The Church usually rejected candidates for regular priesthood who labored under serious physical disabilities. The monasteries had to be less arbitrary. Thus they probably obtained more than their share of blind, semi-invalids, purblind, halt, deaf, etc. In 1161, at an abbey near Boulogne, there are said to have been so many lame, one-eyed, or one-armed monks that the abbot refused to admit any more defectives for thirty years. This was probably an extreme case.
For similar reasons many women, unmarriageable through physical defects, seem to have been placed in nunneries.
[92] In monasteries affiliated with the great abbey of Cluny the highest officer was the prior; the only abbot for the entire group of establishments was at Cluny. Various other small dependent monasteries had merely a prior, supposedly dependent on the abbot at a superior monastery.
[93] While such children would be sometimes presented out of motives of genuine piety, to save their own souls or to redeem those of their relatives, often they were thrust into the convent merely to dispose of unwelcome heirs or to avoid the cost of rearing them. Wise abbots would, of course, sift out such cases carefully.
[94] Bishops theoretically had themselves the right of inspection unless a monastery had a direct papal charter; but in any case the monks would probably resist episcopal interference vigorously unless the Pope gave the bishop specific orders to intervene.
[95] These complaints are identical with those actually made by a worldly monk who visited the venerable abbey of Cluny.
Chapter XX: The Monastery of St. Aliquis: The Activities of Its Inmates. Monastic Learning.
After a monk has taken the great vow "renouncing my parents, my brothers, my friends, my possessions, and the vain and empty glory of this world ... and renouncing also my own will for the will of God, and accepting all the hardships of the monastic life," how is he to be employed? For, as St. Benedict with great sagacity has written, "_Idleness is the enemy of the soul_." The ancient hermits devoted their entire time to contemplation, hoping for visions of angels; but it is recorded too often that they had only visions of the devil. "Therefore," continues the holy Rule, "at fixed times the brothers ought to be employed with manual labor, and again at fixed times in sacred reading." Thus, in general, the monks of St. Aliquis are busied with two great things, _work_ in the fields and _study_, with the copying or actual writing of profitable books.