Physiques et Litteraires, tom. i. p. 80. publishd at Paris in 8vo, in the year 1752. Certain it is, that the rigorous discipline of the Carthusians is quite inconsistent with the delicacy and tenderness of the female sex; and, therefore, in the few female convents of that order that still subsist, the austerity of that discipline has been diminished, as well from necessity as from humanity and wisdom; it was more particularly found necessary to abrogate these severe injunctions of silence and solitude, that are so little adapted to the known character and genius of the sex. [1] In the year 1095. |