Excerpt from The Chronicle of Jocelin of Brakelond, Monk of St. Edmundsbury: A Picture of Monastic and Social Life in the 12th Century Great writer has said of earlier English monasticism, was hardly even next door. The future life was merel the resent continued and each man went {brit-mm laboured at it day by day, not with any idea of finishing it, but only of carrying it on for the Span of his allotted existence. They built, and planted, and wrote till the end came, and then they went to heaven and others stepped into their places and took up the common work. It was indeed a simple life it was almost Arcadian in its picturesque simplicity, and, as Cardinal Newman says Of the same life in the days of our Venerable Bede, it reminds us of those times in the dayspring of the world, when Adam delved and Abel watched the. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.