Cambridge (England) -- History; University of Cambridge -- History
A revival of monastic life--some attempt at a return to the old
Benedictine ideal--came, however, with that century. Under the auspices
of S. Dunstan, the Benedictine Order--renovated at its sources by the
Cluniac reform--was again established, and surviving a second wave of
Danish devastation was, under the patronage of King Cnut and Edward the
Confessor, further strengthened and extended. The strength of this
revival is perhaps best seen in the wonderful galaxy of monastic
chroniclers which sheds its light over that century. Florence of
Worcester, Henry of Huntingdon, William of Malmesbury, Ingulf, Geoffrey
Gaimar, William de Monte, John and Richard of Hexham, Jordan Fantosme,
Simeon of Durham, Thomas and Richard of Ely, Gervase, Giraldus
Cambrensis, William of Newburgh, Richard of Devizes all follow one
another in close succession, while Robert of Gloucester, Roger of
Wendover, and Matthew Paris carry on the line into the next age. But
apart from the Chroniclers, though the monasteries once more flourished
in England, the early Benedictine ideal of learning did not at once
revive. Indeed, the tendency of the monastic reformers of the twelfth
century was distinctly hostile to the more intellectual side of the
monastic ideal. By the end of the century the majority of the
Benedictine convents had sunk into rich corporations of landed
proprietors, whose chief ambition was the aggrandisement of the house to
which they belonged. The new impulse of reform, which in its indirect
results was to give the thirteenth century in England so dominant a
place in the history of her civilisation, came from a quite different
direction. Almost simultaneously, without concert, in different
countries, two great minds, S. Francis and S. Dominic, conceived a
wholly new ideal of monastic perfection. Unlike the older monastic
leaders, deliberately turning their backs upon the haunts of men in town
and village, and seeking in the wilderness seclusion from the world
which they professed to forsake, these new idealists, the followers of
S. Dominic and S. Francis, the mendicant Orders, the Friars' Preachers
and the Friars' Minors, turned to the living world of men. Their object
was no longer the salvation of the individual monk, but the salvation of
others through him. Monastic Christianity was no longer to flee the
world; it must conquer it or win it by gentle violence. The work of the
new Orders, therefore, was from the first among their fellowmen, in
village, in town, in city, in university.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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