central parts of Europe, and in the course of the 7th century the Irish rule of St Columban and the Roman rule of St Benedict met in the monasteries in central Europe that had been founded by Columban and his Irish monks. The Benedictine rule supplanted the Irish so inevitably that the personnel ceased to be Irish, that even in St Columban’s own monastery of Luxeuil his rule was no longer observed, and by Charlemagne’s time all remembrance of any other monastic rule than the Benedictine had died out.
During the 7th and 8th centuries the Benedictine houses were the chief instrument in the Christianizing, civilizing and educating of the Teutonic races. In spite of the frequent pillage and destruction of monasteries by Northmen, Saracens, Arabs and other invaders; in spite of the existence of even widespread local abuses, St Benedict’s institute went on progressing and consolidating; and on the whole it may be said that throughout the early middle ages the general run of Benedictine houses continued to perform with substantial fidelity the religious and social functions for which they were created.
10. Offshoots and Modifications of Benedictine Monachism: the Rise of “Orders.”—Up to the beginning of the 10th century we do not meet in the West such a thing as an “order”—an organized corporate body composed of several houses, diffused through various lands, with centralized government and objects and methods of its own. As stated above, St Pachomius’s monasteries formed an order—a curious anticipation of what six centuries later was to become the vogue in Western monasticism. The Benedictine houses never coalesced in this manner; even when, later on, a system of national congregations was introduced, they were but loose federations of autonomous abbeys; so that to this day, though the convenient expression “Benedictine order” is frequently used, the Benedictines do not form an order in the proper sense of the word. But with the 10th century we reach the period of orders, and it is on this line that all subsequent developments in Western monasticism have run.
The first order was that of Cluny, founded in 910; in rule and manner of life it continued purely Benedictine, and it wielded extraordinary power and religious influence up to the middle of the 12th century. (See Cluny.)
The chief offshoot from the Benedictine institute were the Cistercians (c. 100); their ground idea was a return to the letter of St Benedict’s rule, and a reproduction, as close as could be, of the exterior conditions of life as they existed in St Benedict’s own monastery; consequently field work held a prominent place in the Cistercian ideal. This ideal it has not been possible permanently to maintain in the great body of the order, but only in limited circles, as Trappists (q.v.). But for a century (1125-1225) Citeaux supplanted Cluny as the spiritual centre of western Europe. The Cistercians were an organized, centralized order in the full sense of the word. (See Cistercians.)
Towards the end of the 10th century and during the 11th a strong tendency set in to revert to the eremitical life, probably owing to the example of the Greek monks, who at this time entered Sicily and south Italy in great numbers. This tendency produced the orders of the Camaldulians or Camaldolese (c. 975) in Italy, and in France the Grandmontines (1076) and Carthusians (1084), all leading practically eremitical lives, and assembling ordinarily only for the church services. The Vallombrosians (1038) near Florence maintained a cenobitical life, but eliminated every element of Benedictine life that was not devoted to pure contemplation. At Fontevrault (founded in 1095) the special feature was the system of “double monasteries” i.e. neighbouring, but rigorously separated, monasteries of men and of women—the government being in the hands of the abbesses.
In all these lesser orders may be discerned the tendency of a return to the elements of Eastern monasticism discarded by St Benedict—to the eremitical life; to the purely contemplative life with little or no factor of work; to the undertaking of rigorous bodily austerities and penances—it was at this time that the practice of self-inflicted scourging as a penitential exercise was introduced. All this was a reaction from St Benedict’s reconstruction of the monastic life—a reaction which in the matter of austerities and individualistic piety has made itself increasingly felt in the later manifestations of the monastic ideal in the West.
11. New Kinds of Religious Orders.—Up to this point we have met only with monasticism proper; and if the term were taken strictly, the remainder of this article would be concerned only with the later history of the institutes already spoken of; for neither canons regular, friars, nor regular clerks, are in the strict sense monks. But it is usual, and it will be convenient here, to use the term monasticism in a broader sense, as equivalent to the technical “religious life,” and as embracing the various forms that have come into being so prolifically in the Latin Church at all periods since the middle of the 11th century.
The first of these new forms was that of the canons regular or Augustinian canons (q.v.) who about the year 1060 arose out of the older semi-monastic canonical institute, and lived according to the so-called “Rule of St Augustine.” The essential difference between monks and regular canons may be explained as follows: monks, whether hermits or cenobites, are men who live a certain kind of life for its own sake, for the purpose of leading a Christian life according to the Gospel’s counsel and thus serving God and saving their own souls; external works, either temporal or spiritual, are accidental; clericature or ordination is an addition, an accession, and no part of their object, and, as a matter of fact, till well on in the middle ages it was not usual for monks to be priests; in a word, the life they lead is their object, and they do not adopt it in order the better to compass some other end. But canons regular were in virtue of their origin essentially clerics, and their common life, monastery, rule, and the rest, were something additional grafted on to their proper clerical state. The difference manifested itself in one external point: Augustinian canons frequently and freely themselves served the parish churches in the patronage of their houses; Benedictine monks did so, speaking broadly, hardly at all, and their doing so was forbidden by law, both ecclesiastical and civil. In other respects the life of canons regular in their monasteries, and the external policy and organization among their houses, differed little from what prevailed among the Black Benedictines; their superiors were usually provosts or priors, but sometimes abbots. As contrasted with the friars they are counted among the monastic orders. Alongside of the local federations or congregations of houses of Augustinian canons were formed the Premonstratensian order (1120) (q.v.), and the English “double order” of St Gilbert of Sempringham (1148) (q.v.), both orders, in the full sense of the word, composed of Augustinian canons.
Two special kinds of orders arose out of the religious Wars waged by Christendom against the Mahommedans in the Holy Land and in Spain: (1) the Military orders: the Knights Hospitallers of St John and the Knights Templars, both at the beginning of the 12th century, and the Teutonic Knights at its close; (2) the orders of Ransom, whose object was to free Christian prisoners and slaves from captivity under the Mahommedans, the members being bound by vow even to offer themselves in exchange; such orders were the Trinitarians (q.v.) founded in 1198, and the order of Our Lady of Ransom (de Mercede), founded by St Peter Nolasco in 1223; both were under the Augustinian rule.
At the beginning of the 13th century arose the series of great Mendicant orders. Their nature and work and the needs that called them into being are explained in the article Mendicant Movement, and in the separate articles on St Francis of Assisi and Franciscans (1210), St Dominic and Dominicans (1215), Carmelites (1245), Augustinian Hermits (1256)—these were the four great orders of Mendicant friars—to them were added, in 1487, the Servites (q.v.) founded in 1233.
It will be in place here to explain the difference between friars, monks, and canons regular. The distinction between the two last has already been brought out; but they agree in this that the individual monk and canon alike belongs to his house of profession and not to any greater or wider corporation. They
