In so far
as Dunstan succeeded in his monastic measures, he laid the foundations
of an ecclesiastical power which afterwards became a serious menace to
the political freedom of the Anglo-Saxon race. The battle begun by him
raged fiercely between the popes, efficiently supported by the monks,
and the kings of England, with varying fortunes, for many centuries. But
perhaps, under the plans of that benign Providence who presides over the
destiny of nations, it was essentially in the interests of civilization,
that the lawlessness of rulers and the vices of the people should be
restrained by that ecclesiastical power, which, in after years, and at
the proper time, should be forced to recede to its legitimate sphere and
functions.
Another celebrated reformatory movement was begun by St. Bruno, who
founded the Carthusian Order about the year 1086. Ruskin says: "In
their strength, from the foundation of the order at the close of the
eleventh century to the beginning of the fourteenth, they reared in
their mountain fastnesses and sent out to minister to the world a
succession of men of immense mental grasp and serenely authoritative
innocence, among whom our own Hugh of Lincoln, in his relations with
Henry II. and Coeur de Lion, is to my mind the most beautiful sacerdotal
figure known to me in history."
Bruno, with six companions, established the famous Grand Chartreuse in a
rocky wilderness, near Grenoble, in France, separated from the rest of
the world by a chain of wild mountains, which are covered with ice and
snow for two-thirds of the year.
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