I had a strange experience last week, whilst camping on the Pembrokeshire peninsula in Wales. And no, it wasn’t the 16 hours of continuous rain on Thursday which almost flooded us out; you come to expect that kind of thing if you go camping in Wales. No, it was the strange and magnificent monastic retreat of Caldey Island.
For those who’ve never been to the Tenby area of Little England, in Wales, this is a small island just off the coast which is privately owned by a small group of Trappist monks. These Cistercian Trappists are an offshoot of the Benedictine monks, with the Cistercian monastic order being originally formed in 1098 by St. Robert of Citeaux, who thought the Benedictines were getting a bit lax and cavalier in their ways (for example, by failing to maintain a rigid vow of silence, every day, between sunset and sunrise).
And boy, are these Cistercian monks serious, even in modern times! They get up every day, at 3:15am, for a silent vigil, pray a further six times during the day, and then go to bed at 8pm. They eat no meat, except on either holy feast days, or if they’re ill, and follow vows of poverty, chastity and religious obedience. But after reading Murray N. Rothbard’s The Ethics of Liberty, the week before I packed my estate car’s roof rack with tent, wellies, and waterproofs, I was struck by the almost Rothbardesque island nature of this tiny sliver of Terra Firma. It is one man, the Abbot, who effectively owns the entire island outright, almost like Robinson Crusoe in Rothbard’s magnum opus Man, Economy, and State; you are not allowed to land on the Abbot’s island domain without his permission. The only authorised boats which do land pay a landing fee to the Abbot, for the privilege, which you pay as part of your boat fare, and once you have landed, there are still large swathes of the small island which the Abbot keeps entirely private; though no electric fences are required, just polite notices asking you not to disturb the monks’ peace. However, there is still plenty of room for you to wander about in, to sample the incredible peace of the island.
And this is the thing that struck me, almost immediately upon experiencing it. Aren’t all those opponents of Rothbard committed to the belief that with no state, we will all immediately rack ourselves up with machine guns, like Neo in the Matrix, and then blow each other to pieces? Yet here was an island of thirty monks, various village employees, and several hundred tourists a day, without the slightest sign of any kind of state authority, except I’ll admit for a sub-post office, and a lighthouse. But it was totally peaceful, the kind of place where you could fall asleep like Rip Van Winkle, and wake up a hundred years later to find your wallet still unmolested, the beef cattle still chewing the cud, and the birds still gently singing about the Welsh inevitability of approaching rain clouds.
I have no truck with the catholic church, but another thought struck me, after having visited the Norman castle at Pembroke, that the one organisation to escape the venal rapacity of the Normans, founders of the modern British state, was the Church, which often held complete sway over its own extensive lands without any kind of non-Church state interference, even from someone as bloody as William de Valence, the first Earl of Pembroke. Of course, the British state corrected this oversight under Henry the VIII’s brutal tenure, but remote anomalies like Caldey Island endured.
This lack of state presence has continued, to the present day on Caldey island, which has had a continuous monastic presence, of one kind or another, for over a thousand years. There are no policemen, no soldiers, the sub-post office is owned by the monks, and the only man I saw at the lighthouse was making a few bob on the side by selling ice-creams; a good man and his customers thereby profiting by a private enterprise light service industry. And even Trinity House, the charitable institution which runs Britain’s lighthouses, is not funded directly by the taxpayer, but instead by light dues on shipping; though these are unfortunately collected under the stewardship of the Secretary of State, for Transport (boo, hiss).
The monks make the rest of their independent living by raising beef and dairy cattle, making perfumes from gorse, and by selling tea and biscuits to the tourists; they do this with the help of a few employees who they allow to live on the island with them.
In this corner of Great Britain, perhaps the freest in these sceptred isles, entirely privately owned, peaceful, self-sufficient, content, and virtually state-free, do we have, in some weird religious way, the model for a radically libertarian future? I don’t know. But for the first time in my life I could see the appeal of becoming a monk. No Gordon Brown, no Tony Blair, and no David Blunkett, those modern aristocratic successors to William de Valence, in your face every day feasting on your stolen produce, the keys to their dungeons held over your head in threat, and your time, your life, and your property, to do with as you will.
Yes, I know the Royal Navy protect the coast of Wales, and a helicopter full of SAS is only an hour away from Hereford, and it is only one step from a small sub-post office, to a nuclear powered army base. It’s also a shame about the chastity, the poverty, the religious vows, and the rapacious collectivist history of the catholic church. However, for all that, making a profit from the simple sweat of your own labour, and your own business acumen, making and selling things people want, on this island, without the dead hand of socialism whacking you daily over the head, gave me a tantalising glimmer of hope for the future, as we witness the tortuous crumbling breakdown of western state socialism.
You may experience this glimmer, too, if you visit the monks of Caldey Island, an experience I thoroughly recommend. In the words of Mr Spock, religious shaman of the future, may they live long and prosper.
It has been many years since I followed such things, but, some suggest the historical character later called King Arthur [the Bear] was written from earlier historical records found by monks of the Cistercian order when they set up shop in an existing abby on the south coast of Wales. Wonder if this is the one?
It would be nice to wonder thru their library.
I haven’t got the book to hand, but I think this is Geoffrey of Monmouth, and his History of the Kings of Britain, a book about the gaelish kings of olden days, from the Trojan emigres who landed at Totnes in Devon, who became the British/Welsh, in around 1150 BC, through King Lear, around 500 BC, right through to King Arthur, who it is alleged in this book, invaded the Roman empire, and was partially behind the first sack of Rome, in circa 450 AD.
A great book, and well worth a read, particularly if you’re a fan of the Illiad, the Odyssey, and the Aenid, which also deal with this Trojan diaspora. As memory serves, Geoffrey of Monmouth was a Breton, ie. from a group who’d escaped to Roman Armorica in France, in 500 AD, to escape the ravages of the Anglo-Saxons, many of whom returned with the Norman invasion as Breton Knights. A lot of them returned to the land of the Gaels (Wales), where their long lost relatives spoke virtually the same language as the Bretons.
I think Geoffrey was a monk, who wrote the book in circa 1150 AD, based in the old Roman “City of the Legions”, somewhere in Monmouthshire, though I can’t recall exactly where. He may have been Cistercian, as they had 13 monasteries in Wales at that time. Most of these were destroyed by Henry the VIIIth, when he needed to rob their gold, to pay for his wars.
The faces change, but the British state always seems to remain the same! 🙂
I lived in Manorbier as a child and got my formative education at Manorbier school. I know that part of Wales well. My father, who is from Maine (US) calls it “god’s country” and both he & mater want to retire there. Whenever I really need to recharge my batteries I go to Pembrokeshire and contemplate. It is my favourite place on earth…
…without the dead hand of socialism whacking you daily over the head…
Succor Beneath the Watchful Eyes
Were you not, sir, in the embrace of socialism? Did the individuals of this paradisical domain toil to their own benefit or that of the commonweal?
Anarchcapitalism trysts collectivism? Oh, my.
D Anghelone writes:
Succor Beneath the Watchful Eyes
Too cryptic for me, I’m afraid. Would you mind expanding the point?
Were you not, sir, in the embrace of socialism?
Yes, alas. Young, stupid, and wrong. What can you do? 🙂
Did the individuals of this paradisical domain toil to their own benefit or that of the commonweal?
No, sorry. I can’t resolve the ambiguities in this one. Do you mean the individuals of the paradisical domain of the UK, in general, or Caldey Island, in particular?
My apologies for not coming up to your intellectual level, D. They only let me out of the asylum once a day 🙂
Ah, Pembrokeshire. I spent my years 0 until 19 living in Pembroke, and we still have the family home there. I used to go to Caldey Island for school trips. Great fun!
<>
I think he’s saying these monks have arranged a small communist paradise for themselves.
There’s a difference though, to me, between living in a tiny “communist” homogenous religious (or shared-belief) society you choose to join, and a huge, hybrid, unwieldy and buereaucratic communist society imposed on you from the outside by people who will never come into contact with you, have never consulted you about it (except in the most surface of ways), and don’t really give a damn.
Me – Succor Beneath the Watchful Eyes
You – Too cryptic for me, I’m afraid. Would you mind expanding the point?
– – As the London commuter is Secure Beneath the Watchful Eyes so you found relief in this tightly controlled religious retreat.
Me – Were you not, sir, in the embrace of socialism?
You – Yes, alas. Young, stupid, and wrong. What can you do? 🙂
– – If I could do much at this time then I’d not spend my time in harassing foolish youth.
Me – Did the individuals of this paradisical domain toil to their own benefit or that of the commonweal?
You – No, sorry. I can’t resolve the ambiguities in this one. Do you mean the individuals of the paradisical domain of the UK, in general, or Caldey Island, in particular?
– – Well, you had the opportunity to visit the island at your will while the monks have forfeited their rights to the will of the commune. You likely labor, if you do, more to personal benefit than do the monks.
You – My apologies for not coming up to your intellectual level, D. They only let me out of the asylum once a day 🙂
– – I’ve never found cause to develope an intellect as opinion has sufficed. What intellect I possess is of more a genre than a degree.
Hi D Anghelone,
Nope, ya done me again. I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about. Sorry.
CRL writes:
I think he’s saying these monks have arranged a small communist paradise for themselves.
Thanks for helping me out there, CRL. If they have arranged a small communist paradise for themselves, good luck to them. It’s their island, nobody is forced to go there, and it’s easy to get off it if you don’t like it. But best of all, aside from our free trade relations, from which both sides profit, they leave me alone, and I leave them alone, to work out our own ways through this veil of tears.
I visited Caldey nearly 3 years ago. It is wonderful. It is far from being communist. Leaving aside the fact that all the monks willingly subscribe to the rule, Caldey is economically self sufficient. Plenty of small business enterprises run by the monks. Again meet the monks and they are all extraordinarily cheerful – not a trait usually ascribed to communists.