| . |
The battle of Vougle; the Psalms in ecclesiastical or semi- ecclesiastical history (i) the Papacy and the Empire- Charlemagne, Gregory VII. and Henry IV. Anselm and William Ruf us. Henry II. and Thomas a Becket, Alexander III. and Frederick Barbarossa; (2) pilgrimages; (3) crusades, Abp. Baldwin, Richard I., Henry V.-Abbot Adeime at the Tagus, Cardinal Ximenes, Demetrius of the Don; (4) the religious revival; St Bernard; Stephen Harding and the Cistercian reform-Citeaux and Fountains Abbey; St Francis of Assist and the Franciscans; the Psalms in secular history -William the Conqueror, Vladimir Monomachus, David I. of Scotland, Abelard and Heloise, St Louis of France, William Wallace; in mediaeval science; in mediaeval literature-De Imitatione Christi, Divina Commedia, Piers Plowman, The Golden Legend.
As the centuries advance, the Psalms touch human life at points which grow more and more numerous, till the whole circle of thought and action seems to be embraced. Mediaeval literature and science, as well as secular and ecclesiastical history, are permeated by their influence.
The strongest of the monarchies which rose on the ruins of the Western Empire was the Frankish Kingdom. Hitherto the youthful nations, whose vigour had scourged the effemi- nacy of the older world, if Christians at all, had been Arians. But the baptism of Clovis had for the first time arrayed force on the side of orthodox Christianity; alike against heretics, heathen, and Saracens, the Franks were its zealous champions. It was this fact that gave significance to the victory which Clovis won at Vougle (507) over Alaric II. and his Arian Visigoths.
Blessed by Remy at Rheims, Clovis had marched towards the Loire. Encamping close to Tours, he sent to the church, in which rested the bones of St Martin, to enquire whether any presage of victory would be vouchsafed to him. As his messengers entered the church, the choir were cha^ ting the words, " Thou hast girded me with strength unto the battle;
Thou shalt throw down mine enemies under me. Thou hast made mine enemies also to turn their backs upon me; and I shall destroy them that hate me " (Ps. xviii., verses 39, 40).
56 THE MIDDLE AGES
Encouraged by the omen, Clovis pressed on. A ford over the Vienne was revealed by a deer, and, as he advanced towards Poitiers, a bright gleam, shining from the church of St Hilary as from a lighthouse, guided the movements of his troops. In the battle of Vougle, Alaric was killed by the hand of Clovis; the Visigoths fled, and southern Gaul, from the Loire to the Garonne, fell into the hands of the Franks.
From the time of Clovis onwards, the growing power of the Frankish Kingdom had attracted the eyes of successive Popes, who saw in its rulers the destined heirs of the Roman Em- perors of the West. The idea of an universal church, whose centre was Rome, rapidly approached its realisation. With it grew up the conception of its necessary counterpart, a con- ception which was bred partly of memory, partly of hope. The establishment of an universal monarchy in close alliance with the world-wide dominion of the Church, was the vision which fascinated the imagination of the noblest minds. At the head of this Christian commonwealth of nations, in its temporal character, was to stand the emperor; at its head, in its spiritual character, was to stand the Pope.
For the realisation of such a vision the ground was already prepared. The spell of the old Empire lay upon the bar- barians themselves. Not only were they awe-struck by the stately ceremonial of the Christian religion; they were also impressed with a sense of the sanctity of the emperor, eager to preserve imperial institutions, anxious to perpetuate im- perial methods of administration. Decrepit though the Eastern Empire might be, the West was familiarised with the idea of universal monarchy by the shadowy claims, waning powers, and insecure ascendency of the Byzantine Emperors.
In the eighth century the policy of the Papacy rapidly assumed a definite shape, and the first steps were taken to break the link which still bound the Popes to Byzantium. Already the aid of Pepin had been invoked against invaders;
already the Papacy had lent a special sanctity to the corona- tion of the King of the Franks; already it had received its reward in the gift of the Papal States. Once more, at Pepin's death, the Lombards invaded the possessions of the Church. At the call of Pope Hadrian, Charlemagne swept away the invaders, and added Northern Italy to the dominions of the Franks.
With the penultimate stage of a vast change, a psalm is inseparably connected. Leaving his army at Pavia, Charle- magne journeyed to Rome. Outside the city he was welcomed by the Cross, which hitherto had only been carried beyond the walls to greet the approach of the Exarch or the Patrician. At the sight of the sacred symbol, Charlemagne dismounted from his horse> and, entering Rome on foot, reached the portal,
CHARLEMAGNE 57
of St Peter (April 2nd, 774). There Pope Hadrian received him and took him in his arms. Together they entered the basilica, which Constantine had erected on the spot tradi- tionally hallowed as the scene of St Peter's martyrdom. Hand in hand, they advanced towards the semicircular apse, passed under the arch of victory, ascended the long flight of steps, and prostrated themselves before the high altar, while the multitude, who thronged the building, chanted, "Blessed be he that cometh in the Name of the Lord" (Ps. cxviii., verse 26).
On the next day, Charlemagne, hailed by the Pope as his champion and by the people as their deliverer, was confirmed in the title of Patrician and Consul of the Romans, promised to protect the City and defend the Church, and in the tunic and sandals of the Patrician, took his seat at the tribunal of justice. For six and twenty years the final stage was post- poned, while the Byzantine Emperor remained the titular sovereign of Rome. On Christmas day, 800, the long revolt was consummated. Western Europe disavowed the rule of the Eastern Empire, when, in the basilica of St Peter, Pope Leo III. placed on the head of Charlemagne "the diadem of the Caesars," while the people prayed for long life and victory to " Charles, the most pious Augustus, crowned by God, the peace-giving Emperor."
Fourteen years later (January 28th, 814), Charlemagne, whose favourite psalm was Psalm Ixviii. (" Let God arise "), died at Aix-la-Chapelle, repeating with his last breath the words, "Into Thy hands I commend my spirit" (Ps. xxxi., verse 6). He had loved to be called among his friends by the name of David. Church music and psalmody were the delight of a man, who, in his terrible vengeance on his enemies, his political and ecclesiastical work, and the moral aberrations of his passionate nature, presents curious points of resemblance to the founder of the Jewish monarchy.
As time went on, the relations between the Papacy and the Empire took a different shape, and became a contest for supremacy between the temporal and spiritual powers. At Salerno, in the Cathedral of St Matthew the Apostle, sur- rounded by the narrow, irregular streets, which still bear witness, through their varied architecture, to the Lombard occupation, the Saracen conquests, the Norman rule of Guiscard, and the ascendency of the Hohenstaufen, is the tomb of Hildebrand, the son of a carpenter at Soana, and, as Gregory VII., the vehement champion of the papal su- premacy. It was Hildebrand who freed the Church from vassalage to the temporal power, and stemmed the flowing tide of priestly corruption. If, on one side of his career, he seemed the incarnation of spiritual pride, it should not be forgotten that, as a moral reformer, he roused the conscience
58 THE MIDDLE AGES
of Europe. From the austere heights of his own self-discipline, he rebuked the vices of emperors and kings, and to his example men appealed, in after ages, when sin was once more rampant in high places :
" We need another Hildebrand to shake And purify us." 1
For a quarter of a century, during five successive pontificates, Hildebrand had guided the policy of the Papacy with strong hand and watchful eye. Tier by tier, he had raised the fabric of Theocracy, which, in its moral grandeur, was the inspira- tion of his life. If kings refused to recognise the eternal laws of divine justice, their rule was tyranny; if the people yielded no obedience to civil rulers, the result was anarchy. It was Hildebrand's aim to make the Church, purified, and inde- pendent, the arbitrator between the two, and the spiritual ruler of both. Elected Pope in 1073 under the title of Gregory VII., he entered on the struggle which lay before him with the serene conviction that, as the Vicar of Christ, he was the Divine instrument. His ambition was for the Papacy rather than for himself. His pride was not a peasant's vanity in his exalted station, but an assertion of his dignity as the earthly representative of God.
The history of his Papacy is full of dramatic episodes. It had its triumph when the Emperor Henry IV., in penitential garb, ascended the rocky path, and for three days, in hunger, cold and shame, waited at the gate of the Castle of Canossa (1077). It met its fatal reverse (1084) when the Pope, a prisoner in St Angelo, was rescued by Robert Guiscard. Such a downfall broke the heart of Gregory. In the Castle of Salemo, under the protection of the Normans, he died on 25th May 1085. His last words, taken from Psalm xlv., verse 8, breathe the tragic fulness of his bitter disappoint- ment, " I have loved righteousness, and hated iniquity;- and therefore I die in exile.-"
The great struggle between the Popes and the temporal rulers of Europe extended to England, though, during the reign of William the Conqueror, it was averted by the personal concert between himself and Archbishop Lanfranc. But when to William's wise, yet severe tyranny succeeded the savage license of William Rufus, that struggle between Church and State at once began which lasted to the Reform- ation. In Archbishop Anselm were worthily embodied the spiritual claims of the Church. Tender-hearted and affection- ate, he loved both man and beast. The well-known story of the hunted hare illustrates his feeling for dumb animals, and his habit of reading moral lessons into the ordinary events
1 Longfellow, The Golden Legend, iv.
ANSELM 59
of life. As the archbishop rode from Windsor to Hayes, a hare was started and pursued by his retainers and their dogs. It took refuge under his horse, and Anselm bade the men call off their dogs, and let the trembling creature go. The hunters laughed. " Do ye laugh ? " he said : " this poor beast is far from laughter. She is like a Christian soul cease- lessly pursued by demons, that would drag it down to eternal death. Poor soul in torture, looking round in sore distress, seeking with longing unspeakable for a hand to save!" Every instinct of his nature impelled him towards the ideal rather than the practical aspects of life, or inclined him to study its spiritual rather than its temporal needs. Thought, not action, was the true sphere of the man whom Dante places among the doctors of the Church in the Heaven of the Sun. Transferred from the retirement of the Abbey of Bee to the publicity of the See of Canterbury (1093-1109), he likens himself to an owl, who, " when he is in his hole with his young ones, is happy; but when he goes out among crows and other birds, they hunt him and strike him with their beaks, and he is ill at ease." His office compelled him to be not only a great ecclesiastic, but a great feudal noble. It forced him, also, to choose between the Pope and the king. To his pure soul the solution of the difficulty would probably have been the surrender of worldly greatness, in order to increase his moral influence. But to a guardian of the gifts bestowed upon the Church of God, such a way of escape was impossible. When therefore the conflict began, his choice was inevitable; he made it with quiet courage, and adhered to it with invincible resolution. As the struggle dragged its slow length along, he stood alone in England, siding more and more with the Pope, who was to him the embodiment of law and right in a world of tyranny and wrong.
In 1098 Anselm was at Rome, waiting the results of his appeal to Pope Urban II. against William Rufus. But the air of Rome was unwholesome to one, who, though Piedmontese by birth, was accustomed to a northern climate. He therefore visited Abbot John of St Salvator, a former monk of Bee, now the ruler of a monastery at Telesia, between Benevento and Capua. On the higher slopes of the neighbouring moun- tains was a village called Schlavia, to which the monks resorted in the summer months. To this beautiful spot Anselm was taken. On the hill-top, in the crisp mountain air, respited from his cares, surrounded by the simplicities of life and the charms of nature, the old man's heart leaped within him. " This," he broke forth, like Gall, in the words of a psalm (cxxxii., verse 15), "shall be my rest for ever; here will I dwell, for I have a delight therein." It was at Schlavia that he thought out and composed his famous treatise. Cur Deus Homo? in which he discussed the rational ground of the
6o THE MIDDLE AGES
Atonement, and expounded his profound and original view of the Incarnation.
In the protracted struggle between Henry II. and Thomas &, Becket, the same issue was involved. But the sacrilege of Becket's murder at Canterbury (Tuesday, December 29th, 1170) gave the temporary victory to the Church over the State.
At five o'clock on a winter's evening, the monks were singing vespers in the dimly-lighted cathedral. Suddenly came the news that soldiers were forcing their way into the cloisters on the north side of the building. Becket had mounted the fourth step of the staircase, which led from the Chapel of St Benedict to the choir of the church, when the four knights, in full armour, their mail hiding their faces, burst into the building. At the summons of Fitzurse, he descended into the transept, and in his white rochet, a cloak and hood thrown over his shoulders, faced the murderers. A blow on the head from Tracy drew blood. As the arch- bishop wiped the stain from his face, he said the familiar words, "Into Thy hands I commend my spirit" (Ps. xxxi., verse 6). The deed was soon accomplished. But misfortunes crowded on the king. At Avranches, in May 1172, Henry had done penance for the crime of his adherents. Yet troubles seemed only to increase, and at Canterbury he made a further and final expiation. On July lath, 1174, he entered the streets of the city, walking barefoot,-naked, except for a shirt and cloak. In the cathedral, he kissed the stone where Becket had fallen, recited the penitential psalm against wrath (Ps. vi.), prostrated himself before the tomb of the archbishop, and then, placing his head and shoulders upon it, was scourged by the bishops, abbots, and each of the eighty monks who were present. His humiliation was so profound, that the chroniclers appeal to the language of the Psalms to describe the impression it produced-" The mountains trembled at the presence of the Lord," " the mountain of Canterbury smoked before Him who touches the hills and they smoke."
Yet another scene in the struggle between Church and State is illustrated by the Psalms. In July 1177, the long conflict between Pope Alexander III. and the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa drew to its close. The hand of God, so it seemed to pious minds, struck down the German Em- peror in his hour of triumph. Master of Rome, he had forced his creature into the chair of St Peter. But pestilence de- stroyed his army. Disguised, and almost alone, Barbarossa made his way by an unfrequented pass to Germany. The Lombard League supported Alexander III. against his rival and the emperor; the battle of Legnano (May 2Qth, 1176) broke Barbarossa's power, and compelled him to make terms with the Pope. At Venice, in the summer of 1177, Pope and
POPE ALEXANDER III. 61
emperor were reconciled. Himself a Sienese, it was at Siena that Alexander commemorated his triumph in the frescoes with which Spinello has adorned the Sala di Balia. But in the porch of St Mark's at Venice is another record of the scene. Three marble slabs mark the spot where Barbarossa humbled himself before his enemy. Legend is at least true to the spirit of the conflict, when it represents the Pope as placing his foot on the neck of the kneeling emperor, and quoting the words of Ps. xci., verse 13, " Thou shalt go upon the lion and adder; the young lion and the dragon shalt thou tread under thy feet." In this case the Sienese frescoes may have bred the legend, which Rogers uses in his Italy (" St Mark's Place"):
" In that temple porch (The brass is gone, the porphyry remains), Did Barbarossa fling his mantle off, And, kneeling, on his neck receive the foot Of the proud Pontiff-thus at length consoled For flight, disguise, and many an aguish shake On his stone pillow."
It is to the same legend that Wordsworth refers in his Ecclesiastical Sonnets (No. xxxviii.):
" Black Demons hovering o'er his mitred head, To Caesar's Successor the Pontiff spake;
' Ere I absolve thee, stoop! that on thy neck
Levelled with earth this foot of mine may tread.'
Then he, who to the altar had been led,
He, whose strong arm the Orient could not check,
He who had held the Soldan at his beck,
Stooped, of all glory disinherited,
And even the common dignity of man! "
Among mediaeval agencies which, like the unity of the Church, fostered the intercourse of nations, bridged the dis- tances between class and class, and promoted the growth of the idea of an universal empire, pilgrimages and the crusades were powerful instruments. In both, European Christendom, rich and poor, united for common objects. In both, the Psalms were at work.
Pilgrimages to Palestine practically began with the journey of the Empress Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, and her (' invention " of the true Cross at Jerusalem (326). A few years later, the Bordeaux Pilgrim wrote the first Christian guide-book to the Holy Land; and during the lifetime of Jerome, pilgrims, fired by his example, or attracted by his fame, greatly increased in number. Between 385 and 388, Silvia of Aquitaine visited the Holy Land, and even passed beyond the bounds of the Roman Empire. As they journeyed
62 THE MIDDLE AGES
towards their goal, pilgrims sang together three psalms at the canonical hours, and, on reaching Jerusalem, their first act was to ascend the tower of David, and recite the whole Psalter. Saturated, as they were, with the language of the Psalms, the early pilgrims brought back strange reports of the miracles which were worked in Palestine, even as the Psalmist had foretold. After the sun was up, a cloud rose from the Hill of Hermon, and stood over the church at Jeru- salem, as David had sung of the dew of Hermon which fell upon the Hill of Sion. So says Antoninus of Placentia, sur- named the Martyr, who visited Palestine in the days of Justinian. He also relates how, during the Epiphany festival, at the baptism of catechumens on the banks of the Jordan, when the waters were blessed, the river returned upon itself with a roar; the upper part stood still until the ceremony was completed, the lower part running away to the sea. Thus, as David had said, "Jordan was driven back." His con- temporary Theodosius, in his work De Situ Terrce Sanctce, tells how " a vine which the Lord had planted," close to the field where He had Himself ploughed a furrow, regularly provided the wine for the Pentecostal communion; how the " little hills " had walked exulting before the Lord, when He descended to Baptism, even as David had said, "The moun- tains skipped like rams, and the little hills like young sheep ";
and how, to the pious eye of the traveller, <( even to this day they seemed in the act of jumping." With the lapse of years, religious fervour cooled. Mixed motives influenced the motley crowds, who, with knobbed iron-shod staves in their hands, a scrip for provisions slung at their sides, their hats and clothes studded with leaden medals and pewter brooches, journeyed to Walsingham or Canterbury, to Rocamadour of Compostella, and even to Rome or Jerusalem. Some travelled barefoot, or naked but for their shirts, to expiate their sins;
others toiled wearily in the hope of miraculous healing; others fulfilled a vow made in sickness; some protested against the government by visiting the shrine of a canonised rebel; others became pilgrims by profession, from laziness, for the pleasures of the journey, from love of adventure. But however great may have been the abuses which were satirised by Langland and Wyclif, by the author of Reynard the Fox and Erasmus, there never failed to be numbers of simple devout pilgrims, who, as they travelled singly or in companies, chanted the Psalms on the way in the spirit of an earlier faith, and re- turned strengthened and consoled by beholding the mysterious object of their pious veneration.
The Crusades, like the struggle between the temporal and spiritual powers, and like mediaeval pilgrimages, were neces- sarily permeated by religious influences. If they do not exclusively belong to the domain of Church History, they
THE CRUSADES 63
move in that broad belt of twilight, where things secular and things ecclesiastical are as closely associated as the begin- nings of night or day.
There were but few of the battlefields against the Saracens which had not resounded with the Venite (Ps. xcv.), the battle-cry of the Templars, as, in after ages, the Psalms supplied the war-shout of John Sobieski, the motto of the Great Armada, the watch-words of Gustavus Adolphus and of Cromwell, the Marseillaise of the Huguenots and the Cevenols. From the Psalms the Crusade was preached by St Bernard, who made special use of Ps. cxliv. (" Blessed be the Lord my strength," etc.), and Ps. cxvi., verse 13 ("Right dear in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints"). When, on October 3rd, 1187, Jerusalem was again taken by Saladin, it was once more from the Psalms that Pope Clement III. urged the bishops to preach another Holy War (Ps. cxxvii., "Except the Lord build the house," etc.). Baldwin, Arch- bishop of Canterbury, responded to the appeal, donned the White Cross of England, raised the banner of St Thomas, and preached the Crusade in Wales, chanting the Psalms as the war-song of his recruits. At the head of his troop, he left England, March 6th, 1190, eager to win back "the sepulchre of Christ," and
To chase these Pagans, in those holy fields, Over whose acres walked those blessed feet, Which fourteen hundred years ago were naU'd For our advantage on the bitter cross.
From the first he was doomed to disappointment. In the language of the Psalms, his chaplain sums up the archbishop's horror at the licentiousness of the Crusaders' host. "God," he says, " is not in the camp. There is none that doeth good, no not one " (Ps. xiv., verse 2). In his despair, the archbishop prayed for death, in words that plainly allude to another Psalm (cxviii., verse 18), "0 Lord, my God! such need is there for chastening and correcting with Thy holy grace, that, if it please Thy mercy, I pray to be removed from the turmoil of this life. I have tarried long enough with this army." Fifteen days later (igth November 1190), he died at Acre. In the words of a psalm, Richard I. poured out his indignation, when he found himself deserted by his followers, and knew that the crusade had failed, "My God, why hast Thou forsaken me ? " (Ps. xxii., verse i). After the battle of Agincourt (1415) the English army, fresh from victory, sang on bended knees the first verse of Psalm cxv. (" Not unto us, 0 Lord, not unto us, but unto Thy Name give the praise"), which Henry IV. had given to his son as a
1 Henry IV, Part I, Act I, scene i.
64 THE MIDDLE AGES
motto when he called him to a share in the government of his kingdom. It was a psalm that reminded the victor of his life-long ambition. As Psalm li. was read to Henry V. on his death-bed, verse 18, (t 0 be favourable and gracious unto Sion ; build Thou the walls of Jerusalem," reminded the dying king of his cherished hope of rescuing the Holy City from the hands of the Mussulman.
More strongly political than the Holy War in Palestine, were the struggles by which Spain was wrested from the Moors, or Russia from its Mongol oppressors, and from each may be quoted instances of the use of the Psalms.
Adeline, Abbot of the Benedictine House of Chaise-Dieu, accompanied the army of Alphonso the Valiant, first King of Castile, who in 1085 had driven the Moors from Toledo. At the passage of the Tagus, the Christian soldiers recoiled from entering the swollen flood. But Adeline, mounted on his ass, rode into the stream, singing the 7th verse of Ps. xx., " Some put their trust in chariots, and some in horses; but we will remember the Name of the Lord our God." His courage shamed the hesitating soldiers ; they plunged into the stream, and the whole Christian army crossed the river. The final stage of the struggle was reached in 1510, when Cardinal Ximenes in full pontificals led the Spanish troops against the Moors at Oran. The town was captured, and the victorious cardinal rode through the streets, chanting Ps. cxv., " Not unto us, 0 Lord, not unto us, but unto Thy Name give the praise."
In the latter half of the fourteenth century, the young Demetrius, as a child of twelve, became Grand Prince of Russia, with Moscow for his capital (1363). Two centuries were yet to elapse before Ivan the Terrible was crowned and anointed first Czar of Muscovy. But it was under the youth- ful Demetrius, known from his victory by the title of " the Don," that Russia made her first great step towards national independence and national unity. In 1380, the Tartar hordes, leaving blackened solitudes in their rear, were advancing upon Moscow. For Russia, enervated by Mongol domination, torn by civil discord, hard pressed on her western borders, and menaced by invasion from the east, the crisis was supreme. The issue seemed inevitable. But it was as a Holy War that resistance was preached. Blessed by Sergius, the hermit of the Holy Trinity, Demetrius advanced to meet Mamai and the Mongol invaders on the banks of the Don (September 8th, 1380). If his heart quailed at the numbers of the enemy, it was with a psalm that he renewed his courage. After reading aloud Ps. xlvi., " God is our refuge and strength," he plunged into the fight, which ended in the total defeat of the Tartars at Koulikoff. The memory of the victory lives .in contemporary literature, in pictures and sculp-
DEMETRIUS OF THE DON 65
tures, in the Donskoi and Simonoff monasteries, and in the legends with which national gratitude has surrounded the names of Sergius and of Demetrius of the Don.
In their devotional aspect the Crusades, like pilgrimages, had developed a reverential love for the scenes of our Lord's life on earth. In theory at least, the Pope represented the moral grandeur of mankind, and, in the struggle between the Papacy and the empire, was asserted the claim of the spirit to supremacy over the flesh. Meanwhile the millennium had come and gone, and, with its passing, hopes of the future of humanity were revived. On these and other sides, men's minds were disposed to religious revivals and religious reforms, like those associated with the Cistercian or Franciscan Orders. With the need came the men. St Bernard, by his character and genius, exemplified in practice the principles which he maintained, and embodied them in a personality at once winning and commanding. Free, in its simplicity and purity, from religious or secular politics, the Cistercian reform was, in its early stages, the spiritual movement which the Christian world was demanding. In the establishment of the Cistercians in England may be traced, broadly and strongly, the influence of the Psalms.
The Founder of the Order was Stephen Harding (1066- ii34), a monk of the Benedictine house of Sherbome. It is significant that, as he made his pilgrim's journey to Rome through city, forest, or mountain pass, he daily recited the whole Psalter. On his return, as he passed through the diocese of Langres in Burgundy, he came on a cluster of huts, surrounding a wooden oratory on the slope of a hill above the river Leignes. It was the newly founded (1075) Benedictine monastery of Molesme. Fascinated by the solitude of the spot, attracted by the poverty and strictness of the brethren, he entered the community. Time passed. The monastery grew wealthy, and relaxed its discipline. In vain Abbot Robert, Prior Alberic, and Stephen Harding struggled to revive the ancient spirit. At last they determined to leave Molesme, and with twenty-one brethren, the three leaders settled (1098) at Citeaux, in the marshy glade of a wild forest. Here, on the death of Alberic (1109), Stephen was chosen the third Abbot of Citeaux, and here be framed the Rule of the Cistercian Order.
Poverty, solitude, and simplicity were the essence of the reform which the Order initiated. The brethren were thus members of a militant community, in warfare with worldliness, luxury, and insincerity, both in Church and State. Unlike the Benedictines, they were compactly organised. They were not isolated monastic homes, which might relapse unnoticed from their high ideals. Careful provision was made for the periodical visitation and inspection of all the dependencies of
C
66 THE MIDDLE AGES
Citeaux, as well as of Citeaux itself. The dress was of the simplest; but, as the black scapular fell over the white tunic, it seemed to the brethren that they bore in daily life the Cross of Christ. Their life was to be passed in sequestered villages, in hard manual toil among vineyards or cornfields, or in that meditation which "gathers itself from earthly things to con- template God." Their scanty food-a daily portion of bread and two messes of vegetables-was earned by the sweat of the brow. They possessed no property which had ever belonged to the parochial clergy. Their churches were severely simple, but filled with the austere perfection of form and outline. Their music was the Gregorian chant, sung in unison by grave masculine voices. Instead of cruci- fixes of gold or silver, a crucifix of painted wood was alone allowed. Sculptures, pictures, gorgeous vestments were banished. As in the church, so in the scriptorium. Illu- minated figures, elaborate capitals, marginal arabesques, were alike forbidden.
In the bareness, severity, and simplicity of their religious life, the Cistercians made no appeal to imagination. For fifteen years no novices were attracted to the marshy solitude of Citeaux. It seemed as though the new community would perish with the deaths of its first founders. But Stephen Harding persevered in his resolution. If any novices came, they would be men of the right stamp. At last his confidence was rewarded. In 1113, thirty men, headed by Bernard, and belonging to the noblest families of Burgundy, entered Citeaux as novices. The " barren woman " was made " to keep house, and to be a joyful mother of children." In 1115 had been established the daughter houses of La Ferte, Pontigny, Morimond, and Clairvaux, with Bernard as its first abbot. From each there sprang a whole line of monasteries.
In the Cistercian cloisters was thus planted a vine, which spread its branches far and wide, and bore fruit in many lands. A new life was breathed into the monasteries of Europe. In 1128, the first Cistercians settled in England, at Waverley, in Surrey. A little later, another body of monks, sent by Bernard himself, found a home on the banks of the Rye in Yorkshire, where now stands the Ruins of the Abbey of Rievaux. A third was established at Fountains; and the story of the foundation, as told by the Monk Serlo and Hugh of Kirkstall, is almost clothed in the language of the Psalms.
The fame of the Cistercians spread abroad through the cloisters of Northern England. It penetrated within the precincts of the Benedictine Abbey of St Mary at York, where lived many men who walked honestly in the tradition of their predecessors, but fell short of the Cistercian discipline. The piety of the new-comers]woke the Benedictines from their
FOUNTAINS ABBEY 67
lethargy; it stirred their dormant energies. They chafed at their sojourning "in the tents of Kedar," sickened of the flesh-pots of Egypt, wearied of the fret and fever of men and cities, sighed for "the wings of the dove," that they "might flee away, and be at rest." They longed to wander "far off, and remain in the wilderness." (Ps. lv., verses 6, 7).
Chief of the men who were thus moved by the example of the Cistercians was Richard, the sacrist of the house. He and six of his brethren, like-minded with himself, entered into a bond that they would seek a stricter life, and atone for past remissness by a severer discipline. But they dared not reveal their purpose to the prior, lest he should bring their design to nothing. Their fears were without cause. Prior Richard had felt the same stirring, and formed the same purpose. He gladly associated himself with the others, whose numbers presently rose to thirteen men of but "one heart and one soul." They longed to depart from the convent, and to be grafted on the fruitful vine of the Cistercian Order.
But their design became known to other members of the house, and reached the ears of the aged Abbot Godfrey. He charged them to give up an undertaking that cast a slur upon their Order. He even threatened punishment, if they per- sisted. Within the convent they were treated as traitors and as rebels, and it was only by taking refuge within the church and by appealing to Turstin, Archbishop of York, that they escaped violence. In 1132, the thirteen associates passed through the gates of the abbey in the train of Turstin, who begged the Archbishop of Canterbury to protect them, as Legate of the Apostolic See. Their only desire, he urged, was to follow, in their fullest meaning, the vows of their profession. The spirit of God, he says, speaks by the mouth of the Psalmist. "Promise unto the Lord your God, and keep it; pay thy vows unto the most Highest; I will pay thee my vows which I promised with my lips." The luxury of their surroundings had choked their spiritual aspirations. They longed to flee from the fate of the Israelites in the desert, who " did eat and were filled, for He gave them their own desire;
they were not disappointed of their lust." If these men felt that they could not live uprightly so long as they stayed where they were, it was wrong to compel them to remain. " God," he continues, " who is our hope and strength, a very present help in trouble," was making them a way to escape. Was not their longing to withdraw from the world like that of David, when he yearned to escape from the clash of arms and the tumult of the people: " Lo, then would I get me away far off, and remain in the wilderness " (Ps. lv., verse 7) ?
Whether the legate intervened, or not, is uncertain. But, in December 1132, Turstin himself took the brethren with him to celebrate the Nativity on his great manorial domains at