Volume I Part 37 (2/2)

In retaliation, the Sicilian and other estates of the Church were confiscated. Gregory III., who in the meantime succeeded to the papacy, continued the policy of his predecessor. The emperor was defied. A fleet, fitted out by him in support of the exarch, was lost in a storm.

With this termination of the influence of Constantinople in Italy came the imminent danger that the pope must acknowledge the supremacy of the Lombards. In his distress Gregory turned to Charles Martel. He sent him the keys of the sepulchre of St. Peter, and implored his a.s.sistance. The die was cast. Papal Rome revolted from her sovereign, and became indissolubly bound to the barbarian kingdoms. To France a new dynasty was given, to the pope temporal power, and to the west of Europe a fict.i.tious Roman empire.

[Sidenote: The monks.]

The monks had thus overcome the image-breaking emperors, a result which proves them to have already become a formidable power in the state. It is necessary, for a proper understanding of the great events with which henceforth they were connected, to describe their origin and history.

[Sidenote: Their first position]

In the iconoclastic quarrel they are to be regarded as the representatives of the common people in contradistinction to the clergy; often, indeed, the representatives of the populace, infected with all its instincts of superst.i.tion and fanaticism. They are the upholders of miracle-cures, invocation of saints, wors.h.i.+p of images, clamorous a.s.serters of a unity of faith in the Church--a unity which they never practised, but which offered a convenient pretext for a bitter persecution of heresy and paganism, though they were more than half pagan themselves.

[Sidenote: and subsequent improvement.]

It was their destiny to impress on the practical life of Europe that mixture of Christianity and heathenism engendered by political events in Italy and Greece. Yet, while they thus co-operated in great affairs, they themselves exhibited, in the most signal manner, the force of that law of continuous variation of opinion and habits to which all enduring communities of men must submit. Born of superst.i.tion, obscene in their early life, they end in luxury, refinement, learning. Theirs is a history to which we may profitably attend.

[Sidenote: The first hermits.]

[Sidenote: Their self-denial.]

From very early times there had been in India zealots who, actuated by a desire of removing themselves from the temptations of society and preparing for another life, retired into solitary places. Such also were the Essenes among the Jews, and the Therapeutae in Egypt. Pliny speaks of the blameless life of the former when he says, ”They are the companions of palms;” nor does he hide his astonishment at an immortal society in which no one is ever born. Their example was not lost upon more devout Christians, particularly after the influence of Magianism began to be felt. Though it is sometimes said that the first of these hermits were Anthony and Paulus, they doubtless are to be regarded as only having rendered themselves more ill.u.s.trious by their superior sanct.i.ty among a crowd of worthies who had preceded them or were their contemporaries. As early as the second and third centuries the practice of retirement had commenced among Christians; soon afterwards it had become common. The date of Hilarion is about A.D. 328, of Basil A.D.

360. Regarding prayer as the only occupation in which man may profitably engage, they gave no more attention to the body than the wants of nature absolutely demanded. A little dried fruit or bread for food, and water for drink, were sufficient for its support; occasionally a particle of salt might be added, but the use of warm water was looked upon as betraying a tendency to luxury. The incentives to many of their rules of life might excite a smile, if it were right to smile at the acts of earnest men. Some, like the innocent Essenes, who would do nothing whatever on the Sabbath, observed the day before as a fast, rigorously abstaining from food and drink, that nature might not force them into sin on the morrow. For some, it was not enough, by the pa.s.sive means of abstinence, to refrain from fault or reduce the body to subjection, though starvation is the antidote for desire; the more active, and, perhaps, more effectual operation of periodical flagellations and bodily torture were added. Ingenuity was taxed to find new means of personal infliction. A hermit who never permitted himself to sleep more than an hour without being awakened endured torments not inferior to those of the modern fakir, who crosses his arms on the top of his head and keeps them there for years, until they are wasted to the bone, or suspends himself to a pole by means of a hook inserted in the flesh of his back.

[Sidenote: Profound contemplation of G.o.d.]

[Sidenote: Aerial martyrs. Holy birds.]

Among the Oriental sects there are some who believe that the Supreme Being is perpetually occupied in the contemplation of himself, and that the nearer man can approach to a state of total inaction the more will he resemble G.o.d. For many years the Indian sage never raises his eyes from his navel; absorbed in the profound contemplation of it, his perennial reverie is unbroken by any outward suggestions, the admiring by-standers administering, as chance offers, the little food and water that his wants require. Under the influence of such ideas, in the fifth century, St. Simeon Stylites, who in his youth had often been saved from suicide, by ascending a column he had built, sixty feet in height, and only one foot square at the top, departed as far as he could from earthly affairs, and approached more closely to heaven. On this elevated retreat, to which he was fastened by a chain, he endured, if we may believe the incredible story, for thirty years the summer's sun and the winter's frost. Afar off the pa.s.ser-by was edified by seeing the motionless figure of the holy man with outstretched arms like a cross, projected against the sky, in his favourite att.i.tude of prayer, or expressing his thankfulness for the many mercies of which he supposed himself to be the recipient by rapidly striking his forehead against his knees. Historians relate that a curious spectator counted twelve hundred and forty-four of these motions, and then abstained through fatigue from any farther tally, though the unwearied exhibition was still going on.

This ”most holy aerial martyr,” as Evagrius calls him, attained at last his reward, and Mount Telenissa witnessed a vast procession of devout admirers accompanying to the grave his mortal remains.

[Sidenote: The monks insist on celibacy.]

More commonly, however, the hermit declined the conspicuous notoriety of these ”holy birds,” as they were called by the profane, and, retiring to some cave in the desert, despised the comforts of life, and gave himself up to penance and prayer. Among men who had thus altogether exalted themselves above the wants of the flesh, there was no toleration for its l.u.s.ts. The sinfulness of the marriage relation, and the pre-eminent value of chast.i.ty, followed from their principles. If it was objected to such practices that by their universal adoption the human species would soon be extinguished, and no man would remain to offer praises to G.o.d, these zealots, remembering the temptations from which they had escaped, with truth replied that there would always be sinners enough in the world to avoid that disaster, and that out of their evil works good would be brought. St. Jerome offers us the pregnant reflection that, though it may be marriage that fills the earth, it is virginity that replenishes heaven.

[Sidenote: Grazing hermits.]

If they were not recorded by many truthful authors, the extravagances of some of these enthusiasts would pa.s.s belief. Men and women ran naked upon all fours, a.s.sociating themselves with the beasts of the field. In the spring season, when the gra.s.s is tender, the grazing hermits of Mesopotamia went forth to the plains, sharing with the cattle their filth, and their food. Of some, notwithstanding a weight of evidence, the stupendous biography must tax their admirers' credulity. It is affirmed that St. Ammon had never seen his own body uncovered; that an angel carried him on his back over a river which he was obliged to cross; that at his death he ascended to heaven through the skies, St.

Anthony being an eye-witness of the event--St. Anthony, who was guided to the hermit Paulus by a centaur; that Didymus never spoke to a human being for ninety years.

[Sidenote: Insane hermits.]

From the Jewish anchorites, who of old sought a retreat beneath the shade of the palms of Engaddi, who beguiled their weary hours in the chanting of psalms by the bitter waters of the Dead Sea; from the philosophic Hindu, who sought for happiness in bodily inaction and mental exercise, to these Christian solitaries, the stages of delusion are numerous and successive. It would not be difficult to present examples of each step in the career of debas.e.m.e.nt. To one who is acquainted with the working and accidents of the human brain, it will not be surprizing that an asylum for hermits who had become hopelessly insane was inst.i.tuted at Jerusalem.

[Sidenote: Causes of hallucinations.]

The biographies of these recluses, for ages a source of consolation to the faithful in their temptations, are not to be regarded as mere works of fiction, though they abound in supernatural occurrences, and are the forerunners of the daemonology of the Middle Ages. The whole world was a scene of daemoniac adventures, of miracles and wonders. So far from being mere impostures, they relate nothing more than may be witnessed at any time under similar conditions. In the brain of man, impressions of whatever he has seen or heard, of whatever has been made manifest to him by his other senses, nay, even the vestiges of his former thoughts, are stored up. These traces are most vivid at first, but, by degrees, they decline in force, though they probably never completely die out. During our waking hours, while we are perpetually receiving new impressions from things that surround us, such vestiges are overpowered, and cannot attract the attention of the mind. But in the period of sleep, when external influences cease, they present themselves to our regard, and the mind submitting to the delusion, groups them into the fantastic forms of dreams. By the use of opium and other drugs which can blunt our sensibility to pa.s.sing events, these phantasms may be made to emerge.

They also offer themselves in the delirium of fevers and in the hour of death.

[Sidenote: Supernatural appearances.]

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