DISSOLUTION OF THE MONASTERIES. 183 



vineyards to be planted, and, by the operation of chalking* they 

 turned many a barren into a fruitful field. From these religious 

 houses forming a sort of spiritual corporation throughout Europe, 

 the general chapters of each order served as a canal to convey to the 

 monks every improvement abroad or at home, by the means they 

 afforded of a ready interchange of ideas. Under such circumstances 

 it stands, therefore, to reason, that the superiority of the ecclesias- 

 tical chiefs over the lay possessors of land was as conspicuous as 

 their qualifications for stale employments.t This piece of justice we 

 may render to these superiors of the old foundations without any risk, 

 we suppose, of our protestant feelings and attachments being called 

 in question — without our being suspected of the wish that we 

 were now writing under the government of his holiness the pope, 

 or bowing the knee at the shrine of St. Becket. 



The accomplished scholar, the man of fine genius and generous 

 spirit in his high exultation at the advanced state of knowledge, as 

 he contemplates it under all the possible varieties of aspect, will 

 readily acknowledge that monkery rendered this service in its day 

 and generation, — it saved the remains of ancient authors from 

 irretrievably perishing. The art of writing^ preserved in the soli- 

 tude of the cloister, reared as it were a wall of adamant around 

 those remains, till the discovery of printing made their destruction 

 impossible. And though the writings of the monkish historians, as 

 they are contemptuously styled, do not exhibit specimens of the poe- 

 tical history of Livy, or of the philosophical history of Tacitus, yet 

 under a rude and slovenly exterior, they contain much curious in- 

 formation on the manners and opinions of their contemporaries im- 



* This taunting observation of Peter of Blois, clearly indicates that some 

 of them were more intent upon becoming nursing fathers of agriculture than 

 of the church: — " Quae utilitas quod fimo et creta ager sationarius impingua- 

 tur, si in Dominicae messis cultura, nee spina evellitur nee extirpatur tribu- 

 lus, nee verbum Domini seminatur." — Peir. Bices., Ep. v. 



■f In part liv. of the Penny Magazine — article, By land Abbey, — there are 

 some very interesting and instructive remarks upon the monastic rulers, in 

 their characters of proprietors of land. 



J Contemporary and posthumous fame, as well as present fortune, became 

 the reward of those whose pens supplied the fairest and most correct 

 copies to their several monasteries. L'art de copier devint une source 

 de fortune, de gloire merae : on celebrait les monaste'res ou se faissent les 

 copies les plus exactes et les plus belles, et dans chaque monastere les moi- 

 nes qui excellaient & copier. L'abbaye de Fontenelle en particulier, et deux 

 de ses moines, Ovon et Hardouin acquirent en ce genre une veritable renom- 

 mee." — Cours tfffisloire Moderne, par M. Guizot, p. 356. 



