To those instances of involuntary flagellations, during the times of the
eastern Anchorites and the first monks, we may, I think, safely add
those which the devil, jealous of their merit, has inflicted upon them;
a case which has frequently happened, if we are to credit the writers of
those times.
In the lives of the saints remarkable virtues 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 Assisi, 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 entitled 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. As some
times 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, Callot, 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 relics having been brought from
Egypt to Constantinople, and thence transferred to Dauphine, 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 of the
chapter.
The story I mean, is contained in the book of the _Apologie pour
Herodote_, which was written about the year 1500 by Henry Etienne, on
purpose to show that those who entirely reject the facts related by
Herodotus, on account of their incredibility, treat them 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
facer_,) in the same manner as St. Hubert cures the hydrophobia; 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 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 magpie 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 meanwhile the magpie 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 gunpowder,
he pretended to be quite out of patience, he cursed the magpie, 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 magpie with her nest;
which miracle wonderfully raised the character of the friar, and proved
afterwards very beneficial both to him and his convent.
CHAP. IV.—_Corrections of a flagellatory kind, inflicted by force; the
common method of correcting offences of a religious nature; and the
power of inflicting them possessed alike by Bishops and the heads of
Monasteries._
It must be confessed, however, that though self-flagellation made no
part of the rules or statutes belonging to the different monastic
orders, founded in those early stages of Christianity, the same cannot
be said of that method of correction, when imposed by force upon such
monks as had been guilty of offences, either against the discipline of
the order, or against piety: an extensive power of inflicting such
salutary corrections, having, from the earliest times, been lodged in
the hands of abbots and the superiors of convents.
Nay more, we find that bishops during the very first times of
Christianity, assumed the paternal power we mention, even with regard to
persons who were bound to them by no vow whatever, when they happened to
have been guilty either of breaches of piety or of heresy. Of this, a
remarkable proof may be deduced from the 59th Epistle of St. Augustin,
which he wrote to the Tribune Marcellinus, concerning the Donatists. St.
Augustin expresses himself in the following words: “Do not recede from
that parental diligence you have manifested in your researches after
offenders; in which you have succeeded to procure confessions of such
great crimes, not by using racks, red-hot blades of iron, or flames, but
only by the application of rods. This is a method of coercion which is
frequently practised by teachers of the fine arts upon their pupils, by
parents upon their children, and often also by bishops upon those whom
they find to have been guilty of offences.”
Another proof of this power of flagellation, assumed by bishops in very
early times, may be derived from the account which Cyprianus has given
of Cesarius, Bishop of Arles; who says, that that bishop endeavoured as
much as possible, in the exercise of his power, to keep within the
bounds of moderation prescribed by the law of Moses. The following are
Cyprianus’s words: “This holy man took constant care that those who were
subjected to his authority, whether they were of a free or servile
condition, when they were to be flagellated for some offence they had
committed, should not receive more than thirty-nine stripes. If any of
them, however, had been guilty of a previous fault, then indeed he
permitted them to be again lashed a few days afterwards, though with a
smaller number of stripes.”
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