Chapter IV: Part 4

The influence of Jerome, Chrysostom, and other eminent churchmen, the example of the West, and the efforts of the Origenians in favor of philosophic asceticism, doubtless had a powerful effect during the first years of the fifth century in extending the custom, but they failed in the endeavor to render it universal and obligatory, and the testimony of Socrates shows how soon even those provinces which adopted it in Jerome’s time returned to the previous practice of leaving the matter to the election of the individual. The East thus preserved the traditions of earlier times, as recorded in the Apostolic Constitutions and Canons, prohibiting marriage in orders and the ordination of digami, but imposing no compulsory separation on those who had been married previous to ordination.

Even these rules required to be occasionally enunciated in order to maintain their observance. In 530 a constitution of Justinian calls attention to the regulation prohibiting the marriage of deacons and subdeacons, and in view of the little respect paid to it, the Emperor proceeds to declare the children of such unions spurious (not even nothi or naturales) and incompetent to inherit anything; the wife is likewise incapacitated from inheritance, and the whole estate of the father is escheated to the church—the severity of which may perhaps be a fair measure of the extent of the evil which it was intended to repress.[162] Five years later Justinian recurs to the subject, and lays down the received regulations in all their details. Any one who keeps a concubine, or who has married a divorced woman or a second wife, is to be held ineligible to the diaconate or priesthood. Any member of those orders or of the subdiaconate who takes a wife or a concubine, whether publicly or secretly, is thereupon to be degraded and to lose all clerical privileges; and though the strongest preference is expressed for those who though married preserve strict continence, the very phrase employed indicates that this was altogether a matter of choice, and that previous conjugal relations were not subject to any legislative interference.[163] These same regulations were repeated some ten years later in a law, promulgated about 545,[164] which was preserved throughout the whole period of Greek jurisprudence, being inserted by Leo the Philosopher in his Basilica,[165] quoted by Photius in the Nomocanon, and referred to as still in force by Balsamon in the thirteenth century.[166] At the same time Justinian tacitly admits the failure of previous efforts when he adds a provision by which an unmarried postulant for the diaconate is obliged to pledge himself not to marry, and any bishop permitting such marriage is threatened with degradation.[167]

Bishops, however, were subjected to the full severity of the Latin discipline. As early as 528, Justinian ordered that no one should be eligible to the episcopate who was burdened with either children or grandchildren, giving as a reason the engrossing duties of the office, which required that the whole mind and soul should be devoted to them, and still more significantly hinting the indecency of converting to the use of the prelate’s family the wealth bestowed by the faithful on the church for pious uses and for charity.[168] It is probable that this was not strictly observed, for in 535, when repeating the injunction, and adding a restriction on conjugal intercourse, he intimates that no inquiry shall be made into infractions previously occurring, but that it shall be rigidly enforced for the future.[169] The decision was final as regards the absence of a wife, for it was again alluded to in 548, and that law is carried through the Nomocanon and Basilica.[170] The absence of children as a prerequisite to the episcopate, however, was not insisted upon so pertinaciously, for Leo the Philosopher, after the compilation of the Basilica, issued a constitution allowing the ordination of bishops who had legitimate offspring, arguing that brothers and other relatives were equally prone to withdraw them from the duties of their position.[171]

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It is not worth while to enter into the interminable controversy respecting the council held at Constantinople in 680, the canons of which were promulgated in 692, and which is known to polemics as the _Quinisext in Trullo_. The Greeks maintain that it was Œcumenic, and its legislation binding upon Christendom; the Latins, that it was provincial and schismatic; but whether Pope Agatho acceded to its canons or not; whether a century later Adrian I. admitted them, or whether their authentication by the second council of Nicæa gave them authority over the whole church or not, are questions of little practical importance for our purpose, for they never were really incorporated into the law of the West, and they are only to be regarded as forming a portion of the received ecclesiastical jurisprudence of the East. In one sense, however, their bearing upon the Latin church is interesting, for, in spite of them, Rome maintained communion with Constantinople for more than a century and a half, and the schism which then took place arose from altogether different causes. In the West, therefore, celibacy was only a point of discipline, of no doctrinal importance, and not a matter of heresy, as we shall see it afterwards become under the stimulus afforded by Protestant controversy.

The canons of the Quinisext are very full upon all the questions relating to celibacy, and show that great relaxation had occurred in enforcing the regulations embodied in the laws of Justinian. Digami must have become numerous in the church, for the prohibition of their ordination is renewed, and all who had not released themselves from such forbidden unions by June 15th of the preceding year are condemned to suffer deposition. So marriage in orders had evidently become frequent, for all guilty of it are enjoined to leave their wives, when, after a short suspension, they are to be restored to their position, though ineligible to promotion.[172] A much severer punishment is, however, provided for those who should subsequently be guilty of the same indiscretion, for all such infractions of the rule are visited with absolute deposition[173]—thus proving that it had fallen into desuetude, since those who sinned after its restoration were regarded as much more culpable than those who had merely transgressed an obsolete law. Even bishops had neglected the restrictions imposed upon them by Justinian, for the council refers to prelates in Africa, Libya, and elsewhere, who lived openly with their wives; and although this is prohibited for the future under penalty of deposition, and although all wives of those promoted to the episcopate are directed to be placed in nunneries at a distance from their husbands, yet the remarkable admission is made that this is done for the sake of the people, who regarded such things as a scandal, and not for the purpose of changing that which had been ordained by the Apostles.[174]

With regard to the future discipline of the great body of the clergy, the council, after significantly acknowledging that the Roman church required a promise of abstinence from married candidates for the diaconate and priesthood, proceeds to state that it desires to adhere to the Apostolic canon by keeping inviolate the conjugal relations of those in holy orders, and by permitting them to associate with their wives, only stipulating for continence during the time devoted to the ministry of the sacraments. To put an end to all opposition to this privilege, deposition is threatened against those who shall presume to interfere between the clergy and their wives, and likewise against all who, under pretence of religion, shall put their wives away. At the same time, in order to promote the extension of the church, in the foreign provinces, this latter penalty is remitted, as a concession to the prejudices of the “Barbarians.”[175] How thoroughly in some regions sacerdotal marriage had come to be the rule we learn from a reference to Armenia, where the Levitical custom of the Hebrews was imitated, in the creation of a sacerdotal caste, transmitted from father to son, and confined to the priestly houses. This limitation is condemned by the council, which orders that all who are worthy of ordination shall be regarded as eligible.[176]

The Eastern church thus formally and in the most solemn manner recorded its separate and independent discipline on this point, and refused to be bound by the sacerdotalism of Rome. It thus maintained the customs transmitted from the early period, when asceticism had commenced to show itself, but it shrank from carrying out the principles involved to their ultimate result, as was sternly attempted by the inexorable logic of Rome. The system thus laid down was permanent, for throughout the East the Quinisext was received unquestioningly as a general council, and its decrees were authoritative and unalterable. It is true that in the confusion of the two following centuries a laxity of practice gradually crept in, by which those who desired to marry were admitted to holy orders while single, and were granted two years after ordination during which they were at liberty to take wives, but this was acknowledged to be an abuse, and about the year 900 it was formally prohibited by a constitution of Leo the Philosopher.[177] Thus restored, the Greek church has preserved its early traditions unaltered to the present day. Marriage in orders is not permitted, nor are digami admissible, but the lower grades of the clergy are free to marry, nor are they separated from their wives when promoted to the sacred functions of the diaconate or priesthood. The bishops are selected from the regular clergy or monks, and, being bound by the vow of chastity, are of course unmarried and unable to marry. Thus the legislation of Justinian is practically transmitted to the nineteenth century. Even this restriction on the freedom of marriage renders it difficult to preserve the purity of the priesthood, and the Greek church, like the Latin, is forced occasionally to renew the Nicene prohibition against the residence of suspected women.[178]

The strongly marked hereditary tendency, which is so distinguishing a characteristic of mediæval European institutions has led, in Russia at least, since the time of Peter the Great, to the customary transmission of the priesthood, and even of individual churches, from father to son, thus creating a sacerdotal caste. To such an extent has this been carried that marriage is obligatory on the parish priest, and custom requires that the wife shall be the daughter of a priest. Some of the results of this are to be seen in a law of 1867, forbidding for the future the aspirant to a cure from marrying the daughter of his predecessor or undertaking to support the family of the late incumbent as a condition precedent to obtaining the preferment. It shows how entirely the duties of the clergy had been lost in the sense of property and hereditary right attaching to benefices, leading inevitably to the neglect or perfunctory performance of ecclesiastical duties.[179] We shall see hereafter how narrowly the Latin church escaped a similar transformation, and how prolonged was the struggle to avoid it.

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One branch of the Eastern church, however, relaxed the rules of the Quinisext. In 431, Nestorius, Patriarch of Constantinople, was excommunicated for his heretical subtleties as to the nature of the Godhead in Christ. Driven out from the Empire by the orthodox authorities, his followers spread throughout Mesopotamia and Persia, where, by the end of the century, their efforts had gradually converted nearly the whole population. About the year 480, Barsuma, metropolitan of Nisibi, added to his Nestorian heresy the guilt of marrying a nun, when to justify himself he assembled a synod in which the privilege of marriage was granted not only to priests, but even to monks. In 485, Babueus, Patriarch of Seleucia, held a council which excommunicated Barsuma and condemned his licentious doctrines; but, about ten years later, a subsequent patriarch, Babeus, in the council of Seleucia, obtained the enactment of canons conferring the privilege of marriage on all ranks of the clergy, from monk to patriarch. Some forty years later a debate recorded between the Patriarch Mar Aba and King Chosroes shows that repeated marriages were common among all orders, but Mar Aba subsequently issued a canon depriving patriarchs and bishops of the right, and subjecting them to the rules of the Latin and Greek churches.[180]

The career of the Nestorians shows that matrimony is not incompatible with mission-work, for they were the most successful missionaries on record. They penetrated throughout India, Tartary, and China. In the latter empire they lasted until the thirteenth century; while in India they not improbably exercised an influence in modifying the doctrines of ancient Brahmanism,[181] and the Portuguese discoverers in the fifteenth century found them flourishing in Malabar. So numerous were they that during the existence of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem they are described, in conjunction with the monophysite sect of the Jacobines, as exceeding in numbers the inhabitants of the rest of Christendom.[182]

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Another segment of the Eastern church may properly receive attention here. The Abyssinians and Coptic Christians of Egypt can scarcely in truth be considered a part of the Greek church, as they are monophysite in belief, and have in many particulars adopted Jewish customs, such as circumcision, &c. Their observances as regards marriage, however, tally closely with the canons of the Quinisext, except that bishops are permitted to retain their wives. In the sixteenth century, Bishop Zaga Zabo, who was sent as envoy to Portugal by David, King of Abyssinia, left behind him a confession of faith for the edification of the curious. In this document he describes the discipline of his church as strict in forbidding the clericature to illegitimates; marriage is not dissolved by ordination, but second marriage, or marriage in orders, is prohibited, except under dispensation from the Patriarch, a favor occasionally granted to magnates for public reasons. Without such dispensation, the offender is expelled from the priesthood, while a bishop or other ecclesiastic convicted of having an illegitimate child is forthwith deprived of all his benefices and possessions. Monasteries, moreover, were numerous and monachal chastity was strictly enforced.[183] These rules, I presume, are still in force. A recent traveller in those regions states that “if a priest be married previous to his ordination, he is allowed to remain so; but no one can marry after having entered the priesthood”—while a mass of superstitious and ascetic observances has overlaid religion, until little trace is left of original Christianity.[184]

VII.

MONACHISM.

The Monastic Orders occupy too prominent a place in ecclesiastical history, and were too powerful an instrument both for good and evil, to be passed over without some cursory allusion, although the secular clergy is more particularly the subject of the present sketch, and the rise and progress of monachism is a topic too extensive in its details to be thoroughly considered in the space which can be allotted to it.

In this, as in some other forms of asceticism, we must look to Buddhism for the model on which the Church fashioned her institutions. Ages before the time of Sakyamuni, the life of the anchorite had become a favorite mode of securing the _moksha_, or supreme good of absorption in Brahma. Buddhism, in throwing open the way of salvation to all mankind, popularized this, and thus multiplied enormously the crowd of mendicants, who lived upon the charity of the faithful and who abandoned all the cares and duties of life in the hope of advancing a step in the scale of being and of ultimately obtaining the highest bliss of admission to Nirvana. In the hopeless confusion of Hindu chronology, it is impossible to define dates with exactness, but we know that at a very early period these Bhikshus and Bhikshunis, or mendicants of either sex, were organized in monasteries (Viharas or Sangharamas) erected by the piety of the faithful, and were subjected to definite rules, prominent among which were those of poverty and chastity, which subsequently became the foundation of all the Western orders. Probably the oldest existing scripture of Buddhism is the Pratimoksha, or collection of rules for observance by the bhikshus, which tradition, not without probability, ascribes to Sakyamuni himself. In this, infraction of chastity falls under the first of the four Parajika rules; it is classed, with murder, among the most serious offences entailing excommunication and expulsion without forgiveness. The solicitation of a woman comes within the scope of the thirteen Sanghadisesa rules, entailing penance and probation, after which the offender may be absolved by an assembly of not less than twenty bhikshus. Other punishments are allotted for every suspicious act, and the utmost care is shown in the regulations laid down for the minutest details of social intercourse between the sexes.[185]

Under these rules, Buddhist monachism developed to an extent which more than rivals that of its Western derivative. The remains of the magnificent Viharas still to be seen in India testify at once to the enormous multitudes which found shelter in them and to the munificent piety of the monarchs and wealthy men who, as in Europe, sought to purchase the favor of Heaven by founding and enlarging these retreats for the devotee. In China, Buddhism was not introduced until the first century A. D., and yet, by the middle of the seventh century, in spite of repeated and severe persecutions, the number of monasteries already amounted to 3716, while two hundred years later the persecuting Emperor Wu-Tsung ordered the destruction of no less than 4600; and at the present day it is estimated that there are 80,000 Buddhist monks in the environs of Pekin alone. When, in the seventh century, Hiouen-Thsang visited India, he describes the Sangharama of Nalanda as containing ten thousand monks and novices; and the later pilgrim, Fah-Hian, found fifty or sixty thousand in the island of Ceylon. In the fourteenth century, the city of Ilchi, in Chinese Tartary, possessed fourteen monasteries, averaging three thousand devotees in each; while in Tibet, at the present time, there are in the vicinity of Lhassa twelve great monasteries, containing a population of 18,500 lamas. In Ladak, the proportion of lamas to the laity is as one to thirteen; in Spiti, one to seven; and in Burmah, one to thirty.[186] Great as were the proportions to which European monachism grew, it never attained dimensions such as these.

It was some time, however, before the intercourse between East and West led to the introduction of anchoritic and monastic customs. The first rudimentary development of a tendency in such direction is to be found in the vows, which, as stated in a previous section, had already, at an early period in the history of the church, become common among female devotees. In fact an order of widows, employed in charitable works and supported from the offerings of the faithful, was apparently one of the primitive institutions of the Apostles. To prevent any conflict between the claims of the world and of the church, St. Paul directs that they shall be childless and not less than sixty years of age, so that on the one hand there might be no neglect of the first duty which he recognized as owing to the family, nor, on the other hand, that the devotee should be tempted by the flesh to quit the service which she had undertaken.[187]

This admirable plan may be considered the germ of the countless associations by which the church has in all ages earned the gratitude of mankind by giving to Christianity its truest practical exposition. It combined a refuge for the desolate with a most efficient organization for spreading the faith and administering charity; and there was no thought of marring its utility by rendering it simply an instrument for exaggerating and propagating asceticism. St. Paul, indeed, expressly commands the younger ones to marry and bring up children;[188] and he could little have anticipated the time when this order of widows, so venerable in its origin and labors, would, by the caprice of ascetic progress, come to be regarded as degraded in comparison with the virgin spouses of Christ, who selfishly endeavored to purchase their own salvation by shunning all the duties imposed on them by the Creator.[189] Nor could he have imagined that, after eighteen centuries, enthusiastic theologians would seriously argue that Christ and his Apostles had founded regular religious orders, bound by the three customary vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience.[190]

In the early church, as has been already shown, all vows of continence and dedication to the service of God were a matter of simple volition, not only as to their inception, but also as to their duration. The male or female devotee was at liberty to return to the world and to marry at any time;[191] although during the purer periods of persecution, such conduct was doubtless visited with disapprobation and was attended with loss of reputation. As, moreover, there was no actual segregation from the world and no sundering of family ties, there was no necessity for special rules of discipline. When, under the Decian persecution, Paul the Thebæan, and shortly afterwards St. Antony, retired to the desert in order to satisfy a craving for ascetic mortification which could only be satiated by solitude, and thus unconsciously founded the vast society of Egyptian cenobites, they gave rise to what at length became a new necessity.[192] The associations which gradually formed themselves required some government, and the institution of monachism became too important a portion of the church, both in numbers and influence, to remain long without rules of discipline to regulate its piety and to direct its powers. As yet, however, a portion of the church, adhering to ancient tradition, looked reprovingly on these exaggerated pietistic vagaries. Lactantius, for instance, in a passage written subsequent to the conversion of Constantine, earnestly denounces the life of a hermit as that of a beast rather than of a man, and urges that the bonds of human society ought not to be broken, since man cannot exist without his fellows.[193]

It was in vain to attempt to stem the tide which had now fairly set in, nor is it difficult to understand the impulsion which drove so many to abandon the world. No small portion of pastoral duty consisted in exhortations to virginity, the praises of which were reiterated with ever increasing vehemence, and the rewards of which, in this world and the next, were magnified with constantly augmenting promises. Indeed, a perusal of the writings of that age seems to render it difficult to conceive how any truly devout soul could remain involved in worldly duties and pleasures, when the abandonment of all the ties and responsibilities imposed on man by Providence was represented as rendering the path to heaven so much shorter and more certain, and when every pulpit resounded with perpetual amplifications of the one theme. Equally efficacious with the timid and slothful was the prospect of a quiet retreat from the confusion and strife which the accelerating decline of the empire rendered every day wilder and more hopeless; while the crushing burdens of the state drove many, in spite of all the efforts of the civil power, to seek their escape in the exemptions accorded to those connected with the church. When to these classes are added the penitents—prototypes of St. Mary of Egypt, who retired to the desert as the only refuge from her profligate life, and for seventeen years waged an endless struggle with the burning passions which she could control but could not conquer—it is not difficult to estimate how vast were the multitudes unconsciously engaged in laying the foundations of that monastic structure which was eventually to overshadow all Christendom.[194] Indeed, even the church itself at times became alarmed at the increasing tendency, as when the council of Saragossa, in 381, found it necessary to denounce the practice of ecclesiastics abandoning their functions and embracing the monastic life, which it assumes was done from unworthy motives.[195]

Soon after his conversion, Constantine had encouraged the prevailing tendency by not only repealing the disabilities imposed by the old Roman law on those who remained unmarried, but by extending the power of making wills to minors who professed the intention of celibacy.[196] His piety and that of subsequent emperors speedily attributed to all connected with the church certain exemptions from the intolerable municipal burdens which were eating out the heart of the empire. An enormous premium was thus offered to swell the ecclesiastical ranks, while, as the number of the officiating clergy was necessarily limited, the influx would naturally flow into the mass of monks and nuns on whose increase there was no restriction, and whose condition was open to all, with but slender examination into the fitness of the applicant.[197] The rapidly increasing wealth of the church, and the large sums devoted to the maintenance of all orders of the clergy, offered additional temptations to those who might regard the life of the ascetic as the means of securing an assured existence of idleness, free from all care of the morrow. If, therefore, during a period when ridicule and persecution were the portion of those who vowed perpetual continence, it had been found impossible to avoid the most deplorable scandals,[198] it can readily be conceived that allurements such as these would crowd the monastic profession with proselytes of a most questionable character, drawn from a society so frightfully dissolute as that of the fourth century. The fierce declamations of St. Jerome afford a terrible picture of the disorders prevalent among those vowed to celibacy, and of the hideous crimes resorted to in order to conceal or remove the consequences of guilt, showing that the asceticism enforced by Siricius had not wrought any improvement.[199] The necessity of subjecting those bound by vows to established rules must therefore have soon become generally recognized; and although as we have already seen, they were free at any time to abandon the profession which they had assumed, still, while they remained as members, the welfare of the church would render all right-minded men eager to hail any attempt to establish rules of wholesome discipline. The first authoritative attempt to check disorders of the kind is to be found in the first council of Carthage, which in 348 insisted that all who, shunning marriage, elected the better lot of chastity, should live separate and solitary, and that none should have access to them under penalty of excommunication; and in 381 the Council of Saragossa sought to remedy the evil at its root by forbidding virgins to take the veil unless they could furnish proof that they were at least forty years of age.[200]

Although the church, in becoming an affair of state, had to a great extent sacrificed its independence, still it enjoyed the countervailing advantage of being able to call upon the temporal power for assistance when its own authority was defied, nor was it long in requiring this aid in the enforcement of its regulations. Accordingly, in 364, we find a law of Jovian forbidding, under pain of actual or civil death, any attempt to marry a sacred virgin,[201] the extreme severity of which is the best indication of the condition of morals that could justify a resort to penalties so exaggerated. How great was the necessity for reform, and how little was actually accomplished by these attempts, may be estimated from an effort of the Council of Valence, in 374, to prevent those who married from being pardoned after too short a penance,[202] and from the description which ten years later Pope Siricius gives of the unbridled and shameless license indulged in by both sexes in violation of their monastic vows.[203]

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Certain definite rules for the governance of these constantly increasing crowds of all stations, conditions, and characters, who were obviously so ill-fitted for the obligations which they had assumed, became of course necessary, but it was long before they assumed an irrevocable and binding force. The treatise which is known as the rule of St. Oriesis is only a long and somewhat mystic exhortation to asceticism. That which St. Pachomius is said to have received from an angel is manifestly posterior to the date of that saint, and probably belongs to the commencement of the fifth century. Minute as are its instructions, and rigid as are its injunctions respecting every action of the cenobite, yet it fully displays the voluntary nature of the profession and the lightness of the bonds which tied the monk to his order. A stranger applying for admission to a monastery was exposed only to a probation of a few days, to test his sincerity and to prove that he was not a slave; no vows were imposed, only his simple promise to obey the rules being required. If he grew tired of ascetic life, he departed, but he could not be again taken back without penitence and the consent of the archimandrite.[204] Even female travellers applying for hospitality were not refused admittance, and an inclosure was set apart for them, where they were entertained with special honor and attention; a place was likewise provided for them in which to be present at vespers.[205]

A similar system of discipline is manifested in the detailed statement of the regulations of the Egyptian monasteries left us by John Cassianus, Abbot of St. Victor of Marseilles, who died in 448. No vows or religious ceremonies were required of the postulant for admission. He was proved by ten days’ waiting at the gate, and a year’s probation inside, yet the slender tie between him and the community is shown by the preservation of his worldly garments, to be returned to him in case of his expulsion for disobedience or discontent, and also by the refusal to receive from him the gift of his private fortune—although no one within the sacred walls was permitted to call the simplest article his own—lest he should leave the convent and then claim to revoke his donation, as not unfrequently happened in institutions which neglected this salutary rule.[206] So, in a series of directions for cenobitic life, appended to a curious Arabic version of the Nicene canons, the punishment provided for persistent disobedience and turbulence is expulsion of the offender from the monastery.[207]

As a temporary refuge from the trials of life, where the soul could be strengthened by seclusion, meditation, peaceful labor, and rigid discipline, thousands must have found the institution of Monachism most beneficial who had not resolution enough to give themselves up to a life of ascetic devotion and privation. These facilities for entrance and departure, however, only rendered more probable the admission of the turbulent and the worldly; and the want of stringent and effective regulations must have rendered itself every day more apparent, as the holy multitudes waxed larger and more difficult to manage, and as the empire became covered with wandering monks, described by St. Augustin as beggars, swindlers, and peddlers of false relics, who resorted to the most shameless mendacity to procure the means of sustaining their idle and vagabond life.[208]

It was this, no doubt, which led to the adoption and enforcement of the third of the monastic vows—that of obedience—as being the only mode by which during the period when residence was voluntary, the crowds of devotees could be kept in a condition of subjection. To what a length this was carried, and how completely the system of religious asceticism succeeded in its object of destroying all human feeling, is well exemplified by the shining example of the holy Mucius, who presented himself for admission in a monastery, accompanied by his child, a boy eight years of age. His persistent humility gained for him a relaxation of the rules, and father and son were admitted together. To test his worthiness, however, they were separated, and all intercourse forbidden. His patience encouraged a further trial. The helpless child was neglected and abused systematically, but all the perverse ingenuity which rendered him a mass of filth and visited him with perpetual chastisement failed to excite a sign of interest in the father. Finally the abbot feigned to lose all patience with the little sufferer’s moans, and ordered Mucius to cast him in the river. The obedient monk carried him to the bank and threw him in with such promptitude that the admiring spectators were barely able to rescue him. All that is wanting to complete the hideous picture is the declaration of the abbot that in Mucius the sacrifice of Abraham was completed.[209] This epitomizes the whole system—the transfer to man of the obedience due to God—and shows how little, by this time, was left of the hopeful reliance on a beneficent God which distinguished the primitive church, and which led Athenagoras, in the second century, to argue from the premises “God certainly impels no one to those things which are unnatural.”

The weaker sex, whether from the greater value attached to the purity of woman or from her presumed frailty, as well as from some difference in the nature of the engagement entered into, was the first to become the subject of distinct legislation, and the frequency of the efforts required shows the difficulty of enforcing the rule of celibacy and chastity. Allusion has already been made to a law of Jovian which, as early as 364, denounced the attempt to marry a nun as a capital crime. Subsequent canons of the church show that this was wholly ineffectual. The council of Valence, in 374, endeavored to check such marriages. The synod of Rome, in 384, alludes with horror to these unions, which it stigmatizes as adultery, and drawing a distinction between virgins professed and those who had taken the veil, it prescribes an indefinite penance before they can be received back into the church, but at the same time it does not venture to order their separation from their husbands.[210] A year later, the bolder Siricius commands both monks and nuns guilty of unchastity to be imprisoned, but he makes no allusion to marriage.[211] Notwithstanding the fervor of St. Augustin’s admiration for virginity and the earnestness with which he waged war in favor of celibacy, he pronounces that the marriage of nuns is binding, ridicules those who consider it as invalid, and deprecates the evil results of separating man and wife under such circumstances, but yet his asceticism, satisfied with this concession to common sense, pronounces such unions to be worse than adulterous.[212] From this it is evident that these infractions of discipline were far from uncommon, and that the stricter churchmen already treated such marriages as null and void, which resulted in the husbands considering themselves at liberty to marry again. Such view of monastic vows was not sustained by the authorities of the church, for about the same period Innocent I., like St. Augustin, while condemning such marriages as worse than adulterous, admitted their validity by refusing communion to the offenders until one of the partners in guilt should be dead; and, like the synod of 384, he considered the transgression as somewhat less culpable in the professed virgin than in her who had consummated her marriage with Christ by absolutely taking the veil.[213] It was probably this assumed marriage with Christ—a theory which St. Cyprian shows to be as old as the third century, and which is very strongly stated by Innocent—which rendered the church so much more sensitive as to the frailty of the female devotees than to that of the men. As yet, however, the stability of such marriages was generally accepted throughout the church, for, a few years before the epistle of Innocent we find it enunciated by the first council of Toledo, which decided that the nun who married was not admissible to penitence during the life of her husband, unless she separated herself from him.[214]

It is evident from all this that an effort had been made to have such marriages condemned as invalid, and that it had failed. We see, however, that the lines had gradually been drawn more tightly around the monastic order, that the vows could no longer be shaken off with ease, and that there was a growing tendency to render the monastic character ineffaceable when once assumed. Towards the middle of the fifth century, however, a reaction took place, possibly because the extreme views may have been found impracticable. Thus Leo I. treats recalcitrant cenobites with singular tenderness. He declares that monks cannot without sin abandon their profession, and therefore that he who returns to the world and marries must redeem himself by penitence, for however honorable be the marriage-tie and the active duties of life, still it is a transgression to desert the better path. So professed virgins, who throw off the habit and marry, violate their duty, and those who in addition to this have been regularly consecrated commit a great crime—and yet no further punishment is indicated for them;[215] and the little respect still paid to the indelible character claimed for monachism is shown by the manner in which the civil power was ready to interfere for the purpose of putting an end to some of the many abuses arising from monastic institutions. In 458 Majorian promulgated a law in which he inveighs with natural indignation against the parents who, to get rid of their offspring, compel their unhappy daughters to enter convents at a tender age, and he orders that, until the ardor of the passions shall be tempered by advancing years, no vows shall be administered. The minimum age for taking the veil is fixed at forty years and stringent measures are provided for insuring its observance. If infringed by order of the parents, or by an orphan girl of her own free will, one-third of all the possessions of the offender is confiscated to the state, and the ecclesiastics officiating at the ceremony are visited with the heavy punishment of proscription. A woman forced into a nunnery, if her parents die before she reaches the age of forty, is declared to be free to leave it and to marry, nor can she be disinherited thereafter.[216] Fruitless as this well-intentioned effort proved, it is highly suggestive as to the wrongs which were perpetrated under the name of religion, the stern efforts felt to be requisite for their prevention, and the power exercised to annul the vows.

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In the East, the tendency was to give a more rigid and unalterable character to the vows, nor is it difficult to understand the cause. Both church and state began to feel the necessity of reducing to subjection under some competent authority the vast hordes of idle and ignorant men who had embraced monastic life. In the West, monachism was as yet in its infancy, and was to be stimulated rather than to be dreaded, but it was far otherwise in the East, where the influence of the ascetic ideas of India was much more direct and immediate. The examples of Antony and Pachomius had brought them innumerable followers. The solitudes of the deserts had become peopled with vast communities, and as the contagion spread, monasteries arose everywhere and were rapidly filled and enlarged.[217] The blindly bigoted and the turbulently ambitious found a place among those whose only aim was retirement and peace; while the authority wielded by the superior of each establishment, through the blind obedience claimed under monastic vows, gave him a degree of power which rendered him not only important but dangerous. The monks thus became in time a body of no little weight which it behooved the church to thoroughly control, as it might become efficient for good or evil. By encouraging and directing it, she gained an instrument of incalculable force, morally and physically, to consolidate her authority and extend her influence. How that influence was used, and how the monks became at times a terror even to the state is written broadly on the history of the age. Even early in the fifth century the hordes of savage Nitrian cenobites were the janizaries of the fiery Cyril, with which he lorded it over the city of Alexandria, and almost openly bade defiance to the imperial authority. The tumult in which Orestes nearly lost his life, the banishment of the Jews, and the shocking catastrophe of Hypatia show how dangerous an element to society they were even then, when under the guidance of an able and unscrupulous leader.[218] So the prominent part taken by the monks in the deplorable Nestorian and Eutychian controversies, the example of the Abbot Barsumas at the Robber Synod in Ephesus, the exploits of Theodosius of Jerusalem and Peter of Antioch, who drove out their bishops and usurped the episcopal chairs, the career of Eutyches himself, the bloodthirsty rabble of monks who controlled the synod of Ephesus and endeavored to overawe that of Chalcedon, and, in the succeeding century, the insurrections against the Emperor Anastasius which were largely attributed to their efforts—all these were warnings not lightly to be neglected. The monks, in fact, were fast becoming not only disagreeable but even dangerous to the civil power; their organization and obedience to their leaders gave them strength to seriously threaten the influence even of the hierarchy, and the effort to keep them strictly under subjection and within their convent walls became necessary to the peace of both church and state.

At the council of Chalcedon, in 451, the hierarchy had their revenge for the insults which they had suffered two years before in the Robber Synod. A large portion of the monks, infected with Eutychianism, came into direct antagonism with the bishops, whom they defied. With the aid of the civil power, the bishops triumphed, and endeavored to put an end for the future to monastic insubordination, by placing the monasteries under the direct control and supervision of the secular prelates. A series of canons was adopted which declared that monks and nuns were not at liberty to marry; but while excommunication was the punishment provided for the offence, power was given to the bishops to extend mercy to the offenders. At the suggestion of the Emperor Marcian, the council deplored the turbulence of the monks who, leaving their monasteries, stirred up confusion everywhere, and it commanded them to devote themselves solely to prayer and fasting in the spot which they had chosen as a retreat from the world. It forbade them to abandon the holy life to which they had devoted themselves, and pronounced the dread sentence of the anathema on the renegades who refused to return and undergo due penance. No monastery was to be founded without the license of the bishop of the locality, and he alone could give permission to a monk to leave it for any purpose.[219]

This legislation was well adapted to the end in view, but the evil was too deep-seated and too powerful to be thus easily eradicated. Finding the church unable to enforce a remedy, the civil power was compelled to intervene. As early as 390 Theodosius the Great had ordered the monks to confine themselves strictly to deserts and solitudes.[220] Two years later he repealed this law and allowed them to enter the cities.[221] This laxity was abused, and in 466 the Emperors Leo and Anthemius issued an edict forbidding for the future all monks to go beyond the walls of their monasteries on any pretext, except the apocrisarii, or legal officers, on legitimate business alone, and these were strictly enjoined not to engage in religious disputes, not to stir up the people, and not to preside over assemblages of any nature.[222]

History shows us how little obedience this also received, nor is it probable that much more attention was paid to the imperial rescript when, in 532, Justinian confirmed the legislation of his predecessors, and added provisions forbidding those who had once taken the vows from returning to the world under penalty of being handed over to the _curia_ of their municipality, with confiscation of their property, and personal punishment if penniless.[223] Had the effort then been successful, he would not have been under the necessity of renewing it in 535 by a law making over to the monastery, by way of satisfaction to God, the property of any monk presuming to abandon a life of religion and returning to the cares of the world.[224] The prevalent laxity of manners is further shown by another provision according to which the monk who received orders was not allowed to marry, even if he entered grades in which marriage was permitted to the secular clergy, the penalty for taking a wife or a concubine being degradation and dismissal, with incapacity for serving the state.[225] Ten years later, further legislation was found necessary, and at length the final expedient was hit upon, by which the apostate monk was handed over to the bishop to be placed in a monastery, from which if he escaped again he was delivered to the secular tribunal as incorrigible.[226] The trouble was apparently incurable. Three hundred and fifty years later, Leo the Philosopher deplores it, and orders all recalcitrant monks to be returned to their convents as often as they may escape. As for the morals of monastic life, it may be sufficient to refer to the regulation of St. Theodore Studita, in the ninth century, prohibiting the entrance of even female animals.[227]

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Thus gradually the irrevocable nature of monastic vows became established in the East, more from reasons of state than from ecclesiastical considerations. In the West, matters were longer in reaching a settlement, and the causes operating were somewhat different. Monachism there had not become a terror to the civil power, and its management was left to the church; yet, if its influence was insufficient to excite tumults and seditions, it was none the less disorganized, and its disorders were a disgrace to those on whom rested the responsibility.

The Latin church was not by any means insensible to this disgrace, nor did it underrate the importance of rendering the vows indissoluble, of binding its servants absolutely and forever to its service, and of maintaining its character and influence by endeavoring to enforce a discipline that should insure purity. During the period sketched above, and for the two following centuries, there is scarcely a council which did not enact canons showing at once the persistent effort to produce these results and the almost insurmountable difficulty of accomplishing them. It would lead us too far to enter upon the minutiæ of these perpetually reiterated exhortations and threats, or of the various expedients which were successively tried. Suffice it to say that the end in view was never lost sight of, while the perseverance of the wrongdoer seems to have rivalled that of the disciplinarian. The anvil bade fair to wear out the hammer, while the confusion and lawlessness of those dismal ages gave constantly increasing facilities to those who desired to escape from the strictness of the ascetic life to which they had devoted themselves. Thus arose a crowd of vagabond monks, _gyrovagi_, _acephali_, _circilliones_, _sarabaitæ_, who, without acknowledging obedience to any superior, or having any definite place of abode, wandered over the face of the country, claiming the respect and immunities due to a sacred calling, for the purpose of indulging in an idle and dissolute life—vagrants of the worst description, according to the unanimous testimony of the ecclesiastical authorities of the period.[228]

Thus, up to the middle of the fifth century, no regular system of discipline had been introduced in the monastic establishments of the Latin church. About that period Cassianus, the first abbot of St. Victor of Marseilles, wrote out, for the benefit of the ruder monasticism of the West, the details of discipline in which he had perfected himself among the renowned communities of the East. He deplores the absence of any fixed rule in the Latin convents, where every abbot governed on the plan which suited his fancy; where more difficulty was found in preserving order among two or three monks than the Abbot of Tabenna in the Thebaïd experienced with the flock of five thousand committed to his single charge; and where each individual retained his own private hoards, which were carefully locked up and sealed to keep them from the unscrupulous covetousness of his brethren.[229] How little all these efforts accomplished is clearly manifested when, in 494, we find Gelasius I. lamenting the incestuous marriages which were not uncommon among the virgins dedicated to God, and venturing only to denounce excommunication on the offenders, unless they should avert it by undergoing public penance. As for widows who married after professing chastity, he could indicate no earthly chastisement, but only held out to them the prospect of eternal reward or punishment, and left it for them to decide whether they would seek or abandon the better part.[230] Still, the irrevocable nature of the vow of celibacy was so little understood or respected that in 502 Cæsarius, who had just been translated from the abbacy of a monastery to the bishopric of Arles, wrote to Pope Symmachus asking him to issue a precept forbidding marriage to nuns, to which the pontiff promptly acceeded.[231]

A new apostle was clearly needed to aid the organizing spirit of Rome in her efforts to regulate the increasing number of devotees, who threatened to become the worst scandal of the church, and who could be rendered so efficient an instrument for its aggrandizement. He was found in the person of St. Benedict of Nursia, who, about the year 494, at the early age of sixteen, tore himself from the pleasures of the world, and buried his youth in the solitudes of the Latian Apennines. A nature that could wrench itself away from the allurements of a splendid career dawning amid the blandishments of Rome was not likely to shrink from the austerities which awe and attract the credulous and the devout. Tempted by the Evil Spirit in the guise of a beautiful maiden, and finding his resolution on the point of yielding, with a supreme effort Benedict cast off his simple garment and threw himself into a thicket of brambles and nettles, through which he rolled until his naked body was lacerated from head to foot. The experiment, though rude, was eminently successful; the flesh was effectually conquered, and Benedict was never again tormented by rebellious desires.[232] A light so shining was not created for obscurity. Zealous disciples assembled around him, attracted from distant regions by his sanctity, and after various vicissitudes he founded the monastery of Monte Casino, on which for a thousand years were lavished all that veneration and munificence could accumulate to render illustrious the birthplace and capital of the great Benedictine Order.

The rule promulgated by Benedict, which virtually became the established law of Latin Monachism, shows the more practical character of the western mind. Though pervaded by the austerest asceticism, yet labor, charity, and good works occupy a much more prominent place in its injunctions than in the system of the East. Salvation was not to be sought simply by abstinence and mortification, and the innate selfishness of the monastic principle was relaxed in favor of a broader and more human view of the duties of man to his Creator and to his fellows. This gave to the institution a firmer hold on the affections of mankind and a more enduring vitality, which preserved its fortunes through the centuries, in spite of innumerable aberrations and frightful abuses.

Still there were as yet no irrevocable vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience exacted of the novice. After a year of probation he promised, before God and the Saints, to keep the Rule under pain of damnation, and he was then admitted with imposing religious ceremonies. His worldly garments were, however, preserved, to be returned to him in case of expulsion, to which he was liable if incorrigibly disobedient. If he left the monastery, or if he was ejected, he could return twice, but after the third admission, if he again abandoned the order, he was no longer eligible.[233] Voluntary submission was thus the corner-stone of discipline, and there was nothing indelible in the engagement which bound the monk to his brethren.

Contemporary with St. Benedict was St. Cæsarius of Arles, whose Rule has been transmitted to us by his nephew, St. Tetradius. It is very short, but is more rigid than that of Benedict, inasmuch as it requires from the applicant the condition of remaining for life in the convent, nor will it permit his assumption of the habit until he shall have executed a deed bestowing all his property either on his relatives or on the establishment of his choice, thus insuring the rule of poverty, and depriving him of all inducement to retire.[234]