18. No one of the brethren shall dwell as a solitary except such an one that has given proof of his manners for a considerable time.
19. Let no monk take an oracle out of a book for any one. |158
20. Let not any brother who is not a priest or a deacon dare to give the Sacrament ( lit .,the Holy Thing).
21. Those who have been made priests and deacons in the monasteries, and have been entrusted with churches in the villages, shall appoint as superiors in the monasteries those who have shewn proof [of their capacity] and are able to rule the brotherhood; and they themselves shall remain in charge of their churches.
22. Let not any bones of the martyrs be found in the monasteries; but whosoever has any such, let him bring them before us, and if they are genuine they may be venerated in the chapel of the Martyrs; otherwise let them be buried.
23. Those of the monks who wish to make for themselves urns for the dead must bury them in the ground so that they cannot in any wise be seen.
24. If a brother, or a superior of one of the monasteries, departs this world, let only the brethren of the same monastery bury him, and that quietly. If they are not enough, let them invite with them the brethren of a neighbouring monastery; but let them not assemble to the funeral lay people from the villages.
25. If any one is buying corn for the use of the |159 monastery, let him not receive anything over and above; but according to the current charge of the threshing-floor, so shall he buy, and not be acting avariciously in the name of the monastery.
26. Let no one receive a brother who moves about from one monastery to another, without the permission of the superior with whom he was [before].
End of the Admonitions to Monks.
This short, and purely occasional set of rules, terse and to the point, doubtless reflects the mind of the lawgiver; but the rules do not at first sight offer much material for a characterisation of Syrian Monasticism at the beginning of the fifth century. Still they contain one or two notices which may supply us with a basis of comparison with other, better known, embodiments of the monastic ideal. The forms with which it is natural to set out in instituting a comparison are the Antonian and Pachomian Egyptian types.
As Dom Butler has pointed out in his Lausiac History (i. pp. 233 ff.), the Antonian type was not purely cenobitic. Many of the monks, doubtless after a due course of probation, retired to separate cells, out of earshot of one another, and lived a semi-eremitic life. They had, besides, no fixed rule of life, but, in the matter of spiritual exercises, every man did that which was good in his own eyes. The Pachomian monks, on the other hand, were real cenobites, and lived a life of carefully organised discipline. The institute assumed almost from the beginning "the shape of a fully organised congregation or order, with a superior-general and a system of visitation and general chapters." |160
No. 18 of our "Admonitions" clearly contemplates a system which, on broad lines, more closely resembles that of the Antonian monks. For the Syrian monk life in a monastery is not the goal of his aspirations, but only a stepping stone to the more austere life of a recluse. Those who have shewn themselves capable of the hermit's life are to be allowed to embrace it. Again, No. 11, forbidding all sorts of buying and selling in the monastery except what was required for the bare support of the monks, seems to point to a state of things quite different from that which prevailed in the Pachomian monasteries, where every monk was taught to ply some special craft.
The Syrian monks of Rabbula's time further resembled the Antonian monks in that they appear to have had no formal or written rule of life. A century and a half later a modification of the Pachomian rule was introduced among the Nestorian monks of Mesopotamia. But even so they continued the semi-eremitic life. In the great monastery of Beth Abhe, founded about the end of the sixth century, the monks retired, after a noviciate of three years spent in the monastery, to separate cells at some distance from the monastic church. A point on which the Syrian monks differed from all their Egyptian brethren was the greater length and frequency of their offices. Rabbula in No. 16 implies that there was a considerable number of night and day offices. Among the Egyptians there were only two, evensong and nocturns.
The abuses which Rabbula had to deal with were evidently the outcome of a large amount of individual |161 liberty enjoyed by the monks, and especially by the solitaries; and he strove to cope with the situation by limiting the number of these recluses. Those, again, who were allowed to undertake the solitary life were to confine their more eccentric practices of austerity to the privacy of their cells. Rabbula would not have the gaunt ascetic with matted hair, loaded with chains, and sackcloth about his loins, to become a familiar figure in the streets of the great cities: the role of a Christian fakir was one that lent itself too readily as a mask for trickery and fraud. Isaac of Antioch tells us how, half a century later, these possibilities came to be realised in fact. Writing on the capture of Beth Hor by the Arabs, which took place in 457 A.D., and detailing the crimes of the inhabitants which drew that visitation upon them, he turns with bitter sarcasm to the impostures practised upon the simple under cover of the monastic habit.
"And now," he says, "let us come to the modest conversation of the Nazirs ( i.e. ascetics), who are had in honour for their flowing locks, and revered for their monastic garb. And observe how far the genuine members of that class are out-numbered by ruffians and impostors----runaway slaves who have swindled their masters, and sons who have thrown off the obedience due to their fathers. And they cultivate their hair,----contrary to the Gospel rule----and think with their shaggy locks to cover the infamy of their lives. They stroll about the cities collecting alms, and for the, sake of gain put up with insults at the doors of the rich. Ridiculed by citizens and taunted by slaves, they nevertheless put on a bold face and brazen it out in order to till their pockets. And to carry on their ungodly trade they have recourse to every imaginable deceit. . . . One gives himself out for a beneficent person engaged in the redemption of ill-used slaves; |162 another declares that the brethren of his monastery have been carried off captives. And [these stories] they affirm on oath, the better to deceive the simple..... They are supposed to model themselves upon Elijah and John [the Baptist] and Samuel; but while they copy their dress, they are far from imitating their works. They make not the smallest, advance towards the austerity or John, while the righteousness of Samuel they never even saw in a dream."
It would be a mistake to suppose that Isaac bore any ill-will towards the monks; like Rabbula he was a monk himself, and only resented the shame brought upon his venerable calling by charlatans who made it a cloak for deception and avarice. There were giants in those days also among the Syrian monks, even greater than were to be found in Egypt ----but this is only a peep, and it must not be prolonged. The age was one of extremes, of utter self-annihilation on the one hand, and of the wildest licence on the other; and in Mesopotamia of all countries on the earth----for centuries the battlefield of hostile empires, and the hunting ground of wild marauders----we must not took for the types of Christian life which are accustomed to grow amid the blessings of order, prosperity and peace. Monasticism in our days is, we may hope, a highly respectable institution; but we hardly look to find monks living upon pillars, or weighed down with iron chains. The times have changed: now we look outside of Christianity for "all that sort of thing," and are not always edified, when we find it. Yet that was the way of our fathers; and who shall say that the old was not good?
R. C ONNOLLY .
[Footnotes moved to the end]
1. i.e., the Greek-speaking Roman province of which Antioch was the capital.
2. The reader may consult on this point M, Labourt, Le Christianisme dans l'Empire Perse , Ch. xi.
3. Most of these have been translated by Prof. Burkitt in Early Eastern Christianity.
4. It is interesting to learn that monasteries for women had already been established in Mesopotamia at the beginning of the fifth century. In the fifteenth of his "Commands and Admonitions to Priests, etc." Rabbula tells the clergy to exhort lay people to contribute to the support of the monks, and adds: "and let not women [be obliged to] go abroad out of their monasteries.''
5. The Syriac text is contained in Overbeck's S. Ephraemi aliorumque Opera selecta.
6. The Visitor corresponded to the cellarer or procurator. The chief part of his duty was buying provisions and soliciting alms for the monastery.