But aside from the differences between Eastern and Western monasticism, the Christian institution passed through a variety of changes.  The growth of monasticism from the hermit stage to the cloistral life has already been described.  To what shall the development of the community system be attributed?  No religious institution can remain stationary, unaffected by the changing conditions of the society in which it exists.  The progress of the intellect, and the development of social, political and industrial conditions, effect great transformations in religious organizations.

The monastic institution grew up amid the radical changes of European society.  In its early days it witnessed the invasion of the barbarians, which swept away old political divisions and destroyed many of the heritages of an ancient civilization.  Then the process of reconstruction slowly began.  New states were forming; nations were crystallizing.  The barbarian was to lay the foundations of great cities and organize powerful commonwealths out of wild but victorious tribes.  The monk could not remain in hiding.  He was brother to the roving warrior.  The blood in his veins was too active to permit him to stand still amid the mighty whirl of events.  Without entirely abandoning his cloistral life, he became a zealous missionary of the church among the barbarians, a patron of letters and of agriculture, in short a stirring participant in the work of civilization.

Next came the crusades.  Jerusalem was to be captured for Christ and the church.  The monk then appeared as a crusade-preacher, a warrior on the battle-field, or a nurse in the military hospital.

The rise of feudalism likewise wrought a change in the spirit and position of the monks.  The feudal lord was master of his vassals.  “The genius of feudalism,” says Allen, “was a spirit of uncontrolled independence.”  So the abbot became a feudal lord with immense possessions and powers.  He was no longer the obscure, spiritual father of a little family of monks, but a temporal lord also, an aristocrat, ruling wide territories, and dwelling in a monastery little different from the castle of the knight and often exceeding it in splendor.  With wealth came ease, and hard upon the heels of ease came laziness, arrogance, corruption.

Then followed the marvelous intellectual awakening, the moral revival, the discoveries and inventions of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.  The human mind at last had aroused itself from a long repose, or turned from a profitless activity into broad and fruitful fields.  The corruption of the monasteries meant the laxity of vows, the cessation of ministration to the poor and the sick.  Then arose the tender and loving Francis, with his call to poverty and to service.  The independent exercise of the intellect gave birth to heresies, but the Dominicans appeared to preach them down.