ADDRESSES 237 



comes before the world saying: "No person is ever more 

 usefully employed than when working with his hands or 

 following the plough, providing for the use of man. . . . 

 He bent himself to the task of teaching the rich and the 

 proud, the poor and the lazy, the alphabet of prosperity 

 and happiness." 



Agriculture was sunk to a low ebb. Marshes covered once 

 fertile fields, and the men who should have tilled the land 

 spurned the plough as degrading. The monks left their 

 cells and their prayers to dig ditches and plough fields. The 

 effort was magical. Men once more turned back to a noble 

 but despised industry, and peace and plenty supplanted 

 war and poverty. So well recognized were the blessings they 

 brought, that an old German proverb among the peasants 

 runs, "It is good to live under the crozier." They ennobled 

 manual labor, which, in a degenerate Roman world, had 

 been performed exclusively by slaves, and among bar- 

 barians by women. For the monks, it is no exaggeration to 

 say that the cultivation of the soil was like an immense 

 alms spread over a whole country. The abbots and super- 

 iors set the example, and stripping off their sacerdotal 

 robes toiled as common laborers. Like the good parson 

 whom Chaucer portrays in the Prologue to the "Canter- 

 bury Tales":— 



This noble ensample unto his scheep he gaf 

 That first he wroughte and after that he taughte. 



When a papal messenger came in haste to consult the 

 Abbot Equutius on important matters of the church, he 

 was not to be found anywhere, but was finally discovered in 

 the valley cutting hay. Under such guidance and such 

 example the monks upheld and taught everywhere the 



