All down through the Middle Ages, the idea continued to prevail that the monastic life was the highest and purest expression of the Christian religion, and that the monks’ chances of heaven were much better than those of any other class of men.  The laity believed them to be a little nearer God than even the clergy, and so they paid them gold for their prayers.  It will readily be understood that in degenerate times, so profitable a doctrine would be earnestly encouraged by the monks.  The knight, whose conscience revolted against his conduct but who could not bring himself to a complete renunciation of the world, believed that heaven would condone his faults or crimes if in some way he could make friends with the dwellers in the cloister.  To this end, he founded abbeys and sustained monasteries by liberal gifts of gold and land.  Such a donation was made in the following language:  “I, Gervais, who belong to the chivalry of the age, caring for the salvation of my soul, and considering that I shall never reach God by my own prayers and fastings, have resolved to recommend myself in some other way to those who, night and day, serve God by these practices, so that, thanks to their intercession, I may be able to obtain that salvation which I of myself am unable to merit.”  Another endowment was made by Peter, Knight of Maull, in these quaint terms:  “I, Peter, profiting by this lesson, and desirous, though a sinner and unworthy, to provide for my future destiny, I have desired that the bees of God may come to gather their honey in my orchards, so that when their fair hives shall be full of rich combs, they may be able to remember him by whom the hive was given.”

The people believed that the prayers of the monks lifted their souls into heaven; that their curses doomed them to the bottomless pit.  A monastery was the safe and sure road to heaven.  The observation of Gibbon respecting the early monks is applicable to all of them:  “Each proselyte who entered the gates of a monastery was persuaded that he trod the steep and thorny path of eternal happiness.”

The second cause for monasticism in general was a natural love of solitude, which became almost irresistible when reinforced by a despair of the world’s redemption.  The poet voiced the feelings of almost every soul, at some period in life, when he wrote: 

     “O for a lodge in some vast wilderness,
     Some boundless contiguity of shade,
     Where rumor of oppression or deceit,
     Of unsuccessful or successful war,
     Might never reach me more.”

The longing for solitude accompanied the desire for salvation.  An unconquerable weariness of the world, with its strife and passion, overcame the seeker after God.  A yearning to escape the duties of social life, which were believed to interfere with one’s duty to God, possessed his soul.  The flight from the world was merely the method adopted to satisfy his soul-longings.  If such times of degeneracy and rampant iniquity ever return, if humanity is again compelled to stagger under the moral burdens that crushed the Roman Empire, without doubt the love of solitude, which is now held in check by the satisfactions of a comparatively pure and peaceful social life, will again arise in its old-time strength and impel men to seek in waste and lonely places the virtues they cannot acquire in a decaying civilization.