The Hermits Part 15

{35} I have thought it more honest to translate as??s?? by "training,"

which is now, as then, its true equivalent; being a metaphor drawn from the Greek games by St. Paul, 1 Tim. iv. 8.

{41} I give this pa.s.sage as it stands in the Greek version. In the Latin, attributed to Evagrius, it is even more extravagant and rhetorical.

{42} Surely the imagery painted on the inner walls of Egyptian tombs, and probably believed by Antony and his compeers to be connected with devil-worship, explain these visions. In the "Words of the Elders" a monk complains of being troubled with "pictures, old and new." Probably, again, the pain which Antony felt was the agony of a fever; and the visions which he saw, its delirium.

{44} Here is an instance of the original use of the word "monastery,"

viz. a cell in which a single person dwelt.

{45} An allusion to the heathen mysteries.

{49} A.D. 311. Galerius Valerius Maximinus (his real name was Daza) had been a shepherd-lad in Illyria, like his uncle Galerius Valerius Maximia.n.u.s; and rose, like him, through the various grades of the army to be co-Emperor of Rome, over Syria, Egypt, and Asia Minor; a furious persecutor of the Christians, and a brutal and profligate tyrant. Such were the "kings of the world" from whom those old monks fled.

{52a} The lonely alluvial flats at the mouths of the Nile. "Below the cliffs, beside the sea," as one describes them.

{52b} Now the monastery of Deir Antonios, over the Wady el Arabah, between the Nile and the Red Sea, where Antony's monks endure to this day.

{60} This most famous monastery, _i.e._ collection of monks' cells, in Egypt is situate forty miles from Alexandria, on a hill where nitre was gathered. The hospitality and virtue of its inmates are much praised by Ruffinus and Palladius. They were, nevertheless, the chief agents in the fanatical murder of Hypatia.

{65} It appears from this and many other pa.s.sages, that extempore prayer was usual among these monks, as it was afterwards among the Puritans (who have copied them in so many other things), whenever a G.o.dly man visited them.

{66a} Meletius, bishop of Lycopolis, was the author of an obscure schism calling itself the "Church of the Martyrs," which refused to communicate with the rest of the Eastern Church. See Smith's "Dictionary," on the word "Meletius."

{66b} Arius (whose most famous and successful opponent was Athanasius, the writer of this biography) maintained that the Son of G.o.d was not co-equal and co-eternal with the Father, but created by Him out of nothing, and before the world. His opinions were condemned in the famous Council of Nicaea, A.D. 325.

{67} If St. Antony could use so extreme an argument against the Arians, what would he have said to the Mariolatry which sprang up after his death?

{68a} _I.e._ those who were still heathens.

{68b} ?e?e??. The Christian priest is always called in this work simply p?es??te???, or elder.

{72a} Probably that of A.D. 341, when Gregory of Cappadocia, nominated by the Arian Bishops, who had a.s.sembled at the Council of Antioch, expelled Athanasius from the see of Alexandria, and great violence was committed by his followers and by Philagrius the Prefect. Athanasius meanwhile fled to Rome.

{72b} _I.e._ celebrated there their own Communion.

{77} Evidently the primaeval custom of embalming the dead, and keeping mummies in the house, still lingered among the Egyptians.

{108} These sounds, like those which St. Guthlac heard in the English fens, are plainly those of wild-fowl.

{115} The Brucheion, with its palaces and museum, the residence of the kings and philosophers of Egypt, had been destroyed is the days of Claudius and Valerian, during the senseless civil wars which devastated Alexandria for twelve years; and monks had probably taken up their abode in the ruins. It was in this quarter, at the beginning of the next century, that Hypatia was murdered by the monks.

{116} Probably the Northern, or Lesser Oasis, Ouah el Baharieh, about eighty miles west of the Nile.

{117a} Jerome (who sailed that sea several times) uses the word here, as it is used in Acts xxvii. 27, for the sea about Malta, "driven up and down in Adria."

{117b} The southern point of Sicily, now Cape Pa.s.saro.

{118} In the Morea, near the modern Navarino.

{119a} At the mouth of the Bay of Cattaro.

{119b} This story-whatever belief we may give to its details-is one of many which make it tolerably certain that a large snake (Python) still lingered in Eastern Europe. Huge tame snakes were kept as sacred by the Macedonian women; and one of them (according to Lucian) Peregrinus Proteus, the Cagliostro of his time, fitted with a linen mask, and made it personate the G.o.d aesculapius. In the "Historia Lausiaca," cap. lii.

is an account by an eye-witness of a large snake in the Thebaid, whose track was "as if a beam had been dragged along the sand." It terrifies the Syrian monks: but the Egyptian monk sets to work to kill it, saying that he had seen much larger-even up to fifteen cubits.

{121} Now Capo St. Angelo and the island of Cerigo, at the southern point of Greece.

{123a} See p. 52.

{123b} Probably dedicated to the Paphian Venus.

{130} The lives of these two hermits and that of St. Cuthbert will be given in a future number.

{131} Sihor, the black river, was the ancient name of the Nile, derived from the dark hue of its waters.

{159} Ammia.n.u.s Marcellinus, Book xxv. cap. 9.

{160} By Dr. Burgess.

{163} History of Christianity, vol. iii. p. 109.

{203} An authentic fact.

{204} If any one doubts this, let him try the game called "Russian scandal," where a story, pa.s.sed secretly from mouth to mouth, ends utterly transformed, the original point being lost, a new point subst.i.tuted, original names and facts omitted, and utterly new ones inserted, &c. &c.; an experiment which is ludicrous, or saddening, according to the temper of the experimenter.

{209} Les Moines d'Occident, vol. ii. pp. 332467.

{210} M. La Borderie, "Discours sur les Saints Bretons;" a work which I have unfortunately not been able to consult.

{212a} Vitae Patrum, p. 753.

{212b} Ibid. p. 893.

{212c} Ibid. p. 539.

{212d} Ibid. p. 540.

{212e} Ibid. p. 532.

{224} It has been handed down, in most crabbed Latin, by his disciple, Eugippius; it may be read at length in Pez, Scriptores Austriacarum Rerum.

{238} Scriptores Austriacarum Rerum.

{245} Haeften, quoted by Montalembert, vol. ii. p. 22, in note.

{256} Dr. Reeves supposes these to have been "crustacea:" but their stinging and clinging prove them surely to have been jelly-fish-medusae.

{257} I have followed the Latin prose version of it, which M. Achille Jubinal attributes to the eleventh century. Here and there I have taken the liberty of using the French prose version, which he attributes to the latter part of the twelfth. I have often condensed the story, where it was prolix or repeated itself: but I have tried to follow faithfully both matter and style, and to give, word for word, as nearly as I could, any notable pa.s.sages. Those who wish to know more of St. Brendan should consult the learned _brochure_ of M. Jubinal, "La Legende Latine de St.

Brandaines," and the two English versions of the Legend, edited by Mr.

Thomas Wright for the Percy Society, vol. xiv. One is in verse, and of the earlier part of the fourteenth century, and spirited enough: the other, a prose version, was printed by Wynkyn de Worde, in his edition of the "Golden Legend;" 1527.