(A.D. 391.)
[Not to be confounded with S. Macarius of Alexandria (Jan. 2nd).
This Macarius is commemorated by the Greeks on Jan. 19th; by the
Roman later Martyrology on Jan. 15th, but in earlier ones on the
same day as the other Macarius, Jan. 2nd. Authorities for his life
are Palladius, in his History Lausiaca, a thoroughly trustworthy
contemporary, Ruffinus, Sozomen, Socrates, Cassian, &c.]
S. Macarius the Elder was born in Upper Egypt, about the year 300, and
was brought up in the country to attend cattle. In his childhood, in
company with some others, he stole some figs and ate one of them; but
from his conversion to his death, he never ceased bewailing this
offence. By a powerful call of divine grace, he was led to desert the
world in his youth, and to take up his abode in a little cell made of
mats. A wicked woman falsely accused him of having deflowered her; for
which supposed crime he was dragged through the streets, beaten and
insulted, as a base hypocrite under the garb of a monk. He suffered all
with patience, and sent the woman what he earned by his work, saying to
himself, "Well, Macarius, having now another to provide for, you must
work all the harder." But the woman, in the anguish of her travail,
confessed that she had maligned him, and told the real name of her
seducer. Then the people regarded him as a Saint, whom lately they would
have slain. To shun the esteem of men he fled into the desert of Scété,
being then about thirty years of age. In this solitude he lived sixty
years, and became the spiritual father of innumerable holy persons, who
put themselves under his direction, and were governed by the rules he
prescribed them; but all dwelt in separate hermitages. S. Macarius
admitted only one disciple with him to entertain strangers.
He was compelled by an Egyptian bishop to receive the order of
priesthood, about the year 340, the fortieth of his age, that he might
celebrate the Divine Mysteries for the convenience of his holy colony.
When the desert became better peopled, there were four churches built in
it, served by as many priests. The austerities of S. Macarius were very
severe. He usually ate but once a week. Evagrius, his disciple, once
asked him leave to drink a little water, under a parching thirst: but
Macarius bade him be satisfied with reposing a little in the shade,
saying, "For these twenty years I have never eaten, drunk, nor slept as
much as nature demanded." To deny his own will, he did not refuse to
drink a little wine, when others desired him; but he would punish
himself for this indulgence by abstaining two or three days from all
manner of drink; and it was for this reason that his disciples desired
strangers never to tender him a drop of wine. He delivered his
instructions in few words, and principally inculcated silence, humility,
mortification and continual prayer, to all sorts of people. He used to
say, "In prayer you need not use many or grand words. You can always
repeat, Lord, show me mercy as Thou knowest best; or, Assist me, O
Lord!"
His mildness and patience were invincible, and occasioned the conversion
of a heathen priest. A young man applying to S. Macarius for spiritual
advice, he directed him to go to a burying place and upbraid the dead;
and after that to go and flatter them. "Well," said Macarius, when the
young man returned, "How did the dead receive thy abuse of them." "They
answered not a word," he replied. "And how did they behave when
flattered?" "They took no notice of that either." "Go," said Macarius,
"and do thou likewise."
A monk complained to Macarius that he could fast in the monastery, but
not in solitude. "Ah!" said the abbot, "thou likest to have people see
that thou art fasting. Beware of vainglory."
God revealed to Macarius that two women in the nearest city excelled him
in virtue, in spite of all his fasting, and tears, and prayer. He took
his staff, and left the desert, and went in quest of them, and lo! they
were two homely married women, of whom no one talked, but who were
extremely careful not to say spiteful things of their neighbours, who
had not the smallest idea that they were saints, and who laboured night
and day to make home pleasant to their husbands and children.
Lucius, the Arian usurper of the see of Alexandria, who had expelled
Peter, the successor of S. Athanasius, in 376, sent troops into the
deserts, to disperse the zealous monks, several of whom sealed their
faith with their blood. The chiefs, the two Macarii, Isidore, Pambo, and
others, were banished, by the authority of the Emperor Valens, to a
little isle of Egypt, in the midst of stagnant marshes. The inhabitants,
who were pagans, were all converted to the faith by these confessors.
The public indignation obliged Lucius to suffer them to return to their
cells.
The Church of God flashes forth some peculiar type of sanctity at one
time, and then another. It is like a rain-drop in the sun, blazing now
crimson, now green, now yellow, now blue. As there is need, God calls up
an army of Saints, exactly adapted to meet the difficulties of the
times, to uphold the truth, and form, as it were, a prop to stay up his
tottering Church. Now it is the martyrs, who by their constancy conquer
the infidels, now it is these hermits of the Syrian and Egyptian
deserts, against whose orthodoxy Arianism breaks and crumbles to powder.
Humanly speaking, these hermits saved the doctrine of the Godhead of
Christ from being denied, and disappearing from the creed of the Church.
An age like the present, so like the condition of the Roman world in its
highest civilization, when pleasure and self-will are the sole things
sought, and when Arianism is in power in high places, and the learned
and polished, admitting the excellency of Christianity in general, allow
to Christ only the place of a founder of a school of religious
thought--such an age as this seems one meet for the revival of the
hermit life as a witness for the truth, and a protest against luxury.
This, and this only, as far as we can judge, will meet the great want of
the day; it is not preaching that will recover the multitude lapsed into
religious indifference; it must be the example of men, believing with
such a fiery faith, that they sacrifice everything the world holds
precious, for the sake of the truth that Jesus Christ, the everlasting
God, came in the Flesh.
Nothing in the wonderful history of the hermits of Egypt is so
incredible as their number. But the most weighty authorities agree in
establishing it. 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 resistless force. Let us quote some figures. Pachomius, who died at
fifty-six, reckoned three thousand monks under his rule; his monasteries
of Tabenna soon included seven thousand, and S. Jerome affirms that as
many as fifty thousand were present at the annual gathering of the
general congregation of monasteries which followed his rule.
There were five thousand on the mountain of Nitria alone. Nothing was
more frequent than to see two hundred, three hundred, or five hundred
monks under the same abbot. Near Arsinoë (now Suez), the abbot Serapion
governed ten thousand, who, in the harvest time, spread themselves over
the country to cut the corn, and thus gained the means of living and
giving alms. It has even been asserted that there were as many monks in
the deserts of Egypt as inhabitants in the towns. The towns themselves
were, so to speak, inundated by them, since in 356, a traveller found in
the single town of Oxyrynchus (Abou Girge) upon the Nile, ten thousand
monks and twenty thousand virgins consecrated to God.[52] The immense
majority of these religious were cenobites, that is to say, they lived
in the same enclosure, and were united by common rule and practice under
an elected head, whom they everywhere called abbot, from the Syriac word
_abba_, which means _father_. The cenobitical life superseded rapidly,
and almost completely, the life of solitaries. Scarcely any man became a
solitary until after having been a cenobite, and in order to meditate
upon God during the last years of his life. Custom has, therefore, given
the title of monks to cenobites alone.
Ambitious at once of reducing to subjection their rebellious flesh, and
of penetrating the secrets of the celestial light, these cenobites
united the active with the contemplative life. The various and incessant
labours which filled up their days are known. In the great frescoes of
the cemetery of Pisa, they appear in their coarse black or brown
dresses, a cowl upon their shoulders, occupied in digging up the soil,
in cutting down trees, in fishing in the Nile, in milking the goats, in
gathering the dates which served them for food, in plaiting the mats on
which they were to die. Others are absorbed in reading or meditating on
the Holy Scriptures. Thus a Saint has said that the cells united in the
desert were like a hive of bees. There each had in his hands the wax of
labour, and in his mouth the honey of psalms and prayers. The days were
divided between prayer and work. The work was divided between field
labour and the exercise of various trades. There were among these monks
entire colonies of weavers, of carpenters, of curriers, of tailors, and
of fullers.[53] All the rules of the patriarchs of the desert made
labour obligatory, and the example of their holy lives gave authority to
the rule. When Macarius of Egypt came to visit the great Antony, they
immediately set to work on their mats together, conferring thus upon
things important to souls; and Antony was so edified by the zeal of the
priest, that he kissed his hands, saying, "What virtues proceed from
these hands!"
Each monastery was then a great school of labour; it was also, at the
same time, a great school of charity. The monks practised charity not
only among themselves, and with regard to the poor inhabitants of the
neighbouring countries, but especially in the case of travellers whom
the necessities of commerce called to the banks of the Nile, and of the
numerous pilgrims, whom their increasing fame drew to the desert. A more
generous hospitality had never been exercised, nor had the universal
mercy, introduced by Christianity into the world, blossomed anywhere to
such an extent. A thousand incidents in their history reveal the most
tender solicitude for the miseries of the poor. The _Xenodochium_--that
is, the asylum for the poor and strangers--formed from that time a
necessary appendix to every monastery. The most ingenious combinations,
and the most gracious inspirations of charity are to be found in this
history. A certain monastery served as an hospital for sick children;
another was transformed by its founder into an hospital for lepers and
cripples. "Behold," said he, in shewing to the ladies of Alexandria the
upper floor which was reserved for women, "behold my jacinths." Then
conducting them to the floor below, were the men were placed, "See my
emeralds."
They were hard only upon themselves. Under a burning sky, in a climate
which has always seemed the cause, or the excuse of vice, in a country
given up at all times to every kind of luxury and depravity, there were
thousands of men who, during two centuries, interdicted themselves from
the very shadow of a sensual gratification, and made of the most
rigorous mortification a rule as universal as a second nature.
It was their rule also to cultivate the mind by the study of sacred
literature. The rule of S. Pachomius made the reading of divers portions
of the Bible a strict obligation. All the monks, besides, were required
to be able to read and write. To qualify themselves for reading the
Scriptures was the first duty imposed upon the novices.
When, towards evening, at the hour of vespers, after a day of stifling
heat, all work ceased, and from the midst of the sands, from the depths
of caverns, from pagan temples cleared of their idols, and from all the
vast tombs of a people dead, now occupied by these men dead to the
world, the cry of a living people rose to heaven; when everywhere, and
all at once, the air vibrated with hymns, prayers, and the pious and
solemn, tender and joyous songs of these champions of the soul and
conquerors of the desert, who celebrated, in the language of David, the
praises of the living God, the thanksgivings of the freed soul, and the
homage of vanquished passions,--then the traveller, the pilgrim, and
especially the new convert stood still, lost in emotion, and transported
with the sounds of that sublime concert, cried aloud, "Behold, this is
Paradise."[54]
"Go," said the most eloquent doctor of the Church at that period; "go to
the Thebaid; you will find there a solitude still more beautiful than
Paradise, a thousand choirs of angels under human form, nations of
martyrs, armies of virgins, the diabolical tyrant chained, and Christ
triumphant and glorified."[55]