§ 47. Helvidius, Vigilantius, and Aerius.
§ 47. Helvidius, Vigilantius, and Aerius.
See especially the tracts of Jerome quoted in the preceding section.
Helvidius, whether a layman or a priest at Rome it is uncertain, a pupil, according to the statement of Gennadius, of the Arian bishop Auxentius of Milan, wrote a work, before the year 383, in refutation of the perpetual virginity of the mother of the Lord—a leading point with the current glorification of celibacy. He considered the married state equal in honor and glory to that of virginity. Of his fortunes we know nothing. Augustine speaks of Helvidians, who are probably identical with the Antidicomarianites of Epiphanius. Jerome calls Helvidius, indeed, a rough and uneducated man,400 but proves by quotations of his arguments, that he had at least some knowledge of the Scriptures, and a certain ingenuity. He appealed in the first place to Matt. i. 18, 24, 25, as implying that Joseph knew his wife not before, but after, the birth of the Lord; then to the designation of Jesus as the "first born" son of Mary, in Matt. i. 25, and Luke ii. 7; then to the many passages, which speak of the brothers and sisters of Jesus; and finally to the authority of Tertullian and Victorinus. Jerome replies, that the "till" by no means always fixes a point after which any action must begin or cease;401 that, according to Ex. xxxiv. 19, 20; Num. xviii. 15 sqq., the "first born" does not necessarily imply the birth of other children afterward, but denotes every one, who first opens the womb; that the "brothers" of Jesus may have been either sons of Joseph by a former marriage, or, according to the wide Hebrew use of the term, cousins; and that the authorities cited were more than balanced by the testimony of Ignatius, Polycarp(?), and Irenaeus. "Had Helvidius read these," says he, "he would doubtless have produced something more skilful."
This whole question, it is well known, is still a problem in exegesis. The perpetua virginitas of Mary has less support from Scripture than the opposite theory. But it is so essential to the whole ascetic system, that it became from this time an article of the Catholic faith, and the denial of it was anathematized as blasphemous heresy. A considerable number of Protestant divines,402 however, agree on this point with the Catholic doctrine, and think it incompatible with the dignity of Mary, that, after the birth of the Son of God and Saviour of the world, she should have borne ordinary children of men.
Vigilantius, originally from Gaul,403 a presbyter of Barcelona in Spain, a man of pious but vehement zeal, and of literary talent, wrote in the beginning of the fifth century against the ascetic spirit of the age and the superstition connected with it. Jerome’s reply, dictated hastily in a single night at Bethlehem in the year 406, contains more of personal abuse and low witticism, than of solid argument. "There have been," he says, "monsters on earth, centaurs, syrens, leviathans, behemoths .... Gaul alone has bred no monsters, but has ever abounded in brave and noble men,—when, of a sudden, there has arisen one Vigilantius, who should rather be called Dormitantius,404 contending in an impure spirit against the Spirit of Christ, and forbidding to honor the graves of the martyrs; he rejects the Vigils—only at Easter should we sing hallelujah; he declares abstemiousness to be heresy, and chastity a nursery of licentiousness (pudicitiam, libidinis seminarium) .... This innkeeper of Calagurris405 mingles water with the wine, and would, according to ancient art, combine his poison with the genuine faith. He opposes virginity, hates chastity, cries against the fastings of the saints, and would only amidst jovial feastings amuse himself with the Psalms of David. It is terrible to bear, that even bishops are companions of his wantonness, if those deserve this name, who ordain only married persons deacons, and trust not the chastity of the single."406 Vigilantius thinks it better for a man to use his money wisely, and apply it gradually to benevolent objects at home, than to lavish it all at once upon the poor or give it to the monks of Jerusalem. He went further, however, than his two predecessors, and bent his main efforts against the worship of saints and relics, which was then gaining ascendency and was fostered by monasticism. He considered it superstition and idolatry. He called the Christians, who worshipped the "wretched bones" of dead men, ash-gatherers and idolaters.407 He expressed himself sceptically respecting the miracles of the martyrs, contested the practice of invoking them and of intercession for the dead, as useless, and declared himself against the Vigils, or public worship in the night, as tending to disorder and licentiousness. This last point Jerome admits as a fact, but not as an argument, because the abuse should not abolish the right use.
The presbyter Aerius of Sebaste, about 360, belongs also among the partial opponents of monasticism. For, though himself an ascetic, he contended against the fast laws and the injunction of fasts at certain times, considering them an encroachment upon Christian freedom. Epiphanius also ascribes to him three other heretical views: denial of the superiority of bishops to presbyters, opposition to the usual Easter festival, and opposition to prayers for the dead.408 He was hotly persecuted by the hierarchy, and was obliged to live, with his adherents, in open fields and in caves.
Comp. the occasional notices of the Indian gymnosophists in Strabo (lib. xv. cap. 1, after accounts from the time of Alexander the Great), Arrian (Exped. Alex. l. vii. c. 1-3, and Hist. Ind. c. 11), Plinius (Hist Nat. vii. 2), Diodorus Siculus (lib. ii.), Plutarch (Alex. 64), Porphyry (De abstinent. l. iv.), Lucian (Fugit. 7), Clemens Alex. (Strom. l. i. and iii.), and Augustine (De Civit. Dei, l. xiv. c. 17: "Per opacas Indiae solitudines, quum quidam nudi philosophentur, unde gymnosophistae nominantur; adhibent tamen genitalibus tegmina, quibus per caetera membrorum carent;" and l. xv. 20, where he denies all merit to their celibacy, because it is not "secundum fidem summi boni, qui est Deus"). With these ancient representations agree the narratives of Fon Koueki (about 400, translated by M. A. Rémusat, Par. 1836), Marco Polo (1280), Bernier (1670), Hamilton (1700), Papi, Niebuhr, Orlich, Sonnerat, and others.
The Indian word for it is tapas, i.e. the burning out, or the extinction of the individual being and its absorption into the essence of Brahma.
Ad. Wuttke, in his able and instructive work: Das Geistesleben der Chinesen, Japaner, und Indier (second part of his History of Heathenism), 1853, p. 593.
See the older accounts of Catholic missionaries to Thibet, in Pinkerton’s Collection of Voyages and Travels, vol. vii., and also the recent work of Huc, a French missionary priest of the congregation of St. Lazare: Souvenirs d’un Voyage dans la Tartarie, le Thibet, et la Chine, pendant les années 1844-1846. Comp. also on the whole subject the two works of R. S. Hardy: "Eastern Monachism" and "A Manual of Buddhism in its modern development, translated from Singalese MSS." Lond. 1850. The striking affinity between Buddhism and Romanism extends, by the way, beyond monkery and convent life to the heirarchical organization, with the Grand Lama for pope, and to the worship, with its ceremonies, feasts, processions, pilgrimages, confessional, a kind of mass, prayers for the dead, extreme unction, &c. The view is certainly at least plausible, to which the great geographer Carl Ritter (Erdkunde, ii. p. 283-299, 2d ed.) has given the weight of his name, that the Lamaists in Thibet borrowed their religious forms and ceremonies in part from the Nestorian missionaries. But this view is a mere hypothesis, and is rendered improbable by the fact, that Buddhism in Cochin China, Tonquin, and Japan, where no Nestorian missionaries ever were, shows the same striking resemblance to Romanism as the Lamaism of Thibet, Tartary, and North China. Respecting the singular tradition of Prester John, or the Christian priest-king in Eastern Asia, which arose about the eleventh century, and respecting the Nestorian missions, see Ritter, l.c.
Comp. Num. vi. 1-21.
Comp. the remarkable description of these Jewish monks by the elder Pliny, Hist. Natur. v. 15: "Gens sola, et in toto orbe praeter caeteros mira, sine ulla femina, omni venere abdicata, sine pecunia, socia palmarum. Ita per seculorum millia (incredibile dictu) gens aeterna est in qua nemo nascitur. Tam foecunda illis aliorum vitae penitentia est."
Eusebius, H. E. ii. 17, erroneously takes them for Christians.
H. Ruffner, l.c. vol. i. ch. ii.–ix., gives an extended description of these extra-Christian forms of monasticism, and derives the Christian from them, especially from the Buddhist.
So even Calvin, who, in his commentary on 1 Tim. iv. 3, refers Paul’s prophecy of the ascetic apostasy primarily to the Encratites, Gnostics, Montanists, and Manichaeans, but extends it also to the Papists, "quando coelibatum et ciborum abstinentiam severius urgent quam ullum Dei praeceptum." So, recently, Ruffner, and especially Is. Taylor, who, in his "Ancient Christianity," vol. i. p. 299 sqq., has a special chapter on The Predicted Ascetic Apostasy. The best modern interpreters, however, are agreed, that the apostle has the heretical Gnostic dualistic asceticism in his eye, which forbade marriage and certain meats as intrinsically impure; whereas the Roman and Greek churches make marriage a sacrament, only subordinate it to celibacy, and limit the prohibition of it to priests and monks. The application of 1 Tim. iv. 1-3 to the Catholic church is, therefore, admissible at most only in a partial and indirect way.
Comp. vol. i. § 94-97.
Lactantius says it was necessary to buy even the liberty of breathing, and according to Zosimus (Hist. ii. 38) the fathers prostituted their daughters to have means to pay their tax.
From ajnacwrevw, to retire (from human society), ajnacwrhthv", ejrhmivth" (from ejrhmiva, a desert). The word monacov" (from movno", alone, and monavzein, to live alone), monachus (whence monk), also points originally to solitary, hermit life, but is commonly synonymous with coenobite or friar.
Koinovbion, coenobium; from koinov" bivo", vita communis; then the congregation of monks; sometimes also used for the building. In the same sense mavndra, stable, fold, and monasthvrion, claustrum (whence cloister). Also lauvrai, laurae (literally, streets), that is cells, of which usually a number were built not far apart, so as to form a hamlet. Hence this term is often used in the same sense as monasterium. The singular, lau'ra, however, answers to the anchoret life. On this nomenclature of monasticism comp. Du Cange, in the Glossarium mediae et infimae Latinitatis, under the respective words.
JHgouvmeno", ajrcemandrivth" , ajbba'", i.e. father, hence abbot. A female superintendent was called in Syriac ajmma'", mother, abbess.
From nonna, i.e. casta, chaste, holy. The word is probably of Coptic origin, and occurs as early as in Jerome. The masculine nonnus, monk, appears frequently in the middle age. Comp. the examples in Du Cange, s. v.
Hence Middleton says, not without reason: "By all which I have ever read of the old, and have seen of the modern monks, I take the preference to be clearly due to the last, as having a more regular discipline, more good learning, and less superstition among them than the first."
Bivo" qewrhtikov" , and bivo" praktikov", according to Gregory Nazianzen and others. Throughout the middle age the distinction between the vita contemplativa and the vita activa was illustrated by the two sisters of Lazarus, Luke x. 38-42.
JH kata; qeo;n orCristo;n filosofiva, hJ uJyhlhv filo"., i.e. in the sense of the ancients, not so much a speculative system, as a mode of life under a particular rule. So in the Pythagoreans, Stoics, Cynics, and Neo-Platonists. Ascetic and philosopher are the same.
jApostoliko;" bivo" , oJ tw'n ajggevlwn bivo", vita angelica; after an unwarranted application of Christ’s word respecting the sexless life of the angels, Matt. xxii. 30, which is not presented here as a model for imitation, but only mentioned as an argument against the Sadducees.
ln his famous battle poem: "The Charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava," first ed. 1854.
Comp. the truthful remark of Yves de Chartres, of the twelfth century, Ep. 192 (quoted by Montalembert): "Non beatum faciunt hominem secreta sylvarum, cacumina montium, si secum non habet solitudinem mentis, sabbatum cordis, tranquillitatem conscientiae, ascensiones in corde, sine quibus omnem solitudinem comitantur mentis acedia, curiositas, vana gloria, periculosae tentationum procellae."
So Jerome, Ep. 49 (ed. Ben.), ad Paulinum, where he adduces, besides Elijah and John, Isaiah also and the sons of the prophets, as the fathers of monasticism; and in his Vita Pauli, where, however, he more correctly designates Paul of Thebes and Anthony as the first hermits, properly so called, in distinction from the prophets. Comp. also Sozomen: H. E., 1. i. c. 12: Tauvth" de; th'" ajrivsth" filosofiva" h[rxato, w{" tine" levgousin, JHliva" oJ profhvth" kai; jIwavnnh" oJ baptisthv". This appeal to the example of Elijah and John the Baptist has become traditional with Catholic writers on the subject. Alban Butler says, under Jan. 15, in the life of Paul of Thebes: "Elias and John the Baptist sanctified the deserts, and Jesus Christ himself was a model of the eremitical state during his forty days’ fast in the wilderness; neither is it to be questioned but the Holy Ghost conducted the saint of this day (Paul of Thebes) into the desert, and was to him an instructor there."
Hence called consilia evangelica, in distinction from mandata divina; after 1 Cor. vii. 25, where Paul does certainly make a similar distinction. The consilium and votum paupertatis is based on Matt. xix. 21; the votum castitatis, on 1 Cor. vii. 8, 25, 38-40. For the votum obedientiae no particular text is quoted. The theory appears substantially as early as in Origen, and was in him not merely a personal opinion, but the reflex of a very widely spread practice. Comp. vol. i. § 94 and 95.
Comp. Col. ii. 16-23.
Comp. 1 Cor. xiii. 1-3. Comp. p. 168 sq.
[Aplasto", lit. not moulded; hence natural, sincere.
Ma; to;n jIhsou'n (per Christum, in Salvian), which now took the place of the pagan oath: ma; to;n Diva, by Jupiter.
In Theodoret: Hist. relig. c. (vita) 13.
Comp. Matt. xi. 18, 19; 1 Tim. iv. 3-5.
Comp. Hist. Laus. c. 33 and 95.
Hist. Eccles. lib. vi. cap. 34.
These latter themselves were not absolutely naked, but wore a covering over the middle, as Augustine, in the passage above cited, De Civit. Dei, l. xiv. c. 17, and later tourists tell us. On the contrary, there were monks who were very scrupulous on this point. It is said of Ammon, that he never saw himself naked. The monks in Tabennae, according to the rule of Pachomius, had to sleep always in their clothes.
Comp. Hist Lausiaca, c. 20, and Tillemont, tom. viii. p. 633.
Theboskoivor pabulatores. Comp. Sozom. H. E. l. vi. 33. Ephraim Syrus delivered a special eulogy on them, cited in Tillemont, Mem. tom. viii. p. 292 sq.
Hist. Rel. cap. (vita) xv. (Opera omnia, ed Par. iii. 843 sqq.).
Dial. i. c. 8. Severus sees in this a wonderful example of the power of Christ over wild beasts.
L. c. i. c 11.
See Ruffner, l.c. i. 49 sqq., and Wuttke, l.c. p. 369 sqq.
According to a sensuous and local conception of Eph. vi. 12: Ta; pneumatika; th'" ponhriva" ejn toi'" ejpouranivoi" ; "die bösen Geister unter dem Himmel" (evil spirits under heaven), as Luther translates; while the Vulgate gives it literally, but somewhat obscurely: "Spiritualia nequitiae in coelestibus;" and the English Bible quite too freely: "Spiritual wickedness in high places." In any case pneumatikav is to be taken in a much wider sense than pneuvmata or daimovnia; and ejpouravnia, also, is not fully identical with the cloud heaven or the atmosphere, and besides admits a different construction, so that many put a comma after ponhriva". The monastic satanology and demonology, we may remark, was universally received in the ancient church and throughout the middle ages. And it is well known that Luther retained from his monastic life a sensuous, materialistic idea of the devil and of his influence on men.
Athanasius says of St. Anthony, that the devil sometimes appeared to him in the form of a woman; Jerome relates of St. Hilarion, that in bed his imagination was often beset with visions of naked women. Jerome himself acknowledges, in a letter to a virgin (!), Epist. xxii. (ed. Vallars. t. i. p. 91, 92), de Custodia Virginitatis, ad Eustochium: "O quoties ego ipse in eremo constitutus et in illa vasta solitudine, quae exusta solis ardoribus horridum monachis praebebat habitaculum, putavi me Romanis interesse deliciis .... Ille igitur ego, qui ob gehennae metum tali me carcere ipse damnaveram, scorpionum tantum socius et ferarum, saepe choris intereram puellarum. Pallebant ora jejuniis, et mens desideriis aestuabat in frigido corpore, et ante hominem suum jam in carne praemortuum, sola libidinum incendia bulliebant. Itaque omni auxilio destitutus, ad Jesu jacebam pedes, rigabam lacrymis, crine tergebam et repugnantem carnem hebdomadarum inedia subjugabam." St. Ephraim warns against listening to the enemy, who whispers to the monk: Ouj dunato;n pauvsasqei ajpov sou, eja;n mh; plhroforhvsh/" ejpiqumivan sou.
Vita Pach. § 61. Comp. Nilus, Epist. l. ii. p. 140: Tine;" ... eJautou;" e[sfaxan macaivra/ etc. Even among the fanatical Circumcelliones, Donatist medicant monks in Africa, suicide was not uncommon.
Tillem. vii. 430. The abbot thereupon, as Tillemont relates, was informed by a revelation, "que Muce avait egalé par son obeissance celle d’Abraham," and soon after made him his successor.
Omnino monachum fugere debere mulieres et episcopos.
Sozom. iv. 30.
Hist. of (ancient) Christianity, Am. ed., p. 432.
Chateaubriand commends the monastic institution mainly under the first view. "If there are refuges for the health of the body, ah ! permit religion to have such also for the health of the soul, which is still more subject to sickness, and the infirmities of which are so much more sad, so much more tedious and difficult to cure!" Montalembert (l.c. i. 25) objects to this view as poetic and touching but false, and represents monasticism as an arena for the healthiest and strongest souls which the world has ever produced, and quotes the passage of Chrysostom: "Come and see the tents of the soldiers of Christ; come and see their order of battle; they fight every day, and every day they defeat and immolate the passions which assail us."
1 The abbot Isidore of Pelusium wrote to a slaveholder, Ep. l. i. 142 (cited by Neander): "I did not think that the man who loves Christ, and knows the grace which makes us all free, would still hold slaves."
The monkish miracles, with which the Vitae Patrum of the Jesuit Rosweyde and the Acta Sanctorum swarm, often contradict all the laws of nature and of reason, and would be hardly worthy of mention, but that they come from such fathers as Jerome, Rufinus, Severus, Palladius, and Theodoret, and go to characterize the Nicene age. We are far from rejecting all and every one as falsehood and deception, and accepting the judgment of Isaac Taylor (Ancient Christianity, ii. 106): "The Nicene miracles are of a kind which shocks every sentiment of gravity, of decency, and of piety:—in their obvious features they are childish, horrid, blasphemous, and foul." Much more cautious is the opinion of Robertson (Hist. of the Christian Church, i. 312) and other Protestant historians, who suppose that, together with the innocent illusions of a heated imagination and the fabrications of intentional fraud, there must have been also much that was real, though in the nature of the case an exact sifting is impossible. But many of these stories are too much even for Roman credulity, and are either entirely omitted or at least greatly reduced and modified by critical historians. We read not only of innumerable visions, prophecies, healings of the sick and the possessed, but also of raising of the dead (as in the life of Martin of Tours), of the growth of a dry stick into a fruitful tree, and of a monk’s passing unseared, in absolute obedience to his abbot, through a furnace of fire as through a cooling bath. (Comp. Sulp. Sever. Dial. i. c. 12 and 13.) Even wild beasts play a large part, and are transformed into rational servants of the Egyptian saints of the desert. At the funeral of Paul of Thebes, according to Jerome, two lions voluntarily performed the office of sexton. Pachomius walked unharmed over serpents and scorpions, and crossed the Nile on crocodiles, which, of their own accord, presented their backs. The younger Macarius, or (according to other statements of the Historia Lausiaca; comp. the investigation of Tillemont, tom. viii. p. 811 sqq.) the monk Marcus stood on so good terms with the beasts, that a hyena (according to Rufinus, V. P. ii. 4, it was a lioness) brought her young one to him in his cell, that he might open its eyes; which he did by prayer and application of spittle; and the next day she offered him, for gratitude, a large sheepskin; the saint at first declined the gift, and reproved the beast for the double crime of murder and theft, by which she had obtained the skin; but when the hyena showed repentance, and with a nod promised amendment, Macarius took the skin, and afterward bequeathed it to the great bishop Athanasius. Severus (Dial. i. c. 9) gives a very similar account of an unknown anchoret, but, like Rufinus, substitutes for the hyena of Palladius a lioness with five whelps, and makes the saint receive the present of the skin without scruple or reproof. Shortly before (c. 8), he speaks, however, of a wolf, which once robbed a friendly hermit, whose evening meal she was accustomed to share, showed deep repentance for it, and with bowed head begged forgiveness of the saint. Perhaps Palladius or his Latin translator has combined these two anecdotes.
Pliny counts thirty-nine different sorts of palm trees, of which the best grow in Egypt, are ever green, have thick foliage, and bear a fruit, from which in some places bread is made.
Jerome says of Anthony, in his Vita Pauli Theb. (c. i.): "Non tam ipse auto omnes (eremitas) fuit, quam ab eo omnium incitata sunt studia."
According to the common opinion, which was also Augustine’s, Anthony could not even read. But Tillemont (tom. vii. 107 and 666), Butler, and others think that this igorance related only to the Greek alphabet, not to the Egyptian. Athanasius, p. 795, expresses himself somewhat indistinctly; that, from dread of society, he would not maqei'n gravmmata (letters? or the arts?), but speaks afterward of his regard for reading.
Augustine says of him, De doctr. Christ. § 4, that, without being able to read from only hearing the Bible, he knew it by heart. The life of Athanasius shows, indeed, that a number of Scripture passages were very familiar to him. But of a connected and deep knowledge of Scripture in him, or in these anchorets generally, we find no trace.
Matt. xix. 21.
Matt. vi. 34.
Eij" parqenw'na, says Athanasius; i.e., not "un monastere de verges," as Tillemont translates, for nunneries did not yet exist; but a society of female ascetics within the congregation; from which, however, a regular cloister might of course very easily grow.
Jerome, in his Vita Hilarionis, c. 31, gives an incidental description of this last residence of Anthony, according to which it was not so desolate as from Athanasius one would infer. He speaks even of palms, fruit trees, and vines in this garden, the fruit of which any one would have enjoyed.
Athanas. c. 42: jElqovnte" ga;r (oiJ ejcqroi;)oJpoivou" ajn eu{rwsin hJma'",toiou'toi kai; aujtoi; givnontai, etc.—an important psychological observation.
This is not told indeed by Athanasius, but by Rufinus, Jerome, and Socrates (Hist. Eccl. iv. 25). Comp. Tillemont, l.c. p. 129.
Comp. the proofs in Tillemont, l.c. p. 137 sq.
Dion, fol. 51, ed. Petav., cited in Tillemont and Neander.
Hom. viii. in Matth. tom. vii. 128 (ed. Montfaucon).
· Comp. Aug.: Confess. l. viii. c. 6 and 28.
"Quanti populi," says Rufinus (Vitae Patr. ii c. 7), "habentur in urbibus, tantae paene habentur in desertis multitudines monachorum." Gibbon adds the sarcastic remark: "Posterity might repeat the saying, which had formerly been applied to sacred animals of the same country, That in Egypt it was less difficult to find a god than a man." Montalembert (Monks of the West, vol. i. p. 314) says of the increase of monks: "Nothing in the wonderful history of these hermits in Egypt is so incredible as their number. But the most weighty authorities agreed in establishing it (S. Augustine, De morib. Eccles. i. 31). It was a kind of emigration of towns to the desert, of civilization to simplicity, of noise to silence, of corruption to innocence. The current once begun, floods of men, of women, and of children threw themselves into it, and flowed thither during a century with irresistible force."
There were several (five or seven) anchorets of this name, who are often confounded. The most celebrated are Macarius the elder, or the Great († 390), to whom the Homilies probably belong; and Macarius the younger, of Alexandria († 404), the teacher of Palladius, who spent a long time with him, and set him as high as the other. Comp. Tillemont’s extended account, tom. viii. p. 574-650, and the notes, p. 811 sqq.
On Ammon, or, in Egyptian, Amus and Amun, comp. Tillemont, viii. p. 153-166, and the notes, p. 672-674.
Opera, tom. ii. p. 13-40.
Lu. xiv. 33.
A peculiar, romantic, but not fully historical interest attaches to the biography of the imprisoned and fortunately escaping monk Malchus, with his nominal wife, which is preserved to us by Jerome.
Original at least in the Christian church. Gieseler refers to a heathen precedent; the Fallobatei'" in Syria, mentioned by Lucian, De Dea Syria, c. 28 and 29.
Butler, l.c., however, relates something similar of a contemporary Benedictine monk, Dom Claude Leante: "In 1731, when he was about fifty-one years of age, he had fasted eleven years without taking any food the whole forty days, except what he daily took at mass; and what added to the wonder is, that during Lent he did not properly sleep, but only dozed. He could not bear the open air; and toward the end of Lent he was excessively pale and wasted. This fact is attested by his brethren and superiors, in a relation printed at Sens, in 1731."
The first pillar, which he himself erected, and on which he lived four years, was six cubits (phvcewn) high, the second twelve, the third twenty-two, and the fourth, which the people erected for him, and on which he spent twenty years, was thirty-six, according to Theodoret; others say forty. The top was only three feet in diameter. It probably had a railing, however, on which he could lean in sleep or exhaustion. So at least these pillars are drawn in pictures. Food was carried up to the pillar saints by their disciples on a ladder.
To; mevga qau'ma th'" oijkoumevnh". Hist. Relig. c. 26, at the beginning.
Referring to Isa xx. 2; Jer. i. 17; xxviii. 12; Hos i. 2; iii. 1; Ezek. iv. 4; xii. 5.
Ep. ii. 114; cited in Gieseler, ii. 2, p. 246, note 47 (Edinb. Engl. ed. ii. p. 13, note 47), and in Neander.
Möhler remarks on this (Vermischte Schriften, ii. p. 183): "Thus antiquity expresses its faith, that for man perfectly reconciled with God there is no enemy in nature. There is more than poetry here; there is expressed at least the high opinion his own and future generations had of Pachomius." The last qualifying remark suggests a doubt even in the mind of this famous modern champion of Romanism as to the real historical character of the wonderful tales of this monastic saint.
Gregory Nazianzen, in his eulogy on Basil (Orat. xx. of the old order, Orat. xliii. in the new Par. ed.), gives him the honor of endeavoring to unite the theoretical and the practical modes of life in monasticism, i]na mhvte to; filovsofon ajkoinwvnhton h|/, mhvte to; praktiko;n ajfilovsofon.
Comp. Neander, iii. 487 (Torrey’s translation, vol. ii. p. 250 sqq.), who esteems Nilus highly; and the article of Gass in Herzog’s Theol. Encykl. vol. x. p, 355 sqq. His works are in the Bibl. Max. vet. Patr. tom. vii., and in Migne’s Patrol. Gr. t. 79.
Comp. on him Tillemont, xv., and H. A. Niemeyer: "De Isid. Pel. vita, scripet doctrina," Hal. 1825. His Epistles are in the 7th volume of the Bibliotheca Maxima, and in Migne’s Patrol. Graeca, tom. 58, Paris, 1860.
From @ylix]lim' = Eujcivtai, from eujchv, prayer.
Sulpitius Severus, in the first of his three dialogues, gives several amusing instances of the difference between the Gallic and Egyptian stomach, and was greatly astonished when the first Egyptian anchoret whom he visited placed before him and his four companions a half loaf of barley bread and a handful of herbs for a dinner, though they tasted very good after the wearisome journey. "Edacitas," says he, "in Graecis gula est, in Gallia natura." (Dial. i. c. 8, in Gallandi, t. viii. p. 405.)
"The monastic stream," says Montalembert, l.c., "which had been born in the deserts of Egypt, divided itself into two great arms. The one spread in the East, at first inundated everything, then concentrated and lost itself there. The other escaped into the West, and spread itself by a thousand channels over an entire world, which had to be covered and fertilized."
Augustine, Conf. vii. 6: "Erat monasterium Mediolani plenum bonis fratribus extra urbis moenia, sub Ambrosio nutritore."
Ambr.: De virginibus, lib. iii., addressed to his sister Marcellina, about 377. Comp. Tillem. x. 102-105, and Schröckh, viii. 355 sqq.
Ambr.: Hexaëmeron, l. iii. c. 5. Hieron.: Ep. ad Oceanum de morte Fabiolae, Ep. 77 ed. Vall. (84 ed. Ben., al. 30).
He himself speaks of a monasterium clericorum in his episcopal residence, and his biographer, Possidius, says of him, Vita, c. 5: "Factus ergo presbyter monasterium inter ecclesiam mox instituit, et cum Dei servis vivere coepit secundum modum, et regulam sub sanctis apostlis constitutam, maxime ut nemo quidquam proprium haberet, sed eis essent omnia communia."
De opera monach. c. 22. Still later, Salvian (De gubern. Dei, viii. 4) speaks of the hatred of the Africans for monasticism.
In his Vita Martini, and also in three letters respecting him, and in three very eloquently and elegantly written dialogues, the first of which relates to the oriental monks, the two others to the miracles of Martin (translated, with some omissions, in Ruffner’s Fathers of the Desert, vol. ii. p. 68-178). He tells us (Dial. i. c. 23) that the book traders of Rome sold his Vita Martini more rapidly than any other book, and made great profit on it. The Acts of the Saints were read as romances in those days.
The biographer here refers, of course, to Matt. xxv. 40
Toward the close of his biography, c. 26, 27 (Gallandi, tom. viii. 399).
Comp. Dial. ii. 5 (in Gallandi Bibl. tom. viii. p. 412).
Vita M. c. 20 (in Gallandi, viii. 397).
Dial. ii. 7, which probably relates to the same banquet, since Martin declined other invitations to the imperial table. Severus gives us to understand that this was the only time Martin allowed a woman so near him, or received her service. He commended a nun for declining even his official visit as bishop, and Severus remarks thereupon: "O glorious virgin, who would not even suffer herself to be seen by Martin! O blessed Martin, who took not this refusal for an insult, but commended its virtue, and rejoiced to find in that region so rare an example!" (Dial, ii. c. 12, Gall, viii. 414.)
As he himself boasts in his second apology to Rufinus: "Ego philosophus(?), rhetor, grammaticus, dialecticus, hebraeus, graecus, latinus, trilinguis." The celebrated Erasmus, the first editor of his works, and a very competent judge in matters of literary talent and merit, places Jerome above all the fathers, even St. Augustine (with whose doctrines of free grace and predestination he could not sympathize), and often gives eloquent expression to his admiration for him. In a letter to Pope Leo X. (Ep. ii. 1, quoted in Vallarsi’s ed. of Jerome’s works, tom. xi. 290), he says: "Divus Hieronymus sic apud Latinos est theologorum princeps, ut hunc prope solum habeamus theologi dignum nomine. Non quod caeteros damnem, sed quod illustres alioqui, si cum hoc conferantur, ob huius eminentiam velut obscurentur. Denique tot egregiis est cumulatus dotibus, ut vix ullum habeat et ipsa docta Graecia, quem cum hoc viro quest componere. Quantum in illo Romanae facundiae! quanta linguarum peritia! quanta omnis antiquitatis omnium historiarum notitia! quam fida memoria! quam felix rerum omnium mixtum! quam absoluta mysticarum literarum cognitio! super omnia, quis ardor ille, quam admirabilis divini pectoris afflatus? ut una et plurimum delectet eloquentia, et doceat eruditione, et rapiat sanctimonia."
Hence called Stridonensis; also in distinction from the contemporary but little known Greek Jerome, who was probably a presbyter in Jerusalem.
Martianay, Stilting, Cave, Schröckh, Hagenbach, and others, place his birth, according to Prosper, Chron. ad ann. 331, in the year 331; Baronius, Du Pin, and Tillemont, with greater probability, in the year 342. The last infers from various circumstances, that Jerome lived, not ninety-one years, as Prosper states, but only seventy-eight. Vallarsi (t. xi. 8) places his birth still later, in the year 346. His death is placed in the year 419 or 420.
"Mentiris," said the Lord to him, when Jerome called himself a Christian, Ciceronianus es, non Christianus, ubi enim thesaurus tuus ibi et cor tuum." Ep. xxii. ad Eustochium, "De custodia virginitatis "(tom. i. p. 113). C. A. Heumann has written a special treatise, De ecstasi Hieronymi anti-Ciceroniana. Comp. also Schröckh, vol. vii. p. 35 sqq., and Ozanam: " Civilisation au 5e Siècle," i. 301.
Ep. xxii. ed. Vall. i. 112).
Ep. xxii. (i. p. 91, ed. Vallars.)
Ep. cxxv., ed. Vallars. (al. 95 or 4.)
De laude vitae solitariae, Ep. xiv. (tom. i. 28-36) ad Heliodorum. The Roman lady Fabiola learned this letter by heart, and Du Pin calls it a masterpiece of eloquence (Nouv. Bibl. des auteurs eccl. iii. 102), but it is almost too declamatory and turgid. He himself afterward acknowledged it overdrawn.
Gibbon says of them: "The stories of Paul, Hilarion, and Malchus are admirably told; and the only defect of these pleasing compositions is the want of truth and common sense."
Ep. xiv. (t. i. 29 sq.) Similar descriptions of the attractions of monastic life we meet with in the ascetic writings of Gregory, Basil, Ambrose, Chrysostom, Cassian, Nilus, and Isidor. "So great grace," says the venerable monk Nilus of Mount Sinai, in the beginning of the fifth century (Ep. lib. i Ep. 1, as quoted by Neander, Am. ed. ii. 250), "so great grace his God bestowed on the monks, even in anticipation of the future world, that they wish for no honors from men, and feel no longing after the greatness of this world; but, on the contrary, often seek rather to remain concealed from men: while, on the other hand, many of the great, who possess all the glory of the world, either of their own accord, or compelled by misfortune, take refuge with the lowly monks, and, delivered from fatal dangers, obtain at once a temporal and an eternal salvation."
As we infer from a remark of Jerome in Ep. cxxiii. c. 10, written a. 409 (ed. Vallars. i. p. 901): "Ante annos plurimos, quum in chartis ecclesiasticis" (i.e. probably in ecclesiastical documents; though Schröckh, viii. p. 122, refers it to the Holy Scriptures, appealing to a work of Bonamici unknown to me), "juvarem Damasum, Romanae urbis episcopum, et orientis atque occidentis synodicis consultationibus responderem," etc. The latter words, which Schröckh does not quote, favor the common interpretation.
Montalembert, himself the scion of an old noble family in France, l.c. i. p. 388 sq. Comp. Hieron., Epist. lxvi. ad Pammachium, de obit. Paulinae (ed. Vallars. i. 391 sqq.).
In one of his Epist. ad Pammach.: "Primus inter monachos in prima urbe ... archistrategos monachorum."
Ep. xxii. ad Eustochium, "de custodia virginitatis." Even Rufinus was shocked at the profane, nay, almost blasphemous expression, socrus Dei, and asked him from what heathen poet he had stolen it.
His controversy with Augustine on the interpretation of Gal. ii. 14 is not unimportant as an index of the moral character of the two most illustrous Latin fathers of the church. Jerome saw in the account of the collision between Paul and Peter, in Antioch, an artifice of pastoral prudence, and supposed that Paul did not there reprove the senior apostle in earnest, but only for effect, to reclaim the Jews from their wrong notions respecting the validity of the ceremonial law. Augustine’s delicate sense of truth was justly offended by this exegesis, which, to save the dignity of Peter, ascribed falsehood to Paul, and he expressed his opinion to Jerome, who, however, very loftily made him feel his smaller grammatical knowledge. But they afterward became reconciled. Comp. on this dispute the letters on both sides, in Hieron. Opera, ed. Vall. tom. i. 632 sqq., and the treatise of Möhler, in his "Vermischte Schriften," vol. i. p. 1-18.
"Tantis de toto orbe confluentibus obruimur turbis monachorum."
The Jesuit Stilting, the author of the Vita Hieron. in the Acta Sanctorum, devotes nearly thirty folio pages to accounts of the veneration paid to him and his relics after his death.
Most Roman Catholic biographers, as Martianay, Vallarsi, Stilting, Dolci, and even the Anglican Cave, are unqualified eulogists of Jerome. See also the "Selecta Veterum testimonia de Hieronymo ejusque scriptis," in Vallarsi’s edition, tom. xi. pp. 282-300. Tillemont, however, who on account of his Jansenist proclivity sympathizes more with Augustine, makes a move toward a more enlightened judgment, for which Stilting sharply reproves him. Montalembert (l.c. i. 402) praises him as a man of genius, inspired by zeal and subdued by penitence, of ardent faith and immense resources of knowledge; yet he incidentally speaks also of his "almost savage impetuosity of temper," and "that inexhaustible vehemence which sometimes degenerated into emphasis and affectation." Dr. John H. Newman, in his opinion before his transition from Puseyism to Romanism, exhibits the conflict in which the moral feeling is here involved with the authority of the Roman Church: "I do not scruple to say, that, were he not a saint, there are things in his writings and views from which I should shrink; but as the case stands, I shrink rather from putting myself in opposition to something like a judgment of the catholic(?) world in favor of his saintly perfection." (Church of the Fathers, 263, cited by Robertson.) Luther also here boldly broke through tradition, but, forgetful of the great value of the Vulgate even to his German version of the Bible, went to the opposite extreme of unjust derogation, expressing several times a distinct antipathy to this church father, and charging him with knowing not how to write at all of Christ, but only of fasts, virginity, and useless monkish exercises. Le Clerc exposed his defects with thorough ability, but unfairly, in his "Quaestiones Hieronymianae" (Amstel. 1700, over 500 pages). Mosheim and Schröckh are more mild, but the latter considers it doubtful whether Jerome did Christianity more good than harm. Among later Protestant historians opinion has become somewhat more favorable, though rather to his learning than to his moral character, which betrays in his letters and controversial writings too many unquestionable weaknesses.
Her father professed to trace his genealogy to Agamemnon, and her husband to Aeneas.
This want of cleanliness, the inseparable companion of ancient ascetic holiness, is bad enough in monks, but still more intolerable and revolting in nuns.
"Nesciebat se matrem," says Jerome, "ut Christi probaret ancillam." Revealing the conflict of monastic sanctity with the natural virtues which God has enjoined. Montalembert, also, quotes this objectionable passage with apparent approbation.
Jerome says, Eustochium hoped to pay the debts of her mother—probably by the help of others. Fuller justly remarks: "Liberality should have banks, as well as a stream."
In Latin Sublaqueum, or Sublacum, in the States of the Church, over thirty English miles (Butler says "near forty," Montalembert, ii. 7, "fifty miles") east of Rome, on the Teverone. Butler describes the place as "a barren, hideous chain of rocks, with a river and lake in the valley."
Monasterium Cassinense. It was destroyed, indeed, by the Lombards, as early as 583, as Benedict is said to have predicted it would be, but was rebuilt in 731, consecrated in 748, again destroyed by the Saracens in 857, rebuilt about 950, and more completely, after many other calamities, in 1649, consecrated for the third time by Benedict XIII. in 1727, enriched and increased under the patronage of the emperors and popes, but in modern times despoiled of its enormous income (which at the end of the sixteenth century was reckoned at 500,000 ducats), and has stood through all vicissitudes to this day. In the days of its splendor, when the abbot was first baron of the kingdom of Naples, and commanded over four hundred towns and villages, it numbered several hundred monks, but in 1843 only twenty. It has a considerable library. Montalembert (l.c. ii. 19) calls Monte Cassino "the most powerful and celebrated monastery in the Catholic universe; celebrated especially because there Benedict wrote his rule and formed the type which was to serve as a model to innumerable communities submitted to that sovereign code." He also quotes the poetic description from Dante’s Paradiso. Dom Luigi Tosti published at Naples, in 1842, a full history of this convent, in three volumes.
Gregor. Dial. ii. 37.
"Scienter nesciens, et sapienter indoctus."
Butler, l.c., compares him even with Moses and Elijah. "Being chosen by God, like another Moses, to conduct faithful souls into the true promised land, the kingdom of heaven, he was enriched with eminent supernatural gifts, even those of miracles and prophecy. He seemed, like another Eliseus, endued by God with an extraordinary power, commanding all nature, and, like the ancient prophets, foreseeing future events. He often raised the sinking courage of his monks, and baffled the various artifices of the devil with the sign of the cross, rendered the heaviest stone light, in building his monastery, by a short prayer, and, in presence of a multitude of people, raised to life a novice who had been crushed by the fall of a wall at Monte Cassino." Montalembert omits the more extraordinary miracles, except the deliverance of Placidus from the whirlpool, which he relates in the language of Bossuet, ii. 15.
The Catholic church has recognized three other rules besides that of St. Benedict, viz.: 1. That of St. Basil, which is still retained by the Oriental monks; 2. That of St. Augustine, which is adopted by the regular canons, the order of the preaching brothers or Dominicans, and several military orders; 3. The rule of St. Francis of Assisi, and his mendicant order, in the thirteenth century.
Pope Gregory believed the rule of St. Benedict even to be directly inspired, and Bossuet (Panégyric de Saint Benoit), in evident exaggeration, calls it "an epitome of Christianity, a learned and mysterious abridgment of all doctrines of the gospel, all the institutions of the holy fathers, and all the counsels of perfection." Montalembert speaks in a similar strain of French declamatory eloquence. Monasticism knows very little of the gospel of freedom, and resolves Christianity into a new law of obedience.
We have availed ourselves, in this extract from the preface, of the translation of Montalembert, ii. 44 sq.
Cap. 5: "Primus humilitatis gradus est obedientia sine mora. Haec convenit iis, qui nihil sibi Christo carius aliquid existimant; propter servitium sanctum, quod professi sunt, seu propter metum gehennae, vel gloriam vitae aeternae, mox ut aliquid imperatum a majore fuerit, ac si divinitus imperetur, moram pati nesciunt in faciendo."
Cap. 48: "Otiositas inimica est animae; et ideo certis temporibus occupari debent fratres in labore manuum, certis iterum horis in lectione divina."
The horaecanonicae are the Nocturnae vigiliae, Matutinae, Prima, Tertia, Sexta, Nona, Vespera, and Completorium, and are taken (c. 16) from a literal interpretation of Ps. cxix. 164: "Seven times a day do I praise thee," and v. 62: "At midnight I will rise to give thanks unto thee." The Psalter was the liturgy and hymn book of the convent. It was so divided among the seven services of the day, that the whole psalter should be chanted once a week.
Cap. 59: "Si quis forte de nobilibus offert filium suum Deo in monasterio, si ipse puer minori aetate est, parentes ejus faciant petitionem," etc.
Cap. 40: "Carnium quadrupedum ab omnibus abstinetur comestio, praeter omnino debiles et aegrotos." Even birds are excluded, which were at that time only delicacies for princes and nobles, as Mabillon shows from the contemporary testimony of Gregory of Tours.
Cap. 66: "Monasterium, si possit fieri, ita debet construi, ut omnia necessaria, id est, aqua, molendinum, hortus, pistrinum, vel artes diversae intra monasterium exerceantur, ut non sit necessitas monachis vagandi foras, quia omnino non expedit animabus eorum."
This Maurus, the founder of the abbacy of Glanfeuil (St. Maur sur Loire), is the patron saint of a branch of the Benedictines, the celebrated Maurians in France (dating from 1618), who so highly distinguished themselves in the seventeenth and early part of the eighteenth centuries, by their thorough archaeological and historical researches, and their superior editions of the Fathers. The most eminent of the Maurians are D. (Dom, equivalent to Domnus, Sir) Menard, d’Achery, Godin, Mabillon, le Nourry, Martianay, Ruinart, Martene, Montfaucon, Massuet, Garnier, and de la Rue, and in our time Dom Pitra, editor of a valuable collection of patristic fragments, at the cloister of Solesme.
He was the last of the Roman consuls—an office which Justinian abolished—and was successively the minister of Odoacer, Theodoric, and Athalaric, who made him prefect of the praetorium
Or Vivaria, so called from the numerous vivaria or fish ponds in that region.
Comp. Mabillon, Ann. Bened. l. v. c. 24, 27; F. de Ste. Marthe, Vie de Cassiodore, 1684.
1 Cor. vii. 26.
Adv. Jovin. lib. i. c. 40 (Opera, ii. 304): "Et tamen iste formosus monachus, crassus, nitidus, dealbatus, et quasi sponsus semper incedens, aut uxorem ducat ut aequalem virginitatem nuptiis probet; aut, si non duxerit, frustra contra nos verbis agit, cum opere nobiscum sit."
Augustine says, De haer. c. 82: "Cito ista haeresis oppressa et extincta est;" and Jerome writes of Jovinian, in 406, Adv. Vigilant. c. 1, that, after having been condemned by the authority of the Roman church, he dissipated his mind in the enjoyment of his lusts.
1 Cor. vii. 36, 39.
1 Tim. iii. 2, 12.
1 Tim. v. 14; comp. 1 Tim. ii. 15; Heb. xiii. 4.
From 1 Cor. vii. 1, for example ("It is good for a man not to touch a woman"), he argues, without qualification, l. i. c. 7 (Opera, ii. 246): "Si bonum est mulierem non tangere, malum est ergo tangere, nihil enim bono contrarium est, nisi malum; si autem malum est, et ignoscitur, ideo conceditur, ne malo quid deterius fiat .... Tolle fornicationem, et non dicet [apostolus], unusquisque uxorem suam habeat."Immediately after this (ii. 247) he argues, from the exhortation of Paul to pray without ceasing, 1 Thess. v. 17: "Si semper orandum est, nunquam ergo conjugio serviendum, quoniam quotiescunque uxori debitum reddo, orare non possum." Such sophistries and misinterpretations evidently proceed upon the lowest sensual idea of marriage, and called forth some opposition even at that age. He himself afterward felt that he had gone too far, and in his Ep. 48 (ed. Vallars. or Ep. 30, ed. Bened.) ad Pammachium, endeavored to save himself by distinguishing between the gymnastic (polemically rhetorical) and the dogmatic mode of writing.
De bono conj. c. 8: "Duo bona sunt connubium et continentia, quorum alterum est melius."
2 Cor. ix. 6.
400 At the very beginning of his work against him, he styles him "hominem rusticum et vix primis quoque imbutum literis."
401 Comp. Matt. xxviii. 20.
402 Luther, for instance (who even calls Helvidius a "gross fool"), and Zuingle, among the Reformers; Olshausen and J. P. Lange, among the later theologians.
403 Respecting his descent, compare the diffuse treatise of the tedious but thorough Walch, l.c. p. 675-677.
404 This cheap pun he repeats, Epist. 109, ad Ripar. (Opera, i. p. 719), where he says that Vigilantius (Wakeful) was so called kat j ajntivfrasin, and should rather be called Dormitantius (Sleepy). The fact is, that Vigilantius was wide-awake to a sense of certain superstitions of the age
405 In South Gaul; now Casères in Gascogne. As the business of innkeeper is incompatible with the spiritual office, it has been supposed that the father of Vigilantius was a caupo Calagurritanus. Comp. Rössler’s Bibliothek der Kirchenväter, part ix. p. 880 sq., note 100; and Walch, l.c
406 Adv. Vigil.c. 1 and 2 (Opera, tom. ii. p. 387 sqq.).
407 "Cinerarios et idolatras, qui mortuorum ossa venerantur." Hieron. Ep. 109, ad Riparium (tom. i. p. 719).
408 Epiph. Haer. 75. Comp. also Walch, l.c. iii. 321-338. Bellarmine, on account of this external resemblance, styles Protestantism the Aerian heresy.