Part 2 (1/2)
But time plays havoc with saints as well as sinners, and death slays the strongest. Bowed in prayer, his weary heart ceased to beat and the eyes that gazed aloft were closed forever. Anthony, his beloved disciple, ascending the column, found that his master was no more. Yet, it seemed as if Simeon was loath to leave the spot, for his spirit appeared to his weeping follower and said, ”I will not leave this column, and this blessed mountain. For I have gone to rest, as the Lord willed, but do thou not cease to minister in this place and the Lord will repay thee in heaven.”
His body was carried down the mountain to Antioch. Heading the solemn procession were the patriarch, six bishops, twenty-one counts and six thousand soldiers, ”and Antioch,” says Gibbon, ”revered his bones as her glorious ornament and impregnable defence.”
_The Cen.o.bites of the East_
We cannot linger with these hermits. I pa.s.s now to the cen.o.bitic[C]
life. We go back in years and return to Egypt. Man is a social animal, and the social instinct is so strong that even hermits are swayed by its power and get tired of living apart from one another. When Anthony died the deserts were studded with hermitages, and those of exceptional fame were surrounded by little cl.u.s.ters of huts and dens. Into these cells crowded the hermits who wished to be near their master.
[Footnote C: Appendix, Note C.]
Thus, step by step, organized or cen.o.bitic monasticism easily and naturally came into existence. The anchorites crawled from their dens every day to hear the words of their chief saint,--a practice giving rise to stated meetings, with rules for wors.h.i.+p. Regulations as to meals, occupations, dress, penances, and prayers naturally follow.
The author of the first monastic rules is said to have been Pachomius, who was born in Egypt about the year 292 A.D. He was brought up in paganism but was converted in early life while in the army. On his discharge he retired with a hermit to Tabenna, an island in the Nile. It is said he never ate a full meal after his conversion, and for fifteen years slept sitting on a stone. Natural gifts fitted him to become a leader, and it was not long before he was surrounded by a congregation of monks for whom he made his rules.
The monks of Pachomius were divided into bands of tens and hundreds, each tenth man being an under officer in turn subject to the hundredth, and all subject to the superior or abbot of the mother house. They lived three in a cell, and a congregation of cells const.i.tuted a laura or monastery. There was a common room for meals and wors.h.i.+p. Each monk wore a close fitting tunic and a white goatskin upper garment which was never laid aside at meals or in bed, but only at the Eucharist. Their food usually consisted of bread and water, but occasionally they enjoyed such luxuries as oil, salt, fruits and vegetables. They ate in silence, which was sometimes broken by the solemn voice of a reader.
”No man,” says Jerome, ”dares look at his neighbor or clear his throat.
Silent tears roll down their cheeks, but not a sob escapes their lips.”
Their labors consisted of some light handiwork or tilling the fields.
They grafted trees, made beehives, twisted fish-lines, wove baskets and copied ma.n.u.scripts. It was early apparent that as man could not live alone so he could not live without labor. We shall see this principle emphasized more clearly by Benedict, but it is well to notice that at this remote day provision was made for secular employments. Jerome enjoins Rusticus, a young monk, always to have some work on hand that the devil may find him busy. ”Hoe your ground,” says he, ”set out cabbages; convey water to them in conduits, that you may see with your own eyes the lovely vision of the poet,--
”Art draws fresh water from the hilltop near, Till the stream, flas.h.i.+ng down among the rocks, Cools the parched meadows and allays their thirst.”
There were individual cases of excessive self-torture even among these congregations of monks but we may say that ordinarily, organized monasticism was altogether less severe upon the individual than anch.o.r.etic life. The fact that the monk was seeking human fellows.h.i.+p is evidence that he was becoming more humane, and this softening of his spirit betrayed itself in his treatment of himself. The aspect of life became a little brighter and happier.
Four objects were comprehended in these monastic roles,--solitude, manual labor, fasting and prayer. We need not pity these dwellers far from walled cities and the marts of trade. Indeed, they claim no sympathy. Religious ideals can make strange transformations in man's disposition and tastes. They loved their hard lives.
The hermit Abraham said to John Ca.s.sian, ”We know that in these, our regions, there are some secret and pleasant places, where fruits are abundant and the beauty and fertility of the gardens would supply our necessities with the slightest toil. We prefer the wilderness of this desolation before all that is fair and attractive, admitting no comparison between the luxuriance of the most exuberant soil and the bitterness of these sands.” Jerome himself exclaimed, ”Others may think what they like and follow each his own bent. But to me a town is a prison and solitude paradise.”
The three vows of chast.i.ty, poverty and obedience were adopted and became the foundation stones of the monastic inst.i.tution, to be found in every monastic order. There is a typical ill.u.s.tration in Kingsley's Hypatia of what they meant by obedience. Philammon, a young monk, was consigned to the care of Cyril, the Bishop of Alexandria, and a factious, cruel man, with an imperious will. The bishop received and read his letter of introduction and thus addressed its bearer, ”Philammon, a Greek. You are said to have learned to obey. If so, you have also learned to rule. Your father-abbot has transferred you to my tutelage. You are now to obey me.” ”And I will,” was the quick response.
”Well said. Go to that window and leap forth into the court.” Philammon walked to it and opened it. The pavement was fully twenty feet below, but his business was to obey and not to take measurements. There was a flower in a vase upon the sill. He quietly removed it, and in an instant would have leaped for life or death, when Cyril's voice thundered, ”Stop!”
The Pachomian monks despised possessions of every kind. The following pathetic incident shows the frightful extent to which they carried this principle, and also ill.u.s.trates the character of that submission to which the novitiate voluntarily a.s.sented: Ca.s.sian described how Mutius sold his possessions and with his little child of eight asked admission to a monastery. The monks received but disciplined him. ”He had already forgotten that he was rich, he must forget that he was a father.” His child was taken, clothed in rags, beaten and spurned. Obedience compelled the father to look upon his child wasting with pain and grief, but such was his love for Christ, says the narrator, that his heart was rigid and immovable. He was then told to throw the boy into the river, but was stopped in the act of obeying.
Yet men, women, and even children, coveted this life of unnatural deprivations. ”Posterity,” says Gibbon, ”might repeat the saying which had formerly been applied to the sacred animals of the same country, that in Egypt it was less difficult to find a G.o.d than a man.” Though the hermit did not claim to be a G.o.d, yet there were more monks in many monasteries than inhabitants in the neighboring villages. Pachomius had fourteen hundred monks in his own monastery and seven thousand under his rule. Jerome says fifty thousand monks were sometimes a.s.sembled at Easter in the deserts of Nitria. It was not uncommon for an abbot to command five thousand monks. St. Serapion boasted of ten thousand.
Altogether, so we are told, there were in the fifth century more than one hundred thousand persons in the monasteries, three-fourths of whom were men.
The rule of Pachomius spread over Egypt into Syria and Palestine. It was carried by Athanasius into Italy and Gaul. It existed in various modified forms until it was supplanted by the Benedictine rule.
Leaving Egypt, again we cross the Mediterranean into Asia Minor. Near the Black Sea, in a wild forest abounding in savage rocks and gloomy ravines, there dwelt a young man of twenty-six. He had traveled in Egypt, Syria and Palestine. He had visited the hermits of the desert and studied philosophy and eloquence in cultured Athens. In virtue eminent, in learning profound, this poetic soul sought to realize its ideal in a lonely and cherished retreat--in a solitude of Pontus.
The young monk is the ill.u.s.trious saint and genius,--Basil the Great,--the Bishop of Caesarea, and the virtual founder of the monastic inst.i.tution in the Greek church. The forest and glens around his hut belonged to him, and on the other bank of the river Iris his mother and sister were leading similar lives, having abandoned earthly honors in pursuit of heaven. Hard crusts of bread appeased his hunger. No fires, except those which burned within his soul, protected him from the wintry blast. His years were few but well spent. After a while his powerful intellect a.s.serted itself and he was led into a clearer view of the true spiritual life. His practical mind revolted against the gross ignorance and meaningless asceticism of Egypt. He determined to form an order that would conform to the inner meaning of the Bible and to a more sensible conception of the religious life. For his time he was a wise legislator, a cunning workman and a daring thinker. The modification of his ascetic ideal was attended by painful struggles. Many an hour he spent with his bosom friend, Gregory of n.a.z.ianza, discussing the subject. The middle course which they finally adopted is thus neatly described by Gregory:
”Long was the inward strife, till ended thus: I saw, when men lived in the fretful world, They vantaged other men, but missed the while The calmness, and the pureness of their hearts.
They who retired held an uprighter post, And raised their eyes with quiet strength toward heaven; Yet served self only, unfraternally.
And so, 'twixt these and those, I struck my path, To meditate with the free solitary, Yet to live secular, and serve mankind.”