among the monks of revulsions of passion even in the most advanced. Of one monk especially, who had long been regarded as a pattern of asceticism, but who had suffered himself to fall into that self-complacency which was very common among the anchorites, it was told that one evening a fainting woman appeared at the door of his cell, and implored him to give her shelter, and not permit her to be devoured by the wild beasts. In an evil hour he yielded to her prayer. With all the aspect of profound reverence she won his regards, and at last ventured to lay her hand upon him. But that touch convulsed his frame. Passions long slumbering and forgotten rushed with impetuous fury through his veins. In a paroxysm of fierce love, he sought to clasp the woman to his heart, but she vanished from his sight, and a chorus of dæmons, with peals of laughter, exulted over his fall. The sequel of the story, as it is told by the monkish writer, is, I think, of a very high order of artistic merit. The fallen hermit did not seek, as might have been expected, by penance and prayers to renew his purity. That moment of passion and of shame had revealed in him a new nature, and severed him irrevocably from the hopes and feelings of the ascetic life. The fair form that had arisen upon his dream, though he knew it to be a deception luring him to destruction, still governed his heart. He fled from the desert, plunged anew into the world, avoided all intercourse with the monks, and followed the light of that ideal beauty even into the jaws of hell.1 1 Rufinus, Hist. Monach. cap. i. This story was told to Rufinus by St. John the hermit. The same saint described his own visions very graphically. Denique etiam me frequenter dæmones noctibus seduxerunt, et neque orare neque requiescere permiserunt, phantasias quasdam per noctem totam sensibus meis et cogitationes suggerentes. Mane vero velut cum quadam illusione prosternebant se ante me dicentes, Indulge nobis, abbas, quia laborem tibi incussimus tota nocte.'-Ibid. St. Benedict in the desert is said to have been tortured by the recollection of a beautiful girl he had once seen, and only regained his composure by rolling in thorns. (St. Greg. Dial. ii. 2.) Anecdotes of this kind, circulated among the monks, contributed to heighten the feelings of terror with which they regarded all communication with the other sex. But to avoid such communication was sometimes very difficult. Few things are more striking, in the early historians of the movement we are considering, than the manner in which narratives of the deepest tragical interest alternate with extremely whimsical accounts of the profound admiration with which the female devotees regarded the most austere anchorites, and the unwearied perseverance with which they endeavoured to force themselves upon their notice. Some women seem in this respect to have been peculiarly fortunate. St. Melania, who devoted a great portion of her fortune to the monks, accompanied by the historian Rufinus, made, near the end of the fourth century, a long pilgrimage through the Syrian and Egyptian hermitages. But with many of the hermits it was a rule never to look upon the face of any woman, and the number of years they had escaped this contamination was commonly stated as a conspicuous proof of their excellence. St. Basil would only speak to a woman under extreme necessity.2 St. John of Lycopolis had not seen a woman for forty-eight years.3 A tribune was sent by his wife on a pilgrimage to St. John the hermit to implore him to allow her to visit him, her desire being so intense that she would probably, in the opinion of her husband, die if it were ungratified. At last the hermit told his suppliant that he would that night Ivisit his wife when she was in bed in her house. The tribune brought this strange message to his wife, who She lived also for some time in a convent at Jerusalem, which she had founded. Melania (who was one of St. Jerome's friends) was a lady of rank and fortune, who devoted her property to the monks. See her journey in Ros weyde, lib. ii. 1 2 See his Life in Tillemont. 3 Ibid. x. p. 14. A certain Didymus lived entirely alone till his death, which took place when he was ninety. (Socrates, H.E. iv. 23.) that night saw the hermit in a dream.1 A young Roman girl made a pilgrimage from Italy to Alexandria, to look upon the face and obtain the prayers of St. Arsenius, into whose presence she forced herself. Quailing beneath his rebuffs, she flung herself at his feet, imploring him with tears to grant her only request to remember her, and to pray for her. 'Remember you!' cried the indignant saint; 'it shall be the prayer of my life that I may forget you.' The poor girl sought consolation from the Archbishop of Alexandria, who comforted her by assuring her that, though she belonged to the sex by which dæmons commonly tempt saints, he doubted not the hermit would pray for her soul, though he would try to forget her face.2 Sometimes this female enthusiasm took another and a more subtle form, and on more than one occasion women were known to attire themselves as men, and to pass their lives undisturbed as anchorites. Among others, St. Pelagia, who had been the most beautiful, and one of the most dangerously seductive actresses of Antioch, having been somewhat strangely converted, was appointed by the bishops to live in penance with an elderly virgin of irreproachable piety; but, impelled, we are told, by her desire for a more austere life, she fled from her companion, assumed a male attire, took refuge among the monks on the Mount of Olives, and, with something of the skill of her old profession, supported her feigned character so consistently that she acquired great renown, and it was only (it is said) after her death that the saints discovered who had been living among them.3 1 cap. i. Rufinus, Hist. Monachorum, 2 Verba Seniorum, § 65. Pelagia was very pretty, and, according to her own account, her sins were heavier than the sand.' The people of Antioch, who were very fond of her, called her Marga rita, or the pearl. 'Il arriva un jour que divers évesques, appelez par celui d'Antioche pour quelques affaires, estant ensemble à la porte de l'église de S.-Julien, Pélagie passa devant eux dans tout l'éclat des pompes du diable, n'ayant pas seulement une coeffe sur sa teste ni The foregoing anecdotes and observations will, I hope, have given a sufficiently clear idea of the general nature of the monastic life in its earliest phase, and also of the writings it produced. We may now proceed to examine the ways in which this mode of life affected both the ideal type and the realised condition of Christian morals. And in the first place, it is manifest that the proportion of virtues was altered. If an impartial person were to glance over the ethics of the New Testament, and were asked what was the central and distinctive virtue to which the sacred writers most continually referred, he would doubtless answer that it was that which is described as love, charity, or philanthropy. If he were to apply a similar scrutiny to the writings of the fourth and fifth centuries, he would answer that the cardinal virtue of the religious type was not love, but chastity. And this chastity, which was regarded as the ideal state, was not the purity of an undefiled marriage. It was the absolute suppression of the whole sensual side of our nature. The chief form of virtue, the central conception of the saintly life, was a perpetual struggle against all carnal impulses, by men who altogether refused the compromise of marriage. From this fact, if I mistake not, some interesting and important consequences may be deduced. In the first place, religion gradually assumed a very sombre hue. The business of the saint was to eradicate a natural appetite, to attain a condition which was emphatically abnormal. The depravity of human nature, especially un mouchoir sur ses épaules, ce qu'on remarqua comme le comble de son impudence. Tous les évesques baissèrent les yeux en gémissant pour ne pas voir ce dangereux objet de péché, hors Nonne, très-saint évesque d'Héliople, qui la regarda avec une attention qui fit peine aux autres.' However, this bishop im mediately began crying a great deal, and reassured his brethren, and a sermon which he preached led to the conversion of the actress. (Tillemont, Mém. d'Hist.ccclés. tome xii. pp. 378-380. See, too, on women, 'under pretence of religion,' attiring themselves as men, Sozomen, iii. 14.) the essential evil of the body, was felt with a degree of intensity that could never have been attained by moralists who were occupied mainly with transient or exceptional vices, such as envy, anger, or cruelty. And in addition to the extreme inveteracy of the appetite which it was desired to eradicate, it should be remembered that a somewhat luxurious and indulgent life, even when that indulgence is not itself distinctly evil, even when it has a tendency to mollify the character, has naturally the effect of strengthening the animal passions, and is therefore directly opposed to the ascetic ideal. The consequence of this was first of all a very deep sense of the habitual and innate depravity of human nature; and, in the next place, a very strong association of the idea of pleasure with that of vice. All this necessarily flowed from the supreme value placed upon virginity. The tone of calm and joyousness that characterises Greek philosophy, the almost complete absence of all sense of struggle and innate sin that it displays, is probably in a very large degree to be ascribed to the fact that, in the department of morals we are considering, Greek moralists made no serious efforts to improve our nature, and Greek public opinion acquiesced, without scandal, in an almost boundless indulgence of illicit pleasures. But while the great prominence at this time given to the conflicts of the ascetic life threw a dark shade upon the popular estimate of human nature, it contributed, I think, very largely to sustain and deepen that strong conviction of the freedom of the human will which the Catholic Church has always so strenuously upheld; for there is, probably, no other form of moral conflict in which men are so habitually and so keenly sensible of that distinction between our will and our desires, upon the reality of which all moral freedom ultimately depends. It had also, I imagine, another result, which it is difficult to describe with the same precision. What may be called a strong animal nature-a nature, that |
