This, then, may be accepted as the usual history of a monastery or a monastic order.  First, vows of poverty, obedience and chastity zealously cherished and observed; as a result of loyalty to this ideal, a spirit of devotion to righteousness is created, and a pure, lofty type of Christian life is formed, which, if not the highest and truest, is sufficiently exalted to win the reverence of worldly men and an extra-ordinary power over their lives and affections.  There naturally follow numerous and valuable gifts of land and gold.  The monks become rich as well as powerful.  Then the decline begins.  Vast riches have always been a menace to true spirituality.  Perhaps they always will be.  The wealthy monk falls a prey to pride and arrogance; he becomes luxurious in his habits, and lazy in the performance of duty.  Vice creeps in and his moral ruin is complete.  The transformation in the character of the monk is accompanied by a change in public opinion.  The monk is now an eyesore; his splendid buildings are viewed with envy by some, with shame by others.  Then arise the vehement cries for the destruction of his palatial cloister, and the heroic efforts of the remnant that abide faithful to reform the institution.  This has been the pathway over which every monastic order has traveled.  As long as there was sufficient vitality to give birth to reformatory movements, new societies sprang up as off-shoots of the older orders, some of which adopted the original rules, while others altered them to suit the views of the reforming founder.  “For indeed,” says Trench, “those orders, wonderful at their beginning, and girt up so as to take heaven by storm, seemed destined to travel in a mournful circle from which there was no escape.”  These facts partly explain the reformatory movements which appear from the ninth century on.

The first great saint to enter the lists against monastic corruption was Benedict of Aniane (750-821 A.D.), a member of a distinguished family in southern France.  The Benedictine rule in his opinion was formed for novices and invalids.  He attributed the prevailing laxity among the monks to the mild discipline.  As abbot of a monastery he undertook to reform its affairs by adopting a system based on Basil of Asia Minor and Pachomius of Egypt.  But he leaned too far back for human nature in the West, and the conclusion was forced upon him that Benedict of Nursia had formulated a set of rules as strict as could be enforced among the Western monks.  Accordingly he directed his efforts to secure a faithful observance of the original Benedictine rules, adding, however, a number of rigid and burdensome regulations.  Although at first the monks doubted his sanity, kicked him and spat on him, yet he afterwards succeeded in gathering about three hundred of them under his rule.  Several colonies were sent out from his monastery, which was built on his patrimonial estate near Montpellier.  His last establishment, which was located near Aix-la-Chapelle, became famous as a center of learning and sanctity.