FOOTBALLER TURNS MONK

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 99, 23 October 1936, Page 9

FOOTBALLER TURNS MONK

FORMER SOCCER BLUE

(Received October 23, 10.20 a.m.) LONDON, October 22. ' A Scottish footballer, a former Soccer Blue of Glasgow University, James Campbell, son of the famous Celtic International, has joined the silent order of Cistercian Monks, who do not eat meat, fish, or eggs, are entirely cut off from the world, do not speak even, amongst themselves except for the gravest reasons, and renounce all rights to property.

The Cistercians, otherwise known as the Grey or White Monks from the | colour of the habits they wear, date i their beginnings from St. Robert, who, I born of a noble family in Champagne, and who was an abbot among some hermits near Chatillon, migrated with about twenty of the monks in 1098 to a place called Citeaux, not far from Dijon. Count Otto of Burgundy built them a monastery, but Robert was obliged by Papal authority to return to the place he had left. The life was an attempt at reproducing the methods of'living of St. Benedectine, all mitigations and developments being rejected. The most striking feature was the return to manual labour, especially field work. As agriculturists and cattle breeders the Cistercians exercised influence in the later Middle Ages; they were the great farmers of those times. Lay brothers were recruited from among the peasantry and were never ordained and never held any superior office. Until the first quarter of the thirteenth century the Cistercians were the most powerful religious order, in Western Europe. The order began to decline because of its very size, | and there was a return to a relaxed form of life. The later history of the order included the introduction of revivals and reforms. There are m\v three main bodies, the Common Observance (about 30 monasteries), mainly in Austria and Hungary, the Middle Observance (about a dozen jno^ftw), and Ijtae Strict Obser-1 varice**. (about BO- .monasteries}.