‘Good is it for us to dwell here, where man lives more purely, falls more rarely, rises more quickly, treads more cautiously, rests more securely, is absolved more easily, and rewarded more plenteously.’ This is the saying of St. Bernard, one of the later monastic reformers; and his ideal was the general conception of the best life possible as understood in the Middle Ages. To the monasteries flocked the devout seeking a home of prayer; but also the student or artist unable to follow his bent in the turbulent world, and the man who despised or feared the atmosphere of war. Even the feudal baron would pause in his quarrels to make some pious gift to abbey or priory, a tribute to a faith he admired but was too weak to practise. Sometimes he came in later life, a penitent who, toiling like his serf, sought in the cloister the salvation of his soul. ‘In the monasteries,’ says a mediaeval German, ‘one saw Counts cooking in the kitchen and Margraves leading their pigs out to feed.’ Monasticism, with its belief in brotherhood, was a leveller of class distinctions; but, like the rest of the Church, it found in the popular enthusiasm it aroused the path of temptation. Men, we have seen, entered the cloister for other reasons than pure devotion to God; and the rule of Benedict proving too strict they yielded secretly to sins that perhaps were not checked or reproved because abbots in time ceased to be saints and became, like the bishops, feudal landlords with worldly interests. In this way vice and laziness were allowed to spread and cling like bindweed. Throughout the Middle Ages there were times of corruption and failure amongst the monastic Orders, followed by waves of sweeping reform and earnest endeavour, when once again the Cross was raised as an emblem of sacrifice and drew the more spiritual of men unto it. [Sidenote: Foundation of Cluni] In 910 the monastery of Cluni was founded in Burgundy, and, freed from the jurisdiction of local bishops by being placed under the direct control of the Pope, was able to establish a reformed Benedictine Order. Its abbot was recognized not only as the superior of the monastery at Cluni but also of ‘daughter’ houses that sprang up all over Europe subject to his discipline and rule. Other monastic Orders founded shortly after this date were those of the Carthusians and Cistercians. In their desire to combat worldliness the early Carthusians, or monks of the monastery of Chartreux, carried on unceasing war against the pleasures of the world. Strict fasting for eight months in the year; one meal a day eaten in silence and alone; no conversation with other brethren save at a weekly meeting; this was the background to a life of toil and prayer.