rtue. The priests hunted
and fought, prayed, preached, swore and drank as they pleased. "We
cannot wonder," says an anonymous historian, "that they should commit
the more reasonable offence of taking wives." Disorders were common
everywhere; the monastic vows were sadly neglected. Political and
religious ideals were lost sight of amid the prevailing confusion and
wild commotion of those dark days. "It is true," says Carlyle, "all
things have two faces, a light one and a dark. It is true in three
centuries much imperfection accumulates; many an ideal, monastic or
otherwise, shooting forth into practice as it can, grows to a strange
reality; and we have to ask with amazement, Is this your ideal? For alas
the ideal has to grow into the real, and to seek out its bed and board
there, often in a sorry way."

This, then, may be accepted as the usual history of a monastery or a
monastic order. First, vows of poverty, obedience and chastity zealously
cherished and observed; as a result of loyalty to this ideal, a spirit
of devotion to righteousness is created, and a pure, lofty type of
Christian life is formed, which, if not the highest and truest, is
sufficiently exalted to win the reverence of worldly men and an
extra-ordinary power over their lives and affections. There naturally
follow numerous and valuable gifts of land and gold. The monks become
rich as well as powerful. Then the decline begins. Vast riches have
always been a menace to true spirituality. Perhaps they always will be.
The wealthy monk falls a prey to pride and arrogance; he becomes
luxurious in his habits, and lazy in the performance of duty. Vice
creeps in and his moral ruin is complete. The transformation in the
character of the monk is accompanied by a change in public opinion. The
monk is now an eyesore; his splendid buildings are viewed with envy by
some, with shame by others. Then arise the vehement cries for the
destruction of his palatial cloister, and the heroic efforts of the
remnant that abide faithful to reform the institution. This has been the
pathway over which every monastic order has traveled. As long as there
was sufficient vitality to give birth to reformatory movements, new
societies sprang up as off-shoots of the older orders, some of which
adopted the original rules, while others altered them to suit the views
of the reforming founder. "For indeed," says Trench, "those orders,
wonderful at their beginning, and girt up so as to take heav