Books: The Hermits

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After an acquaintance of now five-and-twenty years with this
wonderful treasury of early Christian mythology, to which all fairy
tales are dull and meagre, I am almost inclined to sympathise with
M. de Montalembert's questions,--"Who is so ignorant, or so
unfortunate, as not to have devoured these tales of the heroic age
of monachism? Who has not contemplated, if not with the eyes of
faith, at least with the admiration inspired by an incontrollable
greatness of soul, the struggles of these athletes of penitence? . .
. . Everything is to be found there--variety, pathos, the sublime
and simple epic of a race of men, naifs as children, and strong as
giants." In whatever else one may differ from M. de Montalembert--
and it is always painful to differ from one whose pen has been
always the faithful servant of virtue and piety, purity and
chivalry, loyalty and liberty, and whose generous appreciation of
England and the English is the more honourable to him, by reason of
an utter divergence in opinion, which in less wide and noble spirits
produces only antipathy--one must at least agree with him in his
estimate of the importance of these "Lives of the Fathers," not only
to the ecclesiologist, but to the psychologist and the historian.
Their influence, subtle, often transformed and modified again and
again, but still potent from its very subtleness, is being felt
around us in many a puzzle--educational, social, political; and
promises to be felt still more during the coming generation; and to
have studied thoroughly one of them--say the life of St. Antony by
St. Athanasius--is to have had in our hands (whether we knew it or
not) the key to many a lock, which just now refuses either to be
tampered with or burst open.

I have determined, therefore, to give a few of these lives,
translated as literally as possible. Thus the reader will then have
no reason to fear a garbled or partial account of personages so
difficult to conceive or understand. He will be able to see the men
as wholes; to judge (according to his light) of their merits and
their defects. The very style of their biographers (which is copied
as literally as is compatible with the English tongue) will teach
him, if he be wise, somewhat of the temper and habits of thought of
the age in which they lived; and one of these original documents,
with its honesty, its vivid touches of contemporary manners, its
intense earnestness, will give, perhaps, a more true picture of the
whole hermit movement than (with all respect, be it said) the most
brilliant general panorama.

It is impossible to give in this series all the lives of the early
hermits--even of those contained in Rosweyde. This volume will
contain, therefore, only the most important and most famous lives of
the Egyptian, Syrian, and Persian hermits, followed, perhaps, by a
few later biographies from Western Europe, as proofs that the
hermit-type, as it spread toward the Atlantic, remained still the
same as in the Egyptian desert.

Against one modern mistake the reader must be warned; the theory,
namely, that these biographies were written as religious romances;
edifying, but not historical; to be admired, but not believed.
There is not the slightest evidence that such was the case. The
lives of these, and most other saints (certainly those in this
volume), were written by men who believed the stories themselves,
after such inquiry into the facts as they deemed necessary; who knew
that others would believe them; and who intended that they should do
so; and the stones were believed accordingly, and taken as matter of
fact for the most practical purposes by the whole of Christendom.
The forging of miracles, like the forging of charters, for the
honour of a particular shrine, or the advantage of a particular
monastery, belongs to a much later and much worse age; and,
whatsoever we may think of the taste of the authors of these lives,
or of their faculty for judging of evidence, we must at least give
them credit for being earnest men, incapable of what would have been
in their eyes, and ought to be in ours, not merely falsehood, but
impiety. Let the reader be sure of this--that these documents would
not have exercised their enormous influence on the human mind, had
there not been in them, under whatever accidents of credulity, and
even absurdity, an element of sincerity, virtue, and nobility.

SAINT ANTONY

The life of Antony, by Athanasius, is perhaps the most important of
all these biographies; because first, Antony was generally held to
be the first great example and preacher of the hermit life; because
next, Athanasius, his biographer, having by his controversial
writings established the orthodox faith as it is now held alike by
Romanists, Greeks, and Protestants, did, by his publication of the
life of Antony, establish the hermit life as the ideal (in his
opinion) of Christian excellence; and lastly, because that biography
exercised a most potent influence on the conversion of St.
Augustine, the greatest thinker (always excepting St. Paul) whom the
world had seen since Plato, whom the world was to see again till
Lord Bacon; the theologian and philosopher (for he was the latter,
as well as the former, in the strictest sense) to whom the world
owes, not only the formulizing of the whole scheme of the universe
for a thousand years after his death, but Calvinism (wrongly so
called) in all its forms, whether held by the Augustinian party in
the Church of Rome, or the "Reformed" Churches of Geneva, France,
and Scotland.

Whether we have the exact text of the document as Athanasius wrote
it to the "Foreign Brethren"--probably the religious folk of Treves-
-in the Greek version published by Heschelius in 1611, and in
certain earlier Greek texts; whether the Latin translation
attributed to Evagrius, which has been well known for centuries past
in the Latin Church, be actually his; whether it be exactly that of
which St. Jerome speaks, and whether it be exactly that which St.
Augustine saw, are questions which it is now impossible to decide.
But of the genuineness of the life in its entirety we have no right
to doubt, contrary to the verdicts of the most distinguished
scholars, whether Protestant or Catholic; and there is fair reason
to suppose that the document (allowing for errors and variations of
transcribers) which I have tried to translate, is that of which the
great St. Augustine speaks in the eighth book of his Confessions.

He tells us that he was reclaimed at last from a profligate life
(the thought of honourable marriage seems never to have entered his
mind), by meeting, while practising as a rhetorician at Treves, an
old African acquaintance, named Potitanius, an officer of rank.
What followed no words can express so well as those of the great
genius himself.

"When I told him that I was giving much attention to those writings
(the Epistles of Paul), we began to talk, and he to tell, of Antony,
the monk of Egypt, whose name was then very famous among thy
servants: {23} but was unknown to us till that moment. When he
discovered that, he spent some time over the subject, detailing his
virtues, and wondering at our ignorance. We were astounded at
hearing such well-attested marvels of him, so recent and almost
contemporaneous, wrought in the right faith of the Catholic Church.
We all wondered: we, that they were so great; and he, that we had
not heard of them. Thence his discourse ran on to those flocks of
hermit-cells, and the morals of thy sweetness, and the fruitful
deserts of the wilderness, of which we knew nought. There was a
monastery, too, at Milan, full of good brethren, outside the city
walls, under the tutelage of Ambrosius, and we knew nothing of it.
He went on still speaking, and we listened intently; and it befell
that he told us how, I know not when, he and three of his mess
companions at Treves, while the emperor was engaged in an afternoon
spectacle in the circus, went out for a walk in the gardens round
the walls; and as they walked there in pairs, one with him alone,
and the two others by themselves, they parted. And those two,
straying about, burst into a cottage, where dwelt certain servants
of thine, poor in spirit, of such as is the kingdom of heaven; and
there found a book, in which was written the life of Antony. One of
them began to read it, and to wonder, and to be warned; and, as he
read, to think of taking up such a life, and leaving the warfare of
this world to serve thee. Now, he was one of those whom they call
Managers of Affairs. {24} Then, suddenly filled with holy love and
sober shame, angered at himself, he cast his eyes on his friend, and
said, 'Tell me, prithee, with all these labours of ours, whither are
we trying to get? What are we seeking? For what are we soldiering?
Can we have a higher hope in the palace, than to become friends of
the emperor? And when there, what is not frail and full of dangers?
And through how many dangers we do not arrive at a greater danger
still? And how long will that last? But if I choose to become a
friend of God, I can do it here and now.' He spoke thus, and,
swelling in the labour-pangs of a new life, he fixed his eyes again
on the pages and read, and was changed inwardly as thou lookedst on
him, and his mind was stripped of the world, as soon appeared. For
while he read, and rolled over the billows of his soul, he shuddered
and hesitated from time to time, and resolved better things; and
already thine, he said to his friend, 'I have already torn myself
from that hope of ours, and have settled to serve God; and this I
begin from this hour, in this very place. If you do not like to
imitate me, do not oppose me.' He replied that he would cling to
his companion in such a great service and so great a warfare. And
both, now thine, began building, at their own cost, the tower of
leaving all things and following thee. Then Potitianus, and the man
who was talking with him elsewhere in the garden, seeking them, came
to the same place, and warned them to return, as the sun was getting
low. They, however, told their resolution, and how it had sprung up
and taken strong hold in them, and entreated the others not to give
them pain. They, not altered from their former mode of life, yet
wept (as he told us) for themselves; and congratulated them piously,
and commended themselves to their prayers; and then dragging their
hearts along the earth, went back to the palace. But the others,
fixing their hearts on heaven, remained in the cottage. And both of
them had affianced brides, who, when they heard this, dedicated
their virginity to thee."

The part which this incident played in St. Augustine's own
conversion must be told hereafter in his life. But the scene which
his master-hand has drawn is not merely the drama of his own soul or
of these two young officers, but of a whole empire. It is, as I
said at first, the tragedy and suicide of the old empire; and the
birth-agony of which he speaks was not that of an individual soul
here or there, but of a whole new world, for good and evil. The old
Roman soul was dead within, the body of it dead without.
Patriotism, duty, purpose of life, save pleasure, money, and
intrigue, had perished. The young Roman officer had nothing left
for which to fight; the young Roman gentleman nothing left for which
to be a citizen and an owner of lands. Even the old Roman longing
(which was also a sacred duty) of leaving an heir to perpetuate his
name, and serve the state as his fathers had before him--even that
was gone. Nothing was left, with the many, but selfishness, which
could rise at best into the desire of saving every man his own soul,
and so transform worldliness into other-worldliness. The old empire
could do nothing more for man; and knew that it could do nothing;
and lay down in the hermit's cell to die.

Treves was then "the second metropolis of the empire," boasting,
perhaps, even then, as it boasts still, that it was standing
thirteen hundred years before Rome was built. Amid the low hills,
pierced by rocky dells, and on a strath of richest soil, it had
grown, from the mud-hut town of the Treviri, into a noble city of
palaces, theatres, baths, triumphal-arches, on either side the broad
and clear Moselle. The bridge which Augustus had thrown across the
river, four hundred years before the times of hermits and of saints,
stood like a cliff through all barbarian invasions, through all the
battles and sieges of the Middle Age, till it was blown up by the
French in the wars of Louis XIV., and nought remains save the huge
piers of black lava stemming the blue stream; while up and down the
dwindled city, the colossal fragments of Roman work--the Black Gate,
the Heidenthurm, the baths, the Basilica or Hall of Justice, now a
Lutheran church--stand out half ruined, like the fossil bones of
giants amid the works of weaker, though of happier times; while the
amphitheatre was till late years planted thick with vines, fattening
in soil drenched with the blood of thousands. Treves had been the
haunt of emperor after emperor, men wise and strong, cruel and
terrible;--of Constantius, Constantine the Great, Julian,
Valentinian, Valens; and lastly, when Potitianus's friends found
those poor monks in the garden {27} of Gratian, the gentle hunter
who thought day and night on sport, till his arrows were said to be
instinct with life, was holding his military court within the walls
of Treves, or at that hunting palace on the northern downs, where
still on the bath-floors lie the mosaics of hare and deer, and boar
and hound, on which the feet of Emperors trod full fifteen hundred
years ago.

Still glorious outwardly, like the Roman empire itself, was that
great city of Treves; but inwardly it was full of rottenness and
weakness. The Roman empire had been, in spite of all its crimes,
for four hundred years the salt of the earth: but now the salt had
lost its savour; and in one generation more it would be trodden
under foot and cast upon the dunghill, and another empire would take
its place,--the empire, not of brute strength and self-indulgence,
but of sympathy and self-denial,--an empire, not of Caesars, but of
hermits. Already was Gratian the friend and pupil of St. Ambrose of
Milan; already, too, was he persecuting, though not to the death,
heretics and heathens. Nay, some fifty years before (if the legend
can be in the least trusted) had St. Helena, the mother of
Constantine the Great, returned from Palestine, bearing with her--so
men believed--not only the miraculously discovered cross of Christ,
but the seamless coat which he had worn; and, turning her palace
into a church, deposited the holy coat therein: where--so some
believe--it remains until this day. Men felt that a change was
coming, but whence it would come, or how terrible it would be, they
could not tell. It was to be, as the prophet says, "like the
bulging out of a great wall, which bursteth suddenly in an instant."
In the very amphitheatre where Gratian sat that afternoon, with all
the folk of Treves about him, watching, it may be, lions and
antelopes from Africa slaughtered--it may be criminals tortured to
death--another and an uglier sight had been twice seen some seventy
years before. Constantine, so-called the Great, had there exhibited
his "Frankish sports," the "magnificent spectacle," the "famous
punishments," as his flattering court-historians called them:
thousands of Frank prisoners, many of them of noble, and even of
royal blood, torn to pieces by wild beasts, while they stood
fearless, smiling with folded arms; and when the wild beasts were
gorged, and slew no more, weapons were put into the hands of the
survivors, and they were bidden to fight to the death for the
amusement of their Roman lords. But fight they would not against
their own flesh and blood: and as for life, all chance of that was
long gone by. So every man fell joyfully upon his brother's sword,
and, dying like a German man, spoilt the sport of the good folk of
Treves. And it seemed for a while as if there were no God in heaven
who cared to avenge such deeds of blood. For the kinsmen, it may be
the very sons, of those Franks were now in Gratian's pay; and the
Frank Merobaudes was his "Count of the Domestics," and one of his
most successful and trusted generals; and all seemed to go well, and
brute force and craft to triumph on the earth.

And yet those two young staff officers, when they left the imperial
court for the hermit's cell, judged, on the whole, prudently and
well, and chose the better part when they fled from the world to
escape the "dangers" of ambition, and the "greater danger still" of
success. For they escaped, not merely from vice and worldliness,
but, as the event proved, from imminent danger of death if they kept
the loyalty which they had sworn to their emperor; or the worse evil
of baseness if they turned traitors to him to save their lives.

For little thought Gratian, as he sat in that amphitheatre, that the
day was coming when he, the hunter of game--and of heretics--would
be hunted in his turn; when, deserted by his army, betrayed by
Merobaudes--whose elder kinsfolk were not likely to have kept him
ignorant of "the Frankish sports "--he should flee pitiably towards
Italy, and die by a German hand; some say near Lyons, some say near
Belgrade, calling on Ambrose with his latest breath. {29} Little
thought, too, the good folk of Treves, as they sat beneath the vast
awning that afternoon, that within the next half century a day of
vengeance was coming for them, which should teach them that there
was a God who "maketh inquisition for blood;" a day when Treves
should be sacked in blood and flame by those very "barbarian"
Germans whom they fancied their allies--or their slaves. And least
of all did they fancy that, when that great destruction fell upon
their city, the only element in it which would pass safely through
the fire and rise again, and raise their city to new glory and
power, was that which was represented by those poor hermits in the
garden-hut outside. Little thought they that above the awful arches
of the Black Gate--as if in mockery of the Roman Power--a lean
anchorite would take his stand, Simeon of Syracuse by name, a monk
of Mount Sinai, and there imitate, in the far West, the austerities
of St. Simeon Stylites in the East, and be enrolled in the new
Pantheon, not of Caesars, but of Saints.

Under the supposed patronage of those Saints, Treves rose again out
of its ruins. It gained its four great abbeys of St. Maximus (on
the site of Constantine's palace); St. Matthias, in the crypt
whereof the bodies of the monks never decay; {30} St. Martin; and
St. Mary of the Four Martyrs, where four soldiers of the famous
Theban legion are said to have suffered martyrdom by the house of
the Roman prefect. It had its cathedral of St. Peter and St.
Helena, supposed to be built out of St. Helena's palace; its
exquisite Liebfrauenkirche; its palace of the old Archbishops,
mighty potentates of this world, as well as of the kingdom of
heaven. For they were princes, arch-chancellors, electors of the
empire, owning many a league of fertile land, governing, and that
kindly and justly, towns and villages of Christian men, and now and
then going out to war, at the head of their own knights and yeomen,
in defence of their lands, and of the saints whose servants and
trustees they were; and so became, according to their light and
their means, the salt of that land for many generations.

And after a while that salt, too, lost its savour, and was, in its
turn, trodden under foot. The French republican wars swept away the
ecclesiastical constitution and the wealth of the ancient city. The
cathedral and churches were stripped of relics, of jewels, of
treasures of early art. The Prince-bishop's palace is a barrack; so
was lately St. Maximus's shrine; St. Martin's a china manufactory,
and St. Matthias's a school. Treves belongs to Prussia, and not to
"Holy Church;" and all the old splendours of the "empire of the
saints" are almost as much ruinate as those of the "empire of the
Romans." So goes the world, because there is a living God.

"The old order changeth, giving place to the new;
And God fulfils himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world."

But though palaces and amphitheatres be gone, the gardens outside
still bloom on as when Potitianus his friends wandered through them,
perpetual as Nature's self; and perpetual as Nature, too, endures
whatever is good and true of that afternoon's work, and of that
finding of the legend of St. Antony in the monk's cabin, which fixed
the destiny of the great genius of the Latin Church.

The story of St. Antony, as it has been handed down to us, {32} runs
thus:--

The life and conversation of our holy Father Antony, written and
sent to the monks in foreign parts by our Father among the saints,
Athanasius, Archbishop of Alexandria.

You have begun a noble rivalry with the monks of Egypt, having
determined either to equal or even to surpass them in your training
towards virtue; for there are monasteries already among you, and the
monastic life is practised. This purpose of yours one may justly
praise; and if you pray, God will bring it to perfection. But since
you have also asked me about the conversation of the holy Antony,
wishing to learn how he began his training, and who he was before
it, and what sort of an end he made to his life, and whether what is
said of him is true, in order that you may bring yourselves to
emulate him, with great readiness I received your command. For to
me, too, it is a great gain and benefit only to remember Antony; and
I know that you, when you hear of him, after you have wondered at
the man, will wish also to emulate his purpose. For the life of
Antony is for monks a perfect pattern of ascetic training. What,
then, you have heard about him from other informants do not
disbelieve, but rather think that you have heard from them a small
part of the facts. For in any case, they could hardly relate fully
such great matters, when even I, at your request, howsoever much I
may tell you in my letter, can only send you a little which I
remember about him. But do not cease to inquire of those who sail
from hence; for perhaps, if each tells what he knows, at last his
history may be worthily compiled. I had wished, indeed, when I
received your letter, to send for some of the monks who were wont to
be most frequently in his company, that I might learn something
more, and send you a fuller account. But since both the season of
navigation limited me, and the letter-carrier was in haste, I
hastened to write to your piety what I myself know (for I have often
seen him), and what I was able to learn from one who followed him
for no short time, and poured water upon his hands; always taking
care of the truth, in order that no one when he hears too much may
disbelieve, nor again, if he learns less than is needful, despise
the man.

Antony was an Egyptian by race, born of noble parents, {33} who had
a sufficient property of their own: and as they were Christians, he
too was Christianly brought up, and when a boy was nourished in the
house of his parents, besides whom and his home he knew nought. But
when he grew older, he would not be taught letters, {34} not wishing
to mix with other boys; but all his longing was (according to what
is written of Jacob) to dwell simply in his own house. But when his
parents took him into the Lord's house, he was not saucy, like a
boy, nor inattentive as he grew older; but was subject to his
parents, and attentive to what was read, turning it to his own
account. Nor again (as a boy who was moderately well off) did he
trouble his parents for various and expensive dainties, nor did he
run after the pleasures of this life; but was content with what he
found, and asked for nothing more. When his parents died, he was
left alone with a little sister, when he was about eighteen or
twenty years of age, and took care both of his house and of her.
But not six months after their death, as he was going as usual to
the Lord's house, and collecting his thoughts, he meditated as he
walked how the Apostles had left all and followed the Saviour; and
how those in the Acts brought the price of what they had sold, and
laid it at the Apostles' feet, to be given away to the poor; and
what and how great a hope was laid up for them in heaven. With this
in his mind, he entered the church. And it befell then that the
Gospel was being read; and he heard how the Lord had said to the
rich man, "If thou wilt be perfect, go, sell all thou hast, and give
to the poor; and come, follow me, and thou shalt have treasure in
heaven." Antony, therefore, as if the remembrance of the saints had
come to him from God, and as if the lesson had been read on his
account, went forth at once from the Lord's house, and gave away to
those of his own village the possessions he had inherited from his
ancestors (three hundred plough-lands, fertile and very fair), that
they might give no trouble either to him or his sister. All his
moveables he sold, and a considerable sum which he received for them
he gave to the poor. But having kept back a little for his sister,
when he went again into the Lord's house he heard the Lord saying in
the Gospel, "Take no thought for the morrow," and, unable to endure
any more delay, he went out and distributed that too to the needy.
And having committed his sister to known and faithful virgins, and
given to her wherewith to be educated in a nunnery, he himself
thenceforth devoted himself, outside his house, to training; {35}
taking heed to himself, and using himself severely. For monasteries
were not then common in Egypt, nor did any monks at all know the
wide desert; but each who wished to take heed to himself exercised
himself alone, not far from his own village. There was then in the
next village an old man, who had trained himself in a solitary life
from his youth. When Antony saw him, he emulated him in that which
is noble. And first he began to stay outside the village; and then,
if he heard of any earnest man, he went to seek him, like a wise
bee; and did not return till he had seen him, and having got from
him (as it were) provision for his journey toward virtue, went his
way. So dwelling there at first, he settled his mind neither to
look back towards his parents' wealth nor to recollect his
relations; but he put all his longing and all his earnestness on
training himself more intensely. For the rest he worked with his
hands, because he had heard, "If any man will not work, neither let
him eat;" and of his earnings he spent some on himself and some on
the needy. He prayed continually, because he knew that one ought to
pray secretly, without ceasing. He attended, also, so much to what
was read, that, with him, none of the Scriptures fell to the ground,
but he retained them all, and for the future his memory served him
instead of books. Behaving thus, Antony was beloved by all; and
submitted truly to the earnest men to whom he used to go. And from
each of them he learnt some improvement in his earnestness and his
training: he contemplated the courtesy of one, and another's
assiduity in prayer; another's freedom from anger; another's love of
mankind: he took heed to one as he watched; to another as he
studied: one he admired for his endurance, another for his fasting
and sleeping on the ground; he laid to heart the meekness of one,
and the long-suffering of another; and stamped upon his memory the
devotion to Christ and the mutual love which all in common
possessed. And thus filled full, he returned to his own place of
training, gathering to himself what he had got from each, and
striving to show all their qualities in himself. He never emulated
those of his own age, save in what is best; and did that so as to
pain no one, but make all rejoice over him. And all in the village
who loved good, seeing him thus, called him the friend of God; and
some embraced him as a son, some as a brother.

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