A Short History of Monks and Monasteries written by Alfred Wesley Wishart

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Theological discord was made a thousand times more bitter by their
participation in the controversies of the time. Furious monks became the
armed champions of Cyril, the Bishop of Alexandria. They insulted the
prefect, drove out the Jews and, to the everlasting disgrace of the
monks, Cyril and the church, they dragged the lovely Hypatia from her
lecture hall and slew her with all the cruelty satanic ingenuity could
devise. Against a background of black and angry sky she stands forth, as
a soul through whose reason God made himself manifest. Her unblemished
character, her learning and her grace forever cry aloud against an
orthodoxy bereft alike of reason and of the spirit of the Nazarene.

The fighting monks crowded councils and forced decisions. They deposed
hostile bishops or kept their favorites in power by murder and violence.
Two black-cowled armies met in Constantinople, and amid curses fought
with sticks and stones a battle of creeds. Cries of "Holy! Holy! Holy!"
mingled with, "It's the day of martyrdom! Down with the tyrant!" The
whole East was kept in a feverish state. The Imperial soldiers confessed
their justifiable fears when they said, "We would rather fight with
barbarians than with these monks."

No wonder our perplexity increases and it seems impossible to determine
what these men really did for the cause of truth. We have been unable to
distinguish the hermit from the beasts of the fields. We hear his
groans, see his tears, and watch him struggle with demons. We are
disgusted with his filth, amused at his fancies, grieved at his
superstition. We pity his agony and admire his courage. We watch the
progress of order and rule out of chaos. We see monasteries grow up
around damp caves and dismal huts. We behold Simeon praying among the
birds of heaven, and look into the face of the young and handsome Basil,
in whom the monastic institution of the East reaches the zenith of
its power.

I am free to confess a profound reverence for many of these men
determined at all hazards to keep their souls unspotted from the world.
I bow before a passion for righteousness ready to part with life itself
if necessary. Yet the gross extravagances, the almost incredible
absurdities of their unnatural lives compel us to withhold our judgment.

One thing is certain, the strange life of those far-off years is an
eloquent testimony to the indestructible craving of the human soul for
self-mastery and soul-purity.

II

_MONASTICISM IN THE WEST: ANTE-BENEDICTINE MONKS 340-480 A.D._

We are now to follow the fortunes of the monastic system from its
introduction in Rome to the time of Benedict of Nursia, the founder of
the first great monastic order.

Constantine the Great, the first Christian emperor, who made
Christianity the predominant religion in the Roman Empire, died in 337
A.D. Three years later Rome heard, probably for the first time, an
authentic account of the Egyptian hermits. The story was carried to the
Eternal City by Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, one of the most
remarkable characters in the early church, a man of surpassing courage
and perseverance, an intrepid foe of heresy, "heroic and invincible," as
Milton styled him. Twenty of the forty-six years of his official life
were spent in banishment.

Athanasius was an intimate friend of the hermit Anthony and a persistent
advocate of the ascetic ideal. When he fled to Rome, in 340, to escape
the persecutions of the Arians, he took with him two specimens of
monastic virtue--Ammonius and Isidore. These hermits, so filthy and
savage in appearance, albeit, as I trust, clean in heart, excited
general disgust, and their story of the tortures and holiness of their
Egyptian brethren was received with derision. But men who had faced and
conquered the terrors of the desert were not to be so easily repulsed.
Aided by other ascetic travelers from the East they persisted in their
propaganda until contempt yielded to admiration. The enthusiasm of the
uncouth hermits became contagious. The Christians in Rome now welcomed
the story of the recluses as a Divine call to abandon a dissolute
society for the peace and joy of a desert life.

But before this transformation of public opinion can be appreciated, it
is needful to know something of the social and religious condition of
Rome in the days when Athanasius and his hermits walked her streets.

After suffering frightful persecutions for three centuries, the Church
had at last nominally conquered the Roman Empire; nominally, because
although Christianity was to live, the Empire had to die. "No medicine
could have prevented the diseased old body from dying. The time had
come. When the wretched inebriate embraces a spiritual religion with one
foot in the grave, with a constitution completely undermined, and the
seeds of death planted, then no repentance or lofty aspiration can
prevent physical death. It was so in Rome." The death-throes were long
and lingering, as befits the end of a mighty giant, but death was
certain. There are many facts which explain the inability of a
conquering faith to save a tottering empire, but it is impracticable for
us to enter upon that wide field. Some help may be gained from that
which follows.

Of morals, Rome was destitute. She possessed the material remains and
superficial acquirements of a proud civilization, such as great public
highways, marble palaces, public baths, temples and libraries. Elegance
of manners and acquisitions of wealth indicate specious outward
refinement. But these things are not sufficient to guarantee the
permanence of institutions or the moral welfare of a nation. In the
souls of men there was a fatal degeneracy. There was outward prosperity
but inward corruption.

Professor Samuel Dill, in his highly instructive work on "Roman Society
in the Last Century of the Western Empire," points out the fact that
Rome's fall was due to economic and political causes as well as to the
deterioration of her morals. A close study of these causes, however,
will reveal the presence of moral influences. Professor Dill says: "The
general tendency of modern inquiry has to discover in the fall of that
august and magnificent organization, not a cataclysm, precipitated by
the impact of barbarous forces, but a process slowly prepared and
evolved by internal and economic causes." Two of these causes were the
dying out of municipal liberty and self-government, and the separation
of the upper class from the masses by sharp distributions of wealth and
privilege. It is indeed true that these causes contributed to Rome's
ruin; that the central government was weak; that the civil service was
oppressive and corrupt; that the aristocratic class was selfish; and
that the small landed proprietors were steadily growing poorer and
fewer, while, on the contrary, the upper or senatorial class was
increasing in wealth and power. But after due emphasis has been accorded
to these destructive factors, it yet remains true that the want of
public spirit and the prevailing cultivated selfishness may be traced to
a decline of faith in those religious ideals that serve to stimulate the
moral life and thus preserve the national integrity.

Society was divided into three classes. It is computed that one-half the
population were slaves. A large majority of the remainder were paupers,
living on public charity, and constituting a festering sore that
threatened the life of the social organism. The rich, who were
relatively few, squandered princely incomes in a single night, and
exhausted their imaginations devising new and expensive forms of
sensuous pleasure. The profligacy of the nobles almost surpasses
credibility, so that trustworthy descriptions read like works of
fiction. Farrar says: "A whole population might be trembling lest they
should be starved by the delay of an Alexandrian corn ship, while the
upper classes were squandering a fortune at a single banquet, drinking
out of myrrhine and jeweled vases worth hundreds of pounds, and feasting
on the brains of peacocks and the tongues of nightingales." The
frivolity of the social and political leaders of Rome, the insane thirst
for lust and luxury, the absence of seriousness in the face of
frightful, impending ruin, almost justify the epigram of Silvianus,
"Rome was laughing when she died."

"On that hard pagan world disgust
And secret loathing fell;
Deep weariness and sated lust
Made human life a hell.
In his cool hall, with haggard eyes,
The Roman noble lay;
He drove abroad in furious guise
Along the Appian Way;
He made a feast, drank fierce and fast,
And crowned his hair with flowers
No easier nor no guicker past
The impracticable hours."

Pagan mythology and Pagan philosophy were powerless to resist this
downward tendency. Although Christianity had become the state religion,
it was itself in great danger of yielding to the decay that prevailed.
The Empire was, in fact, but nominally Christian. Thousands of
ecclesiastical adherents were half pagan in their spirit and practice.
Harnack declares, "They were too deeply affected by Christianity to
abandon it, but too little to be Christians. Pure religious enthusiasm
waned, ideals received a new form, and the dependence and responsibility
of individuals became weaker." Even ordinary courage had everywhere
declined and the pleasures of the senses controlled the heart of
Christian society.

Many of the men who should have resisted this gross secularization of
the church, who ought to have set their faces against the departure from
apostolic ideals by exalting the standards of the earlier Christianity;
these men, the clergy of the Christian church, had deserted their post
of duty and surrendered to the prevailing worldliness.

Jerome describes, with justifiable sarcasm, these moral weaklings,
charged with the solemn responsibility of preaching a pure gospel to a
dying empire. "Such men think of nothing but their dress; they use
perfumes freely, and see that there are no creases in their leather
shoes. Their curling hair shows traces of the tongs; their fingers
glisten with rings; they walk on tiptoe across a damp road, not to
splash their feet. When you see men acting that way, think of them
rather as bridegrooms than as clergymen. If he sees a pillow that takes
his fancy, or an elegant table-cover, or, indeed, any article of
furniture, he praises it, looks admiringly at it, takes it into his
hand, and, complaining that he has nothing of the kind, begs or rather
extorts it from its owner." Such trifling folly was fatal. The times
demanded men of vigorous spirit, who dared to face the general decline,
and cry out in strong tones against it. The age needed moral warriors,
with the old Roman courage and love of sacrifice; martyrs willing to rot
in prison or shed their blood in the street, not effeminate men, toying
with fancy table-covers and tiptoeing across a sprinkled road. "And as a
background," says Kingsley, "to all this seething heap of corruption,
misrule and misery, hung the black cloud of the barbarians, the Teutonic
tribes from whom we derive our best blood, ever coming nearer and
nearer, waxing stronger and stronger, to be soon the conquerors of the
Caesars and the masters of the world."

But there were many pure and sincere Christians--a saving remnant. The
joyous alacrity with which men and women responded to the monastic call,
and entered upon careers of self-torture for the sake of deliverance
from moral corruption, shows that the spirit of true faith was not
extinct. These seekers after righteousness may be described as "a dismal
and fanatical set of men, overlooking the practical aims of life," but
it is a fair question to ask, "if they had not abandoned the world to
its fate would they not have shared that fate?" "The glory of that age,"
says Professor Dill, "is the number of those who were capable of such
self-surrender; and an age should be judged by its ideals, not by the
mediocrity of conventional religion masking worldly self-indulgence.
This we have always with us; the other we have not always."

Yet the sad fact remains that the transforming power of Christianity was
practically helpless before the surging floods of vice and superstition.
The noble struggles of a few saints were as straws in a hurricane. The
church had all she could do to save herself.

"When Christianity itself was in such need of reform," says Lord, "when
Christians could scarcely be distinguished from pagans in love of
display, and in egotistical ends, how could it reform the world? When it
was a pageant, a ritualism, an arm of the state, a vain philosophy, a
superstition, a formula, how could it save, if ever so dominant? The
corruptions of the church in the fourth century are as well
authenticated as the purity and moral elevation of Christians in the
second century." Even in the early days of Christianity the ruin of Rome
was impending, but, at that time, the adherents of the Christian
religion were few and poor. They did not possess enough power and
influence to save the state. When monasticism came to Rome, the lords of
the church were getting ready to sit upon the thrones of princes, but
the dazzling victory of the church was not a spiritual conquest of sin,
so the last ray of hope for the Empire was extinguished. Her fall was
inevitable.

With this outlined picture in mind, fancy Athanasius and his monks at
Rome. These men despise luxury and contemn riches. They have come to
make Rome ring with the old war cries,--although they wrestled not
against flesh and blood, but against spiritual wickedness in high
places. Terror and despair are on every side, but they are not afraid.
They know what it means to face the demons of the desert, to lie down at
night with wild beasts for companions. They have not yielded to the
depravity of the human heart and the temptations of a licentious age.
They have conquered sinful appetites by self-abnegation and fasting.
They come to a distracted society with a message of peace--a peace won
by courageous self-sacrifice. They call men to save their perishing
souls by surrendering their wills to God and enlisting in a campaign
against the powers of darkness. They appeal to the ancient spirit of
courage and love of hardship. They arouse the dormant moral energies of
the profligate nobles, proud of the past and sick of the present. The
story of Anthony admonished Rome that a life of sensuous gratification
was inglorious, unworthy of the true Roman, and that the flesh could be
mastered by heroic endeavor.

Women, who spent their hours in frivolous amusements, welcomed with
gratitude the discovery that they could be happy without degradation,
and joyfully responded to the call of righteousness. "Despising
themselves," says Kingsley, "despising their husbands to whom they had
been wedded in loveless wedlock, they too fled from a world which had
sated and sickened them."

Woman's natural craving for lofty friendships and pure aspirations found
satisfaction in the monastic ideal. She fled from the incessant broils
of a corrupt court, from the courtesans that usurped the place of the
wife, from the insolence and selfishness of men who scorned even the
appearance of virtue and did not hesitate to degrade even their wives
and sisters. She would disprove the biting sarcasm of Juvenal,--

"Women, in judgment weak, in feeling strong,
By every gust of passion borne along.

* * * * *

A woman stops at nothing, when she wears
Rich emeralds round her neck, and in her ears
Pearls of enormous size; these justify
Her faults, and make all lawful in her eye."

Therefore did the women hear with tremulous eagerness the story of the
saintly inhabitants of the desert, and flinging away their trinkets,
they hastened to the solitude of the cell, there to mourn their folly
and seek pardon and peace at the feet of the Most High.

Likewise, the men, born to nobler tasks than fawning upon princes and
squandering life and fortune in gluttony and debauchery, blushed for
shame, and abandoned forever the company of sensualists and parasites.
Potitianus, a young officer of rank, read the life of Anthony, and cried
to his fellow-soldier: "Tell me, I pray thee, whither all our labors
tend? What do we seek? For whom do we carry arms? What can be our
greatest hope in the palace but to be friend to the Emperor? And how
frail is that fortune! What perils! When shall this be?" Inspired by the
monastic story he exchanged the friendship of the Emperor for the
friendship of God, and the military life lost all its attractiveness.

A philosopher and teacher hears the same narrative, and his countenance
becomes grave; he seizes the arm of Alypius, his friend, and earnestly
asks: "What, then, are we doing? How is this? What hast thou been
hearing? These ignorant men rise; they take Heaven by force, and we,
with our heartless sciences, behold us wallowing in the flesh and in
our blood! Is it shameful to follow them, and are we not rather
disgraced by not following them?" So, disgusted with his self-seeking
career, his round of empty pleasures, he, too, is moved by this higher
call to abandon his wickedness and devote his genius to the cause of
righteousness.

Ambrose, Paulinus, Chrysostom, Basil, Gregory, and many others, holding
important official posts or candidates for the highest honors, abandoned
all their chances of political preferment in order to preach the gospel
of ascetic Christianity.

Yes, for good or evil, Rome is profoundly stirred. The pale monk, in all
his filth and poverty, is the master of the best hearts in the capital.
Every one in whom aspiration is still alive, who longs for some new
light, and all who vaguely grope after a higher life, hear his voice and
become pliant to his will.

"Great historic movements," says Grimke, "are born not in whirlwinds, in
earthquakes, and pomps of human splendor and power, but in the agonies
and enthusiasms of grand, heroic spirits." Monastic history, like
secular, centers in the biographies of such great men as Anthony, Basil,
Jerome, Benedict, Francis, Dominic and Loyola. To understand the
character of the powerful forces set in motion by the coming of the
monks to Rome, it is necessary to know the leading spirits whose
preeminent abilities and lofty personalities made Western monasticism
what it was.

The time is about 418 A.D.; the place, a monastery in Bethlehem, near
the cave of the Nativity. In a lonely cell, within these monastic walls,
we shall find the man we seek. He is so old and feeble that he has to be
raised in his bed by means of a cord affixed to the ceiling. He spends
his time chiefly in reciting prayers. His voice, once clear and
resonant, sinks now to a whisper. His failing vision no longer follows
the classic pages of Virgil or dwells fondly on the Hebrew of the Old
Testament. This is Saint Jerome, the champion of asceticism, the
biographer of hermits, the lion of Christian polemics, the translator of
the Bible, and the worthy, brilliant, determined foe of a dissolute
society and a worldly church. Although he spent thirty-four years of his
life in Palestine, I shall consider Jerome in connection with the
monasticism of the West, for it was in Rome that he exercised his
greatest influence. His translation of the Scriptures is the Vulgate of
the Roman church, and his name is enrolled in the calendar of her
saints. "He is," observes Schaff "the connecting link between the
Eastern and Western learning and religion."

By charming speech and eloquent tongue Jerome won over the men, but
principally the women, of Rome to the monastic life. So powerful was his
message when addressed to the feminine heart, that mothers are said to
have locked their daughters in their rooms lest they should fall under
the influence of his magnetic voice. It was largely owing to his own
labors that he could write in after years: "Formerly, according to the
testimony of the apostles, there were few rich, few noble, few powerful
among the Christians. Now, it is no longer so. Not only among the
Christians, but among the monks are to be found a multitude of the wise,
the noble and the rich."

Near to the very year that Athanasius came to Rome, or about 340 A.D.,
Jerome was born at Stridon, in Dalmatia, in what is now called the
Austro-Hungarian monarchy. His parents were modestly wealthy and were
slaveholders. His student days were spent in Rome, where he divided his
time between the study of books and the revels of the streets. One day
some young Christians induced him to visit the catacombs with them.
Here, before the graves of Christian martyrs, a quiet and holy influence
stole into his heart, that finally led to his conversion and baptism.
Embracing the monastic ideal, he gathered around him a few congenial
friends, who joined him in a covenant of rigid abstinence and ascetic
discipline. Then followed a year of travel with these companions,
through Asia Minor, ending disastrously at Antioch. One of his friends
returned home, two of them died, and he himself became so sick with
fever that his life was despaired of. Undismayed by these evils, brought
on by excessive austerities, he determined to retire to a life
of solitude.

About fifty miles southeast from Antioch was a barren waste of nature
but a paradise for monks--the Desert of Chalcis. On its western border
were several monasteries. All about for miles, the dreary solitudes were
peopled with shaggy hermits. They saw visions and dreamed dreams in
caves infested by serpents and wild beasts. They lay upon the sands,
scorched in summer by the blazing sun, and chilled in winter by the
winds that blew from snowcapped mountains. For five years, Jerome dwelt
among these demon-fighting recluses. Clad in sackcloth stained by
penitential tears, he toiled for his daily bread, and struggled against
visions of Roman dancing girls. He was a most industrious reader of
books and a great lover of debate. Monks from far and near visited him,
and together they discussed questions of theology and philosophy.

But we may not follow this varied and eventful life in all its details.
After a year or two spent at Constantinople, and three years at Rome, he
returned to the East, visiting the hermits of Egypt on his way, and
finally settled at Bethlehem. His fame soon drew around him a great
company of monks. These he organized into monasteries. He built a
hospital, and established an inn for travelers. Lacking the necessary
funds to carry out his projects, he dispatched his brother to the West
with instructions to sell what was left of his property, and the
proceeds of this sale he devoted to the cause. While in Bethlehem he
wrote defences of orthodoxy, eulogies of the dead, lives of saints and
commentaries on the Bible. He also completed his translation of the
Scriptures, and wrote numerous letters to persons dwelling in various
parts of the empire.

Jerome rendered great service to monasticism by his literary labors. He
invested the dullest of lives with a halo of glory; under the magic
touch of his rhetoric the wilderness became a gladsome place and the
desert blossomed as the rose. His glowing language transfigured the pale
face and sunken eyes of the starved hermit into features positively
beautiful, while the rags that hung loosely upon his emaciated frame
became garments of lustrous white. "Oh, that I could behold the desert,"
he cries, "lovelier than any city! Oh, that I could see those lonely
spots made into a paradise by the saints that throng them!" Without
detracting from the bitterness of the prospect, he glorifies the courage
that can face the horrors of the desert, and the heart that can rejoice
midst the solitude of the seas. Hear him describe the home of Bonosus, a
hermit on an isle in the Adriatic:

"Bonosus, your friend, is now climbing the ladder foreshown in Jacob's
dream. He is bearing his cross, neither taking thought for the morrow,
nor looking back at what he has left. Here you have a youth, educated
with us in the refining accomplishments of the world, with abundance of
wealth and in rank inferior to none of his associates; yet he forsakes
his mother, his sister, and his dearly loved brother, and settles like a
new tiller of Eden on a dangerous island, with the sea roaring round its
reefs, while its rough crags, bare rocks and desolate aspect make it
more terrible still.... He sees the glory of God which even the apostles
saw not, save in the desert. He beholds, it is true, no embattled towns,
but he has enrolled his name in the new city. Garments of sackcloth
disfigure his limbs, yet so he will the sooner be caught up to meet
Christ in the clouds. Round the entire island roars the frenzied sea,
while the beetling crags along its winding shores resound as the billows
beat against them. Precipitous cliffs surround his dreadful abode as if
it were a prison. He is careless, fearless, armed from head to foot in
the apostles' armor."

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