MONALDESCHI MONASTERY. 



and bogs. The most important of the rivers are tfie 

 Lagan, Annalee, Ballyhays, Fin, Fane, Myrvale, and 

 Blackwater : none of these are navigable. The deep 

 soil of Monaghan is favourable to the culture of flax, 

 a favourite crop here ; and all the usual crops are 

 sown, wheat only excepted, to which the soil is not 

 found congenial. Monaghan is divided into five 

 baronies, Cremourne, Dartry, Farney, Monaghan, 

 and Trough. In these the principal towns are Castle- 

 blaney, Ballybay, Clones, Carrickmacross, Monaghan, 

 the county town, Smithsborough, and Newbliss. The 

 manufacture of linen constitutes the chief employ- 

 ment of the population. See Ireland and Ulster. 



MONALDESCHI. See Christina, queen of 

 Sweden. 



MONARCHY. See Political Institutions. 



MONASTERY. Monastic seclusion is found, 

 even in the times previous to the Christian era. 

 The inclination to a solitary life arose with the 

 corruptions of society. The better disposed persons, 

 who felt themselves unequal to resist these corrup- 

 tions, sought, in solitude, a protection against temp- 

 tation. That indisposition to action, and that fond- 

 ness for undisturbed contemplation, which is still 

 remarked among the Hindoos, existed among the 

 earliest inhabitants of Southern Asia, and gave rise 

 to the most ancient Oriental philosophy, whose ten- 

 dency to a contemplative life, aspiring to shake oft" 

 the fetters of the body and sense, gave to retire- 

 ment from the world the charm of a peculiar sanc- 

 tity. To this was added the opinion, that trans- 

 gressions may be best atoned for by abstinence from 

 all the pleasures of life, and from all society of men, and 

 thus, according to an ancient notion, popular through- 

 out the East, the Deity might be appeased. Ana- 

 chorites, hermits, recluses and monks are therefore 

 found, in the ante-Christian times of Asiatic anti- 

 quity (see Gymnosophists) ; and, at the present time, 

 the countries which profess the religions of Brama, 

 Fo, Lama, and Mohammed, are full of fakirs and 

 santons, tanirs, or songesses, talapoins, bonzes and 

 dervises, whose fanatical and absurd penances are 

 rather arts of deception than fruits of piety. The 

 ancient Hebrew people, also, had such devotees, as 

 its Nazarites, to whom Moses gave peculiar privi- 

 leges ; and the life of the Essenes and Therapeutes, 

 who flourished in Palestine and Egypt about the 

 times of Jesus, was entirely formed on the idea of 

 separation from the world, and of monastic discipline 

 and piety, which we afterwards see prevalent in the 

 better period of Christian monasticism. Among the 

 Christians, whose religion strictly distinguishes the 

 corporeal and the spiritual, and, moreover, since the 

 third century, has been impregnated with Gnostic 

 and New Platonic ideas of incorporeality and eleva- 

 tion above the world of sense (see Saints), solitary 

 life began to be esteemed, as early as the fourth 

 century. See Chrysostom. 



Monasteries were first founded in the deserts of 

 Upper Egypt, where Antony, commonly called the 

 Great, collected a number of hermits, about the year 

 305, who, for the sake of enjoying the benefits of 

 retirement from the world in each other's society, 

 built their huts near each other, and performed their 

 devotional exercises in common, as the monks of 

 Palestine did at a later period, and as those of Abys- 

 sinia do at the present day. More close than this 

 connexion, which was called Laura (see Anachoret), 

 was that founded by his disciple Pachomius, in the 

 middle of the fourth century. He built a number of 

 houses, at a small distance from each other, upon the 

 island of Tabenna, in the Nile, each of which was 

 occupied by three or four monks (monachi) in cells, 

 who were all under the superintendence of a prior. 

 These priories formed together the cwnobium, or 



monastery, which was under the care of a superior, 

 the abbot, (from abbas, father), higumen or mandrite, 

 and were obliged to submit to uniform rules of life. 

 At the death of Pachomius, in 348, the monastic 

 colony, at Tabenna, amounted to 50,000 persons. 

 The districts in Palestine, Syria, and Armenia were 

 filled with Coenobites, and institutions of the same 

 kind arose in and about the towns, in which a strict 

 confinement within the walls of the establishment, 

 was to preserve the inmates from the temptations of 

 the world around them, and to supply the place of 

 the solitude of deserts. Hence the name of cloisters, 

 from clauslra, enclosures. The monastic life, at first 

 freely chosen by men alone, and therefore restrained 

 by such laws only as each one thought fit to impose 

 upon himself, for promoting the ends of solitary life, 

 was subjected, by St Basil, to stricter rules, about 

 the middle of the fourth century, when female monas- 

 teries, or convents of nuns (a word said, in Coptic, 

 to signify pure) , were instituted, and persons of all 

 ages and stations entered the establishments. By 

 means of these rules, the same discipline was kept 

 up in all the monasteries through the East. Still 

 there was not, in the fourth or fifth centuries, any 

 thing like regular monastic vows, or public profes- 

 sion ; except that the entrance into a monastery 

 was regarded as a tacit devotion of one's self to a 

 life of purity and abstinence from worldly pleasures, 

 and a promise of obedience to the rules and restric- 

 tions of the institution. These vows were introduced 

 in the sixth century, by St Benedict. It may be 

 chiefly ascribed to his strict and judicious regulations, 

 first established in a monastery founded by him at 

 Monte Casino, near Naples, in 529, and afterwards 

 introduced into all the monasteries of the West, that 

 these houses now became the dwellings of piety, 

 industry, and temperance, and the refuge of learning, 

 driven to them for shelter from the troubles of the 

 times. Missionaries were sent out from them ; 

 deserts and solitudes were made habitable by indus- 

 trious monks ; and, in promoting the progress of 

 agriculture and civilizing the German and Sclavonian 

 nations, they certainly rendered great services to the 

 world, from the sixth century to the ninth. But it 

 must be admitted that these institutions, so useful in 

 the dark ages of barbarism, changed their character, 

 to a great degree, as their wealth and influence 

 increased. Idleness and luxury crept within their 

 walls, together with all the vices of the world, and 

 their decay became inevitable, when, by a custom 

 first introduced by the Prankish kings, and afterwards 

 imitated by other princes, of bestowing monasteries 

 upon the nobility for the sake of their income, they 

 came under the care of lay abbots or superiors, who, 

 thinking only of the enjoyment of the revenue which 

 they yielded, did nothing to maintain discipline 

 among the monks and nuns, daily becoming more 

 irregular, and when they were robbed and oppressed, 

 or left wholly to their own government (in conse- 

 quence of the privileges and exemptions they had 

 obtained) by the bishops, who were originally their 

 overseers, but had now lost their fondness for a 

 monastic life. A few only, by means of the convent 

 schools (founded by Charlemagne, for the education 

 of the clergy), as, for instance, those at Tours, Lyons, 

 Cologne, Treves, Fulda, Osnabruck, Paderborn, 

 Wurtzburg, &c., maintained their character for use- 

 fulness and respectability till the ninth and tenth 

 centuries. The monastery at Clugny, in Burgundy, 

 first led the way to the reform, so generally acknow- 

 ledged to be necessary. This was founded in the 

 year 910, and was governed by the rules of St Bene- 

 dict, with additional regulations of a still more rigid 

 cliaracter. A considerable number of monasteries 

 in France, Spain, Italy, and Germany, were reformed 



