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which we admire in the ancients, and traces of which we still meet with in the East, flourished among the religious, many of whom, by the name of Hospitallers, were especially devoted to the exercise of that engaging virtue. In the washing of feet, the blazing fire, the refreshing repast, and the comfortable couch, hospitality appeared, as in the days of Abraham, in all its beauty. If the traveller was poor, he was supplied with food, raiment, and money sufficient till he should reach another monastery, where he received the same treatment. Ladies mounted on their palfreys, knights in quest of adventure, kings bewildered in the chase, knocked at midnight at the gates of ancient abbeys, and shared the hospitality that was given to the obscure pilgrim. Sometimes two hostile knights met in one of these convents and made merry together till sunrise, when, sword in hand, they vindicated the superiority of their ladies and of their respective countries. Boucicault, on his return from the Prussian crusade, lodged in a monastery with several English knights, and singly maintained, in defiance of them all, that a Scotch knight, whom they had attacked in the woods, had been treacherously put to death.

In these inns of religion it was considered as doing great honor to a prince, to propose that he should pay some attentions to the poor who happened to be there at the same time. Cardinal de Bourbon, having attended the unfortunate Elizabeth into Spain, stopped on his return at the hotel of Roncevaux, in the Pyrenees, where he waited at table upon three hundred pilgrims and gave each of them three reals to help them on their journey. Poussin was one of the last travellers that availed himself of this Christian custom. He went from monastery to monastery at Rome, painting altar-pieces in return for the hospitality which he received, and thus renewed in his own profession the adventures of Homer.1

I There is a place-probably the only one remaining in this island—that retains some traces of this ancient monastic bounty; that is, St. Croix, commonly called St. Cross, near Winchester. To the traveller who knocks at the gate of this hospital and asks for refreshment the porter gives bread and beer -a faint image of what was the hospitality of the convents abroad. S.

CHAPTER IX.

ARTS, MANUFACTURES, COMMERCE.

NOTHING is more at variance with historical truth than to represent the first monks as indolent people who lived in affluence at the expense of human superstition. In the first place, this affluence was very far from being real. The order, by its industry, might have acquired wealth, but it is certain that the life of the monks individually was one of great self-denial. All those delicacies of the convent, so exceedingly exaggerated, were confined, even in our time, to a narrow cell, austere practices, and the simplest diet, to say nothing more. In the next place, it is a gross falsehood that the monks were but pious sluggards; if their numerous hospitals, their colleges, their libraries, their religious duties, and all the other services of which we have spoken, had not been sufficient to employ all their time, they would have found out other ways of being useful. They applied themselves to the mechanical arts, and extended the commerce of Europe, both internal and external.

The congregation of the third order of St. Francis, called Bons Fieux, manufactured cloth and lace at the same time that they taught the children of the poor to read and took care of the sick. The company of Poor Brethren, Shoemakers, and Tailors, was instituted in the same spirit. In the Convent of Hieronymites in Spain, several manufactures were carried on. Most of the first monks were masons as well as husbandmen. The Benedictines built their houses with their own hands, as appears from the history of Monte Cassino, Fontevrault, and several others.

With respect to internal trade, many fairs and markets belonged to the abbeys and were established by them. The celebrated fair of Landyt à St. Denis owed its origin to the University of Paris. The nuns supplied great part of the linens of Europe; the beer of Flanders, and most of the finer wines of the Archipelago, Hungary, Italy, and Spain, were made by religious con

gregations. The exportation and importation of corn, either for foreign countries or for the armies, also depended in part on the great ecclesiastical proprietors. The churches promoted the trade in parchment, wax, linen, silks, jewelry, marbles, and the manufactures of wool, tapestry, and gold and silver plate. They alone in the barbarous ages afforded some employment to artists, whom they brought for the purpose from Italy and the remotest corners of Greece. The monks themselves cultivated the fine arts, and were the painters, sculptors, and architects of the Gothic age. If their works now appear rude to us, let us not forget that they form the connecting link between ancient and modern times, that but for them the chain of letters and the arts would have been irreparably broken; and let not the refinement of our taste involve us in the guilt of ingratitude.

With the exception of that small portion of the North comprehended in the line of the Hanseatic towns, all foreign commerce was formerly carried on by the Mediterranean. The Greeks

and Arabs brought us the commodities of the East, which they shipped at Alexandria; but the Crusades transferred this source of wealth into the hands of the Franks. "The conquests of the Crusaders," says Fleury, "secured to them freedom of trade in the merchandise of Greece, Syria, and Egypt, and consequently in the productions of the East, which had not yet found their way to Europe by other channels."1

Robertson, in his excellent work on the commerce of the ancients and moderns with the East Indies, confirms, by the most curious details, what Fleury has here advanced. Genoa, Venice, Pisa, Florence, and Marseilles, owed their opulence and their power to these enterprises of an extravagant zeal which the genuine spirit of Christianity has long condemned. It cannot,

1 Hist. Eccles., tome xviii. p. 20.

2 Fleury, loc. cit. Our author is here misled by Fleury, whose Ecclesiastical History, with its discourses, abounds with inaccuracies of statement and opinion, which have been exposed by Marchetti and several other critics. The chief motives that prompted the Crusades were those of religion and humanity,to check and diminish the Mohammedan power in the East and afford the Christians of that region a sufficient protection. It is not, then, true that they were "enterprises of an extravagant zeal." It is equally incorrect to assert that they have been condemned by "the genuine spirit of Christianity;" for the results of the Crusades were to arrest the ambition and rapacity of the

however, be denied that modern navigation and commerce sprang from those celebrated expeditions. Whatever was good in them belongs to religion, and all the rest to human passions. If the Crusaders were wrong in attempting to wrest Egypt and Syria from the Saracens, let us not sigh in beholding those fine countries a prey to the Turks, who seem to have naturalized pestilence and barbarism in the native land of Phidias and Euripides. What harm would there be if Egypt had been a colony of France since the days of St. Louis, and if the descendants of French knights were reigning at Constantinople, Athens, Damascus, Tripoli, Carthage, Tyre, and Jerusalem ?

Whenever Christianity has proceeded alone upon distant expeditions, she has afforded abundant evidence that the mischiefs of the Crusades did not proceed from her, but from the inordinate passions of men. Our missionaries have opened to us sources of trade, for which they spilled no blood but their own, and of that indeed they have been very lavish. We refer the reader to what we have already said on this subject in the book which treats of the missions.

CHAPTER X.

CIVIL AND CRIMINAL LAWS.

AN inquiry into the influence of Christianity upon laws and governments, like that which we have instituted in regard to morals and poetry, would form the subject of a very interesting work. We shall merely point out the way and present a few results, in order to complete the sum of the benefits conferred by religion.

We have only to open at random the councils, the canon law, the bulls and rescripts of the court of Rome, to be convinced that our ancient laws (collected in the capitularies of Charle

Turks, to save European civilization, and secure the independence of Christian states-effects which true Christianity cannot but approve. See Universal History, vol. Iv.; Alzog, Hist. de l'Eglise, vol. ii. pp. 283 and 338; Fredet, Mod. Hist., vol. i. p. 80. T.

magne, the formulas of Marculfe, and the ordinances of the kings of France) borrowed numberless regulations from the Church, or, rather, were partly compiled by learned priests or assemblies of ecclesiastics.

From time immemorial, the bishops and metropolitans enjoyed considerable privileges in civil matters. To them was committed the promulgation of imperial decrees relative to the public tranquillity; they were taken for umpires in disputes: they were a kind of natural justices of the peace, that religion gave to mankind. The Christian emperors, finding this custom established, thought it so salutary1 that they confirmed it by new enactments. Each graduate, from the sub-deacon to the sovereign pontiff, exercised a certain jurisdiction, so that the religious spirit operated at a thousand points and in a thousand ways upon the laws. But was this influence favorable or detrimental to the public welfare? In our opinion it was favorable.

In the first place, in all that is termed administration the wisdom of the clergy has been invariably acknowledged, even by writers the most inimical to Christianity. When a country is in a state of peace, men do not indulge in mischief for the mere pleasure of doing it. What interest could a council have in enacting an unjust law respecting the order of succession or the conditions of marriage? or why would a priest, authorized to decide on any point of law, have prevaricated? If it is true that education and the principles imbibed in our youth influence our character, ministers of the gospel must in general have been actuated by a spirit of mildness and impartiality,—at least in those things which did not regard their order or themselves individually. Moreover, the esprit de corps, which may be bad in the whole, is always good in part. It is fair to presume that a member of a great religious society will distinguish himself in a civil post rather by his integrity than by his misdemeanor, were it only for the credit of his order and the responsibility which that order imposes upon him.

The councils, moreover, were composed of prelates of all coun

Eus., de Vit. Const., lib. iv. cap. 27; Sozom., lib. i. cap. 9; Cod. Just., lib. i. tit. iv. leg. 7.

2 See Voltaire's Essai sur les Mœurs.

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