NARROW ESCAPE FROM PERSECUTION—HIS ENTRANCE INTO A
MONASTERY—THE MONASTICISM OF THE EAST, A.D. 372.
About this time, 372-373, while Chrysostom was still residing in
Antioch, he narrowly escaped suffering the penalties of an imperial
decree issued by Valentinian and Valens against the practisers of
magical arts, or possessors even of magical books. A severe search was
instituted after suspected persons; soldiers were everywhere on the
watch to detect offenders. The persecution was carried on with peculiar
cruelty at Antioch, where it had been provoked by the detection of a
treasonable act of divination. The twenty-four letters of the alphabet
were arranged at intervals round the rim of a kind of charger, which
was placed on a tripod, consecrated with incantations and elaborate
ceremonies. The diviner, habited as a heathen priest, in linen robes,
sandals, and with a fillet wreathed about his head, chanted a hymn
to Apollo, the god of prophecy, while a ring in the centre of the
charger was slipped rapidly round a slender thread. The letters in
front of which the ring successively stopped indicated the character
of the oracle. The ring on this occasion was supposed to have pointed
to the first four letters in the name of the future Emperor, Θ Ε Ο
Δ. Theodorus, and probably many others who had the misfortune to own
the fatal syllables, were executed. There were, of course, multitudes
of eager informers, and zealous judges, who strove to allay the
suspicious fears of the Emperors, and to procure favour for themselves
by vigorous and wholesale prosecutions. Neither age, nor sex, nor rank
was spared; women and children, senators and philosophers, were dragged
to the tribunals, and committed to the prisons of Rome and Antioch
from the most distant parts of Italy and Asia. Many destroyed their
libraries in alarm—so many innocent books were liable to be represented
as mischievous or criminal; and thus much valuable literature
perished.[109] It was during this dreadful time, when suspicion was
instantly followed by arrest, and arrest by imprisonment, torture,
and probably death, that Chrysostom chanced to be walking with a
friend to the Church of the Martyr Babylas, outside the city. As they
passed through the gardens by the banks of the Orontes, they observed
fragments of a book floating down the stream. Curiosity led them to
fish it out; but, to their dismay, on examining it, they found that it
was inscribed with magical formulæ, and, to increase their alarm, a
soldier was approaching at no great distance. At first they knew not
how to act; they feared the book had been cast into the river by the
artifice of an informer to entrap some unwary victim. They determined,
however, to throw their dangerous discovery back into the river, and
happily the attention or suspicions of the soldier were not roused.
Chrysostom always gratefully looked back to this escape as a signal
instance of God’s mercy and protection.[110]
It must have been soon after this incident and previous to the edict of
persecution against the monks issued by Valens in 373, that Chrysostom
exchanged what might be called the amateur kind of monastic life passed
in his own home for the monastery itself. Whether his mother was now
dead or had become reconciled to the separation, or whether her son’s
passionate enthusiasm for monastic retirement became irresistible,
it is impossible to determine. His mother is not mentioned by him in
his writings after this point, except in allusion to the past, which
is a strong presumption that she was no longer living. Bishop Meletius
would probably have endeavoured to detain him for some active work in
the Church, but he was now in exile; and to Flavian, the successor of
Meletius, Chrysostom was possibly not so intimately known.
During the first four centuries of the Christian era, the enthusiasm
for monastic life prevailed with ever increasing force. We are,
perhaps, naturally inclined to associate monasticism chiefly with the
Western Christianity of the Middle Ages. But the original and by far
the most prolific parent of monasticism was the East. There were always
ascetics in the Christian Church; yet asceticism is the product not
so much of Christianity as of the East; of the oriental temperament,
which admires and cultivates it; of the oriental climate, which makes
it tolerable even when pushed to the most rigorous extremes. Asceticism
is the natural practical expression of that deeply-grounded conviction
of an essential antagonism between the flesh and spirit which pervades
all oriental creeds. Even the monastic form of it was known in the East
before Christianity. The Essenes in Judæa, the Therapeutæ in Egypt,
were prototypes of the active and contemplative communities of monks.
The primitive ascetics of the Christian Church were not monks. They
were persons who raised themselves above the common level of religious
life by exercises in fasting, prayer, study, alms-giving, celibacy,
bodily privations of all kinds. These habits obtained for them great
admiration and reverence. Such persons are frequently designated by
writers of the first three centuries as “an ascetic,” “a follower of
the religious ascetics.”[111] But they did not form a class distinctly
marked off by dress and habitation from the rest of the world, like the
monks or even the anchorites of later time. They lived in the cities or
wherever their home might be, and were not subject to any rules beyond
those of their own private making. Eusebius calls them σπουδαῖοι,
“earnest persons;” and Clemens Alexandrinus ἐκλεκτῶν ἐκλεκτότεροι,
“more elect than the elect.”[112] Midway between the primitive ascetic
and the fully-developed monk must be placed the anchorite or hermit,
who made a step in the direction of monasticism by withdrawing
altogether from the city or populous places into the solitudes of
mountain or desert. Persecution assisted the impulse of religious
fervour. Paul retired to the Egyptian Thebaid during the persecution of
Decius in A.D. 251, and Antony during that of Maximin in A.D. 312. They
are justly named the fathers or founders of the anchorites, because,
though not actually the first, they were the most distinguished; and
the fame of their sanctity, their austerities, their miracles, produced
a tribe of followers. The further Antony retired into the depths of
the wilderness the more numerous became his disciples. They grouped
their cells around the habitation of the saintly father, and out of
the clusters grew in process of time the monastery. A number of cells
ranged in lines like an encampment, not incorporated in one building,
was called a “Laura” or street.[113] This was the earliest and simplest
kind of monastic establishment. It was a community, though without much
system or cohesion.
The real founder of the Cœnobia or monasteries in the East was the
Egyptian Pachomius; he was the Benedict of the East. His rule was that
most generally adopted, not only in Egypt but throughout the oriental
portions of the Empire. He and Antony had now been dead about twenty
years, and Hilarius, the pupil and imitator of Antony, had lately
introduced monasticism on the Pachomian model into Syria. In about
fifty years more, the nomadic Saracens will gaze with veneration and
awe at the spectacle of Simeon on his pillar, forty miles from Antioch.
Thousands will come to receive baptism at his hands; his image will
have been placed over the entrance of the shops in Rome.[114] The
spirit had been already caught in the West. The feelings of abhorrence
with which the Italians first beheld the wild-looking Egyptian monks
who accompanied Athanasius to Rome had soon been exchanged for
veneration. The example of Marcellina, and the exhortations of her
brother Ambrose of Milan, had induced multitudes of women to take vows
of celibacy.[115] Most of the little islands on the coasts of the
Adriatic could boast of their monasteries or cells.[116] St. Martin
built his religious houses near Poitiers and Tours, and was followed to
his grave by two thousand brethren.[117] But St. Jerome, perhaps, more
than any one else, promoted the advance of monasticism in the West.
Born on the borders of East and West,[118] he mingled with the Eastern
Church at Antioch and Constantinople, and in the desert of Chalcis
had inured himself to the most severe forms of oriental asceticism,
and returned to Rome eager to impart to others a kindred spirit of
enthusiasm for the ascetic life. A little later, early in the fifth
century, John Cassianus, president of a religious establishment in
Marseilles, propagated monastic institutions of an oriental type in the
south of France, and made men conversant with the system by his work
on the rules of the cloister. These were the scattered forces which in
the West awaited the master mind and strong hand of Benedict to mould
and discipline them into a mighty system. The nearest approach in the
West to the Egyptian system of Pachomius was among the Benedictines of
Camaldoli.
There is every reason to suppose on general grounds, and the
supposition is corroborated by notices in the writings of Chrysostom,
that the monasteries near Antioch, like the rest of the Syrian
monasteries, were based on the Pachomian model. Pachomius was a native
of the Thebaid, born in A.D. 292. He began to practise asceticism as
a hermit, but, according to the legend, was visited by an angel who
commanded him to promote the salvation of other men’s souls besides his
own, and presented him with a brazen tablet, on which were inscribed
the rules of the Order which he was to found. He established his first
community on Tabennæ, an island in the Nile, which became the parent of
a numerous offspring. Pachomius had the satisfaction in his lifetime of
seeing eight monasteries, containing in all 3000 monks, acknowledging
his rule; and after his death, in the first half of the fifth century,
their numbers had swelled to 50,000.[119] Chrysostom exulted with
Christian joy and pride over the spectacle of “Egypt, that land which
had been the mother of pagan literature and art, which had invented and
propagated every species of witchcraft, now despising all her ancient
customs, and holding up the Cross, in the desert no less if not more
than in the cities: ... for the sky was not more beautiful, spangled
with its hosts of stars, than the desert of Egypt studded in all
directions with the habitations of monks.”[120]
By the Pachomian rule no one was admitted as a full monk till after
three years of probation, during which period he was tested by the most
severe exercises. If willing, after that period, to continue the same
exercises, he was admitted without further ceremony beyond making a
solemn declaration that he would adhere to the rules of the monastery.
That no irrevocable vow was taken by the members of the monastery near
Antioch which Chrysostom joined seems proved by his return to the
city after a residence in the monastery of several years’ duration.
According to Sozomen, the several parts of the dress worn by Pachomian
monks had a symbolical meaning. The tunic (a linen garment reaching as
far as the knees) had short sleeves, to remind the wearers that they
should be prompt to do such honest work only as needed no concealment.
The hood was typical of the innocence and purity of infants, who wore
the same kind of covering; the girdle and scarf, folded about the
back, shoulders, and arms, were to admonish them that they should
be perpetually ready to do active service for God. Each cell was
inhabited by three monks. They took their chief meal in a refectory,
and ate in silence,[121] with a veil so arranged over the face that
they could see only what was on the table. No strangers were admitted,
except travellers, to whom they were bound, by the rule of their
Order, to show hospitality. The common meal or supper took place at
three o’clock,[122] up to which time they usually fasted. When it was
concluded, a hymn was sung, of which Chrysostom gives us a specimen,
though not in metrical form:[123] “Blessed be God, who nourisheth me
from my youth up, who giveth food to all flesh: fill our hearts with
joy and gladness, that we, having all sufficiency at all times, may
abound unto every good work, through Jesus Christ our Lord, with Whom
be glory, and honour, and power to Thee, together with the Holy Ghost,
for ever and ever, Amen. Glory to Thee, O Lord! Glory to Thee, Holy
One! Glory to Thee, King, who hast given us food to make us glad! Fill
us with the Holy Spirit, that we may be found well pleasing in thy
sight, and not ashamed when Thou rewardest every man according to his
works.”
The whole community in a Pachomian monastery was divided into
twenty-four classes, distinguished by the letters of the Greek
alphabet; the most ignorant, for instance, under class Iota, the more
learned under Xi or Zeta, such letters being in shape respectively
the simplest and the most complicated in the alphabet. Those hours
which were not devoted to services or study were occupied by manual
labour, partly to supply themselves with the necessaries of life,
partly to guard against the incursion of evil thoughts. There was a
proverbial saying attributed to some of the old Egyptian fathers, that
“a labouring monk was assaulted by one devil only, but an idle one
by an innumerable legion.” They wove baskets and mats, agriculture
was not neglected, nor even, among the Egyptian monks, ship-building.
Palladius, who visited the Egyptian monasteries about the close of the
fourth century, found, in the monastery of Panopolis, which contained
300 members, 15 tailors, 7 smiths, 4 carpenters, 12 camel-drivers,
15 tanners. Each monastery in Egypt had its steward, and a chief
steward stationed at the principal settlement had the supervision of
all the rest. All the products of monkish labour were shipped under
his inspection on the Nile for Alexandria. With the proceeds of their
sale, stores were purchased for the monasteries, and the surplus was
distributed amongst the sick and poor.[124]
A monastery founded on this model might be fairly described as a kind
of village containing an industrial and religious population; and had
the Eastern monks adhered to this simple and innocent way of life,
such communities might have become more and more schools of learning,
centres of civilisation, and homes of piety. But they were increasingly
forgetful of the wholesome saying of Antony, that a monk in the city
was like “a fish out of water.” Instead of attending exclusively to
their pious and industrial exercises, they mixed themselves up with the
theological and political contests which too often convulsed the cities
of the Eastern Empire. Their influence or interference was frequently
the reverse of peace-making, judicious, or Christian. They would rush
with fanatical fury into the city, to rescue the orthodox, or to attack
those whom they considered heretical. The evil had grown to such a
height by the reign of Arcadius, that a law was passed by which monks
were strictly forbidden to commit such outrages on civil order, and
bishops were commanded to prosecute the authors of such attempts.[125]
Eastern monasticism, in fact, partook of the character which
distinguished the Eastern Church as a whole, and which we may regard as
one principal cause of its corruption and decay. A certain stability,
sobriety, self-control, a law-making and law-respecting spirit, as it
is the peculiar merit of the Western, so the want of it is the peculiar
defect of the Oriental temperament. Hence a curious co-existence of
extremes; the passions, unnaturally repressed at one outlet by intense
asceticism, burst forth with increased fury at another. He who had
subdued his body in the wilderness or on the mountains by fastings and
macerations entertained the most implacable animosity towards pagans
and heretics, and fought them like a ruffian (the word is not too
strong for truth), when some tumult in an adjacent city afforded him
an opportunity for this robust mode of displaying and defending his
orthodoxy. Western monasticism, on the other hand, is distinguished
by more gravity, more of the old Roman quality, a love of stern
discipline. It did not run to such lengths of fanatical asceticism,
and consequently was exempt from such disastrous reactions. It never
produced such a caricature of the anchorite as Simeon Stylites, or
such savage zealots as the monkish bands who dealt their sturdy blows
in the religious riots of Constantinople and Alexandria. From the
notices scattered up and down Chrysostom’s writings of the monasteries
in the neighbourhood of Antioch, it appears that they conformed in all
essential respects to the Pachomian model. We might anticipate, indeed,
that, where such a man as Diodorus was president or visitor, they would
be conducted on a simple and rational system.
South of Antioch were the mountainous heights of Silpius and Casius,
whence rose the springs which in a variety of channels found their
way into the city, provided it with a constant and abundant supply
of the purest water, and irrigated the gardens for which it was
celebrated.[126] In this mountain region dwelt the communities of
monks, in separate huts or cells (κάλυβαι[127]), but subject to an
abbot, and a common rule. Chrysostom has in more passages than one
furnished us with a description of their ordinary costume, fare, and
way of life. He is fond of depicting their simple, frugal, and pious
habits, in contrast to the artificial and luxurious manners of the
gay and worldly people of the city. They were clad in coarse garments
of goat’s hair or camel’s hair, sometimes of skins, over their linen
tunics, which were worn both by night and day.[128] Before the first
rays of sunlight, the abbot went round, and struck those monks who were
still sleeping with his foot, to wake them. When all had risen,—fresh,
healthy, fasting, they sang together, under the precentorship of their
abbot, a hymn of praise to God. The hymn being ended, a common prayer
was offered up (again under the leadership of their abbot), and then
each at sunrise went to his allotted task, some to read, others to
write, others to manual labour, by which they made a good deal to
supply the necessities of the poor. Four hours in the day, the third,
the sixth, the ninth, and some time in the evening, were appointed for
prayers and psalms. When the daily work was concluded, they sat down,
or rather reclined, on strewn grass, to their common meal, which was
sometimes eaten out of doors by moonlight, and consisted of bread and
water only, with occasionally, for invalids, a little vegetable food
and oil. This frugal repast was followed by hymns, after which they
betook themselves to their straw couches, and slept, as Chrysostom
observes, free from those anxieties and apprehensions which beset the
worldly man. There was no need of bolts and bars, for there was no
fear of robbers. The monk had no possession but his body and soul,
and if his life was taken he would regard it as an advantage, for he
could say that to live was Christ, and to die was gain.[129] Those
words “mine and thine,” those fertile causes of innumerable strifes,
were unknown.[130] No lamentations were to be heard when any of the
brethren died. They did not say, “such a one is dead,” but, “he has
been perfected” (τετελείωται), and he was carried forth to burial
amidst hymns of praise, thanksgiving for his release, and the prayers
of his companions that they too might soon see the end of their labours
and struggles, and be permitted to behold Jesus Christ.[131] Such was
the simple and industrial kind of monastic body to which Chrysostom
for a time attached himself; and to the end of his life he regarded
such communities with the greatest admiration and sympathy. But he
never failed to maintain also the duty of work against those who
represented the perfection of the Christian life as consisting in mere
contemplation and prayer. Such a doctrine of otiose Christianity he
proved to be based on a too exclusive attention to certain passages in
the New Testament. If, for instance, our blessed Lord said to Martha,
“Thou art careful and troubled about many things, but one thing is
needful;” or again, “Take no thought for the morrow;” or, “Labour not
for the meat that perisheth”—all such passages were to be balanced and
harmonised by others, as, for example, St. Paul’s exhortation to the
Thessalonians to be “quiet and to do their own business,” and “let
him that stole steal no more, but rather let him labour, working with
his hands that which is good, that he may have to give to him that
needeth.” He points out that the words of our Lord do not inculcate
total abstinence from work, but only censure an undue anxiety about
earthly things, to the exclusion or neglect of spiritual concerns.
The contemplative form of monasticism, based on misconception of
Holy Scripture, had, he observes, seriously injured the cause of
Christianity, for it occasioned practical men of the world to deride it
as a source of indolence.[132]