XIV.

CITEAUX EDIFIES THE WORLD.

 

The times of refreshing from the Lord had indeed come to the forlorn monastery; the unheard-of conversion of so many noble youths filled the world with wonder. It was a proof that the Church was not only not dead, but not even asleep.

At the beginning of the eleventh century, the heart of Christendom seemed to have failed, and all men thought that the world was coming to an end; throughout the whole of the century the Church was either preparing for, or actually engaged in a deadly struggle with the civil power, and in that miserable confusion men seemed to hare lost their land­marks, and not to know what was to come of all the perplexity which they saw about them. Meanwhile, the Church herself felt the deteriorating effects of the struggle; men saw the strange spectacle of courtier-bishops, acting as the ministers of kings, and behaving in all respects like the wild nobles, from whom they were only distinguished by wearing a mitre, and carrying a crozier. Let any one think how bishops behaved in the contest between St. Anselm and the king, or again in Germany, how many of them sided with the emperor against the pope, and he will see how the feudal system had worked upon the Church. In the beginning of the twelfth century, the struggle seemed as doubtful as ever, when the emperor Henry V, like a loving son of the Church that he was, took Pope Pascal prisoner in the very Basilica of St. Peter, and would not let him go till he had given him a blessing; that is, till he had given up the question of investiture, and acknowledged himself vanquished by crowning his tyrant.  

 This, however, was the last act of the great struggle: three years after Bernard's entrance  into Citeaux, the Church resumed her former attitude, when, in the Lateran council, the pope acknowledged his error, and allowed the bishops to excommunicate the emperor. The time of the triumph of the Church was at hand; but though she might conquer the powers of the world, how was she to expel luxury from her own bosom? 

Enough has been said in these pages to show, that the cloister itself was deeply infected by a spirit of worldly pomp. What was worst of all, even Cluny, the nurse of holy prelates and of great popes, was degenerating: in St. Hugh's time, its vast riches had been used in the service of God; but now that he was dead, it became evident in how precarious a situation is a rich monastery. One bad abbott is enough to spoil the whole, and St. Hugh's successor, Pontius, was utterly unequal to the task of governing this vast abbey. He was a young, ambitious man, high in favour with popes, emperors, and all great men, the go-between of high personages in important matters, and withal specially neglectful of the business of the monastery.

For three years he went on well enough; but just about the time of the rising prosperity of Citeaux, he began to vex the monks by his haughty conduct. To finish a melancholy story, after ten years of bickering he threw up his abbey in disgust. After various acts of turbulence, this accomplished and high-spirited man, who might have been one of the greatest personages of his day, died in a prison, excommunioated. Out of reverence for Cluny, he was allowed to be buried in consecrated ground, and long afterwards his tomb was shown in the church, on which lay is effigy, represented with a cord round his hands and feet. His mismanagement ruined Cluny for a time, and threw the whole of its dependent priories into disorder. When the monastic state was thus on the wane, how could any improvement be expected in the bishops, who were mostly supplied from the monks?

The Church might shake off the feudal yoke, but how was the leprosy of pomp and luxury to be shaken out of her own bosom, if her own rulers were tainted? At this juncture, the voice of one crying in the wilderness is heard, calling to repentance those who dwelt in kings' houses, clothed in soft raiment. Stephen's burning love of poverty astonished the world, especially when God set His seal upon His servant's work, by bringing to his feet such a disciple as Bernard, with a train of noble followers. It was a movement in favour of holy poverty, which vibrated over the whole of Christendom. Robert, Alberic, and Stephen had thus created a new idea in the Church; not that there ever were wanting men who would be poor for Christ's sake, but the Cistercian monk in his white habit, and his train of lay-brethren working for him, that he might have time for contemplation, is a personage the precise likeness of whom has never been seen brought out in a regular system before.

The institution of lay-brethren had always existed, as we have said before, but it was more systematized in the Cistercians, and had a more distinct object. The lay-brethren took charge of the granges, which were often at some little distance from the monastery. The choir-brethren were thus enabled always to remain within the cloister, and had an uninterrupted time for spiritual reading and prayer. Meditation had thus a marked place in the system; and it is more observable, because the length and intricacy of the splendid services of Cluny took up a very great part of the time of the monks. The result of this system was, what may be called a new school of ascetic writers, of whom St. Bernard is the chief, followed by Gilbert of Hoyland, abbot of Swineshed in England, Elred of Rievaux, and William of St. Thierry. The science of the interior man thus began to be more especially developed by the Cistercian reform.

Again, Stephen and his disciples were destined to exercise a more direct influence on the world than the old Benedictines; from the fact of there being a reform in the particular direction of a revival of poverty, they occupied, so to speak, a more militant position than the monks before them. They found themselves at once opposed not only to monasteries, but to all luxurious prelates, and secular churchmen who were the favourites of kings, and so, indirectly, to kings. We shall soon see, that all the reforms in the Church naturally connected themselves with Citeaux, as their centre.

A  DAY AT CITEAUX.