34 PROC. COTTESWOLD CLUB vol. xiii. 



under a pledge to abstain from entering into the family 

 bond, as a means to their perfection. 



Beginning in the retirement of single individuals to the 

 solitude of an African desert in times of persecution, 

 monachism has preserved a reminder of its origin in the 

 first portion of its name, from the Greek iW-oVof ; * but 

 the experience that it was " not good for man to be 

 alone," led to a modification of this alone-ness, or isola- 

 tion, by the grouping of a certain number of the hermits 

 into a community; and the head of this community, the 

 Abba, or father, exercised rule in the artificial family, 

 as the parent does in the real one. This monastic 

 regime was taken up and systematised by Basil, in the 

 East ; and, as modelled by him, passed into Europe in the 

 fourth century. Before the middle of the sixth, however, 

 it had so far ceased to fulfil the requirements of the most 

 earnest adherents of monachism, that a new order was 

 evolved out of it by Benedict. But the unattainable was 

 still unattained ; and the practical working of the Bene- 

 dictine monasteries was found so far short of the ideal, 

 that by the end of the eleventh century, and during the 

 twelfth, a reform was as;ain made bv the establishment of 

 stricter rules in a Benedictine house near Dijon. The 

 new order, named in France from its founder, "Bernardins," 

 and known in England as " Cistercians," from Bernard's 

 monastery at Citeaux, built this Abbey of Tintern, shortly 

 after his death. Tintern, therefore, marks a period of 

 endeavour after the reformation by the Benedictines ; 

 how strong an endeavour anyone may see who examines 

 the Bernardine rules which forbad all unnecessary orna- 

 ments ; all pictures in the monastery, except that of 

 Christ ; the use of stained glass in the windows, and so 



* That is tlie beginning of Western monachism. The system had been devised 

 long jneviously among Oriental iieo|ilcs. 



