Stoics and Saints - College of Stoic Philosophers

116 THE MONASTIC SYSTEM.
reared their splendid fane, because they
found there a
dismal marsh and a thick forest, with no clearing big enough
to grow them even a few sheaves of corn. Half their
number died in the first winter from famine and marsh
fever ;
the rest held on, and the result of their pious labour
we enjoy to-day.
If we search the records of the settlement of Benedict
at Subiaco or Monte Cassino : of Columbanus at Luxeuil
or Bobbio ;
of his chief disciple at St. Gall : of Abelard at
the Paraclete, and Bernard at Clairvaulx, we find substanti
ally the same history. These scenes which seem so fit to
be the homes of a soft and indolent quietude, were chosen
because of their wild and desolate sternness ;
and they were
tamed to their present beauty by
the strenuous toil of
husbandmen, the like of whom no other history reveals.
These men believed that each fen which they drained, each
copse which they cleared, each acre which they brought
under the ploughshare, was an acceptable offering of pious
hands and hearts to God. At least this belief animated
the leaders ;
the mass of the followers at any rate caught
the habit, and to catch a good habit is something
great
for the
mass of men in such a world as this. It would be
idle, of course, to contend that this was the constant char
acter of monastic labour throughout the Middle Ages.
Monasteries grew fearfully rich, and, like the secular lords
around them, cultivated vast estates by
the labour of a
peasantry bound to the soil. But the primal motif never
wholly failed them ; agriculture was always
a main concern
with the great religious communities
;
and the quasi-consecration
of all that belonged to them secured for their lands
some share of immunity from the horrors and devastations
of war ; though the protection was more imperfect
than is
generally supposed. Something
of the noble motive to
labour which inspired the first founders, continued to animate