ought not to complain if the stockings are white and the tunic dark. I more than half suspect that the practice enjoined by the Cassinese Declarations, to wit, that the tunic be black and stockings white, was in vigour in Paul's time-i.e., in the eighth century, and possibly much earlier.

What were the shoes and stockings of the ancient monks like? As regards stockings, nothing very certain can be laid down. In the eighth and ninth centuries, according to Warnfrid and Hildemar, the pedules were simply what we should call trunk hose. The custom of having different kinds of shoes for work and for the house was universal. The form varied from the sandals that are depicted in the Cassinese MS. to the boots reaching above the knee described in the Customs of Farfa and of St. Benignus at Dijon. The hobnailed shoes used when working in the fields are often alluded to. Paul Warnfrid says that grease for greasing the shoes is to be kept in a vessel where every one can get at it; but, he adds very naïvely, if it turns that someone steals it, it will be best to give each one a quantity to himself. There were fixed days for the greasing of the shoes, just as Tuesday was the day for the beginning of the week's washing.

The bracile was a broad girdle worn under the habit next the loins. Sometimes a leathern belt, sometimes a hempen girdle was in use. Woollen shirts were ordered to be worn by St. Benedict of Anian for reasons of climate, and whenever black dyed cloth for the tunic came into use, being inconvenient for washing, white woollen underclothing followed it, as at Cluny and elsewhere. The monks slept on palliasses; their coverings were sometimes of wool, often of skins of animals.

One word as to the monastic tonsure. Three forms of tonsure were known to our forefathers: the Eastern, which shaved the whole head; the Scoto-Irish, which shaved the front of the head from ear to ear, leaving the hair long and flowing on the occiput; and the Roman, which left a crown of hair round the head. The use of the razor for the head was not universal at first; in many places it was the distinctive mark or privilege of such as were in holy orders to have the head shaved with the razor.

Now I come to another important point in monastic customsnamely, how were Benedictine monasteries built? Uniformity in this respect is so carefully guarded, in such widely different localities, and from such an early date, that I have no hesitation in believing that on this point our monastic traditions are derived from the directions of the great monastic lawgiver himself, as they are strikingly convenient for the exercises of the monastic rule. The main lines are everywhere the same, except when some peculiar feature in the site chosen for building necessitated

a departure from them. The church built east and west, with the choir in front of the high altar, lies to the north of the monastic buildings. Had it lain to the south, its great height would have shut out warmth and sunlight from the cloister. The monastic offices are distributed round the cloister, whose four sides are built according to the points of the compass. the west side are the porter's lodge and guest-rooms; on the south, the kitchen and refectory; on the east, the principal hall is the chapter-house, running east and west like the church, with a stone bench round it. The dormitory and library are above the east and south cloisters. The north gallery of the cloister abuts on the church, and as most of the day's work is done in community, the covered gallery running round the cloister is a convenient means for going processionally from one office to another. The monks in summer sat and read in the cloister; in winter, St. Dunstan orders that they should have a hall to serve as calefactory, opening off the cloister, probably on the east side, next to the chapter-house. This is all I intend to say on monastic buildings, and will only remark in conclusion that at every epoch in Benedictine history, and never more than when monasteries were governed by saints and monks led lives of extreme austerity, a never-failing instinct led them to rear buildings of chaste simplicity, but of surpassing loveliness. I know of no better examples than the remains we possess of Cistercian architecture within the first hundred years from St. Bernard. As the author of a book on monastic architecture, that mingles many errors with much that is just and true, observes—

In monastic architecture all is seemly and noble. . . .". We do not pass from vaulted aisles to sheds and hovels. In stone halls, as seemly as the builder's art could make them, were the poor, hungry bodies fed and the weary limbs laid to sleep; the very kitchens were massive and picturesque, and wise design and honest work were not thought out of place in even humbler offices..

And thus in the lessons for the Office on the Feast of St. Victor III., we read in our breviary that he built the abbey church of Monte Cassino so that it seemed to be 66 a reclinatorium angelorum." And precisely as monastic observance relaxed, the chaste and noble seemliness of the house of God gave place to a corrupt and vicious taste for flimsiness and overloaded ornament, often more profane than sacred, and uninspired by the religious symbolism that is the breath of life of religious art. But this is a digression, and if any one wishes to observe the unity of plan in monastic buildings, he has only to place side by side

* "Ruined Abbeys of Yorkshire." By W. C. Lefroy.

half a dozen ground plans of monasteries, as far apart in time and place as St. Gall or Westminster, Fleury or Buckfast, and in every case let him take as his starting-point the west wall of the south transept. This wall prolonged gives the wall of the eastern gallery of the cloister, leading to the chapter-house.

And now as to monastic fare. They ate twice a day when it was not a fast-day; once only on fast-days. The use of meat was allowed to the sick and infirm, as well as to the aged and to children to all others it was forbidden. From the fact that St. Benedict in his prohibition specifies the flesh of quadrupeds, the Council of Aix-la-Chapelle allowed the flesh of fowls at Christmas and Easter, a practice in use at Monte Cassino in the eighth century. By some sort of tacit agreement, this interpretation of the rule, never a universal one, seems to have been condemned, and abstinence from the flesh of fowls observed with the same strictness as from that of quadrupeds throughout the Order about a century later. All congregations founded under the rule of St. Benedict, which profess to retain abstinence, exclude both alike. It is otherwise with regard to the practice of cooking dishes with lard or the fat of animals, a custom almost universally adopted within the period to which we are confining ourselves. St. Benedict of Anian, St. Dunstan, the Cluniacs, are at one on this point. The Fathers of Aix-la-Chapelle forbid the use of it on all Fridays, and St. Dunstan does not allow it in Advent, except on feast-days; in Lent it was forbidden. A very good idea of monastic fare is given us by Warnfrid's Commentary. St. Benedict allowed at dinner, bread, two cooked dishes, and fruit; at supper, the third part of the pound of bread. The good Lombard first justly remarks that the word pulmentum is used in the Latin translation both of the Old and New Testament, and signified at St. Benedict's time any kind of food besides bread. In the present instance it means vegetables, fish, cheese, &c., but not flesh. Then he goes on:

On ordinary days, if the heat or labour are not excessive, there should be two cooked dishes and one uncooked at Sext. At supper, if they sup, there should be one cooked dish; and as St. Benedict ordered two-thirds of a pound of bread to be given at dinner and one at supper, so likewise ought we to understand concerning the pulmenta.

Hildemar expressly includes eggs among the items of monastic fare. Warnfrid adds that on feast-days or at times of excessive labour, three cooked dishes and one uncooked one were allowed at Monte Cassino at dinner, and repeats the same in his letter to Charles the Great. There can be little question though, that Mabillon is right in saying that during the first ages of our

Order, the ordinary food consisted of bread and vegetables, and that fish and eggs, though not forbidden, were deemed more or less an indulgence to be allowed on certain days. The later Cluniacs only allowed fish twice a week; cheese or eggs were allowed on other days, but only in one dish; the other was of vegetables only, beans being everywhere the favourite food of monks. The Cluniac usage was already a decided mitigation of the rigour of earlier days such as observed by St. Benedict of Anian and his first disciples, with whom everything beyond bread and vegetables was an exceptional feast. During Lent, of course, only one meal was allowed, and that after Vespers. At this season the customs of Fleury command that on all Wednesdays and Fridays nothing is to be eaten with bread but raw herbs; beans or something of the kind on other days, to which the cellarer is to add fish on Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday. These details will give a general idea of the somewhat variable austerity in food in early Benedictine times. A knotty problem is that of the real meaning of a pound of bread and the hemina of wine allowed by St. Benedict. The Cassinese editors of Paul Deacon have given us in their preface the best essay that has yet appeared on the subject. The measure of the pound of bread now extant at Monte Cassino, consisting of a brass weight with the inscription, "Pondus libri Panis Beati Benedicti," can be traced back as described by Peter the Deacon in the beginning of the twelfth century to Abbot Bonitus, who took it with him to Rome when the abbey was burned by the Lombards in the time of Pope Pelagius. The inscription in letters of silver was placed on it by Gregory II. The weight of bread is 1053 grammes, or over two pounds. Is this really the measure intended for one person, or had our forefathers, working in the fields as they did, such powerful appetites?

A more serious difficulty arises with regard to the measure of wine. The ancient Cassinese Declarations expressly declare that the hemina of wine preserved at Monte Cassino is more than enough for the ordinary wants of one monk in a day. Yet the size of the hemina is confirmed by the Kremsmunster cup, which dates from St. Tassilo's time in the eighth century, and from several other authorities. As the aforesaid measure of wine is pretty nearly two quarts, I must leave it undecided whether it is the hemina intended by St. Benedict for each one's consumption or not rather a measure of two hemina. St. Benedict is explicit in drinking very sparingly, and by ancient rule in Monte Cassino wine was always to be mixed with water.

With these four heads of ancient monastic discipline--to wit, the arrangement of hours, the food, clothing, and dwellings of monks, I must bring this article to its close. It would be useless to VOL. XVII. NO. I. [Third Series.]

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attempt saying anything on monastic liturgy and ceremonies; to make of it a useful essay it would have to be treated separately. It may astonish some to see that in the circle of monastic duties, our earliest Fathers allotted no special place to mental prayer. But the whole life of the monk was in their idea but one round of prayer, and the continuous silence (another subject that needs special discussion), as we find no hour in the day' allotted for recreation, made it far less needful then than it now is, to assign special times for recollection. How, again, was maintained between the brethren that fraternal charity, the exuberant overflowing whereof is so frequent a theme in the lives of our monastic saints and of their disciples, and which drew such countless thousands to the cloister; and what was the range of monastic studies; and how were monks received and professed; and what the care taken of the sick; and what were the regulations for health and cleanliness, are among the subjects that would have more or less interest for students of our monastic history.

It was always a belief among our forefathers, and, I think, a well-grounded one, that the text of the Rule, if carried out in its entirety, adding nothing to it and taking nothing from it, was singularly discreet in its provisions, and adapted to all classes of men. St. Hildegarde writes:

He was a sealed-up spring, which poured forth its waters with the wisdom of God's discretion, clinching the sharp nail of His teaching neither too high nor too low, but in the very centre of the wheel, so that every one, weak as well as strong, could easily drink of it, according to the measure of his strength.

ADAM HAMILTON, O.S.B.

ART. VI. THE PORTUGUESE IN INDIA.

1. An Historical and Archeological Sketch of the City of Goa. By JOSÉ NICOLAU DA FONSECA. Bombay: Thacker & Co. 1878.

2. Les Possessions Portugaises dans l'Extrême Orient. Par CHARLES GREMIAUX. Paris: Challamel Aîné. 1883.

3. Life and Letters of St. Francis Xavier. By HENRY JAMES COLERIDGE, S.J. London: Burns & Oates. 1881.

4. Historia do Descobrimento e Conquista da India pelos Portogveses. Por FERNÃO LOPEZ DE CASTANHEDA. Lisboa. 1883. HE Iberian Peninsula, constituted by nature warden of the straits that lead from the outer to the inner seas, claimed in the fifteenth century to own, by right of pre-emption, the

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