tendency by not only repealing the disabilities imposed by the old
Roman law on those who remained unmarried, but by extending the power
of making wills to minors who professed the intention of celibacy.[196]
His piety and that of subsequent emperors speedily attributed to all
connected with the church certain exemptions from the intolerable
municipal burdens which were eating out the heart of the empire.
An enormous premium was thus offered to swell the ecclesiastical
ranks, while, as the number of the officiating clergy was necessarily
limited, the influx would naturally flow into the mass of monks and
nuns on whose increase there was no restriction, and whose condition
was open to all, with but slender examination into the fitness of the
applicant.[197] The rapidly increasing wealth of the church, and the
large sums devoted to the maintenance of all orders of the clergy,
offered additional temptations to those who might regard the life of
the ascetic as the means of securing an assured existence of idleness,
free from all care of the morrow. If, therefore, during a period when
ridicule and persecution were the portion of those who vowed perpetual
continence, it had been found impossible to avoid the most deplorable
scandals,[198] it can readily be conceived that allurements such as
these would crowd the monastic profession with proselytes of a most
questionable character, drawn from a society so frightfully dissolute
as that of the fourth century. The fierce declamations of St. Jerome
afford a terrible picture of the disorders prevalent among those
vowed to celibacy, and of the hideous crimes resorted to in order
to conceal or remove the consequences of guilt, showing that the
asceticism enforced by Siricius had not wrought any improvement.[199]
The necessity of subjecting those bound by vows to established rules
must therefore have soon become generally recognized; and although
as we have already seen, they were free at any time to abandon the
profession which they had assumed, still, while they remained as
members, the welfare of the church would render all right-minded men
eager to hail any attempt to establish rules of wholesome discipline.
The first authoritative attempt to check disorders of the kind is to be
found in the first council of Carthage, which in 348 insisted that all
who, shunning marriage, elected the better lot of chastity, should live
separate and solitary, and that none should have access to them under
penalty of excommunication; and in 381 the Council of Saragossa sought
to remedy the evil at its root by forbidding virgins to take the veil
unless they could furnish proof that they were at least forty years of
age.[200]
Although the church, in becoming an affair of state, had to a great
extent sacrificed its independence, still it enjoyed the countervailing
advantage of being able to call upon the temporal power for assistance
when its own authority was defied, nor was it long in requiring this
aid in the enforcement of its regulations. Accordingly, in 364, we find
a law of Jovian forbidding, under pain of actual or civil death, any
attempt to marry a sacred virgin,[201] the extreme severity of which
is the best indication of the condition of morals that could justify
a resort to penalties so exaggerated. How great was the necessity for
reform, and how little was actually accomplished by these attempts,
may be estimated from an effort of the Council of Valence, in 374,
to prevent those who married from being pardoned after too short a
penance,[202] and from the description which ten years later Pope
Siricius gives of the unbridled and shameless license indulged in by
both sexes in violation of their monastic vows.[203]
* * * * *
Certain definite rules for the governance of these constantly
increasing crowds of all stations, conditions, and characters, who were
obviously so ill-fitted for the obligations which they had assumed,
became of course necessary, but it was long before they assumed an
irrevocable and binding force. The treatise which is known as the
rule of St. Oriesis is only a long and somewhat mystic exhortation to
asceticism. That which St. Pachomius is said to have received from an
angel is manifestly posterior to the date of that saint, and probably
belongs to the commencement of the fifth century. Minute as are its
instructions, and rigid as are its injunctions respecting every action
of the cenobite, yet it fully displays the voluntary nature of the
profession and the lightness of the bonds which tied the monk to his
order. A stranger applying for admission to a monastery was exposed
only to a probation of a few days, to test his sincerity and to prove
that he was not a slave; no vows were imposed, only his simple promise
to obey the rules being required. If he grew tired of ascetic life,
he departed, but he could not be again taken back without penitence
and the consent of the archimandrite.[204] Even female travellers
applying for hospitality were not refused admittance, and an inclosure
was set apart for them, where they were entertained with special honor
and attention; a place was likewise provided for them in which to be
present at vespers.[205]
A similar system of discipline is manifested in the detailed statement
of the regulations of the Egyptian monasteries left us by John
Cassianus, Abbot of St. Victor of Marseilles, who died in 448. No vows
or religious ceremonies were required of the postulant for admission.
He was proved by ten days’ waiting at the gate, and a year’s probation
inside, yet the slender tie between him and the community is shown by
the preservation of his worldly garments, to be returned to him in
case of his expulsion for disobedience or discontent, and also by the
refusal to receive from him the gift of his private fortune—although no
one within the sacred walls was permitted to call the simplest article
his own—lest he should leave the convent and then claim to revoke his
donation, as not unfrequently happened in institutions which neglected
this salutary rule.[206] So, in a series of directions for cenobitic
life, appended to a curious Arabic version of the Nicene canons, the
punishment provided for persistent disobedience and turbulence is
expulsion of the offender from the monastery.[207]
As a temporary refuge from the trials of life, where the soul could
be strengthened by seclusion, meditation, peaceful labor, and rigid
discipline, thousands must have found the institution of Monachism most
beneficial who had not resolution enough to give themselves up to a
life of ascetic devotion and privation. These facilities for entrance
and departure, however, only rendered more probable the admission of
the turbulent and the worldly; and the want of stringent and effective
regulations must have rendered itself every day more apparent, as the
holy multitudes waxed larger and more difficult to manage, and as the
empire became covered with wandering monks, described by St. Augustin
as beggars, swindlers, and peddlers of false relics, who resorted to
the most shameless mendacity to procure the means of sustaining their
idle and vagabond life.[208]
It was this, no doubt, which led to the adoption and enforcement of the
third of the monastic vows—that of obedience—as being the only mode by
which during the period when residence was voluntary, the crowds of
devotees could be kept in a condition of subjection. To what a length
this was carried, and how completely the system of religious asceticism
succeeded in its object of destroying all human feeling, is well
exemplified by the shining example of the holy Mucius, who presented
himself for admission in a monastery, accompanied by his child, a boy
eight years of age. His persistent humility gained for him a relaxation
of the rules, and father and son were admitted together. To test
his worthiness, however, they were separated, and all intercourse
forbidden. His patience encouraged a further trial. The helpless child
was neglected and abused systematically, but all the perverse ingenuity
which rendered him a mass of filth and visited him with perpetual
chastisement failed to excite a sign of interest in the father. Finally
the abbot feigned to lose all patience with the little sufferer’s
moans, and ordered Mucius to cast him in the river. The obedient monk
carried him to the bank and threw him in with such promptitude that the
admiring spectators were barely able to rescue him. All that is wanting
to complete the hideous picture is the declaration of the abbot that
in Mucius the sacrifice of Abraham was completed.[209] This epitomizes
the whole system—the transfer to man of the obedience due to God—and
shows how little, by this time, was left of the hopeful reliance on a
beneficent God which distinguished the primitive church, and which led
Athenagoras, in the second century, to argue from the premises “God
certainly impels no one to those things which are unnatural.”
The weaker sex, whether from the greater value attached to the purity
of woman or from her presumed frailty, as well as from some difference
in the nature of the engagement entered into, was the first to become
the subject of distinct legislation, and the frequency of the efforts
required shows the difficulty of enforcing the rule of celibacy and
chastity. Allusion has already been made to a law of Jovian which, as
early as 364, denounced the attempt to marry a nun as a capital crime.
Subsequent canons of the church show that this was wholly ineffectual.
The council of Valence, in 374, endeavored to check such marriages.
The synod of Rome, in 384, alludes with horror to these unions,
which it stigmatizes as adultery, and drawing a distinction between
virgins professed and those who had taken the veil, it prescribes an
indefinite penance before they can be received back into the church,
but at the same time it does not venture to order their separation
from their husbands.[210] A year later, the bolder Siricius commands
both monks and nuns guilty of unchastity to be imprisoned, but he
makes no allusion to marriage.[211] Notwithstanding the fervor of St.
Augustin’s admiration for virginity and the earnestness with which he
waged war in favor of celibacy, he pronounces that the marriage of nuns
is binding, ridicules those who consider it as invalid, and deprecates
the evil results of separating man and wife under such circumstances,
but yet his asceticism, satisfied with this concession to common sense,
pronounces such unions to be worse than adulterous.[212] From this it
is evident that these infractions of discipline were far from uncommon,
and that the stricter churchmen already treated such marriages as null
and void, which resulted in the husbands considering themselves at
liberty to marry again. Such view of monastic vows was not sustained
by the authorities of the church, for about the same period Innocent
I., like St. Augustin, while condemning such marriages as worse than
adulterous, admitted their validity by refusing communion to the
offenders until one of the partners in guilt should be dead; and,
like the synod of 384, he considered the transgression as somewhat
less culpable in the professed virgin than in her who had consummated
her marriage with Christ by absolutely taking the veil.[213] It was
probably this assumed marriage with Christ—a theory which St. Cyprian
shows to be as old as the third century, and which is very strongly
stated by Innocent—which rendered the church so much more sensitive
as to the frailty of the female devotees than to that of the men. As
yet, however, the stability of such marriages was generally accepted
throughout the church, for, a few years before the epistle of Innocent
we find it enunciated by the first council of Toledo, which decided
that the nun who married was not admissible to penitence during the
life of her husband, unless she separated herself from him.[214]
It is evident from all this that an effort had been made to have
such marriages condemned as invalid, and that it had failed. We see,
however, that the lines had gradually been drawn more tightly around
the monastic order, that the vows could no longer be shaken off with
ease, and that there was a growing tendency to render the monastic
character ineffaceable when once assumed. Towards the middle of the
fifth century, however, a reaction took place, possibly because the
extreme views may have been found impracticable. Thus Leo I. treats
recalcitrant cenobites with singular tenderness. He declares that monks
cannot without sin abandon their profession, and therefore that he who
returns to the world and marries must redeem himself by penitence, for
however honorable be the marriage-tie and the active duties of life,
still it is a transgression to desert the better path. So professed
virgins, who throw off the habit and marry, violate their duty, and
those who in addition to this have been regularly consecrated commit a
great crime—and yet no further punishment is indicated for them;[215]
and the little respect still paid to the indelible character claimed
for monachism is shown by the manner in which the civil power was ready
to interfere for the purpose of putting an end to some of the many
abuses arising from monastic institutions. In 458 Majorian promulgated
a law in which he inveighs with natural indignation against the parents
who, to get rid of their offspring, compel their unhappy daughters to
enter convents at a tender age, and he orders that, until the ardor of
the passions shall be tempered by advancing years, no vows shall be
administered. The minimum age for taking the veil is fixed at forty
years and stringent measures are provided for insuring its observance.
If infringed by order of the parents, or by an orphan girl of her
own free will, one-third of all the possessions of the offender is
confiscated to the state, and the ecclesiastics officiating at the
ceremony are visited with the heavy punishment of proscription. A woman
forced into a nunnery, if her parents die before she reaches the age
of forty, is declared to be free to leave it and to marry, nor can she
be disinherited thereafter.[216] Fruitless as this well-intentioned
effort proved, it is highly suggestive as to the wrongs which were
perpetrated under the name of religion, the stern efforts felt to be
requisite for their prevention, and the power exercised to annul the
vows.
* * * * *
In the East, the tendency was to give a more rigid and unalterable
character to the vows, nor is it difficult to understand the cause.
Both church and state began to feel the necessity of reducing to
subjection under some competent authority the vast hordes of idle and
ignorant men who had embraced monastic life. In the West, monachism
was as yet in its infancy, and was to be stimulated rather than to be
dreaded, but it was far otherwise in the East, where the influence
of the ascetic ideas of India was much more direct and immediate.
The examples of Antony and Pachomius had brought them innumerable
followers. The solitudes of the deserts had become peopled with vast
communities, and as the contagion spread, monasteries arose everywhere
and were rapidly filled and enlarged.[217] The blindly bigoted and the
turbulently ambitious found a place among those whose only aim was
retirement and peace; while the authority wielded by the superior of
each establishment, through the blind obedience claimed under monastic
vows, gave him a degree of power which rendered him not only important
but dangerous. The monks thus became in time a body of no little weight
which it behooved the church to thoroughly control, as it might become
efficient for good or evil. By encouraging and directing it, she
gained an instrument of incalculable force, morally and physically, to
consolidate her authority and extend her influence. How that influence
was used, and how the monks became at times a terror even to the state
is written broadly on the history of the age. Even early in the fifth
century the hordes of savage Nitrian cenobites were the janizaries of
the fiery Cyril, with which he lorded it over the city of Alexandria,
and almost openly bade defiance to the imperial authority. The tumult
in which Orestes nearly lost his life, the banishment of the Jews, and
the shocking catastrophe of Hypatia show how dangerous an element to
society they were even then, when under the guidance of an able and
unscrupulous leader.[218] So the prominent part taken by the monks
in the deplorable Nestorian and Eutychian controversies, the example
of the Abbot Barsumas at the Robber Synod in Ephesus, the exploits
of Theodosius of Jerusalem and Peter of Antioch, who drove out their
bishops and usurped the episcopal chairs, the career of Eutyches
himself, the bloodthirsty rabble of monks who controlled the synod
of Ephesus and endeavored to overawe that of Chalcedon, and, in the
succeeding century, the insurrections against the Emperor Anastasius
which were largely attributed to their efforts—all these were warnings
not lightly to be neglected. The monks, in fact, were fast becoming
not only disagreeable but even dangerous to the civil power; their
organization and obedience to their leaders gave them strength to
seriously threaten the influence even of the hierarchy, and the effort
to keep them strictly under subjection and within their convent walls
became necessary to the peace of both church and state.
At the council of Chalcedon, in 451, the hierarchy had their revenge
for the insults which they had suffered two years before in the Robber
Synod. A large portion of the monks, infected with Eutychianism, came
into direct antagonism with the bishops, whom they defied. With the aid
of the civil power, the bishops triumphed, and endeavored to put an end
for the future to monastic insubordination, by placing the monasteries
under the direct control and supervision of the secular prelates. A
series of canons was adopted which declared that monks and nuns were
not at liberty to marry; but while excommunication was the punishment
provided for the offence, power was given to the bishops to extend
mercy to the offenders. At the suggestion of the Emperor Marcian,
the council deplored the turbulence of the monks who, leaving their
monasteries, stirred up confusion everywhere, and it commanded them to
devote themselves solely to prayer and fasting in the spot which they
had chosen as a retreat from the world. It forbade them to abandon
the holy life to which they had devoted themselves, and pronounced
the dread sentence of the anathema on the renegades who refused to
return and undergo due penance. No monastery was to be founded without
the license of the bishop of the locality, and he alone could give
permission to a monk to leave it for any purpose.[219]
This legislation was well adapted to the end in view, but the evil was
too deep-seated and too powerful to be thus easily eradicated. Finding
the church unable to enforce a remedy, the civil power was compelled to
intervene. As early as 390 Theodosius the Great had ordered the monks
to confine themselves strictly to deserts and solitudes.[220] Two years
later he repealed this law and allowed them to enter the cities.[221]
This laxity was abused, and in 466 the Emperors Leo and Anthemius
issued an edict forbidding for the future all monks to go beyond the
walls of their monasteries on any pretext, except the apocrisarii, or
legal officers, on legitimate business alone, and these were strictly
enjoined not to engage in religious disputes, not to stir up the
people, and not to preside over assemblages of any nature.[222]
History shows us how little obedience this also received, nor is it
probable that much more attention was paid to the imperial rescript
when, in 532, Justinian confirmed the legislation of his predecessors,
and added provisions forbidding those who had once taken the vows
from returning to the world under penalty of being handed over to the
_curia_ of their municipality, with confiscation of their property,
and personal punishment if penniless.[223] Had the effort then been
successful, he would not have been under the necessity of renewing it
in 535 by a law making over to the monastery, by way of satisfaction
to God, the property of any monk presuming to abandon a life of
religion and returning to the cares of the world.[224] The prevalent
laxity of manners is further shown by another provision according to
which the monk who received orders was not allowed to marry, even
if he entered grades in which marriage was permitted to the secular
clergy, the penalty for taking a wife or a concubine being degradation
and dismissal, with incapacity for serving the state.[225] Ten years
later, further legislation was found necessary, and at length the final
expedient was hit upon, by which the apostate monk was handed over
to the bishop to be placed in a monastery, from which if he escaped
again he was delivered to the secular tribunal as incorrigible.[226]
The trouble was apparently incurable. Three hundred and fifty years
later, Leo the Philosopher deplores it, and orders all recalcitrant
monks to be returned to their convents as often as they may escape. As
for the morals of monastic life, it may be sufficient to refer to the
regulation of St. Theodore Studita, in the ninth century, prohibiting
the entrance of even female animals.[227]
* * * * *
Thus gradually the irrevocable nature of monastic vows became
established in the East, more from reasons of state than from
ecclesiastical considerations. In the West, matters were longer
in reaching a settlement, and the causes operating were somewhat
different. Monachism there had not become a terror to the civil power,
and its management was left to the church; yet, if its influence was
insufficient to excite tumults and seditions, it was none the less
disorganized, and its disorders were a disgrace to those on whom rested
the responsibility.
The Latin church was not by any means insensible to this disgrace, nor
did it underrate the importance of rendering the vows indissoluble,
of binding its servants absolutely and forever to its service, and of
maintaining its character and influence by endeavoring to enforce a
discipline that should insure purity. During the period sketched above,
and for the two following centuries, there is scarcely a council which
did not enact canons showing at once the persistent effort to produce
these results and the almost insurmountable difficulty of accomplishing
them. It would lead us too far to enter upon the minutiæ of these
perpetually reiterated exhortations and threats, or of the various
expedients which were successively tried. Suffice it to say that the
end in view was never lost sight of, while the perseverance of the
wrongdoer seems to have rivalled that of the disciplinarian. The anvil
bade fair to wear out the hammer, while the confusion and lawlessness
of those dismal ages gave constantly increasing facilities to those
who desired to escape from the strictness of the ascetic life to which
they had devoted themselves. Thus arose a crowd of vagabond monks,
_gyrovagi_, _acephali_, _circilliones_, _sarabaitæ_, who, without
acknowledging obedience to any superior, or having any definite place
of abode, wandered over the face of the country, claiming the respect
and immunities due to a sacred calling, for the purpose of indulging in
an idle and dissolute life—vagrants of the worst description, according
to the unanimous testimony of the ecclesiastical authorities of the
period.[228]