Books: The Hermits

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One treasure, however, they did remove, of which the old soldier
Ammianus says nothing, and which, had he seen it pass him on the
road, he would have treated with supreme contempt. And that, says
Theodoret, was the holy body of "their prince and defender," St.
James the mountain hermit, round which the emigrants chanted, says
Theodoret, hymns of regret and praise, "for, had he been alive, that
city would have never passed into barbarian hands."

There stood with Jacob in the breach, during that siege of Nisibis,
a man of gentler temperament, a disciple of his, who had received
baptism at his hands, and who was, like himself, a hermit--Ephraim,
or Ephrem, of Edessa, as he is commonly called, for, though born at
Nisibis, his usual home was at Edessa, the metropolis of a Syrian-
speaking race. Into the Syrian tongue Ephrem translated the
doctrines of the Christian faith and the Gospel history, and spread
abroad, among the heathen round, a number of delicate and graceful
hymns, which remain to this day, and of which some have lately been
translated into English. {160} Soft, sad, and dreamy as they were,
they had strength and beauty enough in them to supersede the Gnostic
hymns of Bardesanes and his son Harmonius, which had been long
popular among the Syrians; and for centuries afterwards, till
Christianity was swept away by the followers of Mahomet, the Syrian
husbandman beguiled his toil with the pious and plaintive melodies
of St. Ephrem.

But Ephrem was not only a hermit and a poet: he was a preacher and
a missionary. If he wept, as it was said, day and night for his own
sins and the sins of mankind, he did his best at least to cure those
sins. He was a demagogue, or leader of the people, for good and not
for evil, to whom the simple Syrians looked up for many a year as
their spiritual father. He died in peace, as he said himself, like
the labourer who has finished his day's work, like the wandering
merchant who returns to his fatherland, leaving nothing behind him
save prayers and counsels, for "Ephrem," he added, "had neither
wallet nor pilgrim's staff."

"His last utterance" (I owe this fact to M. de Montalembert's book,
"Moines d'Occident") "was a protest on behalf of the dignity of man
redeemed by the Son of God."

"The young and pious daughter of the Governor of Edessa came weeping
to receive his latest breath. He made her swear never again to be
carried in a litter by slaves, 'The neck of man,' he said, 'should
bear no yoke save that of Christ.'" This anecdote is one among many
which go to prove that from the time that St. Paul had declared the
great truth that in Christ Jesus was neither bond nor free, and had
proclaimed the spiritual brotherhood of all men in Christ, slavery,
as an institution, was doomed to slow but certain death. But that
death was accelerated by the monastic movement, wherever it took
root. A class of men who came not to be ministered unto, but to
minister to others; who prided themselves upon needing fewer
luxuries than the meanest slaves; who took rank among each other and
among men not on the ground of race, nor of official position, nor
of wealth, nor even of intellect, but simply on the ground of
virtue, was a perpetual protest against slavery and tyranny of every
kind; a perpetual witness to the world that, whether all men were
equal or not in the sight of God, the only rank among them of which
God would take note, would be their rank in goodness.

BASIL

On the south shore of the Black Sea, eastward of Sinope, there dwelt
in those days, at the mouth of the River Iris, a hermit as gentle
and as pure as Ephrem of Edessa. Beside a roaring waterfall, amid
deep glens and dark forests, with distant glimpses of the stormy sea
beyond, there lived on bread and water a graceful gentleman, young
and handsome; a scholar too, who had drunk deeply at the fountains
of Pagan philosophy and poetry, and had been educated with care at
Constantinople and at Athens, as well as at his native city of
Caesaraea, in the heart of Asia Minor, now dwindled under Turkish
misrule into a wretched village. He was heir to great estates; the
glens and forests round him were his own: and that was the use
which he made of them. On the other side of the torrent, his mother
and his sister, a maiden of wonderful beauty, lived the hermit life,
on a footing of perfect equality with their female slaves, and the
pious women who had joined them.

Basil's austerities--or rather the severe climate of the Black Sea
forests--brought him to an early grave. But his short life was
spent well enough. He was a poet, with an eye for the beauty of
Nature--especially for the beauty of the sea--most rare in those
times; and his works are full of descriptions of scenery as healthy-
minded as they are vivid and graceful.

In his travels through Egypt, Palestine, and Syria, he had seen the
hermits, and longed to emulate them; but (to do him justice) his
ideal of the so-called "religious life" was more practical than
those of the solitaries of Egypt, who had been his teachers. "It
was the life" (says Dean Milman {163}) "of the industrious religious
community, not of the indolent and solitary anchorite, which to
Basil was the perfection of Christianity. . . . The indiscriminate
charity of these institutions was to receive orphans" (of which
there were but too many in those evil days) "of all classes, for
education and maintenance: but other children only with the consent
or at the request of parents, certified before witnesses; and vows
were by no means to be enforced upon these youthful pupils. Slaves
who fled to the monasteries were to be admonished and sent back to
their owners. There is one reservation" (and that one only too
necessary then), "that slaves were not bound to obey their master,
if he should order what is contrary to the law of God. Industry was
to be the animating principle of these settlements. Prayer and
psalmody were to have their stated hours, but by no means to intrude
on those devoted to useful labour. These labours were strictly
defined; such as were of real use to the community, not those which
might contribute to vice or luxury. Agriculture was especially
recommended. The life was in no respect to be absorbed in a
perpetual mystic communion with the Deity."

The ideal which Basil set before him was never fulfilled in the
East. Transported to the West by St. Benedict, "the father of all
monks," it became that conventual system which did so much during
the early middle age, not only for the conversion and civilization,
but for the arts and the agriculture of Europe.

Basil, like his bosom friend, Gregory of Nazianzen, had to go forth
from his hermitage into the world, and be a bishop, and fight the
battles of the true faith. But, as with Gregory, his hermit-
training had strengthened his soul, while it weakened his body. The
Emperor Valens, supporting the Arians against the orthodox, sent to
Basil his Prefect of the Praetorium, an officer of the highest rank.
The prefect argued, threatened; Basil was firm. "I never met," said
he at last, "such boldness." "Because," said Basil, "you never met
a bishop." The prefect returned to his Emperor. "My lord, we are
conquered; this bishop is above threats. We can do nothing but by
force." The Emperor shrank from that crime, and Basil and the
orthodoxy of his diocese were saved. The rest of his life and of
Gregory's belongs, like that of Chrysostom, to general history, and
we need pursue it no further here.

I said that Basil's idea of what monks should be was never carried
out in the East, and it cannot be denied that, as the years went on,
the hermit life took a form less and less practical, and more and
more repulsive also. Such men as Antony, Hilarion, Basil, had
valued the ascetic training, not so much because it had, as they
thought, a merit in itself, but because it enabled the spirit to
rise above the flesh; because it gave them strength to conquer their
passions and appetites, and leave their soul free to think and act.

But their disciples, especially in Syria, seem to have attributed
more and more merit to the mere act of inflicting want and suffering
on themselves. Their souls were darkened, besides, more and more,
by a doctrine unknown to the Bible, unknown to the early Christians,
and one which does not seem to have had any strong hold of the mind
of Antony himself--namely, that sins committed after baptism could
only be washed away by tears, and expiated by penance; that for them
the merits of him who died for the sins of the whole world were of
little or of no avail.

Therefore, in perpetual fear of punishment hereafter, they set their
whole minds to punish themselves on earth, always tortured by the
dread that they were not punishing themselves enough, till they
crushed down alike body, mind, and soul into an abject superstition,
the details of which are too repulsive to be written here. Some of
the instances of this self-invented misery which are recorded, even
as early as the time of Theodoret, bishop of Cyra, in the middle of
the fifth century, make us wonder at the puzzling inconsistencies of
the human mind. Did these poor creatures really believe that God
could be propitiated by the torture of his own creatures? What
sense could Theodoret (who was a good man himself) have put upon the
words, "God is good," or "God is love," while he was looking with
satisfaction, even with admiration and awe, on practices which were
more fit for worshippers of Moloch?

Those who think these words too strong, may judge for themselves how
far they apply to his story of Marana and Cyra.

Marana, then, and Cyra were two young ladies of Berhoea, who had
given up all the pleasures of life to settle themselves in a
roofless cottage outside the town. They had stopped up the door
with stones and clay, and allowed it only to be opened at the feast
of Pentecost. Around them lived certain female slaves who had
voluntarily chosen the same life, and who were taught and exhorted
through a little window by their mistresses; or rather, it would
seem, by Marana alone: for Cyra (who was bent double by her
"training") was never to speak. Theodoret, as a priest, was allowed
to enter the sacred enclosure, and found them shrouded from head to
foot in long veils, so that neither their faces or hands could be
seen; and underneath their veils, burdened on every limb, poor
wretches, with such a load of iron chains and rings that a strong
man, he says, could not have stood under the weight. Thus had they
endured for two-and-forty years, exposed to sun and wind, to frost
and rain, taking no food at times for many days together. I have no
mind to finish the picture, and still less to record any of the
phrases of rapturous admiration with which Bishop Theodoret comments
upon their pitiable superstition.

SIMEON STYLITES

Of all such anchorites of the far East, the most remarkable,
perhaps, was the once famous Simeon Stylites--a name almost
forgotten, save by antiquaries and ecclesiastics, till Mr. Tennyson
made it once more notorious in a poem as admirable for its savage
grandness, as for its deep knowledge of human nature. He has
comprehended thoroughly, as it seems to me, that struggle between
self-abasement and self-conceit, between the exaggerated sense of
sinfulness and the exaggerated ambition of saintly honour, which
must have gone on in the minds of these ascetics--the temper which
could cry out one moment with perfect honesty--

"Although I be the basest of mankind,
From scalp to sole one slough and crust of sin;"

at the next--

"I will not cease to grasp the hope I hold
Of saintdom; and to clamour, mourn, and sob,
Battering the gates of heaven with storms of prayer.
Have mercy, Lord, and take away my sin.
Let this avail, just, dreadful, mighty God,
This not be all in vain, that thrice ten years
Thrice multiplied by superhuman pangs,
* * * * * *
A sign between the meadow and the cloud,
Patient on this tall pillar I have borne
Rain, wind, frost, heat, hail, damp, and sleet, and snow;
And I had hoped that ere this period closed
Thou wouldst have caught me up into thy rest,
Denying not these weather-beaten limbs
The meed of saints, the white robe and the palm.
O take the meaning, Lord: I do not breathe,
Not whisper any murmur of complaint.
Pain heaped ten hundred-fold to this, were still
Less burthen, by ten-hundred-fold, to bear
Than were those lead-like tons of sin, that crush'd
My spirit flat before thee."

Admirably also has Mr. Tennyson conceived the hermit's secret doubt
of the truth of those miracles, which he is so often told that he
has worked, that he at last begins to believe that he must have
worked them; and the longing, at the same time, to justify himself
to himself, by persuading himself that he has earned miraculous
powers. On this whole question of hermit miracles I shall speak at
length hereafter. I have given specimens enough of them already,
and shall give as few as possible henceforth. There is a sameness
about them which may become wearisome to those who cannot be
expected to believe them. But what the hermits themselves thought
of them, is told (at least, so I suspect) only too truly by Mr.
Tennyson--

"O Lord, thou knowest what a man I am;
A sinful man, conceived and born in sin:
'Tis their own doing; this is none of mine;
Lay it not to me. Am I to blame for this,
That here come those who worship me? Ha! ha!
The silly people take me for a saint,
And bring me offerings of fruit and flowers:
And I, in truth (thou wilt bear witness here),
Have all in all endured as much, and more
Than many just and holy men, whose names
Are register'd and calendar'd for saints.
Good people, you do ill to kneel to me.
What is it I can have done to merit this?
It may be I have wrought some miracles,
And cured some halt and maimed: but what of that?
It may be, no one, even among the saints,
Can match his pains with mine: but what of that?
Yet do not rise; for you may look on me,
And in your looking you may kneel to God.
Speak, is there any of you halt and maimed?
I think you know I have some power with heaven
From my long penance; let him speak his wish.
Yes, I can heal him. Power goes forth from me.
They say that they are heal'd. Ah, hark! they shout,
'St. Simeon Stylites!' Why, if so,
God reaps a harvest in me. O my soul,
God reaps a harvest in thee. If this be,
Can I work miracles, and not be saved?
This is not told of any. They were saints.
It cannot be but that I shall be saved;
Yea, crowned a saint." . . .

I shall not take the liberty of quoting more: but shall advise all
who read these pages to study seriously Mr. Tennyson's poem if they
wish to understand that darker side of the hermit life which became
at last, in the East, the only side of it. For in the East the
hermits seem to have degenerated, by the time of the Mahomedan
conquest, into mere self-torturing fakeers, like those who may be
seen to this day in Hindostan. The salt lost its savour, and in due
tune it was trampled under foot; and the armies of the Moslem swept
out of the East a superstition which had ended by enervating instead
of ennobling humanity.

But in justice, not only to myself, but to Mr. Tennyson (whose
details of Simeon's asceticism may seem to some exaggerated and
impossible), I have thought fit to give his life at length, omitting
only many of his miracles, and certain stories of his penances,
which can only excite horror and disgust, without edifying the
reader.

There were, then, three hermits of this name, often confounded; and
all alike famous (as were Julian, Daniel, and other Stylites) for
standing for many years on pillars. One of the Simeons is said by
Moschus to have been struck by lightning, and his death to have been
miraculously revealed to Julian the Stylite, who lived twenty-four
miles off. More than one Stylite, belonging to the Monophysite
heresy of Severus Acephalus, was to be found, according to Moschus,
in the East at the beginning of the seventh century. This biography
is that of the elder Simeon, who died (according to Cedrenus) about
460, after passing some forty or fifty years upon pillars of
different heights. There is much discrepancy in the accounts, both
of his date and of his age; but that such a person really existed,
and had his imitators, there can be no doubt. He is honoured as a
saint alike by the Latin and by the Greek Churches.

His life has been written by a disciple of his named Antony, who
professes to have been with him when he died; and also by Theodoret,
who knew him well in life. Both are to be found in Rosweyde, and
there seems no reason to doubt their authenticity. I have therefore
interwoven them both, marking the paragraphs taken from each.

Theodoret, who says that he was born in the village of Gesa, between
Antioch and Cilicia, calls him that "famous Simeon--that great
miracle of the whole world, whom all who obey the Roman rule know;
whom the Persians also know, and the Indians, and AEthiopians; nay,
his fame has even spread to the wandering Scythians, and taught them
his love of toil and love of wisdom;" and says that he might be
compared with Jacob the patriarch, Joseph the temperate, Moses the
legislator, David the king and prophet, Micaiah the prophet, and the
divine men who were like them. He tells how Simeon, as a boy, kept
his father's sheep, and, being forced by heavy snow to leave them in
the fold, went with his parents to the church, and there heard the
Gospel which blesses those who mourn and weep, and calls those
miserable who laugh, and those enviable who have a pure heart. And
when he asked a bystander what he would gain who did each of these
things, the man propounded to him the solitary life, and pointed out
to him the highest philosophy.

This, Theodoret says, he heard from the saint's own tongue. His
disciple Antony gives the story of his conversion somewhat
differently.

St. Simeon (says Antony) was chosen by God from his birth, and used
to study how to obey and please him. Now his father's name was
Susocion, and he was brought up by his parents.

When he was thirteen years old, he was feeding his father's sheep;
and seeing a church he left the sheep and went in, and heard an
epistle being read. And when he asked an elder, "Master, what is
that which is read?" the old man replied, "For the substance (or
very being) of the soul, that a man may learn to fear God with his
whole heart, and his whole mind." Quoth the blessed Simeon, "What
is to fear God?" Quoth the elder, "Wherefore troublest thou me, my
son?" Quoth he, "I inquire of thee, as of God. For I wish to learn
what I hear from thee, because I am ignorant and a fool." The elder
answered, "If any man shall have fasted continually, and offered
prayers every moment, and shall have humbled himself to every man,
and shall not have loved gold, nor parents, nor garments, nor
possessions, and if he honours his father and mother, and follows
the priests of God, he shall inherit the eternal kingdom: but he
who, on the contrary, does not keep those things, he shall inherit
the outer darkness which God hath prepared for the devil and his
angels. All these things, my son, are heaped together in a
monastery."

Hearing this, the blessed Simeon fell at his feet, saying, "Thou art
my father and my mother, and my teacher of good works, and guide to
the kingdom of heaven. For thou hast gained my soul, which was
already being sunk in perdition. May the Lord repay thee again for
it. For these are the things which edify. I will now go into a
monastery, where God shall choose; and let his will be done on me."
The elder said, "My son, before thou enterest, hear me. Thou shalt
have tribulation; for thou must watch and serve in nakedness, and
sustain ills without ceasing; and again thou shalt be comforted,
thou vessel precious to God."

And forthwith the blessed Simeon, going out of the church, went to
the monastery of the holy Timotheus, a wonder-working man; and
falling down before the gate of the monastery, he lay five days,
neither eating nor drinking. And on the fifth day, the abbot,
coming out, asked him, "Whence art thou, my son? And what parents
hast thou, that thou art so afflicted? Or what is thy name, lest
perchance thou hast done some wrong? Or perchance thou art a slave,
and fleest from thy master?" Then the blessed Simeon said with
tears, "By no means, master; but I long to be a servant of God, if
he so will, because I wish to save my lost soul. Bid me, therefore,
enter the monastery, and leave all; and send me away no more." Then
the Abbot, taking his hand, introduced him into the monastery,
saying to the brethren, "My sons, behold I deliver you this brother;
teach him the canons of the monastery." Now he was in the monastery
about four months, serving all without complaint, in which he learnt
the whole Psalter by heart, receiving every day divine food. But
the food which he took with his brethren he gave away secretly to
the poor, not caring for the morrow. So the brethren ate at even:
but he only on the seventh day.

But one day, having gone to the well to draw water, he took the rope
from the bucket with which the brethren drew water, and wound it
round his body from his loins to his neck: and going in, said to
the brethren, "I went out to draw water, and found no rope on the
bucket." And they said, "Hold thy peace, brother, lest the abbot
know it; till the thing has passed over." But his body was wounded
by the tightness and roughness of the rope, because it cut him to
the bone, and sank into his flesh till it was hardly seen. But one
day, some of the brethren going out, found him giving his food to
the poor; and when they returned, said to the abbot, "Whence hast
thou brought us that man? We cannot abstain like him, for he fasts
from Lord's day to Lord's day, and gives away his food." . . . Then
the abbot, going out, found as was told him, and said, "Son, what is
it which the brethren tell of thee? Is it not enough for thee to
fast as we do? Hast thou not heard the Gospel, saying of teachers,
that the disciple is not above his master?" . . . The blessed Simeon
stood and answered nought. And the abbot, being angry, bade strip
him, and found the rope round him, so that only its outside
appeared; and cried with a loud voice, saying, "Whence has this man
come to us, wanting to destroy the rule of the monastery? I pray
thee depart hence, and go whither thou wiliest." And with great
trouble they took off the rope, and his flesh with it, and taking
care of him, healed him.

But after he was healed he went out of the monastery, no man knowing
of it, and entered a deserted tank, in which was no water, where
unclean spirits dwelt. And that very night it was revealed to the
abbot, that a multitude of people surrounded the monastery with
clubs and swords, saying, "Give us Simeon the servant of God,
Timotheus; else we will burn thee with thy monastery, because thou
hast angered a just man." And when he woke, he told the brethren
the vision, and how he was much disturbed thereby. And another
night he saw a multitude of strong men standing and saying, "Give us
Simeon the servant of God; for he is beloved by God and the angels:
why hast thou vexed him? He is greater than thou before God; for
all the angels are sorry on his behalf. And God is minded to set
him on high in the world, that by him many signs may be done, such
as no man has done." Then the abbot, rising, said with great fear
to the brethren, "Seek me that man, and bring him hither, lest
perchance we all die on his account. He is truly a saint of God,
for I have heard and seen great wonders of him." Then all the monks
went out and searched, but in vain, and told the abbot how they had
sought him everywhere, save in the deserted tank. . . . Then the
abbot went, with five brethren, to the tank. And making a prayer,
he went down into it with the brethren. And the blessed Simeon,
seeing him, began to entreat, saying, "I beg you, servants of God,
let me alone one hour, that I may render up my spirit; for yet a
little, and it will fail. But my soul is very weary, because I have
angered the Lord." But the abbot said to him, "Come, servant of
God, that we may take thee to the monastery; for I know concerning
thee that thou art a servant of God." But when he would not, they
brought him by force to the monastery. And all fell at his feet,
weeping, and saying, "We have sinned against thee, servant of God;
forgive us." But the blessed Simeon groaned, saying, "Wherefore do
ye burden an unhappy man and a sinner? You are the servants of God,
and my fathers." And he stayed there about one year.

After this (says Theodoret) he came to the Telanassus, under the
peak of the mountain on which he lived till his death; and having
found there a little house, he remained in it shut up for three
years. But eager always to increase the riches of virtue, he
longed, in imitation of the divine Moses and Elias, to fast forty
days; and tried to persuade Bassus, who was then set over the
priests in the villages, to leave nothing within by him, but to
close up the door with clay. He spoke to him of the difficulty, and
warned him not to think that a violent death was a virtue. "Put by
me then, father," he said, "ten loaves, and a cruse of water, and if
I find my body need sustenance, I will partake of them." At the end
of the days, that wonderful man of God, Bassus, removed the clay,
and going in, found the food and water untouched, and Simeon lying
unable to speak or move. Getting a sponge, he moistened and opened
his lips and then gave him the symbols of the divine mysteries; and,
strengthened by them, he arose, and took some food, chewing little
by little lettuces and succory, and such like.

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