20 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



forests began to be nations, Hallam answers, ' When Boni- 

 face crossed the Alps on his Christian mission.' Asked for 

 the beginning of England's greatness, Green tells us the 

 story of the two Christian teachers who one winter's night 

 entered the rude banquet hall of King Ethelbert." 



About the middle of this period commenced the hermit 

 or ascetic life in the far East. Paul, Anthony, Pacomius 

 and others, gathering together the thousands of disciples 

 that had followed them, peopled the arid wastes and rocky 

 valleys of the Thebaid with their nuns and monks. 



Next follows the missionary period, in which these de- 

 voted soldiers of the cross, pushing their adventurous way 

 into every part of Europe, reconquered for the church the 

 territory it had lost, and, planting their monasteries in the 

 wildest and most unfrequented spots, became the heralds of 

 civilization and Christianity. In this period and in the last 

 the monasteries were largely enriched by the gifts of the 

 faithful, — in most cases the donors begging the intercession 

 of the monks in their behalf. Thus St. Eloysius in his 

 charter to the monks of Solignac writes: "I, your suppli- 

 ant, in the sight of the mass of my sins, and in hopes of 

 being delivered from them by God, give to you a little 

 thing for a great, earth in exchange for heaven, that which 

 passes away for that which is eternal." So Peter, the Lord 

 of Maule, says: "The prudent ant as she sees winter ap- 

 proach makes the more haste to bring in her stores, so as to 

 assure herself of abundant food during the cold weather. 

 I, Peter, profiting by this lesson, and desirous, though a 

 sinner and unworthy, to provide for my future destiny, I 

 have desired that the bees of God may come to gather 

 honey in my orchards, so that when their fair hives shall be 

 full of rich combs of this honey, they may be able, while 

 giving thanks to their Creator, to remember him by whom 

 this hive was given." 



Eager, ardent and impetuous, these anchorites seemed to 

 take the continent by storm.* Amid the gloom of the 

 Thuringian forests, among the wild precipices and caves of 

 the mountains of the Hartz, on the wild, desolate shores of 



* McLear, " Apostles of Mediasval Kurope." 



