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 noble 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
Nazianzen: “The title of Saint has been added to his name, but the
tenderness of his heart and the elegance of his genius reflect a more
pleasing luster 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 God by bringing such evils upon me who have given
you no offence.” This singularly tender petition 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 associated 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,
pronouncing 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 sturdy 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 embarrassments 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 passed 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 institution was planted in Spain, but in
380 the council of Saragossa forbade priests to assume monkish habits.
Germany received the institution some time in the fifth century. The
introduction of Christianity as well as of monasticism into the British
Isles is shrouded in darkness. A few jewels of fact may be gathered
from the legendary rubbish. It is probable that before the days of
Benedict, Saint Patrick, independently of Rome, established monasteries
in Ireland and preached the gospel there; and, without doubt, before
the birth of Benedict of Nursia, there were monks and monasteries in
Great Britain. The monastery of Bangor is said to have been founded
about 450 A.D.
It is probable that Christianity was introduced into Britain before
the close of the second century, and that monasticism arose some time
in the fifth century. Tertullian, about the beginning of the third
century, boasts that Christianity had conquered places in Britain where
the Roman arms could not penetrate. Origen claimed that the power of
the Savior was manifest in Britain as well as in Muritania. The
earliest notice we have of a British church occurs in the writings of
the Venerable Bede (673-735 A.D.), a monk whose numerous and valuable
works on English history entitle him to the praise of being “the
greatest literary benefactor this or any other nation has produced.” He
informs us that a British king—Lucius—embraced Christianity during
the reign of the Emperor Aurelius, and that missionaries were sent from
Rome to Britain about that time. Lingard says the story is suspicious,
since “we know not from what source Bede, at the distance of five
centuries, derived his information.” It seems quite likely that there
must have been some Christians among the Roman soldiers or civil
officials who lived in Britain during the Roman occupation of the
country. The whole problem has been the theme of so much controversy,
however, that a fuller discussion is reserved for the next chapter.