X.

STEPHEN AS ABBOT.

 

Stephen found himself heir to all St. Alberic's difficulties, as well as to his dignity. He received from him a convent perfect in its internal arrangement, but one which men seemed rather disposed to admire at a distance, than to enter. The new abbot, however, felt certain that the principle on which Citeaux had been founded was right; it was one which must in time catch all the ardent spirits in the Church, who wished to be monks in order to crucify the flesh, and not merely to seek for peace.

Hatred of poverty had been the great bane of monasteries, and his aim was to restore the primitive discipline of St. Benedict, which had well nigh been forgotten. In order to do this, he must not only exhibit it in his own person, but he must create, so to speak, a monastery in full operation, one to which novices crowded, and which was to last to the end of the world, a school of Christian discipline. He took what would appear a strange expedient to entice novices to Citeaux. His first act was, to all appearance, the cutting off all earthly support from the monastery.

Hugo, the successor of Odo, the duke of Burgundy, who was buried at Citeaux, followed his father's example in frequenting the church of the monastery on all great festivals. He brought with him a large train of nobles, whose splendid appointments were but an ill match for the simplicity and poverty of the church. The presence of this brilliant array seemed to Stephen ill-suited to the place; the jangling of steel spurs, and the varied colours of the dress of the courtiers, were a poor accompaniment to the grave chant and the poor habit of the brethren.  

Everyone knows that the sight of a king's court is pleasing, and men go a great way to see it; now the echo of earthly pleasure and the presence of earthly joy are inconsistent with the profession of a monk, whose conver­sation ought to be in heaven. Men may say what they will about ideal perfection, but it is a sure fact, that saints are very much nearer perfection than we may think. Human frailties are on the long run unavoidable; but at all events, the frailty of liking the vicinity of princes and nobles in not one of these, for Stephen did avoid it. He declared that no prince should henceforth hold his court in the church of Citeaux.  

Apparently this act was at once cutting himself off from all earthly protection; the presence of a ducal court was no empty show, it was a guarantee that swords would be drawn and lances put in rest to defend Citeaux. All this Stephen, as it seemed, threw away; he knew that God specially guarded the destitute, and he preferred the guardianship of saints and angels to that of an earthly prince. God rewarded his faith, for he did not ultimately lose the favour of Hugo, who after his death rested side by side with his father in the chapel under the porch of the abbey church. Before that time, however, the community had suffered many a hardship, which might have been averted had the powerful duke of Burgundy been as good a friend to the convent as heretofore.

Stephen's next step was one with which modern notions of monasticism are still more inconsistent. He forbade that, says the Exordium, "in the house of God, in which they wished to serve God devoutly day and night anything should be found which savored of pride and excess, or can in any way corrupt poverty, that guardian of virtue which they had chosen of their own accord." According to this, no crucifixes of gold or silver were to be used; one candlestick alone was to light up the church, and that not branching with elaborate ornaments, and studded with precious stones, but of iron; censers were to be of brass; chasubles, not of gold and silver tissue, or of rich silk, but of common stuff; albs and amices of linen; copes, tunicles, and dalmatics were inexorably excluded. Even the chalices were not to be of gold, but silver gilt, as was also to be the pipe through which they received the blessed Blood of the Lord in the Holy Eucharist.

This was indeed a strange way of attracting novices: the monastic churches were frequented by men on account of the splendor of the services, for sacred vessels, and although adorned with gold and gems, for the number of ecclesiastics in splendid vestments passing to and fro before their eyes in seemly order. But by this act Stephen proclaimed to the world that they did not wish their church to be crowded with visitors; they wished to remain known only to God, in the heart of their marshy forest; but he knew that there must be many in the Church who longed to serve God in poverty and oblivion, and he reckoned upon receiving them into Citeaux. The novice who came there must come from the pure love of God, since he even gave up what was considered the heritage of monks, and the compensation for their toils, a striking ceremonial, and solemn rites. This is indeed very different from the notion which our fancy frames of monks, men of warm imaginations, who retired to a cloister to wear a pic­turesque habit, and to be free from toils; and it reads a salutary lesson to those whose Catholicism consists in a love of "aesthetic" religion.

Stephen did not at all, by rejecting these means of external devotion, intend to pronounce against the consecration of the riches of the world to the service of the sanctuary; he was a monk, and had to do with monks alone; it was quite certain that St. Benedict intended poverty to be an essential feature of the cloister, and Stephen was determined to prove that St. Benedict's rule might be kept in the twelfth century as it had been in the sixth. The Church was not in her dotage, and her children could do then what they had done before. Another reason for the re­jection of splendour of worship was, because it interfered with meditation, properly so called, the contemplation of heavenly things without the aid of the senses. Not only were splendid vestments excluded from Citeaux, but, as we learn from its early statutes, sculptures and pictures were not allowed in the church, "because, while the attention is given to such things, the profit of godly meditation and the discipline of religious gravity are often neglected". Without determining which of the two is the better, it will at once be seen, that the devotion which floats to heaven on the sounds of beautiful music, and is kept alive by a splendid religious scene, is very different from that which, with closed eyes, and senses shut up, sings the praises of God, and at the same time is fixed on the heavenly mysteries without any intermediate channel. This latter species of devotion can only exist without danger in the Catholic church, whose creed is fixed and her faith unchangeable, while she herself is an external body, the image of her Lord. Stephen, therefore, could securely reject, to a certain extent, the aid of external religion; for his mind, trained in the Catholic faith, had a definite object to rest upon, the Holy Trinity, with the inexhaustible and incomprehensible treasures of contemplation therein contained.

Though the chalice was not of gold, he knew what was in it, even his blessed Lord; and he could think upon the saints, with their palms and crowns in heaven, though their images were not sculptured about him. Again, though sculptures and paintings were not allowed, yet one image is expressly excepted; crucifixes of wood, painted to the life, were placed in the church, and these must, from the colouring and material, have been much more real than golden or silver figures, however well sculptured, could have been. It should also be observed, that architecture is not excluded from this list of prohibitions; the old church of Citeaux, built in Stephen's time, still existed when Martenne came to visit the monastery; it stood in all its simplicity beside the vast and splendid edifice, a strange relic of the ancient times of Citeaux; yet, notwithstanding the contrast, its beauty is praised by the Benedictine.

The line which Stephen marked out for himself was therefore definite; costliness, pomp, and unnecessary ornaments were excluded, but beauty of shape was kept. He would not have a misshapen chasu­ble, though he eschewed cloth of gold, nor would he have an unsightly church, though he loved simplicity. It is scarcely possible to conceive a better type of Citeaux than a great Norman church, such as is seen in the abbeys of Caen, with its vast round arches and simple shafts clustering round a massive pier; even its austere capitals, looking like an imitation of the architecture of the Roman empire, might come in as the counterpart of Stephen's notion of going back to St. Benedict as his model.

These new regulations of the abbot of Citeaux were the more bold, because they were directly opposed to what may be called the leading religious men of the day. St Hugh of Cluny died the very year that they were put in force, and the state of things which he had introduced at Cluny of course acquired a new sanctity from the saintly memory which he had left behind him. Differing as they did in other respects, nothing can show the difference of his spirit and that of Stephen, more than the contrast between them in this particular. St. Hugh had a great fondness for ecclesiastical ornaments. "He said within himself," writes his biographer, "with the Prophet: 'Lord, I have loved the beauty of Thy house and the place where Thine honor dwelleth;' and whatsoever the devotion of the faithful gave, he entirely consecrated to adorning the church or to the expenses of the poor." The vast church which he built at Cluny, (as it is said, by the Divine command conveyed in a vision), was reckoned the most beautiful of his time; it contained stalls in the choir for 220 monks. It had two side aisles and two transepts, and two vast lanterns gave light to the whole. At the upper end was a beautiful apse supported by eight marble columns, each of which could hardly be embraced by two men. All the precious things of the world were consecrated to the adornment of this splendid basilica: one beautiful corona of lights, the gift of Matilda, queen of England, made after the pattern mentioned in Exodus, especially caught the eye of beholders, as it hung before the high altar: it was made of gold and silver, and its delicate branches blazed with crystals and beryls interspersed among its beautifully wrought lilies.

Even the immense hall, which was the refectory of the convent, had its own religious ornaments; it was painted all round with figures of saints of the Old and New Testament, and of the founders and benefactors of Cluny: but the principal object was a large figure of our Lord, with a representation of the terrible day of judgment. All the ceremonies in the church were most solemn and imposing, seen by the dim light of its narrow windows cut through the thick wall, or with the sun shining through the ample lanterns; or again with its blaze of lights, and specially the seven before the holy Cross on the night of our Lord's nativity, when the church was adorned with rich hangings, and all the bells rang out, and the brethren walked in procession round the cloisters, their hearts burning with the words of good St Hugh, spoken the evening before in the chapter. Who could blame the holy abbot for enlisting the senses in the service of religion? he could not be accused of pomp or pride, who in his simplicity took his turn in washing the beans in the kitchen; his heart, in the beauties of the sanctuary saw but an image of the worship in the courts of heaven, and was not entangled or brought down to earth by the blaze of splendor around him. Still all this, as we have said before, was a development upon St. Benedict's rule and does not seem to have been contemplated by him: if he had walked in a Cluniac cloister, and had seen its grotesque ornaments, with the apes and centaurs peeping out from the rich foliage, the huntsmen with horns and hounds, and the knights fighting together on the walls, he would hardly have known where he was.

Stephen's doubtless was the original conception of monasticism, which time had altered, if it had not corrupted. St. Hugh would have the church all glorious within, and her clothing without of wrought gold; but Stephen wished her to be like her Lord, in whom was found no comeliness that men should desire Him; but Stephen's pastoral staff was a crooked stick such as an old man might carry; St Hugh's was overlaid with foliage wrought in silver, mixed with ivory: yet the souls of both were the work­manship of that One blessed Spirit, who divides to every man severally as He will. Though the abbot of Cluny took advantage of all the treasures of art and nature, and turned them to the service of God, while on the other hand Stephen in many cases rejected the help of external religion, yet both could find a place in the Catholic Church, whose worship is not carnal, nor yet so falsely spiritual as to cease to be the body of the Lord.

 

STEPHEN IN TIMES OF WANT.