Chapter 6: Of the Discipline of Our Ancient Monks; and Abstinence from Meats

Of the discipline of our ancient Monkes; and abstinence from meats.

What has been said of the married Clergie concerns the Seculars, and not the Regulars, whereof there was a very great number in Ireland; because here almost all the Prelates were wont to be chosen into the Clergie out of monasteries. For our monasteries in ancient time were the seminaries of the ministerie: being as it were so many Colleges of learned divines, whereunto the people did usually resort for instruction, and from where the Church was wont continually to be supplied with able ministers. The benefit whereof was not only contained within the limits of this Island, but did extend itself to foreign countries likewise. For this was it that drew Egbert and Ceaddae (for example) into Ireland; that they might there lead a monastical life in prayers and continence and meditation of the holy Scriptures: and hence were those famous monasteries planted in England by Aidan, Finan, Colman, and others; to which the people flocked apace on the Lord's day, not for the feeding of their body, but for the learning of the word of God, as Beda witnesses. Yes, this was the principal means, whereby the knowledge both of the Scriptures and of all other good learning was preserved in that inundation of barbarism, wherewith the whole West was in a manner overwhelmed. Hitherto (says Curio) it might seem that the studies of wisdom should quite have perished; unless God had reserved a seed in some corner of the world. Among the Scottish and the Irish something as yet remained of the doctrine of the knowledge of God and of civil honesty; because there was no terror of arms in those utmost ends of the world. And we may there behold and adore the great goodness of God; that among the Scots, and in those places where no man would have thought it, so many great companies should be gathered together under a most strict discipline.

How strict their discipline was, may appear partly by the Rule, and partly by the daily penances of Monkes; which are yet extant of Columbanus his writing. In the later of these, for the disobedience of Monkes these penances are prescribed. If any brother be disobedient; he shall fast two days, with one bisket and water. If any say, I will not do it; three days, with one bisket and water. If any murmure; two days, with one bisket and water. If any do not ask leave, or tell an excuse; two days, with one bisket and water — and so in other particulars. In his Rule, these good lessons does he give to his Monkes, among many others. That it profited them little, if they were virgins in body, and were not virgins in mind; that they should daily profit, as they did daily pray, and daily read; that the good things of the Pharisee being vainly praised were lost, and the sins of the Publican being accused vanished away: and therefore that a great word should not come out of the mouth of a Monke, lest his great labor should perish. They were not taught to vaunt of their state of perfection, and works of supererogation: or to argue from there (as Celestius the Pelagian Monke sometime did) that by the nature of their free will they had such a possibility of not sinning, that they were able also to do more than was commanded; because they did observe perpetual virginity which is not commanded, whereas for not sinning it is sufficient to fulfill the precepts. It was one of the points which Gallus (the scholar of Columbanus) delivered in his sermon preached at Constance; that our Savior did so persuade the Apostles and their followers to lay hold upon the good of virginity; that yet they should know, it was not of human industry, but of divine gift. And it is a good observation which we read in Claudius: that not only in the splendor of bodily things, but also in mournful abasing of oneself, there may be boasting; and that so much the more dangerous, as it deceives under the name of the service of God.

Our Monkes were religious in deed, and not in name only; far from the hypocrisy, pride, idleness and uncleanness of those evil beasts and slothful bellies that afterward succeeded in their room. Under color of forsaking all, they did not hook all to themselves; nor under semblance of devotion did they devour widows' houses: they held begging to be no point of perfection; but remembered the words of our Lord Jesus, how he said, It is a more blessed thing to give rather than to take. When king Sigebert made large offers to Columbanus and his companions, to keep them within his dominions in France: he received such another answer from them, as Thaddaeus in the Ecclesiastical history is said to have given to Abgarus the governor of Edessa: We who have forsaken our own, that according to the commandment of the Gospel we might follow the Lord, ought not to embrace other men's riches; lest peradventure we should prove transgressors of the divine commandment. How then did these men live, will you say? Walafridus Strabus tells us, that some of them wrought in the garden, others dressed the orchard; Gallus made nets and took fish, wherewith he not only relieved his own company, but was helpful also to strangers. So Bede reports of Cuthbert, that when he retired himself to an anchoretical life, he first indeed received a little bread from his brethren to feed upon, and drank out of his own well; but afterwards he thought it more fit to live by the work of his own hands, after the example of the Fathers: and therefore entreated, that instruments might be brought him wherewith he might till the earth, and corn that he might sow. Quique suis cupiens victum conquirere palmis; Incultam pertentat humum proscindere ferro, Et sator edomitis anni spem credere glebis. The like does he relate of Furseus; and Bonifacius of Livinus; and Theodorus Campidonensis (or whoever else wrote that book) of Gallus, Magnoaldus, and the rest of the followers of Columbanus; that they got their living by the labor of their own hands. And the Apostles' rule is generally laid down for all Monkes, in the life of Furseus: They which live in Monasteries should work with silence, and eat their own bread.

But now there is start up a new generation of men, that refuse to eat their own bread, and count it a high point of sanctity to live by begging of other men's bread; if yet the course they take may rightly be termed begging. For as Richard Fitz-Ralphe, that famous Archbishop of Armagh, objected to their faces, before the Pope himself and his Cardinals in his time (and the matter is little amended, I wisse, in ours) scarce could any great or mean man of the clergy or the laity eat his meat, but such kind of beggars would be at his elbow: not like other poor folks humbly craving alms at the gate or the door (as Francis did command and teach them in his Testament) by begging; but without shame intruding themselves into courts or houses, and lodging there. Where, without any inviting at all, they eat and drink what they do find among them: and not with that content, carry away with them either wheat, or meal, or bread, or flesh, or cheeses (although there were but two in an house) in a kind of an extorting manner; there being none that can deny them, unless he would cast away natural shame.

This did that renowned Primate (whose anniversary memory is still celebrated in Dundalk, where he was born and buried, by the name of Saint Richard) publicly deliver in the year 1357, at the Consistory of Avignon: where he stoutly maintained against the whole rabble of the Friars, what he had preached the year before at Paul's Cross to the people. Namely, that our Lord Jesus Christ, although in his human conversation he was always poor, yet did he never voluntarily beg himself, nor taught others so to do, but taught the plain contrary: and that no man could prudently and holily take upon himself the perpetual observation of voluntary beggary; forasmuch as such kind of begging, as well by Christ, as by his Apostles and Disciples, by the Church and by the holy Scriptures, was both dissuaded and also reproved.

His countryman Henry Crumpe (a monk of the Cistercian order in Baltinglas) not long after, treading in his steps, was accused for delivering in his Determinations at Oxford: that the Friars of the four Mendicant orders are not, nor ever were instituted by God's inspiration, but that contrary to the general Council of Lateran, held under Innocent the third (which prohibited the bringing in of any more new religious orders into the Church) and by feigned and false dreams, Pope Honorius being persuaded by the Friars, did confirm them. And that all the Doctors which did determine for the Friars' side, were either afraid to speak the truth, lest their books should be condemned by the Friars that had gotten to be Inquisitors; or said, As it seemeth, or proceeded only by way of disputation and not of determination: because if they had spoken the truth plainly in the behalf of the Church, the Friars would have persecuted them, as they did persecute the holy Doctor Armachanus. Which Crumpe himself found afterwards to be too true by his own experience. For he was forced to deny and abjure these assertions in the house of the Carmelite Friars at Stanford, before William Courtney Archbishop of Canterbury: and then silenced, that he should not exercise publicly any act in the schools, either by reading, preaching, disputing, or determining; until he should have a special licence from the said Archbishop so to do.

But to leave the begging Friars (being a kind of creatures unknown to the Church for twelve hundred years after Christ) and to return to the labouring monks: we find it related of our Brendan: that he governed three thousand such monks, who by their own labours and handiwork did earn their living. Which agrees well with that saying ascribed to him by the writer of his life: A monk ought to be fed and clothed by the labor of his own hands. Neither was there any other order observed in that famous monastery of Bangor among the Britons, wherein there is said to have been so great a number of monks, that the monastery being divided into seven portions (together with the Rectors appointed over them) none of all those portions had less than three hundred persons in them: all which (says Bede) were wont to live by the labor of their own hands. From the destruction of which monastery, to the erection of Tuy Gwyn, or White-house (which is said to have been about the year 1146.) the setter forth of the Welsh Chronicle observes, that there were no abbeys among the Britons.

Here in Ireland Bishop Colman founded the monastery of Magio (in the county of Limerick) for the entertainment of the English: where they did live according to the example of the reverend Fathers (as Bede writes) under a rule and a canonical Abbot, in great continency and sincerity, with the labor of their own hands. Like whereunto was the monastery of Mailros also, planted by Bishop Aidan and his followers in Northumberland; where Saint Cuthbert had his education: who affirmed, that the life of such monks was justly to be admired, which were in all things subject to the commands of their Abbot; and ordered all the times of their watching, praying, fasting, and working, according to his direction. Excubiasque, famemque, preces, manuumque laborem Ad votum gaudent proni fraenare regentis.

As for their fasting (for of their watching and praying there is no question made; and of their working we have already spoken sufficiently) by the rule of Columbanus, they were every day to fast, and every day to eat: that by this means, the enabling of them for their spiritual proficiency might be retained, together with the abstinence that did macerate the flesh. He would therefore have them every day to eat, because they were every day to profit; and because abstinence, if it did exceed measure, would prove a vice and not a virtue. And he would have them to fast every day too, that is, not to eat any meat at all (for other fasts were not known in those days) until evening. Let the food of Monks (says he) be mean, and taken at evening; flying satiety and excess of drink: that it may both sustain them and not hurt them. This was the daily fasting and feeding of them that lived according to Columbanus his rule, although the strictness of the fast seems to have been kept on Wednesdays and Fridays only: which were the days of the week, wherein the ancient Irish (agreeable to the custom of the Grecian rather than the Roman Church) were wont to observe abstinence both from meat and from the marriage bed. From where in the book before alleged, of the Daily Penances of Monks, we find this order set down by the same Columbanus: that if any one, unless he were weak, did upon the Wednesday or Friday eat before the ninth hour (that is to say, before three of the clock in the afternoon, according to our account) he should be punished with fasting two days in bread and water. And in Bede's Ecclesiastical History; that such as followed the information of Aidan, did upon the same days observe their fast, until the same hour. In which history we also read of Bishop Cedd (who was brought up at Lindisfarne with our Aidan and Finan) that keeping a strict fast, upon a special occasion, in the time of Lent, he did every day, except the Lord's day, continue his fast, (as the manner was) until the evening; and then also did eat nothing but a small pittance of bread, and one egg, with a little milk mingled with water. Where by the way you may note, that in those days eggs were eaten in Lent, and the Sundays excepted from fasting, even then when the abstinence was precisely and in more than an ordinary manner observed.

But generally for this point of the difference of meats, it is well noted by Claudius out of Saint Augustin, that the children of wisdom do understand, that neither in abstaining nor in eating is there any virtue; but in contentedness of bearing the want, and temperance of not corrupting a man's self by abundance, and of opportunely taking or not taking those things, of which not the use but the concupiscence is to be blamed. And in the life of Furseus, the hypocrisy of them is justly taxed, that being assaulted with spiritual vices, do yet omit the care of them, and afflict their body with abstinence: who abstaining from meats, which God has created to be received with thanksgiving, fall to wicked things, as if they were lawful; namely to pride, covetousness, envy, false witnessing, backbiting. Of whom Gildas gives this good censure, in one of his Epistles which now are lost. These men, while they do feed on bread by measure, for this same very thing do glory without measure; while they use water, they are withal drenched with the cup of hatred; while they feed on dry meats, they use detractions; while they spend themselves in watchings, they dispraise others that are oppressed with sleep; preferring fasting before charity, watching before justice, their own invention before concord, severity before humility, and lastly, man before God. Such men's fasting, unless it be proceeded to by some virtues, profits nothing at all: but such as accomplish charity, do say with the harp of the Holy Ghost; All our righteousnesses are as the cloth of a menstruous woman. Thus Gildas: who upon this ground lays down this sound conclusion; wherewith we will shut up this whole matter. Abstinence from corporeal meats is unprofitable without charity. They are therefore the better men, who do not fast much, nor abstain from the creature of God beyond measure, but carefully keep their heart within pure before God, from where they know comes the issue of life: than they who eat no flesh, nor take delight in secular dinners, nor ride with coaches or horses, thinking themselves hereby to be as it were superior to others, upon whom death has entered through the windows of haughtiness.