in which real piety
flourished and literature was fondly cherished, and strive to find all
those facts which show its learning, purposely neglecting those which
display its unlettered ignorance: nor let it be deemed ostentation when I
say that the literary anecdotes and bookish memoranda now submitted to
the reader have been taken, where such a course was practicable, from
the original sources, and the references to the authorities from whence
they are derived have been personally consulted and compared.

That the learning of the Middle Ages has been carelessly represented
there can be little doubt: our finest writers in the paths of history
have employed their pens in denouncing it; some have allowed difference
of opinion as regards ecclesiastical policy to influence their
conclusions; and because the poor scribes were monks, the most licentious
principles, the most dismal ignorance and the most repulsive crimes have
been attributed to them. If the monks deserved such reproaches from
posterity, they have received no quarter; if they possessed virtues as
christians, and honorable sentiments as men, they have met with no reward
in the praise or respect of this liberal age: they were monks!
superstitious priests and followers of Rome! What good could come of
them? It cannot be denied that there were crimes perpetrated by men
aspiring to a state of holy sanctity; there are instances to be met with
of priests violating the rules of decorum and morality; of monks
revelling in the dissipating pleasures of sensual enjoyments, and of nuns
whose frail humanity could not maintain the purity of their virgin vows.
But these instances are too rare to warrant the slanders and scurrility
that historians have heaped upon them. And when we talk of the sensuality
of the monks, of their gross indulgences and corporeal ease, we surely do
so without discrimination; for when we speak of the middle ages thus, our
thoughts are dwelling on the sixteenth century, its mocking piety and
superstitious absurdity; but in the olden time of monastic rule, before
monachism had burst its ancient boundaries, there was surely nothing
physically attractive in the austere and dull monotony of a cloistered
life. Look at the monk; mark his hard, dry studies, and his midnight
prayers, his painful fasting and mortifying of the flesh; what can we
find in this to tempt the epicure or the lover of indolence and sloth?
They were fanatics, blind and credulous--I gran