Books: The Hermits

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But they answered, "Not for a hundred gold pieces, so favourable was
the wind," and fed him all the way to Rome, where we lose sight of
him and his humour.

To go on with almost chance quotations:--

Some monks were eating at a festival, and one said to the serving
man, "I eat nothing cooked; tell them to bring me salt." The
serving man began to talk loudly: "That brother eats no cooked
meat; bring him a little salt." Quoth Abbot Theodore: "It were
more better for thee, brother, to eat meat in thy cell than to hear
thyself talked about in the presence of thy brethren."

Again: a brother came to Abbot Silvanus, in Mount Sinai, and found
the brethren working, and said, "Why labour you for the meat which
perisheth? Mary chose the good part." The abbot said, "Give him a
book to read, and put him in an empty cell." About the ninth hour
the brother looked out, to see if he would be called to eat, and at
last came to the abbot, and asked, "Do not the brethren eat to-day,
abbot?" "Yes." "Then why was not I called?" Then quoth Abbot
Silvanus: "Thou art a spiritual man: and needest not their food.
We are carnal, and must eat, because we work: but thou hast chosen
the better part." Whereat the monk was ashamed.

As was also John the dwarf, who wanted to be "without care like the
angels, doing nothing but praise God." So he threw away his cloak,
left his brother the abbot, and went into the desert. But after
seven days he came back, and knocked at the door. "Who is there?"
asked his brother. "John." "Nay, John is turned into an angel, and
is no more among men." So he left him outside all night; and in the
morning gave him to understand that if he was a man he must work,
but that if he was an angel, he had no need to live in a cell.

Consider again the saying of the great Antony, when some brethren
were praising another in his presence. But Antony tried him, and
found that he could not bear an injury. Then said the old man,
"Brother, thou art like a house with an ornamented porch, while the
thieves break into it by the back door."

Or this, of Abbot Isidore, when the devil tempted him to despair,
and told him that he would be lost after all: "If I do go into
torment, I shall still find you below me there."

Or this, of Zeno the Syrian, when some Egyptian monks came to him
and began accusing themselves: "The Egyptians hide the virtues
which they have, and confess vices which they have not. The Syrians
and Greeks boast of virtues which they have not, and hide vices
which they have."

Or this: One old man said to another, "I am dead to this world."
"Do not trust yourself," quoth the other, "till you are out of this
world. If you are dead, the devil is not."

Two old men lived in the same cell, and had never disagreed. Said
one to the other, "Let us have just one quarrel, like other men."
Quoth the other: "I do not know what a quarrel is like." Quoth the
first: "Here--I will put a brick between us, and say that it is
mine: and you shall say it is not mine; and over that let us have a
contention and a squabble." But when they put the brick between
them, and one said, "It is mine," the other said, "I hope it is
mine." And when the first said, "It is mine, it is not yours," he
answered, "If it is yours, take it." So they could not find out how
to have a quarrel.

Anger, malice, revenge, were accursed things in the eyes of these
men. There was enough of them, and too much, among their monks; but
far less, doubt not, than in the world outside. For within the
monastery it was preached against, repressed, punished; and when
repented of, forgiven, with loving warnings and wise rules against
future transgression.

Abbot Agathon used to say, "I never went to sleep with a quarrel
against any man; nor did I, as far as lay in me, let one who had a
quarrel against me sleep till he had made peace."

Abbot Isaac was asked why the devils feared him so much. "Since I
was made a monk," he said, "I settled with myself that no angry word
should come out of my mouth."

An old man said, "Anger arises from these four things: from the
lust of avarice, in giving and receiving; from loving one's own
opinion; from wishing to be honoured; and from fancying oneself a
teacher and hoping to be wiser than everybody. And anger obscures
human reason by these four ways: if a man hate his neighbour; or if
he envy him; or if he look on him as nought; or if he speak evil of
him."

A brother being injured by another, came to Abbot Sidonius, told his
story, and said, "I wish to avenge myself, father." The abbot
begged him to leave vengeance to God: but when he refused, said,
"Then let us pray." Whereon the old man rose, and said, "God, thou
art not necessary to us any longer, that thou shouldest be careful
of us: for we, as this brother says, both will and can avenge
ourselves." At which that brother fell at his feet, and begged
pardon, promising never to strive with his enemy.

Abbot Poemen said often, "Let malice never overcome thee. If any
man do thee harm, repay him with good, that thou mayest conquer evil
with good."

In a congregation at Scetis, when many men's lives and conversation
had been talked over, Abbot Pior held his tongue. After it was
over, he went out, and filled a sack with sand, and put it on his
back. Then he took a little bag, filled it likewise with sand, and
carried it before him. And when the brethren asked him what he
meant, he said, "The sack behind is my own sins, which are very
many: yet I have cast them behind my back, and will not see them,
nor weep over them. But I have put these few sins of my brother's
before my eyes, and am tormenting myself over them, and condemning
my brother."

A brother having committed a fault, went to Antony, and his brethren
followed, upbraiding him, and wanting to bring him back; while he
denied having done the wrong. Abbot Paphnutius was there, and spoke
a parable to them:--

"I saw on the river bank a man sunk in the mud up to his knees. And
men came to pull him out, and thrust him in up to the neck."

Then said Antony of Paphnutius, "Behold a man who can indeed save
souls."

Abbot Macarius was going up to the mountain of Nitria, and sent his
disciple on before. The disciple met an idol-priest hurrying on,
and carrying a great beam: to whom he cried, "Where art thou
running, devil?" At which he was wroth, and beat him so that he
left him half dead, and then ran on, and met Macarius, who said,
"Salvation to thee, labourer, salvation!" He answered, wondering,
"What good hast thou seen in me that thou salutest me?" "Because I
saw thee working and running, though ignorantly." To whom the
priest said, "Touched by thy salutation, I knew thee to be a great
servant of God; for another--I know not who--miserable monk met me
and insulted me, and I gave him blows for his words." Then laying
hold of Macarius's feet he said, "Unless thou make me a monk I will
not leave hold of thee."

After all, of the best of these men are told (with much honesty)
many sayings which show that they felt in their minds and hearts
that the spirit was above the letter: sayings which show that they
had at least at times glimpses of a simpler and more possible
virtue; foretastes of a perfection more human, and it may be more
divine.

"Better," said Abbot Hyperichius, "to eat flesh and drink wine, than
to eat our brethren's flesh with bitter words."

A brother asked an elder, "Give me, father one thing which I may
keep, and be saved thereby." The elder answered, "If thou canst be
injured and insulted, and hear and be silent, that is a great thing,
and above all the other commandments."

One of the elders used to say, "Whatever a man shrinks from let him
not do to another. Dost thou shrink if any man detracts from thee?
Speak not ill of another. Dost thou shrink if any man slanders
thee, or if any man takes aught from thee? Do not that or the like
to another man. For he that shall have kept this saying, will find
it suffice for his salvation."

"The nearer," said Abbot Muthues, "a man approaches God, the more he
will see himself to be a sinner."

Abbot Sisois, when he lay dying, begged to live a little longer,
that he might repent; and when they wondered, he told them that he
had not yet even begun repentance. Whereby they saw that he was
perfect in the fear of the Lord.

But the most startling confession of all must have been that wrung
from the famous Macarius the elder. He had been asked once by a
brother, to tell him a rule by which he might be saved; and his
answer had been this:--to fly from men, to sit in his cell, and to
lament for his sins continually; and, what was above all virtues, to
keep his tongue in order as well as his appetite.

But (whether before or after that answer is not said) he gained a
deeper insight into true virtue, on the day when (like Antony when
he was reproved by the example of the tanner in Alexandria) he heard
a voice telling him that he was inferior to two women who dwelt in
the nearest town. Catching up his staff, like Antony, he went off
to see the wonder. The women, when questioned by him as to their
works, were astonished. They had been simply good wives for years
past, married to two brothers, and living in the same house. But
when pressed by him, they confessed that they had never said a foul
word to each other, and never quarrelled. At one time they had
agreed together to retire into a nunnery, but could not, for all
their prayers, obtain the consent of their husbands. On which they
had both made an oath, that they would never, to their deaths, speak
one worldly word.

Which when the blessed Macarius had heard, he said, "In truth there
is neither virgin, nor married woman, nor monk, nor secular; but God
only requires the intention, and ministers the spirit of life to
all."

ARSENIUS

I shall give one more figure, and that a truly tragical one, from
these "Lives of the Egyptian Fathers," namely, that of the once
great and famous Arsenius, the Father (as he was at one time called)
of the Emperors. Theodosius, the great statesman and warrior, who
for some twenty years kept up by his single hand the falling empire
of Rome, heard how Arsenius was at once the most pious and the most
learned of his subjects; and wishing--half barbarian as he was
himself--that his sons should be brought up, not only as scholars,
but as Christians, he sent for Arsenius to his court, and made him
tutor to his two young sons Honorius and Arcadius. But the two lads
had neither their father's strength nor their father's nobleness.
Weak and profligate, they fretted Arsenius's soul day by day; and,
at last, so goes the story, provoked him so far that, according to
the fashion of a Roman pedagogue, he took the ferula and
administered to one of the princes a caning, which he no doubt
deserved. The young prince, in revenge, plotted against his life.
Among the parasites of the Palace it was not difficult to find those
who would use steel and poison readily enough in the service of an
heir-apparent, and Arsenius fled for his life: and fled, as men
were wont in those days, to Egypt and the Thebaid. Forty years old
he was when he left the court, and forty years more he spent among
the cells at Scetis, weeping day and night. He migrated afterwards
to a place called Troe, and there died at the age of ninety-five,
having wept himself, say his admirers, almost blind. He avoided, as
far as possible, beholding the face of man; upon the face of woman
he would never look. A noble lady, whom he had known probably in
the world, came all the way from Rome to see him; but he refused
himself to her sternly, almost roughly. He had known too much of
the fine ladies of the Roman court; all he cared for was peace.
There is a story of him that, changing once his dwelling-place,
probably from Scetis to Troe, he asked, somewhat peevishly, of the
monks around him, "What that noise was?" They told him it was only
the wind among the reeds. "Alas!" he said, "I have fled everywhere
in search of silence, and yet here the very reeds speak." The
simple and comparatively unlearned monks around him looked with a
profound respect on the philosopher, courtier, scholar, who had cast
away the real pomps and vanities of this life, such as they had
never known. There is a story told, plainly concerning Arsenius,
though his name is not actually mentioned in it, how a certain old
monk saw him lying upon a softer mat than his fellows, and indulged
with a few more comforts; and complained indignantly of his luxury,
and the abbot's favouritism. Then asked the abbot, "What didst thou
eat before thou becamest a monk?" He confessed he had been glad
enough to fill his stomach with a few beans. "How wert thou
dressed?" He was glad enough, again he confessed, to have any
clothes at all on his back. "Where didst thou sleep?" "Often
enough on the bare ground in the open air," was the answer. "Then,"
said the abbot, "thou art, by thy own confession, better off as a
monk than thou wast as a poor labouring man: and yet thou grudgest
a little comfort to one who has given up more luxury than thou hast
ever beheld. This man slept beneath silken canopies; he was carried
in gilded litters, by trains of slaves; he was clothed in purple and
fine linen; he fed upon all the delicacies of the great city: and
he has given up all for Christ. And what hast thou given up, that
thou shouldst grudge him a softer mat, or a little more food each
day?" And so the monk was abashed, and held his peace.

As for Arsenius's tears, it is easy to call his grief exaggerated or
superstitious: but those who look on them with human eyes will
pardon them, and watch with sacred pity the grief of a good man, who
felt that his life had been an utter failure. He saw his two
pupils, between whom, at their father's death, the Roman Empire was
divided into Eastern and Western, grow more and more incapable of
governing. He saw a young barbarian, whom he must have often met at
the court in Byzantium, as Master of the Horse, come down from his
native forests, and sack the Eternal City of Rome. He saw evil and
woe unspeakable fall on that world which he had left behind him,
till the earth was filled with blood, and Antichrist seemed ready to
appear, and the day of judgment to be at hand. And he had been
called to do what he could to stave off this ruin, to make those
young princes decree justice and rule in judgment by the fear of
God. But he had failed; and there was nothing left to him save
self-accusation and regret, and dread lest some, at least, of the
blood which had been shed might be required at his hands.
Therefore, sitting upon his palm-mat there in Troe, he wept his life
away; happier, nevertheless, and more honourable in the sight of God
and man than if, like a Mazarin or a Talleyrand, and many another
crafty politician, both in Church and State, he had hardened his
heart against his own mistakes, and, by crafty intrigue and adroit
changing of sides at the right moment, had contrived to secure for
himself, out of the general ruin, honour and power and wealth, and
delicate food, and a luxurious home, and so been one of those of
whom the Psalmist says, with awful irony, "So long as thou doest
well unto thyself, men will speak good of thee."

One good deed at least Arsenius had seen done--a deed which has
lasted to all time, and done, too, to the eternal honour of his
order, by a monk--namely, the abolition of gladiator shows. For
centuries these wholesale murders had lasted through the Roman
Republic and through the Roman Empire. Human beings in the prime of
youth and health, captives or slaves, condemned malefactors, and
even free-born men, who hired themselves out to death, had been
trained to destroy each other in the amphitheatre for the amusement,
not merely of the Roman mob, but of the Roman ladies. Thousands
sometimes, in a single day, had been

"Butchered to make a Roman holiday."

The training of gladiators had become a science. By their weapons
and their armour, and their modes of fighting, they had been
distinguished into regular classes, of which the antiquaries count
up full eighteen: Andabatae, who wore helmets without any opening
for the eyes, so that they were obliged to fight blindfold, and thus
excited the mirth of the spectators; Hoplomachi, who fought in a
complete suit of armour; Mirmillones, who had the image of a fish
upon their helmets, and fought in armour with a short sword, matched
usually against the Retiarii, who fought without armour, and whose
weapons were a casting-net and a trident. These, and other species
of fighters, were drilled and fed in "families" by Lanistae; or
regular trainers, who let them out to persons wishing to exhibit a
show. Women, even high-born ladies, had been seized in former times
with the madness of fighting, and, as shameless as cruel, had gone
down into the arena to delight with their own wounds and their own
gore the eyes of the Roman people.

And these things were done, and done too often, under the auspices
of the gods, and at their most sacred festivals. So deliberate and
organized a system of wholesale butchery has never perhaps existed
on this earth before or since, not even in the worship of those
Mexican gods whose idols Cortez and his soldiers found fed with
human hearts, and the walls of their temples crusted with human
gore. Gradually the spirit of the Gospel had been triumphing over
this abomination. Ever since the time of Tertullian, in the second
century, Christian preachers and writers had lifted up their voice
in the name of humanity. Towards the end of the third century, the
Emperors themselves had so far yielded to the voice of reason, as to
forbid by edicts the gladiatorial fights. But the public opinion of
the mob in most of the great cities had been too strong both for
saints and for emperors. St. Augustine himself tells us of the
horrible joy which he, in his youth, had seen come over the vast
ring of flushed faces at these horrid sights; and in Arsenius's own
time, his miserable pupil, the weak Honorius, bethought himself of
celebrating once more the heathen festival of the Secular Games, and
formally to allow therein an exhibition of gladiators. But in the
midst of that show sprang down into the arena of the Colosseum of
Rome an unknown monk, some said from Nitria, some from Phrygia, and
with his own hands parted the combatants in the name of Christ and
God. The mob, baulked for a moment of their pleasure, sprang on
him, and stoned him to death. But the crime was followed by a
sudden revulsion of feeling. By an edict of the Emperor the
gladiatorial sports were forbidden for ever; and the Colosseum,
thenceforth useless, crumbled slowly away into that vast ruin which
remains unto this day, purified, as men well said, from the blood of
tens of thousands, by the blood of one true and noble martyr.

THE HERMITS OF ASIA

The impulse which, given by Antony, had been propagated in Asia by
his great pupil, Hilarion, spread rapidly far and wide. Hermits
took possession of the highest peaks of Sinai; and driven from
thence, so tradition tells, by fear of those mysterious noises which
still haunt its cliffs, settled at that sheltered spot where now
stands the convent of St. Catharine. Massacred again and again by
the wild Arab tribes, their places were filled up by fresh hermits,
and their spiritual descendants hold the convent to this day.

Through the rich and luxuriant region of Syria, and especially round
the richest and most luxurious of its cities, Antioch, hermits
settled, and bore, by the severity of their lives, a noble witness
against the profligacy of its inhabitants, who had half renounced
the paganism of their forefathers without renouncing in the least,
it seems, those sins which drew down of old the vengeance of a
righteous God upon their forefathers, whether in Canaan or in Syria
itself.

At Antioch, about the year 347, was born the famous Chrysostom, John
of the Golden Mouth; and near Antioch he became a hermit, and dwelt,
so legends say, several years alone in the wilderness: till, nerved
by that hard training, he went forth again into the world to become,
whether at Antioch or at Constantinople, the bravest as well as the
most eloquent preacher of righteousness and rebuker of sin which the
world had seen since the times of St. Paul. The labours of
Chrysostom belong not so much to this book as to a general
ecclesiastical history: but it must not be forgotten that he, like
all the great men of that age, had been a monk, and kept up his
monastic severity, even in the midst of the world, until his dying
day.

At Nisibis, again, upon the very frontier of Persia, appeared
another very remarkable personage, known as the Great Jacob or Great
St. James. Taking (says his admiring biographer, Theodoret of Cyra)
to the peaks of the loftiest mountains., he passed his life on them,
in spring and summer haunting the woods, with the sky for a roof,
but sheltering himself in winter in a cave. His food was wild
fruits and mountain herbs. He never used a fire, and, clothed in a
goats' hair garment, was perhaps the first of those Boscoi, or
"browsing hermits," who lived literally like the wild animals in the
flesh, while they tried to live like angels in the spirit.

Some of the stories told of Jacob savour of that vindictiveness
which Giraldus Cambrensis, in after years, attributed to the saints
in Ireland. He was walking one day over the Persian frontier, "to
visit the plants of true religion" and "bestow on them due care,"
when he passed at a fountain a troop of damsels washing clothes and
treading them with their feet. They seem, according to the story,
to have stared at the wild man, instead of veiling their faces or
letting down their garments. No act or word of rudeness is reported
of them: but Jacob's modesty or pride was so much scandalized that
he cursed both the fountain and the girls. The fountain of course
dried up forthwith, and the damsels' hair turned grey. They ran
weeping into the town. The townsfolk came out, and compelled Jacob,
by their prayers, to restore the water to their fountain; but the
grey hair he refused to restore to its original hue unless the
damsels would come and beg pardon publicly themselves. The poor
girls were ashamed to come, and their hair remained grey ever after.

A story like this may raise a smile in some of my readers, in others
something like indignation or contempt. But as long as such legends
remain in these hermit lives, told with as much gravity as any other
portion of the biography, and eloquently lauded, as this deed is, by
Bishop Theodoret, as proofs of the holiness and humanity of the
saint, an honest author is bound to notice some of them at least,
and not to give an alluring and really dishonest account of these
men and their times, by detailing every anecdote which can elevate
them in the mind of the reader, while he carefully omits all that
may justly disgust him.

Yet, after all, we are not bound to believe this legend, any more
than we are bound to believe that when Jacob saw a Persian judge
give an unjust sentence, he forthwith cursed, not him, but a rock
close by, which instantly crumbled into innumerable fragments, so
terrifying that judge that he at once revoked his sentence, and gave
a just decision.

Neither, again, need we believe that it was by sending, as men said
in his own days, swarms of mosquitos against the Persian invaders,
that he put to flight their elephants and horses: and yet it may be
true that, in the famous siege of Nisibis, Jacob played the patriot
and the valiant man. For when Sapor, the Persian king, came against
Nisibis with all his forces, with troops of elephants, and huge
machines of war, and towers full of archers wheeled up to the walls,
and at last, damming the river itself, turned its current against
the fortifications of unburnt brick, until a vast breach was opened
in the walls, then Jacob, standing in the breach, encouraged by his
prayers his fellow-townsmen to stop it with stone, brick, timber,
and whatsoever came to hand; and Sapor, the Persian Sultan, saw
"that divine man," and his goats'-hair tunic and cloak seemed
transformed into a purple robe and royal diadem. And, whether he
was seized with superstitious fear, or whether the hot sun or the
marshy ground had infected his troops with disease, or whether the
mosquito swarms actually became intolerable, the great King of
Persia turned and went away.

So Nisibis was saved for a while; to be shamefully surrendered to
the Persians a few years afterwards by the weak young Emperor
Jovian. Old Ammianus Marcellinus, brave soldier as he was, saw with
disgust the whole body of citizens ordered to quit the city within
three days, and "men appointed to compel obedience to the order,
with threats of death to every one who delayed his departure; and
the whole city was a scene of mourning and lamentation, and in every
quarter nothing was heard but one universal wail, matrons tearing
their hair, and about to be driven from the homes in which they had
been born and brought up; the mother who had lost her children, or
the wife who had lost her husband, about to be torn from the place
rendered sacred by their shades, clinging to their doorposts,
embracing their thresholds, and pouring forth floods of tears.
Every road was crowded, each person struggling away as he could.
Many, too, loaded themselves with as much of their property as they
thought they could carry, while leaving behind them abundant and
costly furniture, which they could not remove for want of beasts of
burden." {159}

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