238 iHENRY HILL GOODELL 



dignity of labor, first, by consecrating to agriculture the 

 energy and intelligent activity of freemen, often of high 

 birth and clothed with the double authority of the priest- 

 hood and of hereditary nobility, and second, by associating 

 under the Benedictine habit sons of kings, princes, and 

 nobles with the rudest labors of peasants and serfs. 



There is still another phase of this monastic life. We 

 have seen that the one universal and regular duty imposed 

 was the necessity of being constantly employed. It was 

 work for the sake of work. The object sought was not so 

 much what would be produced by the labor as to keep the 

 body and mind so constantly employed that temptations 

 could find no access and sin would therefore be escaped. 

 Consequently it was a matter of comparative indifference 

 what the work was. The harder and more painful and un- 

 attractive to men in general it might be, so much the better 

 for the monk. If sufficiently difficult, the element of pen- 

 ance was added, and it became a still more effectual means 

 of grace. In this way the monks did a great amount of 

 extremely useful work which no one else would have under- 

 taken. Especially is this true of the clearing and reclaiming 

 of land. A swamp was of no value. It was a source of 

 pestilence. But it was just the place for a monastery be- 

 cause it made life especially hard ; and so the monks carried 

 in earth and stone, and made a foundation, and built their 

 convent, and then set to work to dyke and drain and fill up 

 the swamp, till they had turned it into fertile plough-land 

 and the pestilence had ceased. 



The connection of the monasteries with the great centres 

 of population to-day is an interesting one. 1 The require- 

 1 Gibbins, Industrial History of England. 



