sults followed the fall of the monasteries. The
majority of the House of Lords was now transferred from the abbots to
the lay peers. The secular clergy, who had been fighting the monks for
centuries, were at last accorded their proper standing in the church.
Numerous unjust ecclesiastical privileges were swept aside, and in many
respects the whole church was strengthened and purified. Credulity and
superstition began to decline. Ecclesiastical criminals were no longer
able to escape the just penalty for their crimes. Naturally all these
beneficent ends were not attained immediately. For a while there was
great disorder and distress. Society was disturbed not only by the
stoppage of monastic alms-giving, but the wandering monks, unaccustomed
to toil and without a trade, increased the confusion.

In this connection it is well to point out that some writers make very
much of the poverty relieved by the monks, and claim that the nobles,
into whose hands the monastic lands fell, did almost nothing to mitigate
the distresses of the unfortunate. But they ignore the fact that a blind
and undiscriminating charity was the cause, and not the cure, of much of
the miserable wretchedness of the poor. Modern society has learned that
the monastic method is wholly wrong; that fraud and laziness are
fostered by a wholesale distribution of doles. The true way to help the
poor is to enable the poor to assist themselves; to teach them trades
and give them work. The sociological methods of to-day are thoroughly
anti-monastic.

On the other hand, the infidel Zosimus, quoted by Gibbon, was not far
wrong when he said "the monks robbed an empire to help a few beggars."
The fact that the religious houses did distribute alms and entertain
strangers is not disputed; indeed it is pleasant to reflect upon this
noble charity of the monks; it is a bright spot in their history. But it
is in no sense true that they deserve all the credit for relieving
distress. They received the money for alms in the shape of rents, gifts
and other kinds of income. Hallam says, "There can be no doubt that many
of the impotent poor derived support from their charity. But the blind
eleemosynary spirit inculcated by the Romish church is notoriously the
cause, not the cure, of beggary and wickedness. The monastic
foundations, scattered in different countries, could never answer the
ends of local and limited succor. Their gates might, indeed, be open to
those who knocked at