The Cœnobites and Anachorets

pose which they had sought in the cloister was disturbed by tardy repentance, profane doubts, and guilty desires; and, while they considered each natural impulse as an unpardonable sin, they perpetually trembled on the edge of a flaming and bottomless abyss. From the painful struggles of disease and despair these unhappy victims were sometimes relieved by madness or death; and, in the sixth century, an hospital was founded at Jerusalem for a small portion of the austere penitents, who were deprived of their senses.64 attained this extreme and acknowledged term of frenzy, have Their visions, before they afforded ample materials of supernatural history. It was their firm persuasion that the air which they breathed was peopled with invisible enemies; with innumerable dæmons, who watched every occasion, and assumed every form, to terrify, and above all to tempt, their unguarded virtue. The imagination, and even the senses, were deceived by the illusions of distempered fanaticism; and the hermit, whose midnight prayer was oppressed by involuntary slumber, might easily confound the phantoms of horror or delight which had occupied his sleeping and his waking dreams.65

The monks were divided into two classes: the Cœnobites, who lived under a common and regular discipline; and the Anachorets, who indulged their unsocial, independent fanaticism.66 The most devout, or the most ambitious, of the spiritual brethren renounced the convent, as they had renounced the world. The fervent monasteries of Egypt, Palestine, and Syria were surrounded by a Laura,67 a distant circle of solitary cells;

Inigo, or Ignatius, the founder of the Jesuits (Vie d'Inigo de Guiposcoa, tom. i. p. 29-38), may serve as a memorable example.

64 Fleury, Hist. Ecclésiastique, tom. vii. p. 46. I have read somewhere, in the Vita Patrum, but I cannot recover the place, that several, I believe many, of the monks, who did not reveal their temptations to the abbot, became guilty of suicide.

65 See the seventh and eighth Collations of Cassian, who gravely examines why the dæmons were grown less active and numerous since the time of St. Antony. Rosweyde's copious index to the Vita Patrum will point out a variety of infernal scenes. The devils were most formidable in a female shape.

66 For the distinction of the Canobites and the Hermits, especially in Egypt, see Jerom (tom. i. p. 45, ad Rusticum), the first Dialogue of Sulpicius Severus, Rufinus (c. 22, in Vit. Patrum, 1. ii. p. 478), Palladius (c. 7, 69, in Vit. Patrum, 1. viii. p. 712, 758), and, above all, the eighteenth and nineteenth Collations of Cassian. These writers, who compare the common and solitary life, reveal the abuse and danger of the latter.

67 Suicer. Thesaur. Ecclesiast. tom. ii. p. 205, 218. Thomassin (Discipline de l'Eglise, tom. i. p. 1501, 1502) gives a good account of these cells. When Gerasimus founded his monastery, in the wilderness of Jordan, it was accompanied by a Laura of seventy cells.

and the extravagant penance of the Hermits was stimulated by applause and emulation.68 They sunk under the painful weight of crosses and chains; and their emaciated limbs were confined by collars, bracelets, gauntlets, and greaves, of massy and rigid iron. All superfluous incumbrance of dress they contemptuously cast away; and some savage saints of both sexes have been admired, whose naked bodies were only covered by their long hair. They aspired to reduce themselves to the rude and miserable state in which the human brute is scarcely distinguished above his kindred animals; and a numerous sect of Anachorets derived their name from their humble practice of grazing in the fields of Mesopotamia with the common herd.69 They often usurped the den of some wild beast whom they affected to resemble; they buried themselves in some gloomy cavern which art or nature had scooped out of the rock; and the marble quarries of Thebais are still inscribed with the monuments of their penance.70 The most perfect hermits are supposed to have passed many days without food, many nights without sleep, and many years without speaking; and glorious was the man (I abuse that name) who contrived any cell, or seat, of a peculiar construction, which might expose him, in the most inconvenient posture, to the inclemency of the seasons.

Stylites.

Among these heroes of the monastic life, the name and genius Simeon of Simeon Stylites 71 have been immortalized by the singular A.D. 395-451 invention of an aerial penance. At the age of thirteen, the young Syrian deserted the profession of a shepherd and threw himself into an austere monastery. After a long and painful novitiate, in which Simeon was repeatedly saved from pious suicide, he established his residence on a mountain about thirty or forty miles to the east of Antioch. Within the space of a mandra, or circle of stones, to which he had attached himself by a ponderous chain, he ascended a column, which was suc

68 Theodoret, in a large volume (the Philotheus in Vit. Patrum, 1. ix. p. 793863), has collected the lives and miracles of thirty Anachorets. Evagrius (1. i. c. 12) more briefly celebrates the monks and hermits of Palestine.

69 Sozomen, 1. vi. c. 33. The great St. Ephrem composed a panegyric on these Bóσkot, or grazing monks (Tillemont, Mém. Ecclés. tom. viii. p. 292).

70 The P. Sicard (Missions du Levant, tom. ii. p. 217-233) examined the caverns of the Lower Thebais with wonder and devotion. The inscriptions are in the old Syriac character, which was used by the Christians of Abyssinia.

71 See Theodoret (in Vit. Patrum, 1. ix. p. 848-854), Antony (in Vit. Patrum, 1. i. p. 170-177), Cosmas (in Asseman. Bibliot. Oriental. tom. i. p. 239-253), Evagrius (1. i. c. 13, 14), and Tillemont (Mém. Ecclés. tom. xv. p. 347-392). [On Simeon and the other stylite anachorets, see the monograph of the Bollandist, M. Hippolyte Delehaye, Les Stylites, 1895.]

Miracles and worship of the monks

cessively raised from the height of nine, to that of sixty, feet
from the ground.72 In this last and lofty station, the Syrian
Anachoret resisted the heat of thirty summers, and the cold of
as many winters. Habit and exercise instructed him to main-
tain his dangerous situation without fear or giddiness, and suc-
cessively to assume the different postures of devotion. He
sometimes prayed in an erect attitude with his outstretched
arms in the figure of a cross; but his most familiar practice was
that of bending his meagre skeleton from the forehead to the
feet; and a curious spectator, after numbering twelve hundred
and forty-four repetitions, at length desisted from the endless
account. The progress of
an ulcer in his thigh 73 might shorten,
but it could not disturb, this celestial life; and the patient Hermit
expired without descending from his column. A prince who
should capriciously inflict such tortures would be deemed a tyrant;
but it would surpass the power of a tyrant to impose a long
and miserable existence on the reluctant victims of his cruelty.
This voluntary martyrdom must have gradually destroyed the
sensibility both of the mind and body; nor can it be presumed
that the fanatics, who torment themselves, are susceptible of any
lively affection for the rest of mankind. A cruel unfeeling
temper has distinguished the monks of every age and country:
their stern indifference, which is seldom mollified by personal
friendship, is inflamed by religious hatred; and their merciless
zeal has strenuously administered the holy office of the Inquisi-

tion.

The monastic saints, who excite only the contempt and pity of a philosopher, were respected, and almost adored, by the prince and people. Successive crowds of pilgrims from Gaul and India saluted the divine pillar of Simeon; the tribes of Saracens disputed in arms the honour of his benediction; the queens of Arabia and Persia gratefully confessed his supernatural virtue; and the angelic Hermit was consulted by the younger Theodosius, in the most important concerns of the church and state. His remains were transported from the mountain of Telenissa, by a solemn procession of the patriarch, the master

72 The narrow circumference of two cubits, or three feet, which Evagrius assigns for the summit of the column, is inconsistent with reason, with facts, and with the rules of architecture. The people who saw it from below might be easily deceived.

73 I must not conceal a piece of ancient scandal concerning the origin of this ulcer. It has been reported that the Devil, assuming an angelic form, invited him to ascend, like Elijah, into a fiery chariot. The saint too hastily raised his foot, and Satan seized the moment of inflicting this chastisement on his vanity.

general of the East, six bishops, twenty-one counts or tribunes, and six thousand soldiers; and Antioch revered his bones, as her glorious ornament and impregnable defence. The fame of the apostles and martyrs was gradually eclipsed by these recent and popular Anachorets; the Christian world fell prostrate before their shrines; and the miracles ascribed to their relics exceeded, at least in number and duration, the spiritual exploits of their lives. But the golden legend of their lives 74 was embellished by the artful credulity of their interested brethren; and a believing age was easily persuaded that the slightest caprice of an Egyptian or a Syrian monk had been sufficient to interrupt the eternal laws of the universe. The favourites of Heaven were accustomed to cure inveterate diseases with a touch, a word, or a distant message; and to expel the most obstinate dæmons from the souls, or bodies, which they possessed. They familiarly accosted, or imperiously commanded, the lions and serpents of the desert; infused vegetation into a sapless trunk; suspended iron on the surface of the water; passed the Nile on the back of a crocodile, and refreshed themselves in a fiery furnace. These extravagant Superstition tales, which display the fiction, without the genius, of poetry, have seriously affected the reason, the faith, and the morals of the Christians. Their credulity debased and vitiated the faculties of the mind; they corrupted the evidence of history; and superstition gradually extinguished the hostile light of philosophy and science. Every mode of religious worship which had been practised by the saints, every mysterious doctrine which they believed, was fortified by the sanction of divine revelation, and all the manly virtues were oppressed by the servile and pusillanimous reign of the monks. If it be possible to measure the interval between the philosophic writings of Cicero and the sacred legend of Theodoret, between the character of Cato and that of Simeon, we may appreciate the memorable revolution which was accomplished in the Roman empire within a period of five hundred years.

of the age

II. The progress of Christianity has been marked by two glorious and decisive victories: over the learned and luxurious BION OF THE citizens of the Roman empire; and over the warlike Barbarians RIANS

74 I know not how to select or specify the miracles contained in the Vitae Patrum of Rosweyde, as the number very much exceeds the thousand pages of that voluminous work. An elegant specimen may be found in the Dialogues of Sulpicius Severus, and his life of St. Martin. He reveres the monks of Egypt; yet he insults them with the remark that they never raised the dead; whereas the bishop of Tours had restored three dead men to life.

BARBA

Ulphilas, Apostle of the Goths.

A.D. 360, &c.

of Scythia and Germany, who subverted the empire, and em-
braced the religion, of the Romans. The Goths were the fore-
most of these savage proselytes; and the nation was indebted
for its conversion to a countryman, or, at least, to a subject,
worthy to be ranked among the inventors of useful arts, who
have deserved the remembrance and gratitude of posterity. A
great number of Roman provincials had been led away into
captivity by the Gothic bands who ravaged Asia in the time of
Gallienus; and of these captives, many were Christians, and
several belonged to the ecclesiastical order. Those involuntary
missionaries, dispersed as slaves in the villages of Dacia, suc-
cessively laboured for the salvation of their masters.
The seeds,
which they planted, of the evangelic doctrine, were gradually
propagated; and before the end of a century, the pious work
was achieved by the labours of Ulphilas, whose ancestors had
been transported beyond the Danube from a small town of
Cappadocia.

Ulphilas, the bishop and apostle of the Goths,75 acquired their love and reverence by his blameless life and indefatigable zeal; and they received, with implicit confidence, the doctrines of truth and virtue which he preached and practised. He executed the arduous task of translating the Scriptures into their native tongue, a dialect of the German or Teutonic language; but he prudently suppressed the four books of Kings, as they might tend to irritate the fierce and sanguinary spirit of the Barbarians. The rude, imperfect, idiom of soldiers and shepherds, so ill-qualified to communicate any spiritual ideas, was improved and modulated by his genius; and Ulphilas, before he could frame his version, was obliged to compose a new alphabet of twenty-four letters; four of which he invented, to express the peculiar sounds that were unknown to the Greek, and Latin, pronunciation.76 But the prosperous state of the Gothic church

75 On the subject of Ulphilas, and the conversion of the Goths, see Sozomen, 1. vi. c. 37. Socrates, 1. iv. c. 33. Theodoret, 1. iv. c. 37. Philostorg. 1. ii. c. 5. The heresy of Philostorgius appears to have given him superior means of information. [The notices of Socrates and Sozomen have been shown, with much probability, to be derived entirely from Philostorgius; Jeep, Quellenuntersuchungen, P. 149.]

76 A mutilated copy of the four gospels, in the Gothic version, was published A.D. 1665, and is esteemed the most ancient monument of the Teutonic language, though Wetstein attempts, by some frivolous conjectures, to deprive Ulphilas of the honour of the work. [The Codex Argenteus, preserved at Upsala. It is ascribed to the 5th century.] Two of the four additional letters express the Wand our own Th. See Simon, Hist. Critique du Nouveau Testament, tom. ii. p. 219223. Mill, Prolegom. p. 151, edit. Kuster. Wetstein, Prolegom. tom. i. p. 114. [See Appendix 4.j