penance to a rich and liberal sinner." Time continually increased, and accidents could seldom diminish, the estates of the popular monasteries, which spread over the adjacent country and cities; and, in the first century of their institution, the infidel Zosimus has maliciously observed, that, for the benefit of the poor, the Christian monks had reduced a great part of mankind to a state of beggary. As long as they maintained their original fervour, they approved themselves, however, the faithful and benevolent stewards of the charity which was intrusted to their care. But their discipline was corrupted by prosperity; they gradually assumed the pride of wealth, and at last indulged the luxury of expense. Their public luxury might be excused by the magnificence of religious worship, and the decent motive of erecting durable habitations for an immortal society. But every age of the church has accused the licentiousness of the degenerate monks; who no longer remembered the object of their institution, embraced the vain and sensual pleasures of the world, which they had renounced, and scandalously abused the riches which had been acquired by the austere virtues of their founders.1 Their natural descent, from such painful and dangerous virtue, to the common vices of humanity, will not, perhaps, excite much grief or indignation in the mind of a philosopher.

h See Jerome, tom. 1. p. 176. 183. The monk of Pambo made a sublime answer to Melania, who wished to specify the value of her gift. 'Do you offer it to me, or to God? If to God, HE who suspends the mountains in a balance, need not be informed of the weight of your plate." (Pallad. Hist. Lausiac. c. 10. in the Vit. Patrum, lib. 8. p. 715.)

1 Το πολύ μέρος της γης ωκειώσαντο, προφάσει του μεταδιδόναι παντα πτωχοις, παντας ως ειπείν) πτωχους καταστησαντες. Zosim. lib. 5. p. 325. Yet the wealth of the eastern monks was far surpassed by the princely greatness of the Benedictines. * The sixth general council (the Quinisext in Trullo, Canon 47. in Beveridge, tom. 1. p. 213.) restrains women from passing the night in a male, or men in a female monastery. The seventh general council (the second Nicene, Canon 20. in Beveridge, tom. 1. p. 325.) prohibits the erection of double or promiscuous monasteries of both sexes; but it appears from Balsamon, that the prohibition was not effectual. On the irregular pleasures and expenses of the clergy and monks, see Thomassin, tom. 3. p. 1334-1363.

I have somewhere heard or read the frank confession of a Benedictine abbotMy vow of poverty has given me a hundred thousand crowns a year; my vow of obedience has raised me to the rank of a sovereign prince." I forget the conse quence of his vow of chastity,

Their so litude.

The lives of the primitive monks were consumed in penance and solitude; undisturbed by the various occupations which fill the time, and exercise the faculties, of reasonable, active, and social beings. Whenever they were permitted to step beyond the precincts of the monastery, two jealous companions were the mutual guards and spies of each other's actions; and, after their return, they were condemned to forget, or at least to suppress, whatever they had seen or heard in the world. Strangers, who professed the orthodox faith, were hospitably entertained in a separate apartment; but their dangerous conversation was restricted to some chosen elders of approved discretion and fidelity. Except in their presence, the monastic slave might not receive the visits of his friends or kindred; and it was deemed highly meritorious, if he afflicted a tender sister, or an aged parent, by the obstinate refusal of a word or look. The monks themselves, passed their lives without personal attachments, among a crowd, which had been formed by accident, and was detained, in the same prison, by force of prejudice. Recluse fanatics have few ideas or sentiments to communicate; a special licence of the abbot regulated the time and duration of their familiar visits; and, at their silent meals, they were enveloped in their cowls, inaccessible, and almost invisible, to each other." Study is the resource of solitude: but education had not prepared and qualified for any liberal studies the mechanics and peasants, who filled the monastic communities. They might work: but the vanity of spiritual perfection was tempted to disdain the exercise of manual labour; and the industry must be faint and languid, which is not excited by the sense of personal interest.

m

Pior, an Egyptian monk, allowed his sister to see him; but he shut his eyes during the whole visit. See Vit. Patrum, lib. 3. p. 504. Many such examples might be added.

The seventh, eighth, twenty-ninth, thirtieth, thirty-first, thirty-fourth, fiftyseventh, sixtieth, eighty-sixth, and ninety-fifth, articles of the Rule of Pachomins, impose most intolerable laws of silence and mortification.

Their de

According to their faith and zeal, they might votion and employ the day, which they passed in their cells, visions. either in vocal or mental prayer: they assembled in the evening, and they were awakened in the night, for the public worship of the monastery. The precise moment was determined by the stars, which are seldom clouded in the serene sky of Egypt; and a rustic horn or trumpet, the signal of devotion, twice interrupted the vast silence of the desert. Even sleep, the last refuge of the unhappy, was rigorously measured; the vacant hours of the monk heavily rolled along, without business or pleasure; and before the close of each day, he had repeatedly accused the tedious progress of the sun. In this comfortless state, superstition still pursued and tormented her wretched votaries. The repose 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, a hospital was founded at Jerusalem for a small portion of the austere penitents, who were deprived of their senses. Their visions, before they attained this extreme and acknowledged term of frenzy, have afforded ample materials of supernatural history. It was their firm persuasion, that the air which they

• The diurnal and nocturnal prayers of the monks are copiously discussed by Cassian in the third and fourth books of his Institutions; and he constantly prefers the liturgy, which an angel had dictated to the monasteries of Tabenne.

P Cassian, from his own experience, describes the acedia, or listlessness of mind and body, to which a monk was exposed, when he sighed to find himself alone. Sæpiusque egreditur et ingreditur cellam, et solem velut ad occasum tardius properantem crebrius intuetur. Institut. 10. 1.)

The temptations and sufferings of Stagirius were communicated by that unfortunate youth to his friend St. Chrysostom. See Middleton's Works, vol. 1. p. 107 -110. Something similar introduces the life of every saint; and the famous Inigo, or Ignatius, the founder of the Jesuits, (vide d'Inigo de Guiposcoa, tom. 1. p. 2938.) may serve as a memorable example.

T Fleury, Hist. Ecclesiastique, tom. 7. p. 46. I have read somewhere, in the Vitæ 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.

breathed, was peopled with invisible enemies; with innumerable demons, 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."

The Cœnobites and Anacho

The monks were divided into two classes: the Cœnobites, who lived under a common, and rerets. gular, discipline; and the Anachorets, who indulged their unsocial, independent fanaticism. 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," a distant circle of solitary cells; and the extravagant penance of the hermits was stimulated by applause and emulation.* 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 incumberances 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

See the seventh and eighth Collations of Cassian, who gravely examines, why the demons 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 evils were most formidable in a female shape.

t For the distinction of the Canobites and the Hermits, especially in Egypt, see Jerome (tom. 1. p. 45. ad Rusticum), the first Dialogue of Sulpicius Severus; Rufinus, (c. 22. in Vit. Patrum, lib. 2. p. 478.) Paladius, (c. 7. 69. in Vit. Patrum, lib. 8. p. 712. 758.) and, above all, the eighteenth and nineteenth Collations of Cassian. These writers, who compare the common and salutary life, reveal the abuse and danger of the latter.

"Suicer. Thesaur. Ecclesiast. tom. 2. p. 205. 218. Thomassin (Discipline de l'Eglise, tom. 1. 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.

Theodoret, in a large volume (the Philotheus in Vit. Patrum, lib. 9. p. 793— 863.) has collected the lives and miracles of thirty anachorets. Evagrius (lib. 1. c. 12.) more briefly celebrates the monks and hermits of Palestine.

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.' 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." 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.

Simeon

A.D. 395

-451.

Among these heroes of the monastic life, the Stylites. name and genius of Simeon Stylites have been immortalized by the singular 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 noviciate, 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 mandara, or circle of stones, to which he had attached himself by a ponderous chain, he ascended a column, which was successively raised from the height of nine, to that of sixty feet, from the ground. In this last, and lofty station, the Syrian ana

y Sozomen, lib. 6. c. 33. The great St. Ephrem composed a panegyric on these Booxo, or grazing monks. (Tillemont, Mem. Eccles. tom..8. p. 292.)

The P. Sicard (Missions du Levant, tom. 2.p. 217-223.) 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.

a See Theodoret, (in Vit. Patrum, lib. 9. p. 848-854.) Antony, (in Vit. Patrum, lib. 1. p. 170-177.) Cosmas, (in Asseman. Bibliot. Oriental, tom. 1. p. 239-253.) Evagrius, (lib. 1. c. 13, 14.) and Tillemont. (Mem. Eccles. tom. 15. p. 347-392.) b 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.