London - Edward Rutherfurd [155]
No. It was an inner voice that had prompted him, a growing sense of the emptiness of the world around him, a need to shake off its grossness and find purity and simplicity. Just as a pilgrim desires to touch a fragment of the Holy Cross at a shrine, so Michael needed to feel the living presence of his God each day. And he knew he could not do so in the world.
This was not particularly surprising. Whatever the Church’s quarrels and compromises with kings, a great new tide of religious emotion had been sweeping across all Europe in recent generations, and had reached the shores of England. The great Cistercian monasteries, led by that stern monk known as Bernard of Clairvaux, had spread their simple religious communities and sheep farms from the Mediterranean to the bleak moors of northern England. A sudden enthusiasm for the Blessed Virgin Mary had sprung up. The roads to Europe’s holy shrines were thronged with pilgrims. Above all, in the last seventy years Christendom had thrilled to a new call to rescue the Holy Land from the Saracens in that great series of adventures, the crusades.
In London, too, this fervour was evident. The bells rang out, and time was reckoned not by the hours but according to the seven monastic services of the day. New churches and other foundations were clustering about the city. On the Thames riverside near the Aldwych the crusading Knights Templar were building the great headquarters already called the Temple. Near Westminster Abbey there was now a hospital dedicated to St James. So many and so flourishing were all these, that more than a fifth of London’s population was in religious orders of some kind.
When young Michael said he wanted to be a monk, therefore, his father had been disappointed but not shocked. After a few months, seeing that his son was steadfast in his purpose, he had obtained a place for him in the aristocratic community of Benedictine monks at the great house of Westminster Abbey, to which he had accordingly made a handsome donation, remarking hopefully, “The king’s palace is right beside him. Monks have been known to make fine careers.” And there, in the ancient and royal Abbey of Westminster, in the company of the black-robed monks, Michael had passed ten happy years.
He loved Westminster, the grey abbey, the great hall, the atmosphere that came from having religious cloisters, royal chapel and the courtyards of the royal administration side by side. He loved to walk out into the surrounding fields or gaze over the River Thames as it flowed by. How pleasant it was to be in a place so silent and peaceful and yet at the centre of things.
He had been happy when he had taken his vows. “These three vows,” the old monk who prepared him had explained, “will for the rest of your life be like friends to accompany you along the path to God. Poverty first,” he went on. “Why do we take the vow of poverty?”
“Because Our Lord said, ‘Where your treasure is, your heart will be also.’ And also, ‘Sell all thou hast and follow me.’”
“Exactly. You cannot love worldly goods and God at once. We choose God. And the vow of chastity?”
“He who follows the flesh neglects the soul.”
“And obedience?”
“To set aside my own pride and desires.”
“And to be guided by those wiser than you. For you need a guide upon your journey.” These three vows, the old man reminded him, were taken by every monk in Christendom. “Like dear friends, you must be constant to them, and they will protect you.”
Brother Michael had taken his vows and kept them. Indeed, they were now dearer to him than anything else. And if, from time to time, he saw that not all the monks at Westminster were chaste, or obedient, or even poor, he knew it was only a human frailty and prayed for them, and himself, the more.
He had been happy, too, when, just a year after his arrival, the Pope, having read the great Life of the monarch that the Abbey had prepared, together with many supporting documents,