Religious Orders in Rome, 1903
It would require at the least an entire book to discuss the origin of monasticism properly; for our present purpose a very slight and imperfect sketch of the history of…
From: 228 C.E. To: 1903 C.E.
Location: Rome, Italy
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
From Italy and the Italians by Edward Hutton, 1903.
It would require at the least an entire book to discuss the origin of monasticism properly; for our present purpose a very slight and imperfect sketch of the history of monachism must suffice.
Though asceticism probably existed from the first in the Christian Church, it is not until the fourth century that monasticism can be said to have developed from the Anchorites, the first of whom was Paul, 228-341, through the Stylitai, of whom the most famous was Simeon of Antioch, 387-459, and the Cenobites, who dwelt together in community, of whom the first abbas and lawgiver was one Pachomius, who ruled 1400 brothers in eight or nine houses. And in order to understand monasticism in its greater developments, it is necessary before all things to remember that it was the work of laymen and not of the clergy.
All the great figures of these early centuries—Antony, Pachomius, and even Benedict—were laymen. Indeed at this time it was forbidden to a monk to be ordained. And amidst all the hurly-burly of Christendom East and West in those early centuries we find much that appears to us ridiculous and extreme; gangs of fanatics sworn to every sort of excessive asceticism and cruelty, hating or despising the clergy, yet when the opportunity offered ready at the bidding of some ignorant priest to murder and torture all those whom they were unable to understand, crash through the almost illegible pages of the history of the time.
The excesses of the Inquisition grow pale and passionless before the orgies of blood, the immense sensualities and crimes of the early Church. For the Church of Christ grew up, her hands already crimsoned in the rivers of blood that she had shed, her eyes flaming with a new cruelty that desired even the blood of the bloodless and immortal statues, since the living hearts of men torn from their mortal bodies were not sufficient to satiate her desires.
It was not till St Benedict came, 480-542, that we find any order or sanity in this immense chaos. The history of his order is for centuries the history of monachism. He was the son of wealthy parents of Nursia in Spoleto, and was educated in Rome. Disgusted, it is said, by the licentiousness of the Roman youth of his day, he fled to the mountains of Subiaco at the age of fifteen.
One finds just there perhaps the true explanation of all the nightmare of the previous Christian centuries. Flight—it was the very first principle, the very spirit of asceticism, of monasticism—flight from the world, from the race of man, so that one might separate oneself from those whom God had already condemned. Fear drove them as the wind drives the sea. And it was fear, that most terrible of all passions, that had driven so many thousands mad with cruelty and the desire for blood, for sacrifice, for the death and mutilation of those who were not afraid. But St Benedict, after many adventures, founded twelve monasteries, placing in each twelve monks with a superior.
His order, he says, "is a school in which men learn to serve God." Well, it was founded on obedience, and began to civilise Europe as well as to convert it. His motto—the motto of his order—was Pax. With his advent monasticism proper may be said to have begun. And the Benedictines have always been, and are still, not only the greatest community in the Catholic Church, but its most civilising force, its most cultured class, as it were its aristocracy.
Of the five orders of Western Christendom the Benedictine order stands first. Of the three Rules that of St Benedict is the most profound, the most comprehensive. His is the only monastic order proper. The Dominicans, the Franciscans, the Carmelites, the Augustinians, are friars and not monks at all.
The Benedictine order in rather less than five hundred years began to produce branches of black and white monks and nuns, which are liable to cause confusion to the stranger, unless he clearly understands that these numerous orders are really only Benedictines under other names. Thus we may divide the order somewhat as follows:—
The Benedictines Proper, founded in 580, who wear a black habit; these are the original order founded by St Benedict.
The Black monks and nuns; and,
The White monks and nuns.
The Black monks and nuns are as follows: The Vallombrosans of Italy, founded in 1038, and the Silvestrines of Italy, who are monks only, founded in 1230. The White monks and nuns consist of the following orders: The Cistercians of France, founded in 1100, from whom again in 1660 we get the Trappists of France; the Camaldolese of Italy, founded in 1012, from whom we get in 1272 the Olivetans of Italy, who are monks only; the Carthusians of France, founded in 1086. All these are Benedictines and are under St Benedict's rule, with or without additions peculiar to each sub-order.
Thus we see how from time to time in the course of centuries reformers arose to restore the ancient rule in all its strictness when may be it had from one cause or another fallen into disuse or abuse. It will give the reader some idea of the vast strength and power of the Benedictine order if he understands that before the first sub-order was founded the Benedictines held in England alone the monasteries of Westminster, St Albans, Winchester, Whitby, and Glastonbury, to name no others.
To name the monasteries and churches they have held in Italy would fill a small volume. In Rome at the present day, however, they occupy only six houses—namely, the great monastery of S. Anselmo on the Aventine Hill, which is a great international college for the education of monks of the order, at present under a Belgian abbas. It is here that at 9 a.m. on Sundays one may hear mass sung to the old plain-song, a magnificent experience. S. Callisto in Trastevere and S. Ambrogio de' Maxima in the Piazza Mattei are also Benedictine monasteries. There are also three nunneries in the city—namely, S. Maria in Campo Marzio, S. Benedetto in Via Boncampagni (which used to have, and for what I know has now, an English abbess), and St Cecilia in Trastevere.
From time to time the Benedictines have occupied more than thirty-seven different monasteries and churches in Rome, among them being S. Maria in Aracoeli, S. Gregorio Magno on the Caelian Hill, and S. Giorgio in Velabro, these two last being the churches of the apostle and the patron saint of the English, and S. Silvestro in Capite, which is now the church of the English-speaking Catholics. S. Agnese Fuori le Mura, S. Maria Sopra Minerva, and S. Bibiana were also at various times in their hands.
It should be noted also that the first reform of the Benedictines was that made by William of Aquitaine at Cluny in 910, and it was indirectly from Cluny that in 1119 at Citcaux the Cistercian order was founded, not as a separate body from the Benedictine Order, but as a reform of it. It was to Citeaux that St Bernard, "the last of the Fathers," came accompanied by his five brothers and other friends to beg the habit of the Order.
At the present time the Cistercians are in occupation of three churches and chapels in Rome—namely, S. Bernardo, in Piazza S. Bernardo, near the railway station; S. Susanna, on the opposite side of the Via Venti Settembre from S. Bernardo; and S. Croce in Gerusalemme. The dress is a white habit and black scapular.
But already S. Romuald of Ravenna in 1012 had founded a house at Camaldoli, close to Arezzo, where a little village of hermitages was built. Mr. Montgomery Carmichael in his book 'In Tuscany' has written a delightful chapter on this monastery, now secularised, but well worth a visit. This was the third reform that had arisen within the Benedictine Order. The Camaldolese are to be found in Rome at S. Ildefonso in Via Sistina and at S. Antonio on the Aventine Hill. The dress is a white habit and white scapular.
The fourth reform was instituted in 1038 by S. Giovanni Gualbertus at Vallombrosa, a place familiar to most people who have visited Florence. The monastery is now secularised, but in Rome you will find the Vallombrosans at S. Prassede on the Esquiline Hill. The habit and scapular are black.
The next reform was the foundation of the great Order of Carthusians by S. Bruno in 1086. It was he who founded the Grande Chartreuse in the high Alps. In England the houses of the Order were called Charterhouses, as in France Chartreuses, and in Italy Certose. The great school and alms-house, the Charterhouse, was one of their foundations suppressed by Henry VIII.
They are famous in the Church for their Rule, which has never been reformed, and in the world for their liqueur, distilled in the Alps, and known in every city in Europe. In Rome they are to be found in the Via Palestro, but there is no monastery; the principal centre of the Order is in France. The dress of the Order is a white habit and white scapular. They are said to wear a hair shirt next the skin.
The Sylvestrians, an unimportant reform founded by Sylvester Gozzolini in 1230, is an Italian Order. It admits monks only. The dress is a blue habit and blue scapular. It is in Austria the Order is mostly found. In Rome they have a house in the Via di S. Stefano.
The Olivetan Order, another small reform wholly Italian in origin and development, was founded by Bernard of Siena in 1319. The convent on Monte Oliveto, not far from Siena, was suppressed in 1870, and has practically been turned into an hotel where one may live very fairly for 5 lire a-day. Mr and Mrs Pennell in their book, 'An Italian Pilgrimage,' have written a charming account of their sojourn with the few remaining monks in that curiously lonely spot.
The Abbate di Negro, however, died in 1897, mourned by many who had experienced his courtesy and kindness and who loved him. He was of the family of St Catherine, the Seraph of Genoa. In Rome the Order will be found at St Francis Church in the Forum. The dress is a white habit and scapular.
We now come to the Order about which there is so much vulgar curiosity. The Trappists are really a reform of the Cistercian Order. They were founded as late as 1660 by the Abbe de Ranee. His abbey, La Trappe, founded in 1140, was a Cistercian monastery.
The discipline of La Trappe—how often one hears the phrase together with an adventurous explanation wholly inaccurate. It is true that silence is considered as a spiritual necessity among the Trappists, but it is wholly untrue that when they speak they dismally murmur, "Brother, we must die."
After a rather large experience of the Religious Orders of the Catholic Church, I find that I am chiefly impressed by the extraordinary cheerfulness, more especially of the monks, whom one might expect perhaps to find unspeakably sad. But it is not so. Their point of view is so different from that of the ordinary man living in the world that it is impossible to judge of them by the same standard.
A very excellent account of a Trappist monastery as seen from the inside may be found in J. K. Huysman's 'En Route.' In Rome the Trappists will be found at Tre Fontane, which they have redeemed from the malaria partly by means of plantations of eucalyptus trees. The dress of the Order is white with a black scapular.
Having given this utterly inadequate account of the monastic Orders, it is necessary to turn for a few moments to the friars—a very different body of men. The three great names among the friars are those of St Francis, St Dominic, and St Teresa.
The friars, of whom perhaps the best known type is St Francis of Assisi and the Franciscans, whom we shall consider later, are different from monks in many things. Their first aim is not so much the service of God as of man. They are not so much contemplatives as preachers; they are not inclosed as the monk really is, but are pilgrims through the world. It is perhaps necessary to remind the English reader, who is usually never so much at sea as when trying to understand the Religious Orders of the Catholic Church, that the Dominicans are not monks but friars.
It is from St Dominic that the Dominicans get their Rule. A Spaniard, born in Old Castille in 1170, twelve years before St Francis of Assisi, he founded his Order in 1215—an Order which has indeed proved to be the watch-dog of the Church. The enterprise he set on foot was chiefly missionary. He was a son of the noble house of Guzmani, and was educated at Salamanca. In 1198 he went, together with the Bishop of Osma, to arrange a marriage between Prince Ferdinand of Castille and the daughter of the Earl of La Marche.
Passing through Languedoc, where the Albigensian heresy was rife, he is said to have converted completely the owner of the house where he lodged in the course of a single night. And it would seem that this experience coloured his whole life, setting an ideal before him of which he never lost sight.
The Pope somewhat reluctantly gave him leave to return to Languedoc, whence in reality he set out to conquer the world. And it was during this missionary enterprise in Languedoc that St Dominic composed the Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary—a series of prayers designed really to remind the world of the birth of our Saviour. And it was in Languedoc, too, in 1215, that he established his order of Preaching Friars.
Setting out for Rome in 1216 to get his Order established by the Pope, he was present at the Fourth Council at the Lateran, when the rule of confession once at the least in each year before receiving the Eucharist at Easter was enjoined on the faithful. In 1218 he returned to Spain, to Segovia, where he founded a convent; and we find his convents and monasteries already, even at that date, in England, France, Italy, Ireland, Germany, Greece, Norway, Sweden, and the near East. He died at Bologna, August 6, 1221, of a summer fever, after returning from a mission to Florence.
Of all religious orders that of St Dominic has remained the most at one with itself. There appear to have been no reforms, no branches springing from the Dominicans. They have ever worked together, under a discipline as sound as that of the Society of Jesus. The dress of the Order is white as to habit and scapular, covered by a black cloak and hood—the cappa nigra. In Rome the Dominicans will be found at S. Clemente (Irish), S. Sabina, and on Monte Mario.
There is also a nursing order of English Dominican sisters in Via Napoli. Their General lives at S. Maria Sopra Minerva, where St Catherine of Siena, their greatest saint, lies buried under the high altar. St Thomas Aquinas, whom Leo XIII. loves so dearly, was a great Dominican; as also St Rose of Lima, the Mystic, and St Peter Martyr.
The life of St Francis of Assisi is known to everyone almost, certainly to everyone who has any pretensions to education. In him we seem to see Christ on earth again. The knight of Lady Poverty, he has fascinated a world with the beauty of holiness. His few poor brothers have multiplied till in every city of Italy they are of all sorts and conditions of men the most frequently met with. And even as the ideal of St Benedict appears always to be intellectual, so the ideal of St Francis is emotional, is, in its founder at least, just love. To read " The Little Flowers of St Francis" is to catch a glimpse of heaven.
His rule, approved by Pope Honorius III. in 1223, appears only to have been accepted by those in authority because of a supposed miracle. Pope Innocent III., who in 1210 had provisionally approved the rule, did so in spite of the decision of the Church to create no new order, because of a dream in which he saw a little poor man in a brown frock supporting the Lateran Church which was falling.
St Mary of the Angels at Assisi, given to St Francis by the Benedictines, has since 1870 been taken from the Franciscans by a government that is already perjured beyond any redemption. That is not the least of its crimes.
The Franciscan Order, however, early divided into two branches because of the severity of the original vow of poverty. For this rule was not only applied to the individual but to the Order itself as an Order, so that the Franciscans could hold no property or money either privately or in common.
The two branches into which the Order was divided were the Observants and the Conventuals. The Observants, with whom S. Bernardino of Siena will ever be associated, tried to keep the strict Franciscan rule of poverty. The Conventuals compromised with the flesh in this matter. The Observants, however, in various countries passed under different names and under separate government; but in 1897 Leo XIII. reformed them all into one Order, called the Ordo Minorum, under which splendid and ancient name may they long flourish.
The Cappuccini, another reform instituted by the Observant Matteo of Urbino, are still in existence, however. They wear the original pointed hood supposed to have been designed by St Francis himself. These Cappuccini are perhaps the strictest Order of the three. They are really as poor as church mice, whom they much resemble. Even the ornaments of their churches are without intrinsic value, and they beg their bread. Thus we see the First Order, at the present day, divided into three branches—namely, Friars Minor, Cappuchins, and Conventuals.
The Second Order, founded in 1212 by St Clare, who loved St Francis, is for women. St Francis gave her a Rule in 1224, confirmed in 1246 by Innocent IV. Their rule is probably stricter than any observed by the friars.
There is a Third Order, which consists of those who, while living in the world, desire to conform their lives as much as possible to the rule of St Francis. These tertiaries, as they are called, recite every day the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Rosary. They wear a tiny scapular under their clothes, and are buried in the habit of the Order.
The Friars Minor are to be found in Rome at the Church of S. Antonio, which was inaugurated December 1887. It has been built entirely "by the Franciscan friars of Italy, who each gave the price of two masses weekly. There are 13,000 friars, and about 26,000 lire were paid weekly." S. Maria in Aracceli also belongs to them, together with S. Sebastiano in Via Appia, S. Pietro in Montorio, S. Francesco a Ripa, the convent of which was turned into a barracks by the Sardinian Government. A room is shown there in which St Francis lived.
The Conventuals are to be found at SS. Apostoli and at S. Dorotea.
The Cappuccini are to be found at the Cappuccini in Piazza Barberini Via Veneto.
The dress of the Franciscans is made of a coarse woollen stuff, confined round the waist by a cord. The Friars Minor wear a deep red-brown habit and long cape or cloak, together with a small round hood of the same colour, and white cord for the waist. The Conventuals wear a black habit and short cape, a rosary, white cord for the waist, and a priest's hat. The Cappuccini wear a brown habit, with a long pointed hood, a short cape reaching only just below the waist, round which is a white cord and a hanging rosary; they also are, as a rule, unshaven, wearing a long beard and moustache.
The Conventuals alone wear shoes, the Friars Minor and the Cappuccini being practically barefoot. The Poor Clares wear a brown habit and cloak, and a black veil ; they, too, are practically barefoot; around the waist is the usual white cord.
The Order of Mount Carmel, about which, had it not been for St Teresa, perhaps the greatest of all the mystical saints, there would have been but little to say, is said to follow the Rule of the prophet Elijah. However that may be, we find a Calabrian, Berthold by name, founding a hermitage on Mount Carmel in the twelfth century, and in 1209 the Patriarch of Jerusalem, whose name has escaped me, gave him a Rule that was confirmed by Pope Honorius III. (he who approved the Rule of St Francis) in 1224.
In 1247 Pope Innocent IV. appears to have changed the rule and re-formed the Order under the name of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. The Order owes everything to St Teresa, who, finding it in a condition of considerable feebleness in 1562, re-formed it. It is impossible to speak adequately of St Teresa in a few lines; I will therefore content myself with referring the reader to Alban Butler's "Life," in his 'Lives of the Saints,' or to her own works, her Autobiography, and her 'Interior Castle.'
Here it will be sufficient to state that, excepting St Catherine of Siena, no more profoundly reasonable and practical a woman ever lived. It is a vulgar error to think of her as always in an hysterical ecstasy. She destroyed the Protestant reformation or revolution in Spain by her magnificent work, and even confused her fellow Catholics, and more especially her confessors, by the originality of her ideas. Her enthusiasm was genius, it consumed everything—herself, too, at last.
A profound mystic, in which science she has never been surpassed, she was the friend and counsellor of St John of the Cross, who to some extent carried on her work—though he was perhaps more entirely a mystic, with less real genius. She, unlike St John, never allowed herself to be consumed by despair and melancholy. Having practically revivified religion in Spain and founded thirty-two houses for men and women, she died, being sixty-seven years old, in 1582. She is buried at Avila.
Her Rule is beautiful—a kind of "government by love." Such as are sick are to "sleep in linen and have good beds," such as are in health on straw. Clean linen is one of the signs of her sons and daughters, the latter it is said being allowed even a flask of eau-de-Cologne in their cells. The dress is a brown habit and scapular, together with a white cloak. In Rome they are to be found at S. Maria della Vittoria, in Via Venti Settembre, where there is a group by Bernini, representing St Teresa killed by the Angel of Death, inordinately admired by M. Habert in M. Zola's 'Rome.' In spite of M. Zola's irony, however, Bernini's peculiar genius is not quite so diseased as he suggests. One may at least admire Bernini without compromising St Teresa. The Carmelite nuns are found at various churches and convents in the city.
Having now very briefly and inadequately put before the reader a few facts regarding the Religious Orders proper, there remain to be considered still more briefly, and therefore more inadequately, the Sisters of Charity of all rules, the "Clerks Regular," who include the Jesuits, and such Canons and Friars and Congregations as the Augustinians, the Trinitarians, the Passionists. and a host of others.
The reader is possibly already utterly confused. It is only with a certain amount of pains that he can arrive at last at a clear understanding of such a multitude of religious. For it is in the Religious Orders that we see the greatness, the immensity of Rome. It is probably impossible to say how many thousands, it may be millions, of human beings are devoted to the cause of Christ and the Church under the strict rule of some greater or lesser Order. When one begins to consider then their work in all Italy, in Spain, in France, in Germany, even in England and America, one is confronted by a fact too often forgotten in England—namely, the tremendous power of the Roman Catholic faith over the hearts of men.
Hutton, Edward. Italy and the Italians. E. P. Dutton & Company, 1903.
About TOTA
TOTA.world provides cultural information and sharing across the world to help you explore your Family’s Cultural History and create deep connections with the lives and cultures of your ancestors.
