The influence of the Cistercians was different in kind from that of the earlier monasticism. The life of the Benedictines was, so to say, in the world though not of it. They sought tranquillity and retirement, but not solitude; the site of an abbey was chosen with a careful eye to the natural resources of the place, its accessibility, and the advantages which it offered for cultivation and production of all kinds. A Benedictine house almost invariably became, and indeed was intended to become, the nucleus of a flourishing lay population, either a cluster of rural settlements, or, not unfrequently, a busy, thriving town. But by the close of the tenth century, although the palmy days of the Benedictine fathers as the guardians of art and literature were in part still to come, the work in which they had been unrivalled for five hundred years, as the missionaries, cultivators and civilizers of Europe, was well-nigh accomplished; and the position into which they had unavoidably drifted as owners of vast landed property protected by special privileges was beginning to show its dangerous side. On the one hand, the secularizing spirit which had made such inroads upon the Church in general was creeping even into the cloister. On the other, the monasteries were growing rich and powerful at the expense of the parochial and diocesan organization. The laity were too apt, while showering their pious gifts upon the altars of the religious houses, to leave those of their own parish churches naked and uncared-for; and the growing habit of diverting the tithes of various estates and districts to the endowment of some abbey with which they were quite unconnected was already becoming a distinct abuse. Against all this the scheme of the Cistercians was a direct protest. They refused to have anything to do with tithes in any shape, saying that monks had no right to them; their houses were of the plainest possible construction: even in their churches scarcely an ornament was admitted to soften the stern grandeur of the architecture; there were no broidered hangings, no delicate paintings, no gold and silver vessels, no crucifixes glittering with enamel and precious gems; they hardly allowed, even for the most solemn rite, the use of any vestment more ornate than the simple white surplice or alb; and their ordinary habit, made from the wool of their flocks, was not black like that of the Benedictines, but the natural white or gray, for they looked upon dyeing as a refinement useless to men who had renounced the cares and pleasures of this life as well as the deceitfulness of riches.[197] Their aim was to be simply voices crying in the wilderness--a wilderness wherein they were resolved to dwell, as much as possible, alone. Their rule absolutely forbade the erection of a house even of their own order within a certain distance of another. But the cry that came forth from the depth of their solitude thrilled through the very hearts of men, and their influence