superior with palfrey and trappings. No bishop assisted at the solemnity
to receive into the higher ranks of the church nobility a dignitary
whose voice in the legislature was as potent as his own."

We are enabled by this partially-quoted description to imagine the
importance attached to the election of an abbot. He became, in feudal
times, a lord of the land, the richest man in the community, and a
tremendous power in political councils and parliaments. A Benedictine
abbot once confessed: "My vow of poverty has given me a hundred thousand
crowns a year; my vow of obedience has raised me to the rank of a
sovereign prince."

No new principle seems to be disclosed by the Benedictine rules. The
command to labor had been emphasized even in the monasteries of Egypt.
The Basilian code contained a provision enforcing manual labor, but the
work was light and insufficient to keep the mind from brooding. The
monastery that was to succeed in the West must provide for men who not
only could toil hard, but who must do so if they were to be kept pure
and true; it must welcome men accustomed to the dangerous adventures of
pioneer life in the vast forests of the North. The Benedictine system
met these conditions by a unique combination and application of
well-known monastic principles; by a judicious subordination of minor
matters to essential discipline; by bringing into greater prominence
the doctrine of labor; by tempering the austerities of the cell to meet
the necessities of a severe climate; and lastly, by devising a scheme of
life equally adaptable to the monk of sunny Italy and the rude Goth of
the northern forests.

It was the splendid fruition of many years of experiment amid varying
results. "It shows," says Schaff, "a true knowledge of human nature, the