isy railway stations, though,
from one point of view, the contrast that they present is agreeable and
valuable, and try to conceive the church as it once stood, the centre of a
harmonious group of monastic buildings.

The founder of the monastic system in the West was the famous Benedict of
Nursia, who had adapted the strict code of St. Basil, mitigating its
severity, and making it more in accordance with the climate, manners,
and general circumstances of Western peoples. His code was described by
Gregory the Great as "excellent in its discretion, lucid in its
expression"--_discretione praecipuam sermone luculentam_. He founded the
monasteries of Montecassino and Subiaco in the beginning of the sixth
century. In the ninth and tenth centuries--the worst period of the Dark
Ages--corruption and laxity pervaded society in general, and the
Benedictine monasteries especially. At the end of this deplorable epoch
many efforts were made in the direction of reform. Gregory the Great
himself was a member of the Benedictine brotherhood; so also was
Augustine, who founded the great monastery of Christ Church. The venerable
Bede relates that "when Augustine, the first Archbishop of Canterbury,
assumed the episcopal throne in that royal city, he recovered therein,
by the king's assistance, a church which, as he was told, had been
constructed by the original labour of Roman believers. This church he
consecrated in the name of the Saviour, our God and Lord Jesus Christ, and
there he established an habitation for himself and all his successors."
This was the Basilica-Church, mentioned in an earlier part of this work,
an imitation of the original Basilica of St. Peter at Rome. Augustine's
monastery was handsomely endowed. A large stretch of country was given to
the monks, and they were the first who brought the soil into cultivation,
and built churches and preached in them. "The monks," says Bede, "were the
principal of those who came to the work of preaching." In the city itself
there were thirty-two "mansurae" or mansions, held by the clergy, rendering
35_s._ a year, and a mill worth 5_s._ per annum. Augustine's monastery
lived and prospered--though, as we shall see, it did not escape the
general corruption of the eighth and ninth centuries--until the time of
the Norman invasion. In 1067 a fire destroyed the Saxon cathedral and the
greater part of the monastic buildings. But the year 1070 marks an epoch
in the history of the monastery, f