What We Owe the Monks
Thomas Woods continues his series of articles at Lew Rockwell about the Catholic Church's contributions to Western Civilization. Link. Excerpts:
Although the Rule of St. Benedict (c. 529) was known for its moderation and its aversion to exaggerated penances, we often find the monks freely embracing work that was difficult and unattractive, since for them such tasks were channels of grace and opportunities for mortification of the flesh. This is certainly true when it comes to the clearing and reclaiming of land. A swamp was utterly without value, and was only a source of pestilence. But the monks thrived in such locations, and embraced the challenges that came with them. Before long, they managed to dike and drain the swamp. Soon, what had once been a source of disease and filth became fertile agricultural land.
No wonder the monks have been called "the skillful and unpaid technical advisers of the third world of their times ”“ that is to say, Europe after the invasion of the barbarians." A French scholar writes: "In effect, whether it be the mining of salt, lead, iron, alum, or gypsum, or metallurgy, quarrying marble, running cutler's shops and glassworks, or forging metal plates, also known as firebacks, there was no activity at all in which the monks did not display creativity and a fertile spirit of research. Utilizing their labor force, they instructed and trained it to perfection. Monastic know-how [would] spread throughout Europe."
Another of the glories of the monastic tradition was the monks' attention to charitable activities, a subject worthy of lengthy treatment in itself. Here we may note simply that Benedict's Rule called for the monastery to dispense alms and hospitality to the extent that its means permitted.
[The monks] did much more than simply preserve literacy. Even an unsympathetic scholar could write of the monks, "They not only established the schools, and were the schoolmasters in them, but also laid the foundations for the universities. They were the thinkers and philosophers of the day and shaped the political and religious thought. To them, both collectively and individually, was due the continuity of thought and civilization of the ancient world with the later Middle Ages and with the modern period."
