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Ipalmc^feiirji ^ikg tit ib §e0t Jag^. 



By the Eev. Canon J. E. Jackson, F.S.A. 



(Read at an Evening Meeting of the Wilts ArchiBological Society, at Malmesbury, August 2nd, 1882.) 



9^ j'^N a paper read in this room before our Society twenty years 

 ^J^ ago, and afterwards printed in the JFilts Archceological 

 Magazine (vol. viii. 14), some particulars were collected from the 

 earlier annals of the town and Abbey-Church. The present paper 

 proposes rather to deal with the monastic establishment itself, and to 

 attempt to describe what it was in its best days. 



Malmesbury Monastery was a Benedictine House. In order to 

 understand more clearly what that means it may be well to say a 

 few words about the origin of monastic institutions.^ In one form or 

 other they have existed in all climates and countries from remote 

 times : chiefly in the East, India and Syria, but more particularly 

 in Egypt. At a very early period of the Christian era the doctrines 

 of the great Greek philosopher Plato were introduced into the 

 Christian schools of divinity at Alexandria, and some of those 

 Christians adopted a favourite theory of the Platonists, that the 

 body is a mere incumbrance to the soul : consequently that the 

 faculties of the soul are crippled and confined within a very narrow 

 compass. Hence arose the idea, that the more the body was mor- 

 tified, the nearer would be the approach to perfection : and that 



' Dr. Sam. Johnson's remarks upon monastic life are worth extracting : " I do 

 not wonder that where the Monastick life is permitted every Oi-der finds votaries, 

 and every monastery inhabitants. Men will submit to any rule, by which they 

 may be exempted from the tyranny and caprice of chance. They are glad to 

 supply by external authority their own want of constancy and resolution, and 

 court the government of others when long experience has convinced them of their 

 own inability to govern themselves. If I were to visit Italy, my curiosity w^. 

 be more attracted by convents than by palaces : though I am afraid that I sh'*. 

 find expectation in both places equally disappointed, and life in both places 

 supported with impatience and quitted with reluctance." — (BosweU's Life of 

 Johnson, Croker's Edit., II., 354.^ 



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