y, the idea,
and even the name, of all separate or exclusive possessions. [50] The
brethren were supported by their manual labor; and the duty of labor was
strenuously recommended as a penance, as an exercise, and as the most
laudable means of securing their daily subsistence. [51] The garden
and fields, which the industry of the monks had often rescued from the
forest or the morass, were diligently cultivated by their hands.
They performed, without reluctance, the menial offices of slaves and
domestics; and the several trades that were necessary to provide their
habits, their utensils, and their lodging, were exercised within the
precincts of the great monasteries. The monastic studies have tended,
for the most part, to darken, rather than to dispel, the cloud of
superstition. Yet the curiosity or zeal of some learned solitaries
has cultivated the ecclesiastical, and even the profane, sciences; and
posterity must gratefully acknowledge, that the monuments of Greek
and Roman literature have been preserved and multiplied by their
indefatigable pens. [52] But the more humble industry of the monks,
especially in Egypt, was contented with the silent, sedentary occupation
of making wooden sandals, or of twisting the leaves of the palm-tree
into mats and baskets. The superfluous stock, which was not consumed in
domestic use, supplied, by trade, the wants of the community: the boats
of Tabenne, and the other monasteries of Thebais, descended the Nile
as far as Alexandria; and, in a Christian market, the sanctity of the
workmen might enhance the intrinsic value of the work.

[Footnote 50: Such expressions as my book, my cloak, my shoes, (Cassian
Institut. l. iv. c. 13,) were not less severely prohibited among the
Western monks, (Cod. Regul. part ii. p. 174, 235, 288;) and the rule
of Columbanus punished them with six lashes. The ironical author of the
Ordres Monastiques, who laughs at the foolish nicety of modern convents,
seems ignorant that the ancients were equally absurd.]

[Footnote 51: Two great masters of ecclesiastical science, the P.
Thomassin, (Discipline de l'Eglise, tom. iii. p. 1090-1139,) and the
P. Mabillon, (Etudes Monastiques, tom. i. p. 116-155,) have seriously
examined the manual labor of the monks, which the former considers as a
merit and the latter as a duty.]

[Footnote 52: Mabillon (Etudes Monastiques, tom. i. p. 47-55) has
collected many curious facts to justify the literary labors of his
predecessor