Dr. Coulton and Monastic Economy
Five Centuries of Religion. Vol. III : Getting and Spending. By G. G. Coulton. (Cambridge. 35s.) Dn. Courrox's enormous work, like some equipage of an earlier age, proceeds on its lordly way. This is the third volume, of some seven hundred pages ; and there is yet to be a fourth. In a little work of mine On History, some years ago, I remarked on the spacious planning that- was evident hi Dr. Coulton's scheme. Certainly, as it has unfolded itself, Dr. Coulton has come to occupy the position of our leading social historian of the middle ages. It is a position which has been won not without opposition, for Dr. Coulton loves con-. troversy ; and this to some extent has prejudiced his reception, though why popular controversy should be regarded as so deleterious by the academic historian I cannot understand : it may serve useful purpose and provides much fun. Dr. Coulton evidently enjoys it. But it has had the effect that people are apt to forget how balanced a view of monasticism, of its greatness and decline, his is at bottom. Nothing could be more judicious, it seems to me, than the Introduction to this book—one of the best things he has written—and the summary with which he concludes (pp. 596-599). His judge- ment that monasticism about 1300 was predominantly bene- ficent, but by 1500 had become unpopular appears to me convincing. I should only add that by then it had on the whole outgrown its usefulness.
Dr. Coulton's expressed aim is to take the average of its achievement, laying stress neither on its highest flights nor its lowest descents. It is difficult to disagree then with the conclusion : " In nine cases out of ten, there was this very human tendency to settle down first into institutionalism, then to let the institution crystallise into JormaLism ; and finally, without forgetting heaven, to make the best of both worlds."
Monks did not cease to be-human for being monks. After all, zl faut vivre, even in the religious atmosphere of the middle ages; and the great Abbot Samson (Carlyle's Abbot Samson) con- fessed to Joeelin " If I could have been as I was before I became a monk, and could have had five or six marks of rent wherewith I could hatre been supported in the schools, I would never have been monk or abbot." Moreover, when Dr. Coulton allows himself to reflect for a moment on the mass of detail he has accumulated, it is evident how deep must be the sympathy for monasticism and the Church, which has led him to spend a lifetime in its study. He must often have thought when contemplating his monks, " There, but for the grace of God, go I." Indeed, to say that " after all, the mediaeval monk was in himself our own potential self " is more or less to say so.'
In this volume Dr. Coulton is concerned with the economic side of the monasteries, how they acquired what they got, how they managed their business, how they spent the proceeds. He quotes the saying of Hofmann, " that in our estimate of religious life in mediaeval monasteries we must pay more attention to economic life than has been the case until now ; otherwise we cannot fully understand its development," quite rightly. Dr. Coulton proceeds then to assemble into his numerous chapters, not a chronological treatment of monas- ticism, but a wealth of materials dealing with every aspect of the management of their affairs ; from the donations of pious founders and fees for masses and burials and from relics, to the scramble for tithes and for impropriations of livings which made the monasteries so unpopular with the secular clergy and with the parishes towards the end. A number of these chapters contain much new and original matter, particularly those relating to dowries and corrodies (pensions), on banking and monastic-usury, on commendams and impropria- tions. The money made out of relics is an old scandal ; and, really, human credulity being what it is, who can blame the monks for taking advantage of it ? If the people insist on being such fools, why not take them in for the good of the Church ? There is an exquisite catalogue (p. 106) of the precious possessions of the monks of Durham, " a veritable thaumaturgic museum," ranging from griffins' eggs and claws to the coals of St. Lawrence and one of his joints still bearing traces of the sacrilegious fire, portions of Moses' rod and (of course) of the charger which held John the Baptist's head, of the tree under which the three angels sat with Abraham ; a tooth of St. Gengulphus, sovereign for the falling sickness; bits of the twelve thrones of the Apostles. Durham was a wealthy and famous house ; no wonder it was such a success. The press of the people on great occasions to see a well- venerated relic- has its equivalent today in the urge of the populace to behold a favourite film-star. Really the mediaeval historian has a lot to teach the modern historian or political ' thinker who assumes human rationality.
Dr. Coulton's card-index method is open to criticism, and it has been criticised. But it so happens that passing through the whole range of these subjects, from piouS donations to monastic debts and restriction of numbers, we get a roughly chronological impression of the progress from the original enthusiasm which founded monasteries to its decline and their decay, and Dr. Coulton repeats his submission that his volumes are not intended as a history of monasticism, but as materials for a fuller synthesis by some later hand.
A. L. ROWSE.
Previous page
