peasants into connection with the emperors, the security it furnished to fugitive slaves and criminals, the desire of escaping from those fiscal burdens which, in the corrupt and oppressive administration of the Empire, had acquired an intolerable weight, and especially the barbarian invasions, which produced every variety of panic and wretchedness, conspired with the new religious teaching in peopling the desert. A theology of asceticism was speedily formed. The examples of Elijah and Elisha, to the first of whom, by a bold flight of imagination, some later Carmelites ascribed the origin of their order, and the more recent instance of the Baptist, were at once adduced. To an ordinary layman the life of an anchorite might appear in the highest degree opposed to that of the Teacher who began His mission at a marriage feast; who was continually reproached by His enemies for the readiness with which He mixed with the world, and who selected from the female sex some of His purest and most devoted followers; but the monkish theologians, avoiding, for the most part, these topics, dilated chiefly on His immaculate birth, His virgin mother, His life of celibacy, His exhortation to the rich young man. The fact that St. Peter, to whom a general primacy was already ascribed, was unquestionably married was a difficulty which was in a measure met by a tradition that both he, and the other married apostles, abstained from intercourse with their wives after their conversion.1 St. Paul, however, was probably unmarried, and his writings showed a decided preference for the unmarried state, which the ingenuity of theologians also discovered in some quarters where it might be least expected. Thus, St. Jerome assures us that when the clean animals entered the ark by sevens, and the unclean ones by pairs, the odd number typified the celibate, and the even the married condition. Even of the unclean animals but one pair of each

adition see Champagny, Les Antonins, tome i. p. 193.

1

kind was admitted, lest they should perpetrate the enormity of second marriage. Ecclesiastical tradition sustained the tendency, and the apostle James, as he has been portrayed by Hegesippus, became a kind of ideal saint, a faithful picture of what, according to the notions of theologians, was the true type of human nobility. He was consecrated,' it was said, 'from his mother's womb. He drank neither wine nor fer-. mented liquors, and abstained from animal food. A razor never came upon his head. He never anointed himself with oil, or used a bath. He alone was allowed to enter the sanctuary. He never wore woollen, but linen, garments. He was in the habit of entering the temple alone, and was often found upon his bended knees, and interceding for the forgiveness of the people, so that his knees became as hard as a camel's.' 2 The progress of the monastic movement, as has been truly said, was not less rapid or universal than that of Christianity itself.'3 Of the actual number of the anchorites, those who are acquainted with the extreme unveracity of the first historians of the movement will hesitate to speak with confidence. It is said that St. Pachomius, who, early in the fourth century, founded the cœnobitic mode of life, enlisted under his jurisdiction 7,000 monks ; that in the days of St. Jerome nearly 50,000 monks were sometimes assembled at the Easter festivals; 5 that in the desert of Nitria alone there were, in the fourth century, 5,000 monks under a single abbot; that an Egyptian city named Oxyrynchus devoted itself almost exclusively to the ascetic life, and included 20,000 virgins and 10,000 monks; 7 that St. Serapion presided over 10,000 monks; and that, towards the close of the fourth century, the monastic population in a great part of Egypt

4

Jerome, Preface to the Rule of St. Pachomius, § 7.

6 Cassian, De Cœnob. Inst. iv. 1. 7 Rufinus, Hist. Monach. ch. v. Rufinus visited it himself.

Palladius, Hist. Laus. lxxvi.

was nearly equal to the population of the cities. Egypt was the parent of monachism, and it was there that it attained both its extreme development and its most austere severity; but there was very soon scarcely any Christian country in which a similar movement was not ardently propagated. St. Athanasius and St. Zeno are said to have introduced it into Italy, where it soon afterwards received a great stimulus from St. Jerome. St. Hilarion instituted the first monks in Palestine, and he lived to see many thousands subject to his rule, and towards the close of his life to plant monachism in Cyprus. Eustathius, Bishop of Sebastia, spread it through Armenia, Paphlagonia, and Pontus. St. Basil laboured along the wild shores of the Euxine. St. Martin of Tours founded the first monastery in Gaul, and 2,000 monks attended his funeral. Unrecorded missionaries planted the new institution in the heart of Ethiopia, amid the little islands that stud the Mediterranean, in the secluded valleys of Wales and Ireland.3 But even more wonderful than the many thousands who thus abandoned the world is the reverence with which they were regarded by those who, by their attainments or their character, would seem most opposed to the monastic ideal. No one had more reason than Augustine to know the danger of enforced celibacy, but St. Augustine exerted all his energies to spread monasticism through his diocese. St. Ambrose, who was by nature an acute statesman; St. Jerome and St. Basil, who were ambitious scholars;

' Rufinus, Hist. Mon. vii.

2 There is a good deal of doubt and controversy about this. See a note in Mosheim's Eccl. Hist. (Soame's edition), vol. i. p. 354.

3 Most of the passages remaining on the subject of the foundation of monachism are given by Thomassin, Discipline de l'Église, part i. livre iii. ch. xii. This work contains also much general informa

tion about monachism. A curious collection of statistics of the numbers of the monks in different localities, additional to those I have given and gleaned from the Lives of the Saints, may be found in Pitra (Vie de St. Léger, Introd. p. lix.); 2,100, or, according to another account, 3,000 monks, lived in the monastery of Banchor.

St. Chrysostom, who was pre-eminently formed to sway the refined throngs of a metropolis-all exerted their powers in favour of the life of solitude, and the last three practised it themselves. St. Arsenius, who was surpassed by no one in the extravagance of his penances, had held a high office at the court of the Emperor Arcadius. Pilgrims wandered among the deserts, collecting accounts of the miracles and the austerities of the saints, which filled Christendom with admiration; and the strange biographies which were thus formed, wild and grotesque as they are, enable us to realise very vividly the general features of the anchorite life which became the new ideal of the Christian world.1

There is, perhaps, no phase in the moral history of mankind of a deeper or more painful interest than this ascetic epidemic. A hideous, sordid, and emaciated maniac, without knowledge, without patriotism, without natural affection, passing his life in a long routine of useless and atrocious self-torture, and quailing before the ghastly phantoms of his delirious brain, had become the ideal of the nations which had known the writings of Plato and Cicero and the lives of Socrates and Cato. For about two centuries, the hideous maceration of the body was regarded as the highest proof of excellence. St. Jerome declares, with a thrill of admiration,

The three principal are the Historia Monachorum of Rufinus, who visited Egypt A.D. 373, about seventeen years after the death of St. Antony; the Institutiones of Cassian, who, having visited the Eastern monks about A.D. 394, founded vast monasteries containing, it is said, 5,000 monks, at Marseilles, and died at a great age about A.D. 448; and the Historia Lausiaca (so called from Lausus, Governor of Cappadocia) of Palladius, who was himself a hermit on Mount Nitria. in A.D. 388. The

first and last, as well as many minor works of the same period, are given in Rosweyde's invaluable collection of the lives of the Fathers, one of the most fascinating volumes in the whole range of literature.

The hospitality of the monks was not without drawbacks. In a church on Mount Nitria three whips were hung on a palm-tree— one for chastising monks, another for chastising thieves, and a third for chastising guests. (Palladius, Hist. Laus. vii.)

1

how he had seen a monk, who for thirty years had lived exclusively on a small portion of barley bread and of muddy water; another, who lived in a hole and never ate more than five figs for his daily repast; a third, who cut his hair only on Easter Sunday, who never washed his clothes, who never changed his tunic till it fell to pieces, who starved himself till his eyes grew dim, and his skin like a pumice stone,' and whose merits, shown by these austerities, Homer himself Iwould be unable to recount.2 For six months, it is said, St. Macarius of Alexandria slept in a marsh, and exposed his body naked to the stings of venomous flies. He was accustomed to carry about with him eighty pounds of iron. His disciple, St. Eusebius, carried one hundred and fifty pounds of iron, and lived for three years in a dried-up well. St. Sabinus would only eat corn that had become rotten by remaining for a month in water. St. Besarion spent forty days and nights in the middle of thorn-bushes, and for forty years never lay down when he slept,3 which last penance was also during fifteen years practised by St. Pachomius.1 Some saints, like St. Marcian, restricted themselves to one meal a day, so small that they continually suffered the pangs of hunger.5 Of one of them it is related that his daily food was six ounces of bread and a few herbs; that he was never seen to recline on a mat or bed, or even to place his limbs easily for sleep; but that sometimes, from excess of weariness, his eyes would close at his meals, and the food would drop from his mouth.6 Other saints, however, ate only every second day;7 while many, if we could believe the

1 Vita Pauli. St. Jerome adds, that some will not believe this, because they have no faith, but that all things are possible for those that believe.

2 Vita St. Hilarion.

3 See a long list of these penances in Tillemont, Mém. pour

servir à l'Hist. ecclės. tome viii.

Vita Patrum (Pachomius). He used to lean against a wall when overcome by drowsiness. 5 Vita Patrum, ix. 3. Sozomen, vi. 29.

his

E.g. St. Antony, according to biographer St. Athanasius.