Reading (2)

September 20, 2119
P. C. Lo

A. The Fall of the Roman Empire
B. The ‚Dark Age‛
C. How the Monks Saved Western
European Civilization
Irish contribution
Benedict‟s contribution
Non-Christian monasticism and other
Civilizations
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姚介厚, 李鹏程, 杨深著,《西歐文明》,頁
155-59。
經濟
政治
文化
蠻族入侵
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‚羅馬民族高昂、進取的道德精神已喪失殆
盡,社會道德風氣極為敗壞‛
‚羅馬全年娛樂假日公元1世紀時為66天,4
世紀時竟達175天,近半年時日沉湎于觀看奴
隸角鬥、鬥獸、海戰、戲劇等表演‛(頁157)
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匈奴人(Huns),日耳曼諸部落
(Germanic tribes)武裝非法移民
《西歐文明》,頁158。漢帝國與羅馬帝國
3次大入侵及洗劫
‚vandalism”
Hungary
Germanic tribes – Angles, Saxons, Jutes,
Franks
Angles Angland England
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AD 476
(南北朝)

《關於羅馬人的二十個問題》,頁163。
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“the growth of so mighty an empire as
Rome‟s was by no means inevitable.
Rome‟s greatness had come from
conquests that provided the Romans
with the means to expand still further,
until there were not enough Romans to
conquer and govern any more peoples
and territory.
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“When pressure from outsiders grew, the
Romans lacked the resources to
advance and defeat the enemy as in
the past…Without new conquests to
provide the immense wealth needed to
defend and maintain internal prosperity,
the Romans finally yielded to
unprecedented onslaughts by fierce
and numerous attackers.”
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“Like similar empires
in the ancient world,
it had been unable
to sustain its
„Immoderate
greatness‟” (Kagan,
Ozment, Turner, The
Western Heritage, 10 th
ed. 2010, p.162)
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認識真正的中世紀
Reading (1):姚介厚、李鹏程、 杨深著,
《西歐文明》,頁163-166。(‚如何認識西
歐中世紀文明‛)
早期中世紀(Early Middle Ages)
鼎盛期中世紀(High Middle Ages)
後期中世紀(Late Middle Ages)
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‚從西羅馬帝國滅亡到約公元1000年的500餘
年間,西歐由於日耳曼蠻族入侵和公元9世紀
斯坎的納維亞半島蠻族南侵,確實兩番出現
了戰亂頻仍、經濟衰敗、政局混亂、古希臘
羅馬文化傳統慘遭破壞殆盡的滿目瘡痍景象
,看來是一種文明的大倒退,所謂中世紀是
‘黑暗時代’,主要是就此而言。‛(姚介
厚、李鹏程、 杨深著,《西歐文明》,頁
164)
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Buildings in Rome crumbled
Looting
Highway robbers
Highway police and customs guards extort
bribes
Kidnapping and trafficking of children
Enslavement of freemen and women
Burned libraries
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Homer and Virgil and all of classical poetry
Herodotus and Tacitus and all of classical
history
Demosthenes and Cicero and all of
classical oratory
Plato and Aristotle and all of Greek
philosophy
Plotinus and Porphyry and all the
subsequent commentary
Tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and
Euripides (really lost)
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‚西羅馬帝國滅於蠻族之手,主要是因為它自身已經
完全腐敗了,已無抵御強敵之力;羅馬文明向中世
紀文明的轉變也得靠蠻族的外部力量,因為衰落的
羅馬文明已完全失去自我革新的機制與活力。西歐
的這種階段性文明的轉變是極為痛苦、曲折的。羅
馬文明的輝煌成就慘遭毀滅性破壞,希臘羅馬的精
神瀕于滅絕,只在基督教內部以神學形式有所傳承,
又靠阿拉伯民族保存其文化遺產,直到中世紀盛期
和至文藝復興時期才得以重放光彩。西歐文明受嚴
重挫折,它走上封建化道路經歷了漫長的所謂‘黑
暗時期’,文明的轉型艱難地經歷了幾個世紀。
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與此相比較,古代中國從奴隸制向封建制的社
會轉型,雖然從戰國至秦漢也經歷了內戰,
但主要是通過中華文明(文化上主要是儒家、
法家、道家等)自身內部的變革機制實現的,
并非在外部蠻族力量毀滅性的打擊后才完成
自身的階段性文明轉型,古代中華文明的這
種轉型相對平和而有連續性。中世紀千餘年
中華文明比西歐中世紀文明更為優越、繁盛,
其主要原因之一,是它有自身變革的機制與
活力,保持了文明傳統的延續性。‛(姚介厚,
李鹏程, 杨深著,《西歐文明》,頁159-160。)
與五胡亂華比較
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Catholic
Church
公教
Protestant
Church
新教
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Orthodox
Church
正教
Byzantium
拜占庭皇國

Asceticism(禁慾主義,苦行/苦修主義)
Self-denial (money, sex, power, comfort,
companions, etc) union with God
Anthony of Egypt (c.251-356); hermit
Solitary, or in community
“monk” (monachos) – “lonely one”
“monastery” (monasterion) – “house of
lone ones,” a community in which a
large number of lonely ones living
together
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“I hereby renounce my parents, my
brothers and relatives, my friends, my
possessions and my property, and the vain
and empty glory and pleasure of this
world. I also renounce my own will, for the
will of God. I accept all the hardships of
monastic life, and take the vows of purity,
chastity, and poverty, in the hope of
heaven; and I promise to remain a monk in
this monastery all the days of my life.”
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“A monk‟s purpose in retiring
to a monastery was to
cultivate a more disciplined
spiritual life… The monks‟
intention had not been to
perform great tasks for
European civilization, yet as
time went on, they came to
appreciate the task for
which the times seemed to
have called them.” (Woods,
p.27)
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Reading (2):
Chapter 3: “The Monks of the
West and the Formation of the
Western Tradition,” pp.47-72.
中譯本,頁40-67
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“the monastery was the most typical
cultural institution throughout the whole
period that extends from the decline of
classical civilization to the rise of the
European universities in the twelfth
century – upwards of seven hundred
years.” (Dawson, p.47)
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“In this new environment monasticism
inevitably tended to assume a role of
cultural leadership foreign to the original
spirit of the institution.
The monks had to instruct their converts not
only in Christian doctrine but in the Latin
tongue…
They had to teach reading and writing and
those arts and sciences which were
necessary for the maintenance of the
Church and liturgy,
such as calligraphy, painting, music and,
above all, chronology and the knowledge
of the calendar…” (Dawson, p.55)
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“Here [Ireland], far from the
barbarian despoliation [掠
奪] of the continent, monks
and scribes laboriously,
lovingly, even playfully
preserved the West‟s
written treasury. With the
return of stability in Europe,
these Irish scholars were
instrumental in spreading
learning. Thus the Irish not
only were conservators of
civilization, but became
shapers of the medieval
mind, putting their unique
stamp on Western culture.”
(book description on back)
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“Wherever they went the Irish brought with
them their books, many unseen in
Europe for centuries… Wherever they
went they brought their love of learning
and their skills in bookmaking. In the
bays and valleys of their exile, they
reestablished literacy and breathed new
life into the exhausted literary culture of
Europe. And that is how the Irish saved
civilization.” (Cahill, p.196)
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“this new learning had to compete in
Ireland with a very ancient and
elaborate system of vernacular culture
and education, which had been
handed down for centuries by the
sacred order of seers and poets who
held a very important place in Irish
society.
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“The representatives of the new culture could
only triumph by meeting their rivals on their
own ground, as men of learning and
masters of the word of power, and
therefore it was natural and inevitable that
Irish monasticism should acquire many of
the features of the old learned class and
that the monasteries should become not
only abodes of prayer and asceticism but
also schools and centres of learning.”
(Dawson, p.58-9)
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(NB: not the same Benedict to be mentioned
later)
“on his repeated journeys to Rome and Gaul
he brought back to England a wealth of
manuscripts, paintings, relics and vestments, as
well as masons and glaziers and singers for the
adornment and service of the Church.”
“Hence it was in Northumbria that Anglo-Saxon
culture, and perhaps the whole culture of
Western monasticism in the Dark Ages,
achieved their climax at the beginning of the
eighth century. (Dawson, p.65-66)
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“the monks taught metallurgy, introduced
new crops, copied ancient texts,
preserved literacy, pioneered in
technology, invented champagne,
improved the European landscape,
provided for wanderers of every stripe,
and looked after the lost and
shipwrecked.” (Woods, p.45)
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“The influence of monasticism upon the
society of the early Middle Ages would
be difficult to exaggerate. The monks
were generally the best farmers in
Europe; they reclaimed waste lands,
drained swamps, and made numerous
discoveries relating to the improvement
of the soil. They preserved some of the
building skill of the Romans and
achieved noteworthy progress in many
of the industrial arts, especially in wood
carving, metal-working, weaving, glassmaking,
and brewing.
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It was the monks,
furthermore, who
wrote most of the
books, copied the
ancient manuscripts,
and maintained the
majority of the
schools and libraries
and nearly all of the
hospitals that existed
during the early
Middle Ages.”
Edward McNall Burns and
Philip Lee Ralph, World
Civilizations, 5 th ed., 1974,
vol. 1, p.339
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Scriptorum(繕寫室),
where monks copied
books and preserved
civilization during the
dark ages
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Gregory the Great at his
writing desk
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本篤
c. 480 - c. 547
1 st sack of Rome: 410
Constant wars as
barbarians kept
invading the Italian
peninsula
Invited to be an
abbot
Founded
monasteries
Visited by a king
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monastery
at Monte Cassino
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A work of only 73 short chapters.
Its wisdom is of two kinds: spiritual (how to live a
Christocentric life on earth) and administrative
(how to run a monastery efficiently).
More than half the chapters describe how to
be obedient and humble, and what to do
when a member of the community is not.
About one-fourth regulate the worship of God
One-tenth outline how, and by whom, the
monastery should be managed.
And another tenth specifically describe the
abbot‟s pastoral duties.
“Benedict of Nursia”
Wikipedia
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“Let all guests who arrive be received as
Christ, because He will say: „I was a stranger
and you took Me in‟ (Mt 25:35).
In the greeting let all humility be shown to
the guests, whether coming or going; with
the head bowed down or the whole body
prostrate on the ground, let Christ be adored
in them as He is also received.
Let the greatest care be taken, especially in
the reception of the poor and travelers,
because Christ is received more specially in
them;”
http://www.kansasmonks.org/RuleOfStBenedict.html#ch53
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“In fact, the Benedictine Abbey was a selfcontained
economic organism, like the
villa of a Roman landowner, save that
the monks were themselves the workers
and the old classical contrast between
servile work and free leisure no longer
obtained.” (Dawson, p.51)
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“Idleness is the enemy of the soul; and
therefore the brethren ought to be
employed in manual labor at certain times,
at others, in devout reading….
If, however, the needs of the place, or
poverty should require that they do the
work of gathering the harvest themselves,
let them not be downcast, for then are they
monks in truth, if they live by the work of
their hands, as did also our forefathers and
the Apostles.”
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“By its sanctification of work and poverty it
revolutionized both the order of social
values which had dominated the slaveowning
society of the Empire and that
which was expressed in the aristocratic
warrior ethos of the barbarian conquerors,
so that the peasant, who for so long had
been the forgotten bearer of the whole
social structure, found his way of life
recognized and honoured by the highest
spiritual authority of the age.” (Dawson,
p.56)
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“Silent men were observed about the
country, or discovered in the forest,
digging, clearing and building; and other
silent men, not seen, were sitting in the
cold cloister, tiring their eyes and
keeping their attention on the stretch,
while they painfully copied and
recopied the manuscripts which they
had saved.
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“There was no one who contended or
cried out, or drew attention to what was
going on, but by degrees the woody
swamp became a hermitage, a religious
house, a farm, an abbey, a village, a
seminary, a school of learning and a city.”
(Dawson, p.58)
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“For centuries, as scholarship became one
of the recognized forms of the monk‟s
labor, the monasteries were the
guardians of the western intellectual
heritage from the Greco-Roman world.
Especially in what we usually call the
Dark Ages, roughly the five hundred
years after 500 A.D., the Benedictine
Order was at the front of the civilizing
forces of the West.”
Brinton, Christopher, Wolff, A History of Civilization, 3 rd ed., p.157.
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“Their disciplined organization and
devotion to hard work made the
Benedictines an economic and political
power as well as a spiritual force
wherever they settled.”
Kagan, Ozment, Turner, The Western Heritage, 10 th
ed. (2010), p.184
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Pope Gregory I was elected as Pope in
590. He was the first monk to be so
elected, and popularized Benedictine
monasticism.
Charlemagne (查理曼大帝 747-814)
imposed the Rule on all monasteries in
the Holy Roman Empire
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Other ecclesiastical and liturgical reform
“its [the Empire‟s] work of cultural and
religious unification remained the
permanent foundation of all the later
medieval developments.” (Dawson, p.69)
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“And after the fall of the Empire it was the
great monasteries…that were the only
remaining islands of intellectual life amidst
the returning flood of barbarism which once
again threatened to submerge Western
Christendom.
“Ninety-nine out of a hundred monasteries
could be burnt and the monks killed or
driven out, and yet the whole tradition
could be reconstituted from the one
survivor,.. (Dawson, p.72)
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“following the same rule, singing the same
liturgy, reading the same books and
thinking the same thoughts as their
predecessors. …with the result that a
century later the Norman and English
monasteries were again among the
leaders of Western culture.” (Dawson,
p.72)
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“by the beginning of the fourteenth
century, the [Benedictine] order had
supplied the Church with 24 popes, 200
cardinals, 7,000 archbishops, and 1,500
canonized saints. At its height, the
Benedictine order could boast 37,000
monasteries.” (Woods, How the Catholic Church Built
Western Civilization, p.28)
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1964, Pope Paul VI named St. Benedict as
patron saint of Europe
9 April, 2008, Pope Benedict XVI discussed
the influence St. Benedict had on Western
Europe. The pope said that “with his life and
work St. Benedict exercised a fundamental
influence on the development of European
civilization and culture” and helped Europe
to emerge from the "dark night of history"
that followed the fall of the Roman empire
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Monks – lonely ones
Renouncing civilization
Preserving and transmitting civilization !
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位於甘肅省 甘南藏族自治州 夏河縣
藏傳佛教格魯派六大寺院之一
3000人
尚有藏经楼、印经院等
《維基百科》
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聞思學院 (顯宗學院/哲學學院)
續部上學院
續部下學院
時輪學院
醫藥學院
喜金剛學院
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“there have been other cultures – Tibet,
Burma and Ceylon, for example – in
which a non-Christian monasticim
played a somewhat similar role.”
(Dawson, p.47)
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中文,非基督徒論述,圖書館有:
王亞平著,《修道院的變遷》。
姚介厚, 李鹏程, 杨深著,《西歐文明》
(2002,2007),上冊,頁194-195。(‚修
道院制度的衍變‛)
李秋零、田薇著,《神光沐浴下的文化再生》
(2000),頁102-110。(‚西方修道制度的
形成及其文化意義‛)
田薇著,《信仰與理性 : 中世紀基督敎文化的
興衰》(2001),頁54-60.(‚修道院 – 修
道制度與文化的保存‛)
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燕京大學神學院 1936 / 2000 (NB)
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‚黑暗時期‛與歐洲接受基督宗教有甚麼關
係?
修道院對歐洲文明的貢獻是時世造英雄?還
是英雄造時世?
For Reading (2), just acquire the main
ideas, ignore most names of people
今天教會該如何回應時代社會的需要?
今天教會有甚麼重要資源可以與社會中匱乏者分享?
香港教會目前有甚麼關懷社會行動?
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