What the Anglo-Saxon church might have been if the rule of celibacy had not been forced upon her, and if she had not submitted to Roman authority in other matters, is a theme for speculation only.  The fact is that Dunstan found a church corrupt to the core and left it, as a result of his purifying efforts, with some semblance, to say the least, of moral influence and spiritual purity.  Some other kind of ecclesiastical polity than that advocated by Dunstan might have achieved the same results as his, but the simple fact is that none did.  In so far as Dunstan succeeded in his monastic measures, he laid the foundations of an ecclesiastical power which afterwards became a serious menace to the political freedom of the Anglo-Saxon race.  The battle begun by him raged fiercely between the popes, efficiently supported by the monks, and the kings of England, with varying fortunes, for many centuries.  But perhaps, under the plans of that benign Providence who presides over the destiny of nations, it was essentially in the interests of civilization, that the lawlessness of rulers and the vices of the people should be restrained by that ecclesiastical power, which, in after years, and at the proper time, should be forced to recede to its legitimate sphere and functions.

Another celebrated reformatory movement was begun by St. Bruno, who founded the Carthusian Order about the year 1086.  Ruskin says:  “In their strength, from the foundation of the order at the close of the eleventh century to the beginning of the fourteenth, they reared in their mountain fastnesses and sent out to minister to the world a succession of men of immense mental grasp and serenely authoritative innocence, among whom our own Hugh of Lincoln, in his relations with Henry II. and Coeur de Lion, is to my mind the most beautiful sacerdotal figure known to me in history.”

Bruno, with six companions, established the famous Grand Chartreuse in a rocky wilderness, near Grenoble, in France, separated from the rest of the world by a chain of wild mountains, which are covered with ice and snow for two-thirds of the year.

Until the time of Guigo (1137), the Grand Chartreuse was governed by unwritten rules.  Thirteen monks only were permitted to live together, and sixteen converts in the huts at the foot of the hill.  The policy of this monastery was at first opposed to all connection with other monasteries.  But applications for admission were so numerous that colonies were sent out in various directions, all subject to the mother house.  The Carthusians differed in many respects from other orders.  The rules of Dom Guigo indicate that the chief aim was to preclude the monks from intercourse with the world, and largely with each other, for each monk had separate apartments, cooked his own food, and so rarely met with his brethren, that he was practically a hermit.  The clothing consisted of a rough hair shirt, worn next the skin, a white cassock over it, and, when they went out,