THE AGE OF FAITH IN THE WEST--(_Continued_).
IMAGE-WORSHIP AND THE MONKS.
_Origin of_ IMAGE-WORSHIP.--_Inutility of Images discovered in
Asia and Africa during the Saracen Wars.--Rise of Iconoclasm._
_The Emperors prohibit Image-worship.--The Monks, aided by
court Females, sustain it.--Victory of the latter._
_Image-worship in the West sustained by the Popes.--Quarrel
between the Emperor and the Pope.--The Pope, aided by the
Monks, revolts and allies himself with the Franks._
THE MONKS.--_History of the Rise and Development of
Monasticism.--Hermits and Coenobites.--Spread of Monasticism
from Egypt over Europe.--Monk Miracles and
Legends.--Humanization of the monastic Establishments.--They
materialize Religion, and impress their Ideas on Europe._
[Sidenote: Influence of the Arabians.]
The Arabian influence, allying itself to philosophy, was henceforth
productive of other than military results. To the loss of Africa and
Asia was now added a disturbance impressed on Europe itself, ending in
the decomposition of Christianity into two forms, Greek and Latin, and
in three great political events--the emancipation of the popes from the
emperors of Constantinople, the usurpation of power by a new dynasty in
France, the reconstruction of the Roman empire in the West.
The dispute respecting the worship of images led to those great events.
The acts of the Mohammedan khalifs and of the iconoclastic or
image-breaking emperors occasioned that dispute.
[Sidenote: Worship of relics and images.]
[Sidenote: Its rapid spread in Christendom.]
Nothing could be more deplorable than the condition of southern Europe
when it first felt the intellectual influence of the Arabians. Its old
Roman and Greek populations had altogether disappeared; the races of
half-breeds and mongrels substituted for them were immersed in
fetichism. An observance of certain ceremonials constituted a religious
life. A chip of the true cross, some iron filings from the chain of St.
Peter, a tooth or bone of a martyr, were held in adoration; the world
was full of the stupendous miracles which these relics had performed.
But especially were painted or graven images of holy personages supposed
to be endowed with such powers. They had become objects of actual
worship. The facility with which the Empress Helena, the mother of
Constantine the Great, had given an aristocratic fashion to this
idolatry, showed that the old pagan ideas had never really died out, and
that the degenerated populations received with approval the religious
conceptions of their great predecessors. The early Christian fathers
believed that painting and sculpture were forbidden by the Scriptures,
and that they were therefore wicked arts; and, though the second Council
of Nicea asserted that the use of images had always been adopted by the
Church, there are abundant facts to prove that the actual worship of
them was not indulged in until the fourth century, when, on the occasion
of its occurrence in Spain, it was condemned by the Council of
Illiberis. During the fifth century the practice of introducing images
into churches increased, and in the sixth it had become prevalent. The
common people, who had never been able to comprehend doctrinal
mysteries, found their religious wants satisfied in turning to these
effigies. With singular obtuseness, they believed that the saint is
present in his image, though hundreds of the same kind were in
existence, each having an equal and exclusive right to the spiritual
presence. The doctrine of invocation of departed saints, which assumed
prominence in the fifth century, was greatly strengthened by these
graphic forms. Pagan idolatry had reappeared.
[Sidenote: Simple fetiches replaced by images.]
[Sidenote: Bleeding and winking images.]
At first the simple cross was used as a substitute for the amulets and
charms of remoter times; it constituted a fetich able to expel evil
spirits, even Satan himself. This Being, who had become singularly
debased from what he was in the noble Oriental fictions, was an
imbecile and malicious though not a malignant spirit, affrighted not
only at pieces of wood framed in the shape of a cross, but at the form
of it made by the finger in the air. A subordinate dæmon was supposed to
possess every individual at his birth, but he was cast out by baptism.
When, in the course of time, the cross became a crucifix, offering a
representation of the dying Redeemer, it might be supposed to have
gathered increased virtue; and soon, in addition to that adorable form,
were introduced images of the Virgin, the apostles, saints, and martyrs.
The ancient times seemed to have come again, when these pictures were
approached with genuflexions, luminaries, and incense. The doctrine of
the more intelligent was that these were aids to devotion, and that,
among people to whom the art of reading was unknown, they served the
useful purpose of recalling sacred events in a kind of hieroglyphic
manner. But among the vulgar, and monks, and women, they were believed
to be endowed with supernatural power. Of some, the wounds could bleed;
of others, the eyes could wink; of others, the limbs could be raised. In
ancient times, the statues of Minerva could brandish spears, and those
of Venus could weep.
[Sidenote: Idolatry never extinguished in Greece and Italy.]
In truth, the populations of the Greek and Latin countries were no more
than nominally converted and superficially Christianized. The old
traditions and practices had never been forgotten. A tendency to
idolatry seemed to be the necessary incident of the climate. Not without
reason have the apologists of the clergy affirmed that image-worship was
insisted on by the people, and that the Church had to admit ideas that
she had never been able to eradicate. After seven hundred years of
apostolic labour, it was found that the populace of Greece and Italy
were apparently in their old state, and that actually nothing at all had
been accomplished; the new-comers had passed into the track of their
predecessors. It is often said that the restoration of image-worship was
owing to the extinction of civilization by the Northern barbarians. But
this is not true. In the blood of the German nations the taint of
idolatry is but small. In their own countries they gave it little
encouragement, and, indeed, hastened quickly to its total rejection. The
sin lay not with them, but with the Mediterranean people.
[Sidenote: Influence of the barbarians.]
Nor are those barbarians to be held accountable for the so-called
extinction of civilization in Italy. The true Roman race had prematurely
died; it came to an untimely end in consequence of its dissolute, its
violent life. Its civilization would have spontaneously died with it had
no barbarian been present; and, if these intruders produced a baneful
effect at first, they compensated for it in the end. As, when fresh coal
is added to a fire that is burning low, a still further diminution will
ensue, perhaps there may be a risk of entirely putting it out; but in
due season, if all goes well, the new material will join in the
contagious blaze. The savages of Europe, thrown into the decaying foci
of Greek and Roman light, did perhaps for a time reduce the general
heat; but, by degrees, it spread throughout their mass, and the bright
flame of modern civilization was the result. Let those who lament the
intrusion of these men into the classical countries, reflect upon the
result which must otherwise have ensued--the last spark would soon have
died out, and nothing but ashes have remained.
[Sidenote: Origin of Iconoclasm.]
Three causes gave rise to Iconoclasm, or the revolt against
image-worship: 1st, the remonstrances and derision of the Mohammedans;
2nd, the good sense of a great sovereign, Leo the Isaurian, who had
risen by his merit from obscurity, and had become the founder of a new
dynasty at Constantinople; 3rd, the detected inability of these
miracle-working idols and fetiches to protect their worshippers or
themselves against an unbelieving enemy. Moreover, an impression was
gradually making its way among the more intelligent classes that
religion ought to free itself from such superstitions. So important were
the consequences of Leo's actions, that some have been disposed to
assign to his reign the first attempt at making policy depend on
theology; and to this period, as I have elsewhere remarked, they
therefore refer the commencement of the Byzantine empire. Through one
hundred and twenty years, six emperors devoted themselves to this
reformation. But it was premature. They were overpowered by the populace
and the monks, by the bishops of Rome, and by a superstitious and wicked
woman.
[Sidenote: Inutility of miraculous images discovered in the Arab
invasions.]
[Sidenote: Destruction and sale of idols by the Arabs.]
It had been a favourite argument against the pagans how little their
gods could do for them when the hour of calamity came, when their
statues and images were insulted and destroyed, and hence how vain was
such worship, how imbecile such gods. When Africa and Asia, full of
relics and crosses, pictures and images, fell before the Mohammedans,
those conquerors retaliated the same logic with no little effect. There
was hardly one of the fallen towns that had not some idol for its
protector. Remembering the stern objurgations of the prophet against
this deadly sin, prohibited at once by the commandment of God and
repudiated by the reason of man, the Saracen khalifs had ordered all the
Syrian images to be destroyed. Amid the derision of the Arab soldiery
and the tears of the terror-stricken worshippers, these orders were
remorselessly carried into effect, except in some cases where the
temptation of an enormous ransom induced the avengers of the unity of
God to swerve from their duty. Thus the piece of linen cloth on which it
was feigned that our Saviour had impressed his countenance, and which
was the palladium of Edessa, was carried off by the victors at the
capture of that town, and subsequently sold to Constantinople at the
profitable price of twelve thousand pounds of silver. This picture, and
also some other celebrated ones, it was said, possessed the property of
multiplying themselves by contact with other surfaces, as in modern
times we multiply photographs. Such were the celebrated images "made
without hands."
[Sidenote: The Emperor prohibits image-worship.]
[Sidenote: The monks sustain it.]
It was currently asserted that the immediate origin of Iconoclasm was
due to the Khalif Yezed, who had completed the destruction of the Syrian
images, and to two Jews, who stimulated Leo the Isaurian to his task.
However that may be, Leo published an edict, A.D. 726, prohibiting the
worship of images. This was followed by another directing their
destruction, and the whitewashing of the walls of churches ornamented
with them. Hereupon the clergy and the monks rebelled; the emperor was
denounced as a Mohammedan and a Jew. He ordered that a statue of the
Saviour in that part of the city called Chalcopratia should be removed,
and a riot was the consequence. One of his officers mounted a ladder and
struck the idol with an axe upon its face; it was an incident like that
enacted centuries before in the temple of Serapis at Alexandria. The
sacred image, which had often arrested the course of Nature and worked
many miracles, was now found to be unable to protect or to avenge its
own honour. A rabble of women interfered in its behalf; they threw down
the ladder and killed the officer; nor was the riot ended until the
troops were called in and a great massacre perpetrated. The monks spread
the sedition in all parts of the empire; they even attempted to proclaim
a new emperor. Leo was everywhere denounced as a Mohammedan infidel, an
enemy of the Mother of God; but with inflexible resolution he persisted
in his determination as long as he lived.
[Sidenote: They accuse the emperor of atheism.]
His son and successor, Constantine, pursued the same iconoclastic
policy. From the circumstance of his accidentally defiling the font at
which he was being baptized, he had received the suggestive name of
Copronymus. His subsequent career was asserted by the monks to have been
foreshadowed by his sacrilegious beginnings. It was publicly asserted
that he was an atheist. In truth, his biography, in many respects,
proves that the higher classes in Constantinople were largely infected
with infidelity. The patriarch deposed upon oath that Copronymus had
made the most irreligious confessions to him, as that our Saviour, far
from being the Son of God, was, in his opinion, a mere man, born of his
mother in the common way. The truth of these accusations was perhaps, in
a measure, sustained by the revenge that the emperor took on the
patriarch for his indiscreet revelations. He seized him, put out his
eyes, caused him to be led through the city mounted on an ass, with his
face to the tail, and then, as if to show his unutterable contempt for
all religion, with an exquisite malice, appointed him to his office
again.
[Sidenote: Council of Constantinople prohibits image-worship.]
If such was the religious condition of the emperor, the higher clergy
were but little better. A council was summoned by Constantine, A.D. 754,
at Constantinople, which was attended by 388 bishops. It asserted for
itself the position of the seventh general council. It unanimously
decreed that all visible symbols of Christ, except in the Eucharist, are
blasphemous or heretical; that image-worship is a corruption of
Christianity and a renewed form of paganism; it directed all statues and
paintings to be removed from the churches and destroyed, it degraded
every ecclesiastic and excommunicated every layman who should be
concerned in setting them up again. It concluded its labours with
prayers for the emperor who had extirpated idolatry and given peace to
the Church.
[Sidenote: Uproar among the monks.]
[Sidenote: The emperor retaliates.]
But this decision was by no means quietly received. The monks rose in an
uproar; some raised a clamour in their caves, some from the tops of
their pillars; one, in the church of St. Mammas, insulted the emperor to
his face, denouncing him as a second apostate Julian. Nor could he
deliver himself from them by the scourging, strangling, and drowning of
individuals. In his wrath, Copronymus, plainly discerning that it was
the monks on one side and the government on the other, determined to
strike at the root of the evil, and to destroy monasticism itself. He
drove the holy men out of their cells and cloisters; made the
consecrated virgins marry; gave up the buildings for civil uses; burnt
pictures, idols, and all kinds of relics; degraded the patriarch from
his office, scourged him, shaved off his eyebrows, set him for public
derision in the circus in a sleeveless shirt, and then beheaded him.
Already he had consecrated a eunuch in his stead. Doubtless these
atrocities strengthened the bishops of Rome in their resolve to seek a
protector from such a master among the barbarian kings of the West.
[Sidenote: Re-establishment of image-worship by Irene the murderess.]
Constantine Copronymus was succeeded by his son, Leo the Chazar, who,
during a short reign of five years, continued the iconoclastic policy.
On his death his wife Irene seized the government, ostensibly in behalf
of her son. This woman, pre-eminently wicked and superstitious beyond
her times, undertook the restoration of images. She caused the patriarch
to retire from his dignity, appointed one of her creatures, Tarasius, in
his stead, and summoned another council. In this second Council of Nicea
that of Constantinople was denounced as a synod of fools and atheists,
the worship of images was pronounced agreeable to Scripture and reason,
and in conformity to the usages and traditions of the Church.
Irene, saluted as the second Helena, and set forth by the monks as an
exemplar of piety, thus accomplished the restoration of image-worship.
In a few years this ambitious woman, refusing to surrender his rightful
dignity to her son, caused him to be seized, and, in the porphyry
chamber in which she had borne him, put out his eyes. Constantinople,
long familiar with horrible crimes, was appalled at such an unnatural
deed.
[Sidenote: Resumption of Iconoclasm by the succeeding emperors.]
[Sidenote: Their Saracenic tastes.]
During the succeeding reigns to that of Leo the Armenian, matters
remained without change; but that emperor resumed the policy of Leo the
Isaurian. By an edict he prohibited image-worship, and banished the
Patriarch of Constantinople, who had admonished him that the apostles
had made images of the Saviour and the Virgin, and that there was at
Rome a picture of the Transfiguration, painted by order of St. Peter.
After the murder of Leo, his successor, Michael the Stammerer, showed no
encouragement to either party. It was affirmed that he was given to
profane jesting, was incredulous as to the resurrection of the dead,
disbelieved the existence of the devil, was indifferent whether images
were worshipped or not, and recommended the patriarch to bury the
decrees of Constantinople and Nicea equally in oblivion. His successor
and son, however, observed no such impartiality. To Saracenic tastes,
shown by his building a palace like that of the khalif; to a devotion
for poetry, exemplified by branding some of his own stanzas on his
image-worshipping enemies; to the composition of music and its singing
by himself as an amateur in the choir; to mechanical knowledge,
displayed by hydraulic contrivances, musical instruments, organs,
automatic singing-birds sitting in golden trees, he added an
abomination of monks and a determined iconoclasm. Instead of merely
whitewashing the walls of the churches, he adorned them with pictures of
beasts and birds. Iconoclasm had now become a struggle between the
emperors and the monks.
[Sidenote: Final restoration of image-worship by the Empress Theodora.]
Again, on the death of Theophilus, image-worship triumphed, and
triumphed in the same manner as before. His widow, Theodora, alarmed by
the monks for the safety of the soul of her husband, purchased
absolution for him at the price of the restoration of images.
Such was the issue of Iconoclasm in the East. The monks proved stronger
than the emperors, and, after a struggle of 120 years, the images were
finally restored. In the West far more important consequences followed.
[Sidenote: Image-worship in the West.]
[Sidenote: It is sustained by the pope,]
To image-worship Italy was devoutly attached. When the first edict of
Leo was made known by the exarch, it produced a rebellion, of which Pope
Gregory II. took advantage to suspend the tribute paid by Italy. In
letters that he wrote to the emperor he defended the popular delusion,
declaring that the first Christians had caused pictures to be made of
our Lord, of his brother James, of Stephen, and all the martyrs, and had
sent them throughout the world; the reason that God the Father had not
been painted was that his countenance was not known. These letters
display a most audacious presumption of the ignorance of the emperor
respecting common Scripture incidents, and, as some have remarked,
suggest a doubt of the pope's familiarity with the sacred volume. He
points out the difference between the statues of antiquity, which are
only the representations of phantoms, and the images of the Church,
which have approved themselves, by numberless miracles, to be the
genuine forms of the Saviour, his mother, and his saints. Referring to
the statue of St. Peter, which the emperor had ordered to be broken to
pieces, he declares that the Western nations regard that apostle as a
god upon earth, and ominously threatens the vengeance of the pious
barbarians if it should be destroyed. In this defence of images Gregory
found an active coadjutor in a Syrian, John of Damascus, who had
witnessed the rage of the khalifs against the images of his own country,
and whose hand, having been cut off by those tyrants, had been
miraculously rejoined to his body by an idol of the Virgin to which he
prayed.
[Sidenote: and by the Lombard king.]
But Gregory was not alone in his policy, nor John of Damascus in his
controversies. The King of the Lombards, Luitprand, also perceived the
advantage of putting himself forth as the protector of images, and of
appealing to the Italians, for their sake, to expel the Greeks from the
country. The pope acted on the principle that heresy in a sovereign
justifies withdrawal of allegiance, the Lombard that it excuses the
seizure of possessions. Luitprand accordingly ventured on the capture of
Ravenna. An immense booty, the accumulation of the emperors, the Gothic
kings, and the exarchs, which was taken at the storming of the town, at
once rewarded his piety, stimulated him to new enterprises of a like
nature, and drew upon him the attention of his enemy the emperor, whom
he had plundered, and of his confederate the pope, whom he had
overreached.
[Sidenote: Position of affairs at this time.]
[Sidenote: The Saracens dominate in the Mediterranean.]
[Sidenote: Causes of the alliance of the popes and the Franks.]
This was the position of affairs. If the Lombards, who were Arians, and
therefore heretics, should succeed in extending their sway all over
Italy, the influence and prosperity of the papacy must come to an end;
their action on the question of the images was altogether of an
ephemeral and delusive kind, for all the northern nations preferred a
simple worship like that of primitive times, and had never shown any
attachment to the adoration of graven forms. If, on the other hand, the
pope should continue his allegiance to Constantinople, he must be liable
to the atrocious persecutions so often and so recently inflicted on the
patriarchs of that city by their tyrannical master; and the breaking of
that connexion in reality involved no surrender of any solid advantages,
for the emperor was too weak to give protection from the Lombards.
Already had been experienced a portentous difficulty in sending relief
from Constantinople, on account of the naval superiority of the Saracens
in the Mediterranean. For the taxes paid to the sovereign no real
equivalent was received; but Rome, in ignominy, was obliged to submit,
like an obscure provincial town, to the mandates of the Eastern court.
Moreover, in her eyes, the emperor, by reason of his iconoclasm, was a
heretic. But if alliance with the Lombards and allegiance to the Greeks
were equally inexpedient, a third course was possible. A mayor of the
palace of the Frankish kings had successfully led his armies against the
Arabs from Spain, and had gained the great victory of Tours. If the
Franks, under the influence of their climate or the genius of their
race, had thus far shown no encouragement to images, in all other
respects they were orthodox, for they had been converted by Catholic
missionaries; their kings, it was true, were mere phantoms, but Charles
Martel had proved himself a great soldier; he was, therefore, an
ambitious man. There was Scripture authority for raising a subordinate
to sovereign power; the prophets of Israel had thus, of old, with oil
anointed kings. And if the sword of France was gently removed from the
kingly hand that was too weak to hold it, and given to the hero who had
already shown that he could smite terribly with it--if this were done by
the authority of the pope, acting as the representative of God, how
great the gain to the papacy! A thousand years might not be enough to
separate the monarchy of France from the theocracy of Italy.
[Sidenote: Revolt of the pope from the emperor.]
[Sidenote: Alliance of the pope and the Franks.]
The resistance which had sprung up to the imperial edict for the
destruction of images determined the course of events. The pope
rebelled, and attempts were made by the emperor to seize or assassinate
him. A fear that the pontiff might be carried to Constantinople, and the
preparations making to destroy the images in the churches, united all
Italy. A council was held at Rome, which anathematized the Iconoclasts.
In retaliation, the Sicilian and other estates of the Church were
confiscated. Gregory III., who in the meantime succeeded to the papacy,
continued the policy of his predecessor. The emperor was defied. A
fleet, fitted out by him in support of the exarch, was lost in a storm.
With this termination of the influence of Constantinople in Italy came
the imminent danger that the pope must acknowledge the supremacy of the
Lombards. In his distress Gregory turned to Charles Martel. He sent him
the keys of the sepulchre of St. Peter, and implored his assistance. The
die was cast. Papal Rome revolted from her sovereign, and became
indissolubly bound to the barbarian kingdoms. To France a new dynasty
was given, to the pope temporal power, and to the west of Europe a
fictitious Roman empire.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: The monks.]
The monks had thus overcome the image-breaking emperors, a result which
proves them to have already become a formidable power in the state. It
is necessary, for a proper understanding of the great events with which
henceforth they were connected, to describe their origin and history.
[Sidenote: Their first position]
In the iconoclastic quarrel they are to be regarded as the
representatives of the common people in contradistinction to the clergy;
often, indeed, the representatives of the populace, infected with all
its instincts of superstition and fanaticism. They are the upholders of
miracle-cures, invocation of saints, worship of images, clamorous
asserters of a unity of faith in the Church--a unity which they never
practised, but which offered a convenient pretext for a bitter
persecution of heresy and paganism, though they were more than half
pagan themselves.
[Sidenote: and subsequent improvement.]
It was their destiny to impress on the practical life of Europe that
mixture of Christianity and heathenism engendered by political events in
Italy and Greece. Yet, while they thus co-operated in great affairs,
they themselves exhibited, in the most signal manner, the force of that
law of continuous variation of opinion and habits to which all enduring
communities of men must submit. Born of superstition, obscene in their
early life, they end in luxury, refinement, learning. Theirs is a
history to which we may profitably attend.
[Sidenote: The first hermits.]
[Sidenote: Their self-denial.]
From very early times there had been in India zealots who, actuated by a
desire of removing themselves from the temptations of society and
preparing for another life, retired into solitary places. Such also were
the Essenes among the Jews, and the Therapeutæ in Egypt. Pliny speaks
of the blameless life of the former when he says, "They are the
companions of palms;" nor does he hide his astonishment at an immortal
society in which no one is ever born. Their example was not lost upon
more devout Christians, particularly after the influence of Magianism
began to be felt. Though it is sometimes said that the first of these
hermits were Anthony and Paulus, they doubtless are to be regarded as
only having rendered themselves more illustrious by their superior
sanctity among a crowd of worthies who had preceded them or were their
contemporaries. As early as the second and third centuries the practice
of retirement had commenced among Christians; soon afterwards it had
become common. The date of Hilarion is about A.D. 328, of Basil A.D.
360. Regarding prayer as the only occupation in which man may profitably
engage, they gave no more attention to the body than the wants of nature
absolutely demanded. A little dried fruit or bread for food, and water
for drink, were sufficient for its support; occasionally a particle of
salt might be added, but the use of warm water was looked upon as
betraying a tendency to luxury. The incentives to many of their rules of
life might excite a smile, if it were right to smile at the acts of
earnest men. Some, like the innocent Essenes, who would do nothing
whatever on the Sabbath, observed the day before as a fast, rigorously
abstaining from food and drink, that nature might not force them into
sin on the morrow. For some, it was not enough, by the passive means of
abstinence, to refrain from fault or reduce the body to subjection,
though starvation is the antidote for desire; the more active, and,
perhaps, more effectual operation of periodical flagellations and bodily
torture were added. Ingenuity was taxed to find new means of personal
infliction. A hermit who never permitted himself to sleep more than an
hour without being awakened endured torments not inferior to those of
the modern fakir, who crosses his arms on the top of his head and keeps
them there for years, until they are wasted to the bone, or suspends
himself to a pole by means of a hook inserted in the flesh of his back.
[Sidenote: Profound contemplation of God.]
[Sidenote: Aerial martyrs. Holy birds.]
Among the Oriental sects there are some who believe that the Supreme
Being is perpetually occupied in the contemplation of himself, and that
the nearer man can approach to a state of total inaction the more will
he resemble God. For many years the Indian sage never raises his eyes
from his navel; absorbed in the profound contemplation of it, his
perennial reverie is unbroken by any outward suggestions, the admiring
by-standers administering, as chance offers, the little food and water
that his wants require. Under the influence of such ideas, in the fifth
century, St. Simeon Stylites, who in his youth had often been saved from
suicide, by ascending a column he had built, sixty feet in height, and
only one foot square at the top, departed as far as he could from
earthly affairs, and approached more closely to heaven. On this elevated
retreat, to which he was fastened by a chain, he endured, if we may
believe the incredible story, for thirty years the summer's sun and the
winter's frost. Afar off the passer-by was edified by seeing the
motionless figure of the holy man with outstretched arms like a cross,
projected against the sky, in his favourite attitude of prayer, or
expressing his thankfulness for the many mercies of which he supposed
himself to be the recipient by rapidly striking his forehead against his
knees. Historians relate that a curious spectator counted twelve hundred
and forty-four of these motions, and then abstained through fatigue from
any farther tally, though the unwearied exhibition was still going on.
This "most holy aerial martyr," as Evagrius calls him, attained at last
his reward, and Mount Telenissa witnessed a vast procession of devout
admirers accompanying to the grave his mortal remains.
[Sidenote: The monks insist on celibacy.]
More commonly, however, the hermit declined the conspicuous notoriety of
these "holy birds," as they were called by the profane, and, retiring to
some cave in the desert, despised the comforts of life, and gave himself
up to penance and prayer. Among men who had thus altogether exalted
themselves above the wants of the flesh, there was no toleration for its
lusts. The sinfulness of the marriage relation, and the pre-eminent
value of chastity, followed from their principles. If it was objected to
such practices that by their universal adoption the human species would
soon be extinguished, and no man would remain to offer praises to God,
these zealots, remembering the temptations from which they had escaped,
with truth replied that there would always be sinners enough in the
world to avoid that disaster, and that out of their evil works good
would be brought. St. Jerome offers us the pregnant reflection that,
though it may be marriage that fills the earth, it is virginity that
replenishes heaven.
[Sidenote: Grazing hermits.]
If they were not recorded by many truthful authors, the extravagances of
some of these enthusiasts would pass belief. Men and women ran naked
upon all fours, associating themselves with the beasts of the field. In
the spring season, when the grass is tender, the grazing hermits of
Mesopotamia went forth to the plains, sharing with the cattle their
filth, and their food. Of some, notwithstanding a weight of evidence,
the stupendous biography must tax their admirers' credulity. It is
affirmed that St. Ammon had never seen his own body uncovered; that an
angel carried him on his back over a river which he was obliged to
cross; that at his death he ascended to heaven through the skies, St.
Anthony being an eye-witness of the event--St. Anthony, who was guided
to the hermit Paulus by a centaur; that Didymus never spoke to a human
being for ninety years.
[Sidenote: Insane hermits.]
From the Jewish anchorites, who of old sought a retreat beneath the
shade of the palms of Engaddi, who beguiled their weary hours in the
chanting of psalms by the bitter waters of the Dead Sea; from the
philosophic Hindu, who sought for happiness in bodily inaction and
mental exercise, to these Christian solitaries, the stages of delusion
are numerous and successive. It would not be difficult to present
examples of each step in the career of debasement. To one who is
acquainted with the working and accidents of the human brain, it will
not be surprizing that an asylum for hermits who had become hopelessly
insane was instituted at Jerusalem.
[Sidenote: Causes of hallucinations.]
The biographies of these recluses, for ages a source of consolation to
the faithful in their temptations, are not to be regarded as mere works
of fiction, though they abound in supernatural occurrences, and are the
forerunners of the dæmonology of the Middle Ages. The whole world was a
scene of dæmoniac adventures, of miracles and wonders. So far from being
mere impostures, they relate nothing more than may be witnessed at any
time under similar conditions. In the brain of man, impressions of
whatever he has seen or heard, of whatever has been made manifest to him
by his other senses, nay, even the vestiges of his former thoughts, are
stored up. These traces are most vivid at first, but, by degrees, they
decline in force, though they probably never completely die out. During
our waking hours, while we are perpetually receiving new impressions
from things that surround us, such vestiges are overpowered, and cannot
attract the attention of the mind. But in the period of sleep, when
external influences cease, they present themselves to our regard, and
the mind submitting to the delusion, groups them into the fantastic
forms of dreams. By the use of opium and other drugs which can blunt our
sensibility to passing events, these phantasms may be made to emerge.
They also offer themselves in the delirium of fevers and in the hour of
death.
[Sidenote: Supernatural appearances.]
It is immaterial in what manner or by what agency our susceptibility to
the impressions of surrounding objects is benumbed, whether by drugs, or
sleep, or disease, as soon as their force is no greater than that of
forms already registered in the brain, those forms will emerge before
us, and dreams or apparitions are the result. So liable is the mind to
practise deception on itself, that with the utmost difficulty it is
aware of the delusion. No man can submit to long-continued and rigorous
fasting without becoming the subject of these hallucinations; and the
more he enfeebles his organs of sense, the more vivid is the exhibition,
the more profound the deception. An ominous sentence may perhaps be
incessantly whispered in his ear; to his fixed and fascinated eye some
grotesque or abominable object may perpetually present itself. To the
hermit, in the solitude of his cell, there doubtless often did appear,
by the uncertain light of his lamp, obscene shadows of diabolical
import; doubtless there was many an agony with fiends, many a struggle
with monsters, satyrs, and imps, many an earnest, solemn, and manful
controversy with Satan himself, who sometimes came as an aged man,
sometimes with a countenance of horrible intelligence, and sometimes as
a female fearfully beautiful. St. Jerome, who, with the utmost
difficulty, had succeeded in extinguishing all carnal desires,
ingenuously confesses how sorely he was tried by this last device of the
enemy, how nearly the ancient flames were rekindled. As to the reality
of these apparitions, why should a hermit be led to suspect that they
arose from the natural working of his own brain? Men never dream that
they are dreaming. To him they were terrible realities; to us they
should be the proofs of insanity, not of imposture.
[Sidenote: Delusions created by the mind.]
If, in the prison discipline of modern times, it has been found that
solitary confinement is a punishment too dreadful for the most hardened
convict to bear, and that, if persisted in, it is liable to lead to
insanity, how much more quickly must that unfortunate condition have
been induced when the trials of religious distress and the physical
enfeeblement arising from rigorous fastings and incessant watchings were
added? To the dreadful ennui which precedes that state, one of the
ancient monks pathetically alludes when he relates how often he went
forth and returned to his cell, and gazed on the sun as if he hastened
too slowly to his setting. And yet such fearful solitude is of but brief
duration. Even though we flee to the desert we cannot be long alone. Cut
off from social converse, the mind of man engenders companions for
itself--companions like the gloom from which they have emerged. It was
thus that to St. Anthony appeared the Spirit of Fornication, under the
form of a lascivious negro boy; it was thus that multitudes of dæmons of
horrible aspect cruelly beat him nearly to death, the brave old man
defying them to the last, and telling them that he did not wish to be
spared one of their blows; it was thus that in the night, with hideous
laughter, they burst into his cell, under the form of lions, serpents,
scorpions, asps, lizards, panthers, and wolves, each attacking him in
own way; thus that when, in his dire extremity, he lifted his eyes for
help, the roof disappeared, and amid beams of light the Saviour looked
down; thus it was with the enchanted silver dish that Satan gave him,
which, being touched, vanished in smoke; thus with the gigantic bats and
centaurs, and the two lions that helped him to scratch a grave for Paul.
[Sidenote: Important religious results of cerebral sight.]
[Sidenote: A future world.]
[Sidenote: Immortality of the soul.]
The images that may thus emerge from the brain have been classed by
physiologists among the phenomena of inverse vision, or cerebral sight.
Elsewhere I have given a detailed investigation of their nature (Human
Physiology, chap, xxi.), and, persuaded that they have played a far more
important part in human affairs than is commonly supposed, have thus
expressed myself: "Men in every part of the world, even among nations
the most abject and barbarous, have an abiding faith not only in the
existence of a spirit that animates us, but also in its immortality. Of
these there are multitudes who have been shut out from all communion
with civilized countries, who have never been enlightened by revelation,
and who are mentally incapable of reasoning out for themselves arguments
in support of those great truths. Under such circumstances, it is not
very likely that the uncertainties of tradition, derived from remote
ages, could be any guide to them, for traditions soon disappear except
they be connected with the wants of daily life. Can there be, in a
philosophical view, anything more interesting than the manner in which
these defects have been provided for by implanting in the very
organization of every man the means of constantly admonishing him of
these facts--of recalling them with an unexpected vividness before even
after they have become so faint as almost to die out? Let him be as
debased and benighted a savage as he may, shut out from all communion
with races whom Providence has placed in happier circumstances, he has
still the same organization, and is liable to the same physiological
incidents, as ourselves. Like us, he sees in his visions the fading
forms of landscapes which are perhaps connected with some of his most
grateful recollections, and what other conclusion can he possibly derive
from these unreal pictures than that they are the foreshadowings of
another land beyond that in which his lot is cast. Like us, he is
revisited at intervals by the resemblances of those whom he has loved or
hated while they were alive, nor can he ever be so brutalized as not to
discern in such manifestations suggestions which to him are
incontrovertible proofs of the existence and immortality of the soul.
Even in the most refined social conditions we are never able to shake
off the impressions of these occurrences, and are perpetually drawing
from them the same conclusions that our uncivilized ancestors did. Our
more elevated condition of life in no respect relieves us from the
inevitable consequences of our own organization, any more than it
relieves us from infirmities and disease. In these respects, all over
the globe we are on an equality. Savage or civilized, we carry within us
a mechanism intended to present to us mementoes of the most solemn facts
with which we can be concerned, and the voice of history tells us that
it has ever been true to its design. It wants only moments of repose or
sickness, when the influence of external things is diminished, to come
into full play, and these are precisely the moments when we are best
prepared for the truths it is going to suggest. Such a mechanism is in
keeping with the manner in which the course of nature is fulfilled, and
bears in its very style the impress of invariability of action. It is no
respecter of persons. It neither permits the haughtiest to be free from
its monitions, nor leaves the humblest without the consolation of a
knowledge of another life. Liable to no mischances, open to no
opportunities of being tampered with by the designing or interested,
requiring no extraneous human agency for its effect, but always present
with each man wherever he may go, it marvellously extracts from vestiges
of the impressions of the past overwhelming proofs of the reality of the
future, and gathering its power from what would seem to be a most
unlikely source, it insensibly leads us, no matter who or where we may
be, to a profound belief in the immortal and imperishable, from phantoms
that have scarcely made their appearance before they are ready to vanish
away."
[Sidenote: Amelioration of monasticism.]
[Sidenote: Its final corruptions.]
From such beginnings the monastic system of Europe arose--that system
which presents us with learning in the place of ferocious ignorance,
with overflowing charity to mankind in the place of malignant hatred of
society. The portly abbot on his easy going palfrey, his hawk upon his
fist, scarce looks like the lineal descendant of the hermit starved
into insanity. How wide the interval between the monk of the third and
the monk of the thirteenth century--between the caverns of Thebais and
majestic monasteries cherishing the relics of ancient learning, the
hopes of modern philosophy--between the butler arranging his
well-stocked larder, and the jug of cold water and crust of bread. A
thousand years had turned starvation into luxury, and alas! if the
spoilers of the Reformation are to be believed, had converted visions of
loveliness into breathing and blushing realities, who exercised their
charms with better effect than of old their phantom sisters had done.
[Sidenote: The modifications of eremitism.]
[Sidenote: Number of anchorites.]
The successive stages to this end may be briefly described. Around the
cell of some eremite like Anthony, who fixed his retreat on Mount
Colzim, a number of humble imitators gathered, emulous of his
austerities and of his piety. A similar sentiment impels them to observe
stated hours of prayer. Necessity for supporting the body indicates some
pursuit of idle industry, the plaiting of mats or making of baskets. So
strong is the instinctive tendency of man to association, that even
communities of madmen may organize. Hilarion is said to have been the
first who established a monastic community. He went into the desert when
he was only fifteen years old. Eremitism thus gave birth to
Coenobitism, and the evils of solitude were removed. Yet still there
remained rigorous anchorites who renounced their associated brethren as
these had renounced the world, and the monastery was surrounded by their
circle of solitary cells--a Laura, it was called. In Egypt, the sandy
deserts on each side of the rich valley of the river offered great
facilities for such a mode of life: that of Nitria was full of monks,
the climate being mild and the wants of man easily satisfied. It is said
that there were at one time in that country of these religious recluses
not fewer than seventy-six thousand males and twenty-seven thousand
females. With countless other uncouth forms, under the hot sun of that
climate they seemed to be spawned from the mud of the Nile. As soon as
from some celebrated hermitage a monastery had formed, the associates
submitted to the rules of brotherhood. Their meal, eaten in silence,
consisted of bread and water, oil, and a little salt. The bundle of
papyrus which had served the monk for a seat by day, while he made his
baskets or mats, served him for a pillow by night. Twice he was roused
from his sleep by the sound of a horn to offer up his prayers. The
culture of superstition was compelled by inexorable rules. A discipline
of penalties, confinement, fasting, whipping, and, at a later period
even mutilation, was inflexibly administered.
[Sidenote: Spread of monasticism from Egypt.]
[Sidenote: Increase of the religious houses.]
From Egypt and Syria monachism spread like an epidemic. It was first
introduced into Italy by Athanasius, assisted by some of the disciples
of Anthony; but Jerome, whose abode was in Palestine, is celebrated for
the multitude of converts he made to a life of retirement. Under his
persuasion, many of the high-born ladies of Rome were led to the
practice of monastic habits, as far as was possible, in secluded spots
near that city, on the ruins of temples, and even in the Forum. Some
were induced to retreat to the Holy Land, after bestowing their wealth
for pious purposes. The silent monk insinuated himself into the privacy
of families for the purpose of making proselytes by stealth. Soon there
was not an unfrequented island in the Mediterranean, no desert shore, no
gloomy valley, no forest, no glen, no volcanic crater, that did not
witness exorbitant selfishness made the rule of life. There were
multitudes of hermits on the desolate coasts of the Black Sea. They
abounded from the freezing Tanais to the sultry Tabenné. In rigorous
personal life and in supernatural power the West acknowledged no
inferiority to the East; his admiring imitators challenged even the
desert of Thebais to produce the equal of Martin of Tours. The solitary
anchorite was soon supplanted by the coenobitic establishment, the
monastery. It became a fashion among the rich to give all that they had
to these institutions for the salvation of their own souls. There was
now no need of basket-making or the weaving of mats. The brotherhoods
increased rapidly. Whoever wanted to escape from the barbarian invaders,
or to avoid the hardships of serving in the imperial army--whoever had
become discontented with his worldly affairs, or saw in those dark times
no inducements in a home and family of his own, found in the monastery
a sure retreat. The number of these religious houses eventually became
very great. They were usually placed on the most charming and
advantageous sites, their solidity and splendour illustrating the
necessity of erecting durable habitations for societies that were
immortal. It often fell out that the Church laid claim to the services
of some distinguished monk. It was significantly observed that the road
to ecclesiastical elevation lay through the monastery porch, and often
ambition contentedly wore for a season the cowl, that it might seize
more surely the mitre.
[Sidenote: Difference of the Eastern and Western monk.]
[Sidenote: Legends of Western saints.]
Though the monastic system of the East included labour, it was greatly
inferior to that of the West in that particular. The Oriental monk, at
first making selfishness his rule of life, and his own salvation the
grand object, though all the world else should perish, in his maturer
period occupied his intellectual powers in refined disputations of
theology. Too often he exhibited his physical strength in the furious
riots he occasioned in the streets of the great cities. He was a fanatic
and insubordinate. On the other hand, the Occidental monk showed far
less disposition for engaging in the discussion of things above reason,
and expended his strength in useful and honourable labour. Beneath his
hand the wilderness became a garden. To a considerable extent this
difference was due to physiological peculiarity, and yet it must not be
concealed that the circumstances of life in the two cases were not
without their effects. The old countries of the East, with their
worn-out civilization and worn-out soil, offered no inducements
comparable with the barbarous but young and fertile West, where to the
ecclesiastic the most lovely and inviting lands were open. Both,
however, coincided in this, that they regarded the affairs of life as
presenting perpetual interpositions of a providential or rather
supernatural kind--angels and devils being in continual conflict for the
soul of every man, who might become the happy prize of the one or the
miserable prey of the other. These spiritual powers were perpetually
controlling the course of nature and giving rise to prodigies. The
measure of holiness in a saint was the number of miracles he had
worked. Thus, in the life of St. Benedict, it is related that when his
nurse Cyrilla let fall a stone sieve, her distress was changed into
rejoicing by the prayer of the holy child, at which the broken parts
came together and were made whole; that once on receiving his food in a
basket, let down to his otherwise inaccessible cell, the devil vainly
tried to vex him by breaking the rope; that once Satan, assuming the
form of a blackbird, nearly blinded him by the flapping of his wings;
that once, too, the same tempter appeared as a beautiful Roman girl, to
whose fascinations, in his youth, St. Benedict had been sensible, and
from which he now hardly escaped by rolling himself among thorns. Once,
when his austere rules and severity excited the resentment of the
monastery over which he was abbot, the brethren--for monks have been
known to do such things--attempted to poison him, but the cup burst
asunder as soon as he took it into his hands. When the priest
Florentius, being wickedly disposed, attempted to perpetrate a like
crime by means of an adulterated loaf, a raven carried away the deadly
bread from the hand of St. Benedict. Instructed by the devil, the same
Florentius drove from his neighbourhood the holy man, by turning into
the garden of his monastery seven naked girls; but scarcely had the
saint taken to flight, when the chamber in which his persecutor lived
fell in and buried him beneath its ruins, though the rest of the house
was uninjured. Under the guidance of two visible angels, who walked
before him, St. Benedict continued his journey to Monte Casino, where he
erected a noble monastery; but even here miracles did not cease; for
Satan bewitched the stones, so that it was impossible for the masons to
move them until they were released by powerful prayers. A boy, who had
stolen from the monastery to visit his parents was not only struck dead
by God for his offence, but the consecrated ground threw forth his body
when they attempted to bury it; nor could it be made to rest until
consecrated bread was laid upon it. Two garrulous nuns, who had been
excommunicated by St. Benedict for their perverse prating, chanced to be
buried in the church. On the next administration of the sacrament, when
the deacon commanded all those who did not communicate to depart, the
corpses rose out of their graves and walked forth from the church.
[Sidenote: The character of these miracles.]
Volumes might be filled with such wonders, which edified the religious
for centuries, exacting implicit belief, and being regarded as of equal
authority with the miracles of the Holy Scriptures.
[Sidenote: Rise and progress of monastic orders.]
Though monastic life rested upon the principle of social abnegation,
monasticism, in singular contradiction thereto, contained within itself
the principle of organization. As early as A.D. 370, St. Basil, the
Bishop of Cæsarea, incorporated the hermits and coenobites of his
diocese into one order, called after him the Basilian. One hundred and
fifty years later, St. Benedict, under a milder rule, organised those
who have passed under his name, and found for them occupation in
suitable employments of manual and intellectual labour. In the ninth
century, another Benedict revised the rule of the order, and made it
more austere. Offshoots soon arose, as those of Clugni, A.D. 900; the
Carthusians, A.D. 1084; the Cistercians, A.D. 1098. A favourite pursuit
among them being literary labour, they introduced great improvements in
the copying of manuscripts; and in their illumination and illustration
are found the germs of the restoration of painting and the invention of
cursive handwriting. St. Benedict enjoined his order to collect books.
It has been happily observed that he forgot to say anything about their
character, supposing that they must all be religious. The Augustinians
were founded in the eleventh century. They professed, however, to be a
restoration of the society founded ages before by St. Augustine.
[Sidenote: The Benedictines.]
The influence to which monasticism attained may be judged of from the
boast of the Benedictines that "Pope John XXII., who died in 1334, after
an exact inquiry, found that, since the first rise of the order, there
had been of it 24 popes, near 200 cardinals, 7000 archbishops, 15,000
bishops, 15,000 abbots of renown, above 4000 saints, and upward of
37,000 monasteries. There have been likewise, of this order, 20 emperors
and 10 empresses, 47 kings and above 50 queens, 20 sons of emperors, and
48 sons of kings; about 100 princesses, daughters of kings and
emperors; besides dukes, marquises, earls, countesses, etc.,
innumerable. The order has produced a vast number of authors and other
learned men. Their Rabanus set up the school of Germany. Their Alcuin
founded the University of Paris. Their Dionysius Exiguus perfected
ecclesiastical computation. Their Guido invented the scale of music;
their Sylvester, the organ. They boasted to have produced Anselm,
Ildefonsus, and the Venerable Bede."
[Sidenote: Civilization of Europe by the monks.]
[Sidenote: Their later intellectual influence.]
We too often date the Christianization of a community from the
conversion of its sovereign, but it is not in the nature of things that
that should change the hearts of men. Of what avail is it if a barbarian
chieftain drives a horde of his savages through the waters of a river by
way of extemporaneous or speedy baptism? Such outward forms are of
little moment. It was mainly by the monasteries that to the peasant
class of Europe was pointed out the way of civilization. The devotions
and charities; the austerities of the brethren; their abstemious meal;
their meagre clothing, the cheapest of the country in which they lived;
their shaven heads, or the cowl which shut out the sight of sinful
objects; the long staff in their hands; their naked feet and legs; their
passing forth on their journeys by twos, each a watch on his brother;
the prohibitions against eating outside of the wall of the monastery,
which had its own mill, its own bakehouse, and whatever was needed in an
abstemious domestic economy; their silent hospitality to the wayfarer,
who was refreshed in a separate apartment; the lands around their
buildings turned from a wilderness into a garden, and, above all, labour
exalted and ennobled by their holy hands, and celibacy, for ever, in the
eye of the vulgar, a proof of separation from the world and a sacrifice
to heaven--these were the things that arrested the attention of the
barbarians of Europe, and led them on to civilization. In our own
material age, the advocates of the monastery have plaintively asked,
Where now shall we find an asylum for the sinner who is sick of the
world--for the man of contemplation in his old age, or for the statesman
who is tired of affairs? It was through the leisure procured by their
wealth that the monasteries produced so many cultivators of letters,
and transmitted to us the literary relics of the old times. It was a
fortunate day when the monk turned from the weaving of mats to the
copying of manuscripts--a fortunate day when he began to compose those
noble hymns and strains of music which will live for ever. From the
"Dies Iræ" there rings forth grand poetry even in monkish Latin. The
perpetual movements of the monastic orders gave life to the Church. The
Protestant admits that to a resolute monk the Reformation was due.
[Sidenote: Their materialization of religion.]
With these pre-eminent merits, the monastic institution had its evils.
Through it was spread that dreadful materialization of religion which,
for so many ages, debased sacred things; through it that worse than
pagan apotheosis, which led to the adoration--for such it really was--of
dead men; through it were sustained relics and lying miracles, a belief
in falsehoods so prodigious as to disgrace the common sense of man. The
apostles and martyrs of old were forgotten; nay, even the worship of God
was forsaken for shrines that could cure all diseases, and relics that
could raise the dead. Through it was developed that intense selfishness
which hesitated at no sacrifice either of the present or the future, so
far as this life is concerned, in order to insure personal happiness in
the next--a selfishness which, in the delusion of the times, passed
under the name of piety; and the degree of abasement from the dignity of
a man was made the measure of the merit of a monk.
END OF VOL. I.