by John Lord, LL. D. ONE of the oldest institutions of the Church is that which grew out of monastic life. It had its seat, at a remote period, in India. It has existed, in differ- ent forms, in other Oriental countries. It has been modified by Brahminical, Buddhistic, and Persian the- ogonies, and extended to Egypt, Syria, and Asia Minor. Go where you will in the East, and you see traces of its mighty influence. We cannot tell its remotest origin, but we see everywhere the force of its ideas. Its fun- damental principle appears to be the desire to propitiate the Deity by penances and ascetic labors as the atone- ment for sin, or as a means of rising to a higher religious life. It has sought to escape the polluting influences of demoralized society by lofty contemplation and retire- ment from the world. From the first, it was a protest against materialism, luxury, and enervating pleasures. It recognized something higher and nobler than devo- tion to material gains, or a life of degrading pleasure. In one sense it was an intellectual movement, while in another it was an insult to the human understanding. It attempted a purer morality, but abnegated obvious and pressing duties. It was always a contradiction,—— lofty while degraded, seeking to comprehend the pro- foundest mysteries, yet debased by puerile supersti- tions. The consciousness of mankind, in all ages and coun- tries, has ever accepted retribution for sin——more or less permanent——in this world or in the next. And it has equally accepted the existence of a Supreme In- telligence and Power, to whom all are responsible, and in connection with whom all are responsible, and in connection with whom human destinies are bound up. The deeper we penetrate into the occult wisdom of the East,——on which light has been shed by modern explorations, monumental inscriptions, manuscripts, his- torical records, and other things which science and genius have deciphered,——the surer we feel that the esoteric classes of India, Egypt, and China were more united in their views of Supreme Power and Intelli- gence than was generally supposed fifty years ago. The higher intellects of Asia, in all countries and ages, had more lofty ideas of God than we have a right to infer from the superstitions of the people generally. They had unenlightened ideas as to the grounds of forgive- ness. But of the necessity of forgiveness and the favor of the Deity they had no doubt. The philosophical opinions of these sages gave direc- tion to a great religious movement. Matter was sup- posed t be inherently evil, ad mind was thought to be inherently good. The seat of evil was placed in the body rather than in the heart and mind. Not the thoughts of men were evil, but the passions and appetites of the body. Hence the first thing for a good man to do was to bring the body——this seat of evil——under subjec- tion, if possible, to eradicate the passions and appe- tites which enslave the body; and this was to be done by self-flagellations, penances, austerities, and solitude,—— flight from the contaminating influences of the world. All Oriental piety assumed this ascetic form. The transition was easy to the sundering of domestic ties, to the suppression of natural emotions and social enjoy- ments. The devotee became austere, cold, inhuman, unsocial. He shunned the habitations of men. And the more desirous he was to essay a higher religious life and thus rise in favor with God, the more severe and revengeful and unforgiving he made the Deity he adored, ——not a compassionate Creator and Father, but an irre- sistible Power bent on his destruction. Thus degrading view of the Deity, borrowed from Paganism, tinged the subsequent theology of the Christian monks, and entered largely into the theology of the Middle Ages. Such was the prevailing philosophy, or theosophy—— both lofty and degraded——with which the Christian converts had to contend; not merely the shameless vices of the people, so open and flagrant as to call out disgust and indignation, but also the views which the more vir- tuous and religious of Pagan saints accepted and pro- mulgated: and not saints alone, but those who made the greatest pretension to intellectual culture, like the Gnos- tics and Manicheans; those men who were the first to ensnare Saint Augustine,——specious, subtle, sophistical, as acute as the Brahmins of India. It was Eastern philosophy, unquestionably false, that influenced the most powerful institution that existed in Europe for above a thousand years,—–an institution which all the learning and eloquence of the Reformers of the six- teenth century could not subvert, except in Protestant countries. Now what, more specifically, were the ideals which the early monks borrowed from India, Persia, and Egypt, which ultimately took such a firm hold of the European mind? One was the superior virtue of a life devoted to purely religious contemplation, and for the same end that ani- mated the existence of fakirs and sofis. It was to escape the contaminating influence of matter, to rise above the wants of the body, to exterminate animal pas- sions and appetites, to hide from a world which luxury corrupted. The Christian recluses were thus led to bury themselves in cells among the mountains and deserts, in dreary and uncomfortable caverns, in isolated retreats far from the habitation of men,——yea, among wild beasts, clothing themselves in their skins and eating their food, in order to commune with God more effec- tually, and propitiate His favor. Their thoughts were diverted from the miseries which they ought to have removed, and were concentrated upon them- selves, not upon their relatives and neighbors. The cries of suffering humanity were disregarded in a vain attempt to practise doubtful virtues. Howe much good those pious recluses might have done, had their piety taken a more practical form! What missionaries they might have made, what self-denying laborers in the field of active philanthropy, what noble teachers to the poor and miserable! The conversion of the world to Christianity did not enter into their minds so much as the desire to swell the number of their commu- nities. They only aimed at a dreamy pietism,——at best their own individual salvation, rather than the salva- tion of others. Instead of reaching to the beatific vis- ion, they became ignorant, narrow, visionary; and when learned, they fought for words and not for things. They were advocates of subtile and metaphysical dis- tinctions in theology, rather than of those practical duties and simple faith which primitive Christianity enjoined. Monastic life, no less than the schools of Alexandria, was influential in creating a divinity which gave as great authority to dogmas that are the result of intellectual deductions, as those based on direct and original declarations. And these deductions were often gloomy, and colored by the fears which were inseparable from a belief in divine wrath rather than divine love. The genius of monasticism, ancient and modern, is the propitiation of the Divinity who seeks to punish rather than to forgive. It invented Purgatory, to escape the awful burnings of an everlasting hell of physical suffer- ings. It pervaded the whole theology of the Middle Ages, filling hamlet and convent alike with an atmos- phere of fear and wrath, and creating a cruel spiritual despotism. The recluse, isolated and lonely, consumed himself with phantoms, fancied devils, and "chimeras dire." he could not escape from himself, although he might fly from society. As a means of grace he sought voluntary solitary confinement, without nutritious food or proper protection from heat and cold, clad in a sheepskin filled with dirt and vermin. What life could be more antagonistic to enlightened reason? What mistake more fatal to everything like self-improvement, culture, knowledge, happiness? And all for what? To strive after an impossible perfection, or the solution of insoluble questions, or the favor of a Deity whose attributes he misunderstood. But this unnatural, unwise retirement was not the worst evil in the life of a primitive monk, with all its dreamy contemplation and silent despair. It was accompanied with the most painful austerities,——self- inflicted scourgings, lacerations, dire privations, to pro- pitiate and angry deity, or to bring the body into a state which would be insensible to pain, or to exorcise pas- sions which the imagination inflamed. All this was based on penance,——self-expiation,——which entered so largely into the theogonies of the East, and which gave a gloomy form to the piety of the Middle Ages. This error was among the first to kindle the fiery pro- tests of Luther. The repudiation of this error, and of it logical sequences, was one of the causes of the Refor- mation. This error cast its dismal shadow on the com- mon life of the Middle Ages. You cannot penetrate the spirit of those centuries without a painful recogni- tion of almost universal darkness and despair. How gloomy was a Gothic church before the eleventh cen- tury, with its dark and heavy crypt, its narrow win- dows, its massive pillars, its low roof, its cold, damp pavement, as if men went into that church to hide themselves and sing mournful songs,——the Dies Iræ of monastic fear! But of the primitive monks, with all their lofty self- sacrifices and efforts for holy meditation, towards the middle of the fourth century, as their number increased from the anarchies and miseries of a falling empire, be- came quarrelsome, sometimes turbulent, and generally fierce and fanatical. They had to be governed. They needed some master mind to control them, and confine them to their religious duties. Then arose Basil, a great scholar, and accustomed to civilized life in the schools of Athens and Constantinople, who gave rules and laws to the monks, gathered them into communi- ties and discouraged social isolation, knowing that the demons had more power over men when they were alone and idle. This Basil was an extraordinary man. His ances- tors were honorable and wealthy. He moved in the highest circle of social life, like Chrysostom. He was educated in the most famous schools. He travelled extensively like other young men of rank. His tutor was the celebrated Libanus, the greatest rhetorician of the day. He exhausted Antioch, Cæsarea, and Con- stantinople, and completed his studies at Athens, where he formed a famous friendship with Gregory Nazian- zen, which was as warm and devoted as that between Cicero and Atticus: these young men were the talk and admiration of Athens. Here, too, he was intimate with young Julian, afterwards the "Apostate" Emperor of Rome. Basil then visited the schools of Alexandria, and made the acquaintance of the great Athanasius, as well as of those monks who sought a retreat amid Egyptian solitudes. Here his conversion took place, and he parted with his princely patrimony for the benefit of the poor. He then entered the Church, and was successively ordained deacon and priest, while leading a monastic life. He retired among the moun- tains of Armenia, and made choice of a beautiful grove, watered with crystal streams, where he gave himself to study and meditation. Here he was joined by his friend Gregory Nazianzen and by enthusiastic admirers, who formed a religious fraternity, to whom he was a spiritual father. He afterwards was forced to accept the great See of Cæsarea, and was no less renowned as bishop and orator than he had been as monk. Yet it is as a monk that he left the most enduring influence, since he made the first great change in monastic life,——making it more orderly, more industrious, and less fanatical. He instituted or embodied, among others, the three great vows, which are vital to monastic institutions,—— Poverty, Obedience, and Chastity. In these vows he gave the institution a more Christian and a less Ori- ental aspect. Monachism became more practical and less visionary and wild. It approximated nearer to the Christian standard. Submission to poverty is cer- tainly a Christian virtue, if voluntary poverty is not. Chastity is a cardinal duty. Obedience is a necessity to all civilized life. It is the first condition of all government. Moreover, these three vows seem to have been called for by the condition of society, and the prevalence of destructive views. Here Basil,——one of the command- ing intellects of his day, and as learned and polished as he was pious,——like Jerome after him, proved him- self a great legislator and administrator, including in his comprehensive view both Christian principles and the necessities of the times, and adapting his institu- tion to both. One of the most obvious, flagrant, and universal evils of the day was devotion to money-making in order to purchase sensual pleasures. It pervaded Roman life from the time of Augustus. The vow of poverty, there- fore, was a stern, lofty, disdainful protest against the most dangerous and demoralizing evil of the Empire. It hurled scorn, hatred, and defiance on this overwhelm- ing evil, and invoked the aid of Christianity. It was simply the earnest affirmation and belief that money could not buy the higher joys of earth, and might jeopardize the hopes of heaven. It called to mind the greatest examples; it showed that the great teach- ers of mankind, the sages and prophets of history, had disdained money as the highest good; that riches exposed men to great temptation, and lowered the standard of morality and virtue,——"how hardly shall they who have riches enter into the kingdom of God!" It appealed to the highest form of self-sacrifice; it arrayed itself against a vice which was undermining society. And among truly Christian people this new application of Christ's warnings against the angers of wealth excited enthusiasm. It was like enlisting in the army of Christ against his greatest enemies. Make any duty clear and imperious to Christian people, and they will generally conform to it. So the world saw one of the most impressive spectacles of history,—— the rich giving up their possessions to follow the ex- ample and injunctions of Christ. It was the most signal test of Christian obedience. It prompted Paula, the richest lady of Christian antiquity, to devote the revenues of entire city, which she owned, to the cause of Christ; and the approbation of Jerome, her friend, was a sufficient recompense. The vow of Chastity was equally a protest against one of the characteristic vices of the day, as well as a Christian virtue. Luxury and pleasure-seeking lives had relaxed the restraints of home and the virtues of earlier days. The evils of concubinage were shameless and open throughout the empire, which led to a low esti- mate of female virtue and degraded the sex. The pagan poets held up women as a subject of scorn and sarcasm. On no subject were the apostles more urgent in their exhortations than to a life of purity. To no greater temptation were the converts of Christianity subjected than the looseness of prevailing sentiments in reference to this vice. It stared everybody in the face. Basil took especial care to guard the monks from this pre- vailing iniquity, and made chastity a transcendent and fundamental virtue. The monks were enjoined to shun the very presence of women. If they carried the system of non- intercourse too far, and became hard and unsympathetic, it was to avoid the great scandal of the age,——a still greater evil. To the monk was denied even the bless- ing of the marriage ties. Celibacy became a fundamen- tal law of monachism. It was not to cement a spiritual despotism that Basil forbade marriage, but to attain a greater sanctity,——for a monk as consecrated to what was rightly held the higher life. This law of celi- bacy was abused, and gradually was extended to all the clergy, secular as well as regular, but not till the clergy were all subordinated to the rules of an absolute Pope. It is the fate of all human institutions to become corrupt; but no institution of the Church has been so fatally perverted as that pertaining to the marriage of the clergy. Founded to promote purity of personal life, it was used to uphold the arms of spiritual despotism. It was the policy of Hildebrand. The vow of Obedience, again, was made in special reference to the disintegration of society, when laws were feebly enforced and a central power was pass- ing away. The discipline even of armies was relaxed. Mobs were the order of the day, even in imperial cities. Moreover, monks had long been insubordinate; they obeyed no head, except nominally; they were with difficulty ruled in their own communities. Therefore obedi- ence was made a cardinal virtue, as essential to the very existence of monastic institutions. I need not here allude to the perversion of this rule,——how it degenerated into a fearful despotism, and was made use of by ambitious popes, and finally by the generals of the Mendicant Friars and the Jesuits. All the rules of Basil were perverted from their original intention; but in his day they were called for. About a century later the monastic system went through another change or development, when Bene- dict, a remarkable organizer, instituted on Monte Cassino, near Naples, his celebrated monastery (529, A. D.), which became the model of all the monasteries of the West. He reaffirmed the rules of Basil, but with greater strictness. He gave no new principles to monastic life; but he adapted it to the climate and institutions of the newly-founded Gothic kingdoms of Europe. It became less Oriental; it was made more practical; it was invested with new dignity. The most visionary and fanatical of all the institutions of the East was made useful. The monks became indus- trious. Industry was recognized as a prime necessity even for men who had retired from the world. No longer were the labors of monks confined to the weav- ing of baskets, but they were extended to the com- forts of ordinary life,——to the erection of the stately buildings, to useful arts, the systematic cultivation of the land, to the accumulation of wealth,——not for individuals, but for their monasteries. Monastic life became less dreamy, less visionary, but more use- ful, recognizing the bodily necessities of men. The religious duties of monks were still dreary, monoto- nous, and gloomy,——long and protracted singing in the choir, incessant vigils, an unnatural silence at the table, solitary walks in the cloister, the absence of social pleasures, confinement to the precincts of their convents; but their convents became bee-hives of in- dustry, and their lands were highly cultivated. The monks were hospitable; they entertained strangers, and gave shelter to the persecuted and miserable. Their monasteries became sacred retreats, which were re- spected by those rude warriors who crushed beneath their feet the glories of ancient civilization. Nor for several centuries did the monks in their sacred en- closures give especial scandal. Their lives were spent in labors of a useful kind, alternated and relieved by devotional duties. Hence they secured the respect and favor of princes and good men, who gave them lands and rich presents of gold and silver vessels. Their convents were unmo- lested and richly endowed, and these became enor- mously multiplied in every European country. Grad- ually they became so rich as to absorb the wealth of nations. Their abbots became great personages, being chosen from the ranks of princes and barons. The original poverty and social insignificance of monachism passed away, and the institution became the most pow- erful organization in Europe. It then aspired to political influence, and the lord abbots became the peers of princes and the ministers of kings. Their abbey churches, espe- cially, became the wonder and the admiration of the age, both for size and magnificence. The abbey church of Cluny, in Burgundy, was five hundred and thirty feet ling, and had stalls for two hundred monks. It had the appointment of one hundred and fifty parish priests. The church of Saint Albans, in England, is said to have been six hundred feet long; and that of Glastonbury, the oldest in England, five hundred and thirty. Peterbor- ough's was over five hundred. The kings of England, both Saxon and Norman, were especial patrons of these religious houses. King Edgar found forty-seven mon- asteries and richly endowed them; Henry. founded one hundred and fifty; and Henry II. as many more. At one time there were seven hundred Benedictine abbeys in England, some of which were enormously rich,——like those of Westminster, St. Albans, Glastonbury, and Bury St. Edmunds,——and their abbots were men of the highest social and political distinction. They sat in Par- liament as peers of the realm; they coined money, like feudal barons; they lived in great state and dignity. The abbot of Monte Cassino was duke and prince, and chancellor of kingdom of the Two Sicilies. This cel- ebrated convent had the patronage of four bishoprics, sixteen hundred and sixty-two churches, and possessed or controlled two hundred and fifty castles, four hun- dred and forty town, and three hundred and thirty-six manors. Its revenues exceeded five hundred thousand ducats, so that the lord-abbot was the peer of the greatest secular princes. He was more powerful and wealthy, probably, than any archbishop in Europe. One of the abbots of St. Gall entered Strasburg with one thousand horsemen in his train. Whiting, of Glastonbury, enter- tained five hundred people of fashion at one time, and had three hundred domestic servants. "My vow of pov- erty," said another of these lordly abbots,——who gene- rally rode on mules with gilded bridles and with hawks on their wrists,——"has given me ten thousand crowns a year; and my vow of obedience has raised me to the rank of a sovereign prince." Among the privileges of these abbots was exemption from taxes and tolls; they were judges in the courts; they had the execution of all rents, and the supreme control of the income of the abbey lands. The revenues of Westminster and Glastonbury were equal to half a million dollars a year in our money, considering the relative value of gold and silver. Glastonbury owned about one thousand oxen, two hundred and fifty cows, and six thousand sheep. Fontaine abbey pos- sessed forty thousand acres of land. The abbot of Augia, in Germany, had a revenue of sixty thousand crowns,——several millions, as money is now measured. At one time the monks, with the other clergy, owned half of the lands of Europe. If a king was to be ran- somed, it was they who furnished the money; if costly gifts were to be given to the Pope, it was they who made them. The value of the vessels of gold and silver, the robes and copes of silk and velvet, the chalices, the altar-pieces, and the shrines enriched with jewels, was inestimable. The feasts which the abbots gave were almost regal. At the installation of the abbot of St. Augustine, at Canterbury, there were consumed fifty- eight tuns of beer, eleven tuns of wine, thirty-one oxen, three hundred pigs, two hundred sheep, one thousand geese, one thousand capons, six hundred rabbits, nine thousand eggs, while the guests numbered six thousand people. Of the various orders of the Benedictines there have been thirty-seven thousand monasteries and one hundred and fifty thousand abbots. From the monks, twenty-one thousand have been chosen as bishops and archbishops, and twenty-eight have been elevated to the papal throne. From these things, and others which may seem too trivial to mention, we infer the great wealth and power of monastic institutions, the most flourishing days of which were from the sixth century of the Crusades, be- ginning in the eleventh, when more than one hundred thousand monks acknowledged to rule of Saint Bene- dict. During this period of prosperity, when the vast abbey churches were built, and when abbots were great temporal as well as spiritual magnates, quite on an equality with the proudest feudal barons, we notice a marked decline in the virtues which had extorted the admiration of Europe. The Benedictines retained their original organization, they were bound by the same vows (as individuals, the monks were always poor), they wore the same dress, as they did centuries before, and they did not fail in their duties in the choir,——singing their regular chants from two o'clock in the morning. But discipline was relaxed; the brothers strayed into un- seemly places; they indulged in the pleasures of the table; they were sensual in their appearance; they were certainly ignorant, as a body; and they performed more singing than preaching or teaching. They lived for themselves rather than for the people. Their convents were hotels as well as bee-hives; any stranger could remain two nights at a convent without compensation and with- out being questioned. The brothers dined together at the refectory, according to the rules, on bread, vege- tables, and a little meat; although it was noticed that they had a great variety in cooking eggs, which were turned and roasted and beaten up, and hardened and minced and fried and stuffed. It is said that subse- quently they drank enormous quantities of beer and wine, and sometimes even to disgraceful excess. Their rules required them to keep silence at their meals; but their humanity got the better of them, and they have been censured for their hilarious and frivolous conversation,——for jests and stories and puns. Ber- nard accused the monks of degeneracy, of being given to the pleasures of the table, of loving the good things which they professed to scorn,——rare fish, game, and elaborate cookery. That the monks sadly degenerated in morals and dis- cipline, and even became objects of scandal, is ques- tioned by no respectable historian. No one was more bitter or vehement in his denunciations of this almost universal corruption of monastic life than Saint Bernard himself,——the impersonation of an ideal monk. Hence reforms were attempted; and the Cluniacs and Cister- cians and other orders arose, modelled after the original institutions on Monte Cassino. These were only branches of the Benedictines. Their vows and habits and duties were the same. It would seem that the prevailing vices of the Benedictines, in their decline, were those which were fostered by great wealth, and consequent idleness and luxury. But at their worst estate the monks, or regular clergy, were no worse than secular clergy, or parish priests, in their ordinary lives, and were more intelligent,——at least more learned. The ignorance of the secular clergy was notorious and scandalous. They could not even write letters of common salutation; and what little knowledge they had was extolled and ex- aggerated. It was confined to the acquisition of the Psalter by heart, while a little grammar, writing, and accounts were regarded as extraordinary. he who could write a few homilies, drawn from the Fathers, was a wonder and a prodigy. There was a total ab- sence of classical literature. But the Benedictines, idle and worldly as they were, guarded what little literature had escaped the ruin of the ancient civilization. They gave the only edu- cation the age afforded. There was usually a school attached to every convent, and manual labor was shortened in favor of students. Nor did the monks systematically and deliberately shut the door of knowl- edge against those inclined to study, for at that time there was no jealousy of learning. There was only in- difference to it, or want of appreciation. The age was ignorant, and life was hard, and the struggle for exist- ence occupied the thoughts of all. The time of the monks was consumed in alternate drudgeries and re- ligious devotions. There was such a general intel- lectual torpor that scholars (and these were very few) were left at liberty to think and write as they pleased on the great questions of theology. There was such a general unanimity of belief, that the popes were not on the look-out for heresy. Nobody thought of attack- ing their throne. There was no jealousy about the reading of the Scriptures. Every convent had a small library, mostly composed of Lives of the saints, and of devout meditations and homilies; and the Bible was the greatest treasure of all,——the Vulgate of Saint Jerome, which was copied and illuminated by busy hands. In spite of the general ignorance, the monks relieved their dull lives by some attempts at art. This was the age of the most beautiful illuminated manuscripts. There was but little of doctrinal con- troversy, for the creed of the Church was settled; but pious meditations and the writings of noted saints were studied and accepted,——especially the works of Saint Augustine, who had fixed the thinking of the West for a thousand years. Pagan literature had but little charm until Aristotle was translated by Ara- bian scholars. The literature of the Church was pue- rile and extravagant, yet Christian,——consisting chiefly of legends of martyrs and Lives of saints. That liter- ature has no charm to us, and can never be revived, indeed is already forgotten and neglected, as well it may be; but it gave unity to Christian belief, and enthroned the Christian heroes on the highest pedestal of human greatness. In the monasteries some of the frater- nity read aloud these Lives and Meditations, while the brothers worked or dined. There was no discussion, for all thought alike; and all sought to stimulate religious emotions rather than to quicken intellectual activity. About half the time of the monks, in a well-regulated monastery, was given to singing and devotional exer- cises and religious improvement, and the other half to labors in the fields, or in painting or musical compo- sition. So far as we know, the monks lived in great harmony, and were obedient to the commands of their superiors. They had a common object to live for, and had few differences in opinion on any subject. They did not enjoy a high life, but it was free from the dis- tracting pleasures. They held to great humility, with which spiritual pride was mingled,——not the arrogant pride of the dialectician, but the self-satisfied pride of the devotee. There was no religious hatred, except toward Turks and Saracens. The monk, in his narrow- ness and ignorance, may be repulsive to an enlight- ened age: he was not repulsive to his own, for he was not behind it either in his ideas or in his habits of life. In fact, the more repulsive the monk of the dark ages is to this generation, the more venerated he was by bishops and barons seven hundred years ago; which fact leads us to infer that the degenerate monk might be to us most interesting when he was most condemned by the reformers of his day, since he was more humane, genial, and free than his brethren, chained to the rigid discipline of the convent. Even a Friar Tuck is not so repulsive to us as an unsocial, austere, narrow-minded, and ignorant fanatic of the eleventh century. But the monks were not to remain forever impris- oned in the castles of ignorance and despair. With the opening of the twelfth century light began to dawn upon the human mind. The intellectual monk, long accustomed to devout meditations, began to speculate on those subjects which had occupied his thoughts,—— on God and His attributes, on the nature and penalty of sin, on redemption, on the Saviour, on the power of the will to resist evil, and other questions that had agitated the early Fathers of the Church. Then arose such men as Erigena, Roscelin, Bérenger, Lanfranc, An- selm, Bernard, and others,——all more or less orthodox. but inquiring and intellectual. It was within the walls of the cloister that the awakening began and the first impulse was given to learning and philosophy. The abbey of Bec, in Normandy, was the most distinguished of the new intellectual centres, while Clairvaux and other princely abbeys had inmates as distinguished for medi- tative habits as for luxury and pride.
By John Lord, LL. D. THOMAS AQUINAS. THE SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY. (ii.) With the Crusades arose a new spirit, which gave an impulse to philosophy as well as to art and enterprise. "The primum mobile of the new system was Motion, in distinction from the Rest which marked the old monas- tic retreats." An immense enthusiasm for knowledge had been kindled by Abélard, which was further in- tensified by the Scholastic doctors of the thirteenth century, especially such of them as belonged to the Dominican and Franciscan friars. These celebrated Orders arose at a great crisis in the Papal history, when rival popes aspired to the throne of Saint Peter, when the Church was rent with divisions, when princes were contending for the right of investiture, and when heretical opinions were de- fended by men of genius. At this crisis a great Pope was called to the government of the Church,——Inno- cent III., under whose able rule the papal power culminated. He belonged to an illustrious Roman family, and received an unusual education, being versed in theology, philosophy, and canon law. His name was Lothario, of the family of the Conti; he was nephew of a pope, and counted three cardinals among his relatives. At the age of twenty-one, about the year 1181, he was one of the canons of Saint Peter's Church; at twenty-four he was sent by the Pope on important missions. In 1188 he was created cardinal by his uncle, Clement III.; and in 1198 he was elected Pope, at the age of thirty-eight, when the Crusades were at their height, when the south of France was agitated by the opinions of the Albigenses, and the provinces on the Rhine by those of the Waldenses. It was a turbulent age, full of tumults insurrections, wars, and theological dissensions. The old monastic orders had degenerated and lost influence through idleness and self-indulgence, while the secular clergy were scarcely any better. Innocent cast his eagle eye into all the abuses which disgraced the age and Church, and made fearless war upon those princes who usurped his pre- rogatives. He excommunicated princes, humbled the Emperor of Germany and the King of England, put kingdoms under their interdict, exempted abbots from the jurisdiction of bishops, punished heretics, formed cru- sades, laid down new canons, regulated taxes, and di- rected all ecclesiastical movements. His activity was ceaseless, and his ambition was boundless. He in- stituted important changes, and added new orders of monks to the Church. It was this Pope who made auricular confession obligatory, thus laying the founda- tion of an imperious spiritual sway in the form of inquisitions. A firm guardian of public morals, his private life was above reproach. His habits were simple and his tastes were cultivated. He was charitable and kind to the poor and unfortunate. He spent his enormous revenues in building churches, endowing hospitals, and rewarding learned men; and otherwise showed himself the friend of scholars, and the patron of benevolent movements. He was a reformer of abuses, publishing the most se- vere acts against venality, and deciding quarrels on prin- ciples of justice. He had no dramatic conflicts like Hildebrand, for his authority was established. As the supreme guardian of the interests of the Church he sel- dom made demands which he had not the power to en- force. John of England attempted resistance, but was compelled to submit. Innocent even gave the arch- bishopric of Canterbury to one of his cardinals, Stephen Langton, against the wishes of a Norman king. He made Philip II take back his lawful wife; he nominated an emperor to the throne of Constantine; he compelled France to make war on England, and incited the barons to rebellion against John. Ten years' civil war in Ger- many were the fruit of his astute policy, and the only great failure of his administration was that he could not exempt Italy from the dominion of the Emperors of Germany, thus giving rise to the two great political par- ties of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries,——the Guelphs and Ghibellines. To cement his vast spiritual power and to add to the usefulness and glory of the Church, he not only countenanced but encouraged the Mendicant Friars, established by Saint Francis of Assisi, and Saint Dominic of the great family of the Guzmans in Spain. These men made substantially the same offers to the Pope that Ignatius Loyola did in after times,——to go where they were sent as teachers, preachers, and missionaries without condition or reward. They renounced riches, professed absolute poverty, and wandered from village to city bare- footed, and subsisting entirely on alms as beggars. The Dominican friar in his black habit, and the Fran- ciscan in his gray, became the ablest and most effective preachers of the thirteenth century. The Dominicans confined their teachings to the upper classes, and be- came their favorite confessors. They were the most learned men of the thirteenth century, and also the most reproachless in morals. The Franciscans were itinerary preachers to the common people, and created among them the same religious revival that the Meth- odists did later in England under the guidance of Wes- ley. The founder of the Franciscans was a man who seemed to be "inebriated with love," so unquenchable was his charity, rapt his devotions, and supernal his sympathy. He found his way to Rome in the year 1215, and in twenty-two years after his death there were nine thousand religious houses of his Order. In a century from his death the friars numbered one hundred and fifty thousand. The increase of the Do- minicans was not so rapid, but more illustrious men belonged to this institution. It is affirmed that it produced seventy cardinals, four hundred and sixty bishops, and four popes. It was in the palmy days of these celebrated monks, before corruption had set in, that the Dominican Order was recruited with one of the most extraordinary men of the Middle Ages. This man was Saint Thomas, born 1225 or 1227, son of a Count of Aquino in the kingdom of Naples, known in history as Thomas Aqui- nas, "the most successful organizer of knowledge," says Archbishop Trench, "the world has known since Aris- totle." He was called "the angelical doctor," exciting the enthusiasm of his age for his learning and piety and genius alike. He was a prodigy and a marvel of dialectical skill, and Catholic writers have exhausted language to find expressions for their admiration. Their Lives of him are an unbounded panegyric for the sweetness of his temper, his wonderful self-control, his lofty devotion to study, his indifference to praises and rewards, his spiritual devotion, his loyalty to the Church, his marvellous acuteness of intellect, his in- dustry, and his unparalleled logical victories. When he was five years of age his father, a noble of very high rank sent him to Monte Cassino with the hope that he would become a Benedictine monk, and ulti- mately abbot of that famous monastery, with the control of its vast revenues and patronage. Here he remained seven years, until the convent was taken and sacked by the soldiers of the Emperor Frederic in his war with the Pope. The young Aquino returned to his father's castle, and was then sent to Naples to be edu- cated at the university, living in a Benedictine abbey, and not in lodgings like other students. The Domini- cans and Franciscans held chairs in the university, one of which was filled with a man of great ability, whose preaching and teaching had such great influence on the youthful Thomas that he resolved to join the Order, and at the age of seventeen became a Dominican friar, to the disappointment of his family. His mother Theodora went to Naples to extricate him from the hands of the Dominicans, who secretly hurried him off to Rome and guarded him in their convent, from which he was rescued by violence. But the youth persisted in his intentions against the most passionate entreaties of his mother, made his escape, and was carried back to Naples. The Pope, at the solicitation of his family, offered to make him Abbot of Monte Cassino, but he remained a poor Dominican. His superior, seeing his remarkable talents, sent him to Cologne to attend the lectures of Albertus Magnus, then the most able ex- pounder of the Scholastic Philosophy, and the oracle of the universities, who continued his lectures after he was made a bishop, and even until he was eighty-five. When Albertus was transferred from Cologne to Paris, where the Dominicans held two chairs of theology, Thomas followed him, and soon after was made bach- elor. Again was Albert sent back to Cologne, and Thomas was made his assistant professor. He at once attracted attention, was ordained priest, and became as famous for his sermons as for his lectures. After four years at Cologne Thomas was ordered back to Paris, travelling on foot, and begging his way, yet stopping to preach in the large cities. He was still magister and Albert professor, but had greatly distinguished himself by his lectures. His appearance at this time was marked. His body was tall and massive, but spare and lean from fasting and labor. His eyes were bright, but their expression was most modest. His face was oblong, his complex- ion sallow; his forehead depressed, his head large, his person erect. His first great work was a commentary of about twelve hundred pages on the "Book of Sentences," in the Parma edition, which was received with great ad- miration for its logical precision, and its opposition to the rationalistic tendencies of the times. In it are discussed all the great theological questions treated by Saint Augustine,——God, Christ, the Holy Spirit, grace, predestination, faith, free-will, Providence, and the like,——blended with metaphysical discussions on the soul, the existence of evil, the nature of angels, and other subjects which interested the Middle Ages. Such was his fame and dialectical skill that he was taken away from his teachings and sent to Rome to defend his Order and the cause of orthodoxy against the slander of William of Saint Amour, an aristo- cratic doctor, who hated the Mendicant Friars and their wandering and begging habits. William had written a book called "Perils," in which he exposed the dangers to be apprehended from the new order of monks, in which he proved himself a true prophet, for ultimately the Mendicant Friars became subjects of ridicule and reproach. But the Pope came to the rescue of his best supporters. On the return of Thomas to Paris he was made doc- tor of theology, at the same time with Bonaventura the Franciscan, called "the seraphic doctor," between whom and Thomas were intimate ties of friendship. He had now reached the highest honor that the uni- versity could bestow, which was conferred with such extraordinary ceremony that it would seem to have been a great event in Paris at that time. His fame chiefly rests on the ablest treatise written in the Middle Ages,——the "Summa Theologica,"——in which all the great questions in theology and philosophy are minutely discussed, in the most exhaustive manner. He took the side of the Realists, his object being to uphold Saint Augustine. He was more a Platonist in his spirit than an Aristotelian, although he was in- debted to Aristotle for his method. He appealed to both reason and authority. He presented the Christian religion in a scientific form. His book is an assimila- tion of all that is precious in the thinking of the Church. If he learned many things at Paris, Cologne, and Naples, he was also educated by Chrysostom, by Augustine, and Ambrose. "It is impossible," says Car- dinal Newman, and no authority is higher than his, "to read the Catena of Saint Thomas without being struck by the masterly skill with which he put it together. A learning of the highest kind,——not merely literary book knowledge which may have supplied the place of in- dexes and tables in ages destitute of these helps, and when they had to be read in unarranged and frag- mentary manuscripts, but a thorough acquaintance with the whole range of ecclesiastical antiquity, so as to be able to bring the substance of all that had been written on any point to bear upon the text which in- volved it,——a familiarity with the style of each writer so as to compress in a few words the pith of the whole page, and a power of clear and orderly arrangement in this mass of knowledge, are qualities which make this Catena nearly perfect as an interpretation of Patristic literature." Dr. Vaughan, in eulogistic language, says: "The 'Summa Theologica' may be likened to one of the great cathedrals of the Middle Ages, infinite in detail but massive in the groupings of pillars and arches, forming a complete unity that must have taxed the brain of the architect to its greatest extent. But greater as work of intellect is this digest of all theologi- cal richness for one thousand years, in which the thread of discourse is never lost sight of, but winds through a labyrinth of important discussions and digressions, all bearing on the fundamental truths which Paul declared and Augustine systematized." This treatise would seem to be a thesaurus of both Patristic and Mediæval learning; not a dictionary of knowledge, but a system of truth severely elaborated in every part,——a work to be studied by the Mediæval students as Calvin's "Institutes" were by the scholars of the Reformation, and not far different in its scope and end; for the Patristic, the Mediæval, and the Protestant divines did not materially differ in refer- ence to the fundamental truths pertaining to God, the Incarnation, and Redemption. The Catholic and Protestant divines differ chiefly on the ideas pertain- ing to government and ecclesiastical institutions, and the various inventions of the Middle Ages to uphold the authority of the Church, not on dogmas strictly theological. A student in theology could even in our times sit at the feet of Thomas Aquinas, as he could at the feet of Augustine or Calvin; except that in the theology which Thomas Aquinas commented upon there is a cumbrous method, borrowed from Aristotle, which introduced infinite distinctions and questions and defi- nitions and deductions and ramifications which have no charm to men who have other things to occupy their minds than Scholastic subtilties, acute and logical as they may be. Thomas Aquinas was raised to combat, with the weapons most esteemed in his day, the various forms of Rationalism, Pantheism, and Mysticism which then existed, and were included in the Nominalism of his antagonists. And as long as universities are cen- tres of inquiry the same errors, under other names, will have to be combated, but probably not with the same methods which marked the teachings of the "angelical doctor." In demolishing errors and systematizing truth he was the greatest benefactor to the cause of "ortho- oxy" that appeared in Europe for several centuries, admired for his genius as much as Spencer and other great lights of science are in our day, but standing pre- eminent and lofty over all, like a beacon light to give both guidance and warning to inquiring minds in every part of Christendom. Nor could popes and sovereigns render too great honor to such a prodigy of genius. They offered him the abbacy of Monte Cassino and the archbishopric of Naples, but he preferred the life of a quiet student, finding in knowledge and study, for their own sake, the highest reward, and pursuing his labors without the impedimenta of those high posi- tions which involve ceremonies and cares and pomps, yet which most ambitious men love better than freedom, placidity, and intellectual repose. He lived not in a palace, as he might have lived, surrounded with flatterers, luxuries, and dignities, but in a cell, wearing his simple black gown, and walking bare- footed wherever he went, begging his daily bread ac- cording to the rules of his Order. His black gown was not an academic badge, but the Dominican dress. His only badge of distinction was the doctors' cap. Dr. Vaughan, in his heavy and unartistic life of Thomas Aquinas, has drawn a striking resemblance be- tween Plato and the Mediæval doctor: "Both," he says, "were nobly born, both were grave from youth, both loved truth with an intensity of devotion. If Plato was instructed by Socrates, Aquinas was taught by Albertus Magnus; if Plato travelled into Italy, Greece, and Egypt, Aquinas went to Cologne, Naples, Bologna, and Rome; if Plato was famous for his erudition, Aqui- nas was no less noted for his universal knowledge. Both were naturally meek and gentle; both led lives of retirement and contemplation; both loved solitude; both were celebrated for self-control; both were brave; both held their pupils spell-bound by their brilliant mental gifts; both passed their time in lecturing to the schools (what the Pythagoreans were to Plato, the Benedictines were to the angelical); both shrank from the display of self; both were great dialecti- cians; both reposed on eternal ideas; both were ora- cles to their generation." But if Aquinas had the soul of Plato, he also had the scholastic gifts of Aris- totle, to whom the Church is indebted for method and nomenclature as it was to Plato for synthesis and that exalted Realism which went hand in hand with Chris- tianity. How far he was indebted to Plato it is diffi- cult to say. He certainly had not studied his dialec- tics through translations or in the original, but had probably imbibed the spirit of this great philosopher through Saint Augustine and other orthodox Fathers who were his admirers. Although both Plato and Aristotle accepted "uni- versals" as the foundation of scientific inquiry, the former arrived at them by consciousness, and the other by reasoning. The spirit of the two great masters of thought was as essentially different as their habits and lives. Plato believed that God governed the world; Aristotle believed that it was governed by chance. The former maintained that mind is divine and eter- nal; the latter that it is a form of the body, and con- sequently mortal. Plato thought that the source of happiness was in virtue and resemblance to God; while Aristotle placed it in riches and outward prosperity. Plato believed in prayer; but Aristotle thought that God would not hear or answer it, and therefore that it was useless. Plato believed in happiness after death; while Aristotle supposed that death ended all pleasure. Plato lived in the world of abstract ideas; Aristotle in the realm of sense and observation. The one was reli- gious; the other secular and worldly. With both the passion for knowledge was boundless, but they differed in their conceptions of knowledge; the one basing it on eternal ideas and the deductions to be drawn from them, and the other on physical science,——the phenomena of Nature,——those things which are cognizable by the senses. The spiritual life of Plato was "a longing after love and of eternal ideas, by the contemplation of which the soul sustains itself and becomes partici- pant in immortality." The life of Aristotle was not spiritual but intellectual. He was an incarnation of mere intellect, the architect of a great temple of knowl- edge, which received the name of Organum, or the philosophy of first principles. Thomas Aquinas, we may see from what has been said, was both Platonic and Aristotelian. He resembled Plato in his deep and pious meditations on the eternal realities of the spiritual world, while in the severity of his logic he resembled Aristotle, from whom he learned precision of language, lucidity of statement, and a syllogistic mode of argument well calculated to confirm what was already known, but not to make attainments in new fields of thought or knowledge. If he was gentle and loving and pious like Plato, he was also as calm and passionless as Aristotle. This great man died at the age of forty-eight, in the year 1274, a few years after Saint Louis, before his sum of theology was completed. He died prematurely, exhausted by his intense studies; leaving, however, treatises which filled seventeen printed folio volumes, ——one of the most voluminous writers of the world. His fame was prodigious, both as a dialectician and a saint, and he was in due time canonized as one of the great pillars of the Church, ranking after Chrysos- tom, Jerome, Augustine, and Gregory the Great,—— the standard authority for centuries of the Catholic theology. The Scholastic Philosophy, which culminated in Thomas Aquinas, maintained its position in the uni- versities of Europe until the Reformation, but declined in earnestness. It descended to the discussion of unim- portant and often frivolous questions. Even the "an- gelical doctor" is quoted as discussing the absurd question as to how many angels could dance together on the point of a needle. The play of words became interminable. Things were lost sight of in a barbarous jargon about questions which have no interest to hu- manity, and which are utterly unintelligible. At the best, logical processes can add nothing to the ideas from which they start. When these ideas are lofty, discussion upon them elevates the mind and doubtless strengthens its powers. But when the subjects them- selves are frivolous, the logical tournaments in their defence degrade the intellect and narrow it. Nothing destroys intellectual dignity more effectually than the waste of energies in the defence of what is of no practical utility, and which cannot be applied to the acquisition of solid knowledge. Hence the Scholastic Philosophy did not advance knowledge, since it did not seek the acquisition of new truths, but only the estab- lishment of the old. Its utility consisted in training the human mind to logical reasonings. It exercised the intellect and strengthening it, as gymnastics do the body, without enlarging it. It was nothing but barren dialectics,——"dry bones," a perpetual fencing. The soul cries out for bread; the Scholastics gave it a stone. We are amazed that intellectual giants, equal to the old Greeks in acuteness and logical powers, could waste their time on the frivolous questions and dialectical subtilties to which they devoted their mighty powers. However interesting to them, nothing is drier and duller to us, nothing more barren and unsatisfying, than their logical sports. Their treatises are like trees with endless branches, each leading to new ramifica- tions, with no central point in view, and hence never finished, and which might be carried on ad infini- tum. To attempt to read their disquisitions is like walking in labyrinths of ever-opening intricacies. By such a method no ultimate truth could be arrived at, beyond what was assumed. There is now and then a man who professes to have derived light and wisdom from those dialectical displays, since they were doubt- less marvels of logical precision and clearness of state- ment. But in a practical point of view those "master- pieces of logic" are utterly useless to most modern inquirers. These are interesting only as they exhibit the waste of gigantic energies; they do not even have the merit of illustrative rhetoric or eloquence. The earlier monks were devout and spiritual, and we can still read their lofty meditations with profit, since they ele- vate the soul and make it pant for the beatitudes of spiritual communion with God. But the writings of the Scholastic doctors are cold, calm, passionless, and purely intellectual,——logical without being edifying. We turn from them, however acute and able, with blended disappointment and despair. They are fig- trees, bearing nothing but leaves, such as out Lord did curse. The distinctions are simply metaphysical, and not moral. Why the whole force of an awakening age should have been so devoted to such subtilties and barren dis- cussion it is difficult to see, unless they were found use- ful in supporting a theology made up of metaphysical deductions rather than an interpretation of the meaning of Scripture texts. But there was then no knowledge of Greek or Hebrew; there was no exegetical research; there was no science and no real learning. There was nothing but theology, with the exception of Lives of the Saint. The horizon of human inquiries was ex- tremely narrow. But when the minds of very intel- lectual men were directed to one particular field, it would be natural to expect something remarkable and marvellously elaborate of its kind. Such was the Scholastic Philosophy. As a mere exhibition of dia- lectical acumen, minute distinctions, and logical pre- cision in the use of words, it was wonderful. The intricacy and detail and ramifications of this system were an intellectual feat which astonishes us, yet which does not instruct us, certainly outside of a metaphys- ical divinity which had more charm to the men of the Middle Ages than it can have to us, even in a theologi- cal school where dogmatic divinity is made the most important study. The day will soon come when the principal chair in the theological school will be for the explanation of the Scripture texts on which dogmas are based; and for this, great learning and scholar- ship will be indispensable. To me it is surprising that metaphysics have so long retained their hold on the minds of Protestant divines. Nothing is more unsatis- factory, and to many more repellent, than metaphysical divinity. It is a perversion of the spirit of Christian teachings. "What says our Lord?" should be the great inquiry in our schools of theology; not, What deduc- tions can be drawn from them by a process of ingenious reasoning which often, without reference to other im- portant truths, lands one in absurdities, or at least in one-sided systems? But the metaphysical divinity of the Schoolmen had great attractions to the students of the Middle Ages. And there must have been something in it which we do not appreciate, or it would not have maintained itself in the schools for three hundred years. Perhaps it was what those ages needed,——the discipline through which the mind must go before it could be prepared for the sci- entific investigations of our own times. In an important sense the Scholastic doctors were the teachers of Luther and Bacon. Certainly their unsatisfactory science was one of the marked developments of the civilization of Europe, through which the Gothic nations must need pass. It has been the fashion to ridicule it and depre- ciate it in our modern times, especially among Prot- estants, who have ridiculed and slandered the papal power and all the institutions of the Middle Ages. Yet scholars might as well ridicule the text-books they were required to study fifty years ago, because they are not up to our times. We should not disdain the early steps by which future progress is made easy. We can- not despise men who gave up their lives to the contem- plation of subjects which demand the highest tension of the intellectual faculties, even if these exercises were barren of utilitarian results. Some future age may be surprised at the comparative unimportance of questions which interest this generation. The Scholastic Philos- ophy cannot indeed be utilized by us in the pursuit of scientific knowledge; nor (to recur to Vaughan's simile for the great work of Aquinas) can a mediæval cathedral be utilized for purposes of oratory or business. But the cathedral is nevertheless a grand monument, suggesting lofty sentiments, which it would be senseless and ruth- less barbarism to destroy or allow to fall into decay, but which should rather be preserved as a precious memento of what is most poetic and attractive in the Middle Ages. When any modern philosopher shall rear so gigantic a symmetrical monument of logical disquisitions as the "Summa Theologica" is said to be by the most com- petent authorities, then the sneers of a Macaulay or a Lewes will be entitled to more consideration. It is said that a new edition of this great Mediæval work is about to be published under the direct auspices of the Pope, as the best and most comprehensive system of Christian theology ever written by man. AUTHORITIES. Dr. Vaughan's Life of Thomas Aquinas; Histoire de la Vie et des Écrits de St. Thomas d'Aquin, par l'Abbé Bareille; Lacordaire's Life of Saint Dom- inic; Dr. Hampden's Life of Thomas Aquinas; article on Thomas Aquinas, in London Quarterly, July, 1881; Summa Theologica; Neander, Milman, Fleury, Dupin, and Ecclesiastical Histories generally; Biographie Univer- selle; Werner's Leben des Heiligen Thomas von Aquino; Trench's Lectures on Mediæval History; Ueberweg & Rousselot's History of Philosophy. Dr. Hampden's article, in the Encyclopædia Metropolitana, on Thomas Aquinas and the Scholastic Philosophy, is regarded by Hallam as the ablest view of this subject which has appeared in English.
Take NPR’s story that black-Asian American tension was the real race story in West Baltimore. Although the report notes in passing that some Blacks stood in harm’s way to protect Asian-owned stores, the only black voices we hear are from possibly two-faced patrons, from those who heartlessly taunt the Chinese American owner Tina Chen in her hollowed-out store—prompting her tears to fall, her voice to break –and those who feel that the anti-Asian arson was justifiable “payback” (even if not “reasonable”). Besides the fact that the overlay is too convenient and lopsided, these reports say nothing of the broader context – the racial history, the workings of elite power — that dangled in front of Blacks a “foreign model minority” myth about Asian Americans; that “they” aren’t really Americans but their success all the same made a mockery of “your” black failure. That is, they owned farms and homes, had good jobs and kept them, stormed Harvard and Stanford, and could skate or play violin at a world-class level – what have you done lately? — you want to cry racism when even the foreigners can “out-American” you?Still Not Doing the Right Thing - Black and Asian American Relations
Of course, the white elites don’t mention that this divide and conquer tactic was made possible by their own machinations of power: starting in the 1960s they drained the central cities of industry’s unionized, high-paying jobs; put nothing in their place; gutted strong civil rights and anti-poverty programs that would’ve helped; then demonized the black and Latino residents for being jobless, working the “illegal” economy, or simply speaking truth to power. Hello, under-served and over-policed West Baltimore. To add insult to injury, elite institutions made sure to pit the black and brown poor against selective cohorts of college-educated Asian immigrants, many of whom began showing up in central cities as new business owners when US institutions wouldn’t recognize their Asian credentials. To the black and brown residents, here was the “nemesis” filling in the nice shoes of the Italians and Jews before.
The key to understanding Marx is his class definition. A class is defined by the ownership of property. Such ownership vests a person with the power to exclude others from the property and to use it for personal purposes. In relation to property there are three great classes of society: the bourgeoisie (who own the means of production such as machinery and factory buildings, and whose source of income is profit), landowners (whose income is rent), and the proletariat (who own their labor and sell it for a wage).To really understand this shit, you need to go back. Way back. Back to the 19th century, back to the time of Alien Land Laws.
Class thus is determined by property, not by income or status. These are determined by distribution and consumption, which itself ultimately reflects the production and power relations of classes. The social conditions of bourgeoisie production are defined by bourgeois property. Class is therefore a theoretical and formal relationship among individuals.
Alien land laws were a series of legislative attempts to discourage Asian and other "non-desirable" immigrants from settling permanently in U.S. states and territories by limiting their ability to own land and property. Because the Naturalization Act of 1870 had extended citizenship rights only to African Americans but not other ethnic groups, these laws relied on coded language excluding "aliens ineligible for citizenship" to prohibit primarily Chinese and Japanese immigrants from becoming landowners without explicitly naming any racial group. Various alien land laws existed in over a dozen states before they were ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1952. Like other discriminatory measures aimed at preventing minorities from establishing homes and businesses in certain areas, such as redlining and restrictive covenants, many alien land laws remained technically in effect, forgotten or ignored, for many years after enforcement of the laws fell out of practice.Property rights are the cornerstone of White Supremacy. Who owns this land, who has the rights to it, and who doesn’t. What is Manifest Destiny? The idea that Whites own this land, all the land, that the entire Earth belongs to them. From feudal times, land ownership has been the primary method of the ruling class to generate rents from the underclass, which had to sell their labor for wages to live on that land.
In the late 1930s, few housing markets received more attention from the FHA than California. “Because of … recent residential building activity (primarily under F.H.A. type financing),” reported field agent T.H. Bowden and analyst D.W. Mayborn, “it is believed that the homeownership rate is now substantially larger than 1930, possibly as high as fifty percent.” Unfortunately for Los Angeles’s non-white residents, the FHA largely excluded minorities from its program. …to Los Angeles assessors, who occupied a key place in FHA and HOLC policy making, blacks and Asians remained the most pressing threats to neighborhood housing values. Federal policy makers viewed racial and ethnic heterogeneity as problematic and purposely rated communities with such diversity as poor investments for private financing, thus establishing an institutionalized system of discriminatory lending that private capital followed rigidly.Source: Only Some May Follow: Southern California, Asian Americans, and Housing During the Cold War
Though ethnic whites and many Mexicans endured housing discrimination, “social class, occupation, and skin color provided a ladder to whiteness” for segments of these populations, notes Charlotte Brooks in her study of Asian American housing integration, Alien Neighbors, Foreign Friends: Asian Americans, Housing, and the Transformation of Urban California. For blacks and Asian Americans, no amount of income could reconcile their racial difference. As one surveyor put it, the best sign that homeowners “remained ‘low class Southern Europeans’” rested on their communities’ proximity to non-whites. Obviously, the diversity of Central Los Angeles presented surveyors and homeowners with obstacles as assessors frequently highlighted the problematic heterogeneity of these neighborhoods and their pockets of Japanese and black populations.
Nearby West Adams had already riled up local white homeowners. Restrictive covenants in the community had expired, enabling Japanese and black integration. Arlington Boulevard served as the racial dividing line, and the local West Adams homeowner association continued to fight against non-white newcomers. When the FHA approved the PIC development, it more or less ensured racial transition of West Adams and the FHA’s intent to contain non-white community expansion.
Whites feared the threat of interracial romances that many equated with housing integration.Fucking haoles and their obsession with muh dick.
Needless to say, US wartime propaganda depicted the Japanese as morally questionable and untrustworthy. When the war ended, however, so too did the need arise to change American ideas about Asian Americans. Certainly along with their black, Latino, and Native American counterparts, Asian Americans contributed mightily to the war effort. Still, even military service only brought these groups so close to full citizenship. For Asian Americans, the ensuing Cold War also helped. After all, with the communist threat looming and the Cold War just gearing up, American officials and the public realized the need to put on a good face for an international community that it hoped would side with the United States in future conflicts with the USSR, particularly in Asia.This right here, folks. This right here is when they decided, hey, fuck it, we can’t stop the tide of migration from all these colored folks, let’s use one of them as the gatekeepers to our community. This shit here is the birth of the model minority.
If Jefferson Park demonstrated the boundaries that still prevented Japanese and Asian Americans from enjoying full equal rights, housing controversies of the 1950s illustrated new realities. Not only had international politics impacted local concerns, so too did demographic change driven by WWII. Blacks and Latinos, mostly Mexican Americans spurred on by the Bracero Program, rapidly increased their numbers in Southern California. Though Los Angeles assessors had considered blacks and Asians of equal threat to property values in the 1940s, by the 1950s the increase in SoCal’s black population ratcheted up white fears. Within this dynamic of Cold War politics and changing demographics, African Americans found themselves enduring the most pernicious housing discrimination, while Asian Americans enjoyed new opportunities
The 442nd Regimental Combat Team of the United States Army was a fighting unit composed almost entirely of American soldiers of Japanese ancestry who fought in World War II. Most of the families of mainland Japanese Americans were confined to internment camps in the United States interior. Beginning in 1944, the regiment fought primarily in Europe during World War II, in particular Italy, southern France, and Germany.Yeah, they love taking us hostage and forcing us to fight their battles for them. They do it abroad, and they do it at home, because these motherfuckers just constantly re-use the same Divide & Conquer tactics over and over.
The unit was called the “guinea pig battalion” by some and considered expendable. In the 100th’s first nine months of engagements, most notably Monte Cassino Abbey, the unit became known as the Purple Heart Battalion because of the extremely high number of casualties it suffered.
Among the best known was the unit’s rescue of the Texas “Lost Battalion,” which was surrounded by Germans in the Vosges Mountains in France. The 442nd was called in after two failed attempts to rescue the 230 trapped soldiers.
After a five-day, uphill battle, the 442nd broke through and rescued the Texans, at a high price — more than 800 casualties.
General Dahlquist's actions and orders received mixed reviews. Many Nisei veterans disliked or disrespected General Dahlquist, and believed that Dahlquist saw the Nisei only as cannon fodder, or expendable soldiers.
wandering eternally like a Scythian while I'm digging myself into books in my free time.Library of the pope's palace in Rome doesn't satisfy Poggio, he's writing to his friends every now and then: send me this and this composition. A list of antique writers he has researched, both Pagan and Christian is truly grandiose. He's an antiquary and numismatist parsing and interpreting inscriptions and medals; at his villa in Val-d'Arno he's collected beautiful museum of antiquities purchased by himself personally or on his instructions in Italy, Greece and in The East. He's a first-class Latinist. "Chiropody" by Xenophon and of first five books by Diodore The Sicilian translated from Greek to Latin by his feather. In his original studies he's a writer of the first-class talent shining not only with almost impossible erudition but also with talent's flexibility on the same scale. His philosophical and ethical tractates ("On miserliness", "On nobleness", "On misfortune of sovereigns", "On wretchedness of human existence") are worthy of Cicero and Seneca. He can discuss theological questions and Christianic virtues with a language that without Bracciolini's signature anyone would mistake for language of one of the Fathers of The Church. Trying to keep up with Plinius who's enraptured Bracciolini he has wrote "On mores of The Indians" book. He has made extremely interesting archeological guide for research of roman monuments (De varietate fortunae). He tells a story of Venice man Niccoli de Conti's journey in Persia. Translates Manilius’ "Astronomicon" to Italian. Does a good sir want a satire of Petronius style? Poggio offers his extremely acrimonious "Historia convivales" ("The Tableful History") scourging lawyer and medic charlatans who has become lords of their age and profiteer both huge power and huge capital with human stupidity. Does good sir want historical study like Tacitus' "Chronicles"? That's what "Historia Florentina" ("The Florence History") is like, a story of clear and accurate tone, solid picture, bright coloring and full of artistic images and personalities and also deeply insightful in its judgment and foresight. After all Poggio's great glory was continuously strengthened and supported with witty and sage letters he was exchanging with the great people of this world (with Nikolai, Laurentius and Cosmos Medici, with Herzogs Sforza, Visconti, Leonello D'Este, with king Alfonso The Aragonian), with a majority of modern cardinals and with almost all of the remarkable personalities of his age. Poggio Bracciolini's splendid letters were going through many hands to be reread, rewritten, replacing newspapers and magazines for Italian intelligentsia of XV century. In a word, this resplendent imitator was his century's ruler of the minds in a full sense of these words. Criticism was placing him on the same level with the greatest authors of The Renaissance. His honorariums prove how high he was valued: for dedication of "The Chiropody" to Alfonso The Aragonian, Poggio was given 600 gold - 7200 franks. With a value of money back then this was a huge capital. Literature has advanced him to a rank of statesmen and he has ended his life at a height of important and powerful rank as a chancellor of The Florence Republic. He was a center of his modern literature to such an extent that many people used to find it possible to define first half of Italian XV century as "The Poggio Age". Even in France his name has disappeared in a family abbreviation of historical common knowledge - "Le Pogge". During his lifetime Florence has erected for him a statue of his own that was cut with Donatello's chisel. At first it stood under portico of Santa Maria del Fiere cathedral, now it’s carried inside the church itself.
I have found an excellent scribe and - believe you or not! - he wasn't in prison for people in a hard labor.Of course scribes were mostly working on saleable secondary product only valuable with Poggio's editing. Amateur specimen were made by master himself and from the following example we can figure out how cruel his pricing was: after selling Alfonso The Aragonian a copy of Titus Livius he has made himself Poggio has spent a money he was paid to buy a villa in Florence. He has accepted a hundred of ducats (1200 franks) from Herzog d'Este for letters of Saint Hieronymus - doing this with a great dissatisfaction which looked like he was forced into it either by being low on money or late to complete his work and we should also consider how in an age of The Renaissance Fathers of the Church could not be sold from hands to hands as easily as Pagan philosophers. Among his clients Poggio had Medici, Sforza, d'Este, aristocratic families of England, Herzog house of Burgundy, Orsini cardinals, Cologne, just rich people like Bartolommeo di Bardio, universities using that exact times and a generosity of enlightened rulers for either establishing a library or widening their old book storages intensively. Poggio was making very big money so he has left his children with an excellent capital that they have wasted with an extreme rapidity. But there can be no doubt how for a very long time - till he was 40 at least - he lived bigger than his constant income was so I he wanted to get himself out of debt he needed some kind of emergency big score that he had to mine using equally emergent ways. And when he had to choose these ways he can never choose wisely.
Cornelius Tacitus et Opera Apuleii.(Cornelius Tacitus and compositions of Apulei from books of Saint Mark monastery in Florence, of Preacher rank (?-tr). As a heritage from Niccolo Niccoli, valiant Florence citizen and extremely educated man)
Conventus sancti Marci de Florentia, ord.
Praedic. De heriditate Nicolai Nicoli
Florentissimi, viri Doctissimi
Cornelius never did lost his head through the ages just hiding it instead.People think (not any kind of proof in present - Auth) how this copy was found in Corvei monastery and after being carried to Rome from there by some monk it was purchased for a pope by a certain Archimboldi who later has become a bishop of Milano. Corvei are a small town in Westphalia 65 kilometers southeast from Minden. It's benedictian monastery was founded by Ludovic The Good Soul in IX century played vital role during The Middle Ages as very important religious and political center.
unlike his predecessors who were writing about the republic Tacitus when he was describing his activity of historian of The Roman Empire made a notion how his study is limited by narrow confines and will not bring him any glory ("Annals", IV, 32). To a certain extent these words have turned out to be prophetic.Not a single historian of The Emperors’ Rome including Tacitus has become a "classic" of roman literature. Tacitus was not taught in roman schools: philologists (so-called grammars) who were keepers of scholar tradition were not interested in his works. For latest roman scientists an effect of this lack of attention appeared in complete absence of information about a life of this historian" (ref 48 v2 p203) By the way it means how the rest of roman historians of emperors' period didn't get any better treatment than Tacitus himself.
So in a city of Mimida on a river that Cornelius Tacitus the historian of feats committed by Romans among these people has called Visurgis (Veser) and historians of today call Visaraka.Basing on this people has made a conclusion how the chronicler had an authentic text of Tacitus' "Annals" in front of him...
we have to agree with Ross and Hoshar when they state how in late XIV and early XV centuries nobody of educated people had the smallest idea of Tacitus. This was an ancientry's great and cloudy myth stored in hints of the antique books. The greats believed in its obscurity and of course they were dreaming: if only I could find it! Idealistic-minded scientists were dreaming about it, practically minded scientists were dreaming about it too. At that time palace pantries, monastery basements and trash of rag pickers have revealed many Litheraturical treasures of The Ancient World and brought many antique dead back to life of The Renaissance. There was a need to conclude a series of findings of The Roman Literature with Tacitus and every bookseller was understanding how finding Tacitus meant amassing a capital. So in the end the demand has created the supply: Tacitus was found.(ref 8 p 373-374)
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