Various minor suppressions had taken place in
Italy, but it was not until the unification of the kingdom that the
religious houses were declared national property. The total number of
monasteries suppressed in Italy, down to 1882, was 2,255, involving an
enormous displacement of property and dispersion of inmates.
The fall of the religious houses in Spain dates from the law of June 21,
1835, which suppressed nine hundred monasteries at a blow. The remainder
were dissolved on October 11th, in the same year.
No European country had so many religious houses in proportion to its
population and area as Portugal. In 1834 the number suppressed
exceeded 500.
NOTE K
The criticism of Schaff is just in its estimate of the general influence
of the monastic ideal, but there were individual monks whose views of
sin and salvation were singularly pure and elevating. Saint Hugh, of
Lincoln, said to several men of the world who were praising the lives of
the Carthusian monks: "Do not imagine that the kingdom of Heaven is only
for monks and hermits. When God will judge each one of us, he will not
reproach the lost for not having been monks or solitaries, but for not
having been true Christians. Now, to be a true Christian, three things
are necessary; and if one of these three things is wanting to us, we are
Christians only in name, and our sentence will be all the more severe,
the more we have made profession of perfection. The three things are:
_Charity in the heart, truth on the lips, and purity of life_; if we are
wanting in these, we are unworthy of the name of Christian.
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