The spread of reformatory opinions resulted in a
determined and largely successful attack upon the monasteries, which
were rightly believed to constitute the bulwark of papal power. So
imperative were the popular demands for a change, that popes and
councils hastened to urge the members of religious orders to abolish
existing abuses by enforcing primitive rules. But while Rome practically
failed in her attempted reformations, the Protestant reformers in church
and state were widely successful in either curtailing the privileges
and revenues of the monks or in annihilating the monasteries.
Since the sixteenth century the leading governments of Europe, even
including those in Catholic countries, have given tangible expression to
popular and political antagonism to monasticism, by the abolition of
convents, or the withdrawal of immunities and favors, for a long time a
source of monastic revenue and power. The results of this hostility have
been so disastrous, that monasticism has never regained its former
prestige and influence. Several of the older orders have risen from the
ruins, and a few new communities have appeared, some of which are
distinguished by their most laudable ministrations to the poor and the
sick, or by their educational services. Yet notwithstanding the
modifications of the system to suit the exigencies of modern times, it
seems altogether improbable that the monks will ever again wield the
power they possessed before the Reformation,
In the present chapter attention will be confined to the dissolution of
the monasteries under Henry VIII.
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