THE CATHOLIC RECORD. Vol. X. NOVEMBER, 1875. No. 55. LEAVES FROM A MONASTIC CHRONICLE. INTRODUCTION. "A less drear ruin then than now."-SHElley. MANY years ago, owing to a series of great family afflictions, I left my wrecked home and native land in the desperate hope of finding oblivion and consolation in new scenes. I had exhausted all the resources of my own philosophy, and the small, cold strata of religious faith that had been incorporated in my education, proved too hard and cold to lift up the heart when, in anguish of soul, I strove to gather some one of its promised beneficent consolations. No Pharos then appeared amid the darkened clouds to guide me to a safer haven. Still, I knew that God was somewhere amid the darkness, and perhaps would have pity, and show himself on another Sinai or Horeb some day even to me. . . Change and action seemed to be the only resource for such a state; so, scattering my household gods, I turned my steps toward other lands. Ignoring the usual route, I started at once for the great, the VOL. X.-I mystic Orient, because everything there, even to faces and tongues, would prove new and strange to me. Could I then, by traversing those ancient deserts, have found the hermitage, which, in the early ages, resounded with the prayers and psalms of the anchorets, gladly would I have ended the search and pilgrimage in these vast solitudes. But my greatest charm and consolation lay amid the marvellous ruins of those classic lands. Thebes, Balbec, and all the lesser monuments of buried ages, breathed like their own Memnon, a diapason of soft, soothing tones that beat in perfect harmony with feelings that knew neither present or future, but, like those vast plains, held only a ruined past. Those wondrous plains of Thebes! Even yet I see them peopled by those colossal effigies that stand the faithful sentinels of centuries, and the representatives of a nation that can never know oblivion, so long (published by the Camden Society, as these attestations of genius and London)-thanks to the vigorous and power can thus hold the destroying hand of time at bay. Sad, silent voices, the sole testimony of a race that once governed a world and grasped all grandeur and might, "when Greece and Rome were but the desert abode of barbarians!" (Belzoni.) The whole bent of my mind now ran on subjects suggested by these scenes; so, relinquishing all literature that heretofore had afforded me most pleasure, I hunted in old libraries for the most antiquated and mouldy tomes. In one of these researches, in the city of Cairo, I came across, in an English gentleman's library, Thorn's Chronicles of the Abbey of St. Augustine's in Canterbury, and though I felt that every word therein must breathe the glow of papistical enthusiasm, still for me it was a link in that enchanting past on which all my fancies were now bent. So I carried the book home, and read with avidity its quaint and what at all times would have proved its almost unintelligible pages, were it not for my patience in deciphering those old Anglo-Saxon hieroglyphics. A perfect fascination now possessed me to know more of the lives of those solitary votaries, who, in that early day, united so much wisdom with simplicity, so much self-denial with fastidiousness, so much tender pity for the sufferings of humanity; crowning all, by a living, active faith and interior piety, during an age, too, when the contest was still fiercely raging between Paganism and Christianity. Next I sought for the fountain-head of this monastic lore in the pure-hearted and intellectual laborer, Venerable Bede, the monk, of whom it is related that he dictated to an amanuensis, and completed a work on the very day of his death. After him, I exhausted the pages of Simeon of Durham and Matthew of Westminster. But of all these literary wonders the Chronicles of Jocelin of Brakeland spirited translation of Mr. Carlyle from the original Latin-afforded almost the deepest interest. How the past looms up before one out of the deeps of these ancient tomes! What a race of men, of mysteries of faith and life, take form again! To us even a hundred years seem a chasm almost impossible to bridge, yet, in listening to these old voices, beam and arch are again fitted into position, and the great sea of centuries is spanned! It appears but a rim of the horizon, whose dazzling sundown has been only made invisible because of our own dimmed vision. Not even the stream of Lethe, with its rushing, devastating waters of seven hundred years, has had power to destroy the strong humanity and brotherhood that flows so naturally from the pen of the dead Jocelin. This "antique figurehead" in a monk's cowl, proves himself a man like unto ourselves, as he prattles of his own day; and while we acknowledge the simplicity of the man, to whom God and his work held the first place, we are also struck by his force of spirit and quiet observance of human nature. To this he united a profound knowledge of the Scripture, and of those classical studies that formed a part of all cloistered learning in those cidevant dark ages. Under the light of the picture he has drawn, the old monastery of Saint Edmondsbury rises from its ruins, and the grim, ivied walls echo the voices of the long departed. How seldom the present dissenters of the town ever dream of the dead monks to whom its existence is due. In lieu of the uplifted faith, works of charity, and prayers, we find now in those walks where matins and lauds were once chanted, where mitred abbots once escorted kingly retinues, or followed the dead with de profundis to the last home, the practical, utilizing beneficence of a botanical garden. Thus fall "the heaven's watch-towers of our fathers," says Carlyle; yes, and from the ruins spring spinning mills and railroads; noisy, greedy Vulcan drives out, with flail and firebrand, contemplation's holy calm and all the altar's lights. "Religion lies over these ages like an all-embracing heavenly canopy, like an atmosphere and life-element, which is not spoken of, which in all things is presupposed without speech. (Carlyle.) Looming, massive, and grand, in this genre picture of the monk Jocelin, rises the athletic figure and iron character of the abbot Sampson. Even now, looking back upon the men who have left their signet upon history, yet seven hundred years fails to eclipse the grand mental and moral proportions of this old mitred Titan, cowled monk though he be. In those days the dignity of an abbot was endowed with sovereign privileges. Mitred peer of Parliament, lord of manor, houses, farms, and extensive lands, these were among his rights. Fifty knights were under his rule, to take up arms in holy cause, as in the Crusades, or to lay them down at his bidding in private quarrels. All this fell, we might say, knowing his antecedents, upon the poor monk Sampson almost miraculously. Not often is it (says Carlyle) that "the electoral winnowing machine hits so accurately upon worth and truth." Rather far would the victor have lived and died in the Scriptorium among his loved books and parchments; but he was called to higher work, and proved himself equal to all demands. Lawyer, bailiff, preacher, judge, director, each in turn, challenged his time and talents, and never found him inadequate to the responsibility. But it is the force, the granite purpose, and withal the undemonstrative tenderness and justice that gives such a glow to this figure-head, looking at us from out the twelfth century. Patient over his own personal wrongs, but striking like lightning for another's rights; practicing upon himself the abstemiousness of an anchoret, but bestowing the hospitality of a king upon the poorest wayfarer. To govern seemed his birthright; all its manifold perplexing phases came as intuitively to him as does color to the artist. Self-conquest had taught him the secret of ruling, and an abhorrence of all spiritual, moral, and physical pusillanimity filled the measure of his power. For eulogy upon this great loyal heart, let us hear Carlyle, who loves the rust of the old ages better far than the golden progress of the nineteenth century; who admires the mail-clad warriors, either mitred or sceptred, dealing hard blows for truth and right against all corruption, better far than the eloquent cant that gilds and enshrines the "isms" of to-day: "The great antique heart, how like a child's in its simplicity, like a man's in its earnest solemnity and depth! Heaven lies over him wheresoever he goes or stands upon the earth, making all the earth a mystic temple to him; the earth's business all a kind of worship; glimpses of bright creatures flash in the common sunlight; angels yet hover, doing God's messages among men; that rainbow was set in the clouds by the hand of God! Wonder, miracle, encompass the man; he lives in an element of miracles; heaven's splendor over his head, hell's darkness under his feet." (Past and Present.) One of the most striking features of these antique chronicles is the native humanity that glints through. every line of the time-worn pages. To find ourselves so completely en rapport as to be able to shake hands over the great chasm of time, upon the plane of all the weaknesses, follies, and sorrows common to human nature appears almost mythical. The mere fact of one choosing a life of religious asceticism, seems to invest him with some supernatural power above and beyond those who stand outside the grille. But even in these monastic walls we see the old, old strife in hopes and fears, pain and weariness, still waging battle-the angel and the demon ever in contest. Reality challenges mysticism, and the carnal wrestles with the spiritual to the end of time. Let us, if we can, looking through the mist of centuries, measure the meed of those, who heroically lay down with holy violence at the foot of the cross all yearnings of the flesh, and thus all unloving and contemned in poverty and fasting, in weary watches and waitings, through trial and tribulation, look ever upward for the opening of the jasper gates from Calvary's mount. In closing these pages, and bidding adieu to the faithful Jocelin and the brave, noble abbot Sampson, I realized how far richer was my harvest than I dreamed possible, when first starting over these fields. Dawnings of faith that held all possible consolations here and hope for hereafter, budded in my soul. For the first time, I realized the glow of feeling that had inspired Sir Humphrey Davy's beautiful tribute, when he proclaims that through religion alone he found the consolation that the philosopher had vainly sought in travel. "It is in misfortune, in sickness, in age (he writes), that its effects are most truly and beneficially felt. . . . Then religion creates powers which were believed to be extinct, and gives a freshness to the mind, which was supposed to have passed away forever, but which is now renovated in immortal hope." I followed with avidity those revelations, even as I wondered at the self-sacrifice and devotion that characterized the spirit of those AngloSaxon women in the pursuit of what they believed to be their heavenly calling. Queen Elfleda, fleeing from the husband to whom she had been forcibly wedded, in violation of her vow of virginity, the young and lovely royal princess Bega, forgetting the weakness and timidity of her sex, when to preserve her vow inviolate, she fearlessly launches a small craft on the ocean, and all alone commits herself in full trust to a heavenly helmsman. Friedeswida, who subsequently became the foundress of the celebrated school of Oxford rather than break her vow, takes refuge in a dense forest, where wild swine alone were sheltered. Can heroism show a braver contest and victory than this? Leaving Syria, I was desirous of traversing the former homes of these buried saints, which even in ruin attest by their beauty the faith and love that went up from these fanes to the throne of God, amid the suffering of unmerited persecution, and the throes and convulsions of fallen dynasties. In Italy, the earnestness and fervor of the primitive recluse was still to be found in the multitudinous religious houses, which at that time at least gave evidence of the vitality of the old faith. In Germany, also, could still be traced, even through the desolating work of schism, the sacrilege of iconoclasm, and the rapine and desolation of innumerable wars, those monuments of faith which, introduced by Saint Boniface in the ninth century, amid a barbarous nation and the wilds of the primeval forest, yet ultimately proved the guiding star to that exalted grade of civilization, that can spring from religion alone. But it was sad to linger long in a land, where at every turn you found the old vitality dead, and all the glorious records and associations that vibrate to the name and deeds of Pepin and Charlemagne, of Otho and Conrad, blighted by the legitimate fruit of infidelity and licentiousness. France held out a fairer promise of research amid the old milestones of medieval structures and records. It was to the GallaFranks under Bertha, the first Christian queen of the Anglo-Saxons, that they owe their primal knowledge of monasticism. What volumes of hidden joys and woes, once bound in |