No. 4.] MONKS IN AGRICULTURE. 11 



sources of the country ; and there is still extant a letter of the 

 great churchman, the venerable Bede, in which, imploring 

 the kings and bishops to put a stop to the grants of land for 

 monastic purposes, because frequently misused, he says : 

 "Many Northumbrians put aside their arms, cut oft* their 

 hair and hasten to enroll themselves in the monastic ranks, 

 instead of exercising themselves in their military duties. 

 The future alone will tell what good will result from this." 

 Perhaps some of you will recollect a more modern instance 

 in the law of Peter the Great, forbidding any state officer, 

 citizen in business or workman from entering the cloisters, 

 affirming that he would not consecrate to idleness subjects 

 that might be useful. 



To support now these throngs of people that assumed the 

 cowl, it w r as necessary for the monks to devote themselves 

 to agriculture and horticulture, and this they did in a most 

 successful manner. "It is impossible to forget," says the 

 great historian of the monks, "it is impossible to forget the 

 use they made of so many vast districts (holding as they did 

 one-fifth of all the land in England) , uncultivated and unin- 

 habited, covered with forests or surrounded by marshes. 

 For such, it must not be forgotten, was the true nature of 

 the vast estates given to the monks, and which had thus the 

 double advantage of ofterino- to communities the most inac- 

 cessible retreats that could be found, and of imposing the 

 least possible sacrifice upon the munificence of the giver." 

 Kings and barons vied with each other in their eagerness to 

 save their souls from hell and pave the way to heaven by 

 giving to these poor monks land the most desolate and un- 

 fertile, land no other human beings would inhabit, land cov- 

 ered with sand or rock or buried in water for the greater 

 part of the year. How man of woman born could live in 

 such unwholesome and unproductive spots and thrive seems 

 absolutely miraculous, but these patient toilers of the church 

 surmounted all the difficulties which stared them in the face 

 of beginning the cultivation of a new country.* The for- 

 ests were cleared, the marshes made wholesome or dried up, 

 the soil irrigated or drained, according to the requirements 



* Montalembert, " Monks of the West." 



