and superstitious.  Their furious natures needed taming and their rude minds tutoring.  Even though during this period churches and monasteries were raised in amazing numbers, yet the spirit of barbarism was so strong that the Christians could scarcely escape its influence.  The power of Christianity was modified by the nature of the people, whose characters it aimed to transform.  The remarks of William Newton Clarke respecting the Christians of the first and second centuries are also appropriate to the period under review:  “The people were changed by the new faith, but the new faith was changed by the people.”  Christianity “made a new people, better than it found them, but they in turn made a new Christianity, with its strong points illustrated and confirmed in their experience, but with weakness brought in from their defects.”

Yes, the work of civilizing the Germanic nations was a task of herculean proportions and of tremendous significance.  Out of these tribes were to be constructed the nations of modern Europe.  To this important mission the monks addressed themselves with such courage, patience, faith and zeal, as to entitle them to the veneration of posterity.  With singular wisdom and unflinching bravery they carried on their missionary and educational enterprises, in the face of discouragements and obstacles sufficient to dismay the bravest souls.  The tenacious strength of those wild forces that clashed with the tenderer influences of the cloister should soften our criticism of the inconsistencies which detract from the glory of those early ministers of righteousness and exemplars of gentleness and peace.

IV

REFORMED AND MILITARY ORDERS

The monastic institution was never entirely good or entirely bad.  In periods of general degradation there were beautiful exceptions in monasteries ruled by pure and powerful abbots.  From the beginning various monasteries soon departed from their discipline by sheltering iniquity and laziness, while other establishments faithfully observed the rules.  But during the eighth, ninth and tenth centuries there was a widespread decline in the spirit of devotion and a shameful relaxation of monastic discipline.  Malmesbury, King Alfred, Alcuin, in England, and many continental writers, sorrowfully testified against the monks because of their vices, their revelings, their vain and gorgeous ornaments of dress and their waning zeal for virtue.  The priests hunted and fought, prayed, preached, swore and drank as they pleased.  “We cannot wonder,” says an anonymous historian, “that they should commit the more reasonable offence of taking wives.”  Disorders were common everywhere; the monastic vows were sadly neglected.  Political and religious ideals were lost sight of amid the prevailing confusion and wild commotion of those dark days.  “It is true,” says Carlyle, “all things have two faces, a light one and a dark.  It is true in three centuries much imperfection accumulates; many an ideal, monastic or otherwise, shooting forth into practice as it can, grows to a strange reality; and we have to ask with amazement, Is this your ideal?  For alas the ideal has to grow into the real, and to seek out its bed and board there, often in a sorry way.”