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SOLITUDE OF THE MONKS.

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for the relief of their favorite monks; who kindly imparted the merits of their prayers and penance to a rich and liberal sinner." Time continually increased, and accidents could seldom diminish, the estates of the popular monasteries, which spread over the adjacent country and cities: and, in the first century of their institution, the infidel Zosimus has maliciously observed, that, for the benefit of the poor, the Christian monks had reduced a great part of mankind to a state of beggary." As long as they maintained their original fervor, they approved themselves, however, the faithful and benevolent stewards of the charity which was intrusted to their care. But their discipline was corrupted by prosperity: they gradually assumed the pride of wealth, and at last indulged the luxury of expense. Their public luxury might be excused by the magnificence of religious worship, and the decent motive of erecting durable habitations for an immortal society. But every age of the church has accused the licentiousness of the degenerate monks; who no longer remembered the object of their institution, embraced the vain and sensual pleasures of the world, which they had renounced," and scandalously abused the riches which had been acquired by the austere virtues of their founders." Their natural descent, from such painful and dangerous virtue, to the common vices of humanity, will not, perhaps, excite much grief or indignation in the mind of a philosopher.

The lives of the primitive monks were con- Their solitude. sumed in penance and solitude; undisturbed by

the various occupations which fill the time, and exercise the faculties, of reasonable, active, and social beings. When

54 See Jerom (tom. i. pp. 176, 183). The monk Pambo made a sublime answer to Melania, who wished to specify the value of her gift: "Do you offer it to me, or to God? If to God, HE who suspends the mountains in a balance, need not "be informed of the weight of your plate." (Pallad. Hist. Lausiac. c. 1o, in the Vit. Patrum, 1. viii. p. 715.)

5. Τὸ πολύ μέρος τῆς γῆς ὠκειώσκαντο, προφάσει του μεταδιδόναι πάντων πτωχοῖς, πάντας (ὡς εἰπεῖν) πτωχούς καταστήσαντες. Zosim. 1. v. p. 325. Yet the wealth of the Eastern monks was far surpassed by the princely greatness of the Benedictines.

56 The sixth general council, (the Quinisext in Trullo, Canon xlvii. in Beveridge, tom. i. p. 213), restrains women from passing the night in a male, or men in a female, monastery. The seventh general council, (the second Nicene, Canon xx. in Beveridge, tom. i. p. 325) prohibits the erection of double or promiscuous monasteries of both sexes: but it appears from Balsamon, that the prohibition was not effectual. On the irregular pleasures and expenses of the clergy and monks. see Thomassin, tom. iii. pp. 1334-1368.

67 I have somewhere heard or read the frank confession of a Benedictine abbot; "My vow of poverty has given me a hundred thousand crowns a year: my vow of obedience has raised me to the rank of a sovereign prince."-I forget the consequences of his vow of chastity.

578

DEVOTION OF THE MONKS.

ever they were permitted to step beyond the precincts of
the monastery, two jealous companions were the mutual
guards and spies of each other's actions; and, after their
return, they were condemned to forget, or, at least, to
suppress, whatever they had seen or heard in the world.
Strangers, who professed the orthodox faith, were hospitably
entertained in a separate apartment; but their dangerous
conversation was restricted to some chosen elders of ap-
proved discretion and fidelity. Except in their presence,
the monastic slave might not receive the visits of his friends
or kindred; and it was deemed highly meritorious, if he
afflicted a tender sister, or an aged parent, by the obstinate
refusal of a word or look. The monks themselves passed
their lives, without personal attachments, among a crowd,
which had been formed by accident, and was detained, in
the same prison, by force or prejudice. Recluse fanatics
have few ideas or sentiments to communicate; a special
license of the abbot regulated the time and duration of their
familiar visits; and, at their silent meals, they were en-
veloped in their cowls, inaccessible, and almost invisible, to
each other. Study is the resource of solitude: but educa-
tion had not prepared and qualified for any liberal studies
the merchanics and peasants, who filled the monastic com-
munities. They might work: but the vanity of spiritual
perfection was tempted to disdain the exercise of manual
labor; and the industry must be faint and languid, which
is not excited by the sense of personal interest.

Their devotion

59

According to their faith and zeal, they might and visions. employ the day, which they passed in their cells, either in vocal or mental prayer: they assembled in the evening, and they were awakened in the night, for the public worship of the monastery. The precise moment was determined by the stars, which are seldom clouded in the serene sky of Egypt; and a rustic horn, or trumpet, the signal of devotion, twice interrupted the vast silence of the desert. Even sleep, the last refuge of the unhappy, was rigorously measured: the vacant hours of the monk heavily rolled along, without business or pleasure; and, 58 Prior, an Egyptian monk, allowed his sister to see him,; but he shut his eyes during the whole visit. See Vit. Patrum, l. iii. p. 504. Many such examples might be added.

The 7th, 8th, 29th, 30th, 31st, 34th, 57th, 60th, 86th, and 95th articles of the
Rule of Pachomius, impose most intolerable laws of silence and mortification.
GO The diurnal and nocturnal prayers of the monks are copiously discussed by
Cassian, in the third and fourth books of his Institutions, and he constantly prefers
the liturgy, which an angel had dictated to the monasteries of Tebenne.

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62

COENOBITES AND ANACHORETS.

61

579

before the close of each day, he had repeatedly accused the tedious progress of the sun. In this comfortless state, superstition still pursued and tormented her wretched votaries. The repose which they had sought in the cloister was disturbed by tardy repentance, profane doubts, and guilty desires; and, while they considered each natural impulse as an unpardonable sin, they perpetually trembled on the edge of a flaming and bottomless abyss. From the painful struggles of disease and despair, these unhappy victims were sometimes relieved by madness or death; and, in the sixth century, an hospital was founded at Jerusalem. for a small portion of the austere penitents, who were deprived of their senses." Their visions, before they attained this extreme and acknowledged term of frenzy, have afforded ample materials of supernatural history. It was their firm persuasion, that the air, which they breathed, was peopled with invisible enemies; with innumerable dæmons, who watched every occasion, and assumed every form, to terrify, and above all to tempt, their unguarded virtue. The imagination, and even the senses, were deceived by the illusions of distempered fanaticism; and the hermit, whose midnight prayer was oppressed by involuntary slumber, might easily confound the phantoms of horror or delight, which had occupied his sleeping, and his waking, dreams."

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The monks were divided into two classes: The Cœnothe Cœnobites, who lived under a common and regular discipline; and the Anachorets, who indulged their unsocial, independent fanaticism.65 The

61 Cassian, from his own experience, describes the acedia, or listlessness of mind and body, to which a monk was exposed, when he sighed to find himself alone. Sæpiusque egreditur et ingreditur cellam, et Solem velut ad occasum tardius properantem crebrius intuetur (Institut. x. 1.)

62 The temptations and sufferings of Stagirius were communicated by that unfortunate youth to his friend St. Chrysostom. See Middleton's Works, vol. i. pp. 107-110. Something similar introduces the life of every saint; and the famous Inigo, or Ignatius, the founder of the Jesuits, (vide d'Inigo de Guarcoa, tom. i. pp. 29-38), may serve as a memorable example.

63 Fleury, Hist. Ecclésiastique, tom. vii. p. 46. I have read, a Vita Patrum, but I cannot recover the place, that several, I le monks, who did not reveal their temptations to the abbot suicide.

64 See the seventh and eighth Collations of Cassian, who gra the demons were grown less active and numerous since the te Rosweyde's copious index to the Vita Patrum will point out scenes. The devils were most formidable in female shape 65 For the distinction of the Canobites and s Hermits Jerom, (tom. i. p. 45, ad Rusticum), the first Walogue of S finus, (c. 22, in Vit. Patrum, 1. ii. p. 478), P wwws (c. 7, 69, pp. 712-758,) and, above all, the eighteenth nineteenth c These writers, who compare the common litary life, danger of the latter.

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580

DEGRADATION OF THE MONKS.

most devout, or the most ambitious, of the spiritual brethren, renounced the convent, as they had renounced the world. The fervent monasteries of Egypt, Palestine, and Syria, were surrounded by a Laura, a distant circle of solitary cells; and the extravagant penance of the hermits was stimulated by applause and emulation." They sunk under the painful weight of crosses and chains; and their emaciated limbs were confined by collars, bracelets, gauntlets, and greaves, of massy and rigid iron. All superfluous encumbrance of dress they contemptuously cast away; and some savage saints of both sexes have been admired, whose naked bodies were only covered by their long hair. They aspired to reduce themselves to the rude and miserable. state in which the human brute is scarcely distinguished above his kindred animals: and a numerous sect of Anachorets derived their name from their humble practice of grazing in the fields of Mesopotamia, with the common herd. They often usurped the den of some wild beast whom they affected to resemble; they buried themselves in some gloomy cavern, which art or nature had scooped out of the rock; and the marble quarries of Thebais are still inscribed with the monuments of their penance. The most perfect hermits are supposed to have passed many days without food, many nights without sleep, and many years without speaking; and glorious was the man (I abuse that name) who contrived any cell, or seat, of a peculiar construction, which might expose him, in the most inconvenient posture, to the inclemency of the seasons.* Simeon Stylites. Among these heroes of the monastic life, the A. D. 395-451 name and genius of Simeon Stylites have been 66 Suicer. Thesaur. Ecclesiast, tom. ii. pp. 205, 218. Thomassin, (Discipline de Eglise, tom. i. pp. 1501, 1502,) gives a good account of these cells. When Geras imus founded his monastry in the wilderness of Jordan, it was accompanied by a Laura of seventy cells.

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67 Theodoret, in a large volume (the Philotheus in Vit. Patrum, 1. ix. pp. 793863), has collected the lives and miracles of thirty Anachorets Evagrius, (1. i. c. 12), more briefly celebrates the monks and hermits of Palestine.

6 Sozomen, 1. vi. c. 33. The great St. Ephrem composed a panegyric on these Bakot, or grazing monks, (Tillemont, Mém. Ecclės. tom. vii. p. 292.)

69 The P. Sicard, (Missions du Levant, tom. ii. pp. 217-233), examined the caverns of the Lower Thebais with wonder and devotion. The inscriptions are in the old Syriac character, which was used by the Christians of Abyssinia.

70 See Theodoret, (in Vit. Patrum, 1. ix. pp. 848-854), Antony, (in Vit. Patrum, 1. i. pp. 107-177,) Cosmas. (in Asseman, Bibliot Oriental. tom. i. pp. 239-253 Evagrius, (1. i. c. 13, 14), and Tillemont, (Mem. Eccles. tom. xv. pp. 347-392-1 *If you are desirous," says Voltaire," of obtaining a great name, of becoming "the founder of a sect or establishment, be completely mad; but, be sure that your madness corresponds with the turn and temper of your age. Have in your madness reason enough to guide your extravagancies; and forget not to be excessively opinionated and obstinate. It is certainly possible that you may get hanged; but if you escape hanging, you will have altars erected to you."-E.

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SIMEON STYLITES.

581 immortalized by the singular invention of an aerial penance. At the age of thirteen, the young Syrian deserted the profession of a shepherd, and threw himself into an austere monastery. After a long and painful novitiate, in which Simeon was repeatedly saved from pious suicide, he established his residence on a mountain, about thirty or forty miles to the east of Antioch. Within the space of a mandra, or circle of stones, to which he had attached himself by a ponderous chain, he ascended a column, which was successively raised from the height of nine, to that of sixty, feet from the ground." In this last and lofty station, the Syrian anachoret resisted the heat of thirty summers, and the cold of as many winters. Habit and exercise instructed him to maintain his dangerous situation without fear or giddiness, and successively to assume the different postures of devotion. He sometimes prayed in an erect attitude, with his out-stretched arms, in the figure of a cross; but his most familiar practice was that of bending his meagre skeleton from the forehead to the feet; and a curious spectator, after numbering twelve hundred and forty-four repetitions, at length desisted from the endless account. The progress of an ulcer in his thigh" might shorten, but it could not disturb, this celestial life; and the patient hermit expired, without descending from his column. A prince, who should capriciously inflict such tortures, would be deemed a tyrant; but it would surpass the power of a tyrant, to impose a long and miserable existence on the reluctant victims of his cruelty. This voluntary martyrdom must have gradually destroyed the sensibility both of the mind and body; nor can it be presumed that the fanatics, who torment themselves, are susceptible of any lively affection for the rest of mankind. A cruel unfeeling temper has distinguished the monks of every age and country: their stern indifference, which is seldom mollified by personal friendship, is inflamed by religious hatred; and their merciless zeal has strenuously administered the holy office of the Inquisition.

71 The narrow circumference of two cubits, or three feet, which Evagrius assigns for the summit of the column, is inconsistent with reason, with facts, and with the rules of architecture. The people who saw it from below might be easily deceived.

72 I must not conceal a piece of ancient scandal concerning the origin of this ulcer. It has been reported that the Devil, assuming an angelic form, invited him to ascend, like Elijah, into a fiery chariot. The Saint too hastily raised his foot, and Satan seized the moment of inflicting this chastisement on his vanity,

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