In the first chapter it was shown that a variety of views respecting
the relation of the body and the soul influenced the origin and
development of Christian monasticism. It will not now be necessary to
repeat what was there said. The essential teaching of all these false
opinions was that the body was in itself evil, that the gratification
of natural appetites was inherently wrong, and that true holiness
consisted in the complete subjection of the body by self-denial and
torture. Jerome distinctly taught that what was natural was opposed to
God. The Gnostics and many of the early Christians believed that this
world was ruled by the devil. The Gnostics held that this opposition of
the kingdom of matter to God was fundamental and eternal. The
Christians, however, maintained that the antagonism was temporary, the
Lord having given the world over to evil spirits for a time. The
prevailing opinion among almost all schools was that a union with God
was only possible to those who had extinguished bodily desires.
The ascetic theory undoubtedly derived much support from the views
held concerning the teachings of the Bible. The Oriental monks
frequently quoted from their sacred books to justify their habits and
ideals. In like manner, the Christian monks believed that they, and
they alone, were literally obeying the commands of Christ and his
apostles. This phase of the subject will receive attention when the
three vows of monasticism are considered.
In the West, two conditions, one political and social, the other
religious, set in motion all these spiritual desires and ascetic
beliefs tending toward monasticism. One was the corrupted state, of
Roman society and the approaching overthrow of the Roman Empire. The
other was the secularization of the church.
Men naturally cling to society as long as there exists any
well-founded hope for its regeneration, but when every expectation for
the survival of righteousness yields to a conviction that doom is
inevitable, then the flight from the world begins. This was precisely
the situation in the declining days of Rome and Alexandria, when
Christian monasticism came into being. The monks believed that the end
of the world was nigh, that all things temporal and earthly were
doomed, and that God's hand was against the empire. “That they were
correct in their judgment of the world about them,” says Kingsley,
“contemporary history proves abundantly. That they were correct,
likewise, in believing that some fearful judgment was about to fall on
man, is proved by the fact that it did fall.”
So they fled to escape being caught in the ruins of society's
tottering structure,—fled to make friends with the angels and with
God. If one cannot live purely in the midst of corruption, by all means
let him live purely away from corruption, but let him never forget that
his piety is of a lower order than that which abides uncorrupted in the
midst of degenerate society. There is much truth in the observation of
Charles Reade in “The Cloister and the Hearth”: “So long as Satan walks
the whole earth, tempting men, and so long as the sons of Belial do
never lock themselves in caves but run like ants, to and fro corrupting
others, the good man that sulks apart, plays the Devil's game, or at
least gives him the odds.”
But the early Christian monks believed that their safety was only in
flight. It was not altogether an unworthy motive; at least it is easy
to sympathize with these men struggling against odds, of the magnitude
of which the modern Christian has only the faintest conception.
The conviction that the only true and certain way to secure
salvation is by flight from the world, continued to prevail during the
succeeding centuries of monastic history, and it can hardly be said to
have entirely disappeared even at the present time. Anselm of
Canterbury, in the twelfth century, wrote to a young friend reminding
him that the glory of this world was perishing. True, not monks only
are saved, “but,” says he, “who attains to salvation in the most
certain, who in the most noble way, the man who seeks to love God
alone, or he who seeks to unite the love of God with the love of the
world?... Is it rational when danger is on every side, to remain where
it is the greatest?”
The Christian church set up an ideal of life which it was impossible
to realize within her borders, and one which differed in many respects
from the teachings of Jesus. Her demands involved a renunciation of the
world, a superiority to all the enticements of bodily appetites, a
lofty scorn of secular bonds and social concerns. A vigorous religious
faith had conquered a mighty empire, but corruption attended its
victory. The standard of Christian morals was lowered, or had at least
degenerated into a cold, formal ideal that no one was expected to
realize; hence none strove to attain it but the monks. When Roman
society with its selfishness, lust and worldliness, swept in through
the open doors of the church and took possession of the sanctuary,
those who had cherished the ascetic ideal gave up the fight against the
world, and the flight from the world-church began. They could not
tolerate this union of the church with a pagan state and an effete
civilization. In some respects, as a few writers maintain, many of
these hermits were like the old Jewish prophets, fighting single-handed
against corruption in church and state, refusing to yield themselves as
slaves to the authority of institutions that had forsaken the ideals of
the past.
Thus the conviction that the end of human society was nigh, and that
the church could no longer serve as an asylum for the lovers of
righteousness, with certain philosophical ideas respecting the body,
the world and God, united to produce the assumption that salvation was
more readily attainable in the deserts; and Christian monasticism, in
its hermit form, began its long and eventful history.