[45] Conclusions against the antiquity of the _upper_ and the _lower_
disciplines, are frequent in the Abbé Boileau’s book; though I have
thought it unnecessary to lay them all before the reader. Against
the latter kind of discipline, he has been particularly zealous;
and, besides his usual charge of novelty, he has, on one occasion,
taxed it with being a remnant of idolatry and Pagan superstition.
This imputation has much displeased a French Curate, who wrote an
answer to him: he thought it reflected on those Saints who practised
the discipline in question, and he animadverted on the Abbé in the
following terms. _Quelle plus grande injure peut-on faire aux Saints
& aux Saintes qui se disciplinent par en bas, que de dire qu’ils
sont des idolatres & des superstitieux?... Peut on les deshonorer
davantage, ces Saints, que d’en parler comme fait M. Boileau?_ ‘Can
a greater insult be put upon those Saints of both Sexes who practise
the lower discipline, than saying that they are superstitious persons
and idolaters? Is it possible to shew more disrespect to those
Saints, than speaking of them as Mons. Boileau does?’
With respect to the silence of the first Monastic Rules, concerning
voluntary flagellation, it may be observed that it has been amply
compensated in subsequent ones. The _Carmes_ are to discipline
themselves twice a week, and the Monks of _Monte Cassino_, once at
least; the _Ursuline_ Nuns, every Friday; the _Carmelite_ Nuns, on
Wednesdays and Fridays; the Nuns of the _Visitation_, when they
please; the English _Benedictines_, a greater or less number of
times, weekly, according to the season of the year; the _Celestines_,
on the eve of every great festival; and the _Capuchin_ Friars are to
perform a lower discipline every morning in the week, &c. &c.
[46] Οἱ μὲν ἐν ἐκείνοις τὸ ἔδαφος τοῖς δάκρυσιν ἔβρεχον, οἱ δὲ
δακρύων ἀποροῦντες ἑαυτοὺς κατέκοπτον.
[47] The above passage of St. Climax, like those of David and
St. Paul, discussed in the 2d and 3d Chapters, has caused much
disputation between the Assertors, and the Opposers, of the doctrine
of the antiquity of voluntary flagellations. The Abbé Boileau has
taken much pains, in his text, to prove that St. John Climax,
notwithstanding the precision of the expression he has used, only
meant to speak in a figurative sense; and he has for that purpose
produced a number of authorities from different books, and entered
into a long grammatical dissertation on the Greek words used by that
Saint, in which he at last bewilders himself, and says the very
reverse of what he had promised to prove. He has also bestowed some
pains on different passages of other Greek fathers, which are as
positive as that quoted from St. John Climax; and among others, upon
one of St. Cyril, Patriarch of Alexandria, who expresses himself
with great clearness, and says, he _whips himself_, and exhorts his
friends to do the same.
However, notwithstanding the great precision of the words used by
the above good Fathers, whether in speaking of themselves, or of
other persons, we are not perhaps intirely to refuse to admit the
assertions of the Abbé Boileau, that they only spoke in a figurative
sense. It is not absolutely impossible that the passages which are
quoted from them, though ever so expressly mentioning _flagellations,
beatings, and scourgings_, were no more, after all, than canting ways
of expression, like those commonly used by men who affect pretensions
to superior sanctity; who take every opportunity of magnifying their
sufferings, or those of their friends, though often of an imaginary
kind. However, on this important subject, I shall leave the Reader to
determine: I will only observe, that the most zealous Supporters of
self-flagellation confess, that the same was never so much practised
among the Eastern as among the Western Christians, as they had
adopted several other means of self-mortification.
[48] Sir Robert Walpole’s Excise Scheme made a wonderful noise in
this Nation; but we may safely suppose, that if flagellations, like
those above-mentioned, had been made part of the project, the noise
would have been still greater.
A fact, supplied by the Abbé Boileau himself, will be introduced in
a subsequent Chapter, from which it appears, that Theodoret was not
unacquainted with the practice of self-flagellation. The silence
of that Author on the subject, in certain parts of his writings,
only shews that that practice was not yet become, in his time,
that settled method of atoning for past sins, which has been since
adopted, and that a scourge had not yet been made a necessary part of
the furniture of Devotees.
[49] _Insidet dorso ejus festivus Gladiator, & latera calcibus,
cervicem flagello verberans._
[50] Instances of flagellations bestowed by the Devil, occur
frequently in the Books in which the Lives of Saints, either antient
or modern, are recited; whether it was that those Saints, after
having dreamed of such flagellations, fancied they had in reality
received them, and spoke accordingly, or that they had some scheme
in view, when they made complaints of that kind. St. Francis of
_Assisa_, for instance, as is related in the Golden Legend, received
a dreadful flagellation from the Devil the very first night he was
in Rome, which caused him to leave that place without delay. And, to
say the truth, it is not at all unlikely that, having met there with
a colder reception than he judged his sanctity intitled him to, he
thought proper to decamp immediately, and when he returned to his
Convent, told the above story to his Monks.
Among those Saints who received flagellations, or visits in general,
from the Devil, St. Anthony is however the most celebrated.
At sometimes the Devil, as is mentioned above, flagellated him
vigorously; and at others, employed temptations of quite a different
kind, in order to seduce him: thus, he assumed in one instance, the
shape of a beautiful young Woman, who made all imaginable advances
to the Saint: but, happily, all was to no purpose. The celebrated
Engraver _Calot_ has made one of those visits of the Devil to St.
Anthony, the subject of one of his Prints, which is inscribed _The
Temptation of St. Anthony_; and he has represented in it such a
numerous swarm of Devils of all sizes, pouring at once into the
Saint’s cavern, and exhibiting so surprising a variety of faces,
postures, and ludicrous weapons, such as squirts, bellows, and the
like, that this Print may very well be mentioned as an instance,
among others, of the great fertility of the imagination of that
Engraver.
Besides the persecutions which St. Anthony suffered from the Devil,
he has the farther merit of having been the first Institutor of the
Monastic life, several other Hermits having in his time chosen to
assemble together, and lived under his direction; and though he has
not expressly been the Founder of any particular Order, yet it is
glory enough for him to have been the Father of the whole family of
Friars and Nuns. In more modern times, however, his relicks having
been brought from Egypt to Constantinople, and thence transferred
to _Dauphiné_, in France, a Church was built on the spot where
they were deposited, and a new Order of Friars was a little after
established, who go by the name of Monks of St. Anthony. These Monks
form a kind of Order distinct from all others; but yet they have no
less ingenuity than the other Monks for procuring the good of their
Convent, as may be judged from the following story, which, I think, I
may venture to relate as a conclusion both of this Note, and of the
whole Chapter.
The Story I mean, is contained in the Book of the _Apologie pour
Hérodote_, which was written about the year 1500 by _Henry Etienne_,
on purpose to shew that those who intirely reject the facts related
by Herodotus, on account of their incredibility, treat him with
too much severity, since a number of facts daily happen, which are
altogether as surprising as those that are found in that Author.
Before relating the story in question, the Reader ought to be
informed, that St. Anthony is commonly thought to have a great
command over fire, and a power of destroying, by flashes of that
element, those who incur his displeasure: the common people have
been led into this belief, by constantly seeing a fire placed by the
side of that Saint, in the representations that are made of him;
though this fire is placed there for no other reason than because
the Saint is thought to have the power of curing the _erysipelas_,
which is also called the _sacred fire_ (_ignis sacer_), in the same
manner as St. Hubert cures the Hydrophoby, St. John the Epilepsy, and
other Saints other disorders. A certain Monk of St. Anthony (to come
to our point) who was well acquainted with the above prepossession
of the vulgar concerning the power of his Saint, used on Sundays to
preach in public, in different villages within a certain distance
from his Convent. One day he assembled his congregation under a tree
on which a magpye had built her nest, into which he had previously
found means to convey a small box filled with gunpowder, which he
had well secured therein; and out of the box hung a long thin match,
that was to burn slowly, and was hidden among the leaves of the tree.
As soon as the Monk, or his Assistant, had touched the match with
a lighted coal, he began his sermon. In the mean while the magpye
returned to her nest; and finding in it a strange body which she
could not remove, she fell into a passion, and began to scratch with
her feet, and chatter unmercifully. The Friar affected to hear her
without emotion, and continued his sermon with great composure; only
he would now and then lift up his eyes towards the top of the tree,
as if he wanted to see what was the matter. At last, when he judged
the fire was very near reaching the gun-powder, he pretended to be
quite out of patience, he cursed the magpye, and wished St. Anthony’s
fire might consume her, and went on again with his sermon; but he
had scarcely pronounced a few periods, when the match on a sudden
produced its effect, and blew up the magpye with her nest; which
miracle wonderfully raised the character of the Friar, and proved
afterwards very beneficial both to him and his Convent.