Paradoxical as such an argument may seem at first sight, the cessation of persecutions may be adduced as a main cause of the great development of monasticism. The deliverance of the Church from this danger coincided with the adoption of Christianity as the State religion, the swamping of old landmarks by a flood of imperfectly instructed adherents, and the lowering of standards in the direction of worldliness. Monasticism in one of its aspects was the reaction of the sterner spirits against the secularisation of the fourth-century Church. Hitherto there had been an intermittent warfare of the State against the Church which expressed itself in persecution. When persecution ceased, a need was felt on the part of the Church for a "moral equivalent for war"; this the Church found in monasticism, which represented the Church militant against worldliness within.
If we turn to our second question, it is not hard to see |22 why Egypt, rather than some other country, was the motherland of monasticism. The solitudes of Asia Minor with their rigorous winter climate were not suitable places for ascetic experiments. Egypt, however, was ideal for this purpose. The climate was warm and practically rainless, the desert was never far away from the narrow strip of cultivable land, and the neighbouring mountain ranges abounded in natural caves.
Another reason may be suggested. The recent discoveries of papyri have thrown a flood of light upon the conditions of life in ancient Egypt. We can trace the ever-tightening hold of the Government upon the people and the process by which the peasants became ascripti glebae . The process was at work in other provinces, but Egypt was in the main docile, had been paternally governed since the days of the Ptolemies, and was of great importance as the granary of Italy. Accordingly the pressure of taxes and public burdens was greatest in Egypt, and the temptation to escape from them by running away became very strong. In the second and third centuries whole districts became depopulated by the flight of their inhabitants. Things became worse in the fourth century. In 312 the village of Theadelphia became "utterly deserted"; so did that of Philadelphia in 359. The peasants ran away from their intolerable burdens. The word used for their retreat ( a)naxw&rhsij ) is the same as that which describes the monks ( a)naxw&rhtai/ , anchorites ). What some did from economic, others could do from religious motives; doubtless in some cases both causes operated. |23
Such an explanation seems far more plausible than that which used to be given, according to which the pagan monasticism of Egypt was the model for the Christian institution. There is little to be said for such a theory, which is indeed now generally abandoned. The resemblance of the so-called monks of Sarapis to the later Christian monks is merely superficial.
The solitary life, begun in the desert as described above, was organised about 305 by St. Antony, who is justly reckoned as the founder of Christian monachism. Through the efforts of him and his disciples great colonies of monks arose, the most famous of which were at Nitria and Scete. The cells were grouped round a central church, where services were held on Saturday and Sunday, devotions otherwise being said in the individual cells. The main feature of this type of monasticism was its voluntary character; each monk lived his own life, and the monastery had a number of solitary lives lived in common rather than a true common life.
The first coenobium, or monastery of the common life, was founded by Pachomius at Tabennisi sometime in the years 315-320. Here Palladius found a federation of monasteries constituting a true Order as understood subsequently in the West, with obedience to the Rule and the Superior as the main principle. There is no need to discuss the two systems here, since the reader will find both modes of life fully described in the text (see especially Chapters VII. and XXXII.).
By the side of the monks there were nuns of various kinds. The purely solitary life was clearly inappropriate to women, though it was attempted, as may be seen |24 from the story of Alexandra, who lived alone in a tomb for ten years (Ch. V.). When women were gathered into a monastery, the presence of men was necessary if only to administer the sacraments. Convents of the Antonian type existed, but the true common life for women was found in the Pachomian nunneries, over the first of which Pachomius' sister was abbess. These were closely associated with the men's houses in a system of double monasteries, which formed an economic whole, the women, for example, making the men's clothes. This institution, carefully safeguarded as it was and providing protection for women in a rough age, fell into suspicion in the East and was forbidden by Justinian.
Little need be said about Palestine. The monastic life was introduced there early in the fourth century by Hilarion, a disciple of Antony; the original impulse continued, and the monasteries were mainly of the Antonian type.
IV. HISTORICAL VALUE OF THE BOOK
No one would deny that Palladius reflects the age in which he lived, the more faithfully because of his simplicity and lack of originality. His casual allusions to Church observances are of great value. Note, for instance, the continued use of the Agape (XVI. 5), the importance attached to frequent communion, a five weeks' abstention being enough to deserve severe punishment (XVII. 9), the offering of the Eucharist for the dead (XXXIII. 4), the use of Holy Oil (XII. 1, XVIII. 11) and Holy Water (XVII. 9) to effect cures, the Invocation of Saints (LX. 2), the beginnings of the Rosary (XX. 1), and generally the great esteem in which the Bible was held, large portions being learned by heart. |25
But a novel may contain such historical data, and it has been claimed that Palladius' History is little better than a romance. We may disregard the earlier criticisms of this kind, since Abbot Butler has answered them satisfactorily, and confine ourselves to the most important of recent books on the subject, Reitzenstein's Hellenistischen Wundererzählungen (1906). He pays special attention to the Lausiac History, and tries to prove that some at least of the stories are old literary motives formerly attached to pagan characters. Thus the tale of Sarapion Sindonita was originally told of some Cynic philosopher. It may be so, though the arguments are not cogent, only this scholar is too ready to assume a literary connection where none is needed. If the same stories were told of Egyptian peasants, heathen and Christian, the simplest explanation is that Egyptian peasants behaved in much the same way, whether before or after conversion. The common background of life and thought is sufficient to explain the similarity of the stories.
Palladius then tells what he saw and heard, his reminiscences in fact of what happened in some cases over twenty years previously. Under such conditions the element of exaggeration and distortion cannot be excluded. But there is no reason to doubt his good faith when he describes what he saw for himself. Where he reports hearsay he is naturally at the mercy of his informants. Those who told him that a virgin hid Athanasius in her house for six years (Ch. LXIII.) were giving the exaggerated popular version of what had happened many years ago.
There is one reason why Palladius' evidence has been distrusted which is not very creditable to |26 nineteenth-century scholars, namely, his conviction that he had witnessed miraculous and supernatural events. It is coming to be recognised that a fifth-century Christian writer who did not believe in the miraculous would be a portent which required explanation. There would be little left of the history of the time if all the writers who believed in contemporary miracles were ruled out as unworthy of credence.
V. SPIRITUAL VALUE OF THE BOOK
The modern reader has to contend with certain prejudices which hinder his proper appreciation of the people depicted in the Lausiac History. To begin with, there is the preoccupation with sexual temptations, which will offend some. Not that this is unfamiliar to the reader of modern literature, where there is enough and to spare of such topics. But the Christian to-day, resting upon the accumulated experience of the Church, has learned that solitude is the worst possible condition for a man troubled with such temptations, and is apt to be impatient with the struggles of the solitaries. Doubtless the monks were often morbid in this matter, and it requires an effort of sympathetic imagination to do them justice. The background of their lives must not, however, be forgotten. Their point of view is readily intelligible when it is regarded as a necessary reaction from the incredible corruption of the pagan society of their day, with which even the Church was infected. Thus the women who boasted that they had not had a bath for years are not to be laughed at or reproached for dirtiness. Their conduct appears in a new light when compared with that of those who did take a bath, the Christian ladies of Alexandria who defied all modesty |27 in the public baths. They sacrificed physical cleanliness as a protest against moral uncleanness. And the monks who fought with their passions under the hot African sun and described their struggles with painful frankness were doing the right thing under conditions needlessly difficult. We who have a truer insight into the psychology of temptation must not reproach those who had not such knowledge.
Again, the demonology of the Lausiac History is at times grotesque to modern eyes. In his poem "St. Simon Stylites" Tennyson shows a just appreciation of this side of early monachism. His description of the saints is fully borne out by the records.
"Devils pluck'd my sleeve,
Abaddon and Asmodeus caught at me.
I smote them with the cross; they swarmed again.
In bed like monstrous apes they crushed my chest:
They flapped my light out as I read: I saw
Their faces grow between me and my book:
With colt-like whinny and with hoggish whine
They burst my prayer."
But the heroic nature of the warfare is easily missed. The ascetic went into the desert knowing that the demons were awaiting him on their own ground. The evil spirits had a special fondness for waterless places; they took up their abode among the animals which frequented ruins. They were also identified with the heathen gods, whose monuments and pictorial representations were to be found in the Egyptian desert. It argued therefore no small degree of moral courage if the monk went out alone to join battle with these potent |28 forces of evil. We forget the squalor and shabbiness of the Middle Ages in our admiration of the chivalry and devotion which dared and accomplished great things, and though we laugh at Don Quixote it is with a pang of regret that the age of chivalry is giving place to the centuries of materialism. Now the monks went into the desert of Egypt to fight their battles in a spirit of chivalry. Maybe they tilted at windmills sometimes, but let us never forget that the battle few won, that their life was a successful protest against corruption in the Church, and that they handed the lamp of spirituality down to posterity through ages which apart from them were truly dark.