A COLONY OF TRAPPIST MONKS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 206, 16 March 1877, Page 5

A COLONY OF TRAPPIST MONKS.

We give the following paragraph from the columns of the New York ' Sun' of Sunday, November 2G. We have no information of our own upon the subject. The ' Sun' says : — " About nine months ago Brother Francisco Xavier was sent to this country by the General of the Order of Trappists, with instructions.to Belect and purchase a suitable plot of ground for the erection of a monastery, as he had resolved to establish a branch of their brotherhood in America. After a long delay Brother Francisco secured a desirable piece of property about three miles from Baltimore where he decided that the new monastery should be erected. -His report was favorably received by the General, but the execution of the latter's plans was deferred until September last, when a clergyman in Baltimore, acting as agent for the Trappists, caused the farmhouse, barns, etc., on the property which Brother Franoisco had purchased to be prepared for the temporary housing of the monks, pending the erection of the new friary, as about one hundred of them would be sent to this country towards the enl of November. Brother Francisco, who will probably become prior or abbot of the new colony of friars, was in this city again last week on his way to Baltimore. He said that among the hundred monks selected for the new station there were blacksmiths, shoemakers, tailor?, cabinetmakers, carpenters, masons, weavers, and skilled agriculturists. The order does not live on charity; it is not ouly selfsupporting-, but reaps large incomes from the industries pursued by its brethren. The rules of this brotherhood are the moat ascetic of all the monastic order 3. They sleep on the floor, rise to pray at midnight, go through the form of digging their own grave 3aa a reminder of death, preserve unbroken silence from year to year, use neither fish, meat, eggs, nor anything except vegetables, bread and water.

Pure milk, butter, beer, and well-reared raoata are proverbially found for the lowest remunerative prices at the monasteries of the Trappists. A few of the monks are privilegel to transact out side business, and for these, of course, the stringent injunctions of perpetual silence and other severe obligations are dispensed with. Of the 100 monks who are now likely on their way to this couutry, equal numbers have been selected from the monasteries of M iriastern in Tui-key, Mount Melbry in Ireland, Sjpt Fronds in France, and St. Bjrnird in Bjljium. They will be expected to conserve the rules of their order as far as practicable while tra /elling. On reaching here, in about ten or twelve days from, now, f.127 will ba taken in charge by Brother Francisco.