een their way to take the
direction of them, and thus get a stronger hold than before on the
princes and people of Western Christendom.

[74] Page 199.

CHAPTER X.

NEW ORDERS OF MONKS.--MILITARY ORDERS.

In the times of which I have lately been speaking, the monks did much
valuable service to the Church and to the world in general. It was
mostly through their labours that heathen nations were converted to the
Gospel, that their barbarous roughness was tamed, and that learning,
although it had greatly decayed, was not altogether lost. Often, where
monks had built their houses in lonely places, little clusters of huts
grew up round them, and in time these clusters of huts became large and
important towns. Monks were very highly thought of, and sometimes it was
seen that kings and queens would leave all their worldly grandeur, and
would withdraw to spend their last years under the quiet roof of a
monastery. But it was found, at the same time, that monks were apt to
fall away from the strict rules by which they were bound, so that
reforms were continually needed among them.

As the popes became more powerful, they found the monks valuable friends
and allies, and they gave _exemptions_ to many monasteries; that is to
say, they took it on themselves to set those monasteries free from the
control which the bishops had held over them, so that the monks of these
exempt places did not own any bishop at all, and would not allow that
any one but the pope was over them.

I have already told you of the rule which was drawn up for monks by St.
Benedict of Nursia.[75] Some other rules were afterwards made, such as
that of Columban, an Irish abbot, who for many years (A.D. 589-615)
laboured in France, Switzerland, and the north of Italy. Columban went
more into little matters than Benedict had done, and laid down exact
directions in cases where Benedict had left the abbots of monasteries to
settle things as they should think fit. Thus Columban's rule laid down
that any monk who should call anything his own should receive six
strokes, and appointed the same punishment for every one who should omit
to say _Amen_ after the abbot's blessing, or to make the sign of the
cross over his spoon or his candle; for every one who should talk at
meals, or should cough at the beginning of a psalm. There were ten
strokes for striking the table with a knife, or for spilling beer on it;
and for heavier offences the punishment sometimes ro