i899 J. BELLOWS — MONASTIC ORDERS 37 



example, who would place Bede's "Ecclesiastical History" 

 on a level with the works of Tacitus or Pliny ? Had the 

 development of European literature during a thousand 

 years of the monastic regime been on a par with that of 

 architecture in the same period, we should not only have 

 had a greater abundance and variety of authorship, but at 

 least a few authors of the very highest power to reflect 

 lustre on the cloister. Dante was unquestionably the 

 most powerful and original of the medieeval WTiters ; and 

 his work was not the outcome of monastic seclusion ; 

 but. like that of Tasso and Chaucer, was accomplished 

 in the busy outside world. All through the ages of 

 monachism we seek in vain, all over Europe, for any one 

 work produced by it, which is read to-day everywhere. 

 To find such a book we must go back to an earlier, or 

 come forward to a later time ; for the golden dav of 

 English literature did not dawn till after that of the 

 monasteries had set. 



The principal aim, however, of good men, in establish- 

 ing the monastic orders, was not so much the develop- 

 ment of the arts or of literature, as of a higher morality 

 than prevailed in the world at large ; for no grandeur of 

 building, and no beauty in writing tends to make men 

 good. On the contrary they often comport with the 

 greatest moral debasement, both in the individual, and in 

 the masses : as is shewn by the corruption that reigned 

 universally in the days that produced the most splendid 

 architecture of Greece and Rome, and by the wicked- 

 ness that had its home in the shadow of the temple at 

 Jerusalem. 



If a foot-bridge is built for the passage of a multitude, 

 it is idle to insist upon its strength because some men 

 have crossed it in safety. And the crucial point in the 

 history of the monastic system, is not whether at some 

 time some men have come up to its several respective 



