Mptleforth 0 Urnal
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MPTLEFORTH THE 0 URNAL AMPLEFORTU JOURNAL. VOL VI. AMPLEFORIII COLLEGE. YORK INDEX. B9.13.,113133433 tie .. Chou, Rules of the Prtler of Vel min 049334 n 99. 99 99993: 3493313 63,99 919rn of 3991933 Fnelez. 68 1.66088 Marketplace 16]66666. THE AMPLEFORTH JOURNAL. &longs of f 6e 'Rad:Tarp. I HAVE before me a new and handsomely print. book, entitled Ord.. lormentra Valhi Camaro.; the Ruleof ....sae Order of the Valules.Choux..c. On examin tion, is found to be not prec:sely the Rule of these Monksit who took their name from the bumble cabbage, but rather their "order of the day," or, as it would Le called in modem monautic phrase, the Coutranier,—the Book of Customs. The Rule proper was that of St. Bene- dict. It may . safely said that very few of my readers have ever heard of the religious Congregation called the Order of Catlin Cantlee, or the Val-des-Chou a. The Marquess of Butt, with that thorough-going archmological spirit which distinguishes him, has had its origin anti documen- tary history investigated, as far as possible, and Me result appears in the Ordinate just mentioned. The Editor, Mr. Walter de Gray Birch, of the British Museum, is a well- known literary man and antiquarian. With the help of Mignard, he has put together in his preface such facts as can be ascertained. The Mother House of the Congregation was founded at the very end of the twelfth century, in a deep Burgundian valley, about twelve miles from Chatillon-our-Seine. Themmt is not very far from the railway line which MONKS OF THE KAIL.A.. MONKS OF THE IUD-FA.. carries the continental traveller from Tonnerre to Dijon. they are now," in their primitive fervour and by no means Why it was Called Vollit Canlint, or the Valley of in need of any refer.. It does indeed sound somewhat Cabbage, it is now impossible to tell. Mr. De Gray Birch paradoxical, that a. Carthusian should find himself impelled' suggests that the Monks may have cultivated the cabbage to leave his Chartreuse in order o become more of a roli- in their little garden-plots. This is, no doubh more than tary ands contemplative: the more so, as the monks of probable. It has, however, been maintained that the true the Val-des-Choup although fairly austere, never attemp- form of the name is really Val des Chroets—the valley of ted anything like the severity of the rule of St. Bruno. Owls. There were probably owls in that remote valley They seem, indeed, to have followed Cistercian customs even before cabbages. It is certain that the founder of the rather than Carthusian. Jacques de Vitro, who wrote in monastery came from the Carthusian House of Lugny, not the thirteenth century, says in so msny words that this far distant, . the opposite bank of the small river Ource. was so. And I may add, what Mr. De Gray Bizch should It is stated that his name was Wiard, and that he w. a certainly have made more clear, that the Ordittale here Carthusian lay brother, who, not finding sufficient oppor- published is almost word Dr word a copy of that of the tunity for solitude and contemplation, retired with the Cistercians. permission of his superiors into the depths of the Burgun- Dom Marlene goes on to point out that the first Prior dian forest. of Val.d..Choux was not Brother Wiard, but a certain There is an interesting reference to the Val-des-Choux Guido, or Guy, whose name is enrorined in on inscription by Dorn Marlene in his Voyage Ds). Its not which existed in the church at Dom Marlene's visit, and clear whether Migna. had seen this passage. The great which he has copied into his journal. It ran thus: French Benedictine visited it, with his companion in ijoS. He [MP us that they found it in the midst of an awful Hie duo sunt fratres, crout ordinis, et solitude. They came upon it after travelling for three or prothopatres four miles through a dense forest, the last mite or so being Guido et Humbert. Sit Christ. utrisoue continuous descent. It was still the Mother House of a inrorotos, Congregation, which was recognized as a branch of the order of StHenedict. DornMartene does not believe that the What right Mr. De Gray Birch has to say that " Guirlo" story of the Pundation by Wiard can be maintained. It is is the same name as "Wia." I do not know. Besides, true that, at the beginning of the Institute, the habit of De there was another inscription, also given by Dom Afar., Val-des-Choux was roat of the Carthusian. When he which, if he has copied it correctly, certainly decides the saw them, their habit was white; but instead of the well- question. Itstates that Wiard e as a choir bro ther known Carthusian " capuroon " which was attached to the at VaLdes.Choux in ,29, "An.nter. Domini sta.. cowl or the scapular, they had adopted the usual qua. Non. Novembris intravit Prater Wiardus in Benedictine "hood." But, he goes on to say, it is hardly chorum Vallis Caulium." The authorities on whom Mr. possible that Vaddes.Choux can have been founded as a De Gray Birch relies have evidently read this inscription Carthusian reform. The house at Lugny itself dated not as 1, —the year about Mich ValbleinChoux was found- many years before, and the Carrousians we, then, 'las ed. But Dom Martel, can hardly have been mistaken, MONKS OF TILE FAILED. MONKS OF T. KAILYARD. and, as he points out it places Brother Wiard's entry one The Congregation of Wallis Caulium may be said to be a hundred years after the foundation. ature Citeaux. It probably never numbered more The point is of no great importance. Yet the uprising than Wirty houses, of which some seventeen were in of this small Congregation, which seems to have had a France, three in Scotland, and some—we do not knove sturdy spirit of its own, and which, when Dom Martine precisely hove many—in Germany, ma Va. &rah,. visited iM Mother House, had a respectable history of doe had no grand monasteries or Lord Abbots. The original years, impels the curious mind to ask how and why it came House in Burgundy was their Mother, a. its Prior into existence. There was Clairvaux in all its glory a exercis. a right of visitation over the other Houses. BM summer day's journey to the north: there was Citeaux each House seems to have been IaR a good deal to itself. about the same distance to We south. What impulse or The order has not produced any canonized Saints or great what kind of a vocation can have urged the recluse who en. But one suspects that if the records of its holy penetrated to that solitary spot and the disciples who first living could be made public, it would be found that for gathered round him? We are reminded of St. Robert and many centuries it sent to heaven large numbers of hidden St. Stephen, and their numerous and sudden dep.res souls who found its solitude preferable to any renown that from communities who in all conscience seem to have been the world could give. regular a. observant enough, and their encamping in the This very interesting Congregation, about one hundred heart of some new wilderness, in order to find themselves years after their first establishment, found their way to nearer to God. St. Bernard himself had not been long in Scotland. There were never any of them in England. It CiWaux before he went forth to begin a new foundation, was King Alexander II.,son of William the Lion, who, in the and after wandering probably in the very Wrests and year ,:so or thereabouts, brought them over. He estab- valleys round Val-des-Climx, rested and built up his lished them at Pluscardine, near Elgin, whilst two other wattle huts in We spot which became Clairvaux. Doubt- Houses were founded elsewhere one at Beauty, where the Mss, the migration which founded the Valhi Cesaliwn was Moray Firth becomes toa Ness and the other at Ardchat only a manifestation of that enthusiasm and divine unrest tan, on the north-west shore of Loch Etive. which was seen in movements like these, and in that wider The ruins of Pluscardine, or Plumarden, Priory sta. movement still which sent Francis of Assisi, a score of about five miles to the west of the ancient Cathedral town years later, out of the cities to the Mils and the campagna of Elgin—which is itself some to miles from that bleak of Italy. Our little encampment never became a Cluny or an on which the North Sea breaksbetween Inverness a Clair., but the faithful Dukes of Burgundy who and Lassiemouth. We do not know how it came about sheltered and protected the rising COmmunity, enabled it that a colony was brought from the Ninny land of Burgun- to grow into the MoWer of a Congregation. The very dy to a spot so far away, m rough and so cold as Moray- smallness of the little religious family attracted those who shire. Dr. Bellesheim, in his History,* states that We desired a Cistercian life, and yet preferred a more homely Congregation of Val-des•Choux, as well as the newly society than they could have in We vast a. majestic founded Dominicans and Franciscans, were introduced system which was spreading itself to Yorkshire and Wales on the west, and beyond the Rhine and the Alps.