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What do you mean by being good ?
The Germans thought being good was being brave.
The Athenians thought that whatever was beautiful was good.
The Stoics thought that doing one’s duty and suffering hardship calmly was being good.
The Epicureans thought the right kinds of pleasure were good.
The martyrs thought being good meant suffering and dying for Christ’s sake.
Ever since the time of the martyrs, some Christians who wanted to be very, very good indeed, went off into the wilderness and lived by themselves. They wished to be far away from other people, so that they could spend all their time praying and thinking holy thoughts. This, they believed was being good.
One of the strangest of these men who wanted to get away from others was named St. Simeon Stylites. He built for himself a pillar or column fifty feet high, and on the top of it he lived with room only to sit but not to lie down. There on the top he lived for many years, day and night, winter and summer, while the sun shone on him and the rain rained on him, and he never came down at all. He could be reached only by a ladder, which his friends used to take him food. High up out of the world, he thought he could best lead a holy life. That was his idea of being good although we should think such a person simply crazy.
In the course of time, however, men and women who wanted to lead holy lives, instead of living alone as they had done at first, gathered in groups and built themselves homes. The men were called monks, the women nuns or virgins, and the houses where they lived were known as monasteries or abbeys. The head monk of an abbey was called an abbot, from the Aramaic word abba , which means father in the language that Jesus spoke. The abbot ruled over the other monks like a father over his children, giving them orders and punishing them when he thought they needed it. Abbesses were in charge of their nuns in the same way.
In the five hundreds there lived an Italian monk named Benedict. He believed very strongly that one must work if he was to be holy, that work was a necessary part of being holy. He thought, also, that monks should have no money of their own, for Christ had said in the Bible, “If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that which thou hast, and give to the poor.” (Matthew 19:21) Benedict started an order for those people who would agree to three things:
The first thing they were to agree to was to have no money.
The second thing was not to marry.
The third thing was to obey the abbot or abbess.
Men and women who joined this order were called Benedictines.
Now, you might think there would have been hardly anyone who would promise for life three such things as to have no money, to obey the abbot—no matter what he told them to do—and never to marry. Nevertheless, there were a great many in every country of Europe who did become Benedictines.
Monk copying a manuscript
Usually monks or nuns lived in little bare rooms like prison cells, and ate their very simple meals together at a single table in a room called the refectory. They sang praise at sunrise and sunset, and four times during the day besides; they even woke up at midnight to sing prayers. Singing praise was their main job, but not all they had to do. Work of every kind they were obliged to do, and they did it joyfully, whether the work was scrubbing floors or digging in the garden. People who had been rich and people who had been poor all followed the same rules.
Sometimes a monastery was situated in a barren or swampy spot on land that had been given the monks because it was not good or, even worse than no good, dangerously unhealthy. But the monks set to work and drained off the water, tilled the soil, and made the waste places bloom like the rose. They then raised vegetables for their table, fodder for their horses and cattle and sheep. Everything they ate or used or needed, they raised or made.
They did not only the rougher handwork; they did fine handwork, too. Movable type had not been invented, and printing was not known in Europe at this time. Books had to be written by hand, and the monks and nuns who had reading and writing skills were the ones to do this job. They copied the old books in Latin and Greek. Sometimes one monk would slowly read the book to be copied, and several other monks at one time would copy what he dictated. In this way a number of copies would be made.
The pages of the books were not made of paper but of calfskin or sheepskin, called vellum, and this vellum was much stronger and lasted much longer than paper.
These old books which the monks wrote were called manuscripts , which means handwritten . Many of these may now be seen in museums and libraries. Some of these manuscripts have been beautifully handpainted with loving care and the initial letters and borders ornamented with designs of flowers and vines and birds and pictures in red and gold and other colors. If monks and nuns hadn’t done this copying, many of the old books would have been lost and unknown to us.
The monks also kept diaries, writing down from day to day and year to year an account of the important things that happened. These old diaries, or chronicles, as they were called, tell us the history of the times. As there were then no newspapers, if these chronicles had not been written we should not know what went on at that time.
The monks were the best educated people of those days, and they taught others—both young and old—the things they themselves knew. The monasteries were also inns for travelers, for anyone who came and asked for lodging was received and given food and a place to sleep whether he had any money to pay or not.
Monks and nuns helped the poor and needy. The sick, too, came to monasteries to be treated and taken care of, so that a monastery was often something like a hospital, too. Many people who had received such help or attention made rich gifts to the monasteries, so they became very wealthy, although neither monks nor nuns could own so much as a spoon for themselves.
So you see monks and nuns were not merely holy; they were lights in an age when the world had grown dull and dangerous. Yes, they were lights, and there were other lights too shining in those years. You will read about them a little later in this book.
