ABSTRACT
Monastic literature of all ages is full of sentiments; indeed it would be difficult to find any really whole-hearted endorsement of any other view from a responsible and representative monk. The monk with nothing but theology to occupy his mind was only too likely to become a preacher of discord and mad fanaticism, but the preservation of the works of antiquity for future ages was one of the very greatest services that monasticism rendered or could have performed." Neither the Cluniac nor the Cistercian reforms were in the direction of fostering monastic scholarship; still less was this case with the hermit orders. An eminent man of letters has described his great masterpiece as: "the flower of monastic poetry. Even in the days of the Renaissance monasticism had by no means lost its force. In the later monastic buildings, libraries are never prominent, though sometimes the scriptorium is a conspicuous feature of the cloisters.
