of the life, and was undertaken for its own sake and not merely for an occupation, as among the Antonian monks. This marks a distinctly new departure in the monastic ideal.
In another respect too St Pachomius broke new ground: not only did he inaugurate Christian cenobitical life, but he also created the first “Religious Order.” The abbot of the head monastery was the superior-general of the whole institute; he nominated the superiors of the other monasteries; he was visitor and held periodical visitations at all of them; he exercised universal supervision, control and authority; and every year a general chapter was held at the head house. This is a curious anticipation of the highly organized and centralized forms of government in religious orders, not met with again till Cluny, Citeaux, and the Mendicant orders in the later middle ages.
A passing reference should be made to the Coptic abbot Shenout, who governed on similar lines the great “White Monastery,” whereof the ruins still survive near Akhmim; the main interest of Shenout’s institute lies in the fact that it continued purely Coptic, without any infiltration of Greek ideas or influence. (See J. Leipoldt, Schenute von Atripe, 1903.)
Egyptian monachism began to wane towards the end of the 5th century, and since the Mahommedan occupation it has ever been declining. Accounts of its present condition may be found in R. Curzon’s Monasteries of the Levant (1837), or in A. J. Butler’s Ancient Coptic Churches (1884). Hardly half a dozen monasteries survive, inhabited by small and ever dwindling communities.
5. Oriental Monachism.—The monastic institute was imported early in the 4th century from Egypt into Syria and the Oriental lands. Here it had a great vogue, and under the influence of the innate Asiatic love of asceticism it tended to assume the form of strange austerities, of a kind not found in Egyptian monachism in its best period. The most celebrated was the life of the Stylites or pillar hermits (see Simeon Stylites). Monastic life here tended to revert to the eremitical form, and to this day Syrian and Armenian monks are to be found dwelling in caverns and desert places, and given up wholly to the practice of austerity and contemplation (see E. C. Butler, Lausiac History of Palladius, pt. i. p. 239, where the chief authorities are indicated). Before the close of the 4th century monachism spread into Persia, Babylonia and Arabia.
6. Basilian and Greek Monachism.—Though Eustathius of Sebaste was the first to introduce the monastic life within the confines of what may be called Greek Christianity in Asia Minor (c. 340), it was St Basil who adapted it to Greek and European ideas and needs. His monastic legislation is explained and the history of his institute sketched in the article Basilian Monks. Here it will suffice to say that he followed the Pachomian rather than the Antonian model, setting himself definitely against the practice of the eremitical life and of excessive asceticism, and inculcating the necessity and superiority of labour. The lines laid down by St Basil have continued ever since to be the lines in which Greek and Slavonic monasticism has rested, the new multitudinous modifications of the monastic ideal, developed in such abundance in the Latin Church, having no counterpart in the Greek. But the element of Work has decreased, and Greek and Slavonic monks give themselves up for the most part to devotional contemplation.
7. Early Western Monachism.—The knowledge of the monastic life was carried to western Europe by St Athanasius, who in 340 went to Rome accompanied by two monks. The Vita Antonii was at an early date translated into Latin and propagated in the West, and the practice of monastic asceticism after the Egyptian model became common in Rome and throughout Italy, and before long spread to Gaul and to northern Africa. A résumé of the chief facts will be found in E. C. Butler, op. cit. pt. i. p. 245; see also Hannay, op. cit. ch. 7. The monastic ideals prevalent were those of the Antonian monarchism, with its hankering after the eremitical life and the practice of extreme bodily austerities. But climatic conditions and racial temperament rendered the Oriental manner of monasticism unattainable, as a rule, in the West. Hence it came to pass that by the end of the 5th century the monastic institute in western Europe, and especially in Italy, was in a disorganized condition, sinking under the weight of traditions inherited from the East. It was St Benedict who effected a permanently working adaptation of the monastic ideal and life to the requirements and conditions of the western races.
8. St Benedict’s Monachism.—St Benedict (c. 500) effected his purpose by a twofold break with the past: he eliminated from the idea of the monastic life the element of Oriental asceticism and extreme bodily austerity; and he put down the tendency, so marked in Egypt and the East, for the monks to vie with one another in ascetical practices, commanding all to live according to the rule. The life was to be self-denying and hard, but not one of any great austerity (for details see Benedict of Nursia; and E. C. Butler, op. cit. pt. i. pp. 237 and 251). The individual monk was sunk in the community, whose corporate life he had to live. St Benedict’s rule was a new creation in monastic history; and as it rapidly supplanted all other monastic rules in western Europe, and was for several centuries the only form of monasticism in Latin Christianity (outside of Ireland), it is necessary to speak in some little detail of its spirit and inner character.[1] It has to be emphasized at the outset that the monasteries in which the Benedictine rule was the basis of the life did not form a body or group apart within the great “monastic order,” which embraced all monasteries of whatever rule; nor had Benedictine monks any special work or object beyond that common to all monks—viz. the sanctifying of their souls by living a community life in accordance with the Gospel counsels. St Benedict defines his monastery as “a school of the service of the lord” (Reg., Prol.). The great act of service is the public common celebration of the canonical office, the “work of God” he calls it, to which “nothing is to be preferred” (Reg. c. 43). The rest of the day is filled up with a round of work and reading. Work, and in St Benedict’s time it was predominantly field work, took an even more recognized and integral place in the life than was the case under St Pachomius or St Basil, occupying notably more time than the church services. St Benedict introduced too into the monastic life the idea of law and order, of rule binding on the abbot no less than on the monks; thus he reduced almost to a vanishing point the element of arbitrariness, or mere dependence on the abbot’s will and whim, found in the earlier rules. Lastly, he introduced the idea of stability, whereby monk and community were bound to each other for life, the normal thing for the Benedictine being to live and die in the monastery of his profession: thus the power hitherto enjoyed by monks, of wandering from monastery to monastery, was cut away, and the Benedictine community was made into a family whose members were bound to one another by bonds that could not be severed at will.
9. Western Monachism in the Early Middle Ages.—It is easy to understand that a form of monastic life thus emptied of distinctively Oriental features and adapted to the needs of the West by a great religious genius like St Benedict, should soon have distanced all competitors and have become the only monastic rule in western Europe. The steps in the propagation of the Benedictine rule are traced in the article Benedictines. The only serious rival was the Irish rule of Columban; and here it will be in place to say a word on Irish monasticism, which, in its birthplace, stood aloof to the end from the general movement. The beginnings of Celtic monachism are obscure, but it seems to have been closely connected with the tribal system.[2] When, however, Irish monachism emerges into the full light of history, it was in its manifestations closely akin to the Egyptian, or even to the Syrian type: there was the same love of the eremitical life, the same craving after bodily austerities of an extraordinary kind, the same individualistic piety. The Irish monks were great missioners in the north of England and the northern and
- ↑ This topic is dealt with by F. A. Gasquet, Sketch of Monastic Constitutional History (pp. viii.–xxii.), the Introduction to 2nd edition of the translation of Montalembert’s Monks of the West (1895).
- ↑ See Willis Bund, Celtic Church in Wales (1897); H. Zimmer, art. “Keltische Kirche” in Herzog-Hauck, Realencyklopädie (3rd ed.), translated into English by Kuno Meyer (1902).
