Pagina:Annales monastici Vol IV.djvu/65

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PREFACE. Ivii disputes from bad or overbearing abbats, or worthless monks. Yet, while fully admitting and i-ealizing this, and knowing that in all ages human nature when exposed to the same temptations will be guilty of the same errors, we must not shut our eyes to the enormous blessings conferred on the country by the groaii monastJck establishments, — the centres of religion and civiliza- tion, — protecting in a hard a"id ruthless age tlie poor and old ; the preservers of, if not literature generally, certainly historical literature, as to them we owe almost all we know of those times ; the cultivators and improvers of the lands which they received as gifts or bequests ; and with inmates who, with all their faults, lived as if they beHeved there is a life beyond this world, and that selfishness is not the one guiding principle for man to follow. Learned, as a rule, the monks were not ; it is singular how seldom books are alluded to throughout these annals, or how rarely we read of a book written by ore of them. Their duties as landlords, and the continual services, doubtless occupied a great portion of their time, and perhaps the kind of men who chiefly supplied the monasteries were not likely to do much for literature. Of all the names of monks mentioned in the Dunstable^ and Worcester annals in the thirteenth century, there is scarcely one which is known from any other source : a great contrast to the previous century, when so many well known names are promi- nent in the histories of the religious houses. I linger about this subject with the feeling that it has never yet been properly considered, or had justice done to it. The indiscriminate and stupid abuse that for so long was lavished on all that existed before the sixteenth century led to a reaction, which, though infinitely better ^ Richard de Morins himself (the author of the earlier portion of the Dunstable Annals) is an instance to the contrary ; he had studied at Bologna. See the Gesta Abbatum S. Albani, i. p. 307 (Riley).