supposed to be coeval with our present civilization. Thus, in one code we read, "on a cloudy day, when the sun is hidden, monks on the journey or in the monastery must say their office as nearly as they can guess at the proper hour; and if they should say it too soon or too late, the obscurity of the air will serve them an excuse, their error having been involuntary *." As the general, so the particular histories of orders and monasteries, many of which, like that by Tiraboschi, of the ancient and celebrated abbey of St. Sylvester of Nonantola, are master pieces of erudition, will be found to be significative. When the third part of Siguença's history of the Hieronimite order appeared, Philip the third king of Spain sat up a whole night to read the fascinating folio; and when Dom Felibien presented to Louis XIV. a copy of his history of the abbey of St. Denis, which had cost him nine years of labour, the king, turning over the leaves, seemed surprised at the magnitude of the work; and some days after he said to the cardinal de Noailles, “Truly I did not believe that the history of St. Denis could be so varied and so agreeable as it is. I have found it most interesting, and this father must have very good materials, for I find that his account of my reign is very accurate." The fact is, the annals of such houses might be made to embrace the history not alone of one kingdom, but of the Church. Many religious houses can be pointed out, either still standing or in ruins, of an antiquity which brings us back to very early times. Lerins, Glastonbury, Marmoutier, Fulda, Subiaco, St. Peter de Cardenna, were not houses of a modern date. This latter, which is the oldest monastery in Spain, was founded by the Lady Sanctia, wife of King Theodoric. It was built twelve years before the city of Burgos. After being destroyed by the Moors, from whom 200 of its monks suffered martyrdom under Cefa the cruel African king, it was rebuilt by Alphonso the Great, who charged the count Diego Porcelos with the work of restoration. Then its great benefactors were the counts Ferdinand Gonzalez and Garcia Fernandez, who chose their burial there. Dear was it also to the King Ferdinand I., to Don Rodrigo de Vivar, celebrated as the Cid, who chose to be carried to it for burial from Valentia, and also to innumerable great men who were there interred t. About one league from Covarrubias, in New Castille, is the monastery of San Pedro de Arlanzo, which existed in the time of the Goths, as it was in it that Wamba took the cowl. It was restored in 912 by the count Fernand Gonzalez, the founder of the Castilian monarchy, who died and was buried in it. Corbie, founded by St. Bathilde, so vast and celebrated in late times, is * Regula Magistri, c. lvi. another of these venerable places of which the history would embrace that of the oldest Christian monarchy. According to one ancient book, the origin of the monastery of St. Michael, at Ordorf, was the great light which appeared in the sky all through the night which St. Boniface spent in a tent on the banks of the river Oraha, after preaching to the pagans. St. Michael, it is said, appeared to the bishop encouraging him. The next morning he said mass, and proceeding on his journey, inquired to whom the ground belonged, and hearing that Hugo the Elder was the proprietor, he asked him to give it to him; the man complied, and was the first of the Thuringians to offer his inheritance to Christ. St. Boniface then returned, cleared the spot from trees, and built the monastery*. The antiquity of some religious houses would seem fabulous if it did not rest upon unquestionable evidence. Thus at Treves, the monastery of St. Matthias, than which the Benedictine order did not possess a more ancient house, was founded more than four hundred years before the birth of St. Benedict; so that it had served as an asylum for the disciples of Christ during more than 1547 years. The history of monasteries is wound up with that of the greatest and best men of Christian ages. Justinian, Theodosius, Charlemagne, Alfred the Great, Edward the Confessor, St. Louis, to speak only of kings, would have thought the overthrow of monasteries identical with the overthrow of the Christian civilization, of respect for law and justice, of veneration for sanctity and for learning, of esteem for innocence and goodness. Let us observe, too, how they loved particular houses, the names of which, to use the expression of a great author, are not so much written as ploughed into the history of the world. Confining our attention to the west, dear to Charlemagne was the monastery of Centula or of St. Riquier, which is within a short walk of Abbeville, where, in the year 800, he kept the festival of Easter. The father of the emperor, St. Henry, used to proceed from the village of Abudiacus every night to the monastery of St. Emmeran, at Ratisbon, and there, on a stone seat which used to be pointed out till the Revolution, he used to wait until the doors of the church were opened. Alphonso, the first king of Portugal, speaking of his great victory over the Moors at Santarem, which he ascribed to the visible protection of St. Michael, says, "I remained there thirty days in the monastery of Alcobaza, praising God and thinking on the establishment of his reign." The Benedictine monastery at Memleben, in Thuringia, founded and enriched by Saxon em * Thuringia Sacra, 19. Yepes, Chron. Gen. ii. 173. Raderus, Bavaria Sancta, i. 103. perors, was celebrated as being the house in which two emperors had died,-St. Henry in 935, and Otho the Great,-as also from being that in which was solemnized the marriage of Henry the Fowler with Matilda *. In 1137, when St. Bernard of Clairvaux was on a visit at the abbey of Monte Cassino, the archives of the house record, that Raynulphus, duke of Apulia, Robert, prince of Capua, and some other great Norman princes were present there with him †. When Dagobert II. came forth against the cruel Ebruin, each step was signalized by his stopping to found or endow a monastery. At Tongres it is Horréen and Stavelo which he enriches; at Cologne it is Malmondier; in the forest of Haguenau, it is Koenigsbruck; at Spire, it is Wissembourg; at Strasbourg, it is the cathedral to which he gives his palace of Isenbourg and the domains of Haut-Mundat. In Alsace he founds Surbourg, Haselach, and St. Sigismond, near Rouffach, and enriches the abbey of Scantern. But let us hear the emperor Lothaire speaking in an ancient charter preserved in the archives of Monte Cassino. "We ought," he says, "the more to defend, exalt, and venerate this monastery, as we know it to have been honoured and endowed by our predecessors. Why is it wonderful that we should defend to the best of our power this monastery, since we know that this was always done gloriously by our predecessors; and they indeed had their own chamber there, so that some of them, laying aside cares and carnal obstacles, chose to be buried there rather than in their own houses? What shall I say of that most holy Charles, worthy of all memory, who having resigned the imperial sceptre, and the august dignity, led there the life of a cœnobite? What shall I tell of Pepin, the brother of that Charles, who being in Germany when his brother Charles died, unwilling_that he should be buried elsewhere, sent his body there? Rachis, also, king of the Langobards, leaving his kingdom, came to the same venerable monastery, and there led a monastic life till his death. What shall I relate of the emperors Justinian, Justin, Theodoric, Pepin, Charles, the other Pepin, Charlemagne, the two Lewis's, Hugo, the two Lothaires, Albert, the three Otho's, and the five Henry's? What of Michael Romanus and Alexius, who so loved and enriched the church of Cassino? There was the imperial camera, so that emperors came themselves at the head of the whole Roman army to deliver it. Henry the Pious, the invincible and most Christian emperor, entered Italy for the sake of defending this monastery at the head of 180,000 men, when, rescuing it from the hands of the Capuan princes, he restored it to liberty. Conrad also, the august emperor, and his son Henry, came with + Hist. Cass. vii. 357. * Thuringia Sacra, 749. an army of 16,000 men to defend the same church, when the unjust tyrant Pandulf subjected it to the yoke of slavery*." But without dwelling longer on such details, we must observe in general that all the eminent monasteries of Europe were, in some way, connected with the history of nations as well as of illustrious princes, who seem to have loved humanity, who had at heart on all occasions the political and social welfare of their subjects, as well as the general interests of the Christian religion. The king Alphonso VI., of Spain, was so munificent a benefactor to Cluny, that in all the monasteries of the order prayers were offered for the repose of his soul and that of his wife. At Cluny every day at the first table of the refectory, the dinner of Alphonso was served as if the king were to dine there, and then it was given to a poor man. For a great while after his death the mass for his soul was said daily at the very hour of his death, and yearly his anniversary was celebrated with as much solemnity as that of the emperor Henry the Black and the empress Agnes. So also Peter the Venerable writing to Roger, king of Sicily, says, "The king of Germany loves Cluny much. The king of Spain, the king of England, the king of the Francs also love us." King Charles V. of France built near his palace a vast monastery for the Celestins, who were then in great favour, and here he used to make a retreat occasionally, conversing with the monks, and assisting at their office. No less dear was that great Benedictine monastery of San Facundo, at Sahagun, to Ferdinand the Great of Spain, who used often to make a retreat in it to meditate on eternity. This abbey had been founded in 905 by Alonso III. el Magno, and here many of the early kings of Spain retired, and died monks, as Bermudo I. in 791, Alphonso IV. in 931, Ramiro II. in 950, and Sancho of Leon in 1067. Many kings died also in the habit of the Minors, to whose convents they had been intimately attached, as the emperor of Constantinople, whose daughter was wife of the emperor Frederick II.; Robert, of the royal house of France; king James, of Arragon; Ferdinand, king of Castille; three kings of Portugal, Ferdinand, Peter, and Alfonso; Frederick, king of Sicily; Lewis, king of Hungary ; Henry, king of Cyprus; and John, king of Arminia †. The emperor Charles V. lived with the friars of St. Yuste on terms of friendly familiarity; which seems rather strange, if they were so "stupid" as they are said to have been. He knew them all by name, and frequently conversed with them. When the visitors of the order made their triennial inspection, they represented to him, with all respect, that his majesty himself was the only * Gattula, i. 249, Hist. Cassinens. + Bucchius, Liber Conformit. Vitæ Francis. ad Vit. Christi, 103. inmate of the convent with whom they had any fault to find; and they entreated him to discontinue the benefactions which he was in the habit of bestowing on the fraternity, and which Jeromites ought not to receive. "Monachism," says a late writer, "had for him a charm, vague yet powerful, such as soldiership has for the young, and he was ever fond of catching glimpses of the life which he had resolved, sooner or later, to embrace. When the empress died, he retired to indulge his grief in the cloisters of La Sisla, near Toledo. After his return from one of his African campaigns, he visited the noble convent of Mejorado, near Olmedo, and spent two days in familiar converse with the Jeromites, sharing their refectory fare, and walking for hours in their garden-alleys of venerable cypress. When he held his court at Bruxelles, he was often a guest at the convent of Groenendael, and the monks commemorated his friendship by erecting there his statue in bronze*. Even kings only distinguished for their political greatness are found to play a great part in the history of such houses. Henry II., king of England, to show his regard magnificently towards the monks of Grandmont, on one occasion, while the monastery was building, sent from Rupella to Grandmont, eight hundred waggons laden with lead, each waggon being drawn by eight English horses of the same colourt. It will probably appear to some persons as if facts of this kind alone were significative; for it is difficult to suppose that it was not on a foundation of truth which rested a religion that had impressed the great and powerful of the earth with a sense of the importance of institutions strictly popular, of which the fruit was peace and virtue, and the object eternity. Moreover, the road of monasteries, being essentially a branch of the road of historians, cannot but lead to those general views of Catholicity which we enjoyed when traversing the forest by that great line of communication. There is no abbey or convent of any antiquity that does not recal some illustrious names, of which we have only to follow up the history to find ourselves in presence of some indication of the truth of Catholicism. St. Benedict himself being of the Anician family, one of the most illustrious of the patrician races of old Rome, points to the conversion of the Pagan world by Catholicism. The medieval monasteries are all monuments of its power in converting the human heart to holiness. "Here dwelt together on one perch," as Hugo of St. Victor says, "the hawk and the dove, the once formidable warrior and the gentle child of peace." It was in these asylums that the most glo * Stirling, c. v. + Levesque, Annales Ord. Grandimontis, 1. |