mained the system of institutional relief parallel to the
more personal almsgiving of the parish.

Monasticism, in acting on men of strong character, endowed them with a
double strength of will, and to men like St Gregory it seemed to give
back with administrative power the relentless firmness of the Roman. In
the East it produced the turbulent soldiery of the church, in the West
its missionaries; and each mission-monastery was a centre of relief. But
whatever the services monasticism rendered, it can hardly be said to
have furthered true charity from the social standpoint, though out of
regard to some of its institutional work we may to a certain degree
qualify this judgment. The movement was almost of necessity in large
measure anti-parochial, and thus out of sympathy with the charities of
the parish, where personal relations with the poor at their homes count
for most.

The good and evil of it may be weighed. Monasticism working through St
Augustine helped the world to realize the mood of love as the real or
eternal life. Of the natural life of the world and its
responsibilities, through which that mood would have borne its
completest fruit, it took but little heed, except in so far as, by
creating a class possessed of leisure, it created able scholars,
lawyers and administrators, and disciplined the will of strong men.
It had no power to stay the social evils of the day. Unlike the
friars, at their best the monks were a class apart, not a class mixed
up with the people. So were their charities. The belief in poverty as
a fixed condition--irretrievable and ever to be alleviated without any
regard to science or observation, subjected charity to a perpetual
stagnation. Charity requires belief in growth, in the sharing of life,
in the utility and nobility of what is done here and now for the
hereafter of this present world. Monasticism had no thought of this.
It was based on a belief in the evil of matter; and from that root
could spring no social charity. Economic difficulties also fostered
monasticism. Gold was appreciated in value, and necessaries were
expensive, and the cost of maintaining a family was great. It was an
economy to force a son or a brother into the church. The population
was decreasing; and in spite of church feeling Marjorian (A.D. 461)
had to forbid women from taking the veil before forty, and to require
the remarriage of widows, subject to a large forf