"Monasticism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... by the way, to assume that the Church in Ireland as Patrick left it, was formally monastic. The clergy lived in community, it is true, but it was under a somewhat elastic rule, which was really rather a series of Christian and Religious counsels. A more formal monasticism had developed by the time of Mochuda; this was evidently influenced by the spread of St. Benedict's Rule, as Patrick's quasi-monasticism, nearly two centuries previously, had been influenced by Pachomius and St. Basil, through Lerins. The real peculiarity in Ireland was that when the ...
— Lives of SS. Declan and Mochuda • Anonymous
... world of work and share the burdens of all—to ask for nothing which other people can not have on like terms—not to consider yourself peculiar, unique and therefore immune and exempt—is now the ideal of the best minds. We have small faith in monasticism or monotheism, but we do have great faith in monism. We believe in the Solidarity of the Race. We must all progress together. Whether Pythagoras, John Humphrey Noyes and Brigham Young were ahead of the world or behind it is really not to the point—the many ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... 'ideal.' Never did nun of the cloister fight such a fight with the flesh, as this poor little woman, that she might not give offence to the Tribunal of the Nice Feelings which leads us to ask, "Is sentimentalism in our modern days taking the place of monasticism to mortify our poor humanity?" The sufferings of the Three of Brookfield under Mrs. Chump was not comparable to Mrs. Lupin's. The good little woman's soul withered at the self-contempt to which her nieces helped her daily. Laughter, far from expanding her heart ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... disciples to her idolatry. "The nations have drunken of her wine; therefore the nations are mad." (Jer. li. 7.)—The inscription "upon her forehead" is after the manner of shameless prostitutes, avowing Rome's whoredoms of idolatry, monasticism, indulgences to sin, as essential to religion, a "mystery of iniquity," by which the "man of sin thinks to change times and laws." (Dan. vii. 24, 25; ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... Lodges with armed force. Tamino may be intended for the Emperor Joseph II., who, though not a Freemason himself as his father was, openly protected the brotherhood; and we may look upon Pamina as the representative of the Austrian people. The name of Monostatos seems to be connected with monasticism, and may be intended to typify the clerical party, which, though outwardly on friendly terms with Freemasonry, seems in reality to have been bent upon its destruction. Papageno and his wife Papagena are excellent representatives of the light-hearted and pleasure-loving population of Vienna. It ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... somewhat the educational status of the new empire, and not only developed the church schools and cathedral schools but also founded some secular schools. The cathedral schools became in many instances centres of learning apart from monasticism. The textbooks, however, of the Middle Ages were chiefly those of Boethius, Isidor, and Capella, and were of the most meagre content and character. That of Capella, as an illustration, was merely an allegory, which ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... longing for the land and want to acquire farms. But it all comes down to the six feet of land. To leave town, and the struggle and the swim of life, and go and hide yourself in a farmhouse is not life—it is egoism, laziness; it is a kind of monasticism, but monasticism without action. A man needs, not six feet of land, not a farm, but the whole earth, all Nature, where in full liberty he can display all the properties and qualities ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... "What is Monasticism but Buddhism under a slightly different form? What are hermits but Buddhists? How different is true Christianity, with its active spirit of benevolence ever going about to do good, and thus to repress and overcome evil," ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... the aspect became still more monastic, like that of a row of solitary cells. Mademoiselle Voisin led the way to her own door all obligingly and as if wishing to be hospitable; she dropped little subdued, friendly attempts at explanation on the way. At her threshold the monasticism stopped—Miriam found herself in a wonderfully upholstered nook, a nest of lamplight and delicate cretonne. Save for its pair of long glasses it might have been a tiny boudoir, with a water-colour drawing of value in each of its panels of stretched ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... well evidences the fine utility of monasticism as the invention of the cloister. In a sense it was the centre of monastic life, so that monastery and cloister are almost synonymous terms. No peasant-born monk of the West, in the carol of his cloister, had occasion to envy the King of Granada his Court of the Lions. Fresh ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... that is, between the self-denial which has no other aim than mere self-mortification, and that which is exercised to secure greater good to ourselves and others. The first is the foundation of monasticism, penances, and all other forms of asceticism; the latter, only, is ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... account of love to our Lord Jesus Christ. Moreover, the heresy of the Lampetians was condemned in most ancient times, which the heretic Jovinian attempted in vain to revive at Rome. Therefore, all things must be rejected which in this article have been produced against monasticism—viz. that monasteries succeeded vows. Of the nunneries it is sufficiently ascertained that, though pertaining to the weaker sex, how in most cloisters the holy nuns persevered far more constantly to vows once uttered, even under these princes and cities, than th majority of monks; even ...
— The Confutatio Pontificia • Anonymous
... never would they have submitted to the Anglo-Saxon commonwealth had they not at the same time been converted to Christianity. Nothing, moreover, contributed more to this than the effort, which was then the order of the day in the Christian world, to base the organisation of the Church on monasticism: from Italy this tendency spread to Germany, from South France to North, from thence to England, where it produced its greatest effect. Now the power of conversion is inherent only in sharply-defined doctrines; and it was precisely this tendency that penetrated the Northern natures: the ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... Monasticism's record in the Philippines presents no new general fact to the eye of history. The attempt to eliminate the eternal feminine from her natural and normal sphere in the scheme of things there met with the same certain and signal disaster ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... plain-spoken, practical race like these Lombards; living by their own laws; disbelieving in witchcraft; and seemingly doing little for monasticism, were not likely to find favour in the eyes of popes. They were not the material which the Papacy could mould into the Neapolitan ideal of 'Little saints,—and little asses.' These Lombards were not a superstitious race; ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... Europe. It became gradually a monarchy, with all the power of a concentrated dominion. The clergy formed a second universal magistracy, exercising always equal, asserting, and for a long time possessing, superior power to the civil government. Western monasticism rent from the world the most powerful minds, and having trained them by its stern discipline, sent them back to rule the world. Its characteristic was adherence to legal form; strong assertion of, and severe subordination to, authority. It maintained its dominion unshaken ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... self-sacrifice but the solemnity of the American athlete is like that of the American Indian. The athletes in the States have the attitude of the athletes among the Spartans, the great historical nation without a sense of humour. They suffer an ascetic regime not to be matched in any monasticism and hardly in any militarism. If any tradition of these things remains in a saner age, they will probably be remembered as a mysterious religious order of fakirs or dancing dervishes, who shaved their heads and fasted in honour of Hercules ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... by any means an invention of the Middle Ages, may yet fairly be said to have attained their height, both of prosperity and of usefulness, during this period of Church History. [Sidenote: Early rise of monasticism.] We may trace the origin of Christian monastic life to very early times, when persecution drove many Christians to a life of loneliness and privation in desert places. The mode of life thus begun from necessity was afterwards continued from choice, and in the hope of more complete self-devotion ...
— A Key to the Knowledge of Church History (Ancient) • John Henry Blunt
... the Cross of Jesus are none but saints, Madonna and the two SS. Maries, St. John the Baptist and St. John the Divine, and beside them kneel the founders of the Religious Orders St. Dominic, the founder of the preaching friars, St. Jerome the father of monasticism, St. Francis the little poor man, St. Bernard who spoke with Madonna, S. Giovanni Gualberto the founder of Vallombrosa, St. Peter Martyr who was wounded for Christ's sake. Above him stands St. Thomas Aquinas the angelic doctor, St. Romuald the founder of Camaldoli St. Benedict ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... you made it a cause of protest against God's will! And worst and strangest of all is this frenzied idea of yours to fly to the Church of Rome for shelter from yourself and your secret misery, and there give yourself over to monasticism and a silent, idolatrous worship,—not of Mary, the Mother of Christ,— but of the mere picture of the woman you loved! And you would pray to THAT?—you would kneel before THAT?—you would pass long hours of ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... One of these he established in his own house and subjected himself to such severe discipline and deprivations that his health never entirely recovered from them. He might, in his enthusiasm for monasticism, have brought himself to an early grave if the pope had not commanded him to undertake a difficult mission to Constantinople; there he had his first opportunity to show his great ability in conducting ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... magic, nor the author of such things stand so absolutely alone, if we were ready with an explanation. As I glanced from the picture to the poor stupid little red-faced brother at my side I wondered if the thing mightn't pass for an elegant epigram on monasticism. Certainly, at any rate, there is more intellect in it than under all the monkish tonsures it has seen coming and going these ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... brought into close contact with the free virility of the ancient world, and emancipated from the thralldom of unproved traditions. The force to judge and the desire to create were generated. The immediate result in the sixteenth century was an abrupt secession of the learned, not merely from monasticism, but also from the true spirit of Christianity. The minds of the Italians assimilated Paganism. In their hatred of mediaeval ignorance, in their loathing of cowled and cloistered fools, they flew to an extreme, and affected ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... the fundamental idea by an allusion to the ship. No folly of the century is left uncensured. The poet attacks with noble zeal the failings and extravagances of his age, and applies his lash unsparingly even to the dreaded Hydra of popery and monasticism, to combat which the Hercules of Wittenberg had not yet kindled his firebrands. But the poet's object was not merely to reprove and to animadvert; he instructs also, and shows the fools the way to the land of wisdom; and ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... theological moralisings—we see not merely the dual drama of two ill-assorted creatures, but the much more terrible tragedy, superadded by the presence, looming, impassive, as of Cypris in Euripides' Hippolytus, of a third all-powerful and superhuman entity: the spirit of monasticism. The unequal misery, the martyrdom of Heloise arises herefrom, that she rebels against this Deus ex machina; that this nun of the eleventh century is a strong warm-hearted modern woman, fit for ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... hand. Yet in no age—not the darkest and most corrupt Christendom has yet seen—have God and His Christ been without their witnesses to the higher truth,—witnesses, if not by speech and doctrine, yet by life and death. Even monasticism, harshly as we may now judge it, arose, in part at least, through the desire to "endure hardness;" only it turned aside from the hardness appointed in the world without, to choose, and ere long to make, a hardness of its own; and then, self-seeking, and therefore anti-Christian, ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... however, was not merely confined to the Via Giulia; it extended to the whole district, once so fine and fashionable, but now fallen into sad decay, far removed from modern life, and exhaling a faint musty odour of monasticism. Towards San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, where the new Corso Vittorio Emanuele has ripped up every olden district, the lofty five-storeyed houses with their dazzling sculptured fronts contrasted violently with the black sunken dwellings ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... recall especially. Passing a noted Spanish town, he remarks: "Here are ten churches, twenty monasteries, and not a single school." No Hohenzollern is likely to waste much sympathy on a nation which brings on its fate by preferring monasticism to education; and never during the Spanish War did he or his government, to my knowledge, show the slightest leaning toward our enemies. Certain it is that when sundry hysterical publicists and meddlesome statesmen of the Continent proposed measures against ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... of transmigration. Buddhism involved atheism, and the denial of personal immortality, or, where this last tenet was not explicitly denied, uncertainty and indifference respecting it. On the foundation of Buddha's teaching, there grew up a vast system of monasticism, with ascetic usages not less burdensome than the yoke of caste. The attractive feature of Buddhism was its moral precepts. These were chiefly an inculcation of chastity, patience, and compassion; the unresisting ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... of visitation over them which had been transferred by the Act of Supremacy from the Papacy to the Crown. The monks were soon to know what this right of visitation implied in the hands of the Vicar-General. As an outlet for religious enthusiasm monasticism was practically dead. The friar, now that his fervour of devotion and his intellectual energy had passed away, had sunk into a mere beggar. The monks had become mere land-owners. Most of the religious ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... died in 1153. His life thus almost coincides with the central portion of the Middle Ages. He saw the First and Second Crusades, the rising liberties of the communes, and the beginnings of scholasticism under Abelard. A large Church reformation and the noblest period of monasticism occurred in his day, and received deep marks ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... of the peasant was a happier one than he had known before. He had achieved definite status, and the line that separated him from the gentry was very thin and constantly traversed, thanks to the accepted system of land tenure, the guilds, chivalry, the schools and universities, the priesthood and monasticism. The Renaissance had rapidly changed all this, however; absolutism in government, dispossession of land, the abolition of the guilds, and the collapse of the moral order and of the dominance of ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... a heritage and gift that cometh from the Lord, but rather as an encumbrance. That such was the temper of the later Roman Empire may be gathered not only from the literature, which is singularly devoid of hopefulness and enterprise, but from the rapid spread of monasticism and eremitism in this period. The prevalence of this world-weariness of course needs explanation, and the cause is rather obscure. It does not seem to be connected with unfavourable external conditions, but rather with a racial exhaustion akin ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... monasteries, or monasteries for both men and women, is as old as that of Christian monasticism itself, though the phrase "monasteria duplicia"[1] dates from about the C6. The term was also sometimes applied to twin monasteries for men; Bede uses it in this sense with reference to Wearmouth and Yarrow, while he generally speaks of a double ...
— Early Double Monasteries - A Paper read before the Heretics' Society on December 6th, 1914 • Constance Stoney |
