SOURCE: Knowles, David. “The Critics of the Monks: Gerald of Wales, Walter Map and the Satirists.” In The Monastic Order in England: A History of Its Development from the Times of St. Dunstan to the Fourth Lateran Council, 943-1216, pp. 662-78. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1950.

In the following excerpt, first published in 1940, Knowles examines Gerald's criticism of monks, discusses some limitations of his arguments, and compares and contrasts his interests to those of his contemporary and fellow critic of monasticism, Walter Map.

I

In an earlier chapter some account was given of the active hostility shown towards the monastic body by a group of influential bishops in the last decades of the twelfth century. At the very moment when the opposition of the secular clergy in high places was thus making itself felt, another and hitherto unprecedented form of attack began which was to continue intermittently in one...