Moralia in Job 24 part 2/3

Cassian teaches that Elijah and Elisha founded the first beginnings of this profession (Book 1 of the Institutes, ch. 2), which Jerome also asserts (Epistle 13, to Paulinus). 'The prince of monks is John the Baptist,' says Chrysostom (Homily 1 on Mark), with whom Sozomen agrees (Book 1 of the History, ch. 12). Bernard commends the monastic order, in his Apology to William the abbot, because it was the first in the Church, nay, that from which the Church began, than which none on earth is more like the angelic orders, of which the apostles were the founders, of which those whom Paul so often calls saints were the initiators. Bernard confirms these things by adducing the testimony of Luke (Acts 4) concerning the common life observed by the first disciples of Christ.

We could adduce innumerable passages, whether from the holy Fathers or even from councils, signifying the same thing. Yet not for that reason do we assert that the apostles ever thought of instituting monks, nor do we flatter ourselves with such authorities; we say only that the monastic and cenobitic life was foreshadowed in their examples and institutions, and that this is what the writers cited meant to signify when, for the commendation of monks, they pronounced that they proceeded from and drew their origin from the apostles. So too must be explained what Urban II and others said concerning canons whom they saw pursuing the cenobitic life and emulating monks; and whatever the learned man seeks thence for establishing their antiquity utterly totters.

From what has been said, therefore, it is most plainly clear that in the Church of Canterbury, from its very beginning, monks alone served, not mere clerics. Whence it is permitted to turn this argument back upon the adversary: 'If I shall rightly have adjudged this one see to canonical clerics' — he says (I shall say, to monks) — 'not undeservedly shall I conclude that the remaining pontifical sees of England likewise fell to canonical clerics' (I shall say, to monk-clerics). 14. Since this preeminent authority of monks in the ecclesiastical ministry had stirred up their rivals,

Mellitus, one of Augustine's companions, bishop of London, came to Rome to treat with the apostolic pope Boniface concerning the necessary affairs of the English Church. And when that most reverend pope had convened a synod of the bishops of Italy, to ordain concerning the life and quiet of the monks, Mellitus himself also sat among them... and returning to Britain he brought with him the mandates and observances of the English Church, together with the letters which that same pontiff directed to Laurence the archbishop beloved of God, and to all the clergy, likewise to King Ethelbert and the English nation (Bede, Book 2 of the History, ch. 4). Among the praised mandates, the most celebrated is the Decree which begins thus:

'There are some, propped up by no doctrine (or: there are some foolish in doctrine), inflamed more by a zeal of bitterness than of love, asserting that monks, because they are dead to the world and live to God, are unworthy of the power of the sacerdotal office (or: of the sacerdotal office), etc.' (Vol. 5 of the Councils.) The supreme pontiff refutes them, especially by the examples of Gregory the Great and of his disciple Augustine, who, though monks, shone with the pontifical dignity; and he adds: 'For neither was Benedict, the teacher of monks, in any way a forbidder of this thing.' 15. The letter to King Ethelbert, of which Bede makes mention, we have in the most recent collection of councils, from which it will suffice to transcribe what bears on our purpose:

'Wherefore, glorious son, what you have requested from the apostolic see through our fellow-bishop Mellitus, we grant with willing mind; namely, that your benignity may freely establish in every respect a dwelling of monks living regularly in the monastery constituted in the city of Canterbury, which your holy teacher Augustine, disciple of Gregory of blessed memory, consecrated to the name of the holy Savior, over which at present our most beloved brother Laurence is known to preside: decreeing by apostolic authority that these preachers of your salvation, themselves monks, associate to themselves a flock of monks' (Ibid.). From these things it is clear that the metropolitan church of St. [Savior] was

the metropolitan church of St. Savior was called a monastery from the beginning on account of the monks inhabiting it. Not only, moreover, did the supreme pontiff ratify that this church had been handed over to monks, but he even decreed by apostolic authority that the preacher-monks should associate to themselves other monks, by whom the monastic institution might be propagated to posterity. We do not therefore contend that monks were admitted to the Church of Christ at Canterbury by Boniface's letters — as the patron of the canons regular seems to believe — but that they were confirmed and asserted in the possession of this church by the authority of the same pope.

I would almost say that the advocate of this utterly desperate cause is dreaming, when he feigns that by Boniface's consent or decree monks were joined to canons regular, to complete the daily psalmody while those clerics, whom public utility called elsewhere, might freely discharge every ecclesiastical office. Trifles indeed! as though, forsooth, the earlier preachers and inhabitants of this church were called by Boniface not monks, but clerics; or as though, after what we have said, any trace of clerics-not-monks received from the beginning in the Church of Canterbury should appear. Argument. — 1. The monks of England were from the beginning Benedictines. Whence what has already been said concerning St. Gregory is confirmed, [that he was bound by] the laws of St.

[bound by] the laws of St. Benedict. — 2. The first reason, from Aldhelm. — 3. The second, from the contemporary writer of St. Wilfrid's life. — 4. The third reason, from the ancient litanies, in which the name of St. Benedict was inserted. — 5. The silence of the synod of Clovesho vainly objected to us. — 6. And of venerable Bede. — 7. Another argument, from the rule of St. Benedict carried into Germany by the English monks. — 8. The opinion of the Bollandists on this matter. — 9. Maresham, thinking otherwise, is refuted. 1. The name of St.

The name of St. Benedict, [invoked] by the supreme pontiff Boniface, with the added title of 'teacher of monks' as well — precisely where the tranquility of the English monks was chiefly being treated — offers us no obscure ground for conjecturing that the monks of England were then Benedictines; whether they were the surviving companions of Augustine, or those whom, after legitimate probation, they associated to themselves and to their congregation. But what need is there of conjectures, where so many demonstrations are at hand? Worthy indeed of this name are the reasons which the most learned Mabillon has gathered on this subject, both in the preface to the first century of the Benedictines, § 8; and in the preliminary observations to the Life of St. Wilfrid, in the first part of the fourth century of the Benedictines;

and in the second volume of the Analecta, in the dissertation on St. Gregory's monkhood, part 2, § 8, p. 173 and following; and finally in the Benedictine Annals, Book 10, § 18, and in Appendix 1, p. 655 and following. But it will be enough for our purpose to sample the chief ones; whence it will follow, as we have also already said (Book 1, ch. 3, §§ 3-10), that St. Gregory observed the Benedictine rule and commended it to his followers to be observed. 2. The first is drawn from the indubitable testimony of St. Aldhelm, who, first educated by Hadrian abbot of the monastery of St. Peter at Canterbury, then a monk and abbot in the monastery of Malmesbury among the West Saxons (of whom he was also bishop), in his poem on virginity designates St.

designates St. Benedict with this eulogy: 'The first who established the contests of our life, how monasteries should hold the desired norm, and in what way the saint should hasten by a straight path, climbing to those above, the cultivator of the heights of the heavens; whose illustrious life, from its origin, bishop Gregory had once described in his writings.' Here St. Aldhelm — a monk and abbot, who flourished in the same century in which St. Augustine and his companions led the English to the Christian faith (for he died only in the year 709, as Bede attests) — plainly testifies that Benedict was the first institutor of the monastic life which he himself had professed and which the English monasteries observed. 3. The second reason is supplied by the contemporary writer of the Life of St.

of St. Wilfrid, the contemporary writer Eddius Stephanus, in whom holy Wilfrid speaks thus to the synod convened for his cause: 'Did I not, first after the death of the first magnates sent by St. Gregory, take care to root out the venomous seedlings of the Scottish planting... or how I established the life of the monks according to the rule of St. Benedict the father, which no one before had introduced' (Fourth century of the Benedictines, part 1, in the Appendix); namely, among the peoples beyond the Humber: for that the rule of St. Benedict had already been received in the kingdom of Kent, and thence carried by St. Wilfrid to the monasteries of Northumbria, whether to be established or restored, these words of Eddius (ch. 14) prove:

'Ecgberht too, the religious king of the men of Kent, summoned our pontiff to himself, and there ordained many priests... dear to all, performing episcopal offices over many regions, with the cantors Aedde and Aeona, and the masons... returning to his own region with the rule of Benedict, he greatly improved the institutions of the Churches.' 4. The third reason is sought from the ancient English litanies, which the most learned Mabillon proves to have been composed at least a thousand years ago, and before the eighth century, both from the semi-Saxon characters of a very ancient codex, and especially because in them no saint is invoked or commemorated who is later than the middle of the seventh century;

not Mellitus, not Paulinus, Cuthbert, Wilfrid, Aidan, and very many others, far more illustrious in holiness and doctrine than many of those enumerated in the series of the litanies of the Blessed; who surely would not have been passed over, if they had already closed their last day, and their sanctity had by then become established, as afterward in the eighth century. Now in these litanies the name of St. Benedict is invoked after St. Jerome and before Sts. Hilary and Martin; which is a most valid argument that St. Benedict, among those who used litanies of this kind, held the place of patron: otherwise why should he alone be commemorated, with Pachomius, Antony, Basil, and Columban omitted? Why should he be invoked twice — a thing granted to no other, except St.

except St. Stephen and St. Mary, called upon three times? Furthermore, that those litanies were in use in England — nay, composed for England — this supplication proves: 'That you may deign to preserve the clergy and people of the English, we beseech you, hear us' — no mention being made of any other nation. 5. These things being weighed in an even balance, the silence of the synod of Clovesho and of venerable Bede concerning the Rule of St. Benedict — which was once objected to us by our adversaries — could in no way harm our cause, even if in them no mention were made either of St. Benedict or of the rule promulgated by him. But not even that is permitted us to object; for in the synod of Clovesho it is read:

'In the twenty-fourth chapter it was enacted that, if any of the laity desires to undertake the service of holy profession, let him not receive the habit of the tonsure before his manner of conversation and quality of morals be more manifestly proved according to the definition of the monastic rule, in keeping with the apostolic precept: Prove the spirits, whether they are of God; unless some reasonable cause duly persuade that they be received into the congregation beforehand.' What, I ask, in the middle of the eighth century — the time at which the council of Clovesho was celebrated — was a monastic rule so famous that it was designated simply, and with nothing added, by the name of 'the monastic Rule,' except the rule of St. Benedict, in whose chapter 58 it is read:

Let no one newly come to conversion be granted an easy entrance (1 John 4), but, as the Apostle says: 'Test the spirits, whether they be of God.' Then, after all the rules for the testing and reception of novices have been laid down, there is added: 'And from that day let him be reckoned in the community.' Nor does it seem right to pass over in silence that in both passages St. John, contrary to custom, is called simply 'the Apostle,' a title which by usage is granted to Paul alone; whence one may surmise (even if no other arguments were at hand) that the Synod of Cloveshoo, in praising John under the name of 'the Apostle,' was following the custom of St. Benedict.

As regards the venerable Bede, in the first book of the 'History of the Abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow' which he himself composed, we read that St. Benedict Biscop undertook a fourth journey to Rome after he had established a monastery according to the Rule. What Rule does he mean but the Benedictine, since no other was widely propagated in the West? Indeed Bede afterwards clearly designates this very Rule when he reports, at the end of the first book, these words spoken by his abbot in his last address to his disciples: 'Take great care, brothers, that you do not seek a father for yourselves from elsewhere, from outside;'

but according to that which the Rule of the great Abbot Benedict of old prescribes, and according to what the decrees of your privilege contain, seek out in the assembly of your congregation, by common counsel, the one who by merit of life and by teaching of wisdom is proved more fit and more worthy to carry out such a ministry. These are the qualities which St. Benedict requires in choosing an abbot, in chapter 64 of the Rule. Abbot Ceolfrid, Biscop's successor, when about to cross the sea, gave the same instructions to his brethren: 'He decreed it more useful,' says Bede, a monk of the same congregation, in book 2, 'having given the brethren the precept that, according to the statutes of their own privilege and according to the Rule of the holy Abbot Benedict, they should choose from among their own number the father who might be more fit.'

Since the same venerable writer asserts in book 1 that Biscop handed on to his disciples that Rule which he had found in the seventeen monasteries he had visited—one of which was the monastery of St. Peter at Canterbury—it is most evident that long before his time the Rule of St. Benedict had been received and flourished in the monasteries of England. 7. No less strong an argument is drawn from the propagation of the Benedictine Rule in Germany and the neighbouring northern regions, through St. Boniface and other monks who set out from England to spread the Christian faith:

who indeed founded very many monasteries, chief among them the monastery of Fulda, most renowned not only in Germany but throughout all Europe, where no one denies that Benedictine observances flourished from the very beginning. Doubtless the same Rule which these heralds of the sacred word had received from their forefathers Augustine and his companions—disciples of Gregory the Great and alumni of the Roman monastery—they handed on to be observed in the ascetic houses they founded, and in following its institutions to the letter they persevered until death. To this belongs what we said in book 1, chapter 3, about the Rule of St. Benedict being taken up in the Roman monastery of St. Andrew, and observed by St. Gregory himself. 8.

Overcome by these reasons, the Bollandist fellows, though they had once followed the contrary opinion, at length of their own accord confessed that with the greatest probability, almost amounting to certainty, the Benedictines number Augustine and his companions among their own. And if it had befallen them to see the treatise of Eddius on the life of St. Wilfrid, praised above (for our Mabillon had not yet brought it out of obscurity when these learned men were writing), they would, with all doubt and wavering removed, have adjudged St. Augustine, apostle of the English, and his companions to the Benedictine family. 9. Quite otherwise indeed thinks John Marsham in the preface to the 'Monasticon Anglicanum'; who, although he admits that there was formerly among the English the greatest reverence for the Rule of St.

Benedict, yet contends that it was received in English monasteries only from the year 965, on account of the silence of the Synod of Cloveshoo and of the venerable Bede concerning this Rule. But we have already sufficiently dissolved these negative arguments, having brought forward indubitable testimonies about the Benedictine Rule, both from the aforesaid synod and from the venerable writer. Moreover Marsham strays altogether from historical truth when he asserts that before the tenth century the Rule of St. Benedict was unknown to English monasteries: how rashly this is said, John the Deacon alone shows in book 4, chapter 82, of the Life of St. Gregory: 'But as to the fact,' he says, 'that the monks who were sent by Gregory into Saxony' (that is, the transmarine or English Saxony)

were bound to the Rule of St. Benedict; this too, among other things, shows it: that among his disciples a monk can scarcely be found in those parts by whom the Rule of St. Benedict is not observed, both in his profession and in his habit.' John the Deacon was writing in the ninth century, nearly a hundred years before the Council of Winchester held in the year 965, in which Marsham judges that the reception of St. Benedict's Rule into English monasteries was dealt with; and already at that time the Rule of St. Benedict so prevailed everywhere in the monasteries of England that in all England scarcely one monk could be found who did not observe the laws of St. Benedict. Nor will anyone suppose that this was rashly asserted by John, the writer of the Life of St.

Gregory, if he has read without drowsiness the testimonies cited above from Aldhelm, Bede, Eddius, and the Council of Cloveshoo. Moreover it is established that John, in order to write about the deeds of St. Gregory, and especially about the English Church founded, governed, and propagated by his disciples, had procured for himself no perfunctory knowledge of English affairs: whence he could not have been ignorant of the laws by which the monasteries of England were bound. But of this argument more than enough; especially since the most learned Mabillon has occupied it. Now let us return to St. Gregory, exulting in the Lord over the converted English, and anxious to bring so great a work to completion. Argument. — 1.

Saint Gregory turns back upon others the praises due to himself for the conversion of the English. — 2. How greatly religion then flourished in England. — 3. The Pope grants certain indulgences to the newly converted. — 4. He orders the temples of idols to be consecrated with Christian rite. — 5. What feasts and love-feasts he allowed the neophytes. — 6. Augustine in vain invites the dissenting Britons to peace. They pay the penalty of their obstinacy. The death of Augustine, and his sacred cult after death. — 7. How much his successors laboured for the reconciliation of the Britons and Scots. — 8. Persecution rages against the Christian English. Which at length is quelled. — 9. The Britons receive the doctrine and rites of the Roman Church. A prayer for the conversion of the English of today. 1.

Having received news of what was being happily accomplished day by day by Augustine and his brethren in the English expedition, Gregory urged his friends by his letters to give thanks to God for so great a benefit. To St. Eulogius, from whom he had lately received the joyful tidings of the conversion of heretics and of the concord of Catholics, he writes thus: 'Since indeed I know that in the good things you do you rejoice together with others also, I return you like thanks, and I report things not unlike: for while the nation of the English, set in a corner of the world, remained faithless until now in the worship of wood and stone, it pleased me, with the aid of your prayer, that I should—God being the author—send a monk of my monastery to it for preaching' (Book

8, letter 30). He then relates by how many and how great miracles Augustine and his companions shone forth among the English; so that they seemed to imitate the virtues of the apostles in the signs which they displayed. 'I have related this,' he says, 'that you may know what you do among the people of Alexandria by preaching, and what you do at the ends of the world by praying. For your prayers are in that place where you are not, whose holy works are shown in the place where you are.' Thus the humble pontiff strove to deflect from himself the praises due for so great a work, and to turn them back upon any others whatsoever. 2. How greatly the Christian religion then flourished in Britain he expresses in these words:

'Behold, the tongue of Britain, which knew nothing but to gnash out barbarous sounds, has long since begun to resound the Hebrew Alleluia in the divine praises. Behold, the Ocean, once swelling, now lies subdued and serves at the feet of the saints; and its barbarous motions, which earthly princes had been unable to tame with the sword, these the lips of the priests, through the fear of God, bind fast with simple words: and he who, as an unbeliever, had by no means feared the throngs of warriors, now as a believer fears the tongues of the humble.'

'For because, upon receiving the heavenly words, and with miracles also shining forth, the power of divine knowledge is poured into him, he is restrained by the terror of that same Godhead, so that he fears to do wicked things, and with all his desires longs to attain the grace of eternity' (Moralia, book 27, no. 21). 3. Yet he indulged certain things in favour of the neophytes which the laws anciently received in the Church forbade; especially concerning the contracting of marriage within certain degrees of consanguinity and affinity: so that, newly born in Christ, they might gradually grow accustomed to His yoke; and lest harsher measures should compel the nation of the English to withdraw from the faith it had received (Book 11, letter 64).

This reason for the indulgence granted he himself brings forward in answering Felix, Bishop of Messina (Book 14, last letter), who was almost expostulating about this relaxation of the sacred law. Thus, having attained the highest authority in the Church, and knowing how to draw the reins tight and to give them loose, as it seemed expedient, the most prudent of pontiffs. 4. He had earlier decreed that the temples of idols should be overthrown; concerning which he had also written to Ethelbert (Book 11, letter 66); but, changing his counsel, he thought it better that these, with the idols destroyed and cast out, should be purified by the sprinkling of holy water, and consecrated with Christian rite; so that the English, newly called to the faith, might more familiarly resort to their accustomed places (Ibid., letter 76). 5.

It was the custom of the heathen, when they offered sacrifices to their idols, to slay many oxen and to feast upon them. In order to transfer this into a pious solemnity, the most holy Pope granted that on the day of the dedication of a church, or on the birthday of the holy martyrs whose relics were laid up in the new temples, the newly-made Christian English should make themselves tabernacles of tree-branches around those churches which had been changed from heathen shrines, and should celebrate the solemnity with religious feasts. 'For to hard minds,' he says, 'it is undoubtedly impossible to cut away all things at once: because he who strives to ascend to the highest place must needs be raised by steps or paces, and not by leaps' (Book 11, letter 76).

We read that St. Gregory surnamed Thaumaturgus once used the same pious diligence toward neophytes, as the other Gregory called of Nyssa relates in his Life; which we judged should be noted, lest our Gregory should seem, in conceding and readily indulging these things to the pagans newly converted to the Christian faith, to have suffered something human and to have savoured according to the flesh. Here in one and the same series we have gathered together whatever was done, by the striving of St. Gregory, for the conversion of the English and pertained to the constitution of the nascent English Church, even though these things happened in different years. It is worth the labour to sketch briefly, and to set before the eyes in compressed form, what results followed upon such auspicious beginnings. 6.

Although Augustine held nothing more important than to lead the English to the Christian faith, he was nevertheless anxious to recall the Britons, the ancient inhabitants of the island, to the unity of the Roman Church, from which they dissented in the view of some in certain rites, a synod having been convened once and again for this purpose. When they resisted, even though he had confirmed by a miracle what he had preached in words, the man of the Lord is said to have threateningly foretold that if they would not accept peace with the brethren, they would receive war from their enemies (Bede, book 2, chapter 2). Nor did the prophecy lack its effect; for Ethelfrid, the most powerful king of the Northumbrians, after the death of Augustine, routed the Britons with immense slaughter;

nor did he spare the priests, who had assembled in great numbers, especially from the monastery of Bangor, in which there is said to have been so great a number of monks that, when it was divided into seven portions with rectors set over each, no one of these portions had fewer than three hundred men, all of whom were wont to live by the labour of their own hands (Ibid.). Out of hatred for this massacre certain of the heterodox have tried to burden Augustine, as if he himself had been the instigator of the war to be waged against the Britons by Ethelfrid (Spelman, vol. 1 of the Councils of England, p. 93). But this is by no means read in Bede, nor in others of the ancient writers. Rather, the venerable Bede expressly teaches that they were slain when he himself had already, long before, been taken up to the heavenly realms.

These words Alfred indeed omitted in the Saxon version; but all the Latin copies present them. Augustine passed to the world above in the year 607, on the 26th day of May, which was made a feast-day among the English by this decree of the Synod of Cloveshoo in the year 747: 'By the seventeenth precept it was established that the birthday of the blessed Pope Gregory, and also the day of the deposition (which is the seventh before the Kalends of June) of St. Augustine, archbishop and confessor, who was sent to the nation of the English by the aforesaid Pope... who first brought them knowledge of the faith, the sacrament of baptism, and the knowledge of the heavenly homeland, should be honourably venerated by all as is fitting:'