A SHORT HISTORY OF
MONKS
AND MONASTERIES
By ALFRED WESLEY WISHART
Sometime Fellow in Church History in The University of Chicago
ALBERT BRANDT, PUBLISHER
TRENTON, NEW JERSEY MDCCCC
1900
PREFACE
The aim of this volume is to sketch the history of the monastic institution from its origin to its overthrow in the Reformation period, for although the institution is by no means now extinct, its power was practically broken in the sixteenth century, and no new orders of importance or new types have arisen since that time.
A little reflection will enable one to understand the great difficulties in the execution of so broad a purpose. It was impracticable in the majority of instances to consult original sources, although intermediate authorities have been studied as widely as possible and the greatest caution has been exercised to avoid those errors which naturally arise from the use of such avenues of information. It was also deemed unadvisable to burden the work with numerous notes and citations. Such notes as were necessary to a true unfolding of the subject will be found in the appendix.
A presentation of the salient features of the whole history was essential to a proper conception of the orderly development of the ascetic ideal. To understand the monastic institution one must not only study the isolated anchorite seeking a victory over a sinful self in the Egyptian desert or the monk in the secluded cloister, but he must also trace the fortunes of ascetic organizations, involving multitudes of men, vast aggregations of wealth, and surviving the rise and fall of empires. Almost every phase of human life is encountered in such an undertaking. Attention is divided between hermits, beggars, diplomatists, statesmen, professors, missionaries and pontiffs. It is hoped the critical or literary student will appreciate the immense difficulties of an attempt to paint so vast a scene on so small a canvas. No other claim is made upon his benevolence.
There is a process of writing history which Trench describes as "a moral whitewashing of such things as in men's sight were as blackamoors before." Religious or temperamental prejudice often obscures the vision and warps the judgment of even the most scholarly minds. Conscious of this infirmity in the ablest writers of history it would be absurd to claim complete exemption from the power of personal bias. It is sincerely hoped, however, that the strongest passion in the preparation of this work has been that commendable predilection for truth and justice which should characterize every historical narrative, and that, whatever other shortcomings may be found herein, there is an absence of that unreasonable suspicion, not to say hatred, of everything monastic, which mars many otherwise valuable contributions to monastic history.
The author's grateful acknowledgment is made, for kindly services and critical suggestions, to Eri Baker Hulbert, D.D., LL.D., Dean of the Divinity School, and Professor and Head of the Department of Church History; Franklin Johnson, D.D., LL.D., Professor of Church History and Homiletics; Benjamin S. Terry, Ph.D., Professor of Medieval and English History; and Ralph C.H. Catterall, Instructor in Modern History; all of The University of Chicago. Also to James M. Whiton, Ph.D., of the Editorial Staff of "The Outlook"; Ephraim Emerton, Ph.D., Winn Professor of Ecclesiastical History in Harvard University; S. Giffard Nelson, L.H.D., of Brooklyn, New York; A.H. Newman, D.D., LL.D., Professor of Church History in McMaster University of Toronto, Ontario; and Paul Van Dyke, D.D., Professor of History in Princeton University.
A.W.W.
Trenton, March, 1900.
CONTENTS
[MONASTICISM IN THE WEST: ANTE-BENEDICTINE MONKS] 340-480 A.D.
[The Spread of Monasticism in Europe.]
[The Struggle Against Barbarism.]
[The Spread of the Benedictine Rule.]
[REFORMED AND MILITARY ORDERS.]
[The Military Religious Orders.]
[Francis Bernardone], 1182-1226 A.D.
[The Success of the Mendicant Orders.]
[The Decline of the Mendicants.]
[Ignatius de Loyola], 1491-1556 A.D.
[Constitution and Polity of the Order.]
[The Casuistry of the Jesuits.]
[THE FALL OF THE MONASTERIES.]
[The Character of Henry VIII.]
[Events Preceding the Suppression.]
[The Monks and the Oath of Supremacy.]
[The Royal Commissioners and their Methods of Investigation.]
[The Report of the Commissioners.]
[The Effect of the Suppression Upon the People.]
[Henry's Disposal of Monastic Revenues.]
[Was the Suppression Justifiable?]
[CAUSES AND IDEALS OF MONASTICISM.]
[Causative Motives of Monasticism.]
[Beliefs Affecting the Causative Motives.]
[Causes of Variations in Monasticism.]
[The Fundamental Monastic Vows.]
[The Effects of Self-Sacrifice Upon the Individual.]
[The Effects of Solitude Upon the Individual.]
[Monasticism and Civic Duties.]
[The Agricultural Services of the Monks.]
[The Monks and Secular Learning.]
LIST OF PORTRAITS
SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSISI, DYING, is CONVEYED TO THE
CHURCH OF SAINTE MARIE DE PORTIUNCULE, . . . . facing title.
After the painting by J.J. Weerts. Originally published by
Goupil & Co. of Paris, and here reproduced by their permission.
[Jean Joseph Weerts was born at Roubaix (Nord), on May 1, 1847. He was a pupil of
Cabanel, Mils and Pils. He was awarded the second-class medal in 1875, was made
Chevalier of the Legion of Honor in 1884, received the silver medal at the Universal
Exposition of 1889, and was created an Officer of the Legion of Honor in 1897. He is a
member of the "Société des Artistes Français," and is hors concours.]
[SAINT BERNARD]
After an engraving by Ambroise Tardieu, from a painting on glass
in the Convent of the R.P. Minimes, at Rheims.
[Ambroise Tardieu was born in Paris, in 1790, and died in 1837. He was an engraver
of portraits, landscapes and architecture, and a clever manipulator of the burin. For a
time he held the position of "Geographical Engraver" to the Departments of Marine,
Fortifications and Forests. He was a member of the French Geographical and Mathematical
Societies.]--Nagler.
[SAINT DOMINIC]
From a photograph of Bozzani's painting, preserved in his cell at
Santa Sabina, Rome. Here reproduced from Augusta T. Drane's
"History of St. Dominic," by courtesy of the author and the publishers,
Longmans, Green & Co., of London and New York.
["Although several so-called portraits (of St. Dominic) are preserved, yet none of them
can be regarded as the vera effigies of the saint, though that preserved at Santa Sabina
probably presents us with a kind of traditionary likeness.">[--History of St. Dominic.
[In the "History of St. Dominic," on page 226, the author credits the portrait shown
to "Bozzani." We are unable to find any record of a painter by that name. Nagler,
however, tells of a painter of portraits and historical subjects, Carlo Bozzoni by name,
who was born in 1607 and died in 1657. He was a son of Luciano Bozzoni, a Genoese
painter and engraver. He is said to have done good work, but no other mention is made
of him.]
[IGNATIUS DE LOYOLA]
After the engraving by Greatbach, "from a scarce print by H.
Wierz." Originally published by Richard Bentley, London, in 1842.
[W. Greatbach was a London engraver in the first half of the nineteenth century. He
worked chiefly for the "calendars" and "annuals" of his time, and did notable work
for the general book trade of the better class.]
[A search of the authorities does not reveal an engraver named "H. Wierz." This
is probably intended for Hieronymus Wierex (or Wierix, according to Bryant), a famous
engraver, born in 1552, and who is credited by Nagler, in his "Künstler-Lexikon,"
with having produced "a beautiful and rare plate" of "St. Ignaz von Loyola." The
error, if such it be, is easily explained by the fact that portrait engravers seldom cut the
lettering of a plate themselves, but have it engraved by others, who have a special aptitude
for making shapely letters.]
![[SAINT BERNARD]](#image193.jpg){kind=link}
![[SAINT DOMINIC]](#image232.jpg){kind=link}
![[IGNATIUS DE LOYOLA]](#image263.jpg){kind=link}
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MONKS
AND MONASTERIES
I
MONASTICISM IN THE EAST
The monk is a type of religious character by no means peculiar to Christianity. Every great religion in ancient and modern times has expressed itself in some form of monastic life.
The origin of the institution is lost in antiquity. Its genesis and gradual progress through the centuries are like the movement of a mighty river springing from obscure sources, but gathering volume by the contributions of a multitude of springs, brooks, and lesser rivers, entering the main stream at various stages in its progress. While the mysterious source of the monastic stream may not be found, it is easy to discover many different influences and causes that tended to keep the mighty current flowing majestically on. It is not so easy to determine which of these forces was the greatest.
"Monasticism," says Schaff, "proceeds from religious seriousness, enthusiasm and ambition; from a sense of the vanity of the world, and an inclination of noble souls toward solitude, contemplation, and freedom from the bonds of the flesh and the temptations of the world." A strong ascetic tendency in human nature, particularly active in the Orient, undoubtedly explains in a general way the origin and growth of the institution. Various forms of philosophy and religious belief fostered this monastic inclination from time to time by imparting fresh impetus to the desire for soul-purity or by deepening the sense of disgust with the world.
India is thought by some to have been the birthplace of the institution. In the sacred writings of the venerable Hindûs, portions of which have been dated as far back as 2400 B.C., there are numerous legends about holy monks and many ascetic rules. Although based on opposite philosophical principles, the earlier Brahminism and the later system, Buddhism, each tended toward ascetic practices, and they each boast to-day of long lines of monks and nuns.
The Hindoo (Brahmin) ascetic, or naked philosopher, as the Greeks called him, exhausted his imagination in devising schemes of self-torture. He buried himself with his nose just above the ground, or wore an iron collar, or suspended weights from his body. He clenched his fists until the nails grew into his palms, or kept his head turned in one direction until he was unable to turn it back. He was a miracle-worker, an oracle of wisdom, and an honored saint. He was bold, spiritually proud, capable of almost superhuman endurance. We will meet him again in the person of his Christian descendant on the banks of the Nile.
The Buddhist ascetic was, perhaps, less severe with himself, but the general spirit and form of the institution was and is the same as among the Brahmins. In each religion we observe the same selfish individualism,--a desire to save one's own soul by slavish obedience to ascetic rules,--the extinction of natural desires by self-punishment. "A Brahmin who wishes to become an ascetic," says Clarke, "must abandon his home and family and go live in the forest. His food must be roots and fruit, his clothing a bark garment or a skin, he must bathe morning and evening, and suffer his hair to grow."
The fact to be remembered, however, is that in India, centuries before the Christian Era, there existed both phases of Christian monasticism, the hermit[[A]] and the crowded convent.
Dhaquit, a Chaldean ascetic, who is said to have lived about 2000 B.C., is reported to have earnestly rebuked those who tried to preserve the body from decay by artificial resources. "Not by natural means," he said, "can man preserve his body from corruption and dissolution after death, but only through good deeds, religious exercises and offering of sacrifices,--by invoking the gods by their great and beautiful names, by prayers during the night, and fasts during the day."
When Father Bury, a Portuguese missionary, first saw the Chinese bonzes, tonsured and using their rosaries, he cried out, "There is not a single article of dress, or a sacerdotal function, or a single ceremony of the Romish church, which the Devil has not imitated in this country." I have not the courage to follow this streamlet back into the devil's heart. The attempt would be too daring. Who invented shaved heads and monkish gowns and habits, we cannot tell, but this we know: long before Father Bury saw and described those things in China, there existed in India the Grand Lama or head monk, with monasteries under him, filled with monks who kept the three vows of chastity, poverty and obedience. They had their routine of prayers, of fasts and of labors, like the Christian monks of the middle ages.
Among the Greeks there were many philosophers who taught ascetic principles. Pythagoras, born about 580 B.C., established a religious brotherhood in which he sought to realize a high ideal of friendship. His whole plan singularly suggests monasticism. His rules provided for a rigid self-examination and unquestioning submission to a master. Many authorities claim that the influence of the Pythagorean philosophy was strongly felt in Egypt and Palestine, after the time of Christ. "Certain it is that more than two thousand years before Ignatius Loyola assembled the nucleus of his great society in his subterranean chapel in the city of Paris, there was founded at Crotona, in Greece, an order of monks whose principles, constitution, aims, method and final end entitle them to be called 'The Pagan Jesuits[[B]].'"
The teachings of Plato, no doubt, had a powerful monastic influence, under certain social conditions, upon later thinkers and upon those who yearned for victory over the flesh. Plato strongly insisted on an ideal life in which higher pleasures are preferred to lower. Earthly thoughts and ambitions are to yield before a holy communion with the Divine. Some of his views "might seem like broken visions of the future, when we think of the first disciples who had all things in common, and, in later days, of the celibate clergy, and the cloisteral life of the religious orders." The effect of such philosophy in times of general corruption upon those who wished to acquire exceptional moral and intellectual power, and who felt unable to cope with the temptations of social life, may be easily imagined. It meant, in many cases, a retreat from the world to a life of meditation and soul-conflict. In later times it exercised a marked influence upon ascetic literature.
Coming closer to Christianity in time and in teaching, we find a Jewish sect, called Essenes, living in the region of the Dead Sea, which bore remarkable resemblances to Christian monasticism. The origin and development of this band, which numbered four thousand about the time of Christ, are unknown. Even the derivation of the name is in doubt, there being at least twenty proposed explanations. The sect is described by Philo, an Alexandrian-Jewish philosopher, who was born about 25 B.C., and by Josephus, the Jewish historian, who was born at Jerusalem A.D. 37. These writers evidently took pains to secure the facts, and from their accounts, upon which modern discussions of the subject are largely based, the following facts are gleaned.
The Essenes were a sect outside the Jewish ecclesiastical body, bound by strict vows and professing an extraordinary purity. While there were no vows of extreme penance, they avoided cities as centers of immorality, and, with some exceptions, eschewed marriage. They held aloof from traffic, oaths, slave-holding, and weapons of offence. They were strict Sabbath observers, wore a uniform robe, possessed all things in common, engaged in manual labor, abstained from forbidden food, and probably rejected the bloody sacrifices of the Temple, although continuing to send their thank-offerings. Novitiates were kept on probation three years. The strictest discipline was maintained, excommunication following detection in heinous sins. Evidently the standard of character was pure and lofty, since their emphasis on self-mastery did not end in absurd extravagances. Their frugal food, simple habits, and love of cleanliness; combined with a regard for ethical principles, conduced to a high type of life. Edersheim remarks, "We can scarcely wonder that such Jews as Josephus and Philo, and such heathens as Pliny, were attracted by such an unworldly and lofty sect."
Some writers maintain that they were also worshipers of the sun, and hence that their origin is to be traced to Persian sources. Even if so, they seemed to have escaped that confused and mystical philosophy which has robbed Oriental thought of much power in the realm of practical life. Philo says, "Of philosophy, the dialectical department, as being in no wise necessary for the acquisition of virtue, they abandon to the word-catchers; and the part which treats of the nature of things, as being beyond human nature, they leave to speculative air-gazers, with the exception of that part of it which deals with the subsistance of God and the genesis of all things; but the ethical they right well work out."
Pliny the elder, who lived A.D. 23-79, made the following reference to the Essenes, which is especially interesting because of the tone of sadness and weariness with the world suggested in its praise of this Jewish sect. "On the western shore (of the Dead Sea) but distant from the sea far enough to escape from its noxious breezes, dwelt the Essenes. They are an eremite clan, one marvelous beyond all others in the whole world; without any women, with sexual intercourse entirely given up, without money, and the associates of palm trees. Daily is the throng of those that crowd about them renewed, men resorting to them in numbers, driven through weariness of existence, and the surges of ill-fortune, to their manner of life. Thus it is that through thousands of ages--incredible to relate!--their society, in which no one is born, lives on perennial. So fruitful to them is the irksomeness of life experienced by other men."
Admission to the order was granted only to adults, yet children were sometimes adopted for training in the principles of the sect. Some believed in marriage as a means of perpetuating the order.
Since it would not throw light on our present inquiry, the mooted question as to the connection of Essenism and the teachings of Jesus may be passed by. The differences are as great as the resemblances and the weight of opinion is against any vital relation.
The character of this sect conclusively shows that some of the elements of Christian monasticism existed in the time of Jesus, not only in Palestine but in other countries. In an account of the Therapeutæ, or true devotees, an ascetic body similar to the Essenes, Philo says, "There are many parts of the world in which this class may be found.... They are, however, in greatest abundance in Egypt."
During Apostolic times various teachings and practices were current that may be characterized as ascetic. The Apostle Paul, in his letter to the Colossians, doubtless had in mind a sect or school which despised the body and abstained from meats and wine. A false asceticism, gathering inspiration from pagan philosophy, was rapidly spreading among Christians even at that early day. The teachings of the Gnostics, a speculative sect of many schools, became prominent in the closing days of the Apostolic age or very soon thereafter. Many of these schools claimed a place in the church, and professed a higher life and knowledge than ordinary Christians possessed. The Gnostics believed in the complete subjugation of the body by austere treatment.
The Montanists, so called after Montanus, their famous leader, arose in Asia Minor during the second century, when Marcus Aurelius was emperor. Schaff describes the movement as "a morbid exaggeration of Christian ideas and demands." It was a powerful and frantic protest against the growing laxity of the church. It despised ornamental dress and prescribed numerous fasts and severities.
These facts and many others that might be mentioned throw light on our inquiry in several ways. They show that asceticism was in the air. The literature, philosophy and religion of the day drifted toward an ascetic scheme of life and stimulated the tendency to acquire holiness, even at the cost of innocent joys and natural gratifications. They show that worldliness was advancing in the church, which called for rebuke and a return to Apostolic Christianity; that the church was failing to satisfy the highest cravings of the soul. True, it was well-nigh impossible for the church, in the midst of such a powerful and corrupt heathen environment, to keep itself up to its standards.
It is a common tradition that in the first three centuries the practices and spirit of the church were comparatively pure and elevated. Harnack says, "This tradition is false. The church was already secularized to a great extent in the middle of the third century." She was "no longer in a position to give peace to all sorts and conditions of men." It was then that the great exodus of Christians from the villages and cities to mountains and deserts began. Although from the time of Christ on there were always some who understood Christianity to demand complete separation from all earthly pleasures, yet it was three hundred years and more before large numbers began to adopt a hermit's life as the only method of attaining salvation. "They fled not only from the world, but from the world within the church. Nevertheless, they did not flee out of the church."
We can now see why no definite cause for the monastic institution can be given and no date assigned for its origin. It did not commence at any fixed time and definite place. Various philosophies and religious customs traveled for centuries from country to country, resulting in singular resemblances and differences between different ascetic or monastic sects. Christian monasticism was slowly evolved, and gradually assumed definite organization as a product of a curious medley of Heathen-Jewish-Christian influences.
A few words should be said here concerning the influence of the Bible upon monasticism. Naturally the Christian hermits and early fathers appealed to the Bible in support of their teachings and practices. It is not necessary, at this point, to discuss the correctness of their interpretations. The simple fact is that many passages of scripture were considered as commands to attain perfection by extraordinary sacrifices, and certain Biblical characters were reverenced as shining monastic models. In the light of the difficulties of Biblical criticism it is easy to forgive them if they were mistaken, a question to be discussed farther on. They read of those Jewish prophets described in Hebrews: "They went about in sheepskins, in goatskins; ... wandering in deserts and mountains and caves, and the holes of the earth." They pointed to Elijah and his school of prophets; to John the Baptist, with his raiment of camel's hair and a leathern girdle about his loins, whose meat was locusts and wild honey. They recalled the commandment of Jesus to the rich young man to sell all his possessions and give to the poor. They quoted the words, "Take no thought for the morrow what ye shall eat and what ye shall drink or wherewithal ye shall be clothed." They construed following Christ to mean in His own words, "forsaking father, mother, brethren, wife, children, houses and lands." They pointed triumphantly to the Master himself, unmarried and poor, who had not "where to lay his head." They appealed to Paul's doctrine of marriage. They remembered that the Church at Jerusalem was composed of those who sold their possessions and had all things in common. Whatever these and numerous other passages may truly mean, they interpreted them in favor of a monastic mode of life; they understood them to teach isolation, fastings, severities, and other forms of rigorous self-denial. Accepting Scripture in this sense, they trampled upon human affection and gave away their property, that they might please God and save their souls.
Between the time of Christ and Paul of Thebes, who died in the first half of the fourth century, and who is usually recognized as the founder of monasticism, many Christian disciples voluntarily abandoned their wealth, renounced marriage and adopted an ascetic mode of life, while still living in or near the villages or cities. As the corruption of society and the despair of men became more widespread, these anxious Christians wandered farther and farther away from fixed habitations until, in an excess of spiritual fervor, they found themselves in the caves of the mountains, desolate and dreary, where no sound of human voice broke in upon the silence. The companions of wild beasts, they lived in rapt contemplation on the eternal mysteries of this most strange world.
My task now is to describe some of those recluses who still live in the biographies of the saints and the traditions of the church. Ducis, while reading of these hermits, wrote to a friend as follows: "I am now reading the lives of the Fathers of the Desert. I am dwelling with St. Pachomius, the founder of the monastery at Tabenna. Truly there is a charm in transporting one's self to that land of the angels--one could not wish ever to come out of it." Whether the reader will call these strange characters angels, and will wish he could have shared their beds of stone and midnight vigils, I will not venture to say, but at all events his visit will be made as pleasant as possible.
In writing the life of Mahomet, Carlyle said, "As there is no danger of our becoming, any of us, Mahometans, I mean to say all the good of Mahomet I justly can." So, without distorting the picture that has come down to us, I mean to say all the good of these Egyptian hermits that the facts will justify.
The Hermits of Egypt
Egypt was the mother of Christian monasticism, as she has been of many other wonders.
Vast solitudes; lonely mountains, honey-combed with dens and caves; arid valleys and barren hills; dreary deserts that glistened under the blinding glare of the sun that poured its heat upon them steadily all the year; strange, grotesque rocks and peaks that assumed all sorts of fantastic shapes to the overwrought fancy; in many places no water, no verdure, and scarcely a thing in motion; the crocodile and the bird lazily seeking their necessary food and stirring only as compelled; unbounded expanse in the wide star-lit heavens; unbroken quiet on the lonely mountains--a fit home for the hermit, a paradise to the lover of solitude and peace.
Of life under such conditions Kingsley has said: "They enjoyed nature, not so much for her beauty as for her perfect peace. Day by day the rocks remained the same. Silently out of the Eastern desert, day by day, the rising sun threw aloft those arrows of light which the old Greeks had named 'the rosy fingers of the dawn.' Silently he passed in full blaze above their heads throughout the day, and silently he dipped behind the Western desert in a glory of crimson and orange, green and purple.... Day after day, night after night, that gorgeous pageant passed over the poor hermit's head without a sound, and though sun, moon and planet might change their places as the years rolled round, the earth beneath his feet seemed not to change." As for the companionless men, who gazed for years upon this glorious scene, they too were of unusual character, Waddington finely says: "The serious enthusiasm of the natives of Egypt and Asia, that combination of indolence and energy, of the calmest languor with the fiercest passions, ... disposed them to embrace with eagerness the tranquil but exciting duties of religious seclusion." Yes, here are the angels of Ducis in real flesh and blood. They revel in the wildest eccentricities with none to molest or make afraid, always excepting the black demons from the spiritual world. One dwells in a cave in the bowels of the earth; one lies on the sand beneath a blazing sun; one has shut himself forever from the sight of man in a miserable hut among the bleak rocks of yonder projecting peak; one rests with joy in the marshes, breathing with gratitude the pestilential vapors.
Some of these saints became famous for piety and miraculous power. Athanasius, fleeing from persecution, visited them, and Jerome sought them out to learn from their own lips the stories of their lives. To these men and to others we are indebted for much of our knowledge concerning this chapter of man's history. Less than fifty years after Paul of Thebes died, or about 375 A.D., Jerome wrote the story of his life, which Schaff justly characterizes as "a pious romance." From Jerome we gather the following account: Paul was the real founder of the hermit life, although not the first to bear the name. During the Decian persecution, when churches were laid waste and Christians were slain with barbarous cruelty, Paul and his sister were bereaved of both their parents. He was then a lad of sixteen, an inheritor of wealth and skilled for one of his years in Greek and Egyptian learning. He was of a gentle and loving disposition. On account of his riches he was denounced as a Christian by an envious brother-in-law and compelled to flee to the mountains in order to save his life. He took up his abode in a cave shaded by a palm that afforded him food and clothing. "And that no one may deem this impossible," affirms Jerome, "I call to witness Jesus and his holy angels that I have seen and still see in that part of the desert which lies between Syria and the Saracens' country, monks of whom one was shut up for thirty years and lived on barley bread and muddy water, while another in an old cistern kept himself alive on five dried figs a day."
It is impossible to determine how much of the story which follows is historically true. Undoubtedly, it contains little worthy of belief, but it gives us some faint idea of how these hermits lived. Its chief value consists in the fact that it preserves a fragment of the monastic literature of the times--a story which was once accepted as a credible narrative. Imagine the influence of such a tale, when believed to be true, upon a mind inclined to embrace the doctrines of asceticism. Its power at that time is not to be measured by its reliability now. Jerome himself declares in the prologue that many incredible things were related of Paul which he will not repeat. After reading the following story, the reader may well inquire what more fanciful tale could be produced even by a writer of fiction.
The blessed Paul was now one hundred and thirteen years old, and Anthony, who dwelt in another place of solitude, was at the age of ninety. In the stillness of the night it was revealed to Anthony that deeper in the desert there was a better man than he, and that he ought to see him. So, at the break of day, the venerable old man, supporting and guiding his weak limbs with a staff, started out, whither he knew not. At scorching noontide he beholds a fellow-creature, half man, half horse, called by the poets Hippo-centaur. After gnashing outlandish utterances, this monster, in words broken, rather than spoken, through his bristling lips, points out the way with his right hand and swiftly vanishes from the hermit's sight. Anthony, amazed, proceeds thoughtfully on his way when a mannikin, with hooked snout, horned forehead and goat's feet, stands before him and offers him food. Anthony asks who he is. The beast thus replies: "I am a mortal being, and one of those inhabitants of the desert, whom the Gentiles deluded by various forms of error worship, under the name of Fauns and Satyrs." As he utters these and other words, tears stream down the aged traveler's face! He rejoices over the glory of God and the destruction of Satan. Striking the ground with his staff, he exclaims, "Woe to thee, Alexandria, who, instead of God, worshipest monsters! Woe to thee, harlot city, into which have flowed together the demons of the world! What will you say now? Beasts speak of Christ, and you, instead of God, worship monsters." "Let none scruple to believe this incident," says the chronicler, "for a man of this kind was brought alive to Alexandria and the people saw him; when he died his body was preserved in salt and brought to Antioch that the Emperor might view him."
Anthony continues to traverse the wild region into which he had entered. There is no trace of human beings. The darkness of the second night wears away in prayer. At day-break he beholds far away a she-wolf gasping with parched thirst and creeping into a cave. He draws near and peers within. All is dark, but perfect love casteth out fear. With halting step and bated breath, he enters. After a while a light gleams in the distant midnight darkness. With eagerness he presses forward, but his foot strikes against a stone and arouses the echoes; whereupon the blessed Paul closes the door and makes it fast. For hours Anthony lay at the door craving admission. "I know I am not worthy," he humbly cries, "yet unless I see you I will not turn away. You welcome beasts, why not a man? If I fail, I will die here on your threshold."
"Such was his constant cry; unmoved he stood,
To whom the hero thus brief answer made."
"Prayers like these do not mean threats, there is no trickery in tears." So, with smiles, Paul gives him entrance and the two aged hermits fall into each other's embrace. Together they converse of things human and divine, Paul, close to the dust of the grave, asks, Are new houses springing up in ancient cities? What government directs the world? Little did this recluse know of his fellow-beings and how fared it with the children of men who dwelt in those great cities around the blue Mediterranean. He was dead to the world and knew it no more.
A raven brought the aged brothers bread to eat and the hours glided swiftly away. Anthony returned to get a cloak which Athanasius had given him in which to wrap the body of Paul. So eager was he to behold again his newly-found friend that he set out without even a morsel of bread, thirsting to see him. But when yet three days' journey from the cave he saw Paul on high among the angels. Weeping, he trudged on his way. On entering the cave he saw the lifeless body kneeling, with head erect and hands uplifted. He tenderly wrapped the body in the cloak and began to lament that he had no implements to dig a grave. But Providence sent two lions from the recesses of the mountain that came rushing with flying manes. Roaring, as if they too mourned, they pawed the earth and thus the grave was dug. Anthony, bending his aged shoulders beneath the burden of the saint's body, laid it lovingly in the grave and departed.
Jerome closes this account by challenging those who do not know the extent of their possessions,--who adorn their homes with marble and who string house to house,--to say what this old man in his nakedness ever lacked. "Your drinking vessels are of precious stones; he satisfied his thirst with the hollow of his hand. Your tunics are wrought of gold; he had not the raiment of your meanest slave. But on the other hand, poor as he was, Paradise is open to him; you, with all your gold, will be received into Gehenna. He, though naked, yet kept the robe of Christ; you, clad in your silks, have lost the vesture of Christ. Paul lies covered with worthless dust, but will rise again to glory; over you are raised costly tombs, but both you and your wealth are doomed to burning. I beseech you, reader, whoever you may be, to remember Jerome the sinner. He, if God would give him his choice, would sooner take Paul's tunics with his merits, than the purple of kings with their punishment."
Such was the story circulated among rich and poor, appealing with wondrous force to the hearts of men in those wretched years.
What was the effect upon the mind of the thoughtful? If he believed such teaching, weary of the wickedness of the age, and moved by his noblest sentiments, he sold his tunics wrought of gold and fled from his palaces of marble to the desert solitudes.
But the monastic story that most strongly impressed the age now under consideration, was the biography of Anthony, "the patriarch of monks" and virtual founder of Christian monasticism. It was said to have been written by Athanasius, the famous defender of orthodoxy and Archbishop of Alexandria; yet some authorities reject his authorship. It exerted a power over the minds of men beyond all human estimate. It scattered the seeds of asceticism wherever it was read. Traces of its influence are found all over the Roman empire, in Egypt, Asia Minor, Palestine, Italy and Gaul. Knowing the character of Athanasius, we may rest assured that he sincerely believed all he really recorded (it is much interpolated) of the strange life of Anthony, and, true or false, thousands of others believed in him and in his story. Augustine, the great theologian of immortal fame, acknowledged that this book was one of the influences that led to his conversion, and Jerome, whose life I will review later, was mightily swayed by it.
Anthony was born about 251 A.D., in Upper Egypt, of wealthy and noble parentage. He was a pious child, an obedient son, and a lover of solitude and books. His parents died when he was about twenty years old, leaving to his care their home and his little sister. One day, as he entered the church, meditating on the poverty of Christ, a theme much reflected upon in those days, he heard these words read from the pulpit, "If thou wouldst be perfect, go and sell all that thou hast, and give to the poor, and come, follow me." As if the call came straight from heaven to his own soul, he left the church at once and made over his farm to the people of the village. He sold his personal possessions for a large sum, and distributed the proceeds among the poor, reserving a little for his sister. Still he was unsatisfied. Entering the church on another occasion, he heard our Lord saying in the gospel, "Take no thought for the morrow." The clouds cleared away. His anxious search for truth and duty was at an end. He went out and gave away the remnant of his belongings. Placing his sister in a convent, the existence of which is to be noted, he fled to the desert. Then follows a striking statement, "For monasteries were not common in Egypt, nor had any monk at all known the great desert; but every one who wished to devote himself to his own spiritual welfare performed his exercise alone, not far from the village."
Laboring with his hands, recalling texts of Scripture, praying whole sleepless nights, fasting for several days at a time, visiting his fellow saints, fighting demons, so passed the long years away. He slept on a small rush mat, more often on the bare ground. Forgetting past austerities, he was ever on the search for some new torture and pressing forward to new and strange experiences. He changed his habitation from time to time. Now he lived in a tomb, in company with the silent dead; then for twenty years in a deserted castle, full of reptiles, never going out and rarely seeing any one. From each saint he learned some fresh mode of spiritual training, observing his practice for future imitation and studying the charms of his Christian character that he might reproduce them in his own life; thus he would return richly laden to his cell.
But in all these struggles Anthony had one foe--the arch-enemy of all good. He suggests impure thoughts, but the saint repels them by prayer; he incites to passion, but the hero resists the fiend with fastings and faith. Once the dragon, foiled in his attempt to overcome Anthony, gnashed his teeth, and coming out of his body, lay at his feet in the shape of a little black boy. But the hermit was not beguiled into carelessness by this victory. He resolved to chastise himself more severely. So he retired to the tombs of the dead. One dark night a crowd of demons flogged the saint until he fell to the ground speechless with torture. Some friends found him the next day, and thinking that he was dead, carried him to the village, where his kinsfolk gathered to mourn over his remains. But at midnight he came to himself, and, seeing but one acquaintance awake, he begged that he would carry him back to the tombs, which was done. Unable to move, he prayed prostrate and sang, "If an host be laid against me, yet shall not my heart be afraid." The enraged devils made at him again. There was a terrible crash; through the walls the fiends came in shapes like beasts and reptiles. In a moment the place was filled with lions roaring at him, bulls thrusting at him with their horns, creeping serpents unable to reach him, wolves held back in the act of springing. There, too, were bears and asps and scorpions. Mid the frightful clamor of roars, growls and hisses, rose the clear voice of the saint, as he triumphantly mocked the demons in their rage. Suddenly the awful tumult ceased; the wretched beings became invisible and a ray of light pierced the roof to cheer the prostrate hero. His pains ceased. A voice came to him saying, "Thou hast withstood and not yielded. I will always be thy helper, and will make thy name famous everywhere." Hearing this he rose up and prayed, and was stronger in body than ever before.
This is but one of numerous stories chronicling Anthony's struggles with the devil. Like conflicts were going on at that hour in many another cave in those great and silent mountains.
There are also wondrous tales of his miraculous power. He often predicted the coming of sufferers and healed them when they came. His fame for curing diseases and casting out devils became so extensive that Egypt marveled at his gifts, and saints came even from Rome to see his face and to hear his words. His freedom from pride and arrogance was as marked as his fame was great. He yielded joyful obedience to presbyters and bishops. His countenance was so full of divine grace and heavenly beauty as to render him easily distinguishable in a crowd of monks. Letters poured in upon him from every part of the empire. Kings wrote for his advice, but it neither amazed him nor filled his heart with pride. "Wonder not," said he, "if a king writes to us, for he is but a man, but wonder rather that God has written His law to man and spoken to us by His Son." At his command princes laid aside their crowns, judges their magisterial robes, while criminals forsook their lives of crime and embraced with joy the life of the desert.
Once, at the earnest entreaty of some magistrates, he came down from the mountain that they might see him. Urged to prolong his stay he refused, saying, "Fishes, if they lie long on the dry land, die; so monks who stay with you lose their strength. As the fishes, then, hasten to the sea, so must we to the mountains."
At last the shadows lengthened and waning strength proclaimed that his departure was nigh. Bidding farewell to his monks, he retired to an inner mountain and laid himself down to die. His countenance brightened as if he saw his friends coming to see him, and thus his soul was gathered to his fathers. He is said to have been mourned by fifteen thousand disciples.
This is the story which moved a dying empire. "Anthony," says Athanasius, "became known not by worldly wisdom, nor by any art, but solely by piety, and that this was the gift of God who can deny?" The purpose of such a life was, so his biographer thought, to light up the moral path for men, that they might imbibe a zeal for virtue.
The "Life of St. Anthony" is even more remarkable for its omissions than for its incredible tales. While I reserve a more detailed criticism of its Christian ideals until a subsequent chapter, it may be well to quote here a few words from Isaac Taylor. After pointing out some of its defects he continues: there is "not a word of justification by faith; not a word of the gracious influence of the Spirit in renewing and cleansing the heart; not a word responding to any of those signal passages of Scripture which make the Gospel 'Glad Tidings' to guilty men." This I must confess to be true, even though I may and do heartily esteem the saint's enthusiasm for righteousness.
So far I have described chiefly the spiritual experiences of these men, but the details of their physical life are hardly less interesting. There was a holy rivalry among them to excel in self-torture. Their imaginations were constantly employed in devising unique tests of holiness and courage. They lived in holes in the ground or in dried up wells; they slept in thorn bushes or passed days and weeks without sleep; they courted the company of the wildest beasts and exposed their naked bodies to the broiling sun. Macarius became angry because an insect bit him and in penitence flung himself into a marsh where he lived for weeks. He was so badly stung by gnats and flies that his friends hardly knew him. Hilarion, at twenty years of age, was more like a spectre than a living man. His cell was only five feet high, a little lower than his stature. Some carried weights equal to eighty or one hundred and fifty pounds suspended from their bodies. Others slept standing against the rocks. For three years, as it is recorded, one of them never reclined. In their zeal to obey the Scriptures, they overlooked the fact that cleanliness is akin to godliness. It was their boast that they never washed. One saint would not even use water to drink, but quenched his thirst with the dew that fell on the grass. St. Abraham never washed his face for fifty years. His biographer, not in the least disturbed by the disagreeable suggestions of this circumstance, proudly says, "His face reflected the purity of his soul." If so, one is moved to think that the inward light must indeed have been powerfully piercing, if it could brighten a countenance unwashed for half a century. There is a story about Abbot Theodosius who prayed for water that his monks might drink. In response to his petition a stream burst from the rocks, but the foolish monks, overcome by a pitiful weakness for cleanliness, persuaded the abbot to erect a bath, when lo, the stream dried. Supplications and repentance availed nothing. After a year had passed, the monks, promising never again to insult Heaven by wishing for a bath, were granted a second Mosaic miracle.
Thus, unwashed, clothed in rags, their hair uncut, their faces unshaven, they lived for years. No wonder that to their disordered fancy the desert was filled with devils, the animals spake and Heaven sent angels to minister unto them.
The Pillar Saint
But the strangest of all strange narratives yet remains. We turn from Egypt to Asia Minor to make the acquaintance of that saint whom Tennyson has immortalized,--the idol of monarchs and the pride of the East,--Saint Simeon Stylites. Stories grow rank around him like the luxuriant products of a tropical soil. How shall I briefly tell of this man, whom Theodoret, in his zeal, declares all who obey the Roman rule know--the man who may be compared with Moses the Legislator, David the King and Micah the Prophet? He lived between the years 390 and 459 A.D. He was a shepherd's son, but at an early age entered a monastery. Here he soon distinguished himself by his excessive austerities. One day he went to the well, removed the rope from the bucket and bound it tightly around his body underneath his clothes. A few weeks later, the abbot, being angry with him because of his extreme self-torture, bade his companions strip him. What was his astonishment to find the rope from the well sunk deeply into his flesh. "Whence," he cried, "has this man come to us, wanting to destroy the rule of this monastery? I pray thee depart hence."
With great trouble they unwound the rope and the flesh with it, and taking care of him until he was well, they sent him forth to commence a life of austerities that was to render him famous. He adopted various styles of existence, but his miracles and piety attracted such crowds that he determined to invent a mode of life which would deliver him from the pressing multitudes. It is curious that he did not hide himself altogether if he really wished to escape notoriety; but, no, he would still be within the gaze of admiring throngs. His holy and fanciful genius hit upon a scheme that gave him his peculiar name. He took up his abode on the top of a column which was at first about twelve feet high, but was gradually elevated until it measured sixty-four feet. Hence, he is called Simeon Stylites, or Simeon the Pillar Saint.
On this lofty column, betwixt earth and heaven, the hermit braved the heat and cold of thirty years. At its base, from morning to night, prayed the admiring worshipers. Kings kneeled in crowds of peasants to do him homage and ask his blessing. Theodoret says, "The Ishmaelites, coming by tribes of two hundred and three hundred at a time, and sometimes even a thousand, deny, with shouts, the error of their fathers, and breaking in pieces before that great illuminator, the images which they had worshiped, and renouncing the orgies of Venus, they received the Divine sacrament." Rude barbarians confessed their sins in tears. Persians, Greeks, Romans and Saracens, forgetting their mutual hatred, united in praise and prayer at the feet of this strange character.
Once a week the hero partook of food. Many times a day he bowed his head to his feet; one man counted twelve hundred and forty-four times and then stopped in sheer weariness from gazing at the miracle of endurance aloft. Again, from the setting of the sun to its appearance in the East, he would stand unsoothed by sleep with his arms outstretched like a cross.
If genius can understand such a life as that and fancy the thoughts of such a soul, Tennyson seems not only to have comprehended the consciousness of the Pillar Saint, but also to have succeeded in giving expression to his insight. He has laid bare the soul of Simeon in its commingling of spiritual pride with affected humility, and of a consciousness of meritorious sacrifice with a sense of sin. The Saint spurns notoriety and the homage of men, yet exults in his control over the multitudes.
The poet thus imagines Simeon to speak as the Saint is praying God to take away his sin:
"But yet
Bethink thee, Lord, while thou and all the saints
Enjoy themselves in heaven, and men on earth
House in the shade of comfortable roofs,
Sit with their wives by fires, eat wholesome food,
And wear warm clothes, and even beasts have stalls,
I, 'tween the spring and downfall of the light,
Bow down one thousand and two hundred times,
To Christ, the Virgin Mother, and the Saints;
Or in the night, after a little sleep,
I wake: the chill stars sparkle; I am wet
With drenching dews, or stiff with crackling frost.
I wear an undress'd goatskin on my back;
A grazing iron collar grinds my neck;
And in my weak, lean arms I lift the cross,
And strive and wrestle with thee till I die:
O mercy, mercy! wash away my sin.
O Lord, thou knowest what a man I am;
A sinful man, conceived and born in sin:
'Tis their own doing; this is none of mine;
Lay it not to me. Am I to blame for this,
That here come those that worship me? Ha! ha!
They think that I am somewhat. What am I?
The silly people take me for a saint,
And bring me offerings of fruit and flowers:
And I, in truth (thou wilt bear witness here)
Have all in all endured as much, and more
Than many just and holy men, whose names
Are register'd and calendared for saints.
Good people, you do ill to kneel to me.
What is it I can have done to merit this?
Yet do not rise; for you may look on me,
And in your looking you may kneel to God.
Speak! is there any of you halt or maim'd?
I think you know I have some power with Heaven
From my long penance: let him speak his wish.
Yes, I can heal him. Power goes forth from me.
They say that they are heal'd. Ah, hark! they shout
'St. Simeon Stylites.' Why, if so,
God reaps a harvest in me. O my soul,
God reaps a harvest in thee. If this be,
Can I work miracles and not be saved?"
Once, the devil, in shape like an angel, riding in a chariot of fire, came to carry Simeon to the skies. He whispered to the weary Saint, "Simeon, hear my words, which the Lord hath commanded thee. He has sent me, his angel, that I may carry thee away as I carried Elijah." Simeon was deceived, and lifted his foot to step out into the chariot, when the angel vanished, and in punishment for his presumption an ulcer appeared upon his thigh.
But time plays havoc with saints as well as sinners, and death slays the strongest. Bowed in prayer, his weary heart ceased to beat and the eyes that gazed aloft were closed forever. Anthony, his beloved disciple, ascending the column, found that his master was no more. Yet, it seemed as if Simeon was loath to leave the spot, for his spirit appeared to his weeping follower and said, "I will not leave this column, and this blessed mountain. For I have gone to rest, as the Lord willed, but do thou not cease to minister in this place and the Lord will repay thee in heaven."
His body was carried down the mountain to Antioch. Heading the solemn procession were the patriarch, six bishops, twenty-one counts and six thousand soldiers, "and Antioch," says Gibbon, "revered his bones as her glorious ornament and impregnable defence."
The Cenobites of the East
We cannot linger with these hermits. I pass now to the cenobitic[[C]] life. We go back in years and return to Egypt. Man is a social animal, and the social instinct is so strong that even hermits are swayed by its power and get tired of living apart from one another. When Anthony died the deserts were studded with hermitages, and those of exceptional fame were surrounded by little clusters of huts and dens. Into these cells crowded the hermits who wished to be near their master.
Thus, step by step, organized or cenobitic monasticism easily and naturally came into existence. The anchorites crawled from their dens every day to hear the words of their chief saint,--a practice giving rise to stated meetings, with rules for worship. Regulations as to meals, occupations, dress, penances, and prayers naturally follow.
The author of the first monastic rules is said to have been Pachomius, who was born in Egypt about the year 292 A.D. He was brought up in paganism but was converted in early life while in the army. On his discharge he retired with a hermit to Tabenna, an island in the Nile. It is said he never ate a full meal after his conversion, and for fifteen years slept sitting on a stone. Natural gifts fitted him to become a leader, and it was not long before he was surrounded by a congregation of monks for whom he made his rules.
The monks of Pachomius were divided into bands of tens and hundreds, each tenth man being an under officer in turn subject to the hundredth, and all subject to the superior or abbot of the mother house. They lived three in a cell, and a congregation of cells constituted a laura or monastery. There was a common room for meals and worship. Each monk wore a close fitting tunic and a white goatskin upper garment which was never laid aside at meals or in bed, but only at the Eucharist. Their food usually consisted of bread and water, but occasionally they enjoyed such luxuries as oil, salt, fruits and vegetables. They ate in silence, which was sometimes broken by the solemn voice of a reader.
"No man," says Jerome, "dares look at his neighbor or clear his throat. Silent tears roll down their cheeks, but not a sob escapes their lips." Their labors consisted of some light handiwork or tilling the fields. They grafted trees, made beehives, twisted fish-lines, wove baskets and copied manuscripts. It was early apparent that as man could not live alone so he could not live without labor. We shall see this principle emphasized more clearly by Benedict, but it is well to notice that at this remote day provision was made for secular employments. Jerome enjoins Rusticus, a young monk, always to have some work on hand that the devil may find him busy. "Hoe your ground," says he, "set out cabbages; convey water to them in conduits, that you may see with your own eyes the lovely vision of the poet,--
"Art draws fresh water from the hilltop near,
Till the stream, flashing down among the rocks,
Cools the parched meadows and allays their thirst."
There were individual cases of excessive self-torture even among these congregations of monks but we may say that ordinarily, organized monasticism was altogether less severe upon the individual than anchoretic life. The fact that the monk was seeking human fellowship is evidence that he was becoming more humane, and this softening of his spirit betrayed itself in his treatment of himself. The aspect of life became a little brighter and happier.
Four objects were comprehended in these monastic roles,--solitude, manual labor, fasting and prayer. We need not pity these dwellers far from walled cities and the marts of trade. Indeed, they claim no sympathy. Religious ideals can make strange transformations in man's disposition and tastes. They loved their hard lives.
The hermit Abraham said to John Cassian, "We know that in these, our regions, there are some secret and pleasant places, where fruits are abundant and the beauty and fertility of the gardens would supply our necessities with the slightest toil. We prefer the wilderness of this desolation before all that is fair and attractive, admitting no comparison between the luxuriance of the most exuberant soil and the bitterness of these sands." Jerome himself exclaimed, "Others may think what they like and follow each his own bent. But to me a town is a prison and solitude paradise."
The three vows of chastity, poverty and obedience were adopted and became the foundation stones of the monastic institution, to be found in every monastic order. There is a typical illustration in Kingsley's Hypatia of what they meant by obedience. Philammon, a young monk, was consigned to the care of Cyril, the Bishop of Alexandria, and a factious, cruel man, with an imperious will. The bishop received and read his letter of introduction and thus addressed its bearer, "Philammon, a Greek. You are said to have learned to obey. If so, you have also learned to rule. Your father-abbot has transferred you to my tutelage. You are now to obey me." "And I will," was the quick response. "Well said. Go to that window and leap forth into the court." Philammon walked to it and opened it. The pavement was fully twenty feet below, but his business was to obey and not to take measurements. There was a flower in a vase upon the sill. He quietly removed it, and in an instant would have leaped for life or death, when Cyril's voice thundered, "Stop!"
The Pachomian monks despised possessions of every kind. The following pathetic incident shows the frightful extent to which they carried this principle, and also illustrates the character of that submission to which the novitiate voluntarily assented: Cassian described how Mutius sold his possessions and with his little child of eight asked admission to a monastery. The monks received but disciplined him. "He had already forgotten that he was rich, he must forget that he was a father." His child was taken, clothed in rags, beaten and spurned. Obedience compelled the father to look upon his child wasting with pain and grief, but such was his love for Christ, says the narrator, that his heart was rigid and immovable. He was then told to throw the boy into the river, but was stopped in the act of obeying.
Yet men, women, and even children, coveted this life of unnatural deprivations. "Posterity," says Gibbon, "might repeat the saying which had formerly been applied to the sacred animals of the same country, that in Egypt it was less difficult to find a god than a man." Though the hermit did not claim to be a god, yet there were more monks in many monasteries than inhabitants in the neighboring villages. Pachomius had fourteen hundred monks in his own monastery and seven thousand under his rule. Jerome says fifty thousand monks were sometimes assembled at Easter in the deserts of Nitria. It was not uncommon for an abbot to command five thousand monks. St. Serapion boasted of ten thousand. Altogether, so we are told, there were in the fifth century more than one hundred thousand persons in the monasteries, three-fourths of whom were men.
The rule of Pachomius spread over Egypt into Syria and Palestine. It was carried by Athanasius into Italy and Gaul. It existed in various modified forms until it was supplanted by the Benedictine rule.
Leaving Egypt, again we cross the Mediterranean into Asia Minor. Near the Black Sea, in a wild forest abounding in savage rocks and gloomy ravines, there dwelt a young man of twenty-six. He had traveled in Egypt, Syria and Palestine. He had visited the hermits of the desert and studied philosophy and eloquence in cultured Athens. In virtue eminent, in learning profound, this poetic soul sought to realize its ideal in a lonely and cherished retreat--in a solitude of Pontus.
The young monk is the illustrious saint and genius,--Basil the Great,--the Bishop of Cæsarea, and the virtual founder of the monastic institution in the Greek church. The forest and glens around his hut belonged to him, and on the other bank of the river Iris his mother and sister were leading similar lives, having abandoned earthly honors in pursuit of heaven. Hard crusts of bread appeased his hunger. No fires, except those which burned within his soul, protected him from the wintry blast. His years were few but well spent. After a while his powerful intellect asserted itself and he was led into a clearer view of the true spiritual life. His practical mind revolted against the gross ignorance and meaningless asceticism of Egypt. He determined to form an order that would conform to the inner meaning of the Bible and to a more sensible conception of the religious life. For his time he was a wise legislator, a cunning workman and a daring thinker. The modification of his ascetic ideal was attended by painful struggles. Many an hour he spent with his bosom friend, Gregory of Nazianza, discussing the subject. The middle course which they finally adopted is thus neatly described by Gregory:
"Long was the inward strife, till ended thus:
I saw, when men lived in the fretful world,
They vantaged other men, but missed the while
The calmness, and the pureness of their hearts.
They who retired held an uprighter post,
And raised their eyes with quiet strength toward heaven;
Yet served self only, unfraternally.
And so, 'twixt these and those, I struck my path,
To meditate with the free solitary,
Yet to live secular, and serve mankind."
Monks in large numbers flocked to this mountain retreat of Basil's. These he banded together in an organization, the remains of which still live in the Greek church. So great is the influence of his life and teachings, "that it is common though erroneous to call all Oriental monks Basilians." His rules are drawn up in the form of answers to two hundred and three questions. He added to the three monastic vows a fourth, which many authorities claim now appeared for the first time,--namely, that of irrevocable vows--once a monk, always a monk.
Basil did not condemn marriage, but he believed that it was incompatible with the highest spiritual attainments. For the Kingdom of God's sake it was necessary to forsake all. "Love not the world, neither the things of the world," embraced to his mind the married state. By avoiding the cares of marriage a man was sure to escape, so he thought, the gross sensuality of the age. He struck at the dangers which attend the possession of riches, by enforcing poverty. An abbot was appointed over his cloisters to whom absolute obedience was demanded. Everywhere men needed this lesson of obedience. The discipline of the armies was relaxed. The authority of religion was set at naught; laxity and disorder prevailed even among the monks. They went roaming over the country controlled only by their whims. Insubordination had to be checked or the monastic institution was doomed. Hence, Basil was particular to enforce a respect for law and order.
Altogether this was an honest and serious attempt to introduce fresh power into a corrupt age and to faithfully observe the Biblical commands as Basil understood them. The floods of iniquity were engulfing even the church. A new standard had to be raised and an inner circle of pious and zealous believers gathered from the multitude of half-pagan Christians, or all was lost.
The subsequent history of Greek monachism has little interest. In Russia, at a late date, the Greek monks served some purpose in keeping alive the national spirit under the Tartar yoke, but the practical benefits to the East were few, in comparison with the vigorous life of the Western monasticism.
Montalembert, the brilliant champion of Christian monasticism, becomes an adverse critic of the system in the East, although it is noteworthy he now speaks of monasticism as it appears in the Greek church, which he holds to be heretical; yet his indictment is quite true: "They yielded to all the deleterious impulses of that declining society. They have saved nothing, regenerated nothing, elevated nothing."
We have visited the hermit in the desert and in the monastery governed by its abbot and its rules. We must view the monk in one other aspect, that of theological champion. Here the hermit and the monk of the monastery meet on common ground. They were fighters, not debaters; fighters, not disciplined soldiers; fighters, not persuading Christians. They swarmed down from the mountains like hungry wolves. They fought heretics, they fought bishops, they fought Roman authorities, they fought soldiers, and fought one another. Ignorant, fanatical and cruel, they incited riots, disturbed the public peace and shed the blood of foes.
Theological discord was made a thousand times more bitter by their participation in the controversies of the time. Furious monks became the armed champions of Cyril, the Bishop of Alexandria. They insulted the prefect, drove out the Jews and, to the everlasting disgrace of the monks, Cyril and the church, they dragged the lovely Hypatia from her lecture hall and slew her with all the cruelty satanic ingenuity could devise. Against a background of black and angry sky she stands forth, as a soul through whose reason God made himself manifest. Her unblemished character, her learning and her grace forever cry aloud against an orthodoxy bereft alike of reason and of the spirit of the Nazarene.
The fighting monks crowded councils and forced decisions. They deposed hostile bishops or kept their favorites in power by murder and violence. Two black-cowled armies met in Constantinople, and amid curses fought with sticks and stones a battle of creeds. Cries of "Holy! Holy! Holy!" mingled with, "It's the day of martyrdom! Down with the tyrant!" The whole East was kept in a feverish state. The Imperial soldiers confessed their justifiable fears when they said, "We would rather fight with barbarians than with these monks."
No wonder our perplexity increases and it seems impossible to determine what these men really did for the cause of truth. We have been unable to distinguish the hermit from the beasts of the fields. We hear his groans, see his tears, and watch him struggle with demons. We are disgusted with his filth, amused at his fancies, grieved at his superstition. We pity his agony and admire his courage. We watch the progress of order and rule out of chaos. We see monasteries grow up around damp caves and dismal huts. We behold Simeon praying among the birds of heaven, and look into the face of the young and handsome Basil, in whom the monastic institution of the East reaches the zenith of its power.
I am free to confess a profound reverence for many of these men determined at all hazards to keep their souls unspotted from the world. I bow before a passion for righteousness ready to part with life itself if necessary. Yet the gross extravagances, the almost incredible absurdities of their unnatural lives compel us to withhold our judgment.
One thing is certain, the strange life of those far-off years is an eloquent testimony to the indestructible craving of the human soul for self-mastery and soul-purity.
II
MONASTICISM IN THE WEST: ANTE-BENEDICTINE MONKS 340-480 A.D.
We are now to follow the fortunes of the monastic system from its introduction in Rome to the time of Benedict of Nursia, the founder of the first great monastic order.
Constantine the Great, the first Christian emperor, who made Christianity the predominant religion in the Roman Empire, died in 337 A.D. Three years later Rome heard, probably for the first time, an authentic account of the Egyptian hermits. The story was carried to the Eternal City by Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, one of the most remarkable characters in the early church, a man of surpassing courage and perseverance, an intrepid foe of heresy, "heroic and invincible," as Milton styled him. Twenty of the forty-six years of his official life were spent in banishment.
Athanasius was an intimate friend of the hermit Anthony and a persistent advocate of the ascetic ideal. When he fled to Rome, in 340, to escape the persecutions of the Arians, he took with him two specimens of monastic virtue--Ammonius and Isidore. These hermits, so filthy and savage in appearance, albeit, as I trust, clean in heart, excited general disgust, and their story of the tortures and holiness of their Egyptian brethren was received with derision. But men who had faced and conquered the terrors of the desert were not to be so easily repulsed. Aided by other ascetic travelers from the East they persisted in their propaganda until contempt yielded to admiration. The enthusiasm of the uncouth hermits became contagious. The Christians in Rome now welcomed the story of the recluses as a Divine call to abandon a dissolute society for the peace and joy of a desert life.
But before this transformation of public opinion can be appreciated, it is needful to know something of the social and religious condition of Rome in the days when Athanasius and his hermits walked her streets.
After suffering frightful persecutions for three centuries, the Church had at last nominally conquered the Roman Empire; nominally, because although Christianity was to live, the Empire had to die. "No medicine could have prevented the diseased old body from dying. The time had come. When the wretched inebriate embraces a spiritual religion with one foot in the grave, with a constitution completely undermined, and the seeds of death planted, then no repentance or lofty aspiration can prevent physical death. It was so in Rome." The death-throes were long and lingering, as befits the end of a mighty giant, but death was certain. There are many facts which explain the inability of a conquering faith to save a tottering empire, but it is impracticable for us to enter upon that wide field. Some help may be gained from that which follows.
Of morals, Rome was destitute. She possessed the material remains and superficial acquirements of a proud civilization, such as great public highways, marble palaces, public baths, temples and libraries. Elegance of manners and acquisitions of wealth indicate specious outward refinement. But these things are not sufficient to guarantee the permanence of institutions or the moral welfare of a nation. In the souls of men there was a fatal degeneracy. There was outward prosperity but inward corruption.
Professor Samuel Dill, in his highly instructive work on "Roman Society in the Last Century of the Western Empire," points out the fact that Rome's fall was due to economic and political causes as well as to the deterioration of her morals. A close study of these causes, however, will reveal the presence of moral influences. Professor Dill says: "The general tendency of modern inquiry has to discover in the fall of that august and magnificent organization, not a cataclysm, precipitated by the impact of barbarous forces, but a process slowly prepared and evolved by internal and economic causes." Two of these causes were the dying out of municipal liberty and self-government, and the separation of the upper class from the masses by sharp distributions of wealth and privilege. It is indeed true that these causes contributed to Rome's ruin; that the central government was weak; that the civil service was oppressive and corrupt; that the aristocratic class was selfish; and that the small landed proprietors were steadily growing poorer and fewer, while, on the contrary, the upper or senatorial class was increasing in wealth and power. But after due emphasis has been accorded to these destructive factors, it yet remains true that the want of public spirit and the prevailing cultivated selfishness may be traced to a decline of faith in those religious ideals that serve to stimulate the moral life and thus preserve the national integrity.
Society was divided into three classes. It is computed that one-half the population were slaves. A large majority of the remainder were paupers, living on public charity, and constituting a festering sore that threatened the life of the social organism. The rich, who were relatively few, squandered princely incomes in a single night, and exhausted their imaginations devising new and expensive forms of sensuous pleasure. The profligacy of the nobles almost surpasses credibility, so that trustworthy descriptions read like works of fiction. Farrar says: "A whole population might be trembling lest they should be starved by the delay of an Alexandrian corn ship, while the upper classes were squandering a fortune at a single banquet, drinking out of myrrhine and jeweled vases worth hundreds of pounds, and feasting on the brains of peacocks and the tongues of nightingales." The frivolity of the social and political leaders of Rome, the insane thirst for lust and luxury, the absence of seriousness in the face of frightful, impending ruin, almost justify the epigram of Silvianus, "Rome was laughing when she died."
"On that hard pagan world disgust
And secret loathing fell;
Deep weariness and sated lust
Made human life a hell.
In his cool hall, with haggard eyes,
The Roman noble lay;
He drove abroad in furious guise
Along the Appian Way;
He made a feast, drank fierce and fast,
And crowned his hair with flowers
No easier nor no guicker past
The impracticable hours."
Pagan mythology and Pagan philosophy were powerless to resist this downward tendency. Although Christianity had become the state religion, it was itself in great danger of yielding to the decay that prevailed. The Empire was, in fact, but nominally Christian. Thousands of ecclesiastical adherents were half pagan in their spirit and practice. Harnack declares, "They were too deeply affected by Christianity to abandon it, but too little to be Christians. Pure religious enthusiasm waned, ideals received a new form, and the dependence and responsibility of individuals became weaker." Even ordinary courage had everywhere declined and the pleasures of the senses controlled the heart of Christian society.
Many of the men who should have resisted this gross secularization of the church, who ought to have set their faces against the departure from apostolic ideals by exalting the standards of the earlier Christianity; these men, the clergy of the Christian church, had deserted their post of duty and surrendered to the prevailing worldliness.
Jerome describes, with justifiable sarcasm, these moral weaklings, charged with the solemn responsibility of preaching a pure gospel to a dying empire. "Such men think of nothing but their dress; they use perfumes freely, and see that there are no creases in their leather shoes. Their curling hair shows traces of the tongs; their fingers glisten with rings; they walk on tiptoe across a damp road, not to splash their feet. When you see men acting that way, think of them rather as bridegrooms than as clergymen. If he sees a pillow that takes his fancy, or an elegant table-cover, or, indeed, any article of furniture, he praises it, looks admiringly at it, takes it into his hand, and, complaining that he has nothing of the kind, begs or rather extorts it from its owner." Such trifling folly was fatal. The times demanded men of vigorous spirit, who dared to face the general decline, and cry out in strong tones against it. The age needed moral warriors, with the old Roman courage and love of sacrifice; martyrs willing to rot in prison or shed their blood in the street, not effeminate men, toying with fancy table-covers and tiptoeing across a sprinkled road. "And as a background," says Kingsley, "to all this seething heap of corruption, misrule and misery, hung the black cloud of the barbarians, the Teutonic tribes from whom we derive our best blood, ever coming nearer and nearer, waxing stronger and stronger, to be soon the conquerors of the Cæsars and the masters of the world." But there were many pure and sincere Christians--a saving remnant. The joyous alacrity with which men and women responded to the monastic call, and entered upon careers of self-torture for the sake of deliverance from moral corruption, shows that the spirit of true faith was not extinct. These seekers after righteousness may be described as "a dismal and fanatical set of men, overlooking the practical aims of life," but it is a fair question to ask, "if they had not abandoned the world to its fate would they not have shared that fate?" "The glory of that age," says Professor Dill, "is the number of those who were capable of such self-surrender; and an age should be judged by its ideals, not by the mediocrity of conventional religion masking worldly self-indulgence. This we have always with us; the other we have not always."
Yet the sad fact remains that the transforming power of Christianity was practically helpless before the surging floods of vice and superstition. The noble struggles of a few saints were as straws in a hurricane. The church had all she could do to save herself.
"When Christianity itself was in such need of reform," says Lord, "when Christians could scarcely be distinguished from pagans in love of display, and in egotistical ends, how could it reform the world? When it was a pageant, a ritualism, an arm of the state, a vain philosophy, a superstition, a formula, how could it save, if ever so dominant? The corruptions of the church in the fourth century are as well authenticated as the purity and moral elevation of Christians in the second century." Even in the early days of Christianity the ruin of Rome was impending, but, at that time, the adherents of the Christian religion were few and poor. They did not possess enough power and influence to save the state. When monasticism came to Rome, the lords of the church were getting ready to sit upon the thrones of princes, but the dazzling victory of the church was not a spiritual conquest of sin, so the last ray of hope for the Empire was extinguished. Her fall was inevitable.
With this outlined picture in mind, fancy Athanasius and his monks at Rome. These men despise luxury and contemn riches. They have come to make Rome ring with the old war cries,--although they wrestled not against flesh and blood, but against spiritual wickedness in high places. Terror and despair are on every side, but they are not afraid. They know what it means to face the demons of the desert, to lie down at night with wild beasts for companions. They have not yielded to the depravity of the human heart and the temptations of a licentious age. They have conquered sinful appetites by self-abnegation and fasting. They come to a distracted society with a message of peace--a peace won by courageous self-sacrifice. They call men to save their perishing souls by surrendering their wills to God and enlisting in a campaign against the powers of darkness. They appeal to the ancient spirit of courage and love of hardship. They arouse the dormant moral energies of the profligate nobles, proud of the past and sick of the present. The story of Anthony admonished Rome that a life of sensuous gratification was inglorious, unworthy of the true Roman, and that the flesh could be mastered by heroic endeavor.
Women, who spent their hours in frivolous amusements, welcomed with gratitude the discovery that they could be happy without degradation, and joyfully responded to the call of righteousness. "Despising themselves," says Kingsley, "despising their husbands to whom they had been wedded in loveless wedlock, they too fled from a world which had sated and sickened them."
Woman's natural craving for lofty friendships and pure aspirations found satisfaction in the monastic ideal. She fled from the incessant broils of a corrupt court, from the courtesans that usurped the place of the wife, from the insolence and selfishness of men who scorned even the appearance of virtue and did not hesitate to degrade even their wives and sisters. She would disprove the biting sarcasm of Juvenal,--
"Women, in judgment weak, in feeling strong,
By every gust of passion borne along.
A woman stops at nothing, when she wears
Rich emeralds round her neck, and in her ears
Pearls of enormous size; these justify
Her faults, and make all lawful in her eye."
Therefore did the women hear with tremulous eagerness the story of the saintly inhabitants of the desert, and flinging away their trinkets, they hastened to the solitude of the cell, there to mourn their folly and seek pardon and peace at the feet of the Most High.
Likewise, the men, born to nobler tasks than fawning upon princes and squandering life and fortune in gluttony and debauchery, blushed for shame, and abandoned forever the company of sensualists and parasites. Potitianus, a young officer of rank, read the life of Anthony, and cried to his fellow-soldier: "Tell me, I pray thee, whither all our labors tend? What do we seek? For whom do we carry arms? What can be our greatest hope in the palace but to be friend to the Emperor? And how frail is that fortune! What perils! When shall this be?" Inspired by the monastic story he exchanged the friendship of the Emperor for the friendship of God, and the military life lost all its attractiveness.
A philosopher and teacher hears the same narrative, and his countenance becomes grave; he seizes the arm of Alypius, his friend, and earnestly asks: "What, then, are we doing? How is this? What hast thou been hearing? These ignorant men rise; they take Heaven by force, and we, with our heartless sciences, behold us wallowing in the flesh and in our blood! Is it shameful to follow them, and are we not rather disgraced by not following them?" So, disgusted with his self-seeking career, his round of empty pleasures, he, too, is moved by this higher call to abandon his wickedness and devote his genius to the cause of righteousness.
Ambrose, Paulinus, Chrysostom, Basil, Gregory, and many others, holding important official posts or candidates for the highest honors, abandoned all their chances of political preferment in order to preach the gospel of ascetic Christianity.
Yes, for good or evil, Rome is profoundly stirred. The pale monk, in all his filth and poverty, is the master of the best hearts in the capital. Every one in whom aspiration is still alive, who longs for some new light, and all who vaguely grope after a higher life, hear his voice and become pliant to his will.
"Great historic movements," says Grimke, "are born not in whirlwinds, in earthquakes, and pomps of human splendor and power, but in the agonies and enthusiasms of grand, heroic spirits." Monastic history, like secular, centers in the biographies of such great men as Anthony, Basil, Jerome, Benedict, Francis, Dominic and Loyola. To understand the character of the powerful forces set in motion by the coming of the monks to Rome, it is necessary to know the leading spirits whose preeminent abilities and lofty personalities made Western monasticism what it was.
The time is about 418 A.D.; the place, a monastery in Bethlehem, near the cave of the Nativity. In a lonely cell, within these monastic walls, we shall find the man we seek. He is so old and feeble that he has to be raised in his bed by means of a cord affixed to the ceiling. He spends his time chiefly in reciting prayers. His voice, once clear and resonant, sinks now to a whisper. His failing vision no longer follows the classic pages of Virgil or dwells fondly on the Hebrew of the Old Testament. This is Saint Jerome, the champion of asceticism, the biographer of hermits, the lion of Christian polemics, the translator of the Bible, and the worthy, brilliant, determined foe of a dissolute society and a worldly church. Although he spent thirty-four years of his life in Palestine, I shall consider Jerome in connection with the monasticism of the West, for it was in Rome that he exercised his greatest influence. His translation of the Scriptures is the Vulgate of the Roman church, and his name is enrolled in the calendar of her saints. "He is," observes Schaff "the connecting link between the Eastern and Western learning and religion."
By charming speech and eloquent tongue Jerome won over the men, but principally the women, of Rome to the monastic life. So powerful was his message when addressed to the feminine heart, that mothers are said to have locked their daughters in their rooms lest they should fall under the influence of his magnetic voice. It was largely owing to his own labors that he could write in after years: "Formerly, according to the testimony of the apostles, there were few rich, few noble, few powerful among the Christians. Now, it is no longer so. Not only among the Christians, but among the monks are to be found a multitude of the wise, the noble and the rich."
Near to the very year that Athanasius came to Rome, or about 340 A.D., Jerome was born at Stridon, in Dalmatia, in what is now called the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. His parents were modestly wealthy and were slaveholders. His student days were spent in Rome, where he divided his time between the study of books and the revels of the streets. One day some young Christians induced him to visit the catacombs with them. Here, before the graves of Christian martyrs, a quiet and holy influence stole into his heart, that finally led to his conversion and baptism. Embracing the monastic ideal, he gathered around him a few congenial friends, who joined him in a covenant of rigid abstinence and ascetic discipline. Then followed a year of travel with these companions, through Asia Minor, ending disastrously at Antioch. One of his friends returned home, two of them died, and he himself became so sick with fever that his life was despaired of. Undismayed by these evils, brought on by excessive austerities, he determined to retire to a life of solitude.
About fifty miles southeast from Antioch was a barren waste of nature but a paradise for monks--the Desert of Chalcis. On its western border were several monasteries. All about for miles, the dreary solitudes were peopled with shaggy hermits. They saw visions and dreamed dreams in caves infested by serpents and wild beasts. They lay upon the sands, scorched in summer by the blazing sun, and chilled in winter by the winds that blew from snowcapped mountains. For five years, Jerome dwelt among these demon-fighting recluses. Clad in sackcloth stained by penitential tears, he toiled for his daily bread, and struggled against visions of Roman dancing girls. He was a most industrious reader of books and a great lover of debate. Monks from far and near visited him, and together they discussed questions of theology and philosophy.
But we may not follow this varied and eventful life in all its details. After a year or two spent at Constantinople, and three years at Rome, he returned to the East, visiting the hermits of Egypt on his way, and finally settled at Bethlehem. His fame soon drew around him a great company of monks. These he organized into monasteries. He built a hospital, and established an inn for travelers. Lacking the necessary funds to carry out his projects, he dispatched his brother to the West with instructions to sell what was left of his property, and the proceeds of this sale he devoted to the cause. While in Bethlehem he wrote defences of orthodoxy, eulogies of the dead, lives of saints and commentaries on the Bible. He also completed his translation of the Scriptures, and wrote numerous letters to persons dwelling in various parts of the empire.
Jerome rendered great service to monasticism by his literary labors. He invested the dullest of lives with a halo of glory; under the magic touch of his rhetoric the wilderness became a gladsome place and the desert blossomed as the rose. His glowing language transfigured the pale face and sunken eyes of the starved hermit into features positively beautiful, while the rags that hung loosely upon his emaciated frame became garments of lustrous white. "Oh, that I could behold the desert," he cries, "lovelier than any city! Oh, that I could see those lonely spots made into a paradise by the saints that throng them!" Without detracting from the bitterness of the prospect, he glorifies the courage that can face the horrors of the desert, and the heart that can rejoice midst the solitude of the seas. Hear him describe the home of Bonosus, a hermit on an isle in the Adriatic:
"Bonosus, your friend, is now climbing the ladder foreshown in Jacob's dream. He is bearing his cross, neither taking thought for the morrow, nor looking back at what he has left. Here you have a youth, educated with us in the refining accomplishments of the world, with abundance of wealth and in rank inferior to none of his associates; yet he forsakes his mother, his sister, and his dearly loved brother, and settles like a new tiller of Eden on a dangerous island, with the sea roaring round its reefs, while its rough crags, bare rocks and desolate aspect make it more terrible still.... He sees the glory of God which even the apostles saw not, save in the desert. He beholds, it is true, no embattled towns, but he has enrolled his name in the new city. Garments of sackcloth disfigure his limbs, yet so he will the sooner be caught up to meet Christ in the clouds. Round the entire island roars the frenzied sea, while the beetling crags along its winding shores resound as the billows beat against them. Precipitous cliffs surround his dreadful abode as if it were a prison. He is careless, fearless, armed from head to foot in the apostles' armor."
Listen to these trumpet tones as Jerome calls to a companion of his youth in Rome: "O desert, enamelled with the flowers of Christ! O retreat, which rejoicest in the friendship of God! What dost thou in the world, my brother, with thy soul greater than the world? How long wilt thou remain in the shadow of roofs, and in the smoky dungeons of cities? Believe me, I see here more light."
To pass hastily over such appeals, coming from distant lands across the sea to stir the minds of the thoughtful in Rome, is to ignore one of the causes which produced the great exodus that followed. He made men see that they were living in a moral Sodom, and that if they would save their souls they must escape to the desert. The power of personal influence, of inspiring private letters, can hardly be overemphasized in studying the remarkable progress of asceticism. Great awakenings in the moral, as in the political or the social world, may be traced to the profound influence of individuals, whose prophetic insight and moral enthusiasm unfold the germ of the larger movements. There may be widespread unrest, the ground may be prepared for the seed, but the immediate cause of universal uprisings is the clarion call of genius. Thus Luther's was the voice that cried in the wilderness, inciting a vast host for whom centuries had been preparing.
But Jerome's fame as a man of learning, possessing a critical taste and a classic style of rare beauty and simplicity, must not blind us to the crowning glory of his brilliant career. He was above all a spiritual force. His chief appeal was to the conscience. He warmed the most torpid hearts by the fervor of his love, and encouraged the most hopeless by his fiery zeal and heroic faith. As a promoter of monasticism, he clashed with the interests of an enfeebled clergy and a corrupt laity. Nothing could swerve him from his course. False monks might draw terrible rebukes from him, but the conviction that the soul could be delivered from captivity to the body only by mortification remained unshaken. He induced men to break the fetters of society that they might, under the more favorable circumstances of solitude, wage war against their unruly passions.
When parents objected to his monastic views, Jerome quoted the saying of Jesus respecting the renunciation of father and mother, and then said: "Though thy mother with flowing hair and rent garments, should show thee the breasts which have nourished thee; though thy father should lie upon the threshold; yet depart thou, treading over thy father, and fly with dry eyes to the standard of the cross. The love of God and the fear of hell easily rend the bonds of the household asunder. The Holy Scripture indeed enjoins obedience, but he who loves them more than Christ loses his soul."
Jerome vividly portrays his own spiritual conflicts. The deserts were crowded with saintly soldiers battling against similar temptations, the nature of which is suggested by the following excerpt from Jerome's writings: "How often," he says, "when I was living in the desert, in the vast solitude which gives to hermits a savage dwelling-place, parched by a burning sun, how often did I fancy myself among the pleasures of Rome! I used to sit alone because I was filled with bitterness. Sack-cloth disfigured my unshapely limbs and my skin from long neglect had become black as an Ethiopian's. Tears and groans were every day my portion; and if drowsiness chanced to overcome my struggles against it, my bare bones, which hardly held together, clashed against the ground. Now although in my fear of hell I had consigned myself to this prison where I had no companions but scorpions and wild beasts, I often found myself amid bevies of girls. Helpless, I cast myself at the feet of Jesus, I watered them with my tears, and I subdued my rebellious body with weeks of abstinence. I remember how I often cried aloud all night till the break of day. I used to dread my cell as if it knew my thoughts, and stern and angry with myself, I used to make my way alone into the desert. Wherever I saw hollow valleys, craggy mountains, steep cliffs, there I made my oratory; there the house of correction for my unhappy flesh. There, also, when I had shed copious tears and had strained my eyes to heaven, I sometimes felt myself among angelic hosts and sang for joy and gladness."
No doubt these men were warring against nature. Their yielding to the temptation to obtain spiritual dominance by self-flagellation and fasting may be criticized in the light of modern Christianity. "Fanaticism defies nature," says F.W. Robertson, "Christianity refines it and respects it. Christianity does not denaturalize, but only sanctifies and refines according to the laws of nature. Christianity does not destroy our natural instincts, but gives them a higher and nobler direction." To all this I must assent, but, at the same time, I cannot but reverence that pure passion for holiness which led men, despairing of acquiring virtue in a degenerate age, to flee from the world and undergo such torments to attain their soul's ideal. The form, the method of their conflict was transient, the spirit and purpose eternal. All honor to them for their magnificent and terrible struggle, which has forever exalted the spiritual ideal, and commanded men everywhere to seek first "the Kingdom of God and its righteousness."
Jerome was always fond of the classics, although pagan writers were not in favor with the early Christians. One night he dreamed he was called to the skies where he was soundly flogged for reading certain pagan authors. This vision interrupted his classical studies for a time. In later years he resumed his beloved Virgil; and he vigorously defended himself against those who charged him with being a Pagan and an apostate on account of his love for Greek and Roman literature. If his admiration for Virgil was the Devil's work, I but give the Devil his due when I declare that much of the charm of Jerome's literary productions is owing to the inspiration of classic models.
Our attention must now be transferred from Jerome to the high-born Roman matrons, who laid off their silks that they might clothe themselves in the humble garb of the nun. As the narrative proceeds I shall let Jerome speak as often as possible, that the reader may become acquainted with the style of those biographies and eulogies which were the talk of Rome, and which have been admired so highly by succeeding generations.
Those who embraced monasticism in Rome did so in one of two ways. Some sold their possessions, adopted coarse garments, and subsisted on the plainest food, but they did not leave the city and were still to be seen upon the streets. Jerome writes to Pammachius: "Who would have believed that a last descendant of the consuls, an ornament of the race of Camillus, could make up his mind to traverse the city in the black robe of a monk, and should not blush to appear thus clad in the midst of senators." Some of those who remained at Rome established a sort of retreat for their ascetic friends.
But another class left Rome altogether. Some took up their abode on the rugged isles of the Adriatic or the Mediterranean. Large numbers of them went to the East, principally to Palestine. Jerome was practically the abbot of a Roman colony of monks and nuns. Two motives, beside the general ruling desire to achieve holiness, produced this exodus to the Holy Land, which culminated centuries later in the crusades. One was a desire to see the deserts and caves, the abode of hermits famous for piety and miracles. Jerome, as I have shown, invested these lonely retreats and strange characters with a sort of holy romance, and hence, faith, mingled with curiosity, led men to the East. Another motive was the desire to visit the land of the Saviour, to tread the soil consecrated by his labors of love, to live a life of poverty in the land where He had no home He could call his own.
St. Paula was one of the women who left Rome and went to Palestine. The story of her life is told in a letter designed to comfort her daughter Eustochium at the time of Paula's death. The epistle begins: "If all the members of my body were to be converted into tongues, and if each of my limbs were to be gifted with a human voice, I could still do no justice to the virtues of the holy and venerable Paula. Of the stock of the Gracchi, descended from the Scipios, she yet preferred Bethlehem to Rome, and left her palace glittering with gold to dwell in a mud cabin." Her husband was of royal blood and had died leaving her five children. At his death, she gave herself to works of charity. The poor and sick she wrapped in her own blankets. She began to tire of the receptions and other social duties which her position entailed upon her. While in this frame of mind, two Eastern bishops were entertained at her home during a gathering of ecclesiastics. They seem to have imparted the monastic impulse, perhaps by the rehearsal of monastic tales, for we are informed that at this time she determined to leave servants, property and children, in order to embrace the monastic life.
Let us stand with her children and kinsfolk on the shore of the sea as they take their final farewell of Paula. "The sails were set and the strokes of the rowers carried the vessel into the deep. On the shore little Toxotius stretched forth his hands in entreaty, while Rufina, now grown up, with silent sobs besought her mother to wait until she should be married. But still Paula's eyes were dry as she turned them heavenwards, and she overcame her love for her children by her love for God. She knew herself no more as a mother that she might approve herself a handmaid of Christ. Yet her heart was rent within her, and she wrestled with her grief as though she were being forcibly separated from parts of herself. The greatness of the affection she had to overcome made all admire her victory the more. Though it is against the laws of nature, she endured this trial with unabated faith."
So the vessel ploughed onward, carrying the mother who thought she was honoring God and attaining the true end of being through ruthless strangling of maternal love. She visited Syria and Egypt and the islands of Ponta and Cyprus. At the feet of the hermit fathers she begged their blessing and tried to emulate the virtues she believed they possessed. At Jerusalem she fell upon her face and kissed the stone before the sepulcher. "What tears, she shed, what groans she uttered, what grief she poured out all Jerusalem knows!"
She established two monasteries at Bethlehem, one of which was for women. Here, with her daughter, she lived a life of rigid abstinence. Her nuns had nothing they could call their own. If they paid too much attention to dress Paula said, "A clean body and a clean dress mean an unclean soul." To her credit, she was more lenient with others than with herself. Jerome admits she went to excess, and prudently observes: "Difficult as it is to avoid extremes, the philosophers are quite right in their opinion that virtue is a mean and vice an excess, or, as we may express it in one short sentence, in nothing too much." Paula swept floors and toiled in the kitchen. She slept on the ground, covered by a mat of goat's hair. Her weeping was incessant. As she meditated over the Scriptures, her tears fell so profusely that her sight was endangered. Jerome warned her to spare her eyes, but she said: "I must disfigure that face which, contrary to God's commandment, I have painted with rouge, white lead and antimony." If this be a sin against the Almighty, bear witness, O ye daughters of Eve! Her love for the poor continued to be the motive of her great liberality. In fact, her giving knew no bounds. Fuller wisely remarks that "liberality must have banks as well as a stream;" but Paula said: "My prayer is that I may die a beggar, leaving not a penny to my daughter and indebted to strangers for my winding sheet." Her petition was literally granted, for she died leaving her daughter not only without a penny but overwhelmed in a mass of debts.
As Jerome approaches the description of Paula's death, he says: "Hitherto the wind has all been in my favor and my keel has smoothly ploughed through the heaving sea. But now my bark is running upon the rocks, the billows are mountain high, and imminent shipwreck awaits me." Yet Paula, like David, must go the way of all the earth. Surrounded by her followers chanting psalms, she breathed her last. An immense concourse of people attended her funeral. Not a single monk lingered in his cell. Thus, the twenty hard years of self-torture for this Roman lady of culture ended in the rest of the grave.
Upon her tombstone was placed this significant inscription:
"Within this tomb a child of Scipio lies,
A daughter of the far-famed Pauline house,
A scion of the Gracchi, of the stock
Of Agamemnon's self, illustrious:
Here rests the lady Paula, well beloved
Of both her parents, with Eustochium
For daughter; she the first of Roman dames
Who hardship chose and Bethlehem for Christ."
Another interesting character of that period was Marcella, a beautiful woman of illustrious lineage, a descendant of consuls and prefects. After a married life of seven years her husband died. She determined not to embark on the matrimonial seas a second time, but to devote herself to works of charity. Cerealis, an old man, but of consular rank, offered her his fortune that he might consider her less his wife than his daughter. "Had I a wish to marry," was her noble reply, "I should look for a husband and not for an inheritance." Disdaining all enticements to remain in society, she began her monastic career with joy and turned her home into a retreat for women who, like herself, wished to retire from the world. It is not known just what rules governed their relations, but they employed the time in moderate fasting, prayers and alms-giving.
Marcella lavished her wealth upon the poor. Jerome praises her philanthropic labors thus: "Our widow's clothing was meant to keep out the cold and not to show her figure. She stored her money in the stomachs of the poor rather than to keep it at her own disposal." Seldom seen upon the streets, she remained at home, surrounded by virgins and widows, obedient and loving to her mother. Among the high-born women it was regarded as degrading to assume the costume of the nun, but she bore the scorn of her social equals with humility and grace.
This quiet and useful life was rudely and abruptly ended by a dreadful catastrophe. Alaric the Goth had seized and sacked Rome. The world stood aghast. The sad news reached Jerome in his cell at Bethlehem, who expressed his sorrow in forceful language: "My voice sticks in my throat; and as I dictate, sobs choke my utterance. The city which has taken the whole world is itself taken." Rude barbarians invaded the sanctity of Marcella's retreat. They demanded her gold, but she pointed to the coarse dress she wore to show them she had no buried treasures. They did not believe her, and cruelly beat her with cudgels. A few days after the saintly heroine of righteousness went to her long home to enjoy richly-merited rest and peace.
"Who can describe the carnage of that night?
What tears are equal to its agony?
Of ancient date a sovran city falls;
And lifeless in its streets and houses lie
Unnumbered bodies of its citizens.
In many a ghastly shape doth death appear."
Marcella and her monastic home fell in the general ruin, but in the words of Horace, she left "a monument more enduring than brass." Her noble life, so full of kind words and loving deeds, still stirs the hearts of her sisters who, while they may reject her ascetic ideal, will, nevertheless, try to emulate her noble spirit. As Jerome said of Paula: "By shunning glory she earned glory; for glory follows virtue as its shadow; and deserting those who seek it, it seeks those who despise it."
Still another woman claims our attention,--Fabiola, the founder of the first hospital. Lecky declares that "the first public hospital and the charity planted by that woman's hand overspread the world, and will alleviate to the end of time the darkest anguish of humanity." She, too, was a widow who refused to marry again, but broke up her home, sold her possessions, and with the proceeds founded a hospital into which were gathered the sick from the streets. She nursed the sufferers and washed their ulcers and wounds. No task was beneath her, no sacrifice of personal comfort too great for her love. Many helped her with their gold, but she gave herself. She also aided in establishing a home for strangers at Portus, which became one of the most famous inns of the time. Travelers from all parts of the world found a welcome and a shelter on landing at this port. When she died the roofs of Rome were crowded with those who watched the funeral procession. Psalms were chanted, and the gilded ceilings of the churches resounded to the music in commendation of her loving life and labors.
These and other characters of like zeal and fortitude exemplify the spirit of the men and women who interested the West in monasticism. Much as their errors and extravagances may be deplored, there is no question that some of them were types of the loftiest Christian virtues, inspired by the most laudable motives.
Noble and true are Kingsley's words: "We may blame those ladies, if we will, for neglecting their duties. We may sneer, if we will, at their weaknesses, the aristocratic pride, the spiritual vanity, we fancy we discover. We must confess that in these women the spirit of the old Roman matrons, which seemed to have been dead so long, flashed up for one splendid moment ere it sank into the darkness of the middle ages."
Monasticism and Women
The origin of nunneries was coeval with that of monasteries, and the history of female recluses runs parallel to that of the men. Almost every male order had its counterpart in some sort of a sisterhood. The general moral character of these female associations was higher than that of the male organizations. I have confined my treatment in this work to the monks, but a few words may be said at this point concerning female ascetics.
Hermit life was unsuited to women, but we know that at a very early date many of them retired to the seclusion of convent life. It will be recalled that in the biography of St. Anthony, before going into the desert he placed his sister in the care of some virgins who were living a life of abstinence, apart from society. It is very doubtful if any uniform rule governed these first religious houses, or if definitely organized societies appear much before the time of Benedict. The variations in the monastic order among the men were accompanied by similar changes in the associations of women.
The history of these sisterhoods discloses three interesting and noteworthy facts that merit brief mention:
First, the effect of a corrupt society upon women. As in the case of men, women were moved to forsake their social duties because they were weary of the sensual and aimless life of Rome. Those were the days of elaborate toilettes, painted faces and blackened eyelids, of intrigues and foolish babbling. Venial faults--it may be thought--innocent displays of tender frailty; but woman's nature demands loftier employments. A great soul craves occupations and recognizes obligations more in harmony with the true nobility of human nature. Rome had no monitor of the higher life until the monks came with their stories of heroic self-abnegation and unselfish toil. The women felt the force and truth of Jerome's criticism of their trifling follies when he said: "Do not seek to appear over-eloquent, nor trifle with verse, nor make yourself gay with lyric songs. And do not, out of affectation, follow the sickly taste of married ladies, who now pressing their teeth together, now keeping their lips wide apart, speak with a lisp, and purposely clip their words, because they fancy that to pronounce them naturally is a mark of country breeding."
Professor Dill is inclined to discount the testimony of Jerome respecting the morals of Roman society. He thinks Jerome exaggerated the perils surrounding women. He says: "The truth is Jerome is not only a monk but an artist in words; and his horror of evil, his vivid imagination, and his passion for literary effect, occasionally carry him beyond the region of sober fact. There was much to amend in the morals of the Roman world. But we must not take the leader of a great moral reformation as a cool and dispassionate observer." But this observation amounts to nothing more than a cautionary word against mistaking evils common to all times for special symptoms of excessive immorality. Professor Dill practically concedes the truthfulness of contemporary witnesses, including Jerome, when he says: "Yet, after all allowances, the picture is not a pleasant one. We feel that we are far away from the simple, unworldly devotion of the freedmen and obscure toilers whose existence was hardly known to the great world before the age of the Antonines, and who lived in the spirit of the Sermon on the Mount and in constant expectation of the coming of their Lord. The triumphant Church, which has brought Paganism to its knees, is very different from the Church of the catacombs and the persecutions." The picture which Jerome draws of the Roman women is indeed repulsive, and Professor Dill would gladly believe it to be exaggerated, but, nevertheless, he thinks that "if the priesthood, with its enormous influence, was so corrupt, it is only probable that it debased the sex which is always most under clerical influence."
But far graver charges cling to the memories of the Roman women. Crime darkened every household. The Roman lady was cruel and impure. She delighted in the blood of gladiators and in illicit love. Roman law at this time permitted women to hold and to control large estates, and it became a fad for these patrician ladies to marry poor men, so that they might have their husbands within their power. All sorts of alliances could then be formed, and if their husbands remonstrated, they, holding the purse strings, were able to say: "If you don't like it you can leave." A profligate himself, the husband usually kept his counsel, and as a reward, dwelt in a palace. "When the Roman matrons became the equal and voluntary companions of their lords," says Gibbon, "a new jurisprudence was introduced, that marriage, like other partnerships, might be dissolved by the abdication of one of the associates." I have but touched the fringe of a veil I will not lift; but it is easy to understand why those women who cherished noble sentiments welcomed the monastic life as a pathway of escape from scenes and customs from which their better natures recoiled in horror.
Secondly, the fine quality of mercy that distinguishes woman's character deserves recognition. Even though she retired to a convent, she could not become so forgetful of her fellow creatures as her male companions. From the very beginning we observe that she was more unselfish in her asceticism than they. It is true the monk forsook all, and to that extent was self-sacrificing, but in his desire for his own salvation, he was prone to neglect every one else. The monk's ministrations were too often confined to those who came to him, but the nun went forth to heal the diseased and to bind up the broken-hearted. As soon as she embraced the monastic life we read of hospitals. The desire for salvation drove man into the desert; a Christ-like mercy and divine sympathy kept his sister by the couch of pain.
Lastly, a word remains to be said touching the question of marriage. At first, the nun sometimes entered the marriage state, and, of course, left the convent; but, beginning with Basil, this practice was condemned, and irrevocable vows were exacted. In 407, Innocent I. closed even the door of penitence and forgiveness to those who broke their vows and married.
Widows and virgins alike assumed the veil. Marriage itself was not despised, because the monastic life was only for those who sought a higher type of piety than, it was supposed, could be attained amid the ordinary conditions of life. But marriage, as well as other so-called secular relations, was eschewed by those who wished to make their salvation sure. Jerome says: "I praise wedlock, I praise marriage, but it is because they give me virgins; I gather the rose from the thorns, the gold from the earth, the pearl from the shell." He therefore tolerated marriage among people contented with ordinary religious attainments, but he thought it incompatible with true holiness. Augustine admitted that the mother and her daughter may be both in heaven, but one a bright and the other a dim star. Some writers, as Helvidius, opposed this view and maintained that there was no special virtue in an unmarried life; that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was also the mother of other children, and as such was an example of Christian virtue. Jerome brought out his guns and poured hot shot into the enemies' camp. In the course of his answer, which contained many intolerant and acrimonious statements, he drew a comparison between the married and the unmarried state. It is interesting because it reflects the opinions of those who disparaged marriage, and reveals the character of the principles which the early Fathers advocated. It is very evident from this letter against Helvidius that Jerome regarded all secular duties as interfering with the pursuit of the highest virtue.
"Do you think," he says, "there is no difference between one who spends her time in prayer and fasting, and one who must, at her husband's approach, make up her countenance, walk with a mincing gait, and feign a show of endearment? The virgin aims to appear less comely; she will wrong herself so as to hide her natural attractions. The married woman has the paint laid on before her mirror, and, to the insult of her Maker, strives to acquire something more than her natural beauty. Then come the prattling of infants, the noisy household, children watching for her word and waiting for her kiss, the reckoning up of expenses, the preparation to meet the outlay. On one side you will see a company of cooks, girded for the onslaught and attacking the meat; there you may hear the hum of a multitude of weavers. Meanwhile a message is delivered that her husband and his friends have arrived. The wife, like a swallow, flies all over the house. She has to see to everything. Is the sofa smooth? Is the pavement swept? Are the flowers in the cup? Is dinner ready? Tell me, pray, amid all this, is there room for the thought of God?"
Such was Roman married life as it appeared to Jerome. The very duties and blessings that we consider the glory of the family he despised. I will return to his views later, but it is interesting to note the absence at this period, of the modern and true idea that God may be served in the performance of household and other secular duties. Women fled from such occupations in those days that they might be religious. The disagreeable fact of Peter's marriage was overcome by the assertion that he must have washed away the stain of his married life by the blood of his martyrdom. Such extreme views arose partly as a reaction from and a protest against the dominant corruption, a state of affairs in which happy and holy marriages were rare.
The Spread of Monasticism in Europe
Much more might be said of monastic life in Rome, were it not now necessary to treat of the spread of monasticism in Europe. There are many noble characters whom we ought to know, such as Ambrose, one of Christendom's greatest bishops, who led a life of poverty and strict abstinence, like his sister Marcella, whom we have met. He it was, of whom the Emperor Theodosius said: "I have met a man who has told me the truth." Well might he so declare, for Ambrose refused him admission to the church at Milan, because his hands were red with the blood of the murdered, and succeeded in persuading him to submit to discipline. To Ambrose may be applied the words which Gibbon wrote of Gregory Nazianzen: "The title of Saint has been added to his name, but the tenderness of his heart and the elegance of his genius reflect a more pleasing luster on his memory."
The story of John, surnamed Chrysostom, who was born at Antioch, in 347, is exceedingly interesting. He was a young lawyer, who entered the priesthood after his baptism. He at once set his heart on the monastic life, but his mother took him to her chamber, and, by the bed where she had given him birth, besought him in fear, not to forsake her. "My son," she said in substance, "my only comfort in the midst of the miseries of this earthly life is to see thee constantly, and to behold in thy traits the faithful image of my beloved husband, who is no more. When you have buried me and joined my ashes with those of your father, nothing will then prevent you from retiring into the monastic life. But so long as I breathe, support me by your presence, and do not draw down upon you the wrath of God by bringing such evils upon me who have given you no offence." This singularly tender petition was granted, but Chrysostom turned his home into a monastery, slept on the bare floor, ate little and seldom, and prayed much by day and by night.
After his mother's death Chrysostom enjoyed the seclusion of a monastic solitude for six years, but impairing his health by excessive self-mortification he returned to Antioch in 380. He rapidly rose to a position of commanding influence in the church. His peerless oratorical and literary gifts were employed in elevating the ascetic ideal and in unsparing denunciations of the worldly religion of the imperial court. He incurred the furious hatred of the young and beautiful Empress Eudoxia, who united her influence with that of the ambitious Theophilus, patriarch of Alexandria, and Chrysostom was banished from Constantinople, but died on his way to the remote desert of Pityus. His powerful sermons and valuable writings contributed in no small degree to the spread of monasticism among the Christians of his time.
Then there was Augustine, the greatest thinker since Plato. "We shall meet him," says Schaff, "alike on the broad highways and the narrow foot-paths, on the giddy Alpine heights and in the awful depths of speculation, wherever philosophical thinkers before him or after him have trod." He, too, like all the other leaders of thought in his time, was ascetic in his habits. Although he lived and labored for thirty-eight years at Hippo, a Numidian city about two hundred miles west of Carthage, in Africa, Augustine was regarded as the intellectual head not only of North Africa but of Western Christianity. He gathered his clergy into a college of priests, with a community of goods, thus approaching as closely to the regular monastic life as was possible to secular clergymen. He established religious houses and wrote a set of rules, consisting of twenty-four articles, for the government of monasteries. These rules were superseded by those of Benedict, but they were resuscitated under Charlemagne and reappeared in the famous Austin Canons of the eleventh century. Little did Augustine think that a thousand years later an Augustinian monk--Luther--would abandon his order to become the founder of modern Protestantism.
Augustine published a celebrated essay,--"On the Labor of Monks,"--in which he pointed out the dangers of monachism, condemned its abuses, and ended by sighing for the quiet life of the monk who divided his day between labor, reading and prayer, whilst he himself spent his years amid the noisy throng and the perplexities of his episcopate.
These men, and many others, did much to further monasticism. But we must now leave sunny Africa and journey northward through Gaul into the land of the hardy Britons and Scots.
Athanasius, the same weary exile whom we have encountered in Egypt and in Rome, had been banished by Constantine to Treves, in 336. In 346 and 349 he again visited Gaul. He told the same story of Anthony and the Egyptian hermits with similar results.
The most renowned ecclesiastic of the Gallican church, whose name is most intimately associated with the spread of monasticism in Western Europe, before the days of Benedict, was Saint Martin of Tours. He lived about the years 316-396 A.D. The chronicle of his life is by no means trustworthy, but that is essential neither to popularity nor saintship. Only let a Severus describe his life and miracles in glowing rhetoric and fantastic legend and the people will believe it, pronouncing him greatest among the great, the mightiest miracle-worker of that miracle-working age.
Martin was a soldier three years, against his will, under Constantine. One bleak winter day he cut his white military coat in two with his sword and clothed a beggar with half of it. That night he heard Jesus address the angels: "Martin, as yet only a catechumen has clothed me with his garment." After leaving the army he became a hermit, and, subsequently, bishop of Tours. He lived for years just outside of Tours in a cell made of interlaced branches. His monks dwelt around him in caves cut out of scarped rocks, overlooking a beautiful stream. They were clad in camel's hair and lived on a diet of brown bread, sleeping on a straw couch.
But Martin's monks did not take altogether kindly to their mode of life. Severus records an amusing story of their rebellion against the meager allowance of food. The Egyptian could exist on a few figs a day. But these rude Gauls, just emerging out of barbarism, were accustomed to devour great slices of roasted meat and to drink deep draughts of beer. Such sturdy children of the northern forests naturally disdained dainty morsels of barley bread and small potations of wine. True, Athanasius had said, "Fasting is the food of angels," but these ascetic novices, in their perplexity, could only say: "We are accused of gluttony; but we are Gauls; it is ridiculous and cruel to make us live like angels; we are not angels; once more, we are only Gauls." Their complaint comes down to us as a pathetic but humorous protest of common sense against ascetic fanaticism; or, regarded in another light, it may be considered as additional evidence of the depravity of the natural man.
In spite of all complaints, however, Martin did not abate the severity of his discipline. As a bishop he pushed his monastic system into all the surrounding country. His zeal knew no bounds, and his strength seemed inexhaustible. "No one ever saw him either gloomy or merry," remarks his biographer. Amid many embarrassments and difficulties he was ever the same, with a countenance full of heavenly serenity. He was a great miracle-worker--that is, if everything recorded of him is true. He cast out demons, and healed the sick; he had strange visions of angels and demons, and, wonderful to relate, thrice he raised bodies from the dead.
But all conquerors are at last vanquished by the angel of death, and Martin passed into the company of the heavenly host and the category of saints. Two thousand monks attended his funeral. His fame spread all over Europe. Tradition tells us he was the uncle of Saint Patrick of Ireland. Churches were dedicated to him in France, Germany, Scotland and England. The festival of his birth is celebrated on the eleventh of November. In Scotland this day still marks the winter term, which is called Martinmas. Saint Martin's shrine was one of the most famous of the middle ages, and was noted for its wonderful cures. No saint is held, even now, in higher veneration by the French Catholic.
It is not known when the institution was planted in Spain, but in 380 the council of Saragossa forbade priests to assume monkish habits. Germany received the institution some time in the fifth century. The introduction of Christianity as well as of monasticism into the British Isles is shrouded in darkness. A few jewels of fact may be gathered from the legendary rubbish. It is probable that before the days of Benedict, Saint Patrick, independently of Rome, established monasteries in Ireland and preached the gospel there; and, without doubt, before the birth of Benedict of Nursia, there were monks and monasteries in Great Britain. The monastery of Bangor is said to have been founded about 450 A.D.
It is probable that Christianity was introduced into Britain before the close of the second century, and that monasticism arose some time in the fifth century. Tertullian, about the beginning of the third century, boasts that Christianity had conquered places in Britain where the Roman arms could not penetrate. Origen claimed that the power of the Savior was manifest in Britain as well as in Muritania. The earliest notice we have of a British church occurs in the writings of the Venerable Bede (673-735 A.D.), a monk whose numerous and valuable works on English history entitle him to the praise of being "the greatest literary benefactor this or any other nation has produced." He informs us that a British king--Lucius--embraced Christianity during the reign of the Emperor Aurelius, and that missionaries were sent from Rome to Britain about that time. Lingard says the story is suspicious, since "we know not from what source Bede, at the distance of five centuries, derived his information." It seems quite likely that there must have been some Christians among the Roman soldiers or civil officials who lived in Britain during the Roman occupation of the country. The whole problem has been the theme of so much controversy, however, that a fuller discussion is reserved for the next chapter.
Disorders and Oppositions
But was there no protest against the progress of these ascetic teachings? Did the monastic institution command the unanimous approval of the church from the outset? There were many and strong outcries against the monks, but they were quickly silenced by the counter-shouts of praise. Even when rebellion against the system seemed formidable, it was popular nevertheless. The lifted hand was quickly struck down, and voices of opposition suddenly hushed. Like a mighty flood the movement swept on,--kings, when so inclined, being powerless to stop it. As Paula was carried fainting from the funeral procession of Blæsilla, her daughter, whispers such as these were audible in the crowd: "Is not this what we have often said? She weeps for her daughter, killed with fasting. How long must we refrain from driving these detestable monks out of Rome? Why do we not stone them or hurl them into the Tiber? They have misled this unhappy mother; that she is not a nun from choice is clear. No heathen mother ever wept for her children as she does for Blæsilla." And this is Paula, who, choked with grief, refused to weep when she sailed from her children for the far East!
Unhappily, history is often too dignified to retail the conversations of the dinner-table and the gossip of private life. But this narrative indicates that in many a Roman family the monk was feared, despised and hated. Sometimes everyday murmurs found their way into literature and so passed to posterity. Rutilius, the Pagan poet, as he sails before a hermit isle in the Mediterranean, exclaims: "Behold, Capraria rises before us; that isle is full of wretches, enemies of light. I detest these rocks scene of a recent shipwreck." He then goes on to declare that a young and rich friend, impelled by the furies, had fled from men and gods to a living tomb, and was now decaying in that foul retreat. This was no uncommon opinion. But contrast it with what Ambrose said of those same isles: "It is there in these isles, thrown down by God like a collar of pearls upon the sea, that those who would escape from the charms of dissipation find refuge. Nothing here disturbs their peace, all access is closed to the wild passions of the world. The mysterious sound of waves mingles with the chant of hymns; and, while the waters break upon the shores of these happy isles with a gentle murmur, the peaceful accents of the choir of the elect ascend toward Heaven from their bosom." No wonder the Milanese ladies guarded their daughters against this theological poet.
Even among the Christians there were hostile as well as friendly critics of monasticism; Jovinian, whom Neander compares to Luther, is a type of the former. Although a monk himself, he disputed the thesis that any merit lay in celibacy, fasting or poverty. He opposed the worship of saints and relics, and believed that one might retain possession of his property and make good use of it. He assailed the dissolute monks and claimed that many of Rome's noblest young men and women were withdrawn from a life of usefulness into the desert. He held that there was really but one class of Christians, namely, those who had faith in Christ, and that a monk could be no more. But Jovinian was far in advance of his age, and it was many years before the truth of his view gained any considerable recognition. He was severely attacked by Jerome, who called him a Christian Epicurean, and was condemned as a heretic by a synod at Milan, in 390. Thus the reformers were crushed for centuries. The Pagan Emperor, Julian, and the Christian, Valens, alike tried in vain to resist the emigration into the desert. Thousands fled, in times of peril to the state, from their civil and military duties, but the emperors were powerless to prevent the exodus.
That there were grounds for complaint against the monks we may know from the charges made even by those who favored the system. Jerome Ambrose, Augustine, and in fact almost every one of the Fathers tried to correct the growing disorders. We learn from them that many fled from society, not to become holy, but to escape slavery and famine; and that many were lazy and immoral. Their "shaven heads lied to God." Avarice, ambition, or cowardice ruled hearts that should have been actuated by a love of poverty, self-sacrifice or courage. "Quite recently," says Jerome, "we have seen to our sorrow a fortune worthy of Croesus brought to light by a monk's death, and a city's alms collected for the poor, left by will to his sons and successors."
Many monks traveled from place to place selling sham relics. Augustine wrote against "those hypocrites who, in the dress of monks, wander about the provinces carrying pretended relics, amulets, preservatives, and expecting alms to feed their lucrative poverty and recompense their pretended virtue." It is to the credit of the Fathers of the church that they boldly and earnestly rebuked the vices of the monks and tried to purge the monastic system of its impurities.
But the church sanctioned the monastic movement. She could not have done anything else. "It is one of the most striking occurrences in history," says Harnack, "that the church, exactly at the time when she was developing more and more into a legal institution and a sacramental establishment, outlined a Christian life-ideal which was incapable of realization within her bounds, but only alongside of her. The more she affiliated herself with the world, the higher and more superhuman did she make her ideal."
It is also noteworthy that this "life-ideal" seems to have led, inevitably, to fanaticism and other excesses, so that even at this early date there was much occasion for alarm. Gross immorality was disclosed as well as luminous purity; indolence and laziness as well as the love of sacrifice and toil. So we shall find it down through the centuries. "The East had few great men," says Milman, "many madmen; the West, madmen enough, but still very many, many great men." We have met some madmen and some great men. We shall meet more of each type.