WORKS PRODUCED DURING HIS MONASTIC LIFE—THE LETTERS TO
DEMETRIUS AND STELECHIUS—TREATISES ADDRESSED TO THE
OPPONENTS OF MONASTICISM—LETTER TO STAGIRIUS.
Several treatises were composed by Chrysostom during his monastic
life. Among the first must be placed two books addressed to Demetrius
and Stelechius. Of these the former was evidently written soon after
the commencement of his retreat, for he speaks of having recently
determined to take the step, and of the petty anxieties about food
and other personal comforts which had at first unsettled his purpose
a little. But he had soon conquered these hankerings after the more
luxurious life which he had abandoned. It seemed to him a disgrace
that one to whom heaven and celestial joys were offered, such as eye
had not seen nor ear heard, should be so hesitating and timorous, when
those who undertook the management of public affairs did not shrink
from dangers and toil, and long journeys, and separation from wife and
children, and perhaps unfavourable criticism, but only inquired whether
the office were honourable and lucrative.[133]
The aim of the books is to animate torpid characters to a warmer piety,
first by drawing a lively picture of the depravity of the times,
secondly by a glowing description of the fervent energy of apostles and
apostolic saints, and insisting that those lofty heights of Christian
holiness were not unattainable by the Christian of his own day, if
he bent the whole energy of his will, aided by Divine grace, to the
attempt.
“So great,” he observes, “was the depravity of the times that if a
stranger were to compare the precepts of the Gospel with the actual
practice of society, he would infer that men were not the disciples,
but the enemies of Christ. And the most fatal symptom was their total
unconsciousness of this deep corruption. Society was like a body which
was outwardly vigorous, but concealed a wasting fever within; or like
an insane person who says and does all manner of shocking things,
but, instead of being ashamed, glories in the fancied possession of
superior wisdom.”[134] Chrysostom applies the test of the principal
precepts of morality in the Sermon on the Mount to the existing state
of Christian morals. Every one of them was shamelessly violated. A
kind of regard, superstitious or hypocritical, was paid to the command
in the letter, which was broken in the spirit. Persons, for instance,
who scrupled to use the actual expressions “fool” or “Raca,” heaped
all kinds of opprobrious epithets on their neighbours.[135] So the
command to be reconciled with a brother before approaching the altar
was really broken though formally kept. Men gave the kiss of peace
at the celebration of Holy Communion when admonished by the deacon
so to do, but continued to nourish resentful feelings in the heart
all the same.[136] Vainglory and ostentation robbed prayer, fasting
and almsgiving of their merit; and as for the precept “Judge not,” a
most uncharitable spirit of censoriousness pervaded every class of
society, including monks and ecclesiastics.[137] Contrast with this
false and hollow religion of the world the condition of one in whom
a deep compunction for sin, and a genuine love of Jesus Christ, was
awakened. The whole multitude of vain frivolous passions was dispersed
like dust before the wind. So it was with St. Paul. Having once turned
the eye of his soul towards heaven, and being entranced by the beauty
of that other world, he could not stoop to earth again. As a beggar,
in some gloomy hovel, if he saw a monarch glittering with gold and
radiant with jewels, might altogether for a time forget the squalor of
his dwelling-place in his eagerness to get inside the palace of the
king, so St. Paul forgot and despised the poverty and hardship of this
present world because the whole energy of his being was directed to the
attainment of that heavenly city.[138] But men objected to the citation
of apostolic examples. Paul and Peter, they said, were superhuman
characters; models beyond our limited powers. “Nay,” Chrysostom
replies, “these are feeble excuses. The Apostles were in all essential
points like ourselves. Did they not breathe the same kind of air? eat
the same kind of food? were not some of them married men? did they not
follow mechanical trades? nay more, had not some of them deeply sinned?
Men at the present day did not indeed receive grace at baptism to
work miracles, but they received enough to enable them to lead a good
and holy Christian life.[139] And the highest blessing of Christ—his
invitation to those who were called ‘blessed children’ to inherit the
kingdom prepared for them—was addressed, not to those who had wrought
miracles, but to those who had ministered to himself through feeding
the hungry, entertaining the stranger, visiting the sick and the
prisoners, who were his brethren. But grace, though undoubtedly given
by God, required man’s own co-operation to become effectual. Otherwise,
since God is no respecter of persons, it would have resided in equal
measure in all men; whereas we see that with one man it remains, from
another it departs; a third is never affected by it at all.”[140] The
second book on the same subject, addressed to another friend, named
Stelechius, is an expression of more rapturous and highly-wrought
feeling, and is more rhetorical in style. His description in the
beginning of the blessed freedom of the monk’s life from secular
vanities and cares, his remarks on David and St. Paul,[141] two of his
most favourite characters, and still more his masterly enumeration of
the manifold ways in which God manifests his providential care for
man,[142] well deserve to be read. They are too long to be translated
here in full, and a paraphrase would very inadequately represent such
passages, of which the peculiar beauty consists in the language more
even than in the ideas. One special interest of these books, written
immediately after his retirement from the world, is that they put
clearly before us what it was which drove him and many another to the
monastic life. It was a sense of the glaring and hideous contrast
between the Christianity of the Gospel and the Christianity of ordinary
society. A kind of implacable warfare,[143] as he expresses it, seemed
to be waged in the world against the commands of Christ; and he had
therefore determined, by seclusion from the world, to seek that kind of
life which he saw exhibited in the Gospels, but nowhere else.[144]
But the largest and most powerful work which Chrysostom produced during
this period was occasioned by the decree of the Emperor Valens in A.D.
373—a decree which struck at the roots of monasticism. It directed
that monks should be dragged from their retreats, and compelled to
discharge their obligations as citizens, either by serving in the
army, or performing the functions of any civil office to which they
might be appointed.[145] The edict is said to have been enforced with
considerable rigour, and in Egypt this seems to have been the case.
But it was evidently far from complete or universal in its operation.
None of Chrysostom’s brethren appear to have been compelled to return
to the city; certainly he himself was not. But they were liable, of
course, to the persecution which, under the shelter of the decree, all
the enemies of their order directed against them. These enemies of
monasticism were of several kinds. There were the zealous adherents of
the old paganism; men like Libanius, who were opposed to Christianity
on principle, and especially to the monastic form of it, as encouraging
idleness, and the dereliction of the duties of good citizens.
There were also the more worldly-minded Christians who had adopted
Christianity more from impulse or conformity than from conviction, and
who disliked the standing protest of monastic life against their own
frivolity. They were irritated also by the influence which the monks
often acquired over their wives and children, sometimes alluring the
latter from that lucrative line of worldly life which their fathers had
marked out for them. And lastly, there were those who regretted that
some men should have taken up a position of direct antagonism to the
world, instead of mingling with it, and infusing good leaven into the
mass of evil. The treatise of Chrysostom addressed “to the assailants
of monastic life” was intended to meet most of these objections.
A friend had brought the terrible tidings to his retreat of the
authorised persecution which had just broken out. He heard it with
indescribable horror. It was a sacrilege far worse than the destruction
of the Jewish Temple. That an Emperor (an Arian, indeed, yet professing
himself Christian) should organise the persecution, and that some
actually baptized persons should take, as his friend informed him, a
part in it, was an intolerable aggravation of the infliction. He would
rather die than witness such a calamity, and was ready to exclaim with
Elijah, “Now, O Lord, take away my life!” His friend roused him from
this state of despondency by suggesting that, instead of giving way
to useless lamentations, he should write an admonitory treatise to
the originators and abettors of this horrible persecution. At first
Chrysostom refused, partly from a feeling of incompetency, partly from
a dread of exposing to the pagans by his writings some of the internal
corruptions, dissensions, and weaknesses of the Church. His friend
replies that these were already but too notorious; and as for the
sufferings of the monks, they formed the topic of public conversation,
too often of public jest. In the market-place and in the doctors’ shops
the subject was freely canvassed, and many boasted of the part which
they had taken against the victims. “I was the first to lay hands on
such a monk,” one would cry, “and to give him a blow;” or, “I was
the first to discover his cell;” or, “I stimulated the judge against
him more than any one.” Such was the spirit of cruelty and profanity
by which even Christians were animated; and, as for the pagans,
they derided both parties. Roused by these dreadful communications,
the indignation of Chrysostom no longer hesitated to set about the
task.[146]
His pity, he says, was excited chiefly for the persecutors; they were
purchasing eternal misery for themselves, while the future reward of
their victims would be in proportion to the magnitude of their present
sufferings, since “Blessed were those whom men should hate, persecute,
and revile for Christ’s sake, and great was to be their reward in
heaven.”[147]
To persecute monks was to hinder that purity of life to which Christ
attached so deep an importance. It might be objected, Cannot men lead
lives uncontaminated at home? to which Chrysostom replies that he
heartily wishes they could, and that such good order and morality might
be established in cities as to make monasteries unnecessary. But at
present such gross iniquity prevailed in large towns, that men of pious
aspirations were compelled to fly to the mountain or the desert. The
blame should fall, not on those who escaped from the city, but on those
who made life there intolerable to virtuous men. He trusted the time
might come when these refugees would be able to return with safety to
the world.[148]
If it was objected that on this principle of reasoning the mass of
mankind was condemned, he could only reply, in the words of Christ
himself, “Narrow is the way which leadeth unto life, and few there be
that find it.” We must not honour a multitude before truth. If all
flesh was once destroyed except eight persons, we cannot be surprised
if the number of men eventually saved shall be few. “I see,” he says,
“a constant perpetration of crimes which are all condemned by Christ
as meriting the punishment of hell—adultery, fornication, envy, anger,
evil speaking, and many more. The multitude which is engaged in this
wickedness is unmolested, but the monks who fly from it themselves, and
persuade others to take flight also, are persecuted without mercy.” So
much for the Christianity of the world.[149]
In Book II. he expresses his astonishment that fathers should so
little understand what was best for their sons as to deter them from
studying “the true philosophy.” But in combating this error he will
put forward all that can be urged on their side. He imagines the case
of a pagan father, possessed of great worldly distinction and wealth.
He has an only son, in whom all his pride and hopes are centred; one
whom he expects to surpass himself in riches and honour. Suddenly this
son becomes converted to monasticism; this rich heir flies to the
mountains, puts on a dress coarser than that of the meanest servant,
toils at the menial occupations of gardening and drawing water,
becomes lean and pale. All the schemes of his father for the future
are frustrated, all past efforts for his education seem to have been
squandered. The little vessel which was his pride and pleasure is
wrecked at the very mouth of the harbour from which it was setting out
on the voyage of life. The parent has no longer any pleasure in life;
he mourns for his son as for one already dead.[150]
Having thus stated the case on his adversary’s side as strongly as
possible, Chrysostom begins his own defence by asking which would be
best: that a man should be subject to thirst all his life, or wholly
exempt from it? Surely to be exempt from it. Apply this to the moral
appetites—love, avarice, and the rest. The monk is exempt from them;
the man of the world is distracted by them, if not overwhelmed. Again,
if the monk has no wealth of his own, he exercises a powerful influence
in directing the wealth of others. Religious men will part with much
of their riches according to his suggestions; if one refuses, another
will give. The resources, in fact, of the monk are quite inexhaustible;
many will subscribe to supply his wants or to execute his wishes, as
Crito said that he and his friends would subscribe for Socrates. It is
impossible to deprive the monk of his wealth or of his home; if you
strip him of everything he has, he rejoices, and thanks you for helping
him to live the life which he desires; and as for his home, the world
is his home; one place is the same as another to him; he needs nothing
but the pure air of heaven, wholesome streams, and herbs. As for high
place and rank, history suffices to teach us that the desert does not
destroy, and the palace does not give, true nobility. Plato—planting,
watering, and eating olives—was a far nobler personage than Dionysius
the Tyrant of Sicily, amidst all the wealth and splendour of a monarch.
Socrates—clad in a single garment, with his bare feet and his meagre
fare of bread, and dependent upon others for the mere necessaries of
life—was a far more illustrious character than Archelaus, who often
invited him, but in vain, to court. Real splendour and distinction
consisted not in fine raiment, or in positions of dignity and power,
but only in excellence of the soul and in philosophy.[151]
He then proceeds to maintain that the influence of the monk was more
powerful than that of the man of the world, however distinguished he
might be. If he descended from his mountain solitude, and entered the
city, the people flocked round him, and pointed him out with reverence
and admiration, as if he were a messenger from heaven. His mean dress
commanded more respect than the purple robe and diadem of the monarch.
If he was required to interfere in matters of public interest, his
influence was greater than that of the powerful or wealthy; for he
could speak before an emperor with boldness and freedom, and without
incurring the suspicion of self-interested or ambitious motives. He was
a more effectual comforter of the mourners than any one in a prosperous
worldly condition was likely to be. If a father had lost his only son,
the sight of other men’s domestic happiness only revived his grief; but
the society of the monk, who disdained the ties of home and family, and
who talked to him of death as only a sleep, soothed his grief. Thus the
man who wished his son to possess real honour and power would permit
him to become a monk; for monks who were once mere peasants had been
visited in their cells and consulted by kings and ministers of state.
Chrysostom concludes this book by relating the history of one of his
own brethren in the monastery, who, when first he desired to become
a monk, had been disowned by his father, a wealthy and distinguished
pagan, who threatened him with imprisonment, turned him out of doors,
and allowed him almost to perish with hunger. But, finding him
inflexible in his purpose, the father at last relented, and, at the
time when Chrysostom wrote, honoured, he might say venerated, that son,
considering the others, who occupied distinguished positions in the
world, scarcely worthy to be his servant.[152]
As the second book was intended to meet the objections of a pagan
father, so the third contains admonitions to one who was professedly
Christian, but worldly-minded, on the duty of parents in regard to the
moral and religious education of their children.
It appeared to him that the fathers of that day gave their sons none
but worldly counsel, inculcated none but worldly industry and prudence,
and encouraged to the emulation of none but worldly examples.[153]
The force of habit was intensely strong, especially when pleasure
co-operated with it, and parents, instead of counteracting habits of
worldliness, promoted them by their own example. God led the Israelites
through the wilderness as a kind of monastic training, to wean them
from the luxurious and sensual habits of an Egyptian life; yet even
then they hankered after the land of their bondage. How, then, could
the children of parents who left them in the midst of the Egypt of
vice, escape damnation? If they achieved anything good of themselves,
it was speedily crushed by the flood of worldly conversation which
issued from the parent. All those things which were condemned by
Christ—as wealth, popularity, strife, an evil eye, divorce—were
approved by parents of that day, and they threw a veil over the
ugliness of these vices, by giving them specious names. Devotion to
the hippodrome and theatre was called fashionable refinement; wealth
was called freedom; love of glory, high spirit; folly, boldness;
prodigality, benevolence; injustice, manliness. Virtues, on the
contrary, were depreciated by opprobrious names: temperance was called
rusticity; equity, cowardice; justice, unmanliness; modesty, meanness;
endurance of injury, feebleness. He truly remarks, that nothing
contributes so much to deter men from vice as calling vices plainly by
their proper names.[154]
“How can children escape moral ruin, when all the labour of their
fathers is bestowed on the provision of superfluous things—fine houses,
dress, horses, beautiful statues, gilded ceilings—while they take no
pains about the soul, which is far more precious than any ornament
of gold?”[155] And there were worse evils behind: vice too monstrous
and unnatural to be named, but to which he was constrained to allude,
because he felt that it was poisoning with deadly venom the very vitals
of the social body. “Well,” but worldly men reply, “Would you have us
all turn philosophers, and let our worldly affairs go to ruin? Nay,”
says Chrysostom, “it is the want of the philosophic spirit and rule
which ruins everything now; it is your rich men—with troops of slaves
and swarms of parasites, eager for wealth and ambitious of distinction,
building fine houses, adding field to field, lending money at a
usurious rate of interest—who propagate the strife and litigation, and
envy, and murder, and general confusion, by which life is distracted.
These are they who bring down the vengeance of Heaven, in the shape of
droughts, and famines, and inundations, and earthquakes, and submersion
of cities, and pestilences. It is not the simple monk, or the
philosophic Christian, who is contented with a humble dwelling, a mean
dress, a little plot of ground. These last, shining like bright beacons
in a dark place, hold up the lamp of philosophy on high, and endeavour
to guide those who are tossing on the open sea in a dark night into the
haven of safety and repose.”[156]
“In spite of law, disorder prevailed to such an extent, that the very
idea of God’s providence was lost. Men assigned the course of events
to fate, or to the stars, or to chance, or to spontaneous force. God
did, indeed, still rule; but He was like a pilot in a storm, whose
skill in managing and conducting the vessel in safety was not perceived
or appreciated by the passengers, owing to the confusion and fright
caused by the raging of the elements. In the monastery, on the other
hand, all was tranquillity and peace as in a community of angels.
He strenuously combated the error of supposing that sin was more
pardonable in a man of the world than in a monk. Anger, uncleanness,
swearing, and the like, were equally sinful in all. Christ made no
distinctions, but propounded one standard of morality for all alike.
Nothing had inflicted more injury on the moral tone of society than
the supposition that strictness of life was demanded of the monk
only.”[157] He strongly urges the advantage of sending youths for
education to monasteries, even for so long a period as ten or twenty
years. Men consented, he says, to part with their children, for the
purpose of learning some art or trade, or even so low an accomplishment
as rope-dancing; but when the object was to train their souls for
heaven, all kinds of impediments were raised. To object that few
attained through residence in a monastery that perfection of spiritual
life which some expected of them, was a mere excuse. In the case of
worldly things, on which men’s hearts were set, they thought of getting
as much as they could, not of reaching absolute perfection. A man did
not prevent his son from entering military service because the chances
of his becoming a prefect were small; why, then, hesitate to send your
son to a monastery because all monks do not become angels?[158]
These treatises are remarkable productions, and deserve to be read,
not only because they exhibit Chrysostom’s best powers of argument
and style, but also because they throw light upon the character of
the man and the times in which he lived. He pleads his cause with the
ingenuity, as well as eloquence, of a man who had been trained for the
law courts. We find, indeed, that his opinions on the advantages of the
monastic life were modified as he grew older; but his bold condemnation
of worldliness, his denunciation of a cold secularised Christianity,
as contrasted with the purity of the Gospel standard, the deep
aspirations after personal holiness, the desire to be filled with a
fervent and overflowing love of Christ, the firm hold on the idea of
a superintending Providence, amidst social confusion and corruption;
these we find, as here, so always, conspicuous characteristics of the
man, and principal sources of his influence.
From the frightful picture here drawn of social depravity, we perceive
the value—we might say, the necessity—of monasteries, as havens of
refuge for those who recoiled in horror from the surrounding pollution.
It is clear also that the influence of the monks was considerable.
Monasteries were recognised places of education, where pious parents
could depend on their children being virtuously brought up. The
Christian wife of a pagan or worldly husband could here find a safe
home for her boy, where he could escape the contamination of his
father’s influence or example. Chrysostom relates, in chapter 12, how
a Christian lady in Antioch, being afraid of the wrath of a harsh
and worldly-minded husband if she sent away her son to school at the
monastery, induced one of the monks, a friend of Chrysostom’s, to
reside for a time in the city, in the character of pedagogue. The boy,
thus subjected to his training, afterwards joined the society of the
monks; but Chrysostom, fearing the consequences both to the youth and
to the monastic body, should his father detect his secession, persuaded
him to return to the city, where he led an ascetic life, though not
habited in monkish dress. Out of these monastic schools, after years
of discipline and prayer, and study of the Word, there issued many a
pastor and preacher, well-armed champions of the truth, strong in the
Lord, and in the power of His might; like Chrysostom himself, instant
in season and out of season; stern denouncers of evil, even in kings’
courts; holding out the light of the Gospel in the midst of a dark and
crooked generation.
The foregoing extracts and paraphrases from these treatises prove
also that as philosophy was considered the highest flight in the
intellectual culture of the pagan, so was asceticism regarded as the
highest standard of Christian life; it was to the education of the
soul what philosophy was to the education of the mind, and hence it
was called by the same name. Possessed by this idea, Chrysostom threw
himself at this period of his life into the system with all the ardour
of his nature. If asceticism was good, it was right to carry it as
far as nature could bear it. He adopted the habits of an old member
of the brotherhood named Syrus, notorious for the severity of his
self-inflicted discipline. The day and greater part of the night were
spent in study, fastings and vigils. Bread and water were his only
habitual food. At the end of four years he proceeded a step further.
He withdrew from the community to one of those solitary caves with
which the mountains overhanging Antioch on its southern side abounded.
In fact, he exchanged the life of a monk for that of an anchorite.
His frame endured this additional strain for nearly two years, and
then gave way. His health was so much shattered that he was obliged to
abandon monastic life, and to return to the greater comfort of his home
in Antioch.[159]
Meanwhile a friend of his, Stagirius by name—a person of noble birth,
who, in spite of his father’s opposition, had embraced monasticism—was
reduced to a more deplorable condition. While Chrysostom was confined
to his house by illness, a friend common to him and Stagirius brought
him the sad intelligence that Stagirius was affected with all the
symptoms of demoniacal possession—wringing of the hands, squinting of
the eyes, foaming at the mouth, strange inarticulate cries, shiverings,
and frightful visions at night.[160] We shall perhaps find little
difficulty in accounting for these distressing affections, as the
consequence of excessive austerities. The young man, who formerly lived
a gay life in the world, and in the midst of affluence, had in the
monastery fared on bread and water only, often kept vigil all night
long, spent his days in prayer and tears of penitence, preserved an
absolute silence, and read so many hours continuously, that his friends
and brother monks feared that his brain would become disordered.[161]
Very probably it was, and hence his visions and convulsions; but those
were not days in which men readily attributed any strange phenomena,
mental or bodily, to physical causes. We may believe in the action of
a spirit-world on the inhabitants of this earth; but we require good
evidence that any violent or strange affection of mind or body is due
to a directly spiritual agency, rather than to the operation of God
according to natural law. The cases of demoniacs in the Gospel stand
apart. Our Lord uses language which amounts to a distinct affirmation
that those men were actually possessed by evil spirits. To use such
expressions as “come out of him,” “enter no more into him,” and the
like, if there was no spirit concerned in the case at all, would have
been, to say the least, a mere unmeaning piece of acting, of which it
would be shocking to suppose our Lord capable. But to admit the direct
agency of spirit, when confirmed by such authoritative testimony,
is widely different from the hasty ascription to spiritual agency,
by an uncritical and unscientific age, of everything which cannot
be accounted for by the most superficial knowledge and observation.
Chrysostom, of course, not being beyond his age in such matters, did
not for a moment dispute the supposition that Stagirius was actually
possessed by a demon, but he displays a great deal of good sense in
dealing with the case. As the state of his own health did not permit
him to pay Stagirius a visit in person, he wrote his advice instead. He
perceived the fatal temptation to despair in a man who imagined that
the devil had got a firm hold upon him, and that every evil inclination
proceeded directly from this demoniacal invader. He will not allow
that the suggestion to suicide, of which Stagirius complained, came
direct from the demon, but rather from his own despondency,[162] with
which the devil had endeavoured to oppress him, that he might, under
cover of that, work his own purposes more effectually, just as robbers
attack houses in the dark. But this was to be shaken off by trust in
God; for the devil did not exercise a compulsory power over the hearts
of men; there must be a co-operation of the man’s own will. Eve fell
partly through her own inclination to sin: “When she saw that the
tree was good for food, and pleasant to the eyes, she took of the
fruit thereof and did eat;” and if Adam was so easily persuaded to
participate in her sin, he would have fallen even had no devil existed.
Chrysostom endeavours also to console his friend by going through
the histories of saints in all times who have been afflicted. His
sufferings were not to be compared to those of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob,
Moses, David, and St. Paul. “These afflictions were sent for remedial,
purgatorial purposes—that the soul might be saved in the day of the
Lord. It was not easy to say why such a person was tried by this or
that form of suffering, but if we knew exactly God’s motives, there
would be no test of faith. The indispensable thing was to be firmly
convinced that whatever God sent was right. Some men were disturbed
because the good were often troubled, and the wicked prosperous; but
such inequality in the distribution of reward and punishment in this
life suggested a future state where they would be finally adjusted. The
wicked who had here received his good things would there receive his
evil.[163] Stagirius had not been attacked by any demon when he was
living in carelessness and worldly pleasure, but when he had buckled
on his armour and appeared as an antagonist, then the devil descended
to the assault. Hence he had no need to be ashamed of his affliction;
the only thing to be ashamed of was sin, and it was owing to his
renunciation of sin that the devil assailed him. The real demoniacs
were those who were carried away by the impulses of unregulated
passions.” His summaries of the lives of the Old Testament saints,
which fill the rest of the second book and most of the third, are very
masterly, and display most intimate acquaintance with Holy Scripture in
all its parts. A powerful mind and retentive memory had profited by six
years of retirement largely devoted to study.