NOTE J

In France, the religious houses suppressed by the laws of February 13, 1790, and August 18, 1792, amounted (without reckoning various minor establishments) to 820 abbeys of men and 255 of women, with aggregate revenues of 95,000,000 livres.

The Thirty Years’ War in Germany wrought much mischief to the monasteries.  On the death of Maria Theresa, in 1780, Joseph II., her son, dissolved the Mendicant Orders and suppressed the greater number of monasteries and convents in his dominions.

Although Pope Alexander VII. secured the suppression of many small cloisters in Italy, he was in favor of a still wider abolition on account of the superfluity of religious institutes, and the general degeneration of the monks.  Various minor suppressions had taken place in Italy, but it was not until the unification of the kingdom that the religious houses were declared national property.  The total number of monasteries suppressed in Italy, down to 1882, was 2,255, involving an enormous displacement of property and dispersion of inmates.

The fall of the religious houses in Spain dates from the law of June 21, 1835, which suppressed nine hundred monasteries at a blow.  The remainder were dissolved on October 11th, in the same year.

No European country had so many religious houses in proportion to its population and area as Portugal.  In 1834 the number suppressed exceeded 500.

NOTE K

The criticism of Schaff is just in its estimate of the general influence of the monastic ideal, but there were individual monks whose views of sin and salvation were singularly pure and elevating.  Saint Hugh, of Lincoln, said to several men of the world who were praising the lives of the Carthusian monks:  “Do not imagine that the kingdom of Heaven is only for monks and hermits.  When God will judge each one of us, he will not reproach the lost for not having been monks or solitaries, but for not having been true Christians.  Now, to be a true Christian, three things are necessary; and if one of these three things is wanting to us, we are Christians only in name, and our sentence will be all the more severe, the more we have made profession of perfection.  The three things are:  Charity in the heart, truth on the lips, and purity of life; if we are wanting in these, we are unworthy of the name of Christian.”

THE END

INDEX

A

Abbey, see Monastery. 
Abbot, meaning of word, 425;
  as father of family of monks, 143;
  election of, 144;
  description of installation of, 145;
  wealth and political influence of, 147;
  disorders among lay, 179;
  as a feudal lord, 373;
  in legislative assemblies, 400. 
Abelard opposed by Bernard, 196.