A Short History of Monks and Monasteries Part 4

At Jerusalem she fell upon her face and kissed the stone before the sepulcher. "What tears, she shed, what groans she uttered, what grief she poured out all Jerusalem knows!"

She established two monasteries at Bethlehem, one of which was for women. Here, with her daughter, she lived a life of rigid abstinence.

Her nuns had nothing they could call their own. If they paid too much attention to dress Paula said, "A clean body and a clean dress mean an unclean soul." To her credit, she was more lenient with others than with herself. Jerome admits she went to excess, and prudently observes: "Difficult as it is to avoid extremes, the philosophers are quite right in their opinion that virtue is a mean and vice an excess, or, as we may express it in one short sentence, in nothing too much." Paula swept floors and toiled in the kitchen. She slept on the ground, covered by a mat of goat's hair. Her weeping was incessant. As she meditated over the Scriptures, her tears fell so profusely that her sight was endangered.

Jerome warned her to spare her eyes, but she said: "I must disfigure that face which, contrary to G.o.d's commandment, I have painted with rouge, white lead and antimony." If this be a sin against the Almighty, bear witness, O ye daughters of Eve! Her love for the poor continued to be the motive of her great liberality. In fact, her giving knew no bounds. Fuller wisely remarks that "liberality must have banks as well as a stream;" but Paula said: "My prayer is that I may die a beggar, leaving not a penny to my daughter and indebted to strangers for my winding sheet." Her pet.i.tion was literally granted, for she died leaving her daughter not only without a penny but overwhelmed in a ma.s.s of debts.

As Jerome approaches the description of Paula's death, he says: "Hitherto the wind has all been in my favor and my keel has smoothly ploughed through the heaving sea. But now my bark is running upon the rocks, the billows are mountain high, and imminent shipwreck awaits me."

Yet Paula, like David, must go the way of all the earth. Surrounded by her followers chanting psalms, she breathed her last. An immense concourse of people attended her funeral. Not a single monk lingered in his cell. Thus, the twenty hard years of self-torture for this Roman lady of culture ended in the rest of the grave.

Upon her tombstone was placed this significant inscription:

"Within this tomb a child of Scipio lies, A daughter of the far-famed Pauline house, A scion of the Gracchi, of the stock Of Agamemnon's self, ill.u.s.trious: Here rests the lady Paula, well beloved Of both her parents, with Eustochium For daughter; she the first of Roman dames Who hardship chose and Bethlehem for Christ."

Another interesting character of that period was Marcella, a beautiful woman of ill.u.s.trious lineage, a descendant of consuls and prefects.

After a married life of seven years her husband died. She determined not to embark on the matrimonial seas a second time, but to devote herself to works of charity. Cerealis, an old man, but of consular rank, offered her his fortune that he might consider her less his wife than his daughter. "Had I a wish to marry," was her n.o.ble reply, "I should look for a husband and not for an inheritance." Disdaining all enticements to remain in society, she began her monastic career with joy and turned her home into a retreat for women who, like herself, wished to retire from the world. It is not known just what rules governed their relations, but they employed the time in moderate fasting, prayers and alms-giving.

Marcella lavished her wealth upon the poor. Jerome praises her philanthropic labors thus: "Our widow's clothing was meant to keep out the cold and not to show her figure. She stored her money in the stomachs of the poor rather than to keep it at her own disposal." Seldom seen upon the streets, she remained at home, surrounded by virgins and widows, obedient and loving to her mother. Among the high-born women it was regarded as degrading to a.s.sume the costume of the nun, but she bore the scorn of her social equals with humility and grace.

This quiet and useful life was rudely and abruptly ended by a dreadful catastrophe. Alaric the Goth had seized and sacked Rome. The world stood aghast. The sad news reached Jerome in his cell at Bethlehem, who expressed his sorrow in forceful language: "My voice sticks in my throat; and as I dictate, sobs choke my utterance. The city which has taken the whole world is itself taken." Rude barbarians invaded the sanct.i.ty of Marcella's retreat. They demanded her gold, but she pointed to the coa.r.s.e dress she wore to show them she had no buried treasures.

They did not believe her, and cruelly beat her with cudgels. A few days after the saintly heroine of righteousness went to her long home to enjoy richly-merited rest and peace.

"Who can describe the carnage of that night?

What tears are equal to its agony?

Of ancient date a sovran city falls; And lifeless in its streets and houses lie Unnumbered bodies of its citizens.

In many a ghastly shape doth death appear."

Marcella and her monastic home fell in the general ruin, but in the words of Horace, she left "a monument more enduring than bra.s.s." Her n.o.ble life, so full of kind words and loving deeds, still stirs the hearts of her sisters who, while they may reject her ascetic ideal, will, nevertheless, try to emulate her n.o.ble spirit. As Jerome said of Paula: "By shunning glory she earned glory; for glory follows virtue as its shadow; and deserting those who seek it, it seeks those who despise it."

Still another woman claims our attention,--Fabiola, the founder of the first hospital. Lecky declares that "the first public hospital and the charity planted by that woman's hand overspread the world, and will alleviate to the end of time the darkest anguish of humanity." She, too, was a widow who refused to marry again, but broke up her home, sold her possessions, and with the proceeds founded a hospital into which were gathered the sick from the streets. She nursed the sufferers and washed their ulcers and wounds. No task was beneath her, no sacrifice of personal comfort too great for her love. Many helped her with their gold, but she gave herself. She also aided in establishing a home for strangers at Portus, which became one of the most famous inns of the time. Travelers from all parts of the world found a welcome and a shelter on landing at this port. When she died the roofs of Rome were crowded with those who watched the funeral procession. Psalms were chanted, and the gilded ceilings of the churches resounded to the music in commendation of her loving life and labors.

These and other characters of like zeal and fort.i.tude exemplify the spirit of the men and women who interested the West in monasticism. Much as their errors and extravagances may be deplored, there is no question that some of them were types of the loftiest Christian virtues, inspired by the most laudable motives.

n.o.ble and true are Kingsley's words: "We may blame those ladies, if we will, for neglecting their duties. We may sneer, if we will, at their weaknesses, the aristocratic pride, the spiritual vanity, we fancy we discover. We must confess that in these women the spirit of the old Roman matrons, which seemed to have been dead so long, flashed up for one splendid moment ere it sank into the darkness of the middle ages."

_Monasticism and Women_

The origin of nunneries was coeval with that of monasteries, and the history of female recluses runs parallel to that of the men. Almost every male order had its counterpart in some sort of a sisterhood. The general moral character of these female a.s.sociations was higher than that of the male organizations. I have confined my treatment in this work to the monks, but a few words may be said at this point concerning female ascetics.

Hermit life was unsuited to women, but we know that at a very early date many of them retired to the seclusion of convent life. It will be recalled that in the biography of St. Anthony, before going into the desert he placed his sister in the care of some virgins who were living a life of abstinence, apart from society. It is very doubtful if any uniform rule governed these first religious houses, or if definitely organized societies appear much before the time of Benedict. The variations in the monastic order among the men were accompanied by similar changes in the a.s.sociations of women.

The history of these sisterhoods discloses three interesting and noteworthy facts that merit brief mention:

First, the effect of a corrupt society upon women. As in the case of men, women were moved to forsake their social duties because they were weary of the sensual and aimless life of Rome. Those were the days of elaborate toilettes, painted faces and blackened eyelids, of intrigues and foolish babbling. Venial faults--it may be thought--innocent displays of tender frailty; but woman's nature demands loftier employments. A great soul craves occupations and recognizes obligations more in harmony with the true n.o.bility of human nature. Rome had no monitor of the higher life until the monks came with their stories of heroic self-abnegation and unselfish toil. The women felt the force and truth of Jerome's criticism of their trifling follies when he said: "Do not seek to appear over-eloquent, nor trifle with verse, nor make yourself gay with lyric songs. And do not, out of affectation, follow the sickly taste of married ladies, who now pressing their teeth together, now keeping their lips wide apart, speak with a lisp, and purposely clip their words, because they fancy that to p.r.o.nounce them naturally is a mark of country breeding."

Professor Dill is inclined to discount the testimony of Jerome respecting the morals of Roman society. He thinks Jerome exaggerated the perils surrounding women. He says: "The truth is Jerome is not only a monk but an artist in words; and his horror of evil, his vivid imagination, and his pa.s.sion for literary effect, occasionally carry him beyond the region of sober fact. There was much to amend in the morals of the Roman world. But we must not take the leader of a great moral reformation as a cool and dispa.s.sionate observer." But this observation amounts to nothing more than a cautionary word against mistaking evils common to all times for special symptoms of excessive immorality.

Professor Dill practically concedes the truthfulness of contemporary witnesses, including Jerome, when he says: "Yet, after all allowances, the picture is not a pleasant one. We feel that we are far away from the simple, unworldly devotion of the freedmen and obscure toilers whose existence was hardly known to the great world before the age of the Antonines, and who lived in the spirit of the Sermon on the Mount and in constant expectation of the coming of their Lord. The triumphant Church, which has brought Paganism to its knees, is very different from the Church of the catacombs and the persecutions." The picture which Jerome draws of the Roman women is indeed repulsive, and Professor Dill would gladly believe it to be exaggerated, but, nevertheless, he thinks that "if the priesthood, with its enormous influence, was so corrupt, it is only probable that it debased the s.e.x which is always most under clerical influence."

But far graver charges cling to the memories of the Roman women. Crime darkened every household. The Roman lady was cruel and impure. She delighted in the blood of gladiators and in illicit love. Roman law at this time permitted women to hold and to control large estates, and it became a fad for these patrician ladies to marry poor men, so that they might have their husbands within their power. All sorts of alliances could then be formed, and if their husbands remonstrated, they, holding the purse strings, were able to say: "If you don't like it you can leave." A profligate himself, the husband usually kept his counsel, and as a reward, dwelt in a palace. "When the Roman matrons became the equal and voluntary companions of their lords," says Gibbon, "a new jurisprudence was introduced, that marriage, like other partnerships, might be dissolved by the abdication of one of the a.s.sociates." I have but touched the fringe of a veil I will not lift; but it is easy to understand why those women who cherished n.o.ble sentiments welcomed the monastic life as a pathway of escape from scenes and customs from which their better natures recoiled in horror.

Secondly, the fine quality of mercy that distinguishes woman's character deserves recognition. Even though she retired to a convent, she could not become so forgetful of her fellow creatures as her male companions.

From the very beginning we observe that she was more unselfish in her asceticism than they. It is true the monk forsook all, and to that extent was self-sacrificing, but in his desire for his own salvation, he was p.r.o.ne to neglect every one else. The monk's ministrations were too often confined to those who came to him, but the nun went forth to heal the diseased and to bind up the broken-hearted. As soon as she embraced the monastic life we read of hospitals. The desire for salvation drove man into the desert; a Christ-like mercy and divine sympathy kept his sister by the couch of pain.

Lastly, a word remains to be said touching the question of marriage. At first, the nun sometimes entered the marriage state, and, of course, left the convent; but, beginning with Basil, this practice was condemned, and irrevocable vows were exacted. In 407, Innocent I. closed even the door of penitence and forgiveness to those who broke their vows and married.

Widows and virgins alike a.s.sumed the veil. Marriage itself was not despised, because the monastic life was only for those who sought a higher type of piety than, it was supposed, could be attained amid the ordinary conditions of life. But marriage, as well as other so-called secular relations, was eschewed by those who wished to make their salvation sure. Jerome says: "I praise wedlock, I praise marriage, but it is because they give me virgins; I gather the rose from the thorns, the gold from the earth, the pearl from the sh.e.l.l." He therefore tolerated marriage among people contented with ordinary religious attainments, but he thought it incompatible with true holiness.

Augustine admitted that the mother and her daughter may be both in heaven, but one a bright and the other a dim star. Some writers, as Helvidius, opposed this view and maintained that there was no special virtue in an unmarried life; that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was also the mother of other children, and as such was an example of Christian virtue. Jerome brought out his guns and poured hot shot into the enemies' camp. In the course of his answer, which contained many intolerant and acrimonious statements, he drew a comparison between the married and the unmarried state. It is interesting because it reflects the opinions of those who disparaged marriage, and reveals the character of the principles which the early Fathers advocated. It is very evident from this letter against Helvidius that Jerome regarded all secular duties as interfering with the pursuit of the highest virtue.

"Do you think," he says, "there is no difference between one who spends her time in prayer and fasting, and one who must, at her husband's approach, make up her countenance, walk with a mincing gait, and feign a show of endearment? The virgin aims to appear less comely; she will wrong herself so as to hide her natural attractions. The married woman has the paint laid on before her mirror, and, to the insult of her Maker, strives to acquire something more than her natural beauty. Then come the prattling of infants, the noisy household, children watching for her word and waiting for her kiss, the reckoning up of expenses, the preparation to meet the outlay. On one side you will see a company of cooks, girded for the onslaught and attacking the meat; there you may hear the hum of a mult.i.tude of weavers. Meanwhile a message is delivered that her husband and his friends have arrived. The wife, like a swallow, flies all over the house. She has to see to everything. Is the sofa smooth? Is the pavement swept? Are the flowers in the cup? Is dinner ready? Tell me, pray, amid all this, is there room for the thought of G.o.d?"

Such was Roman married life as it appeared to Jerome. The very duties and blessings that we consider the glory of the family he despised. I will return to his views later, but it is interesting to note the absence at this period, of the modern and true idea that G.o.d may be served in the performance of household and other secular duties. Women fled from such occupations in those days that they might be religious.

The disagreeable fact of Peter's marriage was overcome by the a.s.sertion that he must have washed away the stain of his married life by the blood of his martyrdom. Such extreme views arose partly as a reaction from and a protest against the dominant corruption, a state of affairs in which happy and holy marriages were rare.

_The Spread of Monasticism in Europe_

Much more might be said of monastic life in Rome, were it not now necessary to treat of the spread of monasticism in Europe. There are many n.o.ble characters whom we ought to know, such as Ambrose, one of Christendom's greatest bishops, who led a life of poverty and strict abstinence, like his sister Marcella, whom we have met. He it was, of whom the Emperor Theodosius said: "I have met a man who has told me the truth." Well might he so declare, for Ambrose refused him admission to the church at Milan, because his hands were red with the blood of the murdered, and succeeded in persuading him to submit to discipline. To Ambrose may be applied the words which Gibbon wrote of Gregory n.a.z.ianzen: "The t.i.tle of Saint has been added to his name, but the tenderness of his heart and the elegance of his genius reflect a more pleasing l.u.s.ter on his memory."

The story of John, surnamed Chrysostom, who was born at Antioch, in 347, is exceedingly interesting. He was a young lawyer, who entered the priesthood after his baptism. He at once set his heart on the monastic life, but his mother took him to her chamber, and, by the bed where she had given him birth, besought him in fear, not to forsake her. "My son,"

she said in substance, "my only comfort in the midst of the miseries of this earthly life is to see thee constantly, and to behold in thy traits the faithful image of my beloved husband, who is no more. When you have buried me and joined my ashes with those of your father, nothing will then prevent you from retiring into the monastic life. But so long as I breathe, support me by your presence, and do not draw down upon you the wrath of G.o.d by bringing such evils upon me who have given you no offence." This singularly tender pet.i.tion was granted, but Chrysostom turned his home into a monastery, slept on the bare floor, ate little and seldom, and prayed much by day and by night.

After his mother's death Chrysostom enjoyed the seclusion of a monastic solitude for six years, but impairing his health by excessive self-mortification he returned to Antioch in 380. He rapidly rose to a position of commanding influence in the church. His peerless oratorical and literary gifts were employed in elevating the ascetic ideal and in unsparing denunciations of the worldly religion of the imperial court.

He incurred the furious hatred of the young and beautiful Empress Eudoxia, who united her influence with that of the ambitious Theophilus, patriarch of Alexandria, and Chrysostom was banished from Constantinople, but died on his way to the remote desert of Pityus. His powerful sermons and valuable writings contributed in no small degree to the spread of monasticism among the Christians of his time.

Then there was Augustine, the greatest thinker since Plato. "We shall meet him," says Schaff, "alike on the broad highways and the narrow foot-paths, on the giddy Alpine heights and in the awful depths of speculation, wherever philosophical thinkers before him or after him have trod." He, too, like all the other leaders of thought in his time, was ascetic in his habits. Although he lived and labored for thirty-eight years at Hippo, a Numidian city about two hundred miles west of Carthage, in Africa, Augustine was regarded as the intellectual head not only of North Africa but of Western Christianity. He gathered his clergy into a college of priests, with a community of goods, thus approaching as closely to the regular monastic life as was possible to secular clergymen. He established religious houses and wrote a set of rules, consisting of twenty-four articles, for the government of monasteries. These rules were superseded by those of Benedict, but they were resuscitated under Charlemagne and reappeared in the famous Austin Canons of the eleventh century. Little did Augustine think that a thousand years later an Augustinian monk--Luther--would abandon his order to become the founder of modern Protestantism.

Augustine published a celebrated essay,--"On the Labor of Monks,"--in which he pointed out the dangers of monachism, condemned its abuses, and ended by sighing for the quiet life of the monk who divided his day between labor, reading and prayer, whilst he himself spent his years amid the noisy throng and the perplexities of his episcopate.

These men, and many others, did much to further monasticism. But we must now leave sunny Africa and journey northward through Gaul into the land of the hardy Britons and Scots.

Athanasius, the same weary exile whom we have encountered in Egypt and in Rome, had been banished by Constantine to Treves, in 336. In 346 and 349 he again visited Gaul. He told the same story of Anthony and the Egyptian hermits with similar results.

The most renowned ecclesiastic of the Gallican church, whose name is most intimately a.s.sociated with the spread of monasticism in Western Europe, before the days of Benedict, was Saint Martin of Tours. He lived about the years 316-396 A.D. The chronicle of his life is by no means trustworthy, but that is essential neither to popularity nor saintship.

Only let a Severus describe his life and miracles in glowing rhetoric and fantastic legend and the people will believe it, p.r.o.nouncing him greatest among the great, the mightiest miracle-worker of that miracle-working age.

Martin was a soldier three years, against his will, under Constantine.

One bleak winter day he cut his white military coat in two with his sword and clothed a beggar with half of it. That night he heard Jesus address the angels: "Martin, as yet only a catechumen has clothed me with his garment." After leaving the army he became a hermit, and, subsequently, bishop of Tours. He lived for years just outside of Tours in a cell made of interlaced branches. His monks dwelt around him in caves cut out of scarped rocks, overlooking a beautiful stream. They were clad in camel's hair and lived on a diet of brown bread, sleeping on a straw couch.

But Martin's monks did not take altogether kindly to their mode of life.

Severus records an amusing story of their rebellion against the meager allowance of food. The Egyptian could exist on a few figs a day. But these rude Gauls, just emerging out of barbarism, were accustomed to devour great slices of roasted meat and to drink deep draughts of beer.

Such st.u.r.dy children of the northern forests naturally disdained dainty morsels of barley bread and small potations of wine. True, Athanasius had said, "Fasting is the food of angels," but these ascetic novices, in their perplexity, could only say: "We are accused of gluttony; but we are Gauls; it is ridiculous and cruel to make us live like angels; we are not angels; once more, we are only Gauls." Their complaint comes down to us as a pathetic but humorous protest of common sense against ascetic fanaticism; or, regarded in another light, it may be considered as additional evidence of the depravity of the natural man.

In spite of all complaints, however, Martin did not abate the severity of his discipline. As a bishop he pushed his monastic system into all the surrounding country. His zeal knew no bounds, and his strength seemed inexhaustible. "No one ever saw him either gloomy or merry,"

remarks his biographer. Amid many embarra.s.sments and difficulties he was ever the same, with a countenance full of heavenly serenity. He was a great miracle-worker--that is, if everything recorded of him is true. He cast out demons, and healed the sick; he had strange visions of angels and demons, and, wonderful to relate, thrice he raised bodies from the dead.

But all conquerors are at last vanquished by the angel of death, and Martin pa.s.sed into the company of the heavenly host and the category of saints. Two thousand monks attended his funeral. His fame spread all over Europe. Tradition tells us he was the uncle of Saint Patrick of Ireland. Churches were dedicated to him in France, Germany, Scotland and England. The festival of his birth is celebrated on the eleventh of November. In Scotland this day still marks the winter term, which is called Martinmas. Saint Martin's shrine was one of the most famous of the middle ages, and was noted for its wonderful cures. No saint is held, even now, in higher veneration by the French Catholic.

It is not known when the inst.i.tution was planted in Spain, but in 380 the council of Saragossa forbade priests to a.s.sume monkish habits.