xt76125q883g https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt76125q883g/data/mets.xml Allen, James Lane, 1849-1925. 1888  books b92-179-30418345 English s.n.], : [S.l. : Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. Trappists United States. Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani (Trappist, Ky.) Home of the silent brotherhood  / James Lane Allen. text Home of the silent brotherhood  / James Lane Allen. 1888 2002 true xt76125q883g section xt76125q883g 



MIDSUMMER



HOLIDA Y



NUMBER.



THE CENTURY MAGAZINE.



VOL. XXXVI.



AUGUST, I888.



A HOME OF THE SILENT BROTHERHOOD.

       THE ABBEY OF LA TRAPPE IN KENTUCKY.



               (ORE than two hundred and
                 fifty years have passed
               I awav Isince the Cardinal
                 de Richelieu stood at the
                 baptismal font as sponsor
                 to a name that within the
                 pale of the Church was
                 destined to become more
    A          famous than    his own.
                 But the world has well-
nigh forgotten Richelieu's godson. Perhaps
only the tireless student of biography now
turns the pages that record his extraordinary
career, ponders the strange unfolding of his
moral nature, is moved by the deep pathos
of his dying hours. The demands of historic
clearness and perspective which enforce some
mention of him here may not, therefore, ap-
pear unfortunate. Dominique Armand-Jean
le Bouthillier de Ranc6! How cleverly, while
scarcely out of short-clothes, did he puzzle
the king's confessor with questions on Homer,
and at the age of thirteen publish an edition
of Anacreon! Of ancient, illustrious birth, and
heir to an almost ducal house, how tenderly
favored was he by Marie de MWdicis; hap-
py-hearted, kindly, suasive, how idolized by
a gorgeous court! In what affluence of rich
laces did he dress; in what irresistible violet-
colored close coats, with emeralds at his wrist-
bands, a diamond on his finger, red heels on
his shoes! How nimbly he capered through
the dance with a sword on his hip! How
bravely he planned quests after the manner
of knights of the Round Table, meaning to
take for himself, doubtless, the part of Lan-
celot! How exquisitely, and ardently, and ah!
how fatally he flirted with the incomparable
ladies in the circle of Madame de Rambouillet!



And with a zest for sport as great as his unc-
tion for the priestly office, how wittily- laying
one hand on his heart and waving the other
through the air-could he bow and say, " This
morning I preached like an angel; I '11 hunt
like the devil this afternoon! "
  All at once his life broke in two when half
spent. He ceased to hunt like the devil, to
adore the flesh, to scandalize the world; and
retiring to the ancient Abbey of La Trappe
in Normandy,-the sponsorial gift of his Em-
inence and favored by many popes,-there
undertook the difficult task of reforming the
relaxed Benedictines. The old abbey - situ-
ated in a great fog-covered basin encompassed
by dense woods of beech, oak, and linden, and
therefore always gloomy, unhealthy, and for-
bidding-was in ruins. One ascended by
means of a ladder from floor to rotting floor.
The refectory had become a place where the
monks assembled to play at bowls with world-
lings. The dormitory, exposed to wind, rain,
and snow, had been given up to owls. Each
monk slept where he could and would. In the
church the stones were scattered, the walls
unsteady, the pavement was broken, the bell
ready to fall. As a single solemn reminder
of the vanished spirit of the place, which had
been founded by St. Stephen and St. Bernard
in the twelfth century, with the intention of
reviving in the Western Church the bright
examples of primitive sanctity furnished by
Eastern solitaries of the third and fourth, one
read over the door of the cloister the words
of Jeremiah: Sedebit so/it/airis et tacebit. The
few monks who remained in the convent
were, as Chateaubriand says, also in a state
of ruins. They preferred sipping ratafia to
reading their breviaries; and when De Ranc6



Copyright, i888, by THE CENTURY Co. All rights reserved.



No. 4

 

A HOME OF THE SILEXT BROTHERHOOD.



undertook to enforce a reform, they threatened
to whip him well for his pains. He, in turn,
threatened them with the royal interference,
and they submitted. There, accordingly, he
introduced a system of rules that a sybarite
might have wept over even to hear recited;
carried into practice cenobitical austerities
that recalled the models of pious anchorites
in Svria and Thebais; and gave its peculiar
meaning to the word " Trappist," a name
which has since been taken by all Cistercian
communities embracing the reform of the first
monastery.
  In the retirement of this mass of woods and
sky De Ranc6 passed the rest of his long life,
doing nothing more worldly, perhaps, than
quoting Aristophanes and Horace to Bossuet,
and allowing himself to be entertained by
Pellisson, carefully exhibiting the accomplish-
ments of his educated spider. There, in acute
agony of body and perfect meekness of spirit,
a worn and weary old man, with time enough
to remember his youthful ardors and emeralds
and illusions, he watched his mortal end draw
slowly near. And there, asking to be buried in
some desolate spot,- some old battle-field,-
he died at last, extending his poor macerated
body on the cross of blessed cinders and straw,
and commending his poor penitent soul to the
pure mercy of Heaven.
  A wonderful spectacle to the less fervid
Benedictines of the closing seventeenth cen-
tury must have seemed the work of De Ranc6
in that old Norman abbey. A strange com-



pany of human souls, attracted by the former
distinction of the great abbot as well as by
the peculiar vows of the institute, must have
come together in its silent halls! One hears
many stories, in the lighter vein, regarding
some of its inmates. Thus, there was a certain
furious ex-trooper, lately reeking with blood,
it seems, who got himself much commended
by living on baked apples, and a young noble-
man who devoted himself to the work of wash-
ing daily the monastery spittoons. One brother,
the story runs, having one day said there was
too much salt in his scalding-hot broth, im-
mediately burst into tears of contrition for his
wickedness in complaining; and another went
for so many years without raising his eyes that
he knew not a new chapel had been built, and
so quite cracked his skull one day against the
wall.
  The abbey was an asylum for the poor and
helpless, the shipwrecked, the conscience-
stricken, and the broken-hearted -for that
meditative type of fervid piety which for ages
has looked upon the cloister as the true earth-
ly paradise wherein to rear the difficult edifice
of the soul's salvation. Much noble blood
sought De Rance's retreat, to wash out, if
might be, its terrifying stains; and more than
one reckless spirit went thither to take upon
itself the yoke of purer, sweeter usages.
  De Rancets work remains an influence in
the world. His monastery and his reform con-
stitute the true background of material and
spiritual fact against which to outline the



BROTHERS.



484


 

A HOME OF THE SILEXT BROTHERHOOD.



hospitality of the venerable
abbot. It is interesting to in-
quire how this religious exotic
from another clime and an-
other age ever came to be
planted in such a spot.

            1i.



                   A FOLLOWER OF ST. JOSEPH.

present Abbey of La Trappe in Kentucky.
Even when thus clearly viewed, it seems
placed where it is only by some freak of his-
tory. An abbey of La Trappe in Kentucky!
How utterly inharmonious with every element
of its environment appears this fragment of
old French monastic life! It is the twelfth
century touching the last of the nineteenth
-the Old World reappearing in the New.
Here are French faces -here is the French
tongue. Here is the identical white cowl pre-
sented to blessed St. Alberick in the forests
of Burgundy nine hundred years ago. Here
is the rule of St. Benedict, patriarch of the
Western monks in the sixth century. When
one is put out at the wayside station, amidst
woodlands and fieldsof Indian-corn, and,leav-
ing all the world behind him, turns his foot-
steps across the country towards the abbey
more than a mile away, the seclusion of the
region, its ineffable quietude, the infinite spir-
itual isolation of the life passed by the silent
brotherhood - all bring vividly before the
mind the image of that ancient distant abbey
with which this one holds connection so s'acred
and so close. Is it not the veritable spot in
Normandy  Here too is the broad basin of
retired country; here are the densely wooded
hills, shutting it in from all the world; here
the orchards and vineyards and gardens of
the ascetic devotees; and as the night falls
from the low blurred sky of ashen-gray, and
cuts short a silent contemplation of the scene,
here too one finds one's self, like some belated
traveler in the dangerous forests of old, hurry-
ing on to reach the porter's lodge and ask ad-
mission within the sacred walls to enjoy the



                   FOR nearly a century after
                 the death of De Ranct6 it is
                 known that his followers
     solituds  of faithfully maintained his re-
                 form at La Trappe. Then the
                 French Revolution drove the
                 Trappists as wanderers into
                 various countries, and the ab-
                 bey wias made a foundry for
                 cannon. A small branch of
                 the order came in td804 to the
                 United States and established
                 itself for a while in Pennsyl-
                 vania, but soon turned its eyes
                 towards the greater wilds and
solitudes of Kentucky. For this there was suf-
ficient reason It must be remembered that
Kentucky was early a great pioneer of the
Catholic Church in the United States. Here
the first episcopal see of the West was erect-
ed, and Bardstown held spiritual jurisdiction.
within certain parallels of latitude, over all
States and Territories between the two oceans.
Here too were the first Catholic missionaries of
the West, except those who were to be found
in the French stations along the Wabash and
the Mississippi. Indeed, the Catholic popula-
tion of Kentucky, which was principally de-
scended from the colonists of Lord Baltimore,
had begun to enter the State as early as 1775,
the nucleus oftheir settlements soon becoming
Nelson County, the locality of the present ab-
bey. Likewise it should be remembered that
the Catholic Church in the United States, es-
pecially that portion of it in Kentucky, owes
a great debt to the zeal of the exiled French
clergy of those early days. That buoyancy and
elasticity of the French
character which nat-
urally adapts it to
every   circumstance
and emergency was
then most demanded
and most efficacious.
From these exiles the
infant missions of the  "A
State were sup)plied
with their most de-
voted laborers.
  Hither, according-
ly, the Trappists re-
moved from Pennsyl-



485


 

A HOME OF THE SILENVT BROTHERHOOD.



OFFICE OF THE FATHER PRIOR.



vania, establishing themselves on Pottinger's
Creek, near Rohan's Knob, several miles
from the present site. But they remained
only a few years. The climate of Kentucky
was deemed ill suited to their life of unre-
laxed asceticism, and, moreover, their restless
superior had conceived a desire to Chris-
tianize Indian children, and so removed the
languishing settlement to Missouri. There
is not space for following the solemn march
of those austere exiles through the wilder-
nesses of the New World. From Missouri
they went to an ancient Indian burying-
ground in Illinois and there built up a sort
of village in the heart of the prairie; but the
great mortality from which they suffered and
the subsidence of the fury of the French Rev-
olution recalled them in x813 to France, to
reoccupy the establishments from which they
had been banished.
  It was of this body that Dickens, in his
"American Notes," wrote as follows:
  Looming upin thedistance,aswe rode along, was an-
other of the ancient Indian burial-places, called Monk's
AMound, in memory of a body of fanatics of the order
of La Trappe, who founded a desolate convent there
many years ago, when there were no settlements
within a thousand miles, and were all swept off by the
pernicious climate; in which lamentable fatality few
rational people will suppose, perhaps, that society ex-
perienced any very severe deprivation.

  But it is almost too late to say that in these
"Notes"   Dickens was not always either
kindly or correct.
  This is a better place in which to state a
miracle than to discuss it; and the following
account of a heavenly portent, which is re-
lated to have been vouchsafed the Trappists
while sojourning in Kentucky, may be given
without comment:
  In the year i8o8 the moon, being then about two-
thirds full, presented a most remarkable appearance.
A bright, luminous cross, clearly defined, was seen in
the heavens, with its arms intersecting the center of



the moon. On each side two smaller crosses were also
distinctly visible, though the portions of them most
distant from the moon were more faintly marked.
This strange phenomenon continued for several hours
and was witnessed by the Trappists on their arising,
as usual, at midnight, to sing the Divine praise.

  The present monastery, which is called the
Abbey of Gethsemane, owes its origin imme-
diately to the Abbey of La Meilleraye, of the
department of the Loire-Inferieure, France.
The abbot of the latter had concluded arrange-
ments with the French Government to found
a house in the island of Martinique on an es-
tate granted by Louis Philippe; but this mon-
arch's rule having been overturned, the plan
was abandoned in favor of a colony in the
United States. Two fathers, with the view of
selecting a site, came to New York in the sum-
mer of i848, and naturally turned their eyes to
the Catholic settlements in Kentucky and to
the domain of the pioneer Trappists. In the
autumn of that year, accordingly, about forty-
five " religious " left the mother-abbey of La
Meilleraye, set sail from Havre de Grace for
New Orleans, went thence by boat to Louis-
ville, and from this point walked to Gethsem-
ane, a distance of some sixty miles. Although
scattered among various countries of Europe,
the Trappists have but two convents in the
United States-this, the oldest, and one near
Dubuque, Iowa, a colony from the abbey in
Ireland.



BY THE WALL



486


 

A HOME OF THE SILENT BROTHERHOOD.



                    IMI.

  THE domain of the abbey comprises some
seventeen hundred acres of land, part of which
is tillable, while the rest consists of a range of
wooded knobs that furnish timber to the mon-
astery steam saw-mill. Around this domain
lie the homesteads of Kentucky farmers, who
make, alas! indifferent monks. One leaves the
public road that winds across the open coun-
try and approaches the monastery through a
long level avenue, inclosed on each side by
a hedge-row of cedars and shaded by nearly
a hundred beautiful English elms, all the off-
spring of a single parent stem. Traversing
this dim, sweet spot, where no sound is heard
but the waving of boughs and the softened
notes of birds, one reaches the porter's lodge,
a low brick building, on each side of which
extends the high brick wall that separates
the inner from the outer world. Passing be-
neath the archway of the lodge, one discov-
ers a graceful bit of landscape gardening-
walks fringed with cedars, elaborately de-
signed beds for flowers, pathways so thickly
strewn with sawdust that the heaviest foot-
fall is unheard, a soft turf of green traversed
only by the gentle shadows of the pious-look-
ing Benedictine trees: a fit spot for recrea-
tion and meditation. It is with a sort of
worldly start that you come upon an inclos-
ure at one end of these grounds wherein a
populous family of white-cowled rabbits tip
around in the most noiseless fashion.
                     Architecturally there is
                   little to please the zes-
                   thetic sense in the monas-
                   tery building, along the
                   whole front of which these
                   grounds extend.   It is
                   a great quadrangular pile
                   of brick, three stories
               k  high, heated by furnaces
                   and  lighted by gas-
                   modem appliances which
                   heighten the contrast with
                   the ancient life whose
                   needs they subserve. With-
                   in the quadrangle is a
                   green inner court, also
                   beautifully laid off. One
                   side of it consists of two
chapels, the one appropriated to the ordinary
services of the Church and entered from with-
out the abbey-wall by all who desire; the
other, consecrated to the offices of the Trap-
pist order, entered only from within, and ac-
cessible exclusively to males. It is here that
one finds occasion to remember the Trappist's
vow of poverty. The vestments are far from
rich, the decorations of the altar far from splen-



WITHIN THE GATES.



did. The crucifixion scene behind the altar
consists of wooden figures carved by one of
the monks now dead and painted with little art.
No tender light of many hues here streams
through long windows rich with holy remi-
niscence and artistic fancy. The church has,
albeit, a certain beauty of its own-that
charm which is inseparable from fine propor-
tion in stone and from gracefully disposed
columns growing into the arches of the lofty
roof. But the cold gray of the interior, severe
and unrelieved, bespeaks a place where the
soul comes to lay itself in simplicity before the
Eternal as it would upon a naked, solitary rock
of the desert. Elsewhere in the abbey,of course,
greater evidences of votive
poverty occur-in the vari-
ous statues and shrines of
the Virgin, in the pictures
and prints that hang in the
main front corridor-in
all that appertains to the
material life of the corm  
munity.
  just outside the church,
beneath the perpetual ben-
ediction of the cross on its
spire, is the quiet ceme-
tery garth where the dead  X
are side by side, their
graves covered with myr-
tle, and each having for    THE COOK.



487'


 

A HOMVE OF THE SILENT BROTHERHOOD.



its headstone a plain wooden crucifix bear-
ing the religious name and the station of him
who lies below -Father Honorius, Father
Timotheus, Brother Hilarius, Brother Eutro-
pius. Who are they And whence And by
what familiar names were they greeted on
the old play-grounds and battle-fields of the
world 
  The Trappists do not, as it is commonly
understood, daily dig a portion of their own



             BEFORE THE MADONNA.
graves. When one of them dies and has been
buried, a new grave is begun beside the one
just filled, as a reminder to all the survivors
that one of them must surely take his place
therein. So, too, when each seeks the ceme-
tery inclosure, in hours of holy meditation,
and, standing bare-headed among the graves,
prays softly for the souls of his departed breth-
ren, he may come for a time to this unfin-
ished grave, and, kneeling on the rude board
placed at the head, pray Heaven, if he be next,
to dismiss his soul in peace.



  Nor do they sleep in the dark, abject ken-
nel, which the imagination, in the light of
medieval history, constructs as the true monk's
cell. By the rule of St. Benedict, they sleep
apart but in the same place, and the dormi-
tory is a great upper room, well lighted and
clean, in the body of which a general frame-
work several feet high is divided into parti-
tions that look like narrow berths.
  It is while going from place to place in the
abbey and considering the other buildings con-
nected with it that one grows deeply inter-
ested in a subject but little understood -the
daily life of the monks.

                    Iv.
  WE have all acquired poetical and pictorial
conceptions of monks-praying with wan
faces and upturned eyes half darkened by the
shadowing cowl, the coarse serge falling away
from the emaciated neck, the hands press-
ing the crucifix close to the heart; and along
with this type has always been associated a
certain idea of cloistral life -that it was an
existence of vacancy and idleness, or at best
of deep meditation of the soul broken only by
express spiritual devotions. There is another
kind of monk, of course, with all the marks
of which we seem traditionally familiar; the
monk with the rubicund face, sleek poll,
good epigastric development, and slightly
unsteady gait, with whom, in turn, we have
connected a different phase of conventual dis-
cipline-fat capon and stubble goose, and
midnight convivial chantings growing ever
more fast and furious, but finally dying away
in a heavy stertorous calm. Poetry, art, the
drama, the novel, have each portrayed human
nature in orders; the saint-like monk, the in-
tellectual monk, the bibulous, the felonious, the
fighting monk (who loves not the hermit of
Copmanhurst), until the memory is stored
and the imagination preoccupied.
  Living for a while in a Trappist monastery in
modern America, one gets a pleasant infusion
of actual experience, and is disposed to insist
upon the existence of other types no less pic-
turesque and on the whole much more accept-
able. He finds himself, for one thing, brought
face to face with the working monk. Idleness
to the Trappist is the enemy of the soul, and
one of his vows is manual labor. Whatever a
monk's previous station may have been, he
must perform, according to abbatial direction,
the most menial services. None are exempt
from work; there is no place among them for
the sluggard. When it is borne in mind that
the abbey is a self-dependent institution,
where the healthy must be maintained, the
sick cared for, the dead buried, the necessity



488


 

A HOME OF THE SILENT BROTHERHOOD.



AMONG THE GRAVES.



for much work becomes manifest. In fact, the
occupations are about as various as those of
a modem factory. There is scope for intel-
lects of all degrees and talents of well-nigh
every order. Daily life, unremittingly from
year to year, is an exact system of duties
and hours. The building, covering about an
acre of ground and penetrated by corridors,
must be kept faultlessly clean. There are
three kitchens,-one for the guests, one for the
community, and one for the infirmary,- that
require each a coqueinariies and separate as-
sistants. There is a tinker's shop and a phar-
macy; a saddlery, where the broken gear used
in cultivating the monastery lands is mended;
a tailor's shop, where the worn garments are
patched; a shoemaker's shop, where the coarse,
heavy shoes of the monks are made and cob-
bled; and a barber's shop, where the Trap-
pist beard is shaved twice a month and the
Trappist head is monthly shorn.
  Outdoors the occupations are even more
varied. The community do not till the farm.
The greater part of their land is occupied by
tenant farmers, and what they reserve for
their own use is cultivated by the so-called
" family brothers," who, it is due to say, have
no families, but live as celibates on the abbey
domain, subject to the abbot's authority, with-
out being members of the order. The monks,
however, do labor in the amiple gardens, or-
chards, and vineyard from which they de-
rive their sustenance, in the steam saw-mill
and grain-mill, in the dairy and the cheese
factory. Thus picturesquely engaged one may
find them in autumn: monks gathering apples
   VOL. XXXVJ.-69.



and making barrel after barrel of pungent
cider, which is stored away in the vast cellar
as their only beverage except water; monks
repairing the shingle roof of a stable; monks
feeding the huge swine which they fatten
for the board of their carnal guests, or the
fluttering multitude of chickens from the
eggs and young of which they derive a slen-
der revenue; monks grouped in the garden
around a green and purple heap of turnips,
to be stored up as a winter relish of no mean
distinction.
  Amidst such scenes one forgets all else while
enjoying the wealth and freshness of artistic
effects. What a picture is this young Belgian
cheese-maker, his sleeves rolled up above the
elbows of his brawny arms, his great pinkish
hands buried in the golden curds, the cap of
his serge cloak falling back and showsing his
closely clipped golden-brown hair, blue eyes,
and clear delicate skin! Or this Australian
ex-farmer, as he stands by the hopper of grist
or lays on his shoulder a bag of flour for the
coarse brown bread of the monks. Or this











               GOING TO WVORK.



489


 


490A H0ME OF THE SILENT BROTHERHOOD.



THE FORTNIGH TLV SHAVE.



dark old French opera-singer, who strutted
his brief hour on many a European stage,
but now hobbles around, all hoary in his cowl
and blanched with age, to 1)ick up a handful
of garlic. Or this athletic, superbly formed
young Irishman, thrusting a great iron prod
into the glowing coals of the saw-mill fur-
nace. Or this slender Switzer, your attend-
ant in the refectory, with great keys dangling
from his leathern cincture, who stands by
with folded hands and bowed head while
you are eating the pagan meal he has pre-



pared, and prays that you may be forgiven
for enjoying it.
  From various countries of the Old World
men find their way into the Abbey of Geth-
semane, l)ut among them are no Americans.
Repeatedly the latter have made the exper'-
ment, and have always failed to persevere up
to the final consecration of the white cow-l.
Tche fairest warning is given to the postulant.
He is made to understand the entire extent
of the obligation he has assumed; and only
after passing through a novitiate, prolonged



490


 

A HfOME OF THME SILENT BROTHERHrOOD.



at the discretion of the abbot, is he admitted
to the vows that must be kept unbroken till
death.
                     V.
  FROM the striking material aspects of their
daily life, however, one is soon recalled to a
sense of their subordination to spiritual aims



and half of cream. The guest-master, whose
business it is to act as vtour guide through the
abbey and the grounds, is warilv mindful of his
special functions and requests you to address
none but him. Only the abbot is free to speak
when and as his judgment may approve. It
is silence, says the Trappist, that shuts out
new ideas, worldly topics, controversy. It is



THE REFECTORY.



and pledges; for upon them all, like a spell
of enchantment, lies the sacred silence. The
honey has been taken from the bees with so-
lemnity; the grapes have been gathered with-
out song and mirth. The vow of life-long
silence taken by the Trappist must of course
not be construed literally; but after all there
are only two occasions during which it is com-
pletely set aside-when confessing his sills
and when singing the offices of the Church.
At all other times his tongue becomes, as far
as possible, a superfluous member; he speaks
only by permission of his superior, and always
simply and to the point. The monk at work
with another exchanges with him only the few
low, necessary words, and those that provoke
no laughter. Of the three so-called monastic
,graces, Si-nip/icifs, Bcei-niuias, Hi/arinas, the
last is not his. Even for necessary speech he
is taught to substitute a language of signs, as
fully systematized as the soeech of the deaf
and dumb. Should he, vhile at work, wound
his fellow-workman, sorrow may be expressed
by striking his breast. A desire to confess is
shown by lifting one hand to the mouth and
striking the breast with the other. The maker
of cheese crosses two fingers at the middle point
to let you know that it is made half of milk



silence that enables the soul to contemplate
with singleness and mortification the infinite
perfections of the Eternal.
  In the abbey it is this all-pervasive hush
that falls like a leaden pall upon the stranger
who has rushed in from the talking universe
and this country of free speech. Are these
priests modern survivals of the rapt solitaries
of India  The days pass, andl the world, which
seemed in hailing distance to you at first, has
receded to dim remoteness. You stand at the
window of your room looking out, and hear
in the autumn trees only the flute-like note of
some migratory bird, passing slowly on towards
the south with all its kind. You listen within.
and hear but a kev turning in distant locks
and the slowv-retreating footsteps of some dusky
fi.-ure returning to its lonely self-coin itunin gs.
lhe utmost precaution is taken to avoid noise:
in the dormitory not even your guide will speak
to you, but explains by gesture and signs. Dur-
ing the short siesta the Trappists allow them-
selves, if one of them, not wishing to sleep.
gets permlission to read in his so-called cell.
he must turn the pages of his book inaud-
ibly. In the refectory, while the meal is eaten
and the appointed reader in the tribune goes
through a service, if one through carelessness



49XI


 

A HOME OF THE SILENT BROTHERHOOD.



READING IN THE CHAPTER ROOM.



makes a noise by so much as dropping a fork
or a spoon, he leaves his seat and prostrates
himself on the floor until bidden by the supe-
rior to arise. 'I'he same penance is undergone
in the church by any one who should distract
attention with the clasp of his book.
  A hard life, to purely human seeming, does
the Trappist make for the body. He thinks
nothing of it. It is his evil tenement of flesh,



whose humors are an impediment to sancti-
fication, whose propensities are to be kept
down by the practice of all austerities. 'l'o it
in part all his monastic vows are addressed-
perpetual and utter poverty, chastity, manual
labor, silence, seclusion, penance, obedience.
'T'he perfections and glories of his monastic
state culminate in the complete abnegation
and destruction of animal nature, and in the



492


 

A HOME OF THE SILENT' BROTHERHOOD.



AT WORK.



correspondence of his earthly life with the
holiness of divine instruction. The war of the
Jesuit is with the world; the war of the Trap-
pist is with himself. From his narrow bed, on
which are simply a coarse thin mattress, pil-
low, sheet, and coverlet, he rises at 2 o'clock,
on certain days at i, on others yet at 12. He
has not undressed, but has slept in his daily
garb, with the cincture around his waist.
  This dress consists, if he be a brother, of
the roughest (lark-brown serge-like stuff, the
over-garment of which is a long robe; if a
father, of a similar material, but white in color,
the over-garment being the cowl, beneath
which is the black scapular. He changes it
only once in two wveeks. The frequent use of
the bath, as tending to luxuriousness, is forbid-
den him, especially if he be young. His diet
is vegetables, fruit, honey, cider, cheese, and
brown bread. Only when sick or infirm may
he take even fish or eggs. His table-service is
pewter, plain earthernwvare, a heavy wooden
s1)oon and fork of his own making, and the
l)ottom of a broken bottle for a salt-cellar. If
he wvears the white cowl, he eats but one such
frugal repast a (lay during part of the year;
if the brown robe, and therefore required to
do more work, he has besides this meal an
early morning luncheon called " mixt." He
renounces all claim to his own person, all right



over his own powers. " I am as wax," he ex-
claims; "mold me as you wvill." By the law
of his patron saint, if commanded to do things
too hard, or even impossible, he must still
undertake them.
  For the least violations of the rules of his
order; for committing a mistake while recit-
ing a psalm, responsory, antiphon, or lesson;
for giving out one note instead of another,
or saying elominus instead of dlomiow for
breaking or losing anything, or committing
any fault while engaged in any kind of work
in kitchen, pantry, bakery, garden, trade, or
business - he must humble himself and make
public satisfaction forthwith. Nay, more:
each by his vowes is forced to become his
brother's keeper, and to lproclaim him publicly
in the community chapter for the slightest
overt transgression. For charity's sake, how-
ever, he may not judge motives nor make
vague general charges.
  The Trappist does not walk beyond the
inclosures except by permission. He must
repress all those inefialbly tender yearnings
that visit and vex the human heart in this
life. The death of the nearest kindred is not
announced to him. Forgotten 1)) the world,
by him it is forgotten. Yet not whollv. When
he lavs the lashes of the scourge on his flesh-
it ma