Volume II Part 2 (2/2)

Pachomius and St. Palaemon were conversing together in the desert, a young monk, with his countenance distracted with madness, rushed into their presence, and, in a voice broken with convulsive sobs, poured out his tale of sorrows. A woman, he said, had entered his cell, had seduced him by her artifices, and then vanished miraculously in the air, leaving him half dead upon the ground;-and then with a wild shriek the monk broke away from the saintly listeners. Impelled, as they imagined, by an evil spirit, he rushed across the desert, till he arrived at the next village, and there, leaping into the open furnace of the public baths, he perished in the flames.(263) Strange stories were told among the monks of revulsions of pa.s.sion 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. Pa.s.sions 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 daemons, 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 pa.s.sion 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 h.e.l.l.(264)

Anecdotes of this kind, circulated among the monks, contributed to heighten the feelings of terror with which they regarded all communication with the other s.e.x. 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.(265) 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.(266) St. John of Lycopolis had not seen a woman for forty-eight years.(267) 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 visit his wife when she was in bed in her house. The tribune brought this strange message to his wife, who that night saw the hermit in a dream.(268) A young Roman girl made a pilgrimage from Italy to Alexandria, to look upon the face and obtain the prayers of St. a.r.s.enius, 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 a.s.suring her that, though she belonged to the s.e.x by which daemons commonly tempt saints, he doubted not the hermit would pray for her soul, though he would try to forget her face.(269) 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 pa.s.s 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, a.s.sumed 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.(270)

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 chast.i.ty. And this chast.i.ty, 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 a.s.sumed a very sombre hue. The business of the saint was to eradicate a natural appet.i.te, to attain a condition which was emphatically abnormal. The depravity of human nature, especially 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 appet.i.te 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 pa.s.sions, 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 a.s.sociation 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 is, in which the pa.s.sions are in vigorous, and at the same time healthy, action-is that in which we should most naturally expect to find several moral qualities.

Good humour, frankness, generosity, active courage, sanguine energy, buoyancy of temper, are the usual and appropriate accompaniments of a vigorous animal temperament, and they are much more rarely found either in natures that are essentially feeble and effeminate, or in natures which have been artificially emasculated by penances, distorted from their original tendency, and habitually held under severe control. The ideal type of Catholicism being, on account of the supreme value placed upon virginity, of the latter kind, the qualities I have mentioned have always ranked very low in the Catholic conceptions of excellence, and the steady tendency of Protestant and industrial civilisation has been to elevate them.

I do not know whether the reader will regard these speculations-which I advance with some diffidence-as far-fetched and fanciful. Our knowledge of the physical antecedents of different moral qualities is so scanty that it is difficult to speak on these matters with much confidence; but few persons, I think, can have failed to observe that the physical temperaments I have described differ not simply in the one great fact of the intensity of the animal pa.s.sions, but also in the apt.i.tude of each to produce a distinct moral type, or, in other words, in the harmony of each with several qualities, both good and evil. A doctrine, therefore, which connects one of these two temperaments indissolubly with the moral ideal, affects the appreciation of a large number of moral qualities. But whatever may be thought of the moral results springing from the physical temperament which asceticism produced, there can be little controversy as to the effects springing from the condition of life which it enjoined.

Severance from the interests and affections of all around him was the chief object of the anchorite, and the first consequence of the prominence of asceticism was a profound discredit thrown upon the domestic virtues.

The extent to which this discredit was carried, the intense hardness of heart and ingrat.i.tude manifested by the saints towards those who were bound to them by the closest of earthly ties, is known to few who have not studied the original literature on the subject. These things are commonly thrown into the shade by those modern sentimentalists who delight in idealising the devotees of the past. To break by his ingrat.i.tude the heart of the mother who had borne him, to persuade the wife who adored him that it was her duty to separate from him for ever, to abandon his children, uncared for and beggars, to the mercies of the world, was regarded by the true hermit as the most acceptable offering he could make to his G.o.d. His business was to save his own soul. The serenity of his devotion would be impaired by the discharge of the simplest duties to his family. Evagrius, when a hermit in the desert, received, after a long interval, letters from his father and mother. He could not bear that the equable tenor of his thoughts should be disturbed by the recollection of those who loved him, so he cast the letters unread into the fire.(271) A man named Mutius, accompanied by his only child, a little boy of eight years old, abandoned his possessions and demanded admission into a monastery. The monks received him, but they proceeded to discipline his heart. ”He had already forgotten that he was rich; he must next be taught to forget that he was a father.”(272) His little child was separated from him, clothed in dirty rags, subjected to every form of gross and wanton hards.h.i.+p, beaten, spurned, and ill treated. Day after day the father was compelled to look upon his boy wasting away with sorrow, his once happy countenance for ever stained with tears, distorted by sobs of anguish. But yet, says the admiring biographer, ”though he saw this day by day, such was his love for Christ, and for the virtue of obedience, that the father's heart was rigid and unmoved. He thought little of the tears of his child. He was anxious only for his own humility and perfection in virtue.”(273) At last the abbot told him to take his child and throw it into the river. He proceeded, without a murmur or apparent pang, to obey, and it was only at the last moment that the monks interposed, and on the very brink of the river saved the child. Mutius afterwards rose to a high position among the ascetics, and was justly regarded as having displayed in great perfection the temper of a saint.(274) An inhabitant of Thebes once came to the abbot Sisoes, and asked to be made a monk. The abbot asked if he had any one belonging to him. He answered, ”A son.” ”Take your son,” rejoined the old man, ”and throw him into the river, and then you may become a monk.” The father hastened to fulfil the command, and the deed was almost consummated when a messenger sent by Sisoes revoked the order.(275)

Sometimes the same lesson was taught under the form of a miracle. A man had once deserted his three children to become a monk. Three years after, he determined to bring them into the monastery, but, on returning to his home, found that the two eldest had died during his absence. He came to his abbot, bearing in his arms his youngest child, who was still little more than an infant. The abbot turned to him and said, ”Do you love this child?” The father answered, ”Yes.” Again the abbot said, ”Do you love it dearly?” The father answered as before. ”Then take the child,” said the abbot, ”and throw it into the fire upon yonder hearth.” The father did as he was commanded, and the child remained unharmed amid the flames.(276) But it was especially in their dealings with their female relations that this aspect of the monastic character was vividly displayed. In this case the motive was not simply to mortify family affections-it was also to guard against the possible danger resulting from the presence of a woman.

The fine flower of that saintly purity might have been disturbed by the sight of a mother's or a sister's face. The ideal of one age appears sometimes too grotesque for the caricature of another; and it is curious to observe how pale and weak is the picture which Moliere drew of the affected prudery of Tartuffe,(277) when compared with the narratives that are gravely propounded in the Lives of the Saints. When the abbot Sisoes had become a very old, feeble, and decrepit man, his disciples exhorted him to leave the desert for an inhabited country. Sisoes seemed to yield; but he stipulated, as a necessary condition, that in his new abode he should never be compelled to encounter the peril and perturbation of looking on a woman's face. To such a nature, of course, the desert alone was suitable, and the old man was suffered to die in peace.(278) A monk was once travelling with his mother-in itself a most unusual circ.u.mstance-and, having arrived at a bridgeless stream, it became necessary for him to carry her across. To her surprise, he began carefully wrapping up his hands in cloths; and upon her asking the reason, he explained that he was alarmed lest he should be unfortunate enough to touch her, and thereby disturb the equilibrium of his nature.(279) The sister of St. John of Calama loved him dearly, and earnestly implored him that she might look upon his face once more before she died. On his persistent refusal, she declared that she would make a pilgrimage to him in the desert. The alarmed and perplexed saint at last wrote to her, promising to visit her if she would engage to relinquish her design. He went to her in disguise, received a cup of water from her hands, and came away without being discovered. She wrote to him, reproaching him with not having fulfilled his promise. He answered her that he had indeed visited her, that ”by the mercy of Jesus Christ he had not been recognised,” and that she must never see him again.(280) The mother of St. Theodorus came armed with letters from the bishops to see her son, but he implored his abbot, St. Pachomius, to permit him to decline the interview; and, finding all her efforts in vain, the poor woman retired into a convent, together with her daughter, who had made a similar expedition with similar results.(281) The mother of St. Marcus persuaded his abbot to command the saint to go out to her. Placed in a dilemma between the sin of disobedience and the perils of seeing his mother, St. Marcus extricated himself by an ingenious device. He went to his mother with his face disguised and his eyes shut. The mother did not recognise her son. The son did not see his mother.(282) The sister of St. Pior in like manner induced the abbot of that saint to command him to admit her to his presence. The command was obeyed, but St. Pior resolutely kept his eyes shut during the interview.(283) St. Pmen and his six brothers had all deserted their mother to cultivate the perfections of an ascetic life. But ingrat.i.tude can seldom quench the love of a mother's heart, and the old woman, now bent by infirmities, went alone into the Egyptian desert to see once more the children she so dearly loved. She caught sight of them as they were about to leave their cell for the church, but they immediately ran back into the cell, and, before her tottering steps could reach it, one of her sons rushed forward and closed the door in her face. She remained outside weeping bitterly. St. Pmen then, coming to the door, but without opening it, said, ”Why do you, who are already stricken with age, pour forth such cries and lamentations?” But she, recognising the voice of her son, answered, ”It is because I long to see you, my sons. What harm could it do you that I should see you? Am I not your mother? did I not give you suck?

I am now an old and wrinkled woman, and my heart is troubled at the sound of your voices.”(284) The saintly brothers, however, refused to open their door. They told their mother that she would see them after death; and the biographer says she at last went away contented with the prospect. St.

Simeon Stylites, in this as in other respects, stands in the first line.

He had been pa.s.sionately loved by his parents, and, if we may believe his eulogist and biographer, he began his saintly career by breaking the heart of his father, who died of grief at his flight. His mother, however, lingered on. Twenty-seven years after his disappearance, at a period when his austerities had made him famous, she heard for the first time where he was, and hastened to visit him. But all her labour was in vain. No woman was admitted within the precincts of his dwelling, and he refused to permit her even to look upon his face. Her entreaties and tears were mingled with words of bitter and eloquent reproach.(285) ”My son,” she is represented as having said, ”why have you done this? I bore you in my womb, and you have wrung my soul with grief. I gave you milk from my breast, you have filled my eyes with tears. For the kisses I gave you, you have given me the anguish of a broken heart; for all that I have done and suffered for you, you have repaid me by the most cruel wrongs.” At last the saint sent a message to tell her that she would soon see him. Three days and three nights she had wept and entreated in vain, and now, exhausted with grief and age and privation, she sank feebly to the ground and breathed her last sigh before that inhospitable door. Then for the first time the saint, accompanied by his followers, came out. He shed some pious tears over the corpse of his murdered mother, and offered up a prayer consigning her soul to heaven. Perhaps it was but fancy, perhaps life was not yet wholly extinct, perhaps the story is but the invention of the biographer; but a faint motion-which appears to have been regarded as miraculous-is said to have pa.s.sed over her prostrate form. Simeon once more commended her soul to heaven, and then, amid the admiring murmurs of his disciples, the saintly matricide returned to his devotions.

The glaring mendacity that characterises the Lives of the Catholic Saints, probably to a greater extent than any other important branch of existing literature, makes it not unreasonable to hope that many of the foregoing anecdotes represent much less events that actually took place than ideal pictures generated by the enthusiasm of the chroniclers. They are not, however, on that account the less significant of the moral conceptions which the ascetic period had created. The ablest men in the Christian community vied with one another in inculcating as the highest form of duty the abandonment of social ties and the mortification of domestic affections. A few faint restrictions were indeed occasionally made.

Much-on which I shall hereafter touch-was written on the liberty of husbands and wives deserting one another; and something was written on the cases of children forsaking or abandoning their parents. At first, those who, when children, were devoted to the monasteries by their parents, without their own consent, were permitted, when of mature age, to return to the world; and this liberty was taken from them for the first time by the fourth Council of Toledo, in A.D. 633.(286) The Council of Gangra condemned the heretic Eustathius for teaching that children might, through religious motives, forsake their parents, and St. Basil wrote in the same strain;(287) but cases of this kind of rebellion against parental authority were continually recounted with admiration in the Lives of the Saints, applauded by some of the leading Fathers, and virtually sanctioned by a law of Justinian, which deprived parents of the power of either restraining their children from entering monasteries, or disinheriting them if they had done so without their consent.(288) St. Chrysostom relates with enthusiasm the case of a young man who had been designed by his father for the army, and who was lured away to a monastery.(289) The eloquence of St. Ambrose is said to have been so seductive, that mothers were accustomed to shut up their daughters to guard them against his fascinations.(290) The position of affectionate parents was at this time extremely painful. The touching language is still preserved, in which the mother of Chrysostom-who had a distinguished part in the conversion of her son-implored him, if he thought it his duty to fly to the desert life, at least to postpone the act till she had died.(291) St. Ambrose devoted a chapter to proving that, while those are worthy of commendation who enter the monasteries with the approbation, those are still more worthy of praise who do so against the wishes, of their parents; and he proceeded to show how small were the penalties the latter could i

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