cises, the cardinal principle of his rule. The waste land around the abbey was transformed into rich fields and orchards. Wildernesses were pierced and opened to cultivation in all parts; and civilization regained the tracts which it had lost. To these painful and persevering labors the richest districts of France trace their prosperity. Montalembert gives a list of over twenty towns of France, named after canonized monks; and nearly forty more, all important places, which, though not bearing their origin written in their names, yet were none the less born in the shadow of the cloister, and under the protection of monastic rule. According to the calculation of M. Longueval, three-eighths of the cities and towns of France may be traced to this source.

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They were the first agriculturists," says Mrs. Jameson, speaking of the Benedictines, "who brought intellectual resources to bear on the cultivation of the soil, to whom we owe experimental farming and gardening, and the introduction of a variety of new plants." "The extraordinary benefits," says Maitland, "which they conferred on mankind, by clearing and cultivating waste places, was small in comparison with the advantages derived from them by society after they had become large proprietors, landholders with more benevolence, and farmers with more intelligence and capital, than any others."

The universal practice of the invading tribes of making slaves of the conquered people, and compelling them to perform the drudgeries of the field, while the masters devoted themselves to war and military exercises, degraded the cultivation of the soil, infecting it with the taint of servitude. The sight of those who were considered the most holy and venerable of men daily digging, planting, sowing, and reaping with their own hands, supplied a powerful antidote to this tendency. The self-respect of the common laborer was sustained by the encouragement of such high example. Farming was not only relieved of the disgrace of being an exclusively servile or menial employment, but tended to acquire something of a venerable and sacred character. Of the victory which was gained at last over Roman corruption and barbaric ferocity, the great instruments were the monks. Everywhere they strove to

introduce order and gentleness into society, and to check the reign of force. Often they were the advisers and counsellors of princes and kings, -as of Charlemagne, Alfred, and Otho, - and had the opportunity of directly modifying the policy and moulding the laws of the state. Wherever this was the case, we find a marked precedence in gentleness, justice, and freedom from barbarism. In Spain it was from the monks that the Visigothic legislation came, whose superiority to the other codes of the Middle Age has gained the admiration of modern historians. By exciting the emulation of the secular clergy, and particularly by filling its ranks with men from their own order, the monks kept the Church nerved to the struggle against barbarism. Nor did they work only by word and deed. They accomplished much by their mere presence in the midst of society. They exerted an influence, not to be lightly estimated, simply by their attire, appearance, and mode of life, in such contrast with those of other men. The sanctuaries that sheltered them seemed to raise continual protests against the corruptions and violence around them. These, at least, never ceased to preach purity and holiness and peace to all within their view, and every matin and vesper bell carried the same lesson to all within sound of its voice. The services of the monastic institution, in removing barbarism from the manners and customs of Europe, have, in fact, been admitted even by those who have declaimed most loudly against it in all other respects.

When Italy, France, and Spain had been brought back into the domain of civilization and the habits of Christianity, the monks, with adventurous zeal and untiring activity, pushed out beyond the old frontiers of the Roman empire. In all Germany and Northern Europe, sacrifices human sacrifices, not infrequently were still offered to the idols of Woden or Thor. The tribes were still in their native, savage wildness. Into the heart of the primeval forests and morasses, and into the midst of these fierce heathens, the monks now sallied. Here they established themselves, reared their abbeys, cleared and cultivated the land around, as they had done before in France and Italy. As in those countries, so also in Germany and Great

Britain, many districts owe their fertility, and many cities their origin, directly to the monks. But now the monks had to face savage men, as well as savage nature; to eradicate the wild and fierce growths of the heathen mind, as well as those of the field; and to hazard the peril of a cruel death, as well as bear the fatigues of toil. The great work of introducing Christianity among the barbarian tribes of Germany and Northern and Eastern Europe, eradicating their dark superstitions and initiating them in civilization,-a work so momentous to the world, yet so formidable, if it may not even be called appalling,- was almost exclusively the work of the monks. It was Augustine and his brother Benedictines who first brought Christianity among the Anglo-Saxons, and succeeded in converting them; and (as Montalembert points out) from the conversion of England, the Christianity of almost half Christendom takes, or is destined to take, its source. It was the Irish monk Columba who planted Christianity on the western coast of Scotland, and disseminated it among the Scots and Picts. It was the British Benedictine Boniface who was the father of Christianity and civilization in Germany; and all his devoted associates in that work, in which Boniface fell a martyr, were likewise monks. It was the monk Severin who introduced Christianity into Austria, and the monk Wigbert who introduced it into Friesland. It was the brother monks Cyril and Methodius who brought about the conversion of the Slavonian and Moravian tribes bordering on the Greek empire. Among the Lieflanders, on the shores of the Baltic, Christianity was introduced by Meinhard, from the convent of Segeberg, and Theodoric, a Cistercian monk. Anschar, from the convent of Corvey, was the principal means of establishing Christianity among the Danes and Scandinavians. The conversion of the Pomeranians was begun by the monk Otto. Adalbert and Bruno fell martyrs in the attempt to convert the Prussians. It was Christian, with a band of fellow-monks who succeeded in the work.

And not only do we owe to the monks the introduction of Christianity into these countries, but it was the monasteries which they planted wherever they penetrated, to which must be ascribed the continuance and firm establishment of the faith.

To wean converts from their old heathen life, it was necessary to separate them entirely, for a time, from their old ties and old customs; to remove them from the distracting influences, the silent or open persecutions, the innumerable temptations, to which they would be subject in their own homes; and put them into a situation where they could first practise their new life in ease and safety. For this the monastery was admirably adapted. While it gave the seclusion and religious training necessary, it was in itself almost another world, with pursuits and qualities adapted and attractive to every variety of disposition. For the energetic, it had its labors; for the burning devotee, its austerities; for strong will, its discipline; for the thoughtful, its contemplation; for the gentle, its serene repose; for those thirsting after knowledge, its studies and instructions. Thus the monastery attracted the barbarians within its walls, detached them from their heathen superstitions and brutal habits, trained them in Christian and civilized life, and then sent them out to teach others the lessons they had learned.

Simultaneously with religious culture, provision was made in the monastery for mental education. The imperial schools which, under the Roman rule, had been scattered over Western Europe, had been overthrown by the fall of the Empire. The devastations and disorders which attended the establishment of the barbarian nations on the ruins of the Roman world, and which continued for a long period afterwards, had occasioned the almost universal destruction or loss of books. Only in the cloister, and the schools attached to the great convents and conducted by the monks, had the light of knowledge been kept alive in Western Europe. The library was from the earliest times a regular part of every monastery. Many monastic communities, especially those of the south and east of Europe, had preserved their books and their learning intact through all the devastations that accompanied the fall of the Roman empire. From these treasuries, the other monasteries derived the riches of ancient knowledge. The monks of Western and Northern Europe rarely returned from their pilgrimages to the south and east, without bringing back a copy of some old master or famous saint. The collecting and copying of manuscripts was

a work enjoined by the Benedictine rule. The work of the scribes was considered the most commendable employment with which the monk could fill his leisure moments. The new acquisitions were therefore soon reproduced, multiplied, and spread abroad among the neighboring abbeys. Libraries were thus gathered, and learning advanced. From the fifth to the eleventh century, the monastery alone furnished the books and instructors sought by all in pursuit of knowledge. To the monasteries, the great cities, the noble families, and the royal houses, sent their sons to be educated. Whoever, young or old, desired to devote himself to the pursuit of letters, sought to enter into the favored Order, and enjoy its treasures of knowledge and the quiet and leisure of its life. The foundations of almost all the eminent schools of Europe were laid by the monks, and many of them still bear the traces of their monastic origin.

The Scriptures, the works of the Fathers, and theology in all its branches, were of course the topics which occupied the first place in the studies of the conventual schools. But they were not limited to those. Aristotle, Pliny, Cicero, Ovid, and Virgil were known and studied in the darkest part of the Middle Age. Science and art received attention as well as literature. Physics, chemistry, botany, medicine, law, painting, and the art of illumination, were all pursued within the walls of the cloister. The monastery became the spring of whatever intellectual activity, whatever development and progress, there was in those ages, the source of whatever cultivation and higher life the times allowed. From the monastery issued new philosophies, bold theories, decisive inventions, reforms in church, state, and society, the great movements of the times. It was the monastery that gave birth to Realism and Nominalism, the scholastic theology, and the rationalistic philosophy. It was the monk Hildebrand who led the great reform of the church in the eleventh century; and his supporters and allies in the movement were the monks. It was Peter the Hermit who excited enthusiasm for the first Crusade, and the abbot Bernard who roused Europe to the second Crusade. A Benedietine monk, Gratiano, was the father of the science of canon