surname; and the appellations of the two great | excites our respectful compassion, and we fondly founders, of the city, and of the monarchy, were thus strangely united in the last of their successors.1 The son of Orestes assumed and disgraced the names of Romulus Augustus; but the first was corrupted into Momyllus, by the Greeks, and the second has been changed by the Latins into the contemptible diminutive Augustulus. The life of this inoffensive youth was spared by the generous clemency of Odoacer; who dismissed him, with his whole family, from the imperial palace, fixed his annual allowance at six thousand pieces of gold, and assigned the castle of Lucullus, in Campania, for the place of his exile or retirement. As soon as the Romans breathed from the toils of the Punic war, they were attracted by the beauties and the pleasures of Campania; and the country-house of the elder Scipio at Liternum exhibited a lasting model of their rustic simplicity." The delicious shores of the bay of Naples were crowded with villas; and Sylla applauded the masterly skill of his rival, who had seated himself on the lofty promontory of Misenum, that commands, on every side, the sea and land, as far as the boundaries of the horizon. The villa of Marius was purchased, within a few years, by Lucullus, and the price had increased from two thousand five hundred, to more than fourscore thousand, pounds sterling. It was adorned by the new proprietor with Grecian arts, and Asiatic treasures; and the houses and gardens of Lucullus obtained a distinguished rank in the list of imperial palaces. When the Vandals became formidable to the sea-coast, the Lucullan villa, on the promontory of Misenum, gradually assumed the strength and appellation of a strong castle, the obscure retreat of the last emperor of the west. About twenty years after that great revolution, it was converted into a church and monastery to receive the bones of St. Severinus. They securely | reposed, amidst the broken trophies of Cimbric and Armenian victories, till the beginning of the tenth century; when the fortifications, which might afford a dangerous shelter to the Saracens, were demolished by the people of Naples."

sympathize with the imaginary grief and indignation of their degenerate posterity. But the calamities of Italy had gradually subdued the proud consciousness of freedom and glory. In the age of Roman virtue, the provinces were subject to the arms, and the citizens to the laws, of the republic; till those laws were subverted by civil discord, and both the city and the provinces became the servile property of a tyrant. The forms of the constitution, which alleviated or disguised their abject slavery, were abolished by time and violence; the Italians alternately lamented the presence or the absence of the sovereigns, whom they detested or despised; and the succession of five centuries inflicted the various evils of military licence, capricious despotism, and elaborate oppression. During the same period, the barbarians had emerged from obscurity and contempt, and the warriors of Germany and Scythia were introduced into the provinces, as the servants, the allies, and at-length the masters, of the Romans, whom they insulted or protected. The hatred of the people was suppressed by fear; they respected the spirit and splendour of the martial chiefs who were invested with the honours of the empire; and the fate of Rome had long depended on the sword of those formidable strangers. The stern Ricimer, who trampled on the ruins of Italy, had exercised the power, without assuming the title, of a king; and the patient Romans were insensibly prepared to acknowledge the royalty of Odoacer and his barbaric successors.

Odoacer was the first barbarian who Decay of the Roman spirit. reigned in Italy, over a people who had once asserted their just superiority above the rest of mankind. The disgrace of the Romans still

1 See his medals in Ducange, (Fam. Byzantin. p. 81.) Priscus. (Excerpt. Legat. p. 56. Maffei. (Osservazioni Letterarie, tom. ii. p. 314.) We may allege a famous and similar case. The meanest subjects of the Roman empire assumed the illustrious name of Patricius, which, by the conversion of Ireland, has been communicated to a whole nation.

Ingrediens autem Ravennam deposuit Augustulum de regno, cujus infantiam misertus concessit ei sanguinem; et quia pulcher erat, tamen donavit ei reditum sex millia solidos, et misit eum intra Campaniam cum parentibus suis libere vivere. Anonym. Vales. p. 716. Jornandes says, (c. 46. p. 680.) in Lucullano Campania castello exilii pœna dam. navit.

n See the eloquent Declamation of Seneca. (Epist. lxxxvi.) The philosopher might have recollected, that all luxury is relative; and that the elder Scipio, whose manners were polished by study and conversation, was himself accused of that vice by his ruder contemporaries. (Livy, xxix. 19.)

Sylla, in the language of a soldier, praised his peritia castrametandi. (Plin. Hist. Natur. xviii. 7.) Phædrus, who makes its shady walks (lata viridia) the scene of an insipid fable, (ii. 5.) has thus de.

scribed the situation:

Cæsar Tiberius quam petens Neapolim,
In Mesenensem villam venisset suam;

A. D. 476-490.

The king of Italy was not unworthy Character and of the high station to which his valour reign of Odoacer, and fortune had exalted him his savage manners were polished by the habits of conversation; and he respected, though a conqueror and a barbarian, the institutions, and even the prejudices, of his subjects. After an interval of seven years, Odoacer restored the consulship of the west. For himself, he modestly, or proudly, declined an honour which was still accepted by the emperors of the east; but the curule chair was successively filled by eleven of the most illustrious senators ;" and the list is adorned by the respectable name of Basilius, whose virtues claimed the friendship and grateful applause of Sidonius, his client. The laws of the emperors were strictly enforced, and the civil adQuæ monte summo posita Luculli manu Prospectat Siculum et prospicit Tuscum mare.

p From seven myriads and a half to two hundred and fifty myriads of drachmæ. Yet even in the possession of Marius, it was a luxurious retirement. The Romans derided his indolence: they soon bewailed his activity. See Plutarch, in Mario, tom. ii. p. 521.

q Lucullus had other villas of equal, though various, magnificence, at Baia, Naples, Tusculum, &c. He boasted that he changed his climate with the storks and cranes. Plutarch, in Lucull. tom. iii. p. 193. r Severinus died in Noricum, A. D. 482. Six years afterwards, his body, which scattered miracles as it passed, was transported by his dis ciples into Italy. The devotion of a Neapolitan lady invited the saint to the Lucullan villa, in the place of Augustulus, who was probably no more. See Baronius (Annal. Eccles. A. D. 496. No. 50, 51.) and Tillemont, (Mem. Eccles. tom. xvi. p. 178–181.) from the original life by Eugippins. The narrative of the last migration of Severinus to Naples, is likewise an authentic piece.

The consular Fasti may be found in Pagi or Muratori. The consuls naned by Odoacer, or perhaps by the Roman senate, appear to have been acknowledged in the eastern empire.

Sidonius Apollinaris (I. i. epist. 9. p. 22. edit. Sirmond) has compared the two leading senators of his time, (A. D. 468.) Gennadius Avienus

602

relate the progress, the persecutions, the establish- | disdained, as firmly as the cynics themselves, all

ment, the divisions, the final triumph, and the gradual corruption, of christianity. I have purposely delayed the consideration of two religious events, interesting in the study of human nature, and important in the decline and fall of the Roman empire. I. The institution of the monastic life; and, II. The conversion of the northern barbarians.

1. THE MONAS.

the forms and decencies of civil society. But the
votaries of this divine philosophy aspired to imitate
a purer and more perfect model. They trod in the
footsteps of the prophets, who had retired to the
desert;e and they restored the devout and contem-
plative life, which had been instituted by the Esse-
nians, in Palestine and Egypt. The philosophic eye
of Pliny had surveyed with astonishment a solitary
people, who dwelt among the palm-trees near the
Dead sea; who subsisted without money, who were
propagated without women, and who derived from
the disgust and repentance of mankind, a perpetual
supply of voluntary associates.
Egypt, the fruitful parent of super-

Antony and the monks of Egypt, A. D. 305.

I. Prosperity and peace introduced | TIC LIFE. Ori- the distinction of the vulgar and the gin of the monks. ascetic christians. The loose and imperfect practice of religion satisfied the conscience of the multitude. The prince or magistrate, the soldier or merchant, reconciled their fervent zeal, and implicit faith, with the exercise of their profession, the pursuit of their interest, and the indul-stition, afforded the first example of gence of their passions; but the ascetics, who the monastic life. Antony, an illiobeyed and abused the rigid precepts of the gospel, terate youth of the lower parts of Thebais, distributed his patrimony, deserted his family and were inspired by the savage enthusiasm, which represents man as a criminal, and God as a tyrant. native home, and executed his monastic penance They seriously renounced the business, and the with original and intrepid fanaticism. After a long pleasures, of the age; abjured the use of wine, of and painful noviciate, among the tombs, and in a flesh, and of marriage; chastised their body, morti- ruined tower, he boldly advanced into the desert fied their affections, and embraced a life of misery, three days' journey to the eastward of the Nile; as the price of eternal happiness. In the reign of discovered a lonely spot, which possessed the adConstantine, the ascetics fled from a profane and vantages of shade and water, and fixed his last degenerate world, to perpetual solitude, or religious residence on mount Colzim, near the Red sea; society. Like the first christians of Jerusalem, where an ancient monastery still preserves the name and memory of the saint. The curious devotion of they resigned the use, or the property, of their temporal possessions; established regular communities the christians pursued him to the desert; and when he was obliged to appear at Alexandria, in of the same sex, and a similar disposition; and assumed the names of Hermits, Monks, and Anacho- | the face of mankind, he supported his fame with rets, expressive of their lonely retreat in a natural discretion and dignity. He enjoyed the friendor artificial desert. They soon acquired the respect ship of Athanasius, whose doctrine he approved; and the Egyptian peasant respectfully declined a of the world, which they despised; and the loudest applause was bestowed on this DIVINE PHILOSO- respectful invitation from the emperor A. D. 251–356. PHY, which surpassed, without the aid of science Constantine. The venerable patriarch or reason, the laborious virtues of the Grecian (for Antony attained the age of one hundred and schools. The monks might indeed contend with five years) beheld the numerous progeny which had the stoics, in the contempt of fortune, of pain, and been formed by his example and his lessons. The of death the Pythagorean silence and submission prolific colonies of monks multiplied with rapid inwere revived in their servile discipline; and they crease on the sands of Libya, upon the rocks of

с

a The origin of the monastic institution has been laboriously discussed by Thomasin (Discipline de l'Eglise, tom. i. p. 1419-1426.) and Helyot, (Hist. des Ordres Monastiques, tom. i. p. 1-66.) These authors are very learned and tolerably honest, and their difference of opinion shows the subject in its full extent. Yet the cautious protes. tant, who distrusts any popish guides, may consult the seventh book of Bingham's Christian Antiquities.

b See Euseb. Demonstrat. Evangel. (1. i. p. 20, 21. edit. Græc. Rob. Stephani, Paris, 1545.) In his Ecclesiastical History, published twelve years after the Demonstration, Eusebius (1. ii. c. 17.) asserts the christianity of the Theraputa; but he appears ignorant, that a similar institution was actually revived in Egypt.

e Cassian (Collat. xviii. 5.) claims this origin for the institution of the Canobites, which gradually decayed till it was restored by Anthony and his disciples.

ὰ Ωφελιμωτατον γαρ τι χρήμα εις άνθρωπος έλθέσα παρα Θε» η τοι avτη piλoσopia. These are the expressive words of Sozomen, who copiously and agreeably describes (1. i. c. 12, 13, 14.) the origin and progress of this monkish philosophy. (See Suicer. Thesaur. Eccles. tom. ii. p. 1441.) Some modern writers, Lipsius (tom. iv. p. 448. Manuduct, ad Philosoph. Stoic. iii. 13.) and la Mothe le Vaye (tom. ix. de la Vertů des Payens, p. 228-262.) have compared the Carmelites to the Pythagoreans, and the Cynics to the Capuchins.

e The Carmelites derive their pedigree, in regular succession, from the prophet Elijah. (See the Theses of Beziers, A. D. 1682. in Bayle's Nouvelles de la Republique des Lettres, Euvres, tom. i. p. 82, &c. and the prolix irony of the Ordres Monastiques, an anonymous work, tom. i. p. 1-433. Berlin, 1751.) Rome, and the inquisition of Spain, silenced the profane criticism of the Jesuits of Flanders, (Helvot, Hist. des Ordres Monastiques, tom. i. p. 282-300.) and the statue of Elijah, the Carmelite, has been erected in the church of St. Peter. (Voyages du P. Labat, tom. iii. p. 87.)

f Plin. Hist. Natur. v. 15. Gens sola, et in toto orbe præter ceteras mira, sine ulla femina, omni venere abdicatâ, sine pecuniâ, socia palmarum. Ita per seculorum millia (incredibile dictu) gens æterna est in quâ nemo nascitur. Tam fœcunda illis aliorum vitæ pœnitentia est. He places them just beyond the noxious influence of the lake, and The Laura, and names Engaddi and Masada as the nearest towns. monastery of St. Sabas, could not be far distant from this place. See Reland. Palestin. tom. i. p. 295. tom. ii. p. 763. $74. 880. 890,

g See Athanas, Op. tom. ii. p. 450-505. and the Vit. Patrum, p. 26 --74 with Rosweyde's Annotations. The former is the Greek origi nal; the latter a very ancient Latin version by Evagrius, the friend of St. Jerom.

Athanas. tom. ii. in Vit. St. Η Γράμματα μεν μαθείν εκ ηνέσχετο. Anton. p. 452. and the assertion of his total ignorance has been received by many of the ancients and moderns. But Tillemont (Mem. Eccles, tom. vii. p. 666.) shows, by some probable arguments, that Antony could read and write in the Coptic, his native tongue; and that he was only a stranger to the Greek letters. The philosopher Synesius (p. 51. acknowledges, that the natural genius of Antony did not require the ad of learning.

i Aruræ autem erant ei trecentæ uberes, et valde optimæ. (Vit. Patr. 1. i. p. 36.) If the Arura be a square measure of an hundred Egyptian cubits, (Rosweyde, Onomasticon ad Vit. Patrum, p. 1014, 1013, and the Egyptian cubit of all ages be equal to twenty-two English inches (Graves, vol. i. p. 233.) the arura will consist of about three quarters of an English acre.

k The description of the monastery is given by Jerom, (tom. i. p. 248, 249. in Vit. Hilarion.) and the P. Sicard, (Missions du Levant, tom. v. p. 122-200.) Their accounts cannot always be reconciled the father painted from his fancy, and the Jesuit from his expe rience

Martin in Gaul,

Thebais, and in the cities of the Nile. To the south | eight years, diffused a similar enthusiasm; and the of Alexandria, the mountain, and adjacent desert, of Nitria, were peopled by five thousand anachorets; and the traveller may still investigate the ruins of fifty monasteries, which were planted in that barren soil by the disciples of Antony.' In the Upper The bais, the vacant island of Tabennem was occupied by Pachomius and fourteen hundred of his brethren. That holy abbot successively founded nine monasteries of men, and one of women; and the festival of Easter sometimes collected fifty thousand religious persons, who followed his angelic rule of discipline. The stately and populous city of Oxyrinchus, the seat of christian orthodoxy, had devoted the temples, the public edifices, and even the ramparts, to pious and charitable uses; and the bishop, who might preach in twelve churches, computed ten thousand females and twenty thousand males of the monastic profession." The Egyptians, who gloried in this marvellous revolution, were disposed to hope, and to believe, that the number of the monks was equal to the remainder of the people ;" and posterity 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 god, than a man. Propagation of the monastic life

at Rome,

A. D. 341.

holy man was followed by a train of two or three
thousand anachorets, whenever he visited the innu-
merable monasteries of Palestine. The fame of
Basil' is immortal in the monastic his-
Basil in Pontus,
tory of the east. With a mind, that
A. D. 360.
had tasted the learning and eloquence of Athens;
with an ambition, scarcely to be satisfied by the
archbishopric of Cæsarea, Basil retired to a savage
solitude in Pontus; and deigned, for a while, to
give laws to the spiritual colonies which he pro-
fusely scattered along the coast of the Black sea.
In the west, Martin of Tours, a sol-
dier, a hermit, a bishop, and a saint, A. D. 370.
established the monasteries of Gaul; two thousand
of his disciples followed him to the grave; and his
eloquent historian challenges the deserts of The-
bais, to produce, in a more favourable climate, a
champion of equal virtue. The progress of the
monks was not less rapid, or universal, than that of
christianity itself. Every province, and, at last,
every city, of the empire, was filled with their in-
creasing multitudes; and the bleak and barren isles,
from Lerins to Lipari, that arise out of the Tuscan
sea, were chosen by the anachorets, for the place
of their voluntary exile. An easy and perpetual
intercourse by sea and land connected the provinces
of the Roman world; and the life of Hilarion dis-
plays the facility with which an indigent hermit of
Palestine might traverse Egypt, embark for Sicily,
escape to Epirus, and finally settle in the island of
Cyprus." The Latin christians embraced the reli-
gious institutions of Rome. The pilgrims, who
visited Jerusalem, eagerly copied, in the most dis-
tant climates of the earth, the faithful model of the
monastic life. The disciples of Antony spread
themselves beyond the tropic, over the christian
empire of Æthiopia. The monastery of Banchory
in Flintshire, which contained above two thousand
brethren, dispersed a numerous colony among the
barbarians of Ireland; and Iona, one of the He-
brides, which was planted by the Irish monks, dif-
fused over the northern regions a doubtful ray of

Athanasius introduced into Rome the knowledge and practice of the monastic life; and a school of this new philosophy was opened by the disciples of Antony, who accompanied their primate to the holy threshold of the Vatican. The strange and savage appearance of these Egyptians excited, at first, horror and contempt, and, at length, applause and zealous imitation. The senators, and more especially the matrons, transformed their palaces and villas into religious houses; and the narrow institution of six vestals, was eclipsed by the frequent monasteries, which were seated on the ruins of ancient temples, and in the midst of the Roman forum. Inflamed by the example of Antony, a Syrian youth, whose name was Hilarion,' fixed his dreary abode on a sandy beach, between the sea and A. D. 328. a morass, about seven miles from Gaza. The austere penance in which he persisted forty-science and superstition."

Hilarion in Palestine,

1 Jerom. tom. i. p. 146. ad Eustochium. Hist. Lausiac. c. 7. in Vit. Patrum, p. 712. The P. Sicard (Missions du Levant, tom. ii. p. 29— 79.) visited, and has described, this desert, which now contains four monasteries, and twenty or thirty monks. See D'Anville, Description de l'Egypte, p. 74.

m Tabenne is a small island in the Nile, in the diocese of Tentyra or Dendera, between the modern town of Girge, and the ruins of ancient Thebes. (D'Anville, p. 194.) M. de Tillemont doubts whether it was an isle; but I may conclude, from his own facts, that the primitive name was afterwards transferred to the great monastery of Bau or Pabau. (Mem. Eccles. tom. vii. p. 678. 688.)

n See in the Codex Regularum (published by Lucas Holstenius, Rome, 1661.) a preface of St. Jerom to his Latin version of the Rule of Pachomius, tom. i. p. 61.

o Rufin. c. 5. in Vit. Patrum. p. 459. He calls it civitas ampla valde et populosa, and reckons twelve churches. Strabo (1. xvii. p 1166.) and Ammianus (xxii. 16.) have made honourable mention of Oxyrin. chus, whose inhabitants adored a small fish in a magnificent temple. P Quanti populi habentur in urbibus, tauta pæna habentur in desertis multitudines monachorum. Rufin. c. 7. in Vit. Patrum, p. 461. congratulates the fortunate change.

He

q The introduction of the monastic life into Rome and Italy, is occasionally mentioned by Jerom, (tom. i. p. 119, 120. 199.)

T See the Life of Hilarion, by St. Jerom, (tom. i. p. 241. 252.) The stories of Paul, Hilarion, and Malchus, by the same author, are admirably told; and the only defect of these pleasing compositions is the want of truth and common sense.

s His original retreat was in a small village on the banks of the Iris,

not far from Neo-Cæsarea. The ten or twelve years of his monastic life were disturbed by long and frequent avocations. Some critics have disputed the authenticity of his ascetic rules; but the external evidence is weighty, and they can only prove that it is the work of a real or affected enthusiast. See Tillemont, Mem. Eccles. tom. ix. p. 636644. Helyot, Hist. des Ordres Monastiques, tom. i. p. 175-181.

t See his Life, and the Three Dialogues by Sulpicius Severus, who asserts (Dialog. i. 16.) that the booksellers of Rome were delighted with the quick and ready sale of his popular work.

u When Hilarion sailed from Parætonium to Cape Pachynus, he offered to pay his passage with a book of the Gospeis. Posthumian, a Gallic monk, who had visited Egypt, found a merchant-ship bound from Alexandria to Marseilles, and performed the voyage in thirty days. (Sulp. Sever. Dialog. i. 1.) Athanasius, who addressed his life of St. Antory to the foreign monks, was obliged to hasten the composition, that it might be ready for the sailing of the fleets, (tom. ii. p. 451.) x See Jerom, (tom. i. p. 126.) Assemanni, (Bibliot. Orient. tom. iv. p. 92. p. 857. 919.) and Geddes, (Church History of Ethiopia, p. 29–31.) The Abyssinian monks adhere very strictly to the primitive institution. y Camden's Britannia, vol. i. p. 666, 667.

z All that learning can extract from the rubbish of the dark ages is copiously stated by archbishop Usher, in his Britannicarum Ecclesiarum Antiquitates, cap. xvi. p. 425-503.

a This small, though not barren, spot, Iona, Hy, or Columbkill, only two miles in length, and one mile in breadth, has been distinguished, 1. by the monastery of St. Columba, founded A. D. 566; whose abbot exercised an extraordinary jurisdiction over the bishops of Caledonia; 2. By a classic library, which afforded some hopes of an entire