1889 J. BELLOWS — MONASTIC ORDERS 39 



senses, or a stimulating of the imagination, he called his 

 followers to simplicity and self-denial, not merely in their 

 personal habits, but in all their surroundings, especially 

 including the buildings in which they assembled for 

 worship. 



As we are considering more particularly the period of 

 the foundation of the Cistercian order, and of the Abbey 

 of Tintern, it is worth our while to examine as to how 

 far the reform was needed, which Robert of Molesme 

 began at Citcaux in 1098, and Bernard carried on in the 

 next century. 



Arnulf, the Bishop of Lisieux (1159 — 81) i)etitioned 

 the Pope, Alexander III., to dissolve a Benedictine 

 monastery in his diocese on the ground of the evil lives 

 of the monks : no fewer than three of whom had com- 

 mitted murder — the Abbot, an absentee, living a debauched 

 life in England, while these disorders were going on. 



Two hundred years later we find a book published by 

 one of the foremost leaders of education in Europe, the 

 Rector of the University of Paris, to call attention to the 

 general condition of the monasteries, whose inmates he 

 states were guilty of idleness, drunkenness, gluttony, and 

 debauchery. He uses even stronger language than this : 

 but the title of his book may suffice : De Corrupto 

 Ecclesise Statu. 



A local history, such as that of Gloucester, shews a 

 state of things not much more satisfactory in the century 

 following that dealt with by the University rector ; and, 

 as Gloucester was proverbial for the number of its 

 monastic houses, there is no reason to suppose that their 

 condition differed materially from that of similar estab- 

 lishments in other places. 



More important, however, than the question whether 

 the monasteries ever did, in their earHer history, come up 

 to the expectations of the earnest men who founded them. 



