16 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



clothed with the double authority of the priesthood 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 plow-land and 

 the pestilence had ceased. 



The connection of the monasteries with the great centres 

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

 ments of the monks and the instruction they were enabled 

 to impart soon led to the establishment in their immediate 

 neighborhood of the first settlement of artificers and retail 

 dealers, while the excess of their crops, their flocks and 

 their herds gave rise to the first markets, which were as a 

 rule held before the gate of the abbey church, or within the 

 church-yard, among the tombs. Thus hamlets and towns 

 were formed which became the centres of trade and general 

 intercourse, and thus originated the market tolls and the 

 jurisdiction of these spiritual lords. Out of these hamlets 



* Gibbins, " Industrial History of England." 



