genius of feudalism," says Allen, "was a spirit of uncontrolled
independence." So the abbot became a feudal lord with immense
possessions and powers. He was no longer the obscure, spiritual father
of a little family of monks, but a temporal lord also, an aristocrat,
ruling wide territories, and dwelling in a monastery little different
from the castle of the knight and often exceeding it in splendor. With
wealth came ease, and hard upon the heels of ease came laziness,
arrogance, corruption.

Then followed the marvelous intellectual awakening, the moral revival,
the discoveries and inventions of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
The human mind at last had aroused itself from a long repose, or turned
from a profitless activity into broad and fruitful fields. The
corruption of the monasteries meant the laxity of vows, the cessation of
ministration to the poor and the sick. Then arose the tender and loving
Francis, with his call to poverty and to service. The independent
exercise of the intellect gave birth to heresies, but the Dominicans
appeared to preach them down.

The growth of the secular spirit and the progress of the new learning
were too much for the old monasticism. The monk had to adapt himself to
a new age, an age that is impatient of mere contemplation, that spurns
the rags of the begging friar and rebels against the fierce intolerance
of the Dominican preaching. So, lastly, came the suave, determined,
practical, cultured Jesuit, ready to comply, at least outwardly, with
all the requirements of modern times. Does the new age reject monastic
seclusion? Very well, the Jesuit throws off his monastic garb and
forsakes his cloister, to take his place among men. Are the ignorance
and the filth of the begging friars offensive? The Jesuit is cultured,
affable and spotlessly clean. Does the new age demand liberty?
"Liberty," cries the Jesuit, "is the divine prerogative, colossal in
proportion, springing straight from the broad basin of the
soul's essence!"

Such in its merest outlines is the story of the development of the
monastic type and its causes.

_The Fundamental Monastic Vows_

The ultimate monastic ideal was the purification of the soul, but when
translated into definite, concrete terms, the immediate aim of the monk
was to live a life of poverty, celibacy and obedience. Riches, marriage
and self-will were regarded as forms of sinful gratification, which
every holy man should abandon. The true