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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Hermits, by Charles Kingsley
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Hermits
+
+
+Author: Charles Kingsley
+
+
+
+Release Date: March 3, 2013  [eBook #8733]
+[This file was first posted on August 5, 2003]
+
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HERMITS***
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1891 Macmillan and Co. edition by David Price, email
+ccx074@pglaf.org
+
+                [Picture: St. Brendan setting Sail.—P. 26]
+
+
+
+
+
+                               THE HERMITS
+
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                                    BY
+                             CHARLES KINGSLEY
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                              _ILLUSTRATED_
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                                  London
+                            MACMILLAN AND CO.
+                               AND NEW YORK
+                                   1891
+
+                  _The Right of Translation is Reserved_
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                     RICHARD CLAY AND SONS, LIMITED,
+                            LONDON AND BUNGAY.
+
+                      _First printed in parts_ 1868.
+
+ _Reprinted in_ 1 _Volume_, _Crown_ 8_vo._ 1871, 1875, 1880, 1885, 1890,
+                                  1891.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+                                                  PAGE
+INTRODUCTION                                         1
+SAINT ANTONY                                        21
+THE LIFE OF SAINT PAUL, THE FIRST HERMIT            83
+HILARION                                           104
+ARSENIUS                                           149
+THE HERMITS OF ASIA                                155
+BASIL                                              162
+SIMEON STYLITES                                    167
+THE HERMITS OF EUROPE                              219
+ST. SEVERINUS, THE APOSTLE OF NORICUM              224
+THE CELTIC HERMITS                                 246
+ST. MALO                                           278
+ST. COLUMBA                                        282
+ST. GUTHLAC                                        300
+ST. GODRIC OF FINCHALE                             309
+ANCHORITES, STRICTLY SO CALLED                     329
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+ST. BRENDAN SETTING SAIL                                _Frontispiece_
+LIFE OF ST. ANTHONY                                       _To face_ 35
+
+    “And having committed his sister to known and
+    faithful virgins, and given to her wherewith
+    to be educated in a nunnery,” &c.
+PAUL, THE FIRST HERMIT                                    _To face_ 92
+
+    “For entering the cave he saw, with bended
+    knees, erect neck, and hands spread out on
+    high, a lifeless corpse.  And at first,
+    thinking that it still lived,” &c.
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+ST. PAPHNUTIUS used to tell a story which may serve as a fit introduction
+to this book.  It contains a miniature sketch, not only of the social
+state of Egypt, but of the whole Roman Empire, and of the causes which
+led to the famous monastic movement in the beginning of the fifth century
+after Christ.
+
+Now Paphnutius was a wise and holy hermit, the Father, Abba, or Abbot of
+many monks; and after he had trained himself in the desert with all
+severity for many years, he besought God to show him which of His saints
+he was like.
+
+And it was said to him, “Thou art like a certain flute-player in the
+city.”
+
+Then Paphnutius took his staff, and went into the city, and found that
+flute-player.  But he confessed that he was a drunkard and a profligate,
+and had till lately got his living by robbery, and recollected not having
+ever done one good deed.  Nevertheless, when Paphnutius questioned him
+more closely, he said that he recollected once having found a holy maiden
+beset by robbers, and having delivered her, and brought her safe to town.
+And when Paphnutius questioned him more closely still, he said he
+recollected having done another deed.  When he was a robber, he met once
+in the desert a beautiful woman; and she prayed him to do her no harm,
+but to take her away with him as a slave, whither he would; for, said
+she, “I am fleeing from the apparitors and the Governor’s curials for the
+last two years.  My husband has been imprisoned for 300 pieces of gold,
+which he owes as arrears of taxes; and has been often hung up, and often
+scourged; and my three dear boys have been taken from me; and I am
+wandering from place to place, and have been often caught myself and
+continually scourged; and now I have been in the desert three days
+without food.”
+
+And when the robber heard that, he took pity on her, and took her to his
+cave, and gave her 300 pieces of gold, and went with her to the city, and
+set her husband and her boys free.
+
+Then Paphnutius said, “I never did a deed like that: and yet I have not
+passed my life in ease and idleness.  But now, my son, since God hath had
+such care of thee, have a care for thine own self.”
+
+And when the musician heard that, he threw away the flutes which he held
+in his hand, and went with Paphnutius into the desert, and passed his
+life in hymns and prayer, changing his earthly music into heavenly; and
+after three years he went to heaven, and was at rest among the choirs of
+angels, and the ranks of the just.
+
+This story, as I said, is a miniature sketch of the state of the whole
+Roman Empire, and of the causes why men fled from it into the desert.
+Christianity had reformed the morals of individuals; it had not reformed
+the Empire itself.  That had sunk into a state only to be compared with
+the worst despotisms of the East.  The Emperors, whether or not they
+called themselves Christian, like Constantine, knew no law save the
+basest maxims of the heathen world.  Several of them were barbarians who
+had risen from the lowest rank merely by military prowess; and who, half
+maddened by their sudden elevation, added to their native ignorance and
+brutality the pride, cunning, and cruelty of an Eastern Sultan.  Rival
+Emperors, or Generals who aspired to be Emperors, devastated the world
+from Egypt to Britain by sanguinary civil wars.  The government of the
+provinces had become altogether military.  Torture was employed, not
+merely, as of old, against slaves, but against all ranks, without
+distinction.  The people were exhausted by compulsory taxes, to be spent
+in wars which did not concern them, or in Court luxury in which they had
+no share.  In the municipal towns, liberty and justice were dead.  The
+curials, who answered somewhat to our aldermen, and who were responsible
+for the payment of the public moneys, tried their best to escape the
+unpopular office, and, when compelled to serve, wrung the money in
+self-defence out of the poorer inhabitants by every kind of tyranny.  The
+land was tilled either by oppressed and miserable peasants, or by gangs
+of slaves, in comparison with whose lot that even of the American negro
+was light.  The great were served in their own households by crowds of
+slaves, better fed, doubtless, but even more miserable and degraded, than
+those who tilled the estates.  Private profligacy among all ranks was
+such as cannot be described in these or in any modern pages.  The regular
+clergy of the cities, though not of profligate lives, and for the most
+part, in accordance with public opinion, unmarried, were able to make no
+stand against the general corruption of the age, because—at least if we
+are to trust such writers as Jerome and Chrysostom—they were giving
+themselves up to ambition and avarice, vanity and luxury, intrigue and
+party spirit, and had become the flatterers of fine ladies, “silly women
+laden with sins, ever learning, and never coming to the knowledge of the
+truth.”  Such a state of things not only drove poor creatures into the
+desert, like that fair woman whom the robber met, but it raised up bands
+of robbers over the whole of Europe, Africa, and the East,—men who, like
+Robin Hood and the outlaws of the Middle Age, getting no justice from
+man, broke loose from society, and while they plundered their oppressors,
+kept up some sort of rude justice and humanity among themselves.  Many,
+too, fled, and became robbers, to escape the merciless conscription which
+carried off from every province the flower of the young men, to shed
+their blood on foreign battle-fields.  In time, too, many of these
+conscripts became monks, and the great monasteries of Scetis and Nitria
+were hunted over again and again by officers and soldiers from the
+neighbouring city of Alexandria in search of young men who had entered
+the “spiritual warfare” to escape the earthly one.  And as a background
+to all this seething heap of decay, misrule, and misery, hung the black
+cloud of the barbarians, the Teutonic tribes from whom we derive the best
+part of our blood, ever coming nearer and nearer, waxing stronger and
+stronger, learning discipline and civilization by serving in the Roman
+armies, alternately the allies and the enemies of the Emperors, rising,
+some of them, to the highest offices of State, and destined, so the
+wisest Romans saw all the more clearly as the years rolled on, to be soon
+the conquerors of the Cæsars, and the masters of the Western world.
+
+No wonder if that, in such a state of things, there arose such violent
+contrasts to the general weakness, such eccentric protests against the
+general wickedness, as may be seen in the figure of Abbot Paphnutius,
+when compared either with the poor man tortured in prison for his arrears
+of taxes, or with the Governor and the officials who tortured him.  No
+wonder if, in such a state of things, the minds of men were stirred by a
+passion akin to despair, which ended in a new and grand form of suicide.
+It would have ended often, but for Christianity, in such an actual
+despair as that which had led in past ages more than one noble Roman to
+slay himself, when he lost all hope for the Republic.  Christianity
+taught those who despaired of society, of the world—in one word, of the
+Roman Empire, and all that it had done for men—to hope at least for a
+kingdom of God after death.  It taught those who, had they been heathens
+and brave enough, would have slain themselves to escape out of a world
+which was no place for honest men, that the body must be kept alive, if
+for no other reason, at least for the sake of the immortal soul, doomed,
+according to its works, to endless bliss or endless torment.
+
+But that the world—such, at least, as they saw it then—was doomed,
+Scripture and their own reason taught them.  They did not merely believe,
+but see, in the misery and confusion, the desolation and degradation
+around them, that all that was in the world, the lust of the flesh, the
+lust of the eye, and the pride of life, was not of the Father, but of the
+world; that the world was passing away, and the lust thereof, and that
+only he who did the will of God could abide for ever.  They did not
+merely believe, but saw, that the wrath of God was revealed from heaven
+against all unrighteousness of men; and that the world in general—above
+all, its kings and rulers, the rich and luxurious—were treasuring up for
+themselves wrath, tribulation, and anguish, against a day of wrath and
+revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who would render to every
+man according to his works.
+
+That they were correct in their judgment of the world about them,
+contemporary history proves abundantly.  That they were correct,
+likewise, in believing that some fearful judgment was about to fall on
+man, is proved by the fact that it did fall; that the first half of the
+fifth century saw, not only the sack of Rome, but the conquest and
+desolation of the greater part of the civilized world, amid bloodshed,
+misery, and misrule, which seemed to turn Europe into a chaos,—which
+would have turned it into a chaos, had there not been a few men left who
+still felt it possible and necessary to believe in God and to work
+righteousness.
+
+Under these terrible forebodings, men began to flee from a doomed world,
+and try to be alone with God, if by any means they might save each man
+his own soul in that dread day.
+
+Others, not Christians, had done the same before them.  Among all the
+Eastern nations men had appeared, from time to time, to whom the things
+seen were but a passing phantom, the things unseen the only true and
+eternal realities; who, tormented alike by the awfulness of the infinite
+unknown, and by the petty cares and low passions of the finite mortal
+life which they knew but too well, had determined to renounce the latter,
+that they might give themselves up to solving the riddle of the former;
+and be at peace; and free, at least, from the tyranny of their own
+selves.  Eight hundred years before St. Antony fled into the desert, that
+young Hindoo rajah, whom men call Buddha now, had fled into the forest,
+leaving wives and kingdom, to find rest for his soul.  He denounced
+caste; he preached poverty, asceticism, self-annihilation.  He founded a
+religion, like that of the old hermits, democratic and ascetic, with its
+convents, saint-worships, pilgrimages, miraculous relics, rosaries, and
+much more, which strangely anticipates the monastic religion; and his
+followers, to this day, are more numerous than those of any other creed.
+
+Brahmins, too, had given themselves up to penance and mortification till
+they believed themselves able, like Kehama, to have gained by
+self-torture the right to command, not nature merely, but the gods
+themselves.  Among the Jews the Essenes by the Dead Sea, and the
+Therapeutæ in Egypt, had formed ascetic communities, the former more
+“practical,” the latter more “contemplative:” but both alike agreed in
+the purpose of escaping from the world into a life of poverty and
+simplicity, piety and virtue; and among the countless philosophic sects
+of Asia, known to ecclesiastical writers as “heretics,” more than one had
+professed, and doubtless often practised, the same abstraction from the
+world, the same contempt of the flesh.  The very Neo-Platonists of
+Alexandria, while they derided the Christian asceticism, found themselves
+forced to affect, like the hapless Hypatia, a sentimental and pharisaic
+asceticism of their own.  This phase of sight and feeling, so strange to
+us now, was common, nay, primæval, among the Easterns.  The day was come
+when it should pass from the East into the West.  And Egypt, “the mother
+of wonders;” the parent of so much civilization and philosophy both Greek
+and Roman; the half-way resting-place through which not merely the
+merchandise, but the wisdom of the East had for centuries passed into the
+Roman Empire; a land more ill-governed, too, and more miserable, in spite
+of its fertility, because more defenceless and effeminate, than most
+other Roman possessions—was the country in which naturally, and as it
+were of hereditary right, such a movement would first appear.
+
+Accordingly it was discovered, about the end of the fourth century, that
+the mountains and deserts of Egypt were full of Christian men who had
+fled out of the dying world, in the hope of attaining everlasting life.
+Wonderful things were told of their courage, their abstinence, their
+miracles: and of their virtues also; of their purity, their humility,
+their helpfulness, and charity to each other and to all.  They called
+each other, it was said, brothers; and they lived up to that sacred name,
+forgotten, if ever known, by the rest of the Roman Empire.  Like the
+Apostolic Christians in the first fervour of their conversion, they had
+all things in common; they lived at peace with each other, under a mild
+and charitable rule; and kept literally those commands of Christ which
+all the rest of the world explained away to nothing.
+
+The news spread.  It chimed in with all that was best, as well as with
+much that was questionable, in the public mind.  That men could be
+brothers; that they could live without the tawdry luxury, the tasteless
+and often brutal amusements, the low sensuality, the base intrigue, the
+bloody warfare, which was the accepted lot of the many; that they could
+find time to look stedfastly at heaven and hell as awful realities, which
+must be faced some day, which had best be faced at once; this, just as
+much as curiosity about their alleged miracles, and the selfish longing
+to rival them in superhuman powers, led many of the most virtuous and the
+most learned men of the time to visit them, and ascertain the truth.
+Jerome, Ruffinus, Evagrius, Sulpicius Severus, went to see them,
+undergoing on the way the severest toils and dangers, and brought back
+reports of mingled truth and falsehood, specimens of which will be seen
+in these pages.  Travelling in those days was a labour, if not of
+necessity, then surely of love.  Palladius, for instance, found it
+impossible to visit the Upper Thebaid, and Syene, and that “infinite
+multitude of monks, whose fashions of life no one would believe, for they
+surpass human life; who to this day raise the dead, and walk upon the
+waters, like Peter; and whatsoever the Saviour did by the holy Apostles,
+He does now by them.  But because it would be very dangerous if we went
+beyond Lyco” (Lycopolis?), on account of the inroad of robbers, he “could
+not see those saints.”
+
+The holy men and women of whom he wrote, he says, he did not see without
+extreme toil; and seven times he and his companions were nearly lost.
+Once they walked through the desert five days and nights, and were almost
+worn out by hunger and thirst.  Again, they fell on rough marshes, where
+the sedge pierced their feet, and caused intolerable pain, while they
+were almost killed with the cold.  Another time, they stuck in the mud up
+to their waists, and cried with David, “I am come into deep mire, where
+no ground is.”  Another time, they waded for four days through the flood
+of the Nile by paths almost swept away.  Another time they met robbers on
+the seashore, coming to Diolcos, and were chased by them for ten miles.
+Another time they were all but upset and drowned in crossing the Nile.
+Another time, in the marshes of Mareotis, “where paper grows,” they were
+cast on a little desert island, and remained three days and nights in the
+open air, amid great cold and showers, for it was the season of Epiphany.
+The eighth peril, he says, is hardly worth mentioning—but once, when they
+went to Nitria, they came on a great hollow, in which many crocodiles had
+remained, when the waters retired from the fields.  Three of them lay
+along the bank; and the monks went up to them, thinking them dead,
+whereon the crocodiles rushed at them.  But when they called loudly on
+the Lord, “the monsters, as if turned away by an angel,” shot themselves
+into the water; while they ran on to Nitria, meditating on the words of
+Job, “Seven times shall He deliver thee from trouble; and in the eighth
+there shall no evil touch thee.”
+
+The great St. Athanasius, fleeing from persecution, had taken refuge
+among these monks.  He carried the report of their virtues to Trêves in
+Gaul, and wrote a life of St. Antony, the perusal of which was a main
+agent in the conversion of St. Augustine.  Hilarion (a remarkable
+personage, whose history will be told hereafter) carried their report and
+their example likewise into Palestine; and from that time Judæa, desolate
+and seemingly accursed by the sin of the Jewish people, became once more
+the Holy Land; the place of pilgrimage; whose ruins, whose very soil,
+were kept sacred by hermits, the guardians of the footsteps of Christ.
+
+In Rome itself the news produced an effect which, to the thoughtful mind,
+is altogether tragical in its nobleness.  The Roman aristocracy was
+deprived of all political power; it had been decimated, too, with
+horrible cruelty only one generation before, {12} by Valentinian and his
+satellites, on the charges of profligacy, treason, and magic.  Mere rich
+men, they still lingered on, in idleness and luxury, without art,
+science, true civilization of any kind; followed by long trains of
+slaves; punishing a servant with three hundred stripes if he were too
+long in bringing hot water; weighing the fish, or birds, or dormice put
+on their tables, while secretaries stood by, with tablets to record all;
+hating learning as they hated poison; indulging at the baths in conduct
+which had best be left undescribed; and “complaining that they were not
+born among the Cimmerians, if amid their golden fans a fly should perch
+upon the silken fringes, or a slender ray of the sun should pierce
+through the awning;” while, if they “go any distance to see their estates
+in the country, or to hunt at a meeting collected for their amusement by
+others, they think that they have equalled the marches of Alexander or of
+Cæsar.”
+
+On the wives, widows, and daughters of men of this stamp—and not half
+their effeminacy and baseness, as the honest rough old soldier Ammianus
+Marcellinus describes it, has been told here—the news brought from Egypt
+worked with wondrous potency.
+
+Women of the highest rank awoke suddenly to the discovery that life was
+given them for nobler purposes than that of frivolous enjoyment and
+tawdry vanity.  Despising themselves; despising the husbands to whom they
+had been wedded in loveless marriages _de convenance_, whose infidelities
+they had too often to endure: they, too, fled from a world which had
+sated and sickened them.  They freed their slaves; they gave away their
+wealth to found hospitals and to feed the poor; and in voluntary poverty
+and mean garments they followed such men as Jerome and Ruffinus across
+the seas, to visit the new found saints of the Egyptian desert, and to
+end their days, in some cases, in doleful monasteries in Palestine.  The
+lives of such women as those of the Anician house; the lives of Marcella
+and Furia, of Paula, of the Melanias, and the rest, it is not my task to
+write.  They must be told by a woman, not by a man.  We may blame those
+ladies, if we will, for neglecting their duties.  We may sneer, if we
+will, at the weaknesses—the aristocratic pride, the spiritual
+vanity—which we fancy that we discover.  We may lament—and in that we
+shall not be wrong—the influence which such men as Jerome obtained over
+them—the example and precursor of so much which has since then been
+ruinous to family and social life: but we must confess that the fault lay
+not with the themselves, but with their fathers, husbands, and brothers;
+we must confess that in these women the spirit of the old Roman matrons,
+which seemed to have been so long dead, flashed up for one splendid
+moment, ere it sunk into the darkness of the Middle Age; that in them
+woman asserted (however strangely and fantastically) her moral equality
+with man; and that at the very moment when monasticism was consigning her
+to contempt, almost to abhorrence, as “the noxious animal,” the “fragile
+vessel,” the cause of man’s fall at first, and of his sin and misery ever
+since, woman showed the monk (to his naïvely-confessed surprise), that
+she could dare, and suffer, and adore as well as he.
+
+But the movement, having once seized the Roman Empire, grew and spread
+irresistibly.  It was accepted, supported, preached, practised, by every
+great man of the time.  Athanasius, Basil, Chrysostom, Gregory of
+Nazianzen in the East, Jerome, Augustine, Ruffinus, Evagrius, Fulgentius,
+Sulpicius Severus, Vincent of Lerins, John Cassian, Martin of Tours,
+Salvian, Cæsarius of Arles, were all monks, or as much of monks as their
+duties would allow them to be.  Ambrose of Milan, though no monk himself,
+was the fervent preacher of, the careful legislator for, monasticism male
+and female.  Throughout the whole Roman Empire, in the course of a
+century, had spread hermits (or dwellers in the desert), anchorites
+(retired from the world), or monks (dwellers alone).  The three names
+grew afterwards to designate three different orders of ascetics.  The
+hermits remained through the Middle Ages those who dwelt in deserts; the
+anchorites, or “ankers” of the English Middle Age, seem generally to have
+inhabited cells built in, or near, the church walls; the name of “monks”
+was transferred from those who dwelt alone to those who dwelt in regular
+communities, under a fixed government.  But the three names at first were
+interchangeable; the three modes of life alternated, often in the same
+man.  The life of all three was the same,—celibacy, poverty, good deeds
+towards their fellow-men; self-restraint, and sometimes self-torture of
+every kind, to atone (as far as might be) for the sins committed after
+baptism: and the mental food of all three was the same likewise;
+continued meditation upon the vanity of the world, the sinfulness of the
+flesh, the glories of heaven, and the horrors of hell: but with these the
+old hermits combined—to do them justice—a personal faith in God, and a
+personal love for Christ, which those who sneer at them would do well to
+copy.
+
+Over all Europe, even to Ireland, {15} the same pattern of Christian
+excellence repeated itself with strange regularity, till it became the
+only received pattern; and to “enter religion,” or “be converted,” meant
+simply to become a monk.
+
+Of the authentic biographies of certain of these men, a few specimens are
+given in this volume.  If they shall seem to any reader uncouth, or even
+absurd, he must remember that they are the only existing and the
+generally contemporaneous histories of men who exercised for 1,300 years
+an enormous influence over the whole of Christendom; who exercise a vast
+influence over the greater part of it to this day.  They are the
+biographies of men who were regarded, during their lives and after their
+deaths, as divine and inspired prophets; and who were worshipped with
+boundless trust and admiration by millions of human beings.  Their fame
+and power were not created by the priesthood.  The priesthood rather
+leant on them, than they on it.  They occupied a post analogous to that
+of the old Jewish prophets; always independent of, sometimes opposed to,
+the regular clergy; and dependent altogether on public opinion and the
+suffrage of the multitude.  When Christianity, after three centuries of
+repression and persecution, emerged triumphant as the creed of the whole
+civilized world, it had become what their lives describe.  The model of
+religious life for the fifth century, it remained a model for succeeding
+centuries; on the lives of St. Antony and his compeers were founded the
+whole literature of saintly biographies; the whole popular conception of
+the universe, and of man’s relation to it; the whole science of
+dæmonology, with its peculiar literature, its peculiar system of criminal
+jurisprudence.  And their influence did not cease at the Reformation
+among Protestant divines.  The influence of these Lives of the Hermit
+Fathers is as much traceable, even to style and language, in “The
+Pilgrim’s Progress” as in the last Papal Allocution.  The great hermits
+of Egypt were not merely the founders of that vast monastic system which
+influenced the whole politics, and wars, and social life, as well as the
+whole religion, of the Middle Age; they were a school of philosophers (as
+they rightly called themselves) who altered the whole current of human
+thought.
+
+Those who wish for a general notion of the men, and of their time, will
+find all that they require (set forth from different points of view,
+though with the same honesty and learning) in Gibbon; in M. de
+Montalembert’s “Moines d’Occident,” in Dean Milman’s “History of
+Christianity” and “Latin Christianity,” and in Ozanam’s “Etudes
+Germaniques.” {17a}  But the truest notion of the men is to be got, after
+all, from the original documents; and especially from that curious
+collection of them by the Jesuit Rosweyde, commonly known as the “Lives
+of the Hermit Fathers.” {17b}
+
+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, _naïfs_ 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 Trêves—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 Trêves, 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 Trêves,
+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.
+
+Trêves 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.  Trêves 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 Trêves, 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 Trêves; 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 Cæsars, 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 Trêves 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 Trêves.  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 Trêves, 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
+Trêves 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 Cæsars, but of Saints.
+
+Under the supposed patronage of those Saints, Trêves 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.  Trêves 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.
+
+                      [Picture: Life of St. Anthony]
+
+But the devil, who hates and envies what is noble, would not endure such
+a purpose in a youth: but attempted against him all that he is wont to
+do; suggesting to him the remembrance of his wealth, care for his sister,
+relation to his kindred, love of money, love of glory, the various
+pleasures of luxury, and the other solaces of life; and then the
+harshness of virtue, and its great toil; and the weakness of his body,
+and the length of time; and altogether raised a great dust-cloud of
+arguments in his mind, trying to turn him back from his righteous choice.
+But when the enemy saw himself to be too weak for Antony’s determination,
+but rather baffled by his stoutness, and overthrown by his great faith,
+and falling before his continual prayers, then he attacked him with the
+temptations which he is wont to use against young men; . . . . but he
+protected his body with faith, prayers, and fastings, . . . setting his
+thoughts on Christ, and on his own nobility through Christ, and on the
+rational faculties of his soul, . . . and again on the terrors of the
+fire, and the torment of the worm, . . . and thus escaped unhurt.  And
+thus was the enemy brought to shame.  For he who thought himself to be
+equal with God was now mocked by a youth; and he who boasted against
+flesh and blood was defeated by a man clothed in flesh.  For the Lord
+worked with him, who bore flesh on our account, and gave to the body
+victory over the devil, that each man in his battle may say, “Not I, but
+the grace of God which is with me.”  At last, when the dragon could not
+overthrow Antony even thus, but saw himself thrust out of his heart, then
+gnashing his teeth (as is written), and as if beside himself, he appeared
+to the sight, as he is to the reason, as a black child, and as it were
+falling down before him, no longer attempted to argue (for the deceiver
+was cast out), but using a human voice, said, “I have deceived many; I
+have cast down many.  But now, as in the case of many, so in thine, I
+have been worsted in the battle.”  Then when Antony asked him, “Who art
+thou who speakest thus to me?” he forthwith replied in a pitiable voice,
+“I am the spirit of impurity.”. . .
+
+Then Antony gave thanks to God, and gaining courage, said, “Thou art
+utterly despicable; for thou art black of soul, and weak as a child; nor
+shall I henceforth cast one thought on thee.  For the Lord is my helper,
+and I shall despise my enemies.”  That black being, hearing this, fled
+forthwith, cowering at his words, and afraid thenceforth of coming near
+the man.
+
+This was Antony’s first struggle against the devil: or rather this mighty
+deed in him was the Saviour’s, who condemned sin in the flesh that the
+righteousness of the Lord should be fulfilled in us, who walk not after
+the flesh, but after the Spirit.  But neither did Antony, because the
+dæmon had fallen, grow careless and despise him; neither did the enemy,
+when worsted by him, cease from lying in ambush against him.  For he came
+round again as a lion, seeking a pretence against him.  But Antony had
+learnt from Scripture that many are the devices of the enemy; and
+continually kept up his training, considering that, though he had not
+deceived his heart by pleasure, he would try some other snares.  For the
+dæmon delights in sin.  Therefore he chastised his body more and more,
+and brought it into slavery, lest, having conquered in one case, he
+should be tripped up in others.  He determined, therefore, to accustom
+himself to a still more severe life; and many wondered at him: but the
+labour was to him easy to bear.  For the readiness of the spirit, through
+long usage, had created a good habit in him, so that, taking a very
+slight hint from others, he showed great earnestness in it.  For he
+watched so much, that he often passed the whole night without sleep; and
+that not once, but often, to the astonishment of men.  He ate once a day,
+after the setting of the sun, and sometimes only once in two days, often
+even in four; his food was bread with salt, his drink nothing but water.
+To speak of flesh and wine there is no need, for such a thing is not
+found among other earnest men.  When he slept he was content with a
+rush-mat: but mostly he lay on the bare ground.  He would not anoint
+himself with oil, saying that it was more fit for young men to be earnest
+in training, than to seek things which softened the body; and that they
+must accustom themselves to labour, according to the Apostle’s saying,
+“When I am weak, then I am strong;” for that the mind was strengthened as
+bodily pleasure was weakened.  And this argument of his was truly
+wonderful.  For he did not measure the path of virtue, nor his going away
+into retirement on account of it, by time; but by his own desire and
+will.  So forgetting the past, he daily, as if beginning afresh, took
+more pains to improve, saying over to himself continually the Apostle’s
+words, “Forgetting what is behind, stretching forward to what is before;”
+and mindful, too, of Elias’ speech, “The Lord liveth, before whom I stand
+this day.”  For he held, that by mentioning to-day, he took no account of
+past time: but, as if he were laying down a beginning, he tried earnestly
+to make himself day by day fit to appear before God, pure in heart, and
+ready to obey his will, and no other.  And he said in himself that the
+ascetic ought for ever to be learning his own life from the manners of
+the great Elias, as from a mirror.  Antony, having thus, as it were,
+bound himself, went to the tombs, which happened to be some way from the
+village; and having bidden one of his acquaintances to bring him bread at
+intervals of many days, he entered one of the tombs, and, shutting the
+door upon himself, remained there alone.  But the enemy, not enduring
+that, but rather terrified lest in a little while he should fill the
+desert with his training, coming one night with a multitude of dæmons,
+beat him so much with stripes, that he lay speechless from the torture.
+For he asserted that the pain was so great that no blows given by men
+could cause such agony.  But by the providence of God (for the Lord does
+not overlook those who hope in him), the next day his acquaintance came,
+bringing him the loaves.  And having opened the door, and seeing him
+lying on the ground for dead, he carried him to the Lord’s house in the
+village, and laid him on the ground; and many of his kinsfolk and the
+villagers sat round him, as round a corpse.  But about midnight, Antony
+coming to himself, and waking up, saw them all sleeping, and only his
+acquaintance awake, and, nodding to him to approach, begged him to carry
+him back to the tombs, without waking any one.  When that was done, the
+doors were shut, and he remained as before, alone inside.  And, because
+he could not stand on account of the dæmons’ blows, he prayed prostrate.
+And after his prayer, he said with a shout, “Here am I, Antony: I do not
+fly from your stripes; yea, if you do yet more, nothing shall separate me
+from the love of Christ.”  And then he sang, “If an host be laid against
+me, yet shall not my heart be afraid.”  Thus thought and spoke the man
+who was training himself.  But the enemy, hater of what is noble, and
+envious, wondering that he dared to return after the stripes, called
+together his dogs, and bursting with rage,—“Ye see,” he said, “that we
+have not stopped this man by the spirit of impurity; nor by blows: but he
+is even growing bolder against us.  Let us attack him some other way.”
+{41}  For it is easy for the devil to invent schemes of mischief.  So
+then in the night they made such a crash, that the whole place seemed
+shaken, and the dæmons, as if breaking in the four walls of the room,
+seemed to enter through them, changing themselves into the shapes of
+beasts and creeping things; {42} and the place was forthwith filled with
+shapes of lions, bears, leopards, bulls, and snakes, asps, scorpions, and
+wolves, and each of them moved according to his own fashion.  The lion
+roared, longing to attack; the bull seemed to toss; the serpent did not
+cease creeping, and the wolf rushed upon him; and altogether the noises
+of all the apparitions were dreadful, and their tempers cruel.  But
+Antony, scourged and pierced by them, felt a more dreadful bodily pain
+than before: but he lay unshaken and awake in spirit.  He groaned at the
+pain of his body: but clear in intellect, and as it were mocking, he
+said, “If there were any power in you, it were enough that one of you
+should come on; but since the Lord has made you weak, therefore you try
+to frighten me by mere numbers.  And a proof of your weakness is, that
+you imitate the shapes of brute animals.”  And taking courage, he said
+again, “If ye can, and have received power against me, delay not, but
+attack; but if ye cannot, why do ye disturb me in vain?  For a seal to us
+and a wall of safety is our faith in the Lord.”  The dæmons, having made
+many efforts, gnashed their teeth at him, because he rather mocked at
+them, than they at him.  But neither then did the Lord forget Antony’s
+wrestling, but appeared to help him.  For, looking up, he saw the roof as
+it were opened and a ray of light coming down towards him.  The dæmons
+suddenly became invisible, and the pain of his body forthwith ceased, and
+the building became quite whole.  But Antony, feeling the succour, and
+getting his breath again, and freed from pain, questioned the vision
+which appeared, saying, “Where wert thou?  Why didst thou not appear to
+me from the first, to stop my pangs?”  And a voice came to him, “Antony,
+I was here, but I waited to see thy fight.  Therefore, since thou hast
+withstood, and not been worsted, I will be to thee always a succour, and
+will make thee become famous everywhere.”  Hearing this, he rose and
+prayed, and was so strong, that he felt that he had more power in his
+body than he had before.  He was then about thirty-and-five years old.
+And on the morrow he went out, and was yet more eager for devotion to
+God; and, going to that old man aforesaid, he asked him to dwell with him
+in the desert.  But when he declined, because of his age, and because no
+such custom had yet arisen, he himself straightway set off to the
+mountain.  But the enemy again, seeing his earnestness, and wishing to
+hinder it, cast in his way the phantom of a great silver plate.  But
+Antony, perceiving the trick of him who hates what is noble, stopped.
+And he judged the plate worthless, seeing the devil in it; and said,
+“Whence comes a plate in the desert?  This is no beaten way, nor is there
+here the footstep of any traveller.  Had it fallen, it could not have
+been unperceived, from its great size; and besides, he who lost it would
+have turned back and found it, because the place is desert.  This is a
+trick of the devil.  Thou shalt not hinder, devil, my determination by
+this: let it go with thee into perdition.”  And as Antony said that, it
+vanished, as smoke from before the face of the fire.  Then again he saw,
+not this time a phantom, but real gold lying in the way as he came up.
+But whether the enemy showed it him, or whether some better power, which
+was trying the athlete, and showing the devil that he did not care for
+real wealth; neither did he tell, nor do we know, save that it was real
+gold.  Antony, wondering at the abundance of it, so stepped over it as
+over fire, and so passed it by, that he never turned, but ran on in
+haste, until he had lost sight of the place.  And growing even more and
+more intense in his determination, he rushed up the mountain, and finding
+an empty inclosure full of creeping things on account of its age, he
+betook himself across the river, and dwelt in it.  The creeping things,
+as if pursued by some one, straightway left the place: but he blocked up
+the entry, having taken with him loaves for six months (for the Thebans
+do this, and they often remain a whole year fresh), and having water with
+him, entering, as into a sanctuary, into that monastery, {44} he remained
+alone, never going forth, and never looking at any one who came.  Thus he
+passed a long time there training himself, and only twice a year received
+loaves, let down from above through the roof.  But those of his
+acquaintance who came to him, as they often remained days and nights
+outside (for he did not allow any one to enter), used to hear as it were
+crowds inside clamouring, thundering, lamenting, crying—“Depart from our
+ground.  What dost thou even in the desert?  Thou canst not abide our
+onset.”  At first those without thought that there were some men fighting
+with him, and that they had got in by ladders: but when, peeping in
+through a crack, they saw no one, then they took for granted that they
+were dæmons, and being terrified, called themselves on Antony.  But he
+rather listened to them than cared for the others.  For his acquaintances
+came up continually, expecting to find him dead, and heard him singing,
+“Let the Lord arise, and his enemies shall be scattered; and let them who
+hate him flee before him.  As wax melts from before the face of the fire,
+so shall sinners perish from before the face of God.”  And again, “All
+nations compassed me round about, and in the name of the Lord I repelled
+them.”  He endured then for twenty years, thus training himself alone;
+neither going forth, nor seen by any one for long periods of time.  But
+after this, when many longed for him, and wished to imitate his training,
+and others who knew him came, and were bursting in the door by force,
+Antony came forth as from some inner shrine, initiated into the
+mysteries, and bearing the God. {45}  And then first he appeared out of
+the inclosure to those who were coming to him.  And when they saw him
+they wondered; for his body had kept the same habit, and had neither
+grown fat, nor lean from fasting, nor worn by fighting with the dæmons.
+For he was just such as they had known him before his retirement.  They
+wondered again at the purity of his soul, because it was neither
+contracted as if by grief, nor relaxed by pleasure, nor possessed by
+laughter or by depression; for he was neither troubled at beholding the
+crowd, nor over-joyful at being saluted by too many; but was altogether
+equal, as being governed by reason, and standing on that which is
+according to nature.  Many sufferers in body who were present did the
+Lord heal by him; and others he purged from dæmons.  And he gave to
+Antony grace in speaking, so that he comforted many who grieved, and
+reconciled others who were at variance, exhorting all to prefer nothing
+in the world to the love of Christ, and persuading and exhorting them to
+be mindful of the good things to come, and of the love of God towards us,
+who spared not his own son, but delivered him up for us all.  He
+persuaded many to choose the solitary life; and so thenceforth cells
+sprang up in the mountains, and the desert was colonized by monks, who
+went forth from their own, and registered themselves in the city which is
+in heaven.
+
+And when he had need to cross the Arsenoite Canal (and the need was the
+superintendence of the brethren), the canal was full of crocodiles.  And
+having only prayed, he entered it; and both he and all who were with him
+went through it unharmed.  But when he returned to the cell, he persisted
+in the noble labours of his youth; and by continued exhortations he
+increased the willingness of those who were already monks, and stirred to
+love of training the greater number of the rest; and quickly, as his
+speech drew men on, the cells became more numerous; and he governed them
+all as a father.  And when he had gone forth one day, and all the monks
+had come to him desiring to hear some word from him, he spake to them in
+the Egyptian tongue, thus—“That the Scriptures were sufficient for
+instruction, but that it was good for us to exhort each other in the
+faith.” . . .
+
+[Here follows a long sermon, historically important, as being the
+earliest Christian attempt to reduce to a science dæmonology and the
+temptation of dæmons: but its involved and rhetorical form proves
+sufficiently that it could not have been delivered by an unlettered man
+like Antony.  Neither is it, probably, even composed by St. Athanasius;
+it seems rather, like several other passages in this biography, the
+interpolation of some later scribe.  It has been, therefore, omitted.]
+
+And when Antony had spoken thus, all rejoiced; and in one the love of
+virtue was increased, in another negligence stirred up, and in others
+conceit stopped, while all were persuaded to despise the plots of the
+devil, wondering at the grace which had been given to Antony by the Lord
+for the discernment of spirits.  So the cells in the mountains were like
+tents filled with divine choirs, singing, discoursing, fasting, praying,
+rejoicing over the hope of the future, working that they might give alms
+thereof, and having love and concord with each other.  And there was
+really to be seen, as it were, a land by itself, of piety and justice;
+for there was none there who did wrong, or suffered wrong: no blame from
+any talebearer: but a multitude of men training themselves, and in all of
+them a mind set on virtue.  So that any one seeing the cells, and such an
+array of monks, would have cried out, and said, “How fair are thy
+dwellings, O Jacob, and thy tents, O Israel; like shady groves and like
+parks beside a river, and like tents which the Lord hath pitched, and
+like cedars by the waters.”  He himself, meanwhile, withdrawing,
+according to his custom, alone to his own cell, increased the severity of
+his training.  And he groaned daily, considering the mansions in heaven,
+and setting his longing on them, and looking at the ephemeral life of
+man.  For even when he was going to eat or sleep, he was ashamed, when he
+considered the rational element of his soul; so that often, when he was
+about to eat with many other monks, he remembered the spiritual food, and
+declined, and went far away from them; thinking that he should blush if
+he was seen by others eating.  He ate, nevertheless, by himself, on
+account of the necessities of the body; and often, too, with the
+brethren, being bashful with regard to them, but plucking up heart for
+the sake of saying something that might be useful; and used to tell them
+that they ought to give all their leisure rather to the soul than to the
+body; and that they should grant a very little time to the body, for mere
+necessity’s sake: but that their whole leisure should be rather given to
+the soul, and should seek her profit, that she may not be drawn down by
+the pleasures of the body, but rather the body be led captive by her.
+For this (he said) was what was spoken by the Saviour, “Be not anxious
+for your soul, what ye shall eat; nor for your body, what ye shall put
+on.  And seek not what ye shall eat, nor what ye shall drink, neither let
+your minds be in suspense: for after all these things the nations of the
+world seek: but your Father knoweth that ye need all these things.
+Rather seek first his kingdom; and all these things shall be added unto
+you.”
+
+After these things, the persecution which happened under the Maximinus of
+that time, {49} laid hold of the Church; and when the holy martyrs were
+brought to Alexandria, Antony too followed, leaving his cell, and saying,
+“Let us depart too, that we may wrestle if we be called, or see them
+wrestling.”  And he longed to be a martyr himself, but, not choosing to
+give himself up, he ministered to the confessors in the mines, and in the
+prisons.  And he was very earnest in the judgment-hall to excite the
+readiness of those who were called upon to wrestle; and to receive and
+bring on their way, till they were perfected, those of them who went to
+martyrdom.  At last the judge, seeing the fearlessness and earnestness of
+him and those who were with him, commanded that none of the monks should
+appear in the judgment-hall, or haunt at all in the city.  So all the
+rest thought good to hide themselves that day; but Antony cared so much
+for the order, that he all the rather washed his cloak, and stood next
+day upon a high place, and appeared to the General in shining white.
+Therefore, when all the rest wondered, and the General saw him, and
+passed by with his array, he stood fearless, showing forth the readiness
+of us Christians.  For he himself prayed to be a martyr, as I have said,
+and was like one grieved, because he had not borne his witness.  But the
+Lord was preserving him for our benefit, and that of the rest, that he
+might become a teacher to many in the training which he had learnt from
+Scripture.  For many, when they only saw his manner of life, were eager
+to emulate it.  So he again ministered continually to the confessors;
+and, as if bound with them, wearied himself in his services.  And when at
+last the persecution ceased, and the blessed Bishop Peter had been
+martyred, he left the city, and went back to his cell.  And he was there,
+day by day, a martyr in his conscience, and wrestling in the conflict of
+faith; for he imposed on himself a much more severe training than before;
+and his garment was within of hair, without of skin, which he kept till
+his end.  He neither washed his body with water, nor ever cleansed his
+feet, nor actually endured putting them into water unless it were
+necessary.  And no one ever saw him unclothed till he was dead and about
+to be buried.
+
+When, then, he retired, and had resolved neither to go forth himself, nor
+to receive any one, one Martinianus, a captain of soldiers, came and gave
+trouble to Antony.  For he had with him his daughter, who was tormented
+by a dæmon.  And while he remained a long time knocking at the door, and
+expecting him to come to pray to God for the child, Antony could not bear
+to open, but leaning from above, said, “Man, why criest thou to me?  I,
+too, am a man, as thou art.  But if thou believest, pray to God, and it
+comes to pass.”  Forthwith, therefore, he believed, and called on Christ;
+and went away, with his daughter cleansed from the dæmon.  And many other
+things the Lord did by him, saying, “Ask, and it shall be given you.”
+For most of the sufferers, when he did not open the door, only sat down
+outside the cell, and believing, and praying honestly, were cleansed.
+But when he saw himself troubled by many, and not being permitted to
+retire, as he wished, being afraid lest he himself should be puffed up by
+what the Lord was doing by him, or lest others should count of him above
+what he was, he resolved to go to the Upper Thebaid, to those who knew
+him not.  And, in fact, having taken loaves from the brethren, he sat
+down on the bank of the river, watching for a boat to pass, that he might
+embark and go up in it.  And as he watched, a voice came to him: “Antony,
+whither art thou going, and why?”  And he, not terrified, but as one
+accustomed to be often called thus, answered when he heard it, “Because
+the crowds will not let me be at rest; therefore am I minded to go up to
+the Upper Thebaid, on account of the many annoyances which befall me;
+and, above all, because they ask of me things beyond my strength.”  And
+the voice said to him, “Even if thou goest up to the Thebaid, even if, as
+thou art minded to do, thou goest down the cattle pastures, {52a} thou
+wilt have to endure more, and double trouble; but if thou wilt really be
+at rest, go now into the inner desert.”  And when Antony said, “Who will
+show me the way, for I have not tried it?” forthwith it showed him
+Saracens who were going to journey that road.  So, going to them, and
+drawing near them, Antony asked leave to depart with them into the
+desert.  But they, as if by an ordinance of Providence, willingly
+received him; and, journeying three days and three nights with them, he
+came to a very high mountain; {52b} and there was water under the
+mountain, clear, sweet, and very cold; and a plain outside; and a few
+neglected date-palms.  Then Antony, as if stirred by God, loved the spot;
+for this it was what he had pointed out who spoke to him beside the river
+bank.  At first, then, having received bread from those who journeyed
+with him, he remained alone in the mount, no one else being with him.
+For he recognised that place as his own home, and kept it thenceforth.
+And the Saracens themselves, seeing Antony’s readiness, came that way on
+purpose, and joyfully brought him loaves; and he had, too, the solace of
+the dates, which was then little and paltry.  But after this, the
+brethren, having found out the spot, like children remembering their
+father, were anxious to send things to him; but Antony saw that, in
+bringing him bread, some there were put to trouble and fatigue; and,
+sparing the monks even in that, took counsel with himself, and asked some
+who came to him to bring him a hoe and a hatchet, and a little corn; and
+when these were brought, having gone over the land round the mountain, he
+found a very narrow place which was suitable, and tilled it; and, having
+plenty of water to irrigate it, he sowed; and, doing this year by year,
+he got his bread from thence, rejoicing that he should be troublesome to
+no one on that account, and that he was keeping himself free from
+obligation in all things.  But after this, seeing again some people
+coming, he planted also a very few pot-herbs, that he who came might have
+some small solace after the labour of that hard journey.  At first,
+however, the wild beasts in the desert, coming on account of the water,
+often hurt his crops and his tillage; but he, gently laying hold of one
+of them, said to them all, “Why do you hurt me, who have not hurt you?
+Depart, and, in the name of the Lord, never come near this place.”  And
+from that time forward, as if they were afraid of his command, they never
+came near the place.  So he was there alone in the inner mountain, having
+leisure for prayer and for training.  But the brethren who ministered to
+him asked him that, coming every month, they might bring him olives, and
+pulse, and oil; for, after all, he was old.  And while he had his
+conversation there, what great wrestlings he endured, according to that
+which is written, “Not against flesh and blood, but against the dæmons
+who are our adversaries,” we have known from those who went in to him.
+For there also they heard tumults, and many voices, and clashing as of
+arms; and they beheld the mount by night full of wild beasts, and they
+looked on him, too, fighting, as it were, with beings whom he saw, and
+praying against them.  And those who came to him he bade be of good
+courage, but he himself wrestled, bending his knees, and praying to the
+Lord.  And it was truly worthy of wonder that, alone in such a desert, he
+was neither cowed by the dæmons who beset him, nor, while there were
+there so many four-footed and creeping beasts, was at all afraid of their
+fierceness: but, as is written, trusted in the Lord like the Mount Zion,
+having his reason unshaken and untost; so that the dæmons rather fled,
+and the wild beasts, as is written, were at peace with him.
+
+Nevertheless, the devil (as David sings) watched Antony, and gnashed upon
+him with his teeth.  But Antony was comforted by the Saviour, remaining
+unhurt by his craft and manifold artifices.  For on him, when he was
+awake at night, he let loose wild beasts; and almost all the hyænas in
+that desert, coming out of their burrows, beset him round, and he was in
+the midst.  And when each gaped on him and threatened to bite him,
+perceiving the art of the enemy, he said to them all, “If ye have
+received power against me, I am ready to be devoured by you: but if ye
+have been set on by dæmons, delay not, but withdraw, for I am a servant
+of Christ.”  When Antony said this, they fled, pursued by his words as by
+a whip.  Next after a few days, as he was working—for he took care, too,
+to labour—some one standing at the door pulled the plait that he was
+working.  For he was weaving baskets, which he used to give to those who
+came, in return for what they brought him.  And rising up, he saw a
+beast, like a man down to his thighs, but having legs and feet like an
+ass; and Antony only crossed himself and said, “I am a servant of Christ.
+If thou hast been sent against me, behold, here I am.”  And the beast
+with its dæmons fled away, so that in its haste it fell and died.  Now
+the death of the beast was the fall of the dæmons.  For they were eager
+to do everything to bring him back out of the desert, but could not
+prevail.
+
+And being once asked by the monks to come down to them, and to visit
+awhile them and their places, he journeyed with the monks who came to
+meet him.  And a camel carried their loaves and their water; for that
+desert is all dry, and there is no drinkable water unless in that
+mountain alone whence they drew their water, and where his cell is.  But
+when the water failed on the journey, and the heat was most intense, they
+all began to be in danger; for going round to various places, and finding
+no water, they could walk no more, but lay down on the ground, and they
+let the camel go, and gave themselves up.  But the old man, seeing them
+all in danger, was utterly grieved, and groaned; and departing a little
+way from them, and bending his knees and stretching out his hands, he
+prayed, and forthwith the Lord caused water to come out where he had
+stopped and prayed.  And thus all of them drinking took breath again; and
+having filled their skins, they sought the camel, and found her; for it
+befell that the halter had been twisted round a stone, and thus she had
+been stopped.  So, having brought her back, and given her to drink, they
+put the skins on her, and went through their journey unharmed.  And when
+they came to the outer cells all embraced him, looking on him as a
+father.  And he, as if he brought them guest-gifts from the mountain,
+gave them away to them in his words, and shared his benefits among them.
+And there was joy again in the mountains, and zeal for improvement, and
+comfort through their faith in each other.  And he too rejoiced, seeing
+the willingness of the monks, and his sister grown old in maidenhood, and
+herself the leader of other virgins.  And so after certain days he went
+back again to the mountain.
+
+And after that many came to him; and others who suffered dared also to
+come.  Now to all the monks who came to him he gave continually this
+command: To trust in the Lord and love him, and to keep themselves from
+foul thoughts and fleshly pleasures; and, as is written in the Parables,
+not to be deceived by fulness of bread; and to avoid vainglory; and to
+pray continually; and to sing before sleep and after sleep; and to lay by
+in their hearts the commandment of Scripture; and to remember the works
+of the saints, in order to have their souls attuned to emulate them.  But
+especially he counselled them to meditate continually on the Apostle’s
+saying, “Let not the sun go down upon your wrath;” and this he said was
+spoken of all commandments in common, in order that not on wrath alone,
+but on every other sin, the sun should never go down; for it was noble
+and necessary that the sun should never condemn us for a baseness by day,
+nor the moon for a sin or even a thought by night; therefore, in order
+that that which is noble may be preserved in us, it was good to hear and
+to keep what the Apostle commanded: for he said: “Judge yourselves, and
+prove yourselves.”  Let each then take account with himself, day by day,
+of his daily and nightly deeds; and if he has not sinned, let him not
+boast, but let him endure in what is good and not be negligent, neither
+condemn his neighbour, neither justify himself, as said the blessed
+Apostle Paul, until the Lord comes who searches secret things.  For we
+often deceive ourselves in what we do, and we indeed know not: but the
+Lord comprehends all.  Giving therefore the judgment to Him, let us
+sympathise with each other; and let us bear each other’s burdens, and
+examine ourselves; and what we are behind in, let us be eager to fill up.
+And let this, too, be my counsel for safety against sinning.  Let us each
+note and write down the deeds and motions of the soul as if he were about
+to relate them to each other; and be confident that, as we shall be
+utterly ashamed that they should be known, we shall cease from sinning,
+and even from desiring anything mean.  For who when he sins wishes to be
+harmed thereby?  Or who, having sinned, does not rather lie, wishing to
+hide it?  As therefore when in each other’s sight we dare not commit a
+crime, so if we write down our thoughts, and tell them to each other, we
+shall keep ourselves the more from foul thoughts, for shame lest they
+should be known. . . .  And thus forming ourselves we shall be able to
+bring the body into slavery, and please the Lord on the one hand, and on
+the other trample on the snares of the enemy.”  This was his exhortation
+to those who met him: but with those who suffered he suffered, and prayed
+with them.  And often and in many things the Lord heard him; and neither
+when he was heard did he boast; nor when he was not heard did he murmur:
+but, remaining always the same, gave thanks to the Lord.  And those who
+suffered he exhorted to keep up heart, and to know that the power of cure
+was none of his, nor of any man’s; but only belonged to God, who works
+when and whatsoever he chooses.  So the sufferers received this as a
+remedy, learning not to despise the old man’s words, but rather to keep
+up heart; and those who were cured learned not to bless Antony, but God
+alone.
+
+For instance, one called Fronto, who belonged to the palace, and had a
+grievous disease (for he gnawed his own tongue, and tried to injure his
+eyes), came to the mountain and asked Antony to pray for him.  And when
+he had prayed he said to Fronto, “Depart, and be healed.”  And when he
+resisted, and remained within some days, Antony continued saying, “Thou
+canst not be healed if thou remainest here; go forth, and as soon as thou
+enterest Egypt, thou shalt see the sign which shall befall thee.”  He,
+believing, went forth; and as soon as he only saw Egypt he was freed from
+his disease, and became sound according to the word of Antony, which he
+had learnt by prayer from the Saviour . . .
+
+[Here follows a story of a girl cured of a painful complaint: which need
+not be translated.]
+
+But when two brethren were coming to him, and water failed them on the
+journey, one of them died, and the other was about to die.  In fact,
+being no longer able to walk, he too lay upon the ground expecting death.
+But Antony, as he sat on the mountain, called two monks who happened to
+be there, and hastened them, saying, “Take a pitcher of water, and run on
+the road towards Egypt; for of two who are coming hither one has just
+expired, and the other will do so if you do not hasten.  For this has
+been showed to me as I prayed.”  So the monks going found the one lying
+dead, and buried him; and the other they recovered with the water, and
+brought him to the old man.  Now the distance was a day’s journey.  But
+if any one should ask why he did not speak before one of them expired, he
+does not question rightly; for the judgment of that death did not belong
+to Antony, but to God, who both judged concerning the one; and revealed
+concerning the other.  But this alone in Antony was wonderful, that
+sitting on the mountain he kept his heart watchful, and the Lord showed
+him things afar off.
+
+For once again, as he sat on the mountain and looked up, he saw some one
+carried aloft, and a great rejoicing among some who met him.  Then
+wondering, and blessing such a choir, he prayed to be taught what that
+might be; and straightway a voice came to him that this was the soul of
+Ammon, the monk in Nitria, {60} who had persevered as an ascetic to his
+old age; and the distance from Nitria to the mountain where Antony was,
+is thirteen days’ journey.  Those then who were with Antony, seeing the
+old man wondering, asked the reason, and heard that Ammon had just
+expired, for he was known to them on account of his having frequently
+come thither, and many signs having been worked by him, of which this is
+one. . . .
+
+[Here follows the story (probably an interpolation) of Ammon’s being
+miraculously carried across the river Lycus, because he was ashamed to
+undress himself.]
+
+But the monks to whom Antony spoke about Ammon’s death noted down the
+day; and when brethren came from Nitria after thirty days, they inquired
+and learnt that Ammon had fallen asleep at the day and hour in which the
+old man saw his soul carried aloft.  And all on both sides wondered at
+the purity of Antony’s soul; how he had learnt and seen instantly what
+had happened thirteen days’ journey off.
+
+Moreover, Archeleas the Count, finding him once in the outer mountain
+praying alone, asked him concerning Polycratia, that wonderful and
+Christ-bearing maiden in Laodicea; for she suffered dreadful internal
+pain from her extreme training, and was altogether weak in body.  Antony,
+therefore, prayed; and the Count noted down the day on which the prayer
+was offered.  And going back to Laodicea, he found the maiden cured; and
+asking when and on what day her malady had ceased, he brought out the
+paper on which he had written down the date of the prayer.  And when she
+told him, he showed at once the writing on the paper.  And all found that
+the Lord had stopped her sufferings while Antony was still praying and
+calling for her on the goodness of the Saviour.
+
+And concerning those who came to him, he often predicted some days, or
+even a month, beforehand, and the cause why they were coming.  For some
+came only to see him, and others on account of sickness, and others
+because they suffered from dæmons, and all thought the labour of the
+journey no trouble nor harm, for each went back aware that he had been
+benefited.  And when he spoke and looked thus, he asked no one to marvel
+at him on that account, but to marvel rather at the Lord, because he had
+given us, who are but men, grace to know him according to our powers.
+And as he was going down again to the outer cells, and was minded to
+enter a boat and pray with the monks, he alone perceived a dreadfully
+evil odour, and when those in the boat told him that they had fish and
+brine on board, and that it was they which smelt, he said that it was a
+different smell; and while he was yet speaking, a youth, who had an evil
+spirit, had gone before them and hidden in the boat, suddenly cried out.
+But the dæmon, being rebuked in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, went
+out of him, and the man became whole, and all knew that the smell had
+come from the evil spirit.  And there was another man of high rank who
+came to him, having a dæmon, and one so terrible, that the possessed man
+did not know that he was going to Antony, but [showed the common symptoms
+of mania].  Those who brought him entreated Antony to pray over him,
+which he did, feeling for the young man, and he watched beside him all
+night.  But about dawn, the young man, suddenly rushing on Antony,
+assaulted him.  When those who came with him were indignant, Antony said,
+“Be not hard upon the youth, for it is not he, but the dæmon in him; and
+because he has been rebuked, and commanded to go forth into dry places,
+he has become furious, and done this.  Glorify, therefore, the Lord for
+his having thus rushed upon me, as a sign to you that the dæmon is going
+out.”  And as Antony said this, the youth suddenly became sound, and,
+recovering his reason, knew where he was, and embraced the old man,
+giving thanks to God.  And most of the monks agree unanimously that many
+like things were done by him: yet are they not so wonderful as what
+follows.  For once, when he was going to eat, and rose up to pray about
+the ninth hour, he felt himself rapt in spirit; and (wonderful to relate)
+as he stood he saw himself as it were taken out of himself, and led into
+the air by some persons; and then others, bitter and terrible, standing
+in the air, and trying to prevent his passing upwards.  And when those
+who led him fought against them, they demanded whether he was not
+accountable to them.  And when they began to take account of his deeds
+from his birth, his guides stopped them, saying, “What happened from his
+birth upwards, the Lord hath wiped out: but of what has happened since he
+became a monk, and made a promise to God, of that you may demand an
+account.”  Then, when they brought accusations against him, and could not
+prove them, the road was opened freely to him.  And straightway he saw
+himself as if coming back and standing before himself, and was Antony
+once more.  Then, forgetting that he had not eaten, he remained the rest
+of the day and all night groaning and praying, for he wondered when he
+saw against how many enemies we must wrestle, and through how many
+labours a man must traverse the air; and he remembered that it is this
+which the Apostle means with regard to the Prince of the power of the
+air; for it is in the air that the enemy has his power, fighting against
+those who pass through it, and trying to hinder them.  Wherefore, also he
+especially exhorts us: “Take the whole armour of God, that the enemy,
+having no evil to say about us, may be ashamed.”  But when we heard this,
+we remembered the Apostle’s saying, “Whether in the body I cannot tell,
+or out of the body I cannot tell: God knoweth.”  But Paul was caught up
+into the third heaven, and, having heard unspeakable words, descended
+again; but Antony saw himself rapt in the air, and wrestling till he
+seemed to be free.
+
+Again, he had this grace, that as he was sitting alone in the mountain,
+if at any time he was puzzled in himself, the thing was revealed to him
+by Providence as he prayed; and the blessed man was, as Scripture says,
+taught of God.  After this, at all events, when he had been talking with
+some who came to him concerning the departure of the soul, and what would
+be its place after this life, the next night some one called him from
+without, and said, “Rise up, Antony; come out and see.”  So coming out
+(for he knew whom he ought to obey), he beheld a tall being, shapeless
+and terrible, standing and reaching to the clouds, and as it were winged
+beings ascending; and him stretching out his hands; and some of them
+hindered by him, and others flying above him, and when they had once
+passed him, borne upwards without trouble.  But against them that tall
+being gnashed his teeth, while over those who fell, he rejoiced.  And
+there came a voice to Antony, “Consider what thou seest.”  And when his
+understanding was opened, he perceived that it was the enemy who envies
+the faithful, and that those who were in his power he mastered and
+hindered from passing; but that those who had not obeyed him, over them,
+as over conquerors, he had no power.  Having seen this, and as it were
+made mindful by it, he struggled more and more daily to improve.  Now
+these things he did not tell of his own accord; but when he was long in
+prayer, and astonished in himself, those who were with him questioned him
+and urged him; and he was forced to tell; unable, as a father, to hide
+anything from his children; and considering, too, that his own conscience
+was clear, and the story would be profitable for them, when they learned
+that the life of training bore good fruit, and that visions often came as
+a solace of their toils.
+
+But how tolerant was his temper, and how humble his spirit; for though he
+was so great, he both honoured exceedingly the canon of the Church, and
+wished to put every ecclesiastic before himself in honour.  For to the
+bishops and presbyters he was not ashamed to bow his head; and if a
+deacon ever came to him for the sake of profit, he discoursed with him on
+what was profitable, but in prayer he gave place to him, not being
+ashamed even himself to learn from him. {65}  For he often asked
+questions, and deigned to listen to all present, confessing that he was
+profited if any one said aught that was useful.  Moreover, his
+countenance had great and wonderful grace; and this gift too he had from
+the Saviour.  For if he was present among the multitude of monks, and any
+one who did not previously know him wished to see him, as soon as he came
+he passed by all the rest, and ran to Antony himself, as if attracted by
+his eyes.  He did not differ from the rest in stature or in stoutness,
+but in the steadiness of his temper, and purity of his soul; for as his
+soul was undisturbed, his outward senses were undisturbed likewise, so
+that the cheerfulness of his soul made his face cheerful, and from the
+movements of his body the stedfastness of his soul could be perceived,
+according to the Scripture, “When the heart is cheerful the countenance
+is glad; but when sorrow comes it scowleth.” . . . And he was altogether
+wonderful in faith, and pious, for he never communicated with the
+Meletian {66a} schismatics, knowing their malice and apostasy from the
+beginning; nor did he converse amicably with Manichæans or any other
+heretics, save only to exhort them to be converted to piety.  For he held
+that their friendship and converse was injury and ruin to the soul.  So
+also he detested the heresy of the Arians, and exhorted all not to
+approach them, nor hold their misbelief. {66b}  In fact, when certain of
+the Ariomanites came to him, having discerned them and found them
+impious, he chased them out of the mountain, saying that their words were
+worse than serpent’s poison; and when the Arians once pretended that he
+was of the same opinion as they, he was indignant and fierce against
+them.  Then being sent for by the bishops and all the brethren, he went
+down from the mountain, and entering Alexandria he denounced the Arians,
+saying, that that was the last heresy, and the forerunner of Antichrist;
+and he taught the people that the Son of God was not a created thing,
+neither made from nought, but that he is the Eternal Word and Wisdom of
+the Essence of the Father; wherefore also it is impious to say there was
+a time when he was not, for he was always the Word co-existent with the
+Father.  Wherefore he said, “Do not have any communication with these
+most impious Arians; for there is no communion between light and
+darkness.  For you are pious Christians: but they, when they say that the
+Son of God and the Word, who is from the Father, is a created being,
+differ nought from the heathen, because they worship the creature instead
+of God the Creator. {67}  Believe rather that the whole creation itself
+is indignant against them, because they number the Creator and Lord of
+all, in whom all things are made, among created things.”  All the people
+therefore rejoiced at hearing that Christ-opposing heresy anathematized
+by such a man; and all those in the city ran together to see Antony and
+the Greeks, {68a} and those who are called their priests {68b} came into
+the church, wishing to see the man of God; for all called him by that
+name, because there the Lord cleansed many by him from dæmons, and healed
+those who were out of their mind.  And many heathens wished only to touch
+the old man, believing that it would be of use to them; and in fact as
+many became Christians in those few days, as would have been usually
+converted in a year.  And when some thought that the crowd troubled him,
+and therefore turned all away from him, he quietly said that they were
+not more numerous than the fiends with whom he wrestled on the mountain.
+But when he left the city, and we were setting him on his journey, when
+we came to the gate a certain woman called to him: “Wait, man of God, my
+daughter is grievously vexed with a devil; wait, I beseech thee, lest I
+too harm myself with running after thee.”  The old man hearing it, and
+being asked by us, waited willingly.  But when the woman drew near, the
+child dashed itself on the ground; and when Antony prayed and called on
+the name of Christ, it rose up sound, the unclean spirit having gone out;
+and the mother blessed God, and we all gave thanks: and he himself
+rejoiced at leaving the city for the mountain, as for his own home.
+
+Now he was very prudent; and what was wonderful, though he had never
+learnt letters, he was a shrewd and understanding man.  Once, for
+example, two Greek philosophers came to him, thinking that they could
+tempt Antony.  And he was in the outer mountain; and when he went out to
+them, understanding the men from their countenances, he said through an
+interpreter, “Why have you troubled yourselves so much, philosophers, to
+come to a foolish man?”  And when they answered that he was not foolish,
+but rather very wise, he said, “If you have come to a fool, your labour
+is superfluous, but if ye think me to be wise, become as I am; for we
+ought to copy what is good, and if I had come to you, I should have
+copied you; but if you come to me, copy me, for I am a Christian.”  And
+they wondering went their way, for they saw that even dæmons were afraid
+of Antony.
+
+And again when others of the same class met him in the outer mountain,
+and thought to mock him, because he had not learnt letters, Antony
+answered, “But what do you say? which is first, the sense or the letters?
+And which is the cause of the other, the sense of the letters, or the
+letters of the sense?”  And when they said that the sense came first, and
+invented the letters, Antony replied, “If then the sense be sound, the
+letters are not needed.”  Which struck them, and those present, with
+astonishment.  So they went away wondering, when they saw so much
+understanding in an unlearned man.  For though he had lived and grown old
+in the mountain, his manners were not rustic, but graceful and urbane;
+and his speech was seasoned with the divine salt, so that no man grudged
+at him, but rather rejoiced over him, as many as came. . . .
+
+[Here follows a long sermon against the heathen worship, attributed to
+St. Antony, but of very questionable authenticity: the only point about
+it which is worthy of note is that Antony confutes the philosophers by
+challenging them to cure some possessed persons, and, when they are
+unable to do so, casts out the dæmons himself by the sign of the cross.]
+
+The fame of Antony reached even the kings, for Constantinus the Augustus,
+and his sons, Constantius and Constans, the Augusti, hearing of these
+things, wrote to him as to a father, and begged to receive an answer from
+him.  But he did not make much of the letters, nor was puffed up by their
+messages; and he was just the same as he was before the kings wrote to
+him.  And he called his monks and said, “Wonder not if a king writes to
+us, for he is but a man: but wonder rather that God has written his law
+to man, and spoken to us by his own Son.”  So he declined to receive
+their letters, saying he did not know how to write an answer to such
+things; but being admonished by the monks that the kings were Christians,
+and that they must not be scandalized by being despised, he permitted the
+letters to be read, and wrote an answer; accepting them because they
+worshipped Christ, and counselling them, for their salvation, not to
+think the present life great, but rather to remember judgment to come;
+and to know that Christ was the only true and eternal king; and he begged
+them to be merciful to men, and to think of justice and the poor.  And
+they, when they received the answer, rejoiced.  Thus was he kindly
+towards all, and all looked on him as their father.  He then betook
+himself again into the inner mountain, and continued his accustomed
+training.  But often, when he was sitting and walking with those who came
+unto him, he was astounded, as is written in Daniel.  And after the space
+of an hour, he told what had befallen to the brethren who were with him,
+and they perceived that he had seen some vision.  Often he saw in the
+mountain what was happening in Egypt, and told it to Serapion the bishop,
+who saw him occupied with a vision.  Once, for instance, as he sat, he
+fell as it were into an ecstasy, and groaned much at what he saw.  Then,
+after an hour, turning to those who were with him, he groaned and fell
+into a trembling, and rose up and prayed, and bending his knees, remained
+so a long while; and then the old man rose up and wept.  The bystanders,
+therefore, trembling and altogether terrified, asked him to tell them
+what had happened, and tormented him much, that he was forced to speak.
+And he groaning greatly—“Ah! my children,” he said, “it were better to be
+dead before what I have seen shall come to pass.”  And when they asked
+him again, he said with tears, that “Wrath will seize on the Church, and
+she will be given over to men like unto brutes, which have no
+understanding; for I saw the table of the Lord’s house, and mules
+standing all around it in a ring and kicking inwards, as a herd does when
+it leaps in confusion; and ye all perceived how I groaned, for I heard a
+voice saying, ‘My sanctuary shall be defiled.’”
+
+This the old man saw, and after two years there befell the present inroad
+of the Arians, {72a} and the plunder of the churches, when they carried
+off the holy vessels by violence, and made the heathen carry them: and
+when too they forced the heathens from the prisons to join them, and in
+their presence did on the holy table what they would. {72b}  Then we all
+perceived that the kicks of those mules presignified to Antony what the
+Arians are now doing without understanding, like the brutes.  But when
+Antony saw this sight, he exhorted those about him, saying, “Lose not
+heart, children; for as the Lord has been angry, so will he again be
+appeased, and the Church shall soon receive again her own order and shine
+forth as she is wont; and ye shall see the persecuted restored to their
+place, and impiety retreating again into its own dens, and the pious
+faith speaking boldly everywhere with all freedom.  Only defile not
+yourselves with the Arians, for this teaching is not of the Apostle but
+of the dæmons, and of their father the devil: barren and irrational and
+of an unsound mind, like the irrational deeds of those mules.”  Thus
+spoke Antony.
+
+But we must not doubt whether so great wonders have been done by a man;
+for the Saviour’s promise is, “If ye have faith as a grain of
+mustard-seed, ye shall say to this mountain, Pass over from hence, it
+shall pass over, and nothing shall be impossible to you;” and again,
+“Verily, verily, I say unto you, if ye shall ask my Father in my name, he
+shall give it you.  Ask, and ye shall receive.”  And he himself it is who
+said to his disciples and to all who believe in him, “Heal the sick, cast
+out devils; freely ye have received, freely give.”  And certainly Antony
+did not heal by his own authority, but by praying and calling on Christ;
+so that it was plain to all that it was not he who did it, but the Lord,
+who through Antony showed love to men, and healed the sufferers.  But
+Antony’s part was only the prayer and the training, for the sake whereof,
+sitting in the mountain, he rejoiced in the sight of divine things, and
+grieved when he was tormented by many, and dragged to the outer mountain.
+
+For all the magistrates asked him to come down from the mountain, because
+it was impossible for them to go in thither to him on account of the
+litigants who followed him; so they begged him to come, that they might
+only behold him.  And when he declined they insisted, and even sent in to
+him prisoners under the charge of soldiers, that at least on their
+account he might come down.  So being forced by necessity, and seeing
+them lamenting, he came to the outer mountain.  And his labour this time
+too was profitable to many, and his coming for their good.  To the
+magistrates, too, he was of use, counselling them to prefer justice to
+all things, and to fear God, and to know that with what judgment they
+judged they should be judged in turn.  But he loved best of all his life
+in the mountain.  Once again, when he was compelled in the same way to
+leave it, by those who were in want, and by the general of the soldiers,
+who entreated him earnestly, he came down, and having spoken to them
+somewhat of the things which conduced to salvation, he was pressed also
+by those who were in need.  But being asked by the general to lengthen
+his stay, he refused, and persuaded him by a graceful parable, saying,
+“Fishes, if they lie long on the dry land, die; so monks who stay with
+you lose their strength.  As the fishes then hasten to the sea, so must
+we to the mountain, lest if we delay we should forget what is within.”
+The general, hearing this and much more from him, said with surprise that
+he was truly a servant of God, for whence could an unlearned man have so
+great sense if he were not loved by God?
+
+Another general, named Balacius, bitterly persecuted us Christians on
+account of his affection for those abominable Arians.  His cruelty was so
+great that he even beat nuns, and stripped and scourged monks.  Antony
+sent him a letter to this effect:—“I see wrath coming upon thee.  Cease,
+therefore, to persecute the Christians, lest the wrath lay hold upon
+thee, for it is near at hand.”  But Balacius, laughing, threw the letter
+on the ground and spat on it; and insulted those who brought it, bidding
+them tell Antony, “Since thou carest for monks, I will soon come after
+thee likewise.”  And not five days had passed, when the wrath laid hold
+on him.  For Balacius himself, and Nestorius, the Eparch of Egypt, went
+out to the first station from Alexandria, which is called Chæreas’s.
+Both of them were riding on horses belonging to Balacius, and the most
+gentle in all his stud: but before they had got to the place, the horses
+began playing with each other, as is their wont, and suddenly the more
+gentle of the two, on which Nestorius was riding, attacked Balacius and
+pulled him off with his teeth, and so tore his thigh that he was carried
+back to the city, and died in three days.  And all wondered that what
+Antony had so wonderfully foretold was so quickly fulfilled.  These were
+his warnings to the more cruel.  But the rest who came to him he so
+instructed that they gave up at once their lawsuits, and blessed those
+who had retired from this life.  And those who had been unjustly used he
+so protected that you would think he and not they was the sufferer.  And
+he was so able to be of use to all; so that many who were serving in the
+army, and many wealthy men, laid aside the burdens of life and became
+thenceforth monks; and altogether he was like a physician given by God to
+Egypt.  For who met him grieving, and did not go away rejoicing?  Who
+came mourning over his dead, and did not forthwith lay aside his grief?
+Who came wrathful, and was not converted to friendship?  What poor man
+came wearied out, and when he saw and heard him did not despise wealth
+and comfort himself in his poverty?  What monk who had grown remiss, was
+not strengthened by coming to him?  What young man coming to the mountain
+and looking upon Antony, did not forthwith renounce pleasure and love
+temperance?  Who came to him tempted by devils, and did not get rest?
+Who came troubled by doubts, and did not get peace of mind?  For this was
+the great thing in Antony’s asceticism, that (as I have said before),
+having the gift of discerning spirits, he understood their movements, and
+knew in what direction each of them turned his endeavours and his
+attacks.  And not only he was not deceived by them himself, but he taught
+those who were troubled in mind how they might turn aside the plots of
+dæmons, teaching them the weakness and the craft of their enemies.  How
+many maidens, too, who had been already betrothed, and only saw Antony
+from afar, remained unmarried for Christ’s sake!  Some, too, came from
+foreign parts to him, and all, having gained some benefit, went back from
+him as from a father.  And now he has fallen asleep, all are as orphans
+who have lost a parent, consoling themselves with his memory alone,
+keeping his instructions and exhortations.  But what the end of his life
+was like, it is fit that I should relate, and you hear eagerly.  For it
+too is worthy of emulation.  He was visiting, according to his wont, the
+monks in the outer mountain, and having learned from Providence
+concerning his own end, he said to the brethren, “This visit to you is my
+last, and I wonder if we shall see each other again in this life.  It is
+time for me to set sail, for I am near a hundred and five years old.”
+And when they heard that they wept, and embraced and kissed the old man.
+And he, as if he was setting out from a foreign city to his own, spoke
+joyfully, and exhorted them not to grow idle in their labours or cowardly
+in their training, but to live as those who died daily, and (as I said
+before) to be earnest in keeping their souls from foul thoughts, and to
+emulate the saints, and not to draw near the Meletian schismatics, for
+“ye know their evil and profane determinations, nor to have any communion
+with the Arians, for their impiety also is manifest to all.  Neither if
+ye shall see the magistrates patronising them, be troubled, for their
+phantasy shall have an end, and is mortal and only for a little while.
+Keep yourselves therefore rather clean from them, and hold that which has
+been handed down to you by the fathers, and especially the faith in our
+Lord Jesus Christ which ye have learned from Scripture, and of which ye
+have often been reminded by me.”  And when the brethren tried to force
+him to stay with them and make his end there, he would not endure it, on
+many accounts, as he showed by his silence; and especially on this:—The
+Egyptians are wont to wrap in linen the corpses of good persons, and
+especially of the holy martyrs, but not to bury them underground, but to
+lay them upon benches and keep them in their houses; {77} thinking that
+by this they honour the departed.  Now Antony had often asked the bishops
+to exhort the people about this, and in like manner he himself rebuked
+the laity and terrified the women; saying that it was a thing neither
+lawful nor in any way holy; for that the bodies of the patriarchs and
+prophets are to this day preserved in sepulchres, and that the very body
+of our Lord was laid in a sepulchre, and a stone placed over it to hide
+it, till he rose the third day.  And thus saying he showed that those
+broke the law who did not bury the corpses of the dead, even if they were
+holy; for what is greater or more holy than the Lord’s body?  Many, then,
+when they heard him, buried thenceforth underground; and blessed the Lord
+that they had been taught rightly.  Being then aware of this, and afraid
+lest they should do the same by his body, he hurried himself, and bade
+farewell to the monks in the outer mountain; and coming to the inner
+mountain, where he was wont to abide, after a few months he grew sick,
+and calling those who were by—and there were two of them who had remained
+there within fifteen years, exercising themselves and ministering to him
+on account of his old age—he said to them, “I indeed go the way of the
+fathers, as it is written, for I perceive that I am called by the Lord.”
+. . .
+
+[Then follows a general exhortation to the monk, almost identical with
+much that has gone before, and ending by a command that his body should
+be buried in the ground.]
+
+“And let this word of mine be kept by you, so that no one shall know the
+place, save you alone, for I shall receive it (my body) incorruptible
+from my Saviour in the resurrection of the dead.  And distribute my
+garments thus.  To Athanasius the bishop give one of my sheepskins, and
+the cloak under me, which was new when he gave it me, and has grown old
+by me; and to Serapion the bishop give the other sheepskin; and do you
+have the hair-cloth garment.  And for the rest, children, farewell, for
+Antony is going, and is with you no more.”
+
+Saying thus, when they had embraced him, he stretched out his feet, and,
+as if he saw friends coming to him, and grew joyful on their account
+(for, as he lay, his countenance was bright), he departed and was
+gathered to his fathers.  And they forthwith, as he had commanded them,
+preparing the body and wrapping it up, hid it under ground: and no one
+knows to this day where it is hidden, save those two servants only.  And
+each (_i.e._ Athanasius and Serapion) having received the sheepskin of
+the blessed Antony, and the cloak which he had worn out, keeps them as a
+great possession.  For he who looks on them, as it were, sees Antony; and
+he who puts them on, wears them with joy, as he does Antony’s counsels.
+
+Such was the end of Antony in the body, and such the beginning of his
+training.  And if these things are small in comparison with his virtue,
+yet reckon up from these things how great was Antony, the man of God, who
+kept unchanged, from his youth up to so great an age, the earnestness of
+his training; and was neither worsted in his old age by the desire of
+more delicate food, nor on account of the weakness of his body altered
+the quality of his garment, nor even washed his feet with water; and yet
+remained uninjured in all his limbs: for his eyes were undimmed and
+whole, so that he saw well; and not one of his teeth had fallen out, but
+they were only worn down to his gums on account of his great age; and he
+remained sound in hand and foot; and, in a word, appeared ruddier and
+more ready for exertion than all who use various meats and baths, and
+different dresses.  But that this man should be celebrated everywhere and
+wondered at by all, and regretted even by those who never saw him, is a
+proof of his virtue, and that his soul was dear to God.  For Antony
+became known not by writings, not from the wisdom that is from without,
+not by any art, but by piety alone; and that this was the gift of God,
+none can deny.  For how as far as Spain, as Gaul, as Rome, as Africa,
+could he have been heard, hidden as he was in a mountain, if it had not
+been for God, who makes known his own men everywhere, and who had
+promised Antony this from the beginning?  For even if they do their deeds
+in secret, and wish to be concealed, yet the Lord shows them as lights to
+all, that so those who hear of them may know that the commandments
+suffice to put men in the right way, and may grow zealous of the path of
+virtue.
+
+Read then these things to the other brethren, that they may learn what
+the life of monks should be, and may believe that the Lord Jesus Christ
+our Saviour will glorify those who glorify him, and that those who serve
+him to the end he will not only bring to the kingdom of heaven, but that
+even if on earth they hide themselves and strive to get out of the way,
+he will make them manifest and celebrated everywhere, for the sake of
+their own virtue, and for the benefit of others.  But if need be, read
+this also to the heathens, that even thus they may learn that our Lord
+Jesus Christ is not only Lord and the Son of God, but that those who
+truly serve him, and believe piously on him, not only prove that those
+dæmons whom the Greeks think are gods to be no gods, but even tread them
+under foot, and chase them out as deceivers and corrupters of men,
+through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom be glory and honour for ever and
+ever.  Amen.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+Thus ends this strange story.  What we are to think of the miracles and
+wonders contained in it, will be discussed at a later point in this book.
+Meanwhile there is a stranger story still connected with the life of St.
+Antony.  It professes to have been told by him himself to his monks; and
+whatever groundwork of fact there may be in it is doubtless his.  The
+form in which we have it was given it by the famous St. Jerome, who sends
+the tale as a letter to Asella, one of the many noble Roman ladies whom
+he persuaded to embrace the monastic life.  The style is as well worth
+preserving as the matter.  Its ruggedness and awkwardness, its ambition
+and affectation, contrasted with the graceful simplicity of Athanasius’s
+“Life of Antony,” mark well the difference between the cultivated Greek
+and the ungraceful and half-barbarous Roman of the later Empire.  I have,
+therefore, given it as literally as possible, that readers may judge for
+themselves how some of the Great Fathers of the fifth century wrote, and
+what they believed.
+
+
+
+
+THE LIFE OF SAINT PAUL, THE FIRST HERMIT
+BY THE DIVINE HIERONYMUS THE PRIEST.
+(ST. JEROME.)
+
+
+PROLOGUE
+
+
+MANY have often doubted by which of the monks the desert was first
+inhabited.  For some, looking for the beginnings of Monachism in earlier
+ages, have deduced it from the blessed Elias and John; of whom Elias
+seems to us to have been rather a prophet than a monk; and John to have
+begun to prophesy before he was born.  But others (an opinion in which
+all the common people are agreed) assert that Antony was the head of this
+rule of life, which is partly true.  For he was not so much himself the
+first of all, as the man who excited the earnestness of all.  But Amathas
+and Macarius, Antony’s disciples (the former of whom buried his master’s
+body), even now affirm that a certain Paul, a Theban, was the beginner of
+the matter; which (not so much in name as in opinion) we also hold to be
+true.  Some scatter about, as the fancy takes them, both this and other
+stories; inventing incredible tales of a man in a subterranean cave,
+hairy down to his heels, and many other things, which it is tedious to
+follow out.  For, as their lie is shameless, their opinion does not seem
+worth refuting.
+
+Therefore, because careful accounts of Antony, both in Greek and Roman
+style, have been handed down, I have determined to write a little about
+the beginning and end of Paul’s life; more because the matter has been
+omitted, than trusting to my own wit.  But how he lived during middle
+life, or what stratagems of Satan he endured, is known to none.
+
+
+
+THE LIFE OF PAUL
+
+
+Under Decius and Valerius, the persecutors, at the time when Cornelius at
+Rome, and Cyprian at Carthage, were condemned in blessed blood, a cruel
+tempest swept over many Churches in Egypt and the Thebaid.
+
+Christian subjects in those days longed to be smitten with the sword for
+the name of Christ.  But the crafty enemy, seeking out punishments which
+delayed death, longed to slay souls, not bodies.  And as Cyprian himself
+(who suffered by him) says: “When they longed to die, they were not
+allowed to be slain.”  In order to make his cruelty better known, we have
+set down two examples for remembrance.
+
+A martyr, persevering in the faith, and conqueror amid racks and red-hot
+irons, he commanded to be anointed with honey and laid on his back under
+a burning sun, with his hands tied behind him; in order, forsooth, that
+he who had already conquered the fiery gridiron, might yield to the
+stings of flies.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+In those days, in the Lower Thebaid, was Paul left at the death of both
+his parents, in a rich inheritance, with a sister already married; being
+about fifteen years old, well taught in Greek and Egyptian letters,
+gentle tempered, loving God much; and, when the storm of persecution
+burst, he withdrew into a distant city.  But
+
+    “To what dost thou not urge the human breast
+    Curst hunger after gold?”
+
+His sister’s husband was ready to betray him whom he should have
+concealed.  Neither the tears of his wife, the tie of blood, or God who
+looks on all things from on high, could call him back from his crime.  He
+was at hand, ready to seize him, making piety a pretext for cruelty.  The
+boy discovered it, and fled into the desert hills.  Once there he changed
+need into pleasure, and going on, and then stopping awhile, again and
+again, reached at last a stony cliff, at the foot whereof was, nigh at
+hand, a great cave, its mouth closed with a stone.  Having moved which
+away (as man’s longing is to know the hidden), exploring more greedily,
+he sees within a great hall, open to the sky above, but shaded by the
+spreading boughs of an ancient palm; and in it a clear spring, the rill
+from which, flowing a short space forth, was sucked up again by the same
+soil which had given it birth.  There were besides in that cavernous
+mountain not a few dwellings, in which he saw rusty anvils and hammers,
+with which coin had been stamped of old.  For this place (so books say)
+was the workshop for base coin in the days when Antony lived with
+Cleopatra.
+
+Therefore, in this beloved dwelling, offered him as it were by God, he
+spent all his life in prayer and solitude, while the palm-tree gave him
+food and clothes; which lest it should seem impossible to some, I call
+Jesus and his holy angels to witness that I have seen monks one of whom,
+shut up for thirty years, lived on barley bread and muddy water; another
+in an old cistern, which in the country speech they call the Syrian’s
+bed, was kept alive on five figs each day.  These things, therefore, will
+seem incredible to those who do not believe; for to those who do believe
+all things are possible.
+
+But to return thither whence I digressed.  When the blessed Paul had been
+leading the heavenly life on earth for 113 years, and Antony, ninety
+years old, was dwelling in another solitude, this thought (so Antony was
+wont to assert) entered his mind—that no monk more perfect than he had
+settled in the desert.  But as he lay still by night, it was revealed to
+him that there was another monk beyond him far better than he, to visit
+whom he must set out.  So when the light broke, the venerable old man,
+supporting his weak limbs on a staff, began to will to go, he knew not
+whither.  And now the mid day, with the sun roasting above, grew fierce;
+and yet he was not turned from the journey he had begun, saying, “I trust
+in my God, that he will show his servant that which he has promised.”
+And as he spake, he sees a man half horse, to whom the poets have given
+the name of Hippocentaur.  Seeing whom, he crosses his forehead with the
+salutary impression of the Cross, and, “Here!” he says, “in what part
+here does a servant of God dwell?”  But he, growling I know not what
+barbarous sound, and grinding rather than uttering, the words, attempted
+a courteous speech from lips rough with bristles, and, stretching out his
+right hand, pointed to the way; then, fleeing swiftly across the open
+plains, vanished from the eyes of the wondering Antony.  But whether the
+devil took this form to terrify him; or whether the desert, fertile (as
+is its wont) in monstrous animals, begets that beast likewise, we hold as
+uncertain.
+
+So Antony, astonished, and thinking over what he had seen, goes forward.
+Soon afterwards, he sees in a stony valley a short manikin, with crooked
+nose and brow rough with horns, whose lower parts ended in goat’s feet.
+Undismayed by this spectacle likewise, Antony seized, like a good
+warrior, the shield of faith and habergeon of hope; the animal, however,
+was bringing him dates, as food for his journey, and a pledge of peace.
+When he saw that, Antony pushed on, and, asking him who he was, was
+answered, “I am a mortal, and one of the inhabitants of the desert, whom
+the Gentiles, deluded by various errors, worship by the name of Fauns,
+Satyrs, and Incubi.  I come as ambassador from our herd, that thou mayest
+pray for us to the common God, who, we know, has come for the salvation
+of the world, and his sound is gone out into all lands.”  As he spoke
+thus, the aged wayfarer bedewed his face plenteously with tears, which
+the greatness of his joy had poured forth as signs of his heart.  For he
+rejoiced at the glory of Christ, and the destruction of Satan; and,
+wondering at the same time that he could understand the creature’s
+speech, he smote on the ground with his staff, and said, “Woe to thee,
+Alexandria, who worshippest portents instead of God!  Woe to thee, harlot
+city, into which all the demons of the world have flowed together!  What
+wilt thou say now?  Beasts talk of Christ, and thou worshippest portents
+instead of God.”  He had hardly finished his words, when the swift beast
+fled away as upon wings.  Lest this should move a scruple in any one on
+account of its incredibility, it was corroborated, in the reign of
+Constantine, by the testimony of the whole world.  For a man of that
+kind, being led alive to Alexandria, afforded a great spectacle to the
+people; and afterwards the lifeless carcase, being salted lest it should
+decay in the summer heat, was brought to Antioch, to be seen by the
+Emperor.
+
+But—to go on with my tale—Antony went on through that region, seeing only
+the tracks of wild beasts, and the wide waste of the desert.  What he
+should do, or whither turn, he knew not.  A second day had now run by.
+One thing remained, to be confident that he could not be deserted by
+Christ.  All night through he spent a second darkness in prayer, and
+while the light was still dim, he sees afar a she-wolf, panting with heat
+and thirst, creeping in at the foot of the mountain.  Following her with
+his eyes, and drawing nigh to the cave when the beast was gone, he began
+to look in: but in vain; for the darkness stopped his view.  However, as
+the Scripture saith, perfect love casteth out fear; with gentle step and
+bated breath the cunning explorer entered, and going forward slowly, and
+stopping often, watched for a sound.  At length he saw afar off a light
+through the horror of the darkness; hastened on more greedily; struck his
+foot against a stone; and made a noise, at which the blessed Paul shut
+and barred his door, which had stood open.
+
+Then Antony, casting himself down before the entrance, prayed there till
+the sixth hour, and more, to be let in, saying, “Who I am, and whence,
+and why I am come, thou knowest.  I know that I deserve not to see thy
+face; yet, unless I see thee, I will not return.  Thou who receivest
+beasts, why repellest thou a man?  I have sought, and I have found.  I
+knock, that it may be opened to me: which if I win not, here will I die
+before thy gate.  Surely thou shalt at least bury my corpse.”
+
+    “Persisting thus he spoke, and stood there fixed:
+    To whom the hero shortly thus replied.”
+
+“No one begs thus to threaten.  No one does injury with tears.  And dost
+thou wonder why I do not let thee in, seeing thou art a mortal guest?”
+
+Then Paul, smiling, opened the door.  They mingled mutual embraces, and
+saluted each other by their names, and committed themselves in common to
+the grace of God.  And after the holy kiss, Paul sitting down with Antony
+thus began—
+
+“Behold him, whom thou hast sought with such labour; with limbs decayed
+by age, and covered with unkempt white hair.  Behold, thou seest but a
+mortal, soon to become dust.  But, because charity bears all things, tell
+me, I pray thee, how fares the human race? whether new houses are rising
+in the ancient cities? by what emperor is the world governed? whether
+there are any left who are led captive by the deceits of the devil?”  As
+they spoke thus, they saw a raven settle on a bough; who, flying gently
+down, laid, to their wonder, a whole loaf before them.  When he was gone,
+“Ah,” said Paul, “the Lord, truly loving, truly merciful, hath sent us a
+meal.  For sixty years past I have received daily half a loaf, but at thy
+coming Christ hath doubled his soldiers’ allowance.”  Then, having
+thanked God, they sat down on the brink of the glassy spring.
+
+But here a contention arising as to which of them should break the loaf,
+occupied the day till well-nigh evening.  Paul insisted, as the host;
+Antony declined, as the younger man.  At last it was agreed that they
+should take hold of the loaf at opposite ends, and each pull towards
+himself, and keep what was left in his hand.  Next they stooped down, and
+drank a little water from the spring; then, immolating to God the
+sacrifice of praise, passed the night watching.
+
+And when day dawned again, the blessed Paul said to Antony, “I knew long
+since, brother, that thou wert dwelling in these lands; long since God
+had promised thee to me as a fellow servant: but because the time of my
+falling asleep is now come, and (because I always longed to depart, and
+to be with Christ) there is laid up for me when I have finished my course
+a crown of righteousness; therefore thou art sent from the Lord to cover
+my corpse with mould, and give back dust to dust.”
+
+Antony, hearing this, prayed him with tears and groans not to desert him,
+but take him as his companion on such a journey.  But he said, “Thou must
+not seek the things which are thine own, but the things of others.  It is
+expedient for thee, indeed, to cast off the burden of the flesh, and to
+follow the Lamb: but it is expedient for the rest of the brethren that
+they should be still trained by thine example.  Wherefore go, unless it
+displease thee, and bring the cloak which Athanasius the bishop gave
+thee, to wrap up my corpse.”  But this the blessed Paul asked, not
+because he cared greatly whether his body decayed covered or bare (as one
+who for so long a time was used to clothe himself with woven palm
+leaves), but that Antony’s grief at his death might be lightened when he
+left him.  Antony astounded that he had heard of Athanasius and his own
+cloak, seeing as it were Christ in Paul, and venerating the God within
+his breast, dared answer nothing: but keeping in silence, and kissing his
+eyes and hands, returned to the monastery, which afterwards was occupied
+by the Saracens.  His steps could not follow his spirit; but, although
+his body was empty with fastings, and broken with old age, yet his
+courage conquered his years.  At last, tired and breathless, he arrived
+at home.  There two disciples met him, who had been long sent to minister
+to him, and asked him, “Where hast thou tarried so long, father?”  He
+answered, “Woe to me a sinner, who falsely bear the name of a monk.  I
+have seen Elias; I have seen John in the desert; I have truly seen Paul
+in Paradise;” and so, closing his lips, and beating his breast, he took
+the cloak from his cell, and when his disciples asked him to explain more
+fully what had befallen, he said, “There is a time to be silent, and a
+time to speak.”  Then going out, and not taking even a morsel of food, he
+returned by the way he had come.  For he feared—what actually
+happened—lest Paul in his absence should render up the soul he owed to
+Christ.
+
+                    [Picture: Paul, the first Hermit]
+
+And when the second day had shone, and he had retraced his steps for
+three hours, he saw amid hosts of angels, amid the choirs of prophets and
+apostles, Paul shining white as snow, ascending up on high; and forthwith
+falling on his face, he cast sand on his head, and weeping and wailing,
+said, “Why dost thou dismiss me, Paul?  Why dost thou depart without a
+farewell?  So late known, dost thou vanish so soon?”  The blessed Antony
+used to tell afterwards, how he ran the rest of the way so swiftly that
+he flew like a bird.  Nor without cause.  For entering the cave he saw,
+with bended knees, erect neck, and hands spread out on high, a lifeless
+corpse.  And at first, thinking that it still lived, he prayed in like
+wise.  But when he heard no sighs (as usual) come from the worshipper’s
+breast, he fell to a tearful kiss, understanding how the very corpse of
+the saint was praying, in seemly attitude, to that God to whom all live.
+
+So, having wrapped up and carried forth the corpse, and chanting hymns of
+the Christian tradition, Antony grew sad, because he had no spade,
+wherewith to dig the ground; and thinking over many plans in his mind,
+said, “If I go back to the monastery, it is a three days’ journey.  If I
+stay here, I shall be of no more use.  I will die, then, as it is fit;
+and, falling beside thy warrior, Christ, breathe my last breath.”
+
+As he was thinking thus to himself, lo! two lions came running from the
+inner part of the desert, their manes tossing on their necks; seeing whom
+he shuddered at first; and then, turning his mind to God, remained
+fearless, as though he were looking upon doves.  They came straight to
+the corpse of the blessed old man, and crouched at his feet, wagging
+their tails, and roaring with mighty growls, so that Antony understood
+them to lament, as best they could.  Then not far off they began to claw
+the ground with their paws, and, carrying out the sand eagerly, dug a
+place large enough to hold a man: then at once, as if begging a reward
+for their work, they came to Antony, drooping their necks, and licking
+his hands and feet.  But he perceived that they prayed a blessing from
+him; and at once, bursting into praise of Christ, because even dumb
+animals felt that he was God, he saith, “Lord, without whose word not a
+leaf of the tree drops, nor one sparrow falls to the ground, give to them
+as thou knowest how to give.”  And, signing to them with his hand, he
+bade them go.
+
+And when they had departed, he bent his aged shoulders to the weight of
+the holy corpse; and laying it in the grave, heaped earth on it, and
+raised a mound as is the wont.  And when another dawn shone, lest the
+pious heir should not possess aught of the goods of the intestate dead,
+he kept for himself the tunic which Paul had woven, as baskets are made,
+out of the leaves of the palm; and returning to the monastery, told his
+disciples all throughout; and, on the solemn days of Easter and
+Pentecost, always clothed himself in Paul’s tunic.
+
+I am inclined, at the end of my treatise, to ask those who know not the
+extent of their patrimonies; who cover their houses with marbles; who sew
+the price of whole farms into their garments with a single thread—What
+was ever wanting to this naked old man?  Ye drink from a gem; he
+satisfied nature from the hollow of his hands.  Ye weave gold into your
+tunics; he had not even the vilest garment of your bond-slave.  But, on
+the other hand, to that poor man Paradise is open; you, gilded as you
+are, Gehenna will receive.  He, though naked, kept the garment of Christ;
+you, clothed in silk, have lost Christ’s robe.  Paul lies covered with
+the meanest dust, to rise in glory; you are crushed by wrought sepulchres
+of stone, to burn with all your works.  Spare, I beseech you, yourselves;
+spare, at least, the riches which you love.  Why do you wrap even your
+dead in golden vestments?  Why does not ambition stop amid grief and
+tears?  Cannot the corpses of the rich decay, save in silk?  I beseech
+thee, whosoever thou art that readest this, to remember Hieronymus the
+sinner, who, if the Lord gave him choice, would much sooner choose Paul’s
+tunic with his merits, than the purple of kings with their punishments.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+This is the story of Paul and Antony, as told by Jerome.  But, in justice
+to Antony himself, it must be said that the sayings recorded of him seem
+to show that he was not the mere visionary ascetic which his biographers
+have made him.  Some twenty sermons are attributed to him, seven of which
+only are considered to be genuine.  A rule for monks, too, is called his:
+but, as it is almost certain that he could neither read nor write, we
+have no proof that any of these documents convey his actual language.  If
+the seven sermons attributed to him be really his, it must be said for
+them that they are full of sound doctrine and vital religion, and worthy,
+as wholes, to be preached in any English church, if we only substitute
+for the word “monk,” the word “man.”
+
+But there are records of Antony which represent him as a far more genial
+and human personage; full of a knowledge of human nature, and of a
+tenderness and sympathy, which account for his undoubted power over the
+minds of men; and showing, too, at times, a certain covert and “pawky”
+humour which puts us in mind, as does the humour of many of the Egyptian
+hermits, of the old-fashioned Scotch.  These reminiscences are contained
+in the “Words of the Elders,” a series of anecdotes of the desert fathers
+collected by various hands; which are, after all, the most interesting
+and probably the most trustworthy accounts of them and their ways.  I
+shall have occasion to quote them later.  I insert here some among them
+which relate to Antony.
+
+
+
+SAYINGS OF ANTONY, FROM THE “WORDS OF THE ELDERS.”
+
+
+A MONK gave away his wealth to the poor, but kept back some for himself.
+Antony said to him, “Go to the village and buy meat, and bring it to me
+on thy bare back.”  He did so: and the dogs and birds attacked him, and
+tore him as well as the meat.  Quoth Antony, “So are those who renounce
+the world, and yet must needs have money, torn by dæmons.”
+
+Antony heard high praise of a certain brother; but, when he tested him,
+he found that he was impatient under injury.  Quoth Antony, “Thou art
+like a house which has a gay porch, but is broken into by thieves through
+the back door.”
+
+Antony, as he sat in the desert, was weary in heart, and said, “Lord, I
+long to be saved, but my wandering thoughts will not let me.  Show me
+what I shall do.”  And looking up, he saw one like himself twisting
+ropes, and rising up to pray.  And the angel (for it was one) said to
+him, “Work like me, Antony, and you shall be saved.”
+
+One asked him how he could please God.  Quoth Antony, “Have God always
+before thine eyes; whatever work thou doest, take example for it out of
+Holy Scripture: wherever thou stoppest, do not move thence in a hurry,
+but abide there in patience.  If thou keepest these three things, thou
+shalt be saved.”
+
+Quoth Antony, “If the baker did not cover the mill-horse’s eyes he would
+eat the corn, and take his own wages.  So God covers our eyes, by leaving
+us to sordid thoughts, lest we should think of our own good works, and be
+puffed up in spirit.”
+
+Quoth Antony, “I saw all the snares of the enemy spread over the whole
+earth.  And I sighed, and said, ‘Who can pass through these?’  And a
+voice came to me, saying, ‘Humility alone can pass through, Antony, where
+the proud can in no wise go.’”
+
+Antony was sitting in his cell, and a voice said to him, “Thou hast not
+yet come to the stature of a currier, who lives in Alexandria.”  Then he
+took his staff, and went down to Alexandria; and the currier, when he
+found him, was astonished at seeing so great a man.  Said Antony, “Tell
+me thy works; for on thy account have I come out of the desert.”  And he
+answered, “I know not that I ever did any good; and, therefore, when I
+rise in the morning, I say that this whole city, from the greatest to the
+least, will enter into the kingdom of God for their righteousness: while
+I, for my sins, shall go to eternal pain.  And this I say over again,
+from the bottom of my heart, when I lie down at night.”  When Antony
+heard that, he said, “Like a good goldsmith, thou hast gained the kingdom
+of God sitting still in thy house; while I, as one without discretion,
+have been haunting the desert all my time, and yet not arrived at the
+measure of thy saying.”
+
+Quoth Antony, “If a monk could tell his elders how many steps he walks,
+or how many cups of water he drinks, in his cell, he ought to tell them,
+for fear of going wrong therein.”
+
+At Alexandria, Antony met one Didymus, most learned in the Scriptures,
+witty, and wise: but he was blind.  Antony asked him, “Art thou not
+grieved at thy blindness?”  He was silent: but being pressed by Antony,
+he confessed that he was sad thereat.  Quoth Antony, “I wonder that a
+prudent man grieves over the loss of a thing which ants, and flies, and
+gnats have, instead of rejoicing in that possession which the holy
+Apostles earned.  For it is better to see with the spirit than with the
+flesh.”
+
+A Father asked Antony, “What shall I do?”  Quoth the old man, “Trust not
+in thine own righteousness; regret not the thing which is past; bridle
+thy tongue and thy stomach.”
+
+Quoth Antony, “He who sits still in the desert is safe from three
+enemies: from hearing, from speech, from sight: and has to fight against
+only one, his own heart.”
+
+A young monk came and told Antony how he had seen some old men weary on
+their journey, and had bidden the wild asses to come and carry him, and
+they came.  Quoth Antony, “That monk looks to me like a ship laden with a
+precious cargo; but whether it will get into port is uncertain.”  And
+after some days he began to tear his hair and weep; and when they asked
+him why, he said, “A great pillar of the Church has just fallen;” and he
+sent brothers to see the young man, and found him sitting on his mat,
+weeping over a great sin which he had done; and he said, “Tell Antony to
+give me ten days’ truce, and I hope I shall satisfy him;” and in five
+days he was dead.
+
+Abbot Elias fell into temptation, and the brethren drove him out.  Then
+he went to the mountain to Antony.  After awhile, Antony sent him home to
+his brethren; but they would not receive him.  Then the old man sent to
+them, and saying, “A ship has been wrecked at sea, and lost all its
+cargo; and, with much toil, the ship is come empty to land.  Will you
+sink it again in the sea?”  So they took Elias back.
+
+Quoth Antony, “There are some who keep their bodies in abstinence: but,
+because they have no discretion, they are far from God.”
+
+A hunter came by, and saw Antony rejoicing with the brethren, and it
+displeased him.  Quoth Antony, “Put an arrow in thy bow, and draw;” and
+he did.  Quoth Antony, “Draw higher;” and again, “Draw higher still.”
+And he said, “If I overdraw, I shall break my bow.”  Quoth Antony, “So it
+is in the work of God.  If we stretch the brethren beyond measure, they
+fail.”
+
+A brother said to Antony, “Pray for me.”  Quoth he, “I cannot pity thee,
+nor God either, unless thou pitiest thyself, and prayest to God.”
+
+Quoth Antony, “The Lord does not permit wars to arise in this generation,
+because he knows that men are weak, and cannot bear them.”
+
+Antony, as he considered the depths of the judgments of God, failed; and
+said, “Lord, why do some die so early, and some live on to a decrepit
+age?  Why are some needy, and others rich?  Why are the unjust wealthy,
+and the just poor?”  And a voice came to him, “Antony, look to thyself.
+These are the judgments of God, which are not fit for thee to know.”
+
+Quoth Antony to Abbot Pastor, “This is a man’s great business—to lay each
+man his own fault on himself before the Lord, and to expect temptation to
+the last day of his life.”
+
+Quoth Antony, “If a man works a few days, and then is idle, and works
+again and is idle again, he does nothing, and will not possess the
+perseverance of patience.”
+
+Quoth Antony to his disciples, “If you try to keep silence, do not think
+that you are exercising a virtue, but that you are unworthy to speak.”
+
+Certain old men came once to Antony; and he wished to prove them, and
+began to talk of holy Scripture, and to ask them, beginning at the
+youngest, what this and that text meant.  And each answered as best they
+could.  But he kept on saying, “You have not yet found it out.”  And at
+last he asked Abbot Joseph, “And what dost thou think this text means?”
+Quoth Abbot Joseph, “I do not know.”  Quoth Antony, “Abbot Joseph alone
+has found out the way, for he says he does not know it.”
+
+Quoth Antony, “I do not now fear God, but love Him, for love drives out
+fear.”
+
+He said again, “Life and death are very near us; for if we gain our
+brother, we gain God: but if we cause our brother to offend, we sin
+against Christ.”
+
+A philosopher asked Antony, “How art thou content, father, since thou
+hast not the comfort of books?”  Quoth Antony, “My book is the nature of
+created things.  In it, when I choose, I can read the words of God.”
+
+Brethren came to Antony, and asked of him a saying by which they might be
+saved.  Quoth he, “Ye have heard the Scriptures, and know what Christ
+requires of you.”  But they begged that he would tell them something of
+his own.  Quoth he, “The Gospel says, ‘If a man smite you on one cheek,
+turn to him the other.’”  But they said that they could not do that.
+Quoth he, “You cannot turn the other cheek to him?  Then let him smite
+you again on the same one.”  But they said they could not do that either.
+Then said he, “If you cannot, at least do not return evil for evil.”  And
+when they said that neither could they do that, quoth Antony to his
+disciples, “Go, get them something to eat, for they are very weak.”  And
+he said to them, “If you cannot do the one, and will not have the other,
+what do you want?  As I see, what you want is prayer.  That will heal
+your weakness.”
+
+Quoth Antony, “He who would be free from his sins must be so by weeping
+and mourning; and he who would be built up in virtue must be built up by
+tears.”
+
+Quoth Antony, “When the stomach is full of meat, forthwith the great
+vices bubble out, according to that which the Saviour says: ‘That which
+entereth into the mouth defileth not a man; but that which cometh out of
+the heart sinks a man in destruction.’”
+
+[This may be a somewhat paradoxical application of the text: but the last
+anecdote of Antony which I shall quote is full of wisdom and humanity.]
+
+A monk came from Alexandria, Eulogius by name, bringing with him a man
+afflicted with elephantiasis.  Now Eulogius had been a scholar, learned,
+and rich, and had given away all he had save a very little, which he kept
+because he could not work with his own hands.
+
+And he told Antony how he had found that wretched man lying in the street
+fifteen years before, having lost then nearly every member save his
+tongue, and how he had taken him home to his cell, nursed him, bathed
+him, physicked him, fed him; and how the man had returned him nothing
+save slanders, curses, and insults; how he had insisted on having meat,
+and had had it; and on going out in public, and had company brought to
+him; and how he had at last demanded to be put down again whence he had
+been taken, always cursing and slandering.  And now Eulogius could bear
+the man no longer, and was minded to take him at his word.
+
+Then said Antony with an angry voice, “Wilt thou cast him out, Eulogius?
+He who remembers that he made him, will not cast him out.  If thou cast
+him out, he will find a better friend than thee.  God will choose some
+one who will take him up when he is cast away.”  Eulogius was terrified
+at these words, and held his peace.
+
+Then went Antony to the sick man, and shouted at him, “Thou elephantiac,
+foul with mud and dirt, not worthy of the third heaven, wilt thou not
+stop shouting blasphemies against God?  Dost thou not know that he who
+ministers to thee is Christ?  How darest thou say such things against
+Christ?”  And he bade Eulogius and the sick man go back to their cell,
+and live in peace, and never part more.  Both went back, and, after forty
+days, Eulogius died, and the sick man shortly after, “altogether whole in
+spirit.”
+
+
+
+
+HILARION
+
+
+I WOULD gladly, did space allow, give more biographies from among those
+of the Egyptian hermits: but it seems best, having shown the reader
+Antony as the father of Egyptian monachism, to go on to his great pupil
+Hilarion, the father of monachism in Palestine.  His life stands written
+at length by St. Jerome, who himself died a monk at Bethlehem; and is
+composed happily in a less ambitious and less rugged style than that of
+Paul, not without elements of beauty, even of tragedy.
+
+
+
+PROLOGUE
+
+
+Remember me in thy holy prayers, glory and honour of virgins, nun Asella.
+Before beginning to write the life of the blessed Hilarion, I invoke the
+Holy Spirit which dwelt in him, that, as he largely bestowed virtues on
+Hilarion, he may give to me speech wherewith to relate them; so that his
+deeds may be equalled by my language.  For those who (as Crispus says)
+“have wrought virtues” are held to have been worthily praised in
+proportion to the words in which famous intellects have been able to
+extol them.  Alexander the Great, the Macedonian (whom Daniel calls
+either the brass, or the leopard, or the he-goat), on coming to the tomb
+of Achilles, “Happy art thou, youth,” he said, “who hast been blest with
+a great herald of thy worth”—meaning Homer.  But I have to tell the
+conversation and life of such and so great a man, that even Homer, were
+he here, would either envy my matter, or succumb under it.
+
+For although St. Epiphanius, bishop of Salamina in Cyprus, who had much
+intercourse with Hilarion, has written his praise in a short epistle,
+which is commonly read, yet it is one thing to praise the dead in general
+phrases, another to relate his special virtues.  We therefore set to work
+rather to his advantage than to his injury; and despise those
+evil-speakers who lately carped at Paul, and will perhaps now carp at my
+Hilarion, unjustly blaming the former for his solitary life, and the
+latter for his intercourse with men; in order that the one, who was never
+seen, may be supposed not to have existed; the other, who was seen by
+many, may be held cheap.  This was the way of their ancestors likewise,
+the Pharisees, who were neither satisfied with John’s desert life and
+fasting, nor with the Lord Saviour’s public life, eating and drinking.
+But I shall lay my hand to the work which I have determined, and pass by,
+with stopped ears, the hounds of Scylla.  I pray that thou mayest
+persevere in Christ, and be mindful of me in thy prayers, most sacred
+virgin.
+
+
+
+THE LIFE
+
+
+HILARION was born in the village of Thabatha, which lies about five miles
+to the south of Gaza, in Palestine.  He had parents given to the worship
+of idols, and blossomed (as the saying is) a rose among the thorns.  Sent
+by them to Alexandria, he was entrusted to a grammarian, and there, as
+far as his years allowed, gave proof of great intellect and good morals.
+He was soon dear to all, and skilled in the art of speaking.  And, what
+is more than all, he believed in the Lord Jesus, and delighted neither in
+the madness of the circus, in the blood of the arena, or in the luxury of
+the theatre: but all his heart was in the congregation of the Church.
+
+But hearing the then famous name of Antony, which was carried throughout
+all Egypt, he was fired with a longing to visit him, and went to the
+desert.  As soon as he saw him he changed his dress, and stayed with him
+about two months, watching the order of his life, and the purity of his
+manner; how frequent he was in prayers, how humble in receiving brethren,
+severe in reproving them, eager in exhorting them; and how no infirmity
+ever broke through his continence, and the coarseness of his food.  But,
+unable to bear longer the crowd which assembled round Antony, for various
+diseases and attacks of devils, he said that it was not consistent to
+endure in the desert the crowds of cities, but that he must rather begin
+where Antony had begun.  Antony, as a valiant man, was receiving the
+reward of victory: he had not yet begun to serve as a soldier.  He
+returned, therefore, with certain monks to his own country; and, finding
+his parents dead, gave away part of his substance to the brethren, part
+to the poor, and kept nothing at all for himself, fearing what is told in
+the Acts of the Apostles, the example or punishment, of Ananias and
+Sapphira; and especially mindful of the Lord’s saying—“He that leaveth
+not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.”
+
+He was then fifteen years old.  So, naked, but armed in Christ, he
+entered the desert, which, seven miles from Maiuma, the port of Gaza,
+turns away to the left of those who go along the shore towards Egypt.
+And though the place was blood-stained by robbers, and his relations and
+friends warned him of the imminent danger, he despised death, in order to
+escape death.  All wondered at his spirit, wondered at his youth.  Save
+that a certain fire of the bosom and spark of faith glittered in his
+eyes, his cheeks were smooth, his body delicate and thin, unable to bear
+any injury, and liable to be overcome by even a light chill or heat.
+
+So, covering his limbs only with a sackcloth, and having a cloak of skin,
+which the blessed Antony had given him at starting, and a rustic cloak,
+between the sea and the swamp, he enjoyed the vast and terrible solitude,
+feeding on only fifteen figs after the setting of the sun; and because
+the region was, as has been said above, of ill-repute from robberies, no
+man had ever stayed before in that place.  The devil, seeing what he was
+doing and whither he had gone, was tormented.  And though he, who of old
+boasted, saying, “I shall ascend into heaven, I shall sit above the stars
+of heaven, and shall be like unto the Most High,” now saw that he had
+been conquered by a boy, and trampled under foot by him, ere, on account
+of his youth, he could commit sin.  He therefore began to tempt his
+senses; but he, enraged with himself, and beating his breast with his
+fist, as if he could drive out thoughts by blows, “I will force thee,
+mine ass,” said he, “not to kick; and feed thee with straw, not barley.
+I will wear thee out with hunger and thirst; I will burden thee with
+heavy loads; I will hunt thee through heat and cold, till thou thinkest
+more of food than of play.”  He therefore sustained his fainting spirit
+with the juice of herbs and a few figs, after each three or four days,
+praying frequently, and singing psalms, and digging the ground with a
+mattock, to double the labour of fasting by that of work.  At the same
+time, by weaving baskets of rushes, he imitated the discipline of the
+Egyptian monks, and the Apostle’s saying—“He that will not work, neither
+let him eat”—till he was so attenuated, and his body so exhausted, that
+it scarce clung to his bones.
+
+One night he began to hear the crying {108} of infants, the bleating of
+sheep, the wailing of women, the roaring of lions, the murmur of an army,
+and utterly portentous and barbarous voices; so that he shrank frightened
+by the sound ere he saw aught.  He understood these to be the insults of
+devils; and, falling on his knees, he signed the cross of Christ on his
+forehead, and armed with that helmet, and girt with the breastplate of
+faith, he fought more valiantly as he lay, longing somehow to see what he
+shuddered to hear, and looking round him with anxious eyes: when, without
+warning, by the bright moonshine he saw a chariot with fiery horses
+rushing upon him.  But when he had called on Jesus, the earth opened
+suddenly, and the whole pomp was swallowed up before his eyes.  Then said
+he, “The horse and his rider he hath drowned in the sea;” and “Some glory
+themselves in chariots, and some in horses: but we in the name of the
+Lord our God.”  Many were his temptations, and various, by day and night,
+the snares of the devils.  If we were to tell them all, they would make
+the volume too long.  How often did women appear to him; how often
+plenteous banquets when he was hungry.  Sometimes as he prayed, a howling
+wolf ran past him, or a barking fox; or as he sang, a fight of gladiators
+made a show for him: and one of them, as if slain, falling at his feet,
+prayed for sepulture.  He prayed once with his head bowed to the ground,
+and—as is the nature of man—his mind wandered from his prayer, and
+thought of I know not what, when a mocking rider leaped on his back, and
+spurring his sides, and whipping his neck, “Come,” he cries, “come, run!
+why do you sleep?” and, laughing loudly over him, asked him if he were
+tired, or would have a feed of barley.
+
+So from his sixteenth to his twentieth year, he was sheltered from the
+heat and rain in a tiny cabin, which he had woven of rush and sedge.
+Afterwards he built a little cell, which remains to this day, four feet
+wide and five feet high—that is, lower than his own stature—and somewhat
+longer than his small body needed, so that you would believe it to be a
+tomb rather than a dwelling.  He cut his hair only once a year, on
+Easter-day, and lay till his death on the bare ground and a layer of
+rushes, never washing the sack in which he was clothed, and saying that
+it was superfluous to seek for cleanliness in haircloth.  Nor did he
+change his tunic, till the first was utterly in rags.  He knew the
+Scriptures by heart, and recited them after his prayers and psalms as if
+God were present.  And, because it would take up too much time to tell
+his great deeds one by one, I will give a short account of them.
+
+[Then follows a series of miracles, similar to those attributed to St.
+Antony, and, indeed, to all these great Hermit Fathers.  But it is
+unnecessary to relate more wonders which the reader cannot be expected to
+believe.  These miracles, however, according to St. Jerome, were the
+foundations of Hilarion’s fame and public career.  For he says, “When
+they were noised abroad, people flowed to him eagerly from Syria to
+Egypt, so that many believed in Christ, and professed themselves to be
+monks—for no one had known of a monk in Syria before the holy Hilarion.
+He was the first founder and teacher of this conversation and study in
+the province.  The Lord Jesus had in Egypt the old man Antony; he had in
+Palestine the young Hilarion . . .  He was raised, indeed, by the Lord to
+such a glory, that the blessed Antony, hearing of his conversation, wrote
+to him, and willingly received his letters; and if rich people came to
+him from the parts of Syria, he said to them, ‘Why have you chosen to
+trouble yourselves by coming so far, when you have at home my son
+Hilarion?’  So by his example innumerable monasteries arose throughout
+all Palestine, and all monks came eagerly to him . . . But what a care he
+had, not to pass by any brother, however humble or however poor, may be
+shown by this; that once going into the Desert of Kadesh, to visit one of
+his disciples, he came, with an infinite crowd of monks, to Elusa, on the
+very day, as it chanced, on which a yearly solemnity had gathered all the
+people of the town to the Temple of Venus; for they honour her on account
+of the morning star, to the worship of which the nation of the Saracens
+is devoted.  The town itself too is said to be in great part
+semi-barbarous, on account of its remote situation.  Hearing, then, that
+the holy Hilarion was passing by—for he had often cured Saracens
+possessed with dæmons—they came out to meet him in crowds, with their
+wives and children, bowing their necks, and crying in the Syrian tongue,
+‘Barech!’ that is, ‘Bless!’  He received them courteously and humbly,
+entreating them to worship God rather than stones, and wept abundantly,
+looking up to heaven, and promising them that, if they would believe in
+Christ, he would come oftener to them.  Wonderful was the grace of the
+Lord.  They would not let him depart till he had laid the foundations of
+a future church, and their priest, crowned as he was, had been
+consecrated with the sign of Christ.”
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+He was now sixty-three years old.  He saw about him a great monastery, a
+multitude of brethren, and crowds who came to be healed of diseases and
+unclean spirits, filling the solitude around; but he wept daily, and
+remembered with incredible regret his ancient life.  “I have returned to
+the world,” he said, “and received my reward in this life.  All Palestine
+and the neighbouring provinces think me to be worth somewhat; while I
+possess a farm and household goods, under the pretext of the brethren’s
+advantage.”  On which the brethren, and especially Hesychius, who bore
+him a wondrous love, watched him narrowly.
+
+When he had lived thus sadly for two years, Aristæneta, the Prefect’s
+wife, came to him, wishing him to go with her to Antony, “I would go,” he
+said, weeping, “if I were not held in the prison of this monastery, and
+if it were of any use.  For two days since, the whole world was robbed of
+such a father.”  She believed him, and stopped.  And Antony’s death was
+confirmed a few days after.  Others may wonder at the signs and portents
+which he did, at his incredible abstinence, his silence, his miracles: I
+am astonished at nothing so much as that he was able to trample under
+foot that glory and honour.
+
+Bishops and clergy, monks and Christian matrons (a great temptation),
+people of the common sort, great men, too, and judges crowded to him, to
+receive from him blessed bread or oil.  But he was thinking of nothing
+but the desert, till one day he determined to set out, and taking an ass
+(for he was so shrunk with fasting that he could hardly walk), he tried
+to go his way.  The news got wind; the desolation and destruction of
+Palestine would ensue; ten thousand souls, men and women, tried to stop
+his way; but he would not hear them.  Smiting on the ground with his
+staff, he said, “I will not make my God a liar.  I cannot bear to see
+churches ruined, the altars of Christ trampled down, the blood of my sons
+spilt.”  All who heard thought that some secret revelation had been made
+to him: but yet they would not let him go.  Whereon he would neither eat
+nor drink, and for seven days he persevered fasting, till he had his
+wish, and set out for Bethulia, with forty monks, who could march without
+food till sundown.  On the fifth day he came to Pelusium, then to the
+camp Thebatrum, to see Dracontius; and then to Babylon to see Philo.
+These two were bishops and confessors exiled by Constantius, who favoured
+the Arian heresy.  Then he came to Aphroditon, where he met Barsanes the
+deacon, who used to carry water to Antony on dromedaries, and heard from
+him that the anniversary Antony’s death was near, and would be celebrated
+by a vigil at his tomb.  Then through a vast and horrible wilderness, he
+went for three days to a very high mountain, and found there two monks,
+Isaac and Pelusianus, of whom Isaac had been Antony’s interpreter.
+
+A high and rocky hill it was, with fountains gushing out at its foot.
+Some of them the sand sucked up; some formed a little rill, with palms
+without number on its banks.  There you might have seen the old man
+wandering to and fro with Antony’s disciples.  “Here,” they said, “he
+used to sing, here to pray, here to work, here to sit when tired.  These
+vines, these shrubs, he planted himself; that plot he laid out with his
+own hands.  This pond to water the garden he made with heavy toil; that
+hoe he kept for many years.”  Hilarion lay on his bed, and kissed the
+couch, as if it were still warm.  Antony’s cell was only large enough to
+let a man lie down in it; and on the mountain top, reached by a difficult
+and winding stair, were two other cells of the same size, cut in the
+stony rock, to which he used to retire from the visitors and disciples,
+when they came to the garden.  “You see,” said Isaac, “this orchard, with
+shrubs and vegetables.  Three years since a troop of wild asses laid it
+waste.  He bade one of their leaders stop; and beat it with his staff.
+‘Why do you eat,’ he asked it, ‘what you did not sow?’  And after that
+the asses, though they came to drink the waters, never touched his
+plants.”
+
+Then Hilarion asked them to show him Antony’s grave.  They led him apart;
+but whether they showed it to him, no man knows.  They hid it, they said,
+by Antony’s command, lest one Pergamius, who was the richest man of those
+parts, should take the corpse to his villa, and build a chapel over it.
+
+Then he went back to Aphroditon, and with only two brothers, dwelt in the
+desert, in such abstinence and silence that (so he said) he then first
+began to serve Christ.  Now it was then three years since the heaven had
+been shut, and the earth dried up: so that they said commonly, the very
+elements mourned the death of Antony.  But Hilarion’s fame spread to
+them; and a great multitude, brown and shrunken with famine, cried to him
+for rain, as to the blessed Antony’s successor.  He saw them, and grieved
+over them; and lifting up his hand to heaven, obtained rain at once.  But
+the thirsty and sandy land, as soon as it was watered by showers, sent
+forth such a crowd of serpents and venomous animals that people without
+number were stung, and would have died, had they not run together to
+Hilarion.  With oil blessed by him, the husbandmen and shepherds touched
+their wounds, and all were surely healed.
+
+But when he saw that he was marvellously honoured, he went to Alexandria,
+meaning to cross the desert to the further oasis.  And because since he
+was a monk he had never stayed in a city, he turned aside to some
+brethren known to him in the Brucheion {115} not far from Alexandria.
+They received him with joy: but, when night came on, they suddenly heard
+him bid his disciples saddle the ass.  In vain they entreated, threw
+themselves across the threshold.  His only answer was, that he was
+hastening away, lest he should bring them into trouble; they would soon
+know that he had not departed without good reason.  The next day, men of
+Gaza came with the Prefect’s lictors, burst into the monastery, and when
+they found him not—“Is it not true,” they said, “what we heard?  He is a
+sorcerer, and knows the future.”  For the citizens of Gaza, after
+Hilarion was gone, and Julian had succeeded to the empire, had destroyed
+his monastery, and begged from the Emperor the death of Hilarion and
+Hesychius.  So letters had been sent forth, to seek them throughout the
+world.
+
+So Hilarion went by the pathless wilderness into the Oasis; {116} and
+after a year, more or less—because his fame had gone before him even
+there, and he could not lie hid in the East—he was minded to sail away to
+lonely islands, that the sea at least might hide what the land would not.
+
+But just then Hadrian, his disciple, came from Palestine, telling him
+that Julian was slain, and that a Christian emperor was reigning; so that
+he ought to return to the relics of his monastery.  But he abhorred the
+thought; and, hiring a camel, went over the vast desert to Parætonia, a
+sea town of Libya.  Then the wretched Hadrian, wishing to go back to
+Palestine and get himself glory under his master’s name, packed up all
+that the brethren had sent by him to his master, and went secretly away.
+But—as a terror to those who despise their masters—he shortly after died
+of jaundice.
+
+Then, with Zananas alone, Hilarion went on board ship to sail for Sicily.
+And when, almost in the middle of Adria, {117a} he was going to sell the
+Gospels which he had written out with his own hand when young, to pay his
+fare withal, then the captain’s son was possessed with a devil, and cried
+out, “Hilarion, servant of God, why can we not be safe from thee even at
+sea?  Give me a little respite till I come to the shore, lest, if I be
+cast out here, I fall headlong into the abyss.”  Then said he, “If my God
+lets thee stay, stay.  But if he cast thee out, why dost thou lay the
+blame on me, a sinner and a beggar?”  Then he made the captain and the
+crew promise not to betray him: and the devil was cast out.  But the
+captain would take no fare when he saw that they had nought but those
+Gospels, and the clothes on their backs.  And so Hilarion came to
+Pachynum, a cape of Sicily, {117b} and fled twenty miles inland into a
+deserted farm; and there every day gathered a bundle of firewood, and put
+it on Zananas’s back, who took it to the town, and bought a little bread
+thereby.
+
+But it happened, according to that which is written, “A city set on an
+hill cannot be hid,” one Scutarius was tormented by a devil in the
+Basilica of St. Peter at Rome; and the unclean spirit cried out in him,
+“A few days since Hilarion, the servant of Christ, landed in Sicily, and
+no man knows him, and he thinks himself hid.  I will go and betray him.”
+And forthwith he took ship with his slaves, and came to Pachynum, and, by
+the leading of the devil, threw himself down before the old man’s hut,
+and was cured.
+
+The frequency of his signs in Sicily drew to him sick people and
+religious men in multitudes; and one of the chief men was cured of dropsy
+the same day that he came, and offered Hilarion boundless gifts: but he
+obeyed the Saviour’s saying, “Freely ye have received; freely give.”
+
+While this was happening in Sicily, Hesychius, his disciple, was seeking
+the old man through the world, searching the shores, penetrating the
+desert, and only certain that, wherever he was, he could not long be hid.
+So, after three years were past, he heard at Methone {118} from a Jew,
+who was selling old clothes, that a prophet of the Christians had
+appeared in Sicily, working such wonders that he was thought to be one of
+the old saints.  But he could give no description of him, having only
+heard common report.  He sailed for Pachynum, and there, in a cottage on
+the shore, heard of Hilarion’s fame—that which most surprised all being
+that, after so many signs and miracles, he had not accepted even a bit of
+bread from any man.
+
+So, “not to make the story too long,” as says St. Jerome, Hesychius fell
+at his master’s knees, and watered his feet with tears, till at last he
+raised him up.  But two or three days after he heard from Zananas, how
+the old man could dwell no longer in these regions, but was minded to go
+to some barbarous nation, where both his name and his speech should be
+unknown.  So he took him to Epidaurus, {119a} a city of Dalmatia, where
+he lay a few days in a little farm, and yet could not be hid; for a
+dragon of wondrous size—one of those which, in the country speech, they
+call boas, because they are so huge that they can swallow an ox—laid
+waste the province, and devoured not only herds and flocks, but
+husbandmen and shepherds, which he drew to him by the force of his
+breath. {119b}  Hilarion commanded a pile of wood to be prepared, and
+having prayed to Christ, and called the beast forth, commanded him to
+ascend the pile, and having put fire under, burnt him before all the
+people.  Then fretting over what he should do, or whither he should turn,
+he went alone over the world in imagination, and mourned that, when his
+tongue was silent, his miracles still spoke.
+
+In those days, at the earthquake over the whole world, which befell after
+Julian’s death, the sea broke its bounds; and, as if God was threatening
+another flood, or all was returning to the primæval chaos, ships were
+carried up steep rocks, and hung there.  But when the Epidauritans saw
+roaring waves and mountains of water borne towards the shore, fearing
+lest the town should be utterly overthrown, they went out to the old man,
+and, as if they were leading him out to battle, stationed him on the
+shore.  And when he had marked three signs of the Cross upon the sand,
+and stretched out his hands against the waves, it is past belief to what
+a height the sea swelled, and stood up before him, and then, raging long
+as if indignant at the barrier, fell back little by little into itself.
+
+All Epidaurus, and all that region, talk of this to this day; and mothers
+teach it their children, that they may hand it down to posterity.  Truly,
+that which was said to the Apostles, “If ye believe, ye shall say to this
+mountain, Be removed, and cast into the sea; and it shall be done,” can
+be fulfilled even to the letter, if we have the faith of the Apostles,
+and such as the Lord commanded them to have.  For which is more strange,
+that a mountain should descend into the sea; or that mountains of water
+should stiffen of a sudden, and, firm as a rock only at an old man’s
+feet, should flow softly everywhere else?  All the city wondered; and the
+greatness of the sign was bruited abroad even at Salo.
+
+When the old man discovered that, he fled secretly by night in a little
+boat, and finding a merchantman after two days, sailed for Cyprus.
+Between Maleæ and Cythera {121} they were met by pirates, who had left
+their vessels under the shore, and came up in two large galleys, worked
+not with sails, but oars.  As the rowers swept the billows, all on board
+began to tremble, weep, run about, get handspikes ready, and, as if one
+messenger was not enough, vie with each other in telling the old man that
+pirates were at hand.  He looked out at them and smiled.  Then turning to
+his disciples, “O ye of little faith,” he said; “wherefore do ye doubt?
+Are these more in number than Pharaoh’s army?  Yet they were all drowned
+when God so willed.”  While he spoke, the hostile keels, with foaming
+beaks, were but a short stone’s throw off.  He then stood on the ship’s
+bow, and stretching out his hand against them, “Let it be enough,” he
+said, “to have come thus far.”
+
+O wondrous faith!  The boats instantly sprang back, and made stern-way,
+although the oars impelled them in the opposite direction.  The pirates
+were astonished, having no wish to return back-foremost, and struggled
+with all their might to reach the ship; but were carried to the shore
+again, much faster than they had come.
+
+I pass over the rest, lest by telling every story I make the volume too
+long.  This only I will say, that, while he sailed prosperously through
+the Cyclades, he heard the voices of foul spirits, calling here and there
+out of the towns and villages, and running together on the beaches.  So
+he came to Paphos, the city of Cyprus, famous once in poets’ songs, which
+now, shaken down by frequent earthquakes, only shows what it has been of
+yore by the foundations of its ruins.  There he dwelt meanly near the
+second milestone out of the city, rejoicing much that he was living
+quietly for a few days.  But not three weeks were past, ere throughout
+the whole island whosoever had unclean spirits began to cry that Hilarion
+the servant of Christ was come, and that they must hasten to him.
+Salonica, Curium, Lapetha, and the other towns, all cried this together,
+most saying that they knew Hilarion, and that he was truly a servant of
+God; but where he was they knew not.  Within a month, nearly 200 men and
+women were gathered together to him.  Whom when he saw, grieving that
+they would not suffer him to rest, raging, as it were to revenge himself,
+he scourged them with such an instancy of prayer, that some were cured at
+once, some after two or three days, and all within a week.
+
+So staying there two years, and always meditating flight, he sent
+Hesychius to Palestine, to salute the brethren, visit the ashes of the
+monastery, and return in the spring.  When he returned, and Hilarion was
+longing to sail again to Egypt,—that is, to the cattle pastures, {123a}
+because there is no Christian there, but only a fierce and barbarous
+folk,—he persuaded the old man rather to withdraw into some more secret
+spot in the island itself.  And looking round it long till he had
+examined it all over, he led him away twelve miles from the sea, among
+lonely and rough mountains, where they could hardly climb up, creeping on
+hands and knees.  When they were within, they beheld a spot terrible and
+very lonely, surrounded with trees, which had, too, waters falling from
+the brow of a cliff, and a most pleasant little garden, and many
+fruit-trees—the fruit of which, however, Hilarion never ate—and near it
+the ruin of a very ancient temple, {123b} out of which (so he and his
+disciples averred) the voices of so many dæmons resounded day and night,
+that you would have fancied an army there.  With which he was exceedingly
+delighted, because he had his foes close to him; and dwelt therein five
+years; and (while Hesychius often visited him) he was much cheered up in
+this last period of his life, because owing to the roughness and
+difficulty of the ground, and the multitude of ghosts (as was commonly
+reported), few, or none, ever dare climb up to him.
+
+But one day, going out of the little garden, he saw a man paralytic in
+all his limbs, lying before the gate; and having asked Hesychius who he
+was, and how he had come, he was told that the man was the steward of a
+small estate, and that to him the garden, in which they were, belonged.
+Hilarion, weeping over him, and stretching a hand to him as he lay, said,
+“I say to thee, in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, arise and walk.”
+Wonderful was the rapidity of the effect.  The words were yet in his
+mouth, when the limbs, strengthened, raised the man upon his feet.  As
+soon as it was known, the needs of many conquered the difficulty of the
+ground, and the want of a path, while all in the neighbourhood watched
+nothing so carefully, as that he should not by some plan slip away from
+them.  For the report had been spread about him, that he could not remain
+long in the same place; which nevertheless he did not do from any
+caprice, or childishness, but to escape honour and importunity; for he
+always longed after silence, and an ignoble life.
+
+So, in the eightieth year of his age, while Hesychius was absent, he
+wrote a short letter, by way of testament, with his own hand, leaving to
+Hesychius all his riches; namely, his Gospel-book, and a sackcloth-shirt,
+hood, and mantle.  For his servant had died a few days before.  Many
+religious men came to him from Paphos while he was sick, especially
+because they had heard that he had said that now he was going to migrate
+to the Lord, and be freed from the chains of the body.  There came also
+Constantia, a high-born lady, whose son-in-law and daughter he had
+delivered from death by anointing them with oil.  And he made them all
+swear, that he should not be kept an hour after his death, but covered up
+with earth in that same garden, clothed, as he was, in his haircloth
+shirt, hood, and rustic cloak.  And now little heat was left in his body,
+and nothing of a living man was left, except his reason: and yet, with
+open eyes, he went on saying, “Go forth, what fearest thou?  Go forth, my
+soul, what doubtest thou?  Nigh seventy years hast thou served Christ,
+and dost thou fear death?”  With these words, he breathed out his soul.
+They covered him forthwith in earth, and told them in the city that he
+was buried, before it was known that he was dead.
+
+The holy man Hesychius heard this in Palestine; reached Cyprus; and
+pretending, in order to prevent suspicion on the part of the neighbours,
+who guarded the spot diligently, that he wished to dwell in that same
+garden, he, after some ten months, with extreme peril of his life, stole
+the corpse.  He carried it to Maiuma, followed by whole crowds of monks
+and townsfolk, and placed it in the old monastery, with the shirt, hood,
+and cloak unhurt; the whole body perfect, as if alive, and fragrant with
+such strong odour, that it seemed to have had unguents poured over it.
+
+I think that I ought not, in the end of my book, to be silent about the
+devotion of that most holy woman Constantia, who, hearing that the body
+of Hilarion, the servant of God, was gone to Palestine, straightway gave
+up the ghost, proving by her very death her true love for the servant of
+God.  For she was wont to pass nights in watching his sepulchre, and to
+converse with him as if he were present, in order to assist her prayers.
+You may see, even to this day, a wonderful contention between the folk of
+Palestine and the Cypriots, the former saying that they have the body,
+the latter that they have the soul, of Hilarion.  And yet, in both
+places, great signs are worked daily; but most in the little garden in
+Cyprus; perhaps because he loved that place the best.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+Such is the story of Hilarion.  His name still lingers in “the place he
+loved the best.”  “To this day,” I quote this fact from M. de
+Montalembert’s work, “the Cypriots, confounding in their memories legends
+of good and of evil, the victories of the soul and the triumph of the
+senses, give to the ruins of one of those strong castles built by the
+Lusignans, which command their isle, the double name of the Castle of St.
+Hilarion, and the Castle of the God of Love.”  But how intense must have
+been the longing for solitude which drove the old man to travel on foot
+from Syria to the Egyptian desert, across the pathless westward waste,
+even to the Oasis and the utmost limits of the Egyptian province; and
+then to Sicily, to the Adriatic, and at last to a distant isle of Greece.
+And shall we blame him for that longing?  He seems to have done his duty
+earnestly, according to his own light, towards his fellow-creatures
+whenever he met them.  But he seems to have found that noise and crowd,
+display and honour, were not altogether wholesome for his own soul; and
+in order that he might be a better man he desired again and again to
+flee, that he might collect himself, and be alone with Nature and with
+God.  We, here in England, like the old Greeks and Romans, dwellers in
+the busy mart of civilized life, have got to regard mere bustle as so
+integral an element of human life, that we consider a love of solitude a
+mark of eccentricity, and, if we meet any one who loves to be alone, are
+afraid that he must needs be going mad: and that with too great solitude
+comes the danger of too great self-consciousness, and even at last of
+insanity, none can doubt.  But still we must remember, on the other hand,
+that without solitude, without contemplation, without habitual collection
+and re-collection of our own selves from time to time, no great purpose
+is carried out, and no great work can be done; and that it is the bustle
+and hurry of our modern life which causes shallow thought, unstable
+purpose, and wasted energy, in too many who would be better and wiser,
+stronger and happier, if they would devote more time to silence and
+meditation; if they would commune with their own heart in their chamber,
+and be still.  Even in art and in mechanical science, those who have done
+great work upon the earth have been men given to solitary meditation.
+When Brindley, the engineer, it is said, had a difficult problem to
+solve, he used to go to bed, and stay there till he had worked it out.
+Turner, the greatest nature-painter of this or any other age, spent hours
+upon hours in mere contemplation of nature, without using his pencil at
+all.  It is said of him that he was seen to spend a whole day, sitting
+upon a rock, and throwing pebbles into a lake; and when at evening his
+fellow painters showed their day’s sketches, and rallied him upon having
+done nothing, he answered them, “I have done this at least: I have learnt
+how a lake looks when pebbles are thrown into it.”  And if this silent
+labour, this steadfast thought are required even for outward arts and
+sciences, how much more for the highest of all arts, the deepest of all
+sciences, that which involves the questions—who are we? and where are we?
+who is God? and what are we to God, and He to us?—namely, the science of
+being good, which deals not with time merely, but with eternity.  No
+retirement, no loneliness, no period of earnest and solemn meditation,
+can be misspent which helps us towards that goal.
+
+And therefore it was that Hilarion longed to be alone; alone with God;
+and with Nature, which spoke to him of God.  For these old hermits,
+though they neither talked nor wrote concerning scenery, nor painted
+pictures of it as we do now, had many of them a clear and intense
+instinct of the beauty and the meaning of outward Nature; as Antony
+surely had when he said that the world around was his book, wherein he
+read the mysteries of God.  Hilarion seems, from his story, to have had a
+special craving for the sea.  Perhaps his early sojourn on the low
+sandhills of the Philistine shore, as he watched the tideless
+Mediterranean, rolling and breaking for ever upon the same beach, had
+taught him to say with the old prophet as he thought of the wicked and
+still half idolatrous cities of the Philistine shore, “Fear ye not? saith
+the Lord; Will ye not tremble at my presence who have placed the sand for
+the bound of the sea, for a perpetual decree, that it cannot pass it?
+And though the waves thereof toss themselves, yet can they not prevail;
+though they roar, yet can they not pass over.  But this people has a
+revolted and rebellious heart, they are revolted and gone.”  Perhaps
+again, looking down from the sunny Sicilian cliffs of Taormino, or
+through the pine-clad gulfs and gullies of the Cypriote hills upon the
+blue Mediterranean below,
+
+    “And watching from his mountain wall
+    The wrinkled sea beneath him crawl,”
+
+he had enjoyed and profited by all those images which that sight has
+called up in so many minds before and since.  To him it may be, as to the
+Psalmist, the storm-swept sea pictured the instability of mortal things,
+while secure upon his cliff he said with the Psalmist, “The Lord hath set
+my feet upon a rock, and ordered my goings;” and again, “The wicked are
+like a troubled sea, casting up mire and dirt.”  Often, again, looking
+upon that far horizon, must his soul have been drawn, as many a soul has
+been drawn since, to it, and beyond it, as it were into a region of
+boundless freedom and perfect peace, while he said again with David, “Oh
+that I had wings like a dove; then would I flee away and be at rest!” and
+so have found, in the contemplation of the wide ocean, a substitute at
+least for the contemplation of those Eastern deserts which seemed the
+proper home for the solitary and meditative philosopher.
+
+For indeed in no northern country can such situations be found for the
+monastic cell as can be found in those great deserts which stretch from
+Syria to Arabia, from Arabia to Egypt, from Egypt to Africa properly so
+called.  Here and there a northern hermit found, as Hilarion found, a
+fitting home by the seaside, on some lonely island or storm-beat rock,
+like St. Cuthbert, off the coast of Northumberland; like St. Rule, on his
+rock at St. Andrew’s; and St. Columba, with his ever-venerable company of
+missionaries, on Iona.  But inland, the fens and the forests were foul,
+unwholesome, depressing, the haunts of fever, ague, delirium, as St.
+Guthlac found at Crowland, and St. Godric at Finkhale. {130}  The vast
+pine-woods which clothe the Alpine slopes, the vast forests of beech and
+oak which then spread over France and Germany, gave in time shelter to
+many a holy hermit.  But their gloom, their unwholesomeness, and the
+severity of the climate, produced in them, as in most northern ascetics,
+a temper of mind more melancholy, and often more fierce; more given to
+passionate devotion, but more given also to dark superstition and cruel
+self-torture, than the genial climate of the desert produced in old monks
+of the East.  When we think of St. Antony upon his mountain, we must not
+picture to ourselves, unless we, too, have been in the East, such a
+mountain as we have ever seen.  We must not think of a brown northern
+moorland, sad, savage, storm-swept, snow-buried, save in the brief and
+uncertain summer months.  We must not picture to ourselves an Alp, with
+thundering avalanches, roaring torrents, fierce alternations of heat and
+cold, uninhabitable by mortal man, save during that short period of the
+year when the maidens in the sennhutt watch the cattle upon the upland
+pastures.  We must picture to ourselves mountains blazing day after day,
+month after month, beneath the glorious sun and cloudless sky, in an air
+so invigorating that the Arabs can still support life there upon a few
+dates each day; and where, as has been said,—“Man needs there hardly to
+eat, drink, or sleep, for the act of breathing will give life enough;” an
+atmosphere of such telescopic clearness as to explain many of the strange
+stories which have been lately told of Antony’s seemingly preternatural
+powers of vision; a colouring, which, when painters dare to put it on
+canvas, seems to our eyes, accustomed to the quiet greys and greens of
+England, exaggerated and impossible—distant mountains, pink and lilac,
+quivering in pale blue haze—vast sheets of yellow sand, across which the
+lonely rock or a troop of wild asses or gazelles throw intense blue-black
+shadows—rocks and cliffs not shrouded, as here, in soil, much less in
+grass and trees, or spotted with lichens and stained with veins; but
+keeping each stone its natural colour, as it wastes—if, indeed, it wastes
+at all—under the action of the all but rainless air, which has left the
+paintings on the old Egyptian temples fresh and clear for thousands of
+years; rocks, orange and purple, black, white, and yellow; and again and
+again beyond them {131} glimpses, it may be, of the black Nile, and of
+the long green garden of Egypt, and of the dark blue sea.  The eastward
+view from Antony’s old home must be one of the most glorious in the
+world, save for its want of verdure and of life.  For Antony, as he
+looked across the blue waters of the Gulf of Akaba, across which, far
+above, the Israelites had passed in old times, could see the sacred goal
+of their pilgrimage, the red granite peaks of Sinai, flaming against the
+blue sky with that intensity of hue which is scarcely exaggerated, it is
+said, by the bright scarlet colour in which Sinai is always painted in
+mediæval illuminations.
+
+But the gorgeousness of colouring, though it may interest us, was not, of
+course, what produced the deepest effect upon the minds of those old
+hermits.  They enjoyed Nature, not so much for her beauty, as for her
+perfect peace.  Day by day the rocks remained the same.  Silently out of
+the Eastern desert, day by day, the rising sun threw aloft those arrows
+of light, which the old Greeks had named “the rosy fingers of the dawn.”
+Silently he passed in full blaze almost above their heads throughout the
+day; and silently he dipped behind the western desert in a glory of
+crimson and orange, green and purple; and without an interval of
+twilight, in a moment, all the land was dark, and the stars leapt out,
+not twinkling as in our damper climate here, but hanging like balls of
+white fire in that purple southern night, through which one seems to look
+beyond the stars into the infinite abyss, and towards the throne of God
+himself.  Day after day, night after night, that gorgeous pageant passed
+over the poor hermit’s head without a sound; and though sun and moon and
+planet might change their places as the year rolled round, the earth
+beneath his feet seemed not to change.  Every morning he saw the same
+peaks in the distance, the same rocks, the same sand-heaps around his
+feet.  He never heard the tinkle of a running stream.  For weeks together
+he did not even hear the rushing of the wind.  Now and then a storm might
+sweep up the pass, whirling the sand in eddies, and making the desert for
+a while literally a “howling wilderness;” and when that was passed all
+was as it had been before.  The very change of seasons must have been
+little marked to him, save by the motions, if he cared to watch them, of
+the stars above; for vegetation there was none to mark the difference
+between summer and winter.  In spring of course the solitary date-palm
+here and there threw out its spathe of young green leaves, to add to the
+number of those which, grey or brown, hung drooping down the stem,
+withering but not decaying for many a year in that dry atmosphere; or
+perhaps the accacia bushes looked somewhat gayer for a few weeks, and the
+Retama broom, from which as well as from the palm leaves he plaited his
+baskets, threw out its yearly crop of twigs; but any greenness there
+might be in the vegetation of spring, turned grey in a few weeks beneath
+that burning sun; and be rest of the year was one perpetual summer of
+dust and glare and rest.  Amid such scenes they had full time for
+thought.  Nature and man alike left it in peace; while the labour
+required for sustaining life (and the monk wished for nothing more than
+to sustain mere life) was very light.  Wherever water could be found, the
+hot sun and the fertile soil would repay by abundant crops, perhaps twice
+in the year, the toil of scratching the ground and putting in the seed.
+Moreover, the labour of the husbandman, so far from being adverse to the
+contemplative life, is of all occupations, it may be, that which promotes
+most quiet and wholesome meditation in the mind which cares to meditate.
+The life of the desert, when once the passions of youth were conquered,
+seems to have been not only a happy, but a healthy one.  And when we
+remember that the monk, clothed from head to foot in woollen, and
+sheltered, too, by his sheepskin cape, escaped those violent changes of
+temperature which produce in the East so many fatal diseases, and which
+were so deadly to the linen-clothed inhabitants of the green lowlands of
+the Nile, we need not be surprised when we read of the vast longevity of
+many of the old abbots; and of their death, not by disease, but by
+gentle, and as it were wholesome natural decay.
+
+But if their life was easy, it was surely not ill-spent.  If having few
+wants, and those soon supplied, they found too much time for the luxury
+of quiet thought, those need not blame them, who having many wants, and
+those also easily supplied, are wont to spend their superfluous leisure
+in any luxury save that of thought, above all save that of thought
+concerning God.  For it was upon God that these men, whatever their
+defects or ignorances may have been, had set their minds.  That man was
+sent into the world to know and to love, to obey and thereby to glorify,
+the Maker of his being, was the cardinal point of their creed, as it has
+been of every creed which ever exercised any beneficial influence on the
+minds of men.  Dean Milman in his “History of Christianity,” vol. iii.
+page 294, has, while justly severe upon the failings and mistakes of the
+Eastern monks, pointed out with equal justice that the great desire of
+knowing God was the prime motive in the mind of all their best men:—
+
+“In some regions of the East, the sultry and oppressive heat, the general
+relaxation of the physical system, dispose constitutions of a certain
+temperament to a dreamy inertness.  The indolence and prostration of the
+body produce a kind of activity in the mind, if that may properly be
+called activity which is merely giving loose to the imagination and the
+emotions as they follow out the wild train of incoherent thought, or are
+agitated by impulses of spontaneous and ungoverned feeling.  Ascetic
+Christianity ministered new aliment to this common propensity.  It gave
+an object, both vague and determinate enough to stimulate, yet never to
+satisfy or exhaust.  The regularity of stated hours of prayer, and of a
+kind of idle industry, weaving mats or plaiting baskets, alternated with
+periods of morbid reflection on the moral state of the soul, and of
+mystic communion with the Deity.  It cannot indeed be wondered that this
+new revelation, as it were, of the Deity, this profound and rational
+certainty of his existence, this infelt consciousness of his perpetual
+presence, these as yet unknown impressions of his infinity, his power,
+and his love, should give a higher character to this eremitical
+enthusiasm, and attract men of loftier and more vigorous minds within its
+sphere.  It was not merely the pusillanimous dread of encountering the
+trials of life which urged the humbler spirits to seek a safe retirement;
+or the natural love of peace, and the weariness and satiety of life,
+which commended this seclusion to those who were too gentle to mingle in,
+or who were exhausted with, the unprofitable turmoil of the world; nor
+was it always the anxiety to mortify the rebellious and refractory body
+with more advantage.  The one absorbing idea of the Majesty of the
+Godhead almost seemed to swallow up all other considerations.  The
+transcendent nature of the Triune Deity, the relation of the different
+persons of the Godhead to each other, seemed the only worthy object of
+men’s contemplative faculties.”
+
+And surely the contemplation of the Godhead is no unworthy occupation for
+the immortal soul of any human being.  But it would be unjust to these
+hermits did we fancy that their religion consisted merely even in this;
+much less that it consisted merely in dreams and visions, or in mere
+stated hours of prayer.  That all did not fulfil the ideal of their
+profession is to be expected, and is frankly confessed by the writers of
+the Lives of the Fathers; that there were serious faults, even great
+crimes, among them is not denied.  Those who wrote concerning them were
+so sure that they were on the whole good men, that they were not at all
+afraid of saying that some of them were bad,—not afraid, even, of
+recording, though only in dark hints, the reason why the Arab tribes
+around once rose and laid waste six churches with their monasteries in
+the neighbourhood of Scetis.  St. Jerome in like manner does not hesitate
+to pour out bitter complaints against many of the monks in the
+neighbourhood of Bethlehem.  It is notorious, too, that many became monks
+merely to escape slavery, hunger, or conscription into the army: Unruly
+and fanatical spirits, too, grew fond of wandering.  Bands of monks on
+the great roads and public places of the empire, Massalians or Gyrovagi,
+as they were called, wandered from province to province, and cell to
+cell, living on the alms which they extorted from the pious, and making
+up too often for protracted fasts by outbursts of gluttony and
+drunkenness.  And doubtless the average monk, even when well-conducted
+himself and in a well-conducted monastery, was, like average men of every
+creed, rank, or occupation, a very common-place person, acting from very
+mixed and often very questionable motives; and valuing his shaven crown
+and his sheepskin cloak, his regular hours of prayer and his implicit
+obedience to his abbot, more highly than he valued the fear and the love
+of God.
+
+It is so in every creed.  With some, even now, the strict observance of
+the Sabbath; with others, outward reverence at the Holy Communion; with
+others, the frequent hearing of sermons which suit heir own views; with
+others, continual reading of pious books (on the lessons of which they do
+not act), covers, instead of charity, a multitude of sins.  But the
+saint, abbot, or father among these hermits was essentially the man who
+was not a common-place person; who was more than an ascetic, and more
+than a formalist; who could pierce beyond the letter to the spirit, and
+see, beyond all forms of doctrine or modes of life, that virtue was the
+one thing needful.
+
+The Historia Lausiaca and the Pratum Spirituale have many a story and
+many a saying as weighty, beautiful, and instructive now as they were
+fifteen hundred years ago; stories which show that graces and virtues
+such as the world had never seen before, save in the persecuted and
+half-unknown Christians of the first three centuries, were cultivated to
+noble fruitfulness by the monks of the East.  For their humility,
+obedience, and reverence for their superiors it is not wise to praise
+them just now; for those are qualities which are not at present
+considered virtues, but rather (save by the soldier) somewhat abject
+vices; and indeed they often carried them, as they did their abstinence,
+to an extravagant pitch.  But it must be remembered, in fairness, that if
+they obeyed their supposed superiors, they had first chosen their
+superiors themselves; that as the becoming a monk at all was an assertion
+of self-will and independence, whether for good or evil, so their
+reverence for their abbots was a voluntary loyalty to one who they
+fancied had a right to rule them, because he was wiser and better than
+they; a feeling which some have found not degrading, but ennobling; and
+the parent, not of servility, but of true freedom.  And as for the
+obsolete virtue of humility, that still remains true which a voice said
+to Antony, when he saw the snares which were spread over the whole earth,
+and asked, sighing, “Who can pass safely over these?” and the voice
+answered, “Humility alone.”
+
+For the rest, if the Sermon on the Mount mean anything, as a practical
+rule of life for Christian men, then these monks were surely justified in
+trying to obey it, for to obey it they surely tried.
+
+The Words of the Elders, to which I have already alluded, and the
+Lausiaca of Palladius likewise, are full of precious scraps of moral
+wisdom, sayings, and anecdotes, full of nobleness, purity, pathos,
+insight into character, and often instinct with a quiet humour, which
+seems to have been, in the Old world, peculiar to the Egyptians, as it
+is, in the New, almost peculiar to the old-fashioned God-fearing
+Scotsman.
+
+Take these examples, chosen almost at random.
+
+Serapion the Sindonite was so called because he wore nothing but a
+sindon, or linen shirt.  Though he could not read, he could say all the
+Scriptures by heart.  He could not (says Palladius) sit quiet in his
+cell, but wandered over the world in utter poverty, so that he “attained
+to perfect impassibility, for with that nature he was born; for there are
+differences of natures, not of substances.”
+
+So says Palladius, and goes on to tell how Serapion sold himself to
+certain play-actors for twenty gold pieces, and laboured for them as a
+slave till he had won them to Christ, and made them renounce the theatre;
+after which he made his converts give the money to the poor, and went his
+way.
+
+On one of his journeys he came to Athens, and, having neither money nor
+goods, starved there for three days.  But on the fourth he went up,
+seemingly to the Areopagus, and cried, “Men of Athens, help!”  And when
+the crowd questioned him, he told them that he had, since he left Egypt,
+fallen into the hands of three usurers, two of whom he had satisfied, but
+the third would not leave him.
+
+On being promised assistance, he told them that his three usurers were
+avarice, sensuality, and hunger.  Of the two first he was rid, having
+neither money nor passions: but, as he had eaten nothing for three days,
+the third was beginning to be troublesome, and demanded its usual debt,
+without paying which he could not well live; whereon certain
+philosophers, seemly amused by his apologue, gave him a gold coin.  He
+went to a baker’s shop, laid down the coin, took up a loaf, and went out
+of Athens for ever.  Then the philosophers knew that he was endowed with
+true virtue; and when they had paid the baker the price of the loaf, got
+back their gold.
+
+When he went into Lacedæmon, he heard that a great man there was a
+Manichæan, with all his family, though otherwise a good man.  To him
+Serapion sold himself as a slave, and within two years converted him and
+his wife, who thenceforth treated him not as a slave, but as their own
+brother.
+
+After awhile, this “Spiritual adamant,” as Palladius calls him, bought
+his freedom of them, and sailed for Rome.  At sundown first the sailors,
+and then the passengers, brought out each man his provisions, and ate.
+Serapion sat still.  The crew fancied that he was sea-sick; but when he
+had passed a second, third, and fourth day fasting, they asked, “Man, why
+do you not eat?”  “Because I have nothing to eat.”  They thought that
+some one had stolen his baggage: but when they found that the man had
+absolutely nothing, they began to ask him not only how he would keep
+alive, but how he would pay his fare.  He only answered, “That he had
+nothing; that they might cast him out of the ship where they had found
+him.”
+
+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 Pœmen 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:
+Andabatæ, 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 Lanistæ; 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}
+
+One treasure, however, they did remove, of which the old soldier Ammianus
+says nothing, and which, had he seen it pass him on the road, he would
+have treated with supreme contempt.  And that, says Theodoret, was the
+holy body of “their prince and defender,” St. James the mountain hermit,
+round which the emigrants chanted, says Theodoret, hymns of regret and
+praise, “for, had he been alive, that city would have never passed into
+barbarian hands.”
+
+There stood with Jacob in the breach, during that siege of Nisibis, a man
+of gentler temperament, a disciple of his, who had received baptism at
+his hands, and who was, like himself, a hermit—Ephraim, or Ephrem, of
+Edessa, as he is commonly called, for, though born at Nisibis, his usual
+home was at Edessa, the metropolis of a Syrian-speaking race.  Into the
+Syrian tongue Ephrem translated the doctrines of the Christian faith and
+the Gospel history, and spread abroad, among the heathen round, a number
+of delicate and graceful hymns, which remain to this day, and of which
+some have lately been translated into English. {160}  Soft, sad, and
+dreamy as they were, they had strength and beauty enough in them to
+supersede the Gnostic hymns of Bardesanes and his son Harmonius, which
+had been long popular among the Syrians; and for centuries afterwards,
+till Christianity was swept away by the followers of Mahomet, the Syrian
+husbandman beguiled his toil with the pious and plaintive melodies of St.
+Ephrem.
+
+But Ephrem was not only a hermit and a poet: he was a preacher and a
+missionary.  If he wept, as it was said, day and night for his own sins
+and the sins of mankind, he did his best at least to cure those sins.  He
+was a demagogue, or leader of the people, for good and not for evil, to
+whom the simple Syrians looked up for many a year as their spiritual
+father.  He died in peace, as he said himself, like the labourer who has
+finished his day’s work, like the wandering merchant who returns to his
+fatherland, leaving nothing behind him save prayers and counsels, for
+“Ephrem,” he added, “had neither wallet nor pilgrim’s staff.”
+
+“His last utterance” (I owe this fact to M. de Montalembert’s book,
+“Moines d’Occident”) “was a protest on behalf of the dignity of man
+redeemed by the Son of God.”
+
+“The young and pious daughter of the Governor of Edessa came weeping to
+receive his latest breath.  He made her swear never again to be carried
+in a litter by slaves, ‘The neck of man,’ he said, ‘should bear no yoke
+save that of Christ.’”  This anecdote is one among many which go to prove
+that from the time that St. Paul had declared the great truth that in
+Christ Jesus was neither bond nor free, and had proclaimed the spiritual
+brotherhood of all men in Christ, slavery, as an institution, was doomed
+to slow but certain death.  But that death was accelerated by the
+monastic movement, wherever it took root.  A class of men who came not to
+be ministered unto, but to minister to others; who prided themselves upon
+needing fewer luxuries than the meanest slaves; who took rank among each
+other and among men not on the ground of race, nor of official position,
+nor of wealth, nor even of intellect, but simply on the ground of virtue,
+was a perpetual protest against slavery and tyranny of every kind; a
+perpetual witness to the world that, whether all men were equal or not in
+the sight of God, the only rank among them of which God would take note,
+would be their rank in goodness.
+
+
+
+
+BASIL
+
+
+ON the south shore of the Black Sea, eastward of Sinope, there dwelt in
+those days, at the mouth of the River Iris, a hermit as gentle and as
+pure as Ephrem of Edessa.  Beside a roaring waterfall, amid deep glens
+and dark forests, with distant glimpses of the stormy sea beyond, there
+lived on bread and water a graceful gentleman, young and handsome; a
+scholar too, who had drunk deeply at the fountains of Pagan philosophy
+and poetry, and had been educated with care at Constantinople and at
+Athens, as well as at his native city of Cæsaræa, in the heart of Asia
+Minor, now dwindled under Turkish misrule into a wretched village.  He
+was heir to great estates; the glens and forests round him were his own:
+and that was the use which he made of them.  On the other side of the
+torrent, his mother and his sister, a maiden of wonderful beauty, lived
+the hermit life, on a footing of perfect equality with their female
+slaves, and the pious women who had joined them.
+
+Basil’s austerities—or rather the severe climate of the Black Sea
+forests—brought him to an early grave.  But his short life was spent well
+enough.  He was a poet, with an eye for the beauty of Nature—especially
+for the beauty of the sea—most rare in those times; and his works are
+full of descriptions of scenery as healthy-minded as they are vivid and
+graceful.
+
+In his travels through Egypt, Palestine, and Syria, he had seen the
+hermits, and longed to emulate them; but (to do him justice) his ideal of
+the so-called “religious life” was more practical than those of the
+solitaries of Egypt, who had been his teachers.  “It was the life” (says
+Dean Milman {163}) “of the industrious religious community, not of the
+indolent and solitary anchorite, which to Basil was the perfection of
+Christianity. . . .  The indiscriminate charity of these institutions was
+to receive orphans” (of which there were but too many in those evil days)
+“of all classes, for education and maintenance: but other children only
+with the consent or at the request of parents, certified before
+witnesses; and vows were by no means to be enforced upon these youthful
+pupils.  Slaves who fled to the monasteries were to be admonished and
+sent back to their owners.  There is one reservation” (and that one only
+too necessary then), “that slaves were not bound to obey their master, if
+he should order what is contrary to the law of God.  Industry was to be
+the animating principle of these settlements.  Prayer and psalmody were
+to have their stated hours, but by no means to intrude on those devoted
+to useful labour.  These labours were strictly defined; such as were of
+real use to the community, not those which might contribute to vice or
+luxury.  Agriculture was especially recommended.  The life was in no
+respect to be absorbed in a perpetual mystic communion with the Deity.”
+
+The ideal which Basil set before him was never fulfilled in the East.
+Transported to the West by St. Benedict, “the father of all monks,” it
+became that conventual system which did so much during the early middle
+age, not only for the conversion and civilization, but for the arts and
+the agriculture of Europe.
+
+Basil, like his bosom friend, Gregory of Nazianzen, had to go forth from
+his hermitage into the world, and be a bishop, and fight the battles of
+the true faith.  But, as with Gregory, his hermit-training had
+strengthened his soul, while it weakened his body.  The Emperor Valens,
+supporting the Arians against the orthodox, sent to Basil his Prefect of
+the Prætorium, an officer of the highest rank.  The prefect argued,
+threatened; Basil was firm.  “I never met,” said he at last, “such
+boldness.”  “Because,” said Basil, “you never met a bishop.”  The prefect
+returned to his Emperor.  “My lord, we are conquered; this bishop is
+above threats.  We can do nothing but by force.”  The Emperor shrank from
+that crime, and Basil and the orthodoxy of his diocese were saved.  The
+rest of his life and of Gregory’s belongs, like that of Chrysostom, to
+general history, and we need pursue it no further here.
+
+I said that Basil’s idea of what monks should be was never carried out in
+the East, and it cannot be denied that, as the years went on, the hermit
+life took a form less and less practical, and more and more repulsive
+also.  Such men as Antony, Hilarion, Basil, had valued the ascetic
+training, not so much because it had, as they thought, a merit in itself,
+but because it enabled the spirit to rise above the flesh; because it
+gave them strength to conquer their passions and appetites, and leave
+their soul free to think and act.
+
+But their disciples, especially in Syria, seem to have attributed more
+and more merit to the mere act of inflicting want and suffering on
+themselves.  Their souls were darkened, besides, more and more, by a
+doctrine unknown to the Bible, unknown to the early Christians, and one
+which does not seem to have had any strong hold of the mind of Antony
+himself—namely, that sins committed after baptism could only be washed
+away by tears, and expiated by penance; that for them the merits of him
+who died for the sins of the whole world were of little or of no avail.
+
+Therefore, in perpetual fear of punishment hereafter, they set their
+whole minds to punish themselves on earth, always tortured by the dread
+that they were not punishing themselves enough, till they crushed down
+alike body, mind, and soul into an abject superstition, the details of
+which are too repulsive to be written here.  Some of the instances of
+this self-invented misery which are recorded, even as early as the time
+of Theodoret, bishop of Cyra, in the middle of the fifth century, make us
+wonder at the puzzling inconsistencies of the human mind.  Did these poor
+creatures really believe that God could be propitiated by the torture of
+his own creatures?  What sense could Theodoret (who was a good man
+himself) have put upon the words, “God is good,” or “God is love,” while
+he was looking with satisfaction, even with admiration and awe, on
+practices which were more fit for worshippers of Moloch?
+
+Those who think these words too strong, may judge for themselves how far
+they apply to his story of Marana and Cyra.
+
+Marana, then, and Cyra were two young ladies of Berhœa, who had given up
+all the pleasures of life to settle themselves in a roofless cottage
+outside the town.  They had stopped up the door with stones and clay, and
+allowed it only to be opened at the feast of Pentecost.  Around them
+lived certain female slaves who had voluntarily chosen the same life, and
+who were taught and exhorted through a little window by their mistresses;
+or rather, it would seem, by Marana alone: for Cyra (who was bent double
+by her “training”) was never to speak.  Theodoret, as a priest, was
+allowed to enter the sacred enclosure, and found them shrouded from head
+to foot in long veils, so that neither their faces or hands could be
+seen; and underneath their veils, burdened on every limb, poor wretches,
+with such a load of iron chains and rings that a strong man, he says,
+could not have stood under the weight.  Thus had they endured for
+two-and-forty years, exposed to sun and wind, to frost and rain, taking
+no food at times for many days together.  I have no mind to finish the
+picture, and still less to record any of the phrases of rapturous
+admiration with which Bishop Theodoret comments upon their pitiable
+superstition.
+
+
+
+
+SIMEON STYLITES
+
+
+Of all such anchorites of the far East, the most remarkable, perhaps, was
+the once famous Simeon Stylites—a name almost forgotten, save by
+antiquaries and ecclesiastics, till Mr. Tennyson made it once more
+notorious in a poem as admirable for its savage grandness, as for its
+deep knowledge of human nature.  He has comprehended thoroughly, as it
+seems to me, that struggle between self-abasement and self-conceit,
+between the exaggerated sense of sinfulness and the exaggerated ambition
+of saintly honour, which must have gone on in the minds of these
+ascetics—the temper which could cry out one moment with perfect honesty—
+
+    “Although I be the basest of mankind,
+    From scalp to sole one slough and crust of sin;”
+
+at the next—
+
+    “I will not cease to grasp the hope I hold
+    Of saintdom; and to clamour, mourn, and sob,
+    Battering the gates of heaven with storms of prayer.
+    Have mercy, Lord, and take away my sin.
+    Let this avail, just, dreadful, mighty God,
+    This not be all in vain, that thrice ten years
+    Thrice multiplied by superhuman pangs,
+                      * * * * * *
+    A sign between the meadow and the cloud,
+    Patient on this tall pillar I have borne
+    Rain, wind, frost, heat, hail, damp, and sleet, and snow;
+    And I had hoped that ere this period closed
+    Thou wouldst have caught me up into thy rest,
+    Denying not these weather-beaten limbs
+    The meed of saints, the white robe and the palm.
+    O take the meaning, Lord: I do not breathe,
+    Not whisper any murmur of complaint.
+    Pain heaped ten hundred-fold to this, were still
+    Less burthen, by ten-hundred-fold, to bear
+    Than were those lead-like tons of sin, that crush’d
+    My spirit flat before thee.”
+
+Admirably also has Mr. Tennyson conceived the hermit’s secret doubt of
+the truth of those miracles, which he is so often told that he has
+worked, that he at last begins to believe that he must have worked them;
+and the longing, at the same time, to justify himself to himself, by
+persuading himself that he has earned miraculous powers.  On this whole
+question of hermit miracles I shall speak at length hereafter.  I have
+given specimens enough of them already, and shall give as few as possible
+henceforth.  There is a sameness about them which may become wearisome to
+those who cannot be expected to believe them.  But what the hermits
+themselves thought of them, is told (at least, so I suspect) only too
+truly by Mr. Tennyson—
+
+       “O Lord, thou knowest what a man I am;
+    A sinful man, conceived and born in sin:
+    ’Tis their own doing; this is none of mine;
+    Lay it not to me.  Am I to blame for this,
+    That here come those who worship me?  Ha! ha!
+    The silly people take me for a saint,
+    And bring me offerings of fruit and flowers:
+    And I, in truth (thou wilt bear witness here),
+    Have all in all endured as much, and more
+    Than many just and holy men, whose names
+    Are register’d and calendar’d for saints.
+       Good people, you do ill to kneel to me.
+    What is it I can have done to merit this?
+    It may be I have wrought some miracles,
+    And cured some halt and maimed: but what of that?
+    It may be, no one, even among the saints,
+    Can match his pains with mine: but what of that?
+    Yet do not rise; for you may look on me,
+    And in your looking you may kneel to God.
+    Speak, is there any of you halt and maimed?
+    I think you know I have some power with heaven
+    From my long penance; let him speak his wish.
+       Yes, I can heal him.  Power goes forth from me.
+    They say that they are heal’d.  Ah, hark! they shout,
+    ‘St. Simeon Stylites!’  Why, if so,
+    God reaps a harvest in me.  O my soul,
+    God reaps a harvest in thee.  If this be,
+    Can I work miracles, and not be saved?
+    This is not told of any.  They were saints.
+    It cannot be but that I shall be saved;
+    Yea, crowned a saint.” . . .
+
+I shall not take the liberty of quoting more: but shall advise all who
+read these pages to study seriously Mr. Tennyson’s poem if they wish to
+understand that darker side of the hermit life which became at last, in
+the East, the only side of it.  For in the East the hermits seem to have
+degenerated, by the time of the Mahomedan conquest, into mere
+self-torturing fakeers, like those who may be seen to this day in
+Hindostan.  The salt lost its savour, and in due tune it was trampled
+under foot; and the armies of the Moslem swept out of the East a
+superstition which had ended by enervating instead of ennobling humanity.
+
+But in justice, not only to myself, but to Mr. Tennyson (whose details of
+Simeon’s asceticism may seem to some exaggerated and impossible), I have
+thought fit to give his life at length, omitting only many of his
+miracles, and certain stories of his penances, which can only excite
+horror and disgust, without edifying the reader.
+
+There were, then, three hermits of this name, often confounded; and all
+alike famous (as were Julian, Daniel, and other Stylites) for standing
+for many years on pillars.  One of the Simeons is said by Moschus to have
+been struck by lightning, and his death to have been miraculously
+revealed to Julian the Stylite, who lived twenty-four miles off.  More
+than one Stylite, belonging to the Monophysite heresy of Severus
+Acephalus, was to be found, according to Moschus, in the East at the
+beginning of the seventh century.  This biography is that of the elder
+Simeon, who died (according to Cedrenus) about 460, after passing some
+forty or fifty years upon pillars of different heights.  There is much
+discrepancy in the accounts, both of his date and of his age; but that
+such a person really existed, and had his imitators, there can be no
+doubt.  He is honoured as a saint alike by the Latin and by the Greek
+Churches.
+
+His life has been written by a disciple of his named Antony, who
+professes to have been with him when he died; and also by Theodoret, who
+knew him well in life.  Both are to be found in Rosweyde, and there seems
+no reason to doubt their authenticity.  I have therefore interwoven them
+both, marking the paragraphs taken from each.
+
+Theodoret, who says that he was born in the village of Gesa, between
+Antioch and Cilicia, calls him that “famous Simeon—that great miracle of
+the whole world, whom all who obey the Roman rule know; whom the Persians
+also know, and the Indians, and Æthiopians; nay, his fame has even spread
+to the wandering Scythians, and taught them his love of toil and love of
+wisdom;” and says that he might be compared with Jacob the patriarch,
+Joseph the temperate, Moses the legislator, David the king and prophet,
+Micaiah the prophet, and the divine men who were like them.  He tells how
+Simeon, as a boy, kept his father’s sheep, and, being forced by heavy
+snow to leave them in the fold, went with his parents to the church, and
+there heard the Gospel which blesses those who mourn and weep, and calls
+those miserable who laugh, and those enviable who have a pure heart.  And
+when he asked a bystander what he would gain who did each of these
+things, the man propounded to him the solitary life, and pointed out to
+him the highest philosophy.
+
+This, Theodoret says, he heard from the saint’s own tongue.  His disciple
+Antony gives the story of his conversion somewhat differently.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+St. Simeon (says Antony) was chosen by God from his birth, and used to
+study how to obey and please him.  Now his father’s name was Susocion,
+and he was brought up by his parents.
+
+When he was thirteen years old, he was feeding his father’s sheep; and
+seeing a church he left the sheep and went in, and heard an epistle being
+read.  And when he asked an elder, “Master, what is that which is read?”
+the old man replied, “For the substance (or very being) of the soul, that
+a man may learn to fear God with his whole heart, and his whole mind.”
+Quoth the blessed Simeon, “What is to fear God?”  Quoth the elder,
+“Wherefore troublest thou me, my son?”  Quoth he, “I inquire of thee, as
+of God.  For I wish to learn what I hear from thee, because I am ignorant
+and a fool.”  The elder answered, “If any man shall have fasted
+continually, and offered prayers every moment, and shall have humbled
+himself to every man, and shall not have loved gold, nor parents, nor
+garments, nor possessions, and if he honours his father and mother, and
+follows the priests of God, he shall inherit the eternal kingdom: but he
+who, on the contrary, does not keep those things, he shall inherit the
+outer darkness which God hath prepared for the devil and his angels.  All
+these things, my son, are heaped together in a monastery.”
+
+Hearing this, the blessed Simeon fell at his feet, saying, “Thou art my
+father and my mother, and my teacher of good works, and guide to the
+kingdom of heaven.  For thou hast gained my soul, which was already being
+sunk in perdition.  May the Lord repay thee again for it.  For these are
+the things which edify.  I will now go into a monastery, where God shall
+choose; and let his will be done on me.”  The elder said, “My son, before
+thou enterest, hear me.  Thou shalt have tribulation; for thou must watch
+and serve in nakedness, and sustain ills without ceasing; and again thou
+shalt be comforted, thou vessel precious to God.”
+
+And forthwith the blessed Simeon, going out of the church, went to the
+monastery of the holy Timotheus, a wonder-working man; and falling down
+before the gate of the monastery, he lay five days, neither eating nor
+drinking.  And on the fifth day, the abbot, coming out, asked him,
+“Whence art thou, my son?  And what parents hast thou, that thou art so
+afflicted?  Or what is thy name, lest perchance thou hast done some
+wrong?  Or perchance thou art a slave, and fleest from thy master?”  Then
+the blessed Simeon said with tears, “By no means, master; but I long to
+be a servant of God, if he so will, because I wish to save my lost soul.
+Bid me, therefore, enter the monastery, and leave all; and send me away
+no more.”  Then the Abbot, taking his hand, introduced him into the
+monastery, saying to the brethren, “My sons, behold I deliver you this
+brother; teach him the canons of the monastery.”  Now he was in the
+monastery about four months, serving all without complaint, in which he
+learnt the whole Psalter by heart, receiving every day divine food.  But
+the food which he took with his brethren he gave away secretly to the
+poor, not caring for the morrow.  So the brethren ate at even: but he
+only on the seventh day.
+
+But one day, having gone to the well to draw water, he took the rope from
+the bucket with which the brethren drew water, and wound it round his
+body from his loins to his neck: and going in, said to the brethren, “I
+went out to draw water, and found no rope on the bucket.”  And they said,
+“Hold thy peace, brother, lest the abbot know it; till the thing has
+passed over.”  But his body was wounded by the tightness and roughness of
+the rope, because it cut him to the bone, and sank into his flesh till it
+was hardly seen.  But one day, some of the brethren going out, found him
+giving his food to the poor; and when they returned, said to the abbot,
+“Whence hast thou brought us that man?  We cannot abstain like him, for
+he fasts from Lord’s day to Lord’s day, and gives away his food.” . . .
+Then the abbot, going out, found as was told him, and said, “Son, what is
+it which the brethren tell of thee?  Is it not enough for thee to fast as
+we do?  Hast thou not heard the Gospel, saying of teachers, that the
+disciple is not above his master?” . . . The blessed Simeon stood and
+answered nought.  And the abbot, being angry, bade strip him, and found
+the rope round him, so that only its outside appeared; and cried with a
+loud voice, saying, “Whence has this man come to us, wanting to destroy
+the rule of the monastery?  I pray thee depart hence, and go whither thou
+wiliest.”  And with great trouble they took off the rope, and his flesh
+with it, and taking care of him, healed him.
+
+But after he was healed he went out of the monastery, no man knowing of
+it, and entered a deserted tank, in which was no water, where unclean
+spirits dwelt.  And that very night it was revealed to the abbot, that a
+multitude of people surrounded the monastery with clubs and swords,
+saying, “Give us Simeon the servant of God, Timotheus; else we will burn
+thee with thy monastery, because thou hast angered a just man.”  And when
+he woke, he told the brethren the vision, and how he was much disturbed
+thereby.  And another night he saw a multitude of strong men standing and
+saying, “Give us Simeon the servant of God; for he is beloved by God and
+the angels: why hast thou vexed him?  He is greater than thou before God;
+for all the angels are sorry on his behalf.  And God is minded to set him
+on high in the world, that by him many signs may be done, such as no man
+has done.”  Then the abbot, rising, said with great fear to the brethren,
+“Seek me that man, and bring him hither, lest perchance we all die on his
+account.  He is truly a saint of God, for I have heard and seen great
+wonders of him.”  Then all the monks went out and searched, but in vain,
+and told the abbot how they had sought him everywhere, save in the
+deserted tank. . . .  Then the abbot went, with five brethren, to the
+tank.  And making a prayer, he went down into it with the brethren.  And
+the blessed Simeon, seeing him, began to entreat, saying, “I beg you,
+servants of God, let me alone one hour, that I may render up my spirit;
+for yet a little, and it will fail.  But my soul is very weary, because I
+have angered the Lord.”  But the abbot said to him, “Come, servant of
+God, that we may take thee to the monastery; for I know concerning thee
+that thou art a servant of God.”  But when he would not, they brought him
+by force to the monastery.  And all fell at his feet, weeping, and
+saying, “We have sinned against thee, servant of God; forgive us.”  But
+the blessed Simeon groaned, saying, “Wherefore do ye burden an unhappy
+man and a sinner?  You are the servants of God, and my fathers.”  And he
+stayed there about one year.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+After this (says Theodoret) he came to the Telanassus, under the peak of
+the mountain on which he lived till his death; and having found there a
+little house, he remained in it shut up for three years.  But eager
+always to increase the riches of virtue, he longed, in imitation of the
+divine Moses and Elias, to fast forty days; and tried to persuade Bassus,
+who was then set over the priests in the villages, to leave nothing
+within by him, but to close up the door with clay.  He spoke to him of
+the difficulty, and warned him not to think that a violent death was a
+virtue.  “Put by me then, father,” he said, “ten loaves, and a cruse of
+water, and if I find my body need sustenance, I will partake of them.”
+At the end of the days, that wonderful man of God, Bassus, removed the
+clay, and going in, found the food and water untouched, and Simeon lying
+unable to speak or move.  Getting a sponge, he moistened and opened his
+lips and then gave him the symbols of the divine mysteries; and,
+strengthened by them, he arose, and took some food, chewing little by
+little lettuces and succory, and such like.
+
+From that time, for twenty-eight years (says Theodoret), he had remained
+fasting continually for forty days at a time.  But custom had made it
+more easy to him.  For on the first days he used to stand and praise God;
+after that, when through emptiness he could stand no longer, he used to
+sit and perform the divine office; and on the last day, even lie down.
+For when his strength failed slowly, he was forced to lie half dead.  But
+after he stood on the column he could not bear to lie down, but invented
+another way by which he could stand.  He fastened a beam to the column,
+and tied himself to it by ropes, and so passed the forty days.  But
+afterwards, when he had received greater grace from on high, he did not
+want even that help: but stood for the forty days, taking no food, but
+strengthened by alacrity of soul and divine grace.
+
+When he had passed three years in that little house, he took possession
+of the peak which has since been so famous; and when he had commanded a
+wall to be made round him, and procured an iron chain, twenty cubits
+long, he fastened one end of it to a great stone, and the other to his
+right foot, so that he could not, if he wished, leave those bounds.
+There he lived, continually picturing heaven to himself, and forcing
+himself to contemplate things which are above the heavens; for the iron
+bond did not check the flight of his thoughts.  But when the wonderful
+Meletius, to whom the care of the episcopate of Antioch was then
+commended (a man of sense and prudence, and adorned with shrewdness of
+intellect), told him that the iron was superfluous, since the will is
+able enough to impose on the body the chains of reason, he gave way, and
+obeyed his persuasion.  And having sent for a smith, he bade him strike
+off the chain.
+
+[Here follow some painful details unnecessary to be translated.]
+
+When, therefore, his fame was flying far and wide everywhere, all ran
+together, not only the neighbours, but those who were many days’ journey
+off, some bringing the palsied, some begging health for the sick, some
+that they might become fathers, and all wishing to receive from him what
+they had not received from nature; and when they had received, and gained
+their request, they went back joyful, proclaiming the benefits they had
+obtained, and sending many more to beg the same.  So, as all are coming
+up from every quarter, and the road is like a river, one may see gathered
+in that place an ocean of men, which receives streams from every side;
+not only of those who live in our region, but Ishmaelites, and Persians,
+and the Armenians who are subject to them, and Iberi, and Homerites, and
+those who dwell beyond them.  Many have come also from the extreme west,
+Spaniards, and Britons, and Gauls who live between the two.  Of Italy it
+is superfluous to speak; for they say that at Rome the man has become so
+celebrated that they have put little images of him in all the porches of
+the shops, providing thereby for themselves a sort of safeguard and
+security.
+
+When, therefore, they came innumerable (for all tried to touch him, and
+receive some blessing from those skin garments of his), thinking it in
+the first place absurd and unfit that such exceeding honour should be
+paid him, and next, disliking the labour of the business, devised that
+station on the pillar, bidding one be built, first of six cubits, then of
+twelve, next of twenty-two, and now of thirty-six.  For he longs to fly
+up to heaven, and be freed from this earthly conversation.
+
+But I believe that this station was made not without divine counsel.
+Wherefore I exhort fault-finders to bridle their tongue, and not let it
+rashly loose, but rather consider that the Lord has often devised such
+things, that he might profit those who were too slothful.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+In proof of which, Theodoret quotes the examples of Isaiah, Hosea, and
+Ezekiel; and then goes on to say how God in like manner ordained this new
+and admirable spectacle, by the novelty of it drawing all to look, and
+exhibiting to those who came, a lesson which they could trust.  For the
+novelty of the spectacle (he says) is a worthy warrant for the teaching;
+and he who came to see goes away instructed in divine things.  And as
+those whose lot it is to rule over men, after a certain period of time,
+change the impressions on their coins, sometimes stamping them with
+images of lions, sometimes of stars, sometimes of angels, and trying, by
+a new mark, to make the gold more precious; so the King of all, adding to
+piety and true religion these new and manifold modes of living, as
+certain stamps on coin, excites to praise the tongues not only of the
+children of faith, but of those who are diseased with unbelief.  And that
+so it is, not only words bear witness, but facts proclaim aloud.  For
+many myriads of Ishmaelites, who were enslaved in the darkness of
+impiety, have been illuminated by that station on the column.  For this
+most shining lamp, set as it were upon a candlestick, sent forth all
+round its rays, like of the sun: and one may see (as I said) Iberi
+coming, and Persians, and Armenians, and accepting divine baptism.  But
+the Ishmaelites, coming by tribes, 200 and 300 at a time, and sometimes
+even 1,000, deny, with shouts, the error of their fathers; and breaking
+in pieces, before that great illuminator, the images which they had
+worshipped, and renouncing the orgies of Venus (for they had received
+from ancient times the worship of that dæmon), they receive the divine
+sacraments, and take laws from that holy tongue, bidding farewell to
+their ancestral rites, and renouncing the eating of wild asses and
+camels.  And this I have seen with my own eyes, and have heard them
+renouncing the impiety of their fathers, and assenting to the Evangelic
+doctrine.
+
+But once I was in the greatest danger: for he himself told them to go to
+me, and receive priestly benediction, saying that they would thence
+obtain great advantage.  But they, having run together in somewhat too
+barbarous fashion, some dragged me before, some behind, some sideways;
+and those who were further off, scrambling over the others, and
+stretching out their hands, plucked my beard, or seized my clothes; and I
+should have been stifled by their too warm onset, had not he, shouting
+out, dispersed them all.  Such usefulness has that column, which is
+mocked at by scornful men, poured forth; and so great a ray of the
+knowledge of God has it sent forth into the minds of barbarians.
+
+I know also of his having done another thing of this kind:—One tribe was
+beseeching the divine man, that he would send forth some prayer and
+blessing for their chief: but another tribe which was present retorted
+that he ought not to bless that chief, but theirs; for the one was a most
+unjust man, but the other averse to injustice.  And when there had been a
+great contention and barbaric wrangling between them, they attacked each
+other.  But I, using many words, kept exhorting them to be quiet, seeing
+that the divine man was able enough to give a blessing to both.  But the
+one tribe kept saying, that the first chief ought not to have it; and the
+other tribe trying to deprive the second chief of it.  Then he, by
+threatening them from above, and calling them dogs, hardly stilled the
+quarrel.  This I have told, wishing to show their great faith.  For they
+would not have thus gone mad against each other, had they not believed
+that the divine man’s blessing possesses some very great power.
+
+I saw another miracle, which was very celebrated.  One coming up (he,
+too, was a chief of a Saracen tribe) besought the divine personage that
+he would help a man whose limbs had given way in paralysis on the road;
+and he said the misfortune had fallen on him in Callinicus, which is a
+very large camp.  When he was brought into the midst, the saint bade him
+renounce the impiety of his forefathers; and when he willingly obeyed, he
+asked him if he believed in the Father, the only-begotten Son, and the
+Holy Spirit.  And when he confessed that he believed—“Believing,” said
+he, “in their names, Arise.”  And when the man had risen, he bade him
+carry away his chief (who was a very large man) on his shoulders to his
+tent.  He took him up, and went away forthwith; while those who were
+present raised their voices in praise of God.  This he commanded,
+imitating the Lord, who bade the paralytic carry his bed.  Let no man
+call this imitation tyranny.  For his saying is, “He who believeth in me,
+the works which I do, he shall do also, and more than these shall he do.”
+And, indeed, we have seen the fulfilment of this promise.  For though the
+shadow of the Lord never worked a miracle, the shadow of the great Peter
+both loosed death, and drove out diseases, and put dæmons to flight.  But
+the Lord it was who did also these miracles by his servants; and now
+likewise, using his name, the divine Simeon works his innumerable
+wonders.
+
+It befell also that another wonder was worked, by no means inferior to
+the last.  For among those who had believed in the saving name of the
+Lord Christ, an Ishmaelite, of no humble rank, had made a vow to God,
+with Simeon as witness.  Now his promise was this, that he would
+henceforth to the end abstain from animal food.  Transgressing this
+promise once, I know not how, he slew a bird, and dared to eat it.  But
+God being minded to bring him by reproof to conversion, and to honour his
+servant, who was a witness to the broken vow, the flesh of the bird was
+changed into the nature of a stone, so that, even if he wished, he could
+not thenceforth eat it.  For how could he, when the body meant for food
+had turned to stone?  The barbarian, stupified by this unexpected sight,
+came with great haste to the holy man, bringing to the light the sin
+which he had hidden, and proclaimed his transgression to all, begging
+pardon from God, and invoking the help of the saint, that by his
+all-powerful prayers he might loose him from the bonds of his sin.  Now
+many saw that miracle, and felt that the part of the bird about the
+breast consisted of bone and stone.
+
+But I was not only an ear-witness of his wonders, but also an ear-witness
+of his prophecies concerning futurity.  For that drought which came, and
+the great dearth of that year, and the famine and pestilence which
+followed together, he foretold two years before, saying that he saw a rod
+which was laid on man, stripes which would be inflicted by it.  Moreover,
+he at another time foretold an invasion of locusts, and that it would
+bring no great harm, because the divine clemency soon follows punishment.
+But when thirty days were past, an innumerable multitude of them hung
+aloft, so that they even cut off the sun’s rays and threw a shadow; and
+that we all saw plainly: but it only damaged the cattle pastures, and in
+no wise hurt the food of man.  To me, too, who was attacked by a certain
+person, he signified that the quarrel would end ere a fortnight was past;
+and I learned the truth of the prediction by experience.
+
+Moreover there were seen by him once two rods, which came down from the
+skies, and fell on the eastern and western lands.  Now the divine man
+said that they signified the rising of the Persian and Scythian nations
+against the Romans; and told the vision to those who were by, and with
+many tears and assiduous prayers, warded that disaster, the threat
+whereof hung over the earth.  Certainly the Persian nation, when already
+armed and prepared to invade the Romans, was kept back (the divine will
+being against them) from their attempt, and occupied at home with their
+own troubles.  But while I know many other cases of this kind, I shall
+pass them over to avoid prolixity.  These are surely enough to show the
+spiritual contemplation of his mind.
+
+His fame was great, also, with the King of the Persians; for as the
+ambassadors told, who came to him, he diligently inquired what was his
+life, and what his miracles.  But they say that the King’s wife also
+begged oil honoured by his blessing, and accepted it as the greatest of
+gifts.  Moreover, all the King’s courtiers, being moved by his fame, and
+having heard many slanders against him from the Magi, inquired
+diligently, and having learnt the truth, called him a divine man; while
+the rest of the crowd, coming to the muleteers and servants and soldiers,
+both offered money, and begged for a share in the oil of benediction.
+The Queen, too, of the Ishmaelites, longing to have a child, sent first
+some of her most noble subjects to the saint, beseeching him that she
+might become a mother.  And when her prayer had been granted, and she had
+her heart’s desire, she took the son who had been born, and went to the
+divine old man; and (because women were not allowed to approach him) sent
+the babe, entreating his blessing on it . . . [Here Theodoret puts into
+the Queen’s mouth words which it is unnecessary to quote.]
+
+But how long do I strive to measure the depths of the Atlantic sea?  For
+as they are unfathomable by man, so do the things which he does daily
+surpass narration.  I, however, admire above all these things his
+endurance; for night and day he stands, so as to be seen by all.  For as
+the doors are taken away, and a large part of the wall around pulled
+down, he is set forth as a new and wondrous spectacle to all; now
+standing long, now bowing himself frequently, and offering adoration to
+God.  Many of those who stand by count these adorations; and once a man
+with me, when he had counted 1,244, and then missed, gave up counting:
+but always, when he bows himself, he touches his feet with his forehead.
+For as his stomach takes food only once in the week, and that very
+little—no more than is received in the divine sacraments,—his back admits
+of being easily bent. . . .  But nothing which happens to him overpowers
+his philosophy; he bears nobly both voluntary and involuntary pains, and
+conquers both by readiness of will.
+
+There came once from Arabena a certain good man, and honoured with the
+ministry of Christ.  He, when he had come to that mountain peak,—“Tell
+me,” he cried, “by the very truth which converts the human race to
+itself—Art thou a man, or an incorporeal nature?”  But when all there
+were displeased with the question, the saint bade them all be silent, and
+said to him, “Why hast thou asked me this?”  He answered, “Because I hear
+every one saying publicly, that thou neither eatest nor sleepest; but
+both are properties of man, and no one who has a human nature could have
+lived without food and sleep.”  Then the saint bade them set a ladder to
+the column, and him to come up; and first to look at his hands, and then
+feel inside his cloak of skins; and to see not only his feet, but a
+severe wound.  But when he saw that he was a man, and the size of that
+wound, and learnt from him how he took nourishment, he came down and told
+me all.
+
+At the public festivals he showed an endurance of another kind.  For from
+the setting of the sun till it had come again to the eastern horizon, he
+stood all night with hands uplift to heaven, neither soothed with sleep
+nor conquered by fatigue.  But in toils so great, and so great a
+magnitude of deeds, and multitude of miracles, his self-esteem is as
+moderate as if he were in dignity the least of all men.  Beside his
+modesty, he is easy of access of speech, and gracious, and answers every
+man who speaks to him, whether he be handicraftsman, beggar, or rustic.
+And from the bounteous God he has received also the gift of teaching, and
+making his exhortations twice a day, he delights the ears of those who
+hear, discoursing much on grace, and setting forth the instructions of
+the Divine Spirit to look up and fly toward heaven, and depart from the
+earth, and imagine the kingdom which is expected, and fear the threats of
+Gehenna, and despise earthly things, and wait for things to come.  He may
+be seen, too, acting as judge, and giving right and just decisions.
+This, and the like, is done after the ninth hour.  For all night, and
+through the day to the ninth hour, he prays perpetually.  After that, he
+first sets forth the divine teaching to those who are present; then
+having heard each man’s petition, after he has performed some cures, he
+settles the quarrels of those between whom there is any dispute.  About
+sunset he begins the rest of his converse with God.  But though he is
+employed in this way, and does all this, he does not give up the care of
+the holy Churches, sometimes fighting with the impiety of the Greeks,
+sometimes checking the audacity of the Jews, sometimes putting to flight
+the bands of heretics, and sometimes sending messages concerning these
+last to the Emperor; sometimes, too, stirring up rulers to zeal for God,
+and sometimes exhorting the pastors of the Churches to bestow more care
+upon their flocks.
+
+I have gone through these facts, trying to show the shower by one drop,
+and to give those who meet with my writing a taste on the finger of the
+sweetness of the honey.  But there remains (as is to be expected) much
+more; and if he should live longer, he will probably add still greater
+wonders. . . .
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+Thus far Theodoret.  Antony gives some other details of Simeon’s life
+upon the column.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+The devil, he says, in envy transformed himself into the likeness of an
+angel, shining in splendour, with fiery horses, and a fiery chariot, and
+appeared close to the column on which the blessed Simeon stood, and shone
+with glory like an angel.  And the devil said with bland speeches,
+“Simeon, hear my words, which the Lord hath commanded thee.  He has sent
+me, his angel, with a chariot and horses of fire, that I may carry thee
+away, as I carried Elias.  For thy time is come.  Do thou, in like wise,
+ascend now with me into the chariot, because the Lord of heaven and earth
+has sent it down.  Let us ascend together into the heavens, that the
+angels and archangels may see thee, with Mary the mother of the Lord,
+with the Apostles and martyrs, the confessors and prophets; because they
+rejoice to see thee, that thou mayest pray to the Lord, who hast made
+thee after his own image.  Verily I have spoken to thee: delay not to
+ascend.”  Simeon, having ended his prayer, said, “Lord, wilt thou carry
+me, a sinner, into heaven?”  And lifting his right foot that he might
+step into the chariot, he lifted also his right hand, and made the sign
+of Christ.  When he had made the sign of the cross, forthwith the devil
+appeared nowhere, but vanished with his device, as dust before the face
+of the wind.  Then understood Simeon that it was an art of the devil.
+
+Having recovered himself, therefore, he said to his foot, “Thou shalt not
+return back hence, but stand here until my death, when the Lord shall
+send for me a sinner.”
+
+[Here follow more painful stories, which had best be omitted.]
+
+But after much time, his mother, hearing of his fame, came to see him,
+but was forbidden, because no woman entered that place.  But when the
+blessed Simeon heard the voice of his mother, he said to her, “Bear up,
+my mother, a little while, and we shall see each other, if God will.”
+But she, hearing this, began to weep, and tearing her hair, rebuked him,
+saying, “Son, why hast thou done this?  In return for the body in which I
+bore thee, thou hast filled me full of grief.  For the milk with which I
+nourished thee, thou hast given me tears.  For the kiss with which I
+kissed thee, thou hast given me bitter pangs of heart.  For the grief and
+labour which I have suffered, thou hast laid on me cruel stripes.”  And
+she spoke so much that she made us all weep.  The blessed Simeon, hearing
+the voice of her who bore him, put his face in his hands and wept
+bitterly; and commanded her, saying, “Lady mother, be still a little
+time, and we shall see each other in eternal rest.”  But she began to
+say, “By Christ, who formed thee, if there is a probability of seeing
+thee, who hast been so long a stranger to me, let me see thee; or if not,
+let me only hear thy voice and die at once; for thy father is dead in
+sorrow because of thee.  And now do not destroy me for very bitterness,
+my son.”  Saying this, for sorrow and weeping she fell asleep; for during
+three days and three nights she had not ceased entreating him.  Then the
+blessed Simeon prayed the Lord for her, and she forthwith gave up the
+ghost.
+
+But they took up her body, and brought it where he could see it.  And he
+said, weeping, “The Lord receive thee in joy, because thou hast endured
+tribulation for me, and borne me, and nursed and nourished me with
+labour.”  And as he said that, his mother’s countenance perspired, and
+her body was stirred in the sight of us all.  But he, lifting up his eyes
+to heaven, said, “Lord God of virtues, who sittest above the cherubim,
+and searchest the foundations of the abyss, who knewest Adam before he
+was; who hast promised the riches of the kingdom of heaven to those who
+love thee; who didst speak to Moses in the bush of fire; who blessedst
+Abraham our father; who bringest into Paradise the souls of the just, and
+sinkest the souls of the impious to perdition; who didst humble the
+lions, and mitigate for thy servants the strong fires of the Chaldees;
+who didst nourish Elisha by the ravens which brought him food—receive her
+soul in peace, and put her in the place of the holy fathers, for thine is
+the power for ever and ever.”
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+Antony then goes on to relate the later years of the saint’s life.
+
+He tells how Simeon, some time after this, ascended the column of forty
+cubits; how a great dragon (serpent) crawled towards it, and coiled round
+it, entreating (so it seemed) to be freed from a spike of wood which had
+entered its eye; and how, St. Simeon took pity on it, he caused the spike
+(which was a cubit long) to come out.
+
+He tells how a woman, drinking water from a jar at night, swallowed a
+snake unawares, which grew within her, till she was brought to the
+blessed Simeon, who commanded some of the water of the monastery to be
+given her; on which the serpent crawled out of her mouth, three cubits
+long, and burst immediately; and was hung up there seven days, as a
+testimony to many.
+
+He tells how, when there was great want of water, St. Simeon prayed till
+the earth opened on the east of the monastery, and a cave full of water
+was discovered, which had never failed them to that day.
+
+He tells how men, sitting beneath a tree, on their way to the saint, saw
+a doe go by, and commanded her to stop, “by the prayers of St. Simeon;”
+which when she had done, they killed and ate her, and came to St. Simeon
+with the skin.  But they were all struck dumb, and hardly cured after two
+years.  And the skin of the doe they hung up, for a testimony to many.
+
+He tells of a huge leopard, which slew men and cattle all around; and how
+St. Simeon bade sprinkle in his haunts soil or water from the monastery;
+and when men went again, they found the leopard dead.
+
+He tells how, when St. Simeon cured any one, he bade him go home, and
+honour God who had healed him, and not dare to say that Simeon had cured
+him, lest a worse thing should suddenly come to him; and not to presume
+to swear by the name of the Lord, for it was a grave sin; but to swear,
+“whether justly or unjustly, by him, lowly and a sinner.  Wherefore all
+the Easterns, and barbarous tribes in those regions, swear by Simeon.”
+
+He tells how a robber from Antioch, Jonathan by name, fled to St. Simeon,
+and embraced the column, weeping bitterly, and saying how he had
+committed every crime, and had come thither to repent.  And how the saint
+said, “Of such is the kingdom of heaven: but do not try to tempt me, lest
+thou be found again in the sins which thou hast cast away.”  Then came
+the officials from Antioch, demanding that he should be given up, to be
+cast to the wild beasts.  But Simeon answered, “My sons, I brought him
+not hither, but One greater than I; for he helps such as this man, and of
+such is the kingdom of heaven.  But if you can enter, carry him hence; I
+cannot give him up, for I fear him who has sent the man to me.”  And
+they, struck with fear, went away.  Then Jonathan lay for seven days
+embracing the column, and then asked the saint leave to go.  The saint
+asked him if he were going back to sin?  “No, lord,” he said; “but my
+time is fulfilled,” and straightway he gave up the ghost; and when
+officials came again from Antioch, demanding him, Simeon replied: “He who
+brought him came with a multitude of the heavenly host, and is able to
+send into Tartarus your city, and all who dwell in it, who also has
+reconciled this man to himself; and I was afraid lest he should slay me
+suddenly.  Therefore weary me no more, a humble man and poor.”
+
+But after a few years (says Antony) it befell one day that he bowed
+himself in prayer, and remained so three days—that is, the Friday, the
+Sabbath, and the Lord’s day.  Then I was terrified, and went up to him,
+and stood before his face, and said to him, “Master, arise: bless us; for
+the people have been waiting three days and three nights for a blessing
+from thee.”  And he answered me not; and I said again to him: “Wherefore
+dost thou grieve me, lord? or in what have I offended?  I beseech thee,
+put out thy hand to me; or, perchance, thou hast already departed from
+us?”
+
+And seeing that he did not answer, I thought to tell no one; for I feared
+to touch him: and, standing about half an hour, I bent down, and put my
+ear to listen; and there was no breathing: but a fragrance as of many
+scents rose from his body.  And so I understood that he rested in the
+Lord; and, turning faint, I wept most bitterly; and, bending down, I
+kissed his eyes, and clasped his beard and hair, and reproaching him, I
+said: “To whom dost thou leave me, lord? or where shall I seek thy
+angelic doctrine?  What answer shall I make for thee? or whose soul will
+look at this column, without thee, and not grieve?  What answer shall I
+make to the sick, when they come here to seek thee, and find thee not?
+What shall I say, poor creature that I am?  To-day I see thee; to-morrow
+I shall look right and left, and not find thee.  And what covering shall
+I put upon thy column?  Woe to me, when folk shall come from afar,
+seeking thee, and shall not find thee!”  And, for much sorrow, I fell
+asleep.
+
+And forthwith he appeared to me, and said: “I will not leave this column,
+nor this place, and this blessed mountain, where I was illuminated.  But
+go down, satisfy the people, and send word secretly to Antioch, lest a
+tumult arise.  For I have gone to rest, as the Lord willed: but do thou
+not cease to minister in this place, and the Lord shall repay thee thy
+wages in heaven.”
+
+But, rising from sleep, I said, in terror, “Master, remember me in thy
+holy rest.”  And, lifting up his garments, I fell at his feet, and kissed
+them; and, holding his hands, I laid them on my eyes, saying, “Bless me,
+I beseech thee, my lord!”  And again I wept, and said, “What relics shall
+I carry away from thee as memorials?”  And as I said that his body was
+moved; therefore I was afraid to touch him.
+
+And, that no one might know, I came down quickly, and sent a faithful
+brother to the Bishop at Antioch.  He came at once with three Bishops,
+and with them Ardaburius, the master of the soldiers, with his people,
+and stretched curtains round the column, and fastened their clothes
+around it.  For they were cloth of gold.
+
+And when they laid him down by the altar before the column, and gathered
+themselves together, birds flew round the column, crying, and as it were
+lamenting, in all men’s sight; and the wailing of the people and of the
+cattle resounded for seven miles away; yea, even the hills, and the
+fields, and the trees were sad around that place; for everywhere a dark
+cloud hung about it.  And I watched an angel coming to visit him; and,
+about the seventh hour, seven old men talked with that angel, whose face
+was like lightning, and his garments as snow.  And I watched his voice,
+in fear and trembling, as long as I could hear it; but what he said I
+cannot tell.
+
+But when the holy Simeon lay upon the bier, the Pope of Antioch, wishing
+to take some of his beard for a blessing, stretched out his hand; and
+forthwith it was dried up; and prayers were made to God for him, and so
+his hand was restored again.
+
+Then, laying the corpse on the bier, they took it to Antioch, with psalms
+and hymns.  But all the people round that region wept, because the
+protection of such mighty relics was taken from them, and because the
+Bishop of Antioch had sworn that no man should touch his body.
+
+But when they came to the fifth milestone from Antioch, to the village
+which is called Meroë, no one could move him.  Then a certain man, deaf
+and dumb for forty years, who had committed a very great crime, suddenly
+fell down before the bier, and began to cry, “Thou art well come, servant
+of God; for thy coming will save me: and if I shall obtain the grace to
+live, I will serve thee all the days of my life.”  And, rising, he caught
+hold of one of the mules which carried the bier, and forthwith moved
+himself from that place.  And so the man was made whole from that hour.
+
+Then all going out of the city of Antioch received the body of the holy
+Simeon on gold and silver, with psalms and hymns, and with many lamps
+brought it into the greater church, and thence to another church, which
+is called Penitence.  Moreover, many virtues are wrought at his tomb,
+more than in his life; and the man who was made whole served there till
+the day of his death.  But many offered treasures to the Bishop of
+Antioch for the faith, begging relics from the body: but, on account of
+his oath, he never gave them.
+
+I, Antony, lowly and a sinner, have set forth briefly, as far as I could,
+this lesson.  But blessed is he who has this writing in a book, and reads
+it in the church and house of God; and when he shall have brought it to
+his memory, he shall receive a reward from the Most High; to whom is
+honour, power, and virtue, for ever and ever.  Amen.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+After such a fantastic story as this of Simeon, it is full time (some
+readers may have thought that it was full time long since) to give my own
+opinion of the miracles, visions, dæmons, and other portents which occur
+in the lives of these saints.  I have refrained from doing so as yet,
+because I wished to begin by saying everything on behalf of these old
+hermits which could honestly be said, and to prejudice my readers’ minds
+in their favour rather than against them; because I am certain that if we
+look on them merely with scorn and ridicule,—if we do not acknowledge and
+honour all in them which was noble, virtuous, and honest,—we shall never
+be able to combat their errors, either in our own hearts or in those of
+our children: and that we may have need to do so is but too probable.  In
+this age, as in every other age of materialism and practical atheism, a
+revulsion in favour of superstition is at hand; I may say is taking place
+round us now.  Doctrines are tolerated as possibly true,—persons are
+regarded with respect and admiration, who would have been looked on, even
+fifty years ago, if not with horror, yet with contempt, as beneath the
+serious notice of educated English people.  But it is this very contempt
+which has brought about the change of opinion concerning them.  It has
+been discovered that they were not altogether so absurd as they seemed;
+that the public mind, in its ignorance, has been unjust to them; and, in
+hasty repentance for that injustice, too many are ready to listen to
+those who will tell them that these things are not absurd at all—that
+there is no absurdity in believing that the leg-bone of St. Simon Stock
+may possess miraculous powers, or that the spirits of the departed
+communicate with their friends by rapping on the table.  The ugly
+after-crop of superstition which is growing up among us now is the just
+and natural punishment of our materialism—I may say, of our practical
+atheism.  For those who will not believe in the real spiritual world, in
+which each man’s soul stands face to face all day long with Almighty God,
+the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, are sure at last to crave after
+some false spiritual world, and seek, like the evil and profligate
+generation of the Jews, after visible signs and material wonders.  And
+those who will not believe that the one true and living God is above
+their path and about their bed and spieth out all their ways, and that in
+him they live and move and have their being, are but too likely at last
+to people with fancied saints and dæmons that void in the imagination and
+in the heart which their own unbelief has made.
+
+Are we then to suppose that these old hermits had lost faith in God?  On
+the contrary, they were the only men in that day who had faith in God.
+And, if they had faith in any other things or persons beside God, they
+merely shared in the general popular ignorance and mistakes of their own
+age; and we must not judge those who, born in an age of darkness, were
+struggling earnestly toward the light, as we judge those who, born in an
+age of scientific light, are retiring of their own will back into the
+darkness.
+
+Before I enter upon the credibility of these alleged saints’ miracles, I
+must guard my readers carefully from supposing that I think miracles
+impossible.  Heaven forbid.  He would be a very rash person who should do
+that, in a world which swarms with greater wonders than those recorded in
+the biography of a saint.  For, after all, which is more wonderful, that
+God should be able to restore the dead to life, or that he should be able
+to give life at all?  Again, as for these miracles being contrary to our
+experience, that is no very valid argument against them; for equally
+contrary to our experience is every new discovery of science, every
+strange phenomenon among plants and animals, every new experiment in a
+chemical lecture.
+
+The more we know of science the more we must confess, that nothing is too
+strange to be true: and therefore we must not blame or laugh at those who
+in old times believed in strange things which were not true.  They had an
+honest and rational sense of the infinite and wonderful nature of the
+universe, and of their own ignorance about it; and they were ready to
+believe anything, as the truly wise man will be ready also.  Only, from
+ignorance of the laws of the universe, they did not know what was likely
+to be true and what was not; and therefore they believed many things
+which experience has proved to be false; just as Seba or any of the early
+naturalists were ready to believe in six-legged dragons, or in the fatal
+power of the basilisk’s eye; fancies which, if they had been facts, would
+not have been nearly as wonderful as the transformation of the commonest
+insect, or the fertilization of the meanest weed: but which are rejected
+now, not because they are too wonderful, but simply because experience
+has proved them to be untrue.  And experience, it must be remembered, is
+the only sound test of truth.  As long as men will settle beforehand for
+themselves, without experience, what they ought to see, so long will they
+be perpetually fancying that they or others have seen it; and their
+faith, as it is falsely called, will delude not only their reason, but
+their very hearing, sight, and touch.
+
+In this age we see no supernatural prodigies, because there are none to
+see; and when we are told that the reason why we see no prodigies is
+because we have no faith, we answer (if we be sensible), Just so.  As
+long as people had faith, in plain English believed, that they could be
+magically cured of a disease, they thought that they or others were so
+cured.  As long as they believed that ghosts could be seen, every silly
+person saw them.  As long as they believed that dæmons transformed
+themselves into an animal’s shape, they said, “The devil croaked at me
+this morning in the shape of a raven; and therefore my horse fell with
+me.”  As long as they believed that witches could curse them, they
+believed that an old woman in the next parish had overlooked them, their
+cattle, and their crops; and that therefore they were poor, diseased, and
+unfortunate.  These dreams, which were common among the peasants in
+remote districts five-and-twenty years ago, have vanished, simply from
+the spread (by the grace of God, as I hold) of an inductive habit of
+mind; of the habit of looking coolly, boldly, carefully, at facts; till
+now, even among the most ignorant peasantry, the woman who says that she
+has seen a ghost is likely not to be complimented on her assertion.  But
+it does not follow that that woman’s grandmother, when she said that she
+saw a ghost, was a consciously dishonest person; on the contrary, so
+complex and contradictory is human nature, she would have been, probably,
+a person of more than average intellect and earnestness; and her instinct
+of the invisible and the infinite (which is that which raises man above
+the brutes) would have been, because misinformed, the honourable cause of
+her error.  And thus we may believe of the good hermits, of whom
+prodigies are recorded.
+
+As to the truth of the prodigies themselves, there are several ways of
+looking at them.
+
+First, we may neither believe nor disbelieve them; but talk of them as
+“devout fairy tales,” religious romances, and allegories; and so save
+ourselves the trouble of judging whether they were true.  That is at
+least an easy and pleasant method; very fashionable in a careless,
+unbelieving age like this: but in following it we shall be somewhat
+cowardly; for there is hardly any matter a clear judgment on which is
+more important just now than these same saints’ miracles.
+
+Next, we may believe them utterly and all; and that is also an easy and
+pleasant method.  But if we follow it, we shall be forced to believe,
+among other facts, that St. Paphnutius was carried miraculously across a
+river, because he was too modest to undress himself and wade; that St.
+Helenus rode a savage crocodile across a river, and then commanded it to
+die; and that it died accordingly upon the spot; and that St. Goar,
+entering the palace of the Archbishop of Trêves, hung his cape on a
+sunbeam, mistaking it for a peg.  And many other like things we shall be
+forced to believe, with which this book has no concern.
+
+Or, again, we may believe as much as we can, because we should like, if
+we could, to believe all.  But as we have not—no man has as yet—any
+criterion by which we can judge how much of these stories we ought to
+believe and how much not, which actually happened and which did not,
+therefore we shall end (as not only the most earnest and pious, but the
+most clear and logical persons, who have taken up this view, have ended
+already) by believing all: which is an end not to be desired.
+
+Or we may believe as few as possible of them, because we should like, if
+we could, to believe none.  And this method, for the reason aforesaid
+(namely, that there is no criterion by which we can settle what to
+believe and what not), usually ends in believing none at all.
+
+This, of believing none at all, is the last method; and this, I confess
+fairly, I am inclined to think is the right one; and that these good
+hermits worked no real miracles and saw no real visions whatsoever.
+
+I confess that this is a very serious assertion.  For there is as much
+evidence in favour of these hermits’ miracles and visions as there is,
+with most men, of the existence of China; and much more than there, with
+most men, is of the earth’s going round the sun.
+
+But the truth is, that evidence, in most matters of importance, is worth
+very little.  Very few people decide a question on its facts, but on
+their own prejudices as to what they would like to have happened.  Very
+few people are judges of evidence; not even of their own eyes and ears.
+Very few persons, when they see a thing, know what they have seen, and
+what not.  They tell you quite honestly, not what they saw, but what they
+think they ought to have seen, or should like to have seen.  It is a fact
+too often conveniently forgotten, that in every human crowd the majority
+will be more or less bad, or at least foolish; the slaves of anger,
+spite, conceit, vanity, sordid hope, and sordid fear.  But let them be as
+honest and as virtuous as they may, pleasure, terror, and the desire of
+seeming to have seen or heard more than their neighbours, and all about
+it, make them exaggerate.  If you take apart five honest men, who all
+stood by and saw the same man do anything strange, offensive, or even
+exciting, no two of them will give you quite the same account of it.  If
+you leave them together, while excited, an hour before you question them,
+they will have compared notes and made up one story, which will contain
+all their mistakes combined; and it will require the skill of a practised
+barrister to pick the grain of wheat out of the chaff.
+
+Moreover, when people are crowded together under any excitement, there is
+nothing which they will not make each other believe.  They will make each
+other believe in spirit-rapping, table-turning, the mesmeric fluid,
+electro-biology; that they saw the lion on Northumberland House wagging
+his tail; {203} that witches have been seen riding in the air; that the
+Jews had poisoned the wells; that—but why go further into the sad
+catalogue of human absurdities, and the crimes which have followed them?
+Every one is ashamed of not seeing what every one else sees, and
+persuades himself against his own eye sight for fear of seeming stupid or
+ill-conditioned; and therefore in all evidence, the fewer witnesses, the
+more truth, because the evidence of ten men is worth more than that of a
+hundred together; and the evidence of a thousand men together is worth
+still less.
+
+Now, if people are savage and ignorant, diseased and poverty-stricken;
+even if they are merely excited and credulous, and quite sure that
+something wonderful must happen, then they will be also quite certain
+that something wonderful has happened; and their evidence will be worth
+nothing at all.
+
+Moreover, suppose that something really wonderful has happened; suppose,
+for instance, that some nervous or paralytic person has been suddenly
+restored to strength by the command of a saint or of some other
+remarkable man.  This is quite possible, I may say common; and it is
+owing neither to physical nor to so-called spiritual causes, but simply
+to the power which a strong mind has over a weak one, to make it exert
+itself, and cure itself by its own will, though but for a time.
+
+When this good news comes to be told, and to pass from mouth to mouth, it
+ends of quite a different shape from that in which it began.  It has been
+added to, taken from, twisted in every direction according to the fancy
+or the carelessness of each teller, till what really happened in the
+first case no one will be able to say; {204} and this is, therefore, what
+actually happened, in the case of these reported wonders.  Moreover (and
+this is the most important consideration of all) for men to be fair
+judges of what really happens, they must have somewhat sound minds in
+somewhat sound bodies; which no man can have (however honest and
+virtuous) who gives himself up, as did these old hermits, to fasting and
+vigils.  That continued sleeplessness produces delusions, and at last
+actual madness, every physician knows; and they know also, as many a poor
+sailor has known when starving on a wreck, and many a poor soldier in
+such a retreat as that of Napoleon from Moscow, that extreme hunger and
+thirst produce delusions also, very similar to (and caused much in the
+same way as) those produced by ardent spirits; so that many a wretched
+creature ere now has been taken up for drunkenness, who has been simply
+starving to death.
+
+Whence it follows that these good hermits, by continual fasts and vigils,
+must have put themselves (and their histories prove that they did put
+themselves) into a state of mental disease, in which their evidence was
+worth nothing; a state in which the mind cannot distinguish between facts
+and dreams; in which life itself is one dream; in which (as in the case
+of madness, or of a feverish child) the brain cannot distinguish between
+the objects which are outside it and the imaginations which are inside
+it.  And it is plain, that the more earnest and pious, and therefore the
+more ascetic, one of these good men was, the more utterly would his brain
+be in a state of chronic disease.  God forbid that we should scorn them,
+therefore, or think the worse of them in any way.  They were animated by
+a truly noble purpose, the resolution to be good according to their
+light; they carried out that purpose with heroical endurance, and they
+have their reward: but this we must say, if we be rational people, that
+on their method of holiness, the more holy any one of them was, the less
+trustworthy was his account of any matter whatsoever; and that the
+hermit’s peculiar temptations (quite unknown to the hundreds of unmarried
+persons who lead quiet and virtuous, because rational and healthy, lives)
+are to be attributed, not as they thought, to a dæmon, but to a more or
+less unhealthy nervous system.
+
+It must be remembered, moreover, in justice to these old hermits, that
+they did not invent the belief that the air was full of dæmons.  All the
+Eastern nations had believed in Genii (Jinns), Fairies (Peris), and
+Devas, Divs, or devils.  The Devas of the early Hindus were beneficent
+beings: to the eyes of the old Persians (in their hatred of idolatry and
+polytheism), they appeared evil beings, Divs, or Devils.  And even so the
+genii and dæmons of the Roman Empire became, in the eyes of the early
+Christians, wicked and cruel spirits.
+
+And they had their reasons, and on the whole sound ones, for so regarding
+them.  The educated classes had given up any honest and literal worship
+of the old gods.  They were trying to excuse themselves for their
+lingering half belief in them, by turning them into allegories, powers of
+nature, metaphysical abstractions, as did Porphyry and Iamblichus,
+Plotinus and Proclus, and the rest of the Neo-Platonist school of
+aristocratic philosophers and fine ladies: but the lower classes still,
+in every region, kept up their own local beliefs and worships, generally
+of the most foul and brutal kind.  The animal worship of Egypt among the
+lower classes was sufficiently detestable in the time of Herodotus.  It
+had certainly not improved in that of Juvenal and Persius; and was still
+less likely to have improved afterwards.  This is a subject so shocking
+that it can be only hinted at.  But as a single instance—what wonder if
+the early hermits of Egypt looked on the crocodile as something diabolic,
+after seeing it, for generations untold, petted and worshipped in many a
+city, simply because it was the incarnate symbol of brute strength,
+cruelty, and cunning?  We must remember, also, that earlier generations
+(the old Norsemen and Germans just as much as the old Egyptians) were
+wont to look on animals as more miraculous than we do; as more akin, in
+many cases, to human beings; as guided, not by a mere blind instinct, but
+by an intellect which was allied to, and often surpassed man’s intellect.
+“The bear,” said the old Norsemen, “had ten men’s strength, and eleven
+men’s wit;” and in some such light must the old hermits have looked on
+the hyæna, “bellua,” the monster _par excellence_; or on the crocodile,
+the hippopotamus, and the poisonous snakes, which have been objects of
+terror and adoration in every country where they have been formidable.
+Whether the hyænas were dæmons, or were merely sent by the dæmons, St.
+Antony and St. Athanasius do not clearly define, for they did not know.
+It was enough for them that the beasts prowled at night in those desert
+cities, which were, according to the opinions, not only of the Easterns,
+but of the Romans, the special haunt of ghouls, witches, and all uncanny
+things.  Their fiendish laughter—which, when heard even in a modern
+menagerie, excites and shakes most person’s nerves—rang through hearts
+and brains which had no help or comfort, save in God alone.  The beast
+tore up the dead from their graves; devoured alike the belated child and
+the foulest offal; and was in all things a type and incarnation of that
+which man ought not to be.  Why should not he, so like the worst of men,
+have some bond or kindred with the evil beings who were not men?  Why
+should not the graceful and deadly cobra, the horrid cerastes, the huge
+throttling python, and even more, the loathly puff-adder,
+undistinguishable from the gravel among which he lay coiled, till he
+leaped furiously and unswerving, as if shot from a bow, upon his prey—why
+should not they too be kindred to that evil power who had been, in the
+holiest and most ancient books, personified by the name of the Serpent?
+Before we have a right to say that the hermits’ view of these deadly
+animals was not the most rational, as well as the most natural, which
+they could possibly have taken up, we must put ourselves in their places;
+and look at nature as they had learnt to look at it, not from Scripture
+and Christianity, so much as from the immemorial traditions of their
+heathen ancestors.
+
+If it be argued, that they ought to have been well enough acquainted with
+these beasts to be aware of their merely animal nature, the answer
+is—that they were probably not well acquainted with the beasts of the
+desert.  They had never, perhaps, before their “conversion,” left the
+narrow valley, well tilled and well inhabited, which holds the Nile.  A
+climb from it into the barren mountains and deserts east and west was a
+journey out of the world into chaos, and the region of the unknown and
+the horrible, which demanded high courage from the unarmed and effeminate
+Egyptian, who knew not what monster he might meet ere sundown.  Moreover,
+it is very probable that during these centuries of decadence, in Egypt,
+as in other parts of the Roman Empire, “the wild beasts of the field had
+increased” on the population, and were reappearing in the more cultivated
+grounds.
+
+But these old hermits appear perpetually in another, and a more humane,
+if not more human aspect, as the miraculous tamers of savage beasts.
+Those who wish to know all which can be alleged in favour of their having
+possessed such a power, should read M. de Montalembert’s chapter, “Les
+Moines et la Nature.” {209}  All that learning and eloquence can say in
+favour of the theory is said there; and with a candour which demands from
+no man full belief of many beautiful but impossible stories, “travesties
+of historic verity,” which have probably grown up from ever-varying
+tradition in the course of ages.  M. de Montalembert himself points out a
+probable explanation of many of them:—An ingenious scholar of our
+times{210} (he says) has pointed out their true and legitimate origin—at
+least in Ancient Gaul.  According to him, after the gradual disappearance
+of the Gallo-Roman population, the oxen, the horses, the dogs had
+returned to the wild state; and it was in the forest that the Breton
+missionaries had to seek these animals, to employ them anew for domestic
+use.  The miracle was, to restore to man the command and the enjoyment of
+those creatures, which God had given him as instruments.
+
+This theory is probable enough, and will explain, doubtless, many
+stories.  It may even explain those of tamed wolves, who may have been
+only feral dogs, _i.e._ dogs run wild.  But it will not explain those in
+which (in Ireland as well as in Gaul) the stag appears as obeying the
+hermit’s commands.  The twelve huge stags who come out of the forest to
+draw the ploughs for St. Leonor and his monks, or those who drew to his
+grave the corpse of the Irish hermit Kellac, or those who came out of the
+forest to supply the place of St. Colodoc’s cattle, which the seigneur
+had carried off in revenge for his having given sanctuary to a hunted
+deer, must have been wild from the beginning; and many another tale must
+remain without any explanation whatsoever—save the simplest of all.
+Neither can any such theory apply to the marvels vouched for by St.
+Athanasius, St. Jerome, and other contemporaries, which “show us (to
+quote M. de Montalembert) the most ferocious animals at the feet of such
+men as Antony, Pachomius, Macarius, and Hilarion, and those who copied
+them.  At every page one sees wild asses, crocodiles, hippopotami,
+hyænas, and, above all, lions, transformed into respectful companions and
+docile servants of these prodigies of sanctity; and one concludes thence,
+not that these beasts had reasonable souls, but that God knew how to
+glorify those who devoted themselves to his glory, and thus show how all
+Nature obeyed man before he was excluded from Paradise by his
+disobedience.”
+
+This is, on the whole, the cause which the contemporary biographers
+assign for these wonders.  The hermits were believed to have returned, by
+celibacy and penitence, to “the life of angels;” to that state of perfect
+innocence which was attributed to our first parents in Eden: and
+therefore of them our Lord’s words were true: “He that believeth in me,
+greater things than these (which I do) shall he do.”
+
+But those who are of a different opinion will seek for different causes.
+They will, the more they know of these stories, admire often their
+gracefulness, often their pathos, often their deep moral significance;
+they will feel the general truth of M. de Montalembert’s words: “There is
+not one of them which does not honour and profit human nature, and which
+does not express a victory of weakness over force, and of good over
+evil.”  But if they look on physical facts as sacred things, as the voice
+of God revealed in the phenomena of matter, their first question will be,
+“Are they true?”
+
+Some of them must be denied utterly, like that of St. Helenus, riding and
+then slaying the crocodile.  It did not happen.  Abbot Ammon {212a} did
+not make two dragons guard his cell against robbers.  St. Gerasimus
+{212b} did not set the lion, out of whose foot he had taken a thorn, to
+guard his ass; and when the ass was stolen by an Arabian camel-driver, he
+did not (fancying that the lion had eaten the ass) make him carry water
+in the ass’s stead.  Neither did the lion, when next he met the thief and
+the ass, bring them up, in his own justification, {212c} to St.
+Gerasimus.  St. Costinian did not put a pack-saddle on a bear, and make
+him carry a great stone.  A lioness did not bring her five blind whelps
+to a hermit, that he might give them sight. {212d}  And, though Sulpicius
+Severus says that he saw it with his own eyes, {212e} it is hard to
+believe the latter part of the graceful story which he tells—of an old
+hermit whom he found dwelling alone twelve miles from the Nile, by a well
+of vast depth.  One ox he had, whose whole work was to raise the water by
+a wheel.  Around him was a garden of herbs, kept rich and green amid the
+burning sand, where neither seed nor root could live.  The old man and
+the ox fed together on the produce of their common toil; but two miles
+off there was a single palm-tree, to which, after supper, the hermit
+takes his guests.  Beneath the palm they find a lioness; but instead of
+attacking them, she moves “modestly” away at the old man’s command, and
+sits down to wait for her share of dates.  She feeds out of his hand,
+like a household animal, and goes her way, leaving her guests trembling,
+“and confessing how great was the virtue of the hermit’s faith, and how
+great their own infirmity.”
+
+This last story, which one would gladly believe, were it possible, I have
+inserted as one of those which hang on the verge of credibility.  In the
+very next page, Sulpicius Severus tells a story quite credible, of a
+she-wolf, which he saw with his own eyes as tame as any dog.  There can
+be no more reason to doubt that fact than to ascribe it to a miracle.  We
+may even believe that the wolf, having gnawed to pieces the palm basket
+which the good old man was weaving, went off, knowing that she had done
+wrong, and after a week came back, begged pardon like a rational soul,
+and was caressed, and given a double share of bread.  Many of these
+stories which tell of the taming of wild beasts may be true, and yet
+contain no miracle.  They are very few in number, after all, in
+proportion to the number of monks; they are to be counted at most by
+tens, while the monks are counted by tens of thousands.  And among many
+great companies of monks, there may have been one individual, as there
+is, for instance, in many a country parish a bee-taker or a horse-tamer,
+of quiet temper and strong nerve, and quick and sympathetic intellect,
+whose power over animals is so extraordinary, as to be attributed by the
+superstitious and uneducated to some hereditary secret, or some fairy
+gift.  Very powerful to attract wild animals must have been the good
+hermits’ habit of sitting motionless for hours, till (as with St.
+Guthlac) the swallows sat and sang upon his knee; and of moving slowly
+and gently at his work, till (as with St. Karilef, while he pruned his
+vines) the robin came and built in his hood as it hung upon a tree: very
+powerful his freedom from anger, and, yet more important, from fear,
+which always calls out rage in wild beasts, while a calm and bold front
+awes them: and most powerful of all, the kindliness of heart, the love of
+companionship, which brought the wild bison to feed by St. Karilef’s side
+as he prayed upon the lawn; and the hind to nourish St. Giles with her
+milk in the jungles of the Bouches du Rhône.  There was no miracle; save
+the moral miracle that, in ages of cruelty and slaughter, these men had
+learned (surely by the inspiration of God) how—
+
+    “He prayeth well who loveth well
+    Both man and bird and beast;
+    He prayeth best who loveth best
+    All things, both great and small;
+    For the dear God who loveth us,
+    He made and loveth all.”
+
+After all, let these old Lives of the Fathers tell their own tale.  By
+their own merits let them stand or fall; and stand they will in one
+sense: for whatsoever else they are not, this they are—the histories of
+good men.  Their physical science and their dæmonology may have been on a
+par with those of the world around them: but they possessed what the
+world did not possess, faith in the utterly good and self-sacrificing
+God, and an ideal of virtue and purity such as had never been seen since
+the first Whitsuntide.  And they set themselves to realize that ideal
+with a simplicity, an energy, an endurance, which were altogether heroic.
+How far they were right in “giving up the world” depends entirely on what
+the world was then like, and whether there was any hope of reforming it.
+It was their opinion that there was no such hope; and those who know best
+the facts which surrounded them, its utter frivolity, its utter
+viciousness, the deadness which had fallen on art, science, philosophy,
+human life, whether family, social, or political; the prevalence of
+slavery, in forms altogether hideous and unmentionable; the insecurity of
+life and property, whether from military and fiscal tyranny, or from
+perpetual inroads of the so-called “Barbarians:” those, I say, who know
+these facts best will be most inclined to believe that the old hermits
+were wise in their generation; that the world was past salvation; that it
+was not a wise or humane thing to marry and bring children into the
+world; that in such a state of society, an honest and virtuous man could
+not exist, and that those who wished to remain honest and virtuous must
+flee into the desert, and be alone with God and their fellows.
+
+The question which had to be settled then and there, at that particular
+crisis of the human race, was not—Are certain wonders true or false?
+but—Is man a mere mortal animal, or an immortal soul?  Is his flesh meant
+to serve his spirit, or his spirit his flesh?  Is pleasure, or virtue,
+the end and aim of his existence?
+
+The hermits set themselves to answer that question, not by arguing or
+writing about it, but by the only way in which any question can be
+settled—by experiment.  They resolved to try whether their immortal souls
+could not grow better and better, while their mortal bodies were utterly
+neglected; to make their flesh serve their spirit; to make virtue their
+only end and aim; and utterly to relinquish the very notion of pleasure.
+To do this one thing, and nothing else, they devoted their lives; and
+they succeeded.  From their time it has been a received opinion, not
+merely among a few philosophers or a few Pharisees, but among the lowest,
+the poorest, the most ignorant, who have known aught of Christianity,
+that man is an immortal soul; that the spirit, and not the flesh, ought
+to be master and guide; that virtue is the highest good; and that purity
+is a virtue, impurity a sin.  These men were, it has been well said, the
+very fathers of purity.  And if, in that and in other matters, they
+pushed their purpose to an extreme—if, by devoting themselves utterly to
+it alone, they suffered, not merely in wideness of mind or in power of
+judging evidence, but even in brain, till they became some of them at
+times insane from over-wrought nerves—it is not for us to blame the
+soldier for the wounds which have crippled him, or the physician for the
+disease which he has caught himself while trying to heal others.  Let us
+not speak ill of the bridge which carries us over, nor mock at those who
+did the work for us as seemed to them best, and perhaps in the only way
+in which it could be done in those evil days.  As a matter of fact,
+through these men’s teaching and example we have learnt what morality,
+purity, and Christianity we possess; and if any answer that we have
+learnt them from the Scriptures, who but these men preserved the
+Scriptures to us?  Who taught us to look on them as sacred and inspired?
+Who taught us to apply them to our own daily lives, and find comfort and
+teaching in every age, in words written ages ago by another race in a
+foreign land?  The Scriptures were the book, generally the only book,
+which they read and meditated, not merely from morn till night, but, as
+far as fainting nature would allow, from night to morn again: and their
+method of interpreting them (as far as I can discover) differed in
+nothing from that common to all Christians now, save that they
+interpreted literally certain precepts of our Lord and of St. Paul which
+we consider to have applied only to the “temporary necessity” of a
+decayed, dying, and hopeless age such as that in which they lived.  And
+therefore, because they knew the Scripture well, and learned in it
+lessons of true virtue and true philosophy, though unable to save
+civilization in the East, they were able at least to save it in the West.
+The European hermits, and the monastic communities which they originated,
+were indeed a seed of life, not merely to the conquered Roman population
+of Gaul or Spain or Britain, but to the heathen and Arian barbarians who
+conquered them.  Among those fierce and armed savages, the unarmed
+hermits stood, strong only by justice, purity, and faith in God, defying
+the oppressor, succouring the oppressed, and awing and softening the new
+aristocracy of the middle age, which was founded on mere brute force and
+pride of race; because the monk took his stand upon mere humanity;
+because he told the wild conqueror, Goth or Sueve, Frank or Burgund,
+Saxon or Norseman, that all men were equal in the sight of God; because
+he told them (to quote Athanasius’s own words concerning Antony) that
+“virtue is not beyond human nature;” that the highest moral excellence
+was possible to the most low-born and unlettered peasant whom they
+trampled under their horses’ hoofs, if he were only renewed and
+sanctified by the Spirit of God.  They accepted the lowest and commonest
+facts of that peasant’s wretched life; they outdid him in helplessness,
+loneliness, hunger, dirt, and slavery; and then said, “Among all these I
+can yet be a man of God, wise, virtuous, pure, free, and noble in the
+sight of God, though not in the sight of Cæsars, counts, and knights.”
+They went on, it is true, to glorify the means above the end; to
+consecrate childlessness, self-torture, dirt, ignorance, as if they were
+things pleasing to God and holy in themselves.  But in spite of those
+errors they wrought throughout Europe a work which, as far as we can
+judge, could have been done in no other way; done only by men who gave up
+all that makes life worth having for the sake of being good themselves
+and making others good.
+
+
+
+
+THE HERMITS OF EUROPE
+
+
+MOST readers will recollect what an important part in the old ballads and
+romances is played by the hermit.
+
+He stands in strongest contrast to the knight.  He fills up, as it were,
+by his gentleness and self-sacrifice, what is wanting in the manhood of
+the knight, the slave too often of his own fierceness and self-assertion.
+The hermit rebukes him when he sins, heals him when he is wounded, stays
+his hand in some mad murderous duel, such as was too common in days when
+any two armed horsemen meeting on road or lawn ran blindly at each other
+in the mere lust of fighting, as boars or stags might run.  Sometimes he
+interferes to protect the oppressed serf; sometimes to rescue the hunted
+deer which has taken sanctuary at his feet.  Sometimes, again, his
+influence is that of intellectual superiority; of worldly experience; of
+the travelled man who has seen many lands and many nations.  Sometimes,
+again, that of sympathy; for he has been a knight himself, and fought and
+sinned, and drank of the cup of vanity and vexation of spirit, like the
+fierce warrior who kneels at his feet.
+
+All who have read (and all ought to have read) Spenser’s Fairy Queen,
+must recollect his charming description of the hermit with whom Prince
+Arthur leaves Serena and the squire after they have been wounded by “the
+blatant beast” of Slander; when—
+
+             “Toward night they came unto a plain
+       By which a little hermitage there lay
+    Far from all neighbourhood, the which annoy it may.
+
+       “And nigh thereto a little chapel stood,
+       Which being all with ivy overspread
+       Decked all the roof, and shadowing the rood,
+       Seemed like a grove fair branchèd overhead;
+       Therein the hermit which his here led
+       In straight observance of religious vow,
+       Was wont his hours and holy things to bed;
+       And therein he likewise was praying now,
+    When as these knights arrived, they wist not where nor how.
+
+       “They stayed not there, but straightway in did pass:
+       Who when the hermit present saw in place,
+       From his devotions straight he troubled was;
+       Which breaking off, he toward them did pace
+       With staid steps and grave beseeming grace:
+       For well it seemed that whilom he had been
+       Some goodly person, and of gentle race,
+       That could his good to all, and well did ween
+    How each to entertain with courtesy beseen.
+
+                                  * * * * *
+
+       “He thence them led into his hermitage,
+       Letting their steeds to graze upon the green:
+       Small was his house, and like a little cage,
+       For his own term, yet inly neat and clean,
+       Decked with green boughs, and flowers gay beseen
+       Therein he them full fair did entertain,
+       Not with such forgèd shews, as fitter been
+       For courting fools that courtesies would feign,
+    But with entire affection and appearance plain.
+
+                                  * * * * *
+
+       How be that careful hermit did his best
+       With many kinds of medicines meet to tame
+       The poisonous humour that did most infest
+    Their reakling wounds, and every day them duly dressed.
+
+       “For he right well in leech’s craft was seen;
+       And through the long experience of his days,
+       Which had in many fortunes tossèd been,
+       And passed through many perilous assays:
+       He knew the divers want of mortal ways,
+       And in the minds of men had great insight;
+       Which with sage counsel, when they went astray,
+       He could inform and them reduce aright;
+    And all the passions heal which wound the weaker sprite.
+
+       “For whilome he had been a doughty knight,
+       As any one that livèd in his days,
+       And provèd oft in many a perilous fight,
+       In which he grace and glory won always,
+       And in all battles bore away the bays:
+       But being now attached with timely age,
+       And weary of this world’s unquiet ways,
+       He took himself unto this hermitage,
+    In which he lived alone like careless bird in cage.”
+
+This picture is not poetry alone: it is history.  Such men actually
+lived, and such work they actually did, from the southernmost point of
+Italy to the northernmost point of Scotland, during centuries in which
+there was no one else to do the work.  The regular clergy could not have
+done it.  Bishops and priests were entangled in the affairs of this
+world, striving to be statesmen, striving to be landowners, striving to
+pass Church lands on from father to son, and to establish themselves as
+an hereditary caste of priests.  The chaplain or house-priest who was to
+be found in every nobleman’s, almost every knight’s castle, was apt to
+become a mere upper servant, who said mass every morning in return for
+the good cheer which he got every evening, and fetched and carried at the
+bidding of his master and mistress.  But the hermit who dwelt alone in
+the forest glen, occupied, like an old Hebrew prophet, a superior and an
+independent position.  He needed nought from any man save the scrap of
+land which the lord was only too glad to allow him in return for his
+counsels and his prayers.  And to him, as to a mysterious and
+supernatural personage, the lord went privately for advice in his
+quarrels with the neighbouring barons, or with his own kin.  To him the
+lady took her children when they were sick, to be healed, as she fancied,
+by his prayers and blessings; or poured into his ears a hundred secret
+sorrows and anxieties which she dare not tell to her fierce lord, who
+hunted and fought the livelong day, and drank too much liquor every
+night.
+
+This class of men sprang up rapidly, by natural causes, and yet by a
+Divine necessity, as soon as the Western Empire was conquered by the
+German tribes; and those two young officers whom we saw turning monks at
+Trêves, in the time of St. Augustine, may, if they lived to be old men,
+have given sage counsel again and again to fierce German knights and
+kinglets, who had dispossessed the rich and effeminate landowners of
+their estates, and sold them, their wives, and children, in gangs by the
+side of their own slaves.  Only the Roman who had turned monk would
+probably escape that fearful ruin; and he would remain behind, while the
+rest of his race was enslaved or swept away, as a seed of Christianity
+and of civilization, destined to grow and spread, and bring the wild
+conquerors in due time into the kingdom of God.
+
+For the first century or two after the invasion of the barbarians, the
+names of the hermits and saints are almost exclusively Latin.  Their
+biographies represent them in almost every case as born of noble Roman
+parents.  As time goes on, German names appear, and at last entirely
+supersede the Latin ones; showing that the conquering race had learned
+from the conquered to become hermits and monks like them.
+
+
+
+
+ST. SEVERINUS, THE APOSTLE OF NORICUM
+
+
+OF all these saintly civilizers, St. Severinus of Vienna is perhaps the
+most interesting, and his story the most historically instructive. {224}
+
+A common time, the middle of the fifth century, the province of Noricum
+(Austria, as we should now call it) was the very highway of invading
+barbarians, the centre of the human Maelstrom in which Huns, Alemanni,
+Rugi, and a dozen wild tribes more, wrestled up and down and round the
+starving and beleaguered towns of what had once been a happy and fertile
+province, each tribe striving to trample the other under foot, and to
+march southward over their corpses to plunder what was still left of the
+already plundered wealth of Italy and Rome.  The difference of race, in
+tongue, and in manners, between the conquered and their conquerors, was
+made more painful by difference in creed.  The conquering Germans and
+Huns were either Arians or heathens.  The conquered race (though probably
+of very mixed blood), who called themselves Romans, because they spoke
+Latin and lived under the Roman law, were orthodox Catholics; and the
+miseries of religious persecution were too often added to the usual
+miseries of invasion.
+
+It was about the year 455–60.  Attila, the great King of the Huns, who
+called himself—and who was—“the Scourge of God,” was just dead.  His
+empire had broken up.  The whole centre of Europe was in a state of
+anarchy and war; and the hapless Romans along the Danube were in the last
+extremity of terror, not knowing by what fresh invader their crops would
+be swept off up to the very gates of the walled towers which were their
+only defence: when there appeared among them, coming out of the East, a
+man of God.
+
+Who he was, he would not tell.  His speech showed him to be an African
+Roman—a fellow-countryman of St. Augustine—probably from the
+neighbourhood of Carthage.  He had certainly at one time gone to some
+desert in the East, zealous to learn “the more perfect life.”  Severinus,
+he said, was his name; a name which indicated high rank, as did the
+manners and the scholarship of him who bore it.  But more than his name
+he would not tell.  “If you take me for a runaway slave,” he said,
+smiling, “get ready money to redeem me with when my master demands me
+back.”  For he believed that they would have need of him; that God had
+sent him into that land that he might be of use to its wretched people.
+And certainly he could have come into the neighbourhood of Vienna at that
+moment for no other purpose than to do good, unless he came to deal in
+slaves.
+
+He settled first at a town called by his biographer Casturis; and,
+lodging with the warden of the church, lived quietly the hermit life.
+Meanwhile the German tribes were prowling round the town; and Severinus,
+going one day into the church, began to warn the priests and clergy and
+all the people that a destruction was coming on them which they could
+only avert by prayer and fasting and the works of mercy.  They laughed
+him to scorn, confiding in their lofty Roman walls, which the
+invaders—wild horsemen, who had no military engines—were unable either to
+scale or batter down.  Severinus left the town at once, prophesying, it
+was said, the very day and hour of its fall.  He went on to the next
+town, which was then closely garrisoned by a barbarian force, and
+repeated his warning there: but while the people were listening to him,
+there came an old man to the gate, and told them how Casturis had been
+already sacked, as the man of God had foretold; and, going into the
+church, threw himself at the feet of St. Severinus, and said that he had
+been saved by his merits from being destroyed with his fellow-townsmen.
+
+Then the dwellers in the town hearkened to the man of God, and gave
+themselves up to fasting and almsgiving and prayer for three whole days.
+
+And on the third day, when the solemnity of the evening sacrifice was
+fulfilled, a sudden earthquake happened, and the barbarians, seized with
+panic fear, and probably hating and dreading—like all those wild
+tribes—confinement between four stone walls instead of the free open life
+of the tent and the stockade, forced the Romans to open their gates to
+them, rushed out into the night, and in their madness slew each other.
+
+In those days a famine fell upon the people of Vienna; and they, as their
+sole remedy, thought good to send for the man of God from the
+neighbouring town.  He went, and preached to them, too, repentance and
+almsgiving.  The rich, it seems, had hidden up their stores of corn, and
+left the poor to starve.  At least St. Severinus discovered (by Divine
+revelation, it was supposed), that a widow named Procula had done as
+much.  He called her out into the midst of the people, and asked her why
+she, a noble woman and free-born, had made herself a slave to avarice,
+which is idolatry.  If she would not give her corn to Christ’s poor, let
+her throw it into the Danube to feed the fish, for any gain from it she
+would not have.  Procula was abashed, and served out her hoards thereupon
+willingly to the poor; and a little while afterwards, to the astonishment
+of all, vessels came down the Danube, laden with every kind of
+merchandise.  They had been frozen up for many days near Passau, in the
+thick ice of the river Enns: but the prayers of God’s servant (so men
+believed) had opened the ice-gates, and let them down the stream before
+the usual time.
+
+Then the wild German horsemen swept around the walls, and carried off
+human beings and cattle, as many as they could find.  Severinus, like
+some old Hebrew prophet, did not shrink from advising hard blows, where
+hard blows could avail.  Mamertinus, the tribune, or officer in command,
+told him that he had so few soldiers, and those so ill-armed, that he
+dare not face the enemy.  Severinus answered, that they should get
+weapons from the barbarians themselves; the Lord would fight for them,
+and they should hold their peace: only if they took any captives they
+should bring them safe to him.  At the second milestone from the city
+they came upon the plunderers, who fled at once, leaving their arms
+behind.  Thus was the prophecy of the man of God fulfilled.  The Romans
+brought the captives back to him unharmed.  He loosed their bonds, gave
+them food and drink, and let them go.  But they were to tell their
+comrades that, if ever they came near that spot again, celestial
+vengeance would fall on them, for the God of the Christians fought from
+heaven in his servants’ cause.
+
+So the barbarians trembled, and went away.  And the fear of St. Severinus
+fell on all the Goths, heretic Arians though they were; and on the Rugii,
+who held the north bank of the Danube in those evil days.  St. Severinus,
+meanwhile, went out of Vienna, and built himself a cell at a place called
+“At the Vineyards.”  But some benevolent impulse—Divine revelation, his
+biographer calls it—prompted him to return, and build himself a cell on a
+hill close to Vienna, round which other cells soon grew up, tenanted by
+his disciples.  “There,” says his biographer, “he longed to escape the
+crowds of men who were wont to come to him, and cling closer to God in
+continual prayer: but the more he longed to dwell in solitude, the more
+often he was warned by revelations not to deny his presence to the
+afflicted people.”  He fasted continually; he went barefoot even in the
+midst of winter, which was so severe, the story continues, in those days
+around Vienna, that wagons crossed the Danube on the solid ice: and yet,
+instead of being puffed-up by his own virtues, he set an example of
+humility to all, and bade them with tears to pray for him, that the
+Saviour’s gifts to him might not heap condemnation on his head.
+
+Over the wild Rugii St. Severinus seems to have acquired unbounded
+influence.  Their king, Flaccitheus, used to pour out his sorrows to him,
+and tell him how the princes of the Goths would surely slay him; for when
+he had asked leave of him to pass on into Italy, he would not let him go.
+But St. Severinus prophesied to him that the Goths would do him no harm.
+Only one warning he must take: “Let it not grieve him to ask peace even
+for the least of men.”
+
+The friendship which had thus begun between the barbarian king and the
+cultivated saint was carried on by his son Feva: but his “deadly and
+noxious wife” Gisa, who appears to have been a fierce Arian, always, says
+his biographer, kept him back from clemency.  One story of Gisa’s
+misdeeds is so characteristic both of the manners of the time and of the
+style in which the original biography is written, that I shall take leave
+to insert it at length.
+
+“The King Feletheus (who is also Feva), the son of the aforementioned
+Flaccitheus, following his father’s devotion, began, at the commencement
+of his reign, often to visit the holy man.  His deadly and noxious wife,
+named Gisa, always kept him back from the remedies of clemency.  For she,
+among the other plague-spots of her iniquity, even tried to have certain
+Catholics re-baptized: but when her husband did not consent, on account
+of his reverence for St. Severinus, she gave up immediately her
+sacrilegious intention, burdening the Romans, nevertheless, with hard
+conditions, and commanding some of them to be exiled to the Danube.  For
+when one day, she, having come to the village next to Vienna, had ordered
+some of them to be sent over the Danube, and condemned to the most menial
+offices of slavery, the man of God sent to her, and begged that they
+might be let go.  But she, blazing up in a flame of fury, ordered the
+harshest of answers to be returned.  ‘I pray thee,’ she said, ‘servant of
+God, hiding there within thy cell, allow us to settle what we choose
+about our own slaves.’  But the man of God hearing this, ‘I trust,’ he
+said, ‘in my Lord Jesus Christ, that she will be forced by necessity to
+fulfil that which in her wicked will she has despised.’  And forthwith a
+swift rebuke followed, and brought low the soul of the arrogant woman.
+For she had confined in close custody certain barbarian goldsmiths, that
+they might make regal ornaments.  To them the son of the aforesaid king,
+Frederic by name, still a little boy, had gone in, in childish levity, on
+the very day on which the queen had despised the servant of God.  The
+goldsmiths put a sword to the child’s breast, saying, that if any one
+attempted to enter without giving them an oath that they should be
+protected, he should die; and that they would slay the king’s child
+first, and themselves afterwards, seeing that they had no hope of life
+left, being worn out with long prison.  When she heard that, the cruel
+and impious queen, rending her garments for grief, cried out, ‘O servant
+of God, Severinus, are the injuries which I did thee thus avenged?  Hast
+thou obtained by the earnest prayer thou hast poured out this punishment
+for my contempt, that thou shouldst avenge it on my own flesh and blood?’
+Then, running up and down with manifold contrition and miserable
+lamentation, she confessed that for the act of contempt which she had
+committed against the servant of God she was struck by the vengeance of
+the present blow; and forthwith she sent knights to ask for forgiveness,
+and sent across the river the Romans his prayers for whom she had
+despised.  The goldsmiths, having received immediately a promise of
+safety, and giving up the child, were in like manner let go.
+
+“The most reverend Severinus, when he heard this, gave boundless thanks
+to the Creator, who sometimes puts off the prayers of suppliants for this
+end, that as faith, hope, and charity grow, while lesser things are
+sought, He may concede greater things.  Lastly, this did the mercy of the
+Omnipotent Saviour work, that while it brought to slavery a woman free,
+but cruel overmuch, she was forced to restore to liberty those who were
+enslaved.  This having been marvellously gained, the queen hastened with
+her husband to the servant of God, and showed him her son, who, she
+confessed, had been freed from the verge of death by his prayers, and
+promised that she would never go against his commands.”
+
+To this period of Severinus’s life belongs the once famous story of his
+interview with Odoacer, the first barbarian king of Italy, and brother of
+the great Onulph or Wolf, who was the founder of the family of the
+Guelphs, Counts of Altorf, and the direct ancestors of Victoria, Queen of
+England.  Their father was Ædecon, secretary at one time of Attila, and
+chief of the little tribe of Turklings, who, though German, had clung
+faithfully to Attila’s sons, and came to ruin at the great battle of
+Netad, when the empire of the Huns broke up once and for ever.  Then
+Odoacer and his brother started over the Alps to seek their fortunes in
+Italy, and take service, after the fashion of young German adventurers,
+with the Romans; and they came to St. Severinus’s cell, and went in,
+heathens as they probably were, to ask a blessing of the holy man; and
+Odoacer had to stoop and to stand stooping, so huge he was.  The saint
+saw that he was no common lad, and said, “Go to Italy, clothed though
+thou be in ragged sheepskins: thou shalt soon give greater gifts to thy
+friends.”  So Odoacer went on into Italy, deposed the last of the Cæsars,
+a paltry boy, Romulus Augustulus by name, and found himself, to his own
+astonishment, and that of all the world, the first German king of Italy;
+and, when he was at the height of his power, he remembered the prophecy
+of Severinus, and sent to him, offering him any boon he chose to ask.
+But all that the saint asked was, that he should forgive some Romans whom
+he had banished.  St. Severinus meanwhile foresaw that Odoacer’s kingdom
+would not last, as he seems to have foreseen many things, by no
+miraculous revelation, but simply as a far-sighted man of the world.  For
+when certain German knights were boasting before him of the power and
+glory of Odoacer, he said that it would last some thirteen, or at most
+fourteen years; and the prophecy (so all men said in those days) came
+exactly true.
+
+There is no need to follow the details of St. Severinus’s labours through
+some five-and-twenty years of perpetual self-sacrifice—and, as far as
+this world was concerned, perpetual disaster.  Eugippius’s chapters are
+little save a catalogue of towns sacked one after the other, from Passau
+to Vienna, till the miserable survivors of the war seemed to have
+concentrated themselves under St. Severinus’s guardianship in the latter
+city.  We find, too, tales of famine, of locust-swarms, of little
+victories over the barbarians, which do not arrest wholesale defeat: but
+we find through all St. Severinus labouring like a true man of God,
+conciliating the invading chiefs, redeeming captives, procuring for the
+cities which were still standing supplies of clothes for the fugitives,
+persuading the husbandmen, seemingly through large districts, to give
+even in time of dearth a tithe of their produce to the poor;—a tale of
+noble work which one regrets to see defaced by silly little prodigies,
+more important seemingly in the eyes of the monk Eugippius than the great
+events which were passing round him.  But this is a fault too common with
+monk chroniclers.  The only historians of the early middle age, they have
+left us a miserably imperfect record of it, because they were looking
+always rather for the preternatural than for the natural.  Many of the
+saints’ lives, as they have come down to us, are mere catalogues of
+wonders which never happened, from among which the antiquary must pick,
+out of passing hints and obscure allusions, the really important facts of
+the time,—changes political and social, geography, physical history, the
+manners, speech, and look of nations now extinct, and even the characters
+and passions of the actors in the story.  How much can be found among
+such a list of wonders, by an antiquary who has not merely learning but
+intellectual insight, is proved by the admirable notes which Dr. Reeves
+has appended to Adamnan’s life of St. Columba: but one feels, while
+studying his work, that, had Adamnan thought more of facts and less of
+prodigies, he might have saved Dr. Reeves the greater part of his labour,
+and preserved to us a mass of knowledge now lost for ever.
+
+And so with Eugippius’s life of St. Severinus.  The reader finds how the
+man who had secretly celebrated a heathen sacrifice was discovered by St.
+Severinus, because, while the tapers of the rest of the congregation were
+lighted miraculously from heaven, his taper alone would not light; and
+passes on impatiently, with regret that the biographer omits to mention
+what the heathen sacrifice was like.  He reads how the Danube dared not
+rise above the mark of the cross which St. Severinus had cut upon the
+posts of a timber chapel; how a poor man, going out to drive the locusts
+off his little patch of corn instead of staying in the church all day to
+pray, found the next morning that his crop alone had been eaten, while
+all the fields around remained untouched.  Even the well-known story,
+which has a certain awfulness about it, how St. Severinus watched all
+night by the bier of the dead priest Silvinus, and ere the morning dawned
+bade him in the name of God speak to his brethren; and how the dead man
+opened his eyes, and Severinus asked him whether he wished to return to
+life, and he answered complainingly, “Keep me no longer here; nor cheat
+me of that perpetual rest which I had already found,” and so, closing his
+eyes once more, was still for ever:—even such a story as this, were it
+true, would be of little value in comparison with the wisdom, faith,
+charity, sympathy, industry, utter self-sacrifice, which formed the true
+greatness of such a man as Severinus.
+
+At last the noble life wore itself out.  For two years Severinus had
+foretold that his end was near; and foretold, too, that the people for
+whom he had spent himself should go forth in safety, as Israel out of
+Egypt, and find a refuge in some other Roman province, leaving behind
+them so utter a solitude, that the barbarians, in their search for the
+hidden treasures of the civilization which they had exterminated, should
+dig up the very graves of the dead.  Only, when the Lord willed that
+people to deliver them, they must carry away his bones with them, as the
+children of Israel carried the bones of Joseph.
+
+Then Severinus sent for Feva, the Rugian king, and Gisa, his cruel wife;
+and when he had warned them how they must render an account to God for
+the people committed to their charge, he stretched his hand out to the
+bosom of the king.  “Gisa,” he asked, “dost thou love most the soul
+within that breast, or gold and silver?”  She answered that she loved her
+husband above all.  “Cease then,” he said, “to oppress the innocent: lest
+their affliction be the ruin of your power.”
+
+Severinus’ presage was strangely fulfilled.  Feva had handed over the
+city of Vienna to his brother Frederic,—“poor and impious,” says
+Eugippius.  Severinus, who knew him well, sent for him, and warned him
+that he himself was going to the Lord; and that if, after his death,
+Frederic dared touch aught of the substance of the poor and the captive,
+the wrath of God would fall on him.  In vain the barbarian pretended
+indignant innocence; Severinus sent him away with fresh warnings.
+
+“Then on the nones of January he was smitten slightly with a pain in the
+side.  And when that had continued for three days, at midnight he bade
+the brethren come to him.”  He renewed his talk about the coming
+emigration, and entreated again that his bones might not be left behind;
+and having bidden all in turn come near and kiss him, and having received
+the sacrament of communion, he forbade them to weep for him, and
+commanded them to sing a psalm.  They hesitated, weeping.  He himself
+gave out the psalm, “Praise the Lord in his saints, and let all that hath
+breath praise the Lord;” and so went to rest in the Lord.
+
+No sooner was he dead than Frederic seized on the garments kept in the
+monastery for the use of the poor, and even commanded his men to carry
+off the vessels of the altar.  Then followed a scene characteristic of
+the time.  The steward sent to do the deed shrank from the crime of
+sacrilege.  A knight, Anicianus by name, went in his stead, and took the
+vessels of the altar.  But his conscience was too strong for him.
+Trembling and delirium fell on him, and he fled away to a lonely island,
+and became a hermit there.  Frederic, impenitent, swept away all in the
+monastery, leaving nought but the bare walls, “which he could not carry
+over the Danube.”  But on him, too, vengeance fell.  Within a month he
+was slain by his own nephew.  Then Odoacer attacked the Rugii, and
+carried off Feva and Gisa captive to Rome.  And then the long-promised
+emigration came.  Odoacer, whether from mere policy (for he was trying to
+establish a half-Roman kingdom in Italy), or for love of St. Severinus
+himself, sent his brother Onulf to fetch away into Italy the miserable
+remnant of the Danubian provincials, to be distributed among the wasted
+and unpeopled farms of Italy.  And with them went forth the corpse of St.
+Severinus, undecayed, though he had been six years dead, and giving forth
+exceeding fragrance, though (says Eugippius) no embalmer’s hand had
+touched it.  In a coffin, which had been long prepared for it, it was
+laid on a wagon, and went over the Alps into Italy, working (according to
+Eugippius) the usual miracles on the way, till it found a resting-place
+near Naples, in that very villa of Lucullus at Misenum, to which Odoacer
+had sent the last Emperor of Rome to dream his ignoble life away in
+helpless luxury.
+
+So ends this tragic story.  Of its substantial truth there can be no
+doubt.  The miracles recorded in it are fewer and less strange than those
+of the average legends—as is usually the case when an eye-witness writes.
+And that Eugippius was an eye-witness of much which he tells, no one
+accustomed to judge of the authenticity of documents can doubt, if he
+studies the tale as it stands in Pez. {238}  As he studies, too, he will
+perhaps wish with me that some great dramatist may hereafter take
+Eugippius’s quaint and rough legend, and shape it into immortal verse.
+For tragic, in the very nighest sense, the story is throughout.  M.
+Ozanam has well said of that death-bed scene between the saint and the
+barbarian king and queen—“The history of invasions has many a pathetic
+scene: but I know none more instructive than the dying agony of that old
+Roman expiring between two barbarians, and less touched with the ruin of
+the empire than with the peril of their souls.”  But even more
+instructive, and more tragic also, is the strange coincidence that the
+wonder-working corpse of the starved and barefooted hermit should rest
+beside the last Emperor of Rome.  It is the symbol of a new era.  The
+kings of this world have been judged and cast out.  The empire of the
+flesh is to perish, and the empire of the spirit to conquer thenceforth
+for evermore.
+
+But if St. Severinus’s labours in Austria were in vain, there were other
+hermits, in Gaul and elsewhere, whose work endured and prospered, and
+developed to a size of which they had never dreamed.  The stories of
+these good men may be read at length in the Bollandists and Surius: in a
+more accessible and more graceful form in M. de Montalembert’s charming
+pages.  I can only sketch, in a few words, the history of a few of the
+more famous.  Pushing continually northward and westward from the shores
+of the Mediterranean, fresh hermits settled in the mountains and forests,
+collected disciples round them, and founded monasteries, which, during
+the sanguinary and savage era of the Merovingian kings, were the only
+retreats for learning, piety, and civilization.  St. Martin (the young
+soldier who may be seen in old pictures cutting his cloak in two with a
+sword, to share it with a beggar) left, after twenty campaigns, the army
+into which he had been enrolled against his will, a conscript of fifteen
+years old, to become a hermit, monk, and missionary.  In the desert isle
+of Gallinaria, near Genoa, he lived on roots, to train himself for the
+monastic life; and then went north-west, to Poitiers, to found Ligugé
+(said to be the most ancient monastery in France), to become Bishop of
+Tours, and to overthrow throughout his diocese, often at the risk of his
+life, the sacred oaks and Druid stones of the Gauls, and the temples and
+idols of the Romans.  But he—like many more—longed for the peace of the
+hermit’s cell; and near Tours, between the river Loire and lofty cliffs,
+he hid himself in a hut of branches, while his eighty disciples dwelt in
+caves of the rocks above, clothed only in skins of camels.  He died in
+A.D. 397, at the age of eighty-one, leaving behind him, not merely that
+famous monastery of Marmontier (Martini Monasterium), which endured till
+the Revolution of 1793, but, what is infinitely more to his glory, his
+solemn and indignant protest against the first persecution by the
+Catholic Church—the torture and execution of those unhappy Priscillianist
+fanatics, whom the Spanish Bishops (the spiritual forefathers of the
+Inquisition) had condemned in the name of the God of love.  Martin wept
+over the fate of the Priscillianists.  Happily he was no prophet, or his
+head would have become (like Jeremiah’s) a fount of tears, could he have
+foreseen that the isolated atrocity of those Spanish Bishops would have
+become the example and the rule, legalized and formulized and commanded
+by Pope after Pope, for every country in Christendom.
+
+Sulpicius Severus, again (whose Lives of the Desert Fathers I have
+already quoted), carried the example of these fathers into his own
+estates in Aquitaine.  Selling his lands, he dwelt among his now
+manumitted slaves, sleeping on straw, and feeding on the coarsest bread
+and herbs; till the hapless neophytes found that life was not so easily
+sustained in France as in Egypt; and complained to him that it was in
+vain to try “to make them live like angels, when they were only Gauls.”
+
+Another centre of piety and civilization was the rocky isle of Lerins,
+off the port of Toulon.  Covered with the ruins of an ancient Roman city,
+and swarming with serpents, it was colonized again, in A.D. 410, by a
+young man of rank named Honoratus, who gathered round him a crowd of
+disciples, converted the desert isle into a garden of flowers and herbs,
+and made the sea-girt sanctuary of Lerins one of the most important spots
+of the then world.
+
+“The West,” says M. de Montalembert, “had thenceforth nothing to envy the
+East; and soon that retreat, destined by its founder to renew on the
+shores of Provence the austerities of the Thebaid, became a celebrated
+school of Christian theology and philosophy, a citadel inaccessible to
+the waves of the barbarian invasion, an asylum for the letters and
+sciences which were fleeing from Italy, then overrun by the Goths; and,
+lastly, a nursery of bishops and saints, who spread through Gaul the
+knowledge of the Gospel and the glory of Lerins.  We shall soon see the
+rays of his light flash even into Ireland and England, by the blessed
+hands of Patrick and Augustine.”
+
+In the year 425, Romanus, a young monk from the neighbourhood of Lyons,
+had gone up into the forests of the Jura, carrying with him the “Lives of
+the Hermits,” and a few seeds and tools; and had settled beneath an
+enormous pine; shut out from mankind by precipices, torrents, and the
+tangled trunks of primæval trees, which had fallen and rotted on each
+other age after age.  His brother Lupicinus joined him; then crowds of
+disciples; then his sister, and a multitude of women.  The forests were
+cleared, the slopes planted; a manufacture of box-wood articles—chairs
+among the rest—was begun; and within the next fifty years the Abbey of
+Condat, or St. Claude, as it was afterwards called, had become, not
+merely an agricultural colony, or even merely a minster for the perpetual
+worship of God, but the first school of that part of Gaul; in which the
+works of Greek as well as Latin orators were taught, not only to the
+young monks, but to young laymen likewise.
+
+Meanwhile the volcanic peaks of the Auvergne were hiding from their Arian
+invaders the ruined gentry of Central France.  Effeminate and luxurious
+slave-holders, as they are painted by Sidonius Appolineris, bishop of
+Clermont, in that same Auvergne, nothing was left for them when their
+wealth was gone but to become monks: and monks they became.  The lava
+grottoes held hermits, who saw visions and dæmons, as St. Antony had seen
+them in Egypt; while near Trêves, on the Moselle, a young hermit named
+Wolflaich tried to imitate St. Simeon Stylites’ penance on the pillar;
+till his bishop, foreseeing that in that severe climate he would only
+kill himself, wheedled him away from his station, pulled down the pillar
+in his absence, and bade him be a wiser man.  Another figure, and a more
+interesting one, is the famous St. Goar; a Gaul, seemingly (from the
+recorded names of his parents) of noble Roman blood, who took his station
+on the Rhine, under the cliffs of that Lurlei so famous in legend and
+ballad as haunted by some fair fiend, whose treacherous song lured the
+boatmen into the whirlpool at their foot.  To rescue the shipwrecked
+boatmen, to lodge, feed, and if need be clothe, the travellers along the
+Rhine bank, was St. Goar’s especial work; and Wandelbert, the monk of
+Prum, in the Eifel, who wrote his life at considerable length, tells us
+how St. Goar was accused to the Archbishop of Trêves as a hypocrite and a
+glutton, because he ate freely with his guests; and how his calumniators
+took him through the forest to Trêves; and how he performed divers
+miracles, both on the road and in the palace of the Archbishop, notably
+the famous one of hanging his cape upon a sunbeam, mistaking it for a
+peg.  And other miracles of his there are, some of them not altogether
+edifying: but no reader is bound to believe them, as Wandelbert is
+evidently writing in the interests of the Abbey of Prum as against those
+of the Prince-Bishops of Trêves; and with a monk’s or regular’s usual
+jealousy of the secular or parochial clergy and their bishops.
+
+A more important personage than any of these is the famous St. Benedict,
+father of the Benedictine order, and “father of all monks,” as he was
+afterwards called, who, beginning himself as a hermit, caused the hermit
+life to fall, not into disrepute, but into comparative disuse; while the
+cœnobitic life—that is, life, not in separate cells, but in corporate
+bodies, with common property, and under one common rule—was accepted as
+the general form of the religious life in the West.  As the author of
+this organization, and of the Benedictine order, to whose learning, as
+well as to whose piety, the world has owed so much, his life belongs
+rather to a history of the monastic orders than to that of the early
+hermits.  But it must be always remembered that it was as a hermit that
+his genius was trained; that in solitude he conceived his vast plans; in
+solitude he elaborated the really wise and noble rules of his, which he
+afterwards carried out as far as he could during his lifetime in the busy
+world; and which endured for centuries, a solid piece of practical good
+work.  For the existence of monks was an admitted fact; even an admitted
+necessity: St. Benedict’s work was to tell them, if they chose to be
+monks, what sort of persons they ought to be, and how they ought to live,
+in order to fulfil their own ideal.  In the solitude of the hills of
+Subiaco, above the ruined palace of Nero, above, too, the town of
+Nurscia, of whose lords he was the last remaining scion, he fled to the
+mountain grotto, to live the outward life of a wild beast, and, as he
+conceived, the inward life of an angel.  How he founded twelve
+monasteries; how he fled with some of his younger disciples, to withdraw
+them from the disgusting persecutions and temptations of the neighbouring
+secular clergy; how he settled himself on the still famous Monte Cassino,
+which looks down upon the Gulf of Gaeta, and founded there the
+“Archi-Monasterium of Europe,” whose abbot was in due time first premier
+baron of the kingdom of Naples,—which counted among its dependencies
+{245} four bishoprics, two principalities, twenty earldoms, two hundred
+and fifty castles, four hundred and forty towns or villages, three
+hundred and thirty-six manors, twenty-three seaports, three isles, two
+hundred mills, three hundred territories, sixteen hundred and sixty-two
+churches, and at the end of the sixteenth century an annual revenue of
+1,500,000 ducats,—are matters which hardly belong to this volume, which
+deals merely with the lives of hermits.
+
+
+
+
+THE CELTIC HERMITS
+
+
+IT is not necessary to enter into the vexed question whether any
+Christianity ever existed in these islands of an earlier and purer type
+than that which was professed and practised by the saintly disciples of
+St. Antony.  It is at least certain that the earliest historic figures
+which emerge from the haze of barbarous antiquity in both the Britains
+and in Ireland, are those of hermits, who, in celibacy and poverty,
+gather round them disciples, found a convent, convert and baptize the
+heathen, and often, like Antony and Hilarion, escape from the bustle and
+toil of the world into their beloved desert.  They work the same
+miracles, see the same visions, and live in the same intimacy with the
+wild animals, as the hermits of Egypt, or of Roman Gaul: but their
+history, owing to the wild imagination and (as the legends themselves
+prove) the gross barbarism of the tribes among whom they dwell, are so
+involved in fable and legend, that it is all but impossible to separate
+fact from fiction; all but impossible, often, to fix the time at which
+they lived.
+
+Their mode of life, it must always be remembered, is said to be copied
+from that of the Roman hermits of Gaul.  St. Patrick, the apostle of
+Ireland, seems to have been of Roman or Roman British lineage.  In his
+famous “Confession” (which many learned antiquaries consider as genuine)
+he calls his father, Calphurnius a deacon; his grandfather, Potitus a
+priest—both of these names being Roman.  He is said to have visited, at
+some period of his life, the monastery of St. Martin at Tours; to have
+studied with St. Germanus at Auxerre; and to have gone to one of the
+islands of the Tuscan sea, probably Lerins itself; and, whether or not we
+believe the story that he was consecrated bishop by Pope Celestine at
+Rome, we can hardly doubt that he was a member of that great spiritual
+succession of ascetics who counted St. Antony as their father.
+
+Such another must that Palladius have been, who was sent, says Prosper of
+Aquitaine, by Pope Celestine to convert the Irish Scots, and who
+(according to another story) was cast on shore on the north-east coast of
+Scotland, founded the church of Fordun, in Kincardineshire, and became a
+great saint among the Pictish folk.
+
+Another primæval figure, almost as shadowy as St. Patrick, is St. Ninian,
+a monk of North Wales, who (according to Bede) first attempted the
+conversion of the Southern Picts, and built himself, at Whithorn in
+Galloway, the Candida Casa, or White House, a little church of stone,—a
+wonder in those days of “creel houses” and wooden stockades.  He too,
+according to Bede, who lived some 250 years after his time, went to Rome;
+and he is said to have visited and corresponded with St. Martin of Tours.
+
+Dubricius, again, whom legend makes the contemporary both of St. Patrick
+and of King Arthur, appears in Wales, as bishop and abbot of Llandaff.
+He too is ordained by a Roman bishop, St. Germanus of Auxerre; and he too
+ends his career, according to tradition, as a hermit, while his disciples
+spread away into Armorica (Brittany) and Ireland.
+
+We need not, therefore, be surprised to find Ireland, Wales, Cornwall,
+Scotland, and Brittany, during the next three centuries, swarming with
+saints, who kept up, whether in company or alone, the old hermit-life of
+the Thebaid; or to find them wandering, whether on missionary work, or in
+search of solitude, or escaping, like St. Cadoc the Wise, from the Saxon
+invaders.  Their frequent journeys to Rome, and even to Jerusalem, may
+perhaps be set down as a fable, invented in after years by monks who were
+anxious to prove their complete dependence on the Holy See, and their
+perfect communion with the older and more civilized Christianity of the
+Roman Empire.
+
+It is probable enough, also, that Romans from Gaul, as well as from
+Britain, often men of rank and education, who had fled before the
+invading Goths and Franks, and had devoted themselves (as we have seen
+that they often did) to the monastic life, should have escaped into those
+parts of these islands which had not already fallen into the hands of the
+Saxon invaders.  Ireland, as the most remote situation, would be
+especially inviting to the fugitives; and we can thus understand the
+story which is found in the Acts of St. Senanus, how fifty monks, “Romans
+born,” sailed to Ireland to learn the Scriptures, and to lead a stricter
+life; and were distributed between St. Senan, St. Finnian, St. Brendan,
+St. Barry, and St. Kieran.  By such immigrations as this, it may be,
+Ireland became—as she certainly was for a while—the refuge of what
+ecclesiastical civilization, learning, and art the barbarian invaders had
+spared; a sanctuary from whence, in after centuries, evangelists and
+teachers went forth once more, not only to Scotland and England, but to
+France and Germany.  Very fantastic, and often very beautiful, are the
+stories of these men; and sometimes tragical enough, like that of the
+Welsh St. Iltut, cousin of the mythic Arthur, and founder of the great
+monastery of Bangor, on the banks of the Dee, which was said—though we
+are not bound to believe the fact—to have held more than two thousand
+monks at the time of the Saxon invasion.  The wild warrior was converted,
+says this legend, by seeing the earth open and swallow up his comrades,
+who had extorted bread, beer, and a fat pig from St. Cadoc of Llancarvan,
+a princely hermit and abbot, who had persuaded his father and mother to
+embrace the hermit life as the regular, if not the only, way of saving
+their souls.  In a paroxysm of terror he fled from his fair young wife
+into the forest; would not allow her to share with him even his hut of
+branches; and devoted himself to the labour of making an immense dyke of
+mud and stones to keep out the inundations of a neighbouring river.  His
+poor wife went in search of him once more, and found him in the bottom of
+a dyke, no longer a gay knight, but poorly dressed, and covered with mud.
+She went away, and never saw him more; “fearing to displease God and one
+so beloved by God.”  Iltut dwelt afterwards for four years in a cave,
+sleeping on the bare rock, and seems at last to have crossed over to
+Brittany, and died at Dol.
+
+We must not forget—though he is not strictly a hermit—St. David, the
+popular saint of the Welsh, son of a nephew of the mythic Arthur, and
+educated by one Paulinus, a disciple, it is said, of St. Germanus of
+Auxerre.  He is at once monk and bishop: he gathers round him young monks
+in the wilderness, makes them till the ground, drawing the plough by
+their own strength, for he allows them not to own even an ox.  He does
+battle against “satraps” and “magicians”—probably heathen chieftains and
+Druids; he goes to the Holy Land, and is made archbishop by the Patriarch
+of Jerusalem: he introduces, it would seem, into this island the right of
+sanctuary for criminals in any field consecrated to himself.  He restores
+the church of Glastonbury over the tomb of his cousin, King Arthur, and
+dies at 100 years of age, “the head of the whole British nation, and
+honour of his fatherland.”  He is buried in one of his own monasteries at
+St. David’s, near the headland whence St. Patrick had seen, in a vision,
+all Ireland stretched out before him, waiting to be converted to Christ;
+and the Celtic people go on pilgrimage to his tomb, even from Brittany
+and Ireland: and, canonized in 1120, he becomes the patron saint of
+Wales.
+
+From that same point, in what year is not said, an old monk of St.
+David’s monastery, named Modonnoc, set sail for Ireland, after a long
+life of labour and virtue.  A swarm of bees settled upon the bow of his
+boat, and would not be driven away.  He took them, whether he would or
+not, with him into Ireland, and introduced there, says the legend, the
+culture of bees and the use of honey.
+
+Ireland was then the “Isle of Saints.”  Three orders of them were counted
+by later historians: the bishops (who seem not to have had necessarily
+territorial dioceses), with St. Patrick at their head, shining like the
+sun; the second, of priests, under St. Columba, shining like the moon;
+and the third, of bishops, priests, and hermits, under Colman and Aidan,
+shining like the stars.  Their legends, full of Irish poetry and
+tenderness, and not without touches here and there of genuine Irish
+humour, lie buried now, to all save antiquaries, in the folios of the
+Bollandists and Colgan: but the memory of their virtue and beneficence,
+as well as of their miracles, shadowy and distorted by the lapse of
+centuries, is rooted in the heart and brain of the Irish peasantry; and
+who shall say altogether for evil?  For with the tradition of their
+miracles has been entwined the tradition of their virtues, as an enduring
+heirloom for the whole Irish race, through the sad centuries which part
+the era of saints from the present time.  We see the Irish women kneeling
+beside some well, whose waters were hallowed, ages since, by the fancied
+miracle of some mythic saint, and hanging gaudy rags (just as do the half
+savage Buddhists of the Himalayas) upon the bushes round.  We see them
+upon holy days crawling on bare and bleeding knees around St. Patrick’s
+cell, on the top of Croagh Patrick, the grandest mountain, perhaps, with
+the grandest outlook, in these British Isles, where stands still, I
+believe, an ancient wooden image, said to have belonged to St. Patrick
+himself; and where, too, hung till late years (it is now preserved in
+Dublin) an ancient bell; such a strange little oblong bell as the Irish
+saints carried with them to keep off dæmons; one of those magic bells
+which appear, so far as I am aware, in no country save Ireland and
+Scotland till we come to Tartary and the Buddhists: such a bell as came
+down from heaven to St. Senan: such a bell as St. Fursey sent flying
+through the air to greet St. Cuandy at his devotions when he could not
+come himself: such a bell as another saint, wandering in the woods, rang
+till a stag came out of the covert, and carried it for him on his horns.
+On that peak, so legends tell, St. Patrick stood once, in the spirit and
+power of Elias—after whom the mountain was long named; fasting, like
+Elias, forty days and forty nights, and wrestling with the dæmons of the
+storm, and the snakes of the fen, and the Peishta-More, the gigantic
+monster of the lakes, till he smote the evil things with the golden rod
+of Jesus, and they rolled over the cliff in hideous rout, and perished in
+the Atlantic far below.  We know that these tales are but the dreams of
+children: but shall we sneer at the devotion of those poor Irish?  Not if
+we remember (what is an undoubted fact) that the memory of these same
+saints has kept up in their minds an ideal of nobleness and purity,
+devotion and beneficence, which, down-trodden slaves as they have been,
+they would otherwise have inevitably lost; that it has helped to preserve
+them from mere brutality, and mere ferocity; and that the thought that
+these men were of their own race and their own kin has given them a pride
+in their own race, a sense of national unity and of national dignity,
+which has endured—and surely for their benefit, for reverence for
+ancestors and the self-respect which springs from it is a benefit to
+every human being—through all the miseries, deserved or undeserved, which
+have fallen upon the Irish since Pope Adrian IV. (the true author of all
+the woes of Ireland), in the year 1155, commissioned Henry II. to conquer
+Ireland and destroy its primæval Church, on consideration of receiving
+his share of the booty in the shape of Peter’s Pence.
+
+Among these Irish saints, two names stand out as especially interesting:
+that of St. Brendan, and that of St. Columba—the former as the
+representative of the sailor monks of the early period, the other as the
+great missionary who, leaving his monastery at Durrow, in Ireland, for
+the famous island of Hy, Iona, or Icolumbkill, off the western point of
+Mull, became the apostle of Scotland and the north of England.  I shall
+first speak of St. Brendan, and at some length.  His name has become
+lately familiar to many, through the medium of two very beautiful poems,
+one by Mr. Matthew Arnold, and the other by Mr. Sebastian Evans; and it
+may interest those who have read their versions of the story to see the
+oldest form in which the story now exists.
+
+The Celts, it must be remembered, are not, in general, a sea-going folk.
+They have always neglected the rich fisheries of their coasts; and in
+Ireland every seaport owes its existence, not to the natives, but to
+Norse colonists.  Even now, the Irishman or Western Highlander, who
+emigrates to escape the “Saxons,” sails in a ship built and manned by
+those very “Saxons,” to lands which the Saxons have discovered and
+civilized.  But in the seventh and eighth centuries, and perhaps earlier,
+many Celts were voyagers and emigrants, not to discover new worlds, but
+to flee from the old one.  There were deserts in the sea, as well as on
+land; in them they hoped to escape from men, and, yet more, from women.
+
+They went against their carnal will.  They had no liking for the salt
+water.  They were horribly frightened, and often wept bitterly, as they
+themselves confess.  And they had reason for fear; for their vessels
+were, for the most part, only “curachs” (coracles) of wattled twigs,
+covered with tanned hides.  They needed continual exhortation and comfort
+from the holy man who was their captain; and needed often miracles
+likewise for their preservation.  Tempests had to be changed into calm,
+and contrary winds into fair ones, by the prayers of a saint; and the
+spirit of prophecy was needed, to predict that a whale would be met
+between Iona and Tiree, who appeared accordingly, to the extreme terror
+of St. Berach’s crew, swimming with open jaws, and (intent on eating, not
+monks, but herrings) nearly upsetting them by the swell which he raised.
+And when St. Baithenius met the same whale on the same day, it was
+necessary for him to rise, and bless, with outspread hands, the sea and
+the whale, in order to make him sink again, after having risen to
+breathe.  But they sailed forth, nevertheless, not knowing whither they
+went; true to their great principle, that the spirit must conquer the
+flesh: and so showed themselves actually braver men than the Norse
+pirates, who sailed afterwards over the same seas without fear, and
+without the need of miracles, and who found everywhere on desert islands,
+on sea-washed stacks and skerries, round Orkney, Shetland, and the
+Faroës, even to Iceland, the cells of these “Papas” or Popes; and named
+them after the old hermits, whose memory still lingers in the names of
+Papa Strona and Papa Westra, in the Orkneys, and in that of Papey, off
+the coast of Iceland, where the first Norse settlers found Irish books,
+bells, and crosiers, the relics of old hermits who had long since fasted
+and prayed their last, and migrated to the Lord.
+
+Adanman, in his life of St. Columba, tells of more than one such voyage.
+He tells how one Baitanus, with the saint’s blessing, sailed forth to
+find “a desert” in the sea; and how when he was gone, the saint
+prophesied that he should be buried, not in a desert isle, but where a
+woman should drive sheep over his grave, the which came true in the
+oak-wood of Calgaich, now Londonderry, whither he came back again.  He
+tells, again, of one Cormac, “a knight of Christ,” who three times sailed
+forth in a coracle to find some desert isle, and three times failed of
+his purpose; and how, in his last voyage, he was driven northward by the
+wind fourteen days’ sail, till he came where the summer sea was full of
+foul little stinging creatures, of the size of frogs, which beat against
+the sides of the frail boat, till all expected them to be stove in.  They
+clung, moreover, to the oar blades; {256} and Cormac was in some danger
+of never seeing land again, had not St. Columba, at home in Iona far
+away, seen him in a vision, him and his fellows, praying and “watering
+their cheeks with floods of tears,” in the midst of “perturbations
+monstrous, horrific, never seen before, and almost unspeakable.”  Calling
+together his monks, he bade them pray for a north wind, which came
+accordingly, and blew Cormac safe back to Iona, to tempt the waves no
+more.  “Let the reader therefore perpend how great and what manner of man
+this same blessed personage was, who, having so great prophetic
+knowledge, could command, by invoking the name of Christ, the winds and
+ocean.”
+
+Even as late as the year 891, says the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: “Three
+Scots came to King Alfred, in a boat without any oars, from Ireland,
+whence they had stolen away, because for the love of God they desired to
+be on pilgrimage, they recked not where.  The boat in which they came was
+made of two hides and a half; and they took with them provisions for
+seven days; and about the seventh day they came on shore in Cornwall, and
+soon after went to King Alfred.  Thus they were named, Dubslane, and
+Macbeth, and Maelinmun.”
+
+Out of such wild feats as these; out of dim reports of fairy islands in
+the west; of the Canaries and Azores; of that Vinland, with its wild corn
+and wild grapes which Leif, the son of Eirek Rauda, had found beyond the
+ocean a thousand years and one after the birth of Christ; of icebergs and
+floes sailing in the far northern sea, upon the edge of the six-months’
+night; out of Edda stories of the Midgard snake, which is coiled round
+the world; out of reports, it may be, of Indian fakirs and Buddhist
+shamans; out of scraps of Greek and Arab myth, from the Odyssey or the
+Arabian Nights, brought home by “Jorsala Farar,” vikings who had been for
+pilgrimage and plunder up the Straits of Gibraltar into the far East;—out
+of all these materials were made up, as years rolled on, the famous
+legend of St. Brendan and his seven years’ voyage in search of the “land
+promised to the saints.”
+
+This tale was so popular in the middle age, that it appears, in different
+shapes, in almost every early European language. {257}  It was not only
+the delight of monks, but it stirred up to wild voyages many a secular
+man in search of St. Brendan’s Isle, “which is not found when it is
+sought,” but was said to be visible at times, from Palma in the Canaries.
+The myth must have been well known to Columbus, and may have helped to
+send him forth in search of “Cathay.”  Thither (so the Spanish peasants
+believed) Don Roderic had retired from the Moorish invaders.  There (so
+the Portuguese fancied) King Sebastian was hidden from men, after his
+reported death in the battle of Alcazar.  The West Indies, when they were
+first seen, were surely St. Brendan’s Isle: and the Mississippi may have
+been, in the eyes of such old adventurers as Don Ferdinando da Soto, when
+he sought for the Fountain of Perpetual Youth, the very river which St.
+Brendan found parting in two the Land of Promise.  From the year 1526
+(says M. Jubinal), till as late as 1721, armaments went forth from time
+to time into the Atlantic, and went forth in vain.
+
+For the whole tale, from whatever dim reports of fact they may have
+sprung, is truly (as M. Jubinal calls it) a monkish Odyssey, and nothing
+more.  It is a dream of the hermit’s cell.  No woman, no city, nor
+nation, are ever seen during the seven years’ voyage.  Ideal monasteries
+and ideal hermits people the “deserts of the ocean.”  All beings therein
+(save dæmons and Cyclops) are Christians, even to the very birds, and
+keep the festivals of the Church as eternal laws of nature.  The voyage
+succeeds, not by seamanship, or geographic knowledge, nor even by chance:
+but by the miraculous prescience of the saint, or of those whom he meets;
+and the wanderings of Ulysses, or of Sinbad, are rational and human in
+comparison with those of St. Brendan.
+
+Yet there are in them, as was to be expected, elements in which the Greek
+or the Arab legends are altogether deficient; perfect innocence,
+patience, and justice; utter faith in a God who prospers the innocent and
+punishes the guilty; ennobling obedience to the saint, who stands out a
+truly heroic figure above his trembling crew; and even more valuable
+still, the belief in, the craving for, an ideal, even though that ideal
+be that of a mere earthly Paradise; the “divine discontent,” as it has
+been well called, which is the root of all true progress; which leaves
+(thank God) no man at peace save him who has said, “Let us eat and drink,
+for to-morrow we die.”
+
+And therefore I have written at some length the story of St. Brendan;
+because, though it be but a monk-ideal, it is an ideal still: and
+therefore profitable for all who are not content with this world, and its
+paltry ways.
+
+Saint Brendan, we read, the son of Finnloga, and great grandson of Alta,
+son of Ogaman, of the race of Ciar son of Fergus, was born at Tralee, and
+founded, in 559, the Abbey of Clonfert, {260a} and was a man famous for
+his great abstinence and virtues, and the father of nearly 3,000 monks.
+{260b}  And while he was “in his warfare,” there came to him one evening
+a holy hermit named “Barintus,” of the royal race of Neill; and when he
+was questioned, he did nought but cast himself on the ground, and weep
+and pray.  And when St. Brendan asked him to make better cheer for him
+and his monks, he told him a strange tale.  How a nephew of his had fled
+away to be a solitary, and found a delicious island, and established a
+monastery therein; and how he himself had gone to see his nephew, and
+sailed with him to the eastward to an island, which was called “the land
+of promise of the saints,” wide and grassy, and bearing all manner of
+fruits; wherein was no night, for the Lord Jesus Christ was the light
+thereof; and how they abode there for a long while without eating and
+drinking; and when they returned to his nephew’s monastery, the brethren
+knew well where they had been, for the fragrance of Paradise lingered on
+their garments for nearly forty days.
+
+So Barintus told his story, and went back to his cell.  But St. Brendan
+called together his most loving fellow-warriors, as he called them, and
+told them how he had set his heart on seeking that Promised Land.  And he
+went up to the top of the hill in Kerry, which is still called Mount
+Brendan, with fourteen chosen monks; and there, at the utmost corner of
+the world, he built him a coracle of wattle, and covered it with hides
+tanned in oak-bark and softened with butter, and set up in it a mast and
+a sail, and took forty days’ provision, and commanded his monks to enter
+the boat, in the name of the Holy Trinity.  And as he stood alone,
+praying on the shore, three more monks from his monastery came up, and
+fell at his feet, and begged to go too, or they would die in that place
+of hunger and thirst; for they were determined to wander with him all the
+days of their life.  So he gave them leave.  But two of them, he
+prophesied, would come to harm and to judgment.  So they sailed away
+toward the summer solstice, with a fair wind, and had no need to row.
+But after twelve days the wind fell to a calm, and they had only light
+airs at night, till forty days were past, and all their victual spent.
+Then they saw toward the north a lofty island, walled round with cliffs,
+and went about it three days ere they could find a harbour.  And when
+they landed, a dog came fawning on them, and they followed it up to a
+great hall with beds and seats, and water to wash their feet.  But St.
+Brendan said, “Beware, lest Satan bring you into temptation.  For I see
+him busy with one of those three who followed us.”  Now the hall was hung
+all round with vessels of divers metals, and bits and horns overlaid with
+silver.  Then St. Brendan told his servant to bring the meal which God
+had prepared; and at once a table was laid with napkins, and loaves
+wondrous white, and fishes.  Then they blessed God, and ate, and took
+likewise drink as much as they would, and lay down to sleep.  Then St.
+Brendan saw the devil’s work; namely, a little black boy holding a silver
+bit, and calling the brother aforementioned.  So they rested three days
+and three nights.  But when they went to the ship, St. Brendan charged
+them with theft, and told what was stolen, and who had stolen it.  Then
+the brother cast out of his bosom a silver bit, and prayed for mercy.
+And when he was forgiven and raised up from the ground, behold, a little
+black boy flew out of his bosom, howling aloud, and crying, “Why, O man
+of God, dost thou drive me from my habitation, where I have dwelt for
+seven years?”
+
+Then the brother received the Holy Eucharist, and died straightway, and
+was buried in that isle, and the brethren saw the angels carry his soul
+aloft, for St. Brendan had told him that so it should be: but that the
+brother who came with him should have his sepulchre in hell.  And as they
+went on board, a youth met them with a basket of loaves and a bottle of
+water, and told them that it would not fail till Pentecost.
+
+Then they sailed again many days, till they came to an isle full of great
+streams and fountains swarming with fish; and sheep there all white, as
+big as oxen, so many that they hid the face of the earth.  And they
+stayed there till Easter Eve, and took one of the sheep (which followed
+them as if it had been tame) to eat for the Paschal feast.  Then came a
+man with loaves baked in the ashes, and other victual, and fell down
+before St. Brendan and cried, “How have I merited this, O pearl of God,
+that thou shouldest be fed at this holy tide from the labours of my
+hand?”
+
+And they learned from that man that the sheep grew there so big because
+they were never milked, nor pinched with winter, but they fed in those
+pastures all the year round.  Moreover, he told them that they must keep
+Easter in an isle hard by, opposite a shore to the west, which some
+called the Paradise of Birds.
+
+So to the nearest island they sailed.  It had no harbour, nor sandy
+shore, and there was no turf on it, and very little wood.  Now the Saint
+knew what manner of isle it was, but he would not tell the brethren, lest
+they should be terrified.  So he bade them make the boat fast stem and
+stern, and when morning came he bade those who were priests to celebrate
+each a mass, and then to take the lamb’s fleece on shore and cook it in
+the caldron with salt, while St. Brendan remained in the boat.
+
+But when the fire blazed up, and the pot began to boil, that island began
+to move like water.  Then the brethren ran to the boat imploring St.
+Brendan’s aid; and he helped them each in by the hand, and cast off.
+After which the island sank in the ocean.  And when they could see their
+fire burning more than two miles off, St. Brendan told them how that God
+had revealed to him that night the mystery; that this was no isle, but
+the biggest of all fishes which swam in the ocean, always it tries to
+make its head and its tail meet, but cannot, by reason of its length; and
+its name is Jasconius.
+
+Then, across a narrow strait, they saw another isle, very grassy and
+wooded, and full of flowers.  And they found a little stream, and towed
+the boat up it (for the stream was of the same width as the boat), with
+St. Brendan sitting on board, till they came to the fountain thereof.
+Then said the holy father, “See, brethren, the Lord has given us a place
+wherein to celebrate his holy Resurrection.  And if we had nought else,
+this fountain, I think, would serve for food as well as drink.”  For the
+fountain was too admirable.  Over it was a huge tree of wonderful
+breadth, but no great height, covered with snow-white birds, so that its
+leaves and boughs could scarce be seen.
+
+And when the man of God saw that, he was so desirous to know the cause of
+that assemblage of birds, that he besought God upon his knees, with
+tears, saying, “God, who knowest the unknown, and revealest the hidden,
+thou knowest the anxiety of my heart. . . .  Deign of thy great mercy to
+reveal to me thy secret. . . .  But not for the merit of my own dignity,
+but regarding thy clemency, do I presume to ask.”
+
+Then one of those birds flew from off the tree, and his wings sounded
+like bells over the boat.  And he sat on the prow, and spread his wings
+joyfully, and looked quietly on St. Brendan.  And when the man of God
+questioned that bird, it told how they were of the spirits which fell in
+the great ruin of the old enemy; not by sin or by consent, but
+predestined by the piety of God to fall with those with whom they were
+created.  But they suffered no punishment; only they could not, in part,
+behold the presence of God.  They wandered about this world, like other
+spirits of the air, and firmament, and earth.  But on holy days they took
+those shapes of birds, and praised their Creator in that place.
+
+Then the bird told him, how he and his monks had wandered one year
+already, and should wander for six more; and every year should celebrate
+their Easter in that place, and after find the Land of Promise; and so
+flew back to its tree.
+
+And when the eventide was come, the birds began all with one voice to
+sing, and clap their wings, crying, “Thou, O God, art praised in Zion,
+and unto Thee shall the vow be performed in Jerusalem.”  And always they
+repeated that verse for an hour, and their melody and the clapping of
+their wings was like music which drew tears by its sweetness.
+
+And when the man of God wakened his monks at the third watch of the night
+with the verse, “Thou shalt open my lips, O Lord,” all the birds
+answered, “Praise the Lord, all his angels; praise him, all his virtues.”
+And when the dawn shone, they sang again, “The splendour of the Lord God
+is over us;” and at the third hour, “Sing psalms to our God, sing; sing
+to our King, sing with wisdom.”  And at the sixth, “The Lord hath lifted
+up the light of his countenance upon us, and had mercy on us.”  And at
+the ninth, “Behold how good and pleasant it is for brethren to dwell in
+unity.”  So day and night those birds gave praise to God.  St. Brendan,
+therefore, seeing these things, gave thanks to God for all his marvels,
+and the brethren were refreshed with that spiritual food till the octave
+of Easter.
+
+After which, St. Brendan advised to take of the water of the fountain;
+for till then they had only used it to wash their feet and hands.  But
+there came to him the same man who had been with them three days before
+Easter, and with his boat full of meat and drink, and said, “My brothers,
+here you have enough to last till Pentecost: but do not drink of that
+fountain.  For its nature is, that whosoever drinks will sleep for
+four-and-twenty hours.”  So they stayed till Pentecost, and rejoiced in
+the song of the birds.  And after mass at Pentecost, the man brought them
+food again, and bade them take of the water of the fountain and depart.
+Then the birds came again, and sat upon the prow, and told them how they
+must, every year, celebrate Easter in the Isle of Birds, and Easter Eve
+upon the back of the fish Jasconius; and how, after eight months, they
+should come to the isle called Ailbey, and keep their Christmas there.
+
+After which they were on the ocean for eight months, out of sight of
+land, and only eating after every two or three days, till they came to an
+island, along which they sailed for forty days, and found no harbour.
+Then they wept and prayed, for they were almost worn out with weariness;
+and after they had fasted and prayed for three days, they saw a narrow
+harbour, and two fountains, one foul, one clear.  But when the brethren
+hurried to draw water, St. Brendan (as he had done once before) forbade
+them, saying that they must take nought without leave from the elders who
+were in that isle.
+
+And of the wonders which they saw in that isle it were too long to tell:
+how there met them an exceeding old man, with snow-white hair, who fell
+at St. Brendan’s feet three times, and led him in silence up to a
+monastery of four-and-twenty silent monks, who washed their feet, and fed
+them with bread and water, and roots of wonderful sweetness; and then at
+last, opening his mouth, told them how that bread was sent them
+perpetually, they knew not from whence; and how they had been there
+eighty years, since the times of St. Patrick, and how their father Ailbey
+and Christ had nourished them; and how they grew no older, nor ever fell
+sick, nor were overcome by cold or heat; and how brother never spoke to
+brother, but all things were done by signs; and how he led them to a
+square chapel, with three candles before the mid-altar, and two before
+each of the side altars; and how they, and the chalices and patens, and
+all the other vessels, were of crystal; and how the candles were lighted
+always by a fiery arrow, which came in through the window, and returned;
+and how St. Brendan kept his Christmas there, and then sailed away till
+Lent, and came to a fruitful island where he found fish; and how when
+certain brethren drank too much of the charmed water they slept, some
+three days, and some one; and how they sailed north, and then east, till
+they came back to the Isle of Sheep at Easter, and found on the shore
+their caldron, which they had lost on Jasconius’s back; and how, sailing
+away, they were chased by a mighty fish which spouted foam, but was slain
+by another fish which spouted fire; and how they took enough of its flesh
+to last them three months; and how they came to an island flat as the
+sea, without trees, or aught that waved in the wind; and how on that
+island were three troops of monks (as the holy man had foretold),
+standing a stone’s throw from each other: the first of boys, robed in
+snow-white; the second of young men, dressed in hyacinthine; the third of
+old men, in purple dalmatics, singing alternately their psalms, all day
+and night: and how when they stopped singing, a cloud of wondrous
+brightness overshadowed the isle; and how two of the young men, ere they
+sailed away, brought baskets of grapes, and asked that one of the monks
+(as had been prophesied) should remain with them, in the Isle of Strong
+Men; and how St. Brendan let him go, saying, “In a good hour did thy
+mother conceive thee, because thou hast merited to dwell with such a
+congregation;” and how those grapes were so big, that a pound of juice
+ran out of each of them, and an ounce thereof fed each brother for a
+whole day, and was as sweet as honey; and how a magnificent bird dropped
+into the ship the bough of an unknown tree, with a bunch of grapes
+thereon; and how they came to a land where the trees were all bowed down
+with vines, and their odour as the odour of a house full of pomegranates;
+and how they fed forty days on those grapes, and strange herbs and roots;
+and how they saw flying against them the bird which is called gryphon;
+and how that bird who had brought the bough tore out the gryphon’s eyes,
+and slew him; and how they looked down into the clear sea, and saw all
+the fishes sailing round and round, head to tail, innumerable as flocks
+in the pastures, and were terrified, and would have had the man of God
+celebrate mass in silence, lest the fish should hear, and attack them;
+and how the man of God laughed at their folly; and how they came to a
+column of clear crystal in the sea, with a canopy round it of the colour
+of silver, harder than marble, and sailed in through an opening, and
+found it all light within; {269} and how they found in that hall a
+chalice of the same stuff as the canopy, and a paten of that of the
+column, and took them, that they might make many believe; and how they
+sailed out again, and past a treeless island, covered with slag and
+forges; and how a great hairy man, fiery and smutty, came down and
+shouted after them; and how when they made the sign of the Cross and
+sailed away, he and his fellows brought down huge lumps of burning slag
+in tongs, and hurled them after the ship; and how they went back, and
+blew their forges up, till the whole island flared, and the sea boiled,
+and the howling and stench followed them, even when they were out of
+sight of that evil isle; and how St. Brendan bade them strengthen
+themselves in faith and spiritual arms, for they were now on the confines
+of hell, therefore they must watch, and play the man.  All this must
+needs be hastened over, that we may come to the famous legend of Judas
+Iscariot.
+
+They saw a great and high mountain toward the north, with smoke about its
+peak.  And the wind blew them close under the cliffs, which were of
+immense height, so that they could hardly see their top, upright as
+walls, and black as coal. {270}  Then he who remained of the three
+brethren who had followed St. Brendan sprang out of the ship, and waded
+to the cliff foot, groaning, and crying, “Woe to me, father, for I am
+carried away from you; and cannot turn back.”  Then the brethren backed
+the ship, and cried to the Lord for mercy.  But the blessed Father
+Brendan saw how that wretch was carried off by a multitude of devils, and
+all on fire among them.  Then a fair wind blew them away southward; and
+when they looked back they saw the peak of the isle uncovered, and flame
+spouting from it up to heaven, and sinking back again, till the whole
+mountain seemed one burning pile.
+
+After that terrible vision they sailed seven days to the south, till
+Father Brendan saw a dense cloud; when they neared it, a form as of a man
+sitting, and before him a veil, as big as a sack, hanging between two
+iron tongs, and rocking on the waves like a boat in a whirlwind.  Which
+when the brethren saw some thought was a bird, and some a boat; but the
+man of God bade them give over arguing, and row thither.  And when they
+got near, the waves were still, as if they had been frozen; and they
+found a man sitting on a rough and shapeless rock, and the waves beating
+over his head; and when they fell back, the bare rock appeared on which
+that wretch was sitting.  And the cloth which hung before him the wind
+moved, and beat him with it on the eyes and brow.  But when the blessed
+man asked him who he was, and how he had earned that doom, he said, “I am
+that most wretched Judas, who made the worst of all bargains.  But I hold
+not this place for any merit of my own, but for the ineffable mercy of
+Christ.  I expect no place of repentance: but for the indulgence and
+mercy of the Redeemer of the world, and for the honour of His holy
+resurrection, I have this refreshment; for it is the Lord’s-day now, and
+as I sit here I seem to myself in a paradise of delight, by reason of the
+pains which will be mine this evening; for when I am in my pains I burn
+day and night like lead melted in a pot.  But in the midst of that
+mountain which you saw, is Leviathan with his satellites, and I was there
+when he swallowed your brother; and therefore the king of hell rejoiced,
+and sent forth huge flames, as he doth always when he devours the souls
+of the impious.”  Then he told them how he had his refreshings there
+every Lord’s-day from even to even, and from Christmas to Epiphany, and
+from Easter to Pentecost, and from the Purification of the Blessed Virgin
+to her Assumption: but the rest of his time he was tormented with Herod
+and Pilate, Annas and Caiaphas; and so adjured them to intercede for him
+with the Lord that he might be there at least till sunrise in the morn.
+To whom the man of God said, “The will of the Lord be done.  Thou shalt
+not be carried off by the dæmons till to-morrow.”  Then he asked him of
+that clothing, and he told how he had given it to a leper when he was the
+Lord’s chamberlain; “but because it was no more mine than it was the
+Lord’s and the other brethren’s, therefore it is of no comfort to me, but
+rather a hurt.  And these forks I gave to the priests to hang their
+caldrons on.  And this stone on which I always sit I took off the road,
+and threw it into a ditch for a stepping-stone, before I was a disciple
+of the Lord.” {272}
+
+“But when the evening hour had covered the face of Thetis,” behold a
+multitude of dæmons shouting in a ring, and bidding the man of God
+depart, for else they could not approach; and they dared not behold their
+prince’s face unless they brought back their prey.  But the man of God
+bade them depart.  And in the morning an infinite multitude of devils
+covered the face of the abyss, and cursed the man of God for coming
+thither; for their prince had scourged them cruelly that night for not
+bringing back the captive.  But the man of God returned their curses on
+their own heads, saying that “cursed was he whom they blest, and blessed
+he whom they cursed;” and when they threatened Judas with double torments
+because he had not come back, the man of God rebuked them.
+
+“Art thou, then, Lord of all,” they asked, “that we should obey thee?”
+“I am the servant,” said he, “of the Lord of all; and whatsoever I
+command in his name is done; and I have no ministry save what he concedes
+to me.”
+
+So they blasphemed him till he left Judas, and then returned, and carried
+off that wretched soul with great rushing and howling.
+
+After which they saw a little isle; and the holy man told them that now
+seven years were nigh past; and that in that isle they should soon see a
+hermit, named Paul the Spiritual, who had lived for sixty years without
+any corporeal food, but for thirty years before that he had received food
+from a certain beast.
+
+The isle was very small, about a furlong round; a bare rock, so steep
+that they could find no landing-place.  But at last they found a creek,
+into which they thrust the boat’s bow, and then discovered a very
+difficult ascent.  Up that the man of God climbed, bidding them wait for
+him, for they must not enter the isle without the hermit’s leave; and
+when he came to the top he saw two caves, with their mouths opposite each
+other, and a very small round well before the cave mouth, whose waters,
+as fast as they ran out, were sucked in again by the rock. {274}  As he
+went to one entrance, the old man came out of the other, saying, “Behold
+how good and pleasant it is, brethren, to dwell together in unity,” and
+bade him call up the brethren from the boat; and when they came, he
+kissed them, and called them each by his name.  Whereat they marvelled,
+not only at his spirit of prophecy, but also at his attire; for he was
+all covered with his locks and beard, and with the other hair of his
+body, down to his feet.  His hair was white as snow for age, and none
+other covering had he.  When St. Brendan saw that, he sighed again and
+again, and said within himself, “Woe is me, sinner that I am, who wear a
+monk’s habit, and have many monks under me, when I see a man of angelic
+dignity sitting in a cell, still in the flesh, and unhurt by the vices of
+the flesh.”  To whom the man of God answered, “Venerable father, what
+great and many wonders God hath showed thee, which he hath manifested to
+none of the fathers, and thou sayest in thy heart that thou art not
+worthy to wear a monk’s habit.  I tell thee, father, that thou art
+greater than a monk; for a monk is fed and clothed by the work of his own
+hands: but God has fed and clothed thee and thy family for seven years
+with his secret things, while wretched I sit here on this rock like a
+bird, naked save the hair of my body.”
+
+Then St. Brendan asked him how and whence he came thither; and he told
+how he was nourished in St. Patrick’s monastery for fifty years, and took
+care of the cemetery; and how when the dean had bidden him dig a grave,
+an old man, whom he knew not, appeared to him, and forbade him, for that
+grave was another man’s.  And how he revealed to him that he was St.
+Patrick, his own abbot, who had died the day before, and bade him bury
+that brother elsewhere, and go down to the sea and find a boat, which
+would take him to the place where he should wait for the day of his
+death; and how he landed on that rock, and thrust the boat off with his
+foot, and it went swiftly back to its own land; and how, on the very
+first day, a beast came to him, walking on its hind paws, and between its
+fore paws a fish, and grass to make a fire, and laid them at his feet;
+and so every third day for twenty years; and every Lord’s day a little
+water came out of the rock, so that he could drink and wash his hands;
+and how after thirty years he had found these caves and that fountain,
+and had fed for the last sixty years on nought but the water thereof.
+For all the years of his life were 150, and henceforth he awaited the day
+of his judgment in that his flesh.
+
+Then they took of that water, and received his blessing, and kissed each
+other in the peace of Christ, and sailed southward: but their food was
+the water from the isle of the man of God.  Then (as Paul the Hermit had
+foretold) they came back on Easter Eve to the Isle of Sheep, and to him
+who used to give them victuals; and then went on to the fish Jasconius,
+and sang praises on his back all night, and mass at morn.  After which
+the fish carried them on his back to the Paradise of Birds, and there
+they stayed till Pentecost.  Then the man who always tended them, bade
+them fill their skins from the fountain, and he would lead them to the
+land promised to the saints.  And all the birds wished them a prosperous
+voyage in God’s name; and they sailed away, with forty days’ provision,
+the man being their guide, till after forty days they came at evening to
+a great darkness which lay round the Promised Land.  But after they had
+sailed through it for an hour, a great light shone round them, and the
+boat stopped at a shore.  And when they landed they saw a spacious land,
+full of trees bearing fruit as in autumn time.  And they walked about
+that land for forty days, eating of the fruit and drinking of the
+fountains, and found no end thereof.  And there was no night there, but
+the light shone like the light of the sun.  At last they came to a great
+river, which they could not cross, so that they could not find out the
+extent of that land.  And as they were pondering over this, a youth, with
+shining face and fair to look upon, met them, and kissed them with great
+joy, calling them each by his name, and said, “Brethren, peace be with
+you, and with all that follow the peace of Christ.”  And after that,
+“Blessed are they who dwell in thy house, O Lord; they shall be for ever
+praising thee.”
+
+Then he told St. Brendan that that was the land which he had been seeking
+for seven years, and that he must now return to his own country, taking
+of the fruits of that land, and of its precious gems, as much as his ship
+could carry; for the days of his departure were at hand, when he should
+sleep in peace with his holy brethren.  But after many days that land
+should be revealed to his successors, and should be a refuge for
+Christians in persecution.  As for the river that they saw, it parted
+that island; and the light shone there for ever, because Christ was the
+light thereof.
+
+Then St. Brendan asked if that land would ever be revealed to men: and
+the youth answered, that when the most high Creator should have put all
+nations under his feet, then that land should be manifested to all his
+elect.
+
+After which St. Brendan, when the youth had blessed him, took of the
+fruits and of the gems, and sailed back through the darkness, and
+returned to his monastery; whom when the brethren saw, they glorified God
+for the miracles which he had heard and seen.  After which he ended his
+life in peace.  Amen.
+
+Here ends (says the French version) concerning St. Brendan, and the
+marvels which he found in the sea of Ireland.
+
+
+
+
+ST. MALO
+
+
+INTERMINGLED, fantastically and inconsistently, with the story of St.
+Brendan, is that of St. Maclovius or Machutus, who has given his name to
+the seaport of St. Malo, in Brittany.  His life, written by Sigebert, a
+monk of Gembloux, about the year 1100, tells us how he was a Breton, who
+sailed with St. Brendan in search of the fairest of all islands, in which
+the citizens of heaven were said to dwell.  With St. Brendan St. Malo
+celebrated Easter on the whale’s back, and with St. Brendan he returned.
+But another old hagiographer, Johannes à Bosco, tells a different story,
+making St. Malo an Irishman brought up by St. Brendan, and preserved by
+his prayers from a wave of the sea.  He gives, moreover, to the Isle of
+Paradise the name of Inga, and says that St. Brendan and his companions
+never reached it after all, but came home after sailing round the Orkneys
+and other Northern isles.  The fact is, that the same saints reappear so
+often on both sides of the British and the Irish Channels, that we must
+take the existence of many of them as mere legend, which has been carried
+from land to land by monks in their migrations, and taken root upon each
+fresh soil which it has reached.  One incident in St. Malo’s voyage is so
+fantastic, and so grand likewise, that it must not be omitted.  The monks
+come to an island whereon they find the barrow of some giant of old time.
+St. Malo, seized with pity for the lost soul of the heathen, opens the
+mound and raises the dead to life.  Then follows a strange conversation
+between the giant and the saint.  He was slain, he says, by his kinsmen,
+and ever since has been tormented in the other world.  In that nether pit
+they know (he says) of the Holy Trinity: but that knowledge is rather
+harm than gain to them, because they did not choose to know it when alive
+on earth.  Therefore he begs to be baptized, and so delivered from his
+pain.  He is therefore instructed, catechised, and in due time baptized,
+and admitted to the Holy Communion.  For fifteen days more he remains
+alive: and then, dying once more, is again placed in his sepulchre, and
+left in peace.
+
+From fragmentary recollections of such tales as these (it may be observed
+in passing) may have sprung the strange fancy of the modern Cornishmen,
+which identifies these very Celtic saints of their own race with the
+giants who, according to Geoffrey of Monmouth, inhabited the land before
+Brutus and his Trojans founded the Arthuric dynasty.  St. Just, for
+instance, who is one of the guardian saints of the Land’s End, and St.
+Kevern, one of the guardian saints of the Lizard, are both giants; and
+Cornishmen a few years since would tell how St. Just came from his
+hermitage by Cape Cornwall to visit St. Kevern in his cave on the east
+side of Goonhilly Downs; and how they took the Holy Communion together;
+and how St. Just, tempted by the beauty of St. Kevern’s paten and
+chalice, arose in the night and fled away with the holy vessels, wading
+first the Looe Pool, and then Mount’s Bay itself; and how St. Kevern
+pursued him, and hurled after him three great boulders of porphyry, two
+of which lie on the slates and granites to this day; till St. Just,
+terrified at the might of his saintly brother, tossed the stolen vessels
+ashore opposite St. Michael’s Mount, and, fleeing back to his own
+hermitage, never appeared again in the neighbourhood of St. Kevern.
+
+But to return.  St. Malo, coming home with St. Brendan, craves for peace,
+and solitude, and the hermit’s cell, and goes down to the sea-shore, to
+find a vessel which may carry him out once more into the infinite
+unknown.  Then there comes by a boat with no one in it but a little boy,
+who takes him on board, and carries him to the isle of the hermit Aaron,
+near the town of Aletha, which men call St. Malo now; and then the little
+boy vanishes away, and St. Malo knows that he was Christ himself.  There
+he lives with Aaron, till the Bretons of the neighbourhood make him their
+bishop.  He converts the idolaters around, and performs the usual
+miracles of hermit saints.  He changes water into wine, and restores to
+life not only a dead man, but a dead sow likewise, over whose motherless
+litter a wretched slave, who has by accident killed the sow with a stone,
+is weeping and wringing his hands in dread of his master’s fury.  While
+St. Malo is pruning vines, he lays his cape upon the ground, and a
+redbreast comes and lays an egg on it.  He leaves it there, for the
+bird’s sake, till the young are hatched, knowing, says his biographer,
+that without God the Father not a sparrow falls to the ground.  Hailoch,
+the prince of Brittany, destroys his church, and is struck blind.
+Restored to sight by the saint, he bestows large lands on the Church.
+“The impious generation,” who, with their children after them, have lost
+their property by Hailoch’s gift, rise against St. Malo.  They steal his
+horses, and in mockery leave him only a mare.  They beat his baker, tie
+his feet under the horse’s body, and leave him on the sand to be drowned
+by the rising tide.  The sea by a miracle stops a mile off, and the baker
+is saved.
+
+St. Malo, weary of the wicked Bretons, flees to Saintonge in Aquitaine,
+where he performs yet more miracles.  Meanwhile, a dire famine falls on
+the Bretons, and a thousand horrible diseases.  Penitent, they send for
+St. Malo, who delivers them and their flocks.  But, at the command of an
+angel, he returns to Saintonge and dies there, and Saintonge has his
+relics, and the innumerable miracles which they work, even to the days of
+Sigebert, of Gembloux.
+
+
+
+
+ST. COLUMBA
+
+
+THE famous St. Columba cannot perhaps be numbered among the hermits: but
+as the spiritual father of many hermits, as well as many monks, and as
+one whose influence upon the Christianity of these islands is notorious
+and extensive, he must needs have some notice in these pages.  Those who
+wish to study his life and works at length will of course read Dr.
+Reeves’s invaluable edition of Adamnan.  The more general reader will
+find all that he need know in Mr. Hill Burton’s excellent “History of
+Scotland,” chapters vii. and viii.; and also in Mr. Maclear’s “History of
+Christian Missions during the Middle Ages”—a book which should be in
+every Sunday library.
+
+St. Columba, like St. David and St. Cadoc of Wales, and like many great
+Irish saints, is a prince and a statesman as well as a monk.  He is mixed
+up in quarrels between rival tribes.  He is concerned, according to
+antiquaries, in three great battles, one of which sprang, according to
+some, from Columba’s own misdeeds.  He copies by stealth the Psalter of
+St. Finnian.  St. Finnian demands the copy, saying it was his as much as
+the original.  The matter is referred to King Dermod, who pronounces, in
+high court at Tara, the famous decision which has become a proverb in
+Ireland, that “to every cow belongs her own calf.” {283}  St. Columba,
+who does not seem at this time to have possessed the dove-like temper
+which his name, according to his disciples, indicates, threatens to
+avenge upon the king his unjust decision.  The son of the king’s steward
+and the son of the King of Connaught, a hostage at Dermod’s court, are
+playing hurley on the green before Dermod’s palace.  The young prince
+strikes the other boy, kills him, and flies for protection to Columba.
+He is nevertheless dragged away, and slain upon the spot.  Columba leaves
+the palace in a rage, goes to his native mountains of Donegal, and
+returns at the head of an army of northern and western Irish to fight the
+great battle of Cooldrevny in Sligo.  But after a while public opinion
+turns against him; and at the Synod of Teltown, in Meath, it is
+proclaimed that Columba, the man of blood, shall quit Ireland, and win
+for Christ out of heathendom as many souls as have perished in that great
+fight.  Then Columba, with twelve comrades, sails in a coracle for the
+coast of Argyleshire; and on the eve of Pentecost, A.D. 563, lands upon
+that island which, it may be, will be famous to all times as Iona, Hy, or
+Icolumkill,—Hy of Columb of the Cells.
+
+Thus had Columba, if the tale be true, undertaken a noble penance; and he
+performed it like a noble man.  If, according to the fashion of those
+times, he bewailed his sins with tears, he was no morbid or selfish
+recluse, but a man of practical power, and of wide humanity.  Like one of
+Homer’s old heroes, St. Columba could turn his hand to every kind of
+work.  He could turn the hand-mill, work on the farm, heal the sick, and
+command as a practised sailor the little fleet of coracles which lay
+hauled up on the strand of Iona, ready to carry him and his monks on
+their missionary voyages to the mainland or the isles.  Tall, powerful,
+handsome, with a face which, as Adamnan said, made all who saw him glad,
+and a voice so stentorian that it could be heard at times a full mile
+off, and coming too of royal race, it is no wonder if he was regarded as
+a sort of demigod, not only by his own monks, but by the Pictish chiefs
+to whom he preached the Cross.  We hear of him at Craig Phadrick, near
+Inverness; at Skye, at Tiree, and other islands; we hear of him receiving
+visits from his old monks of Derry and Durrow; returning to Ireland to
+decide between rival chiefs; and at last dying at the age of
+seventy-seven, kneeling before the altar in his little chapel of Iona—a
+death as beautiful as had been the last thirty-four years of his life;
+and leaving behind him disciples destined to spread the light of
+Christianity over the whole of Scotland and the northern parts of
+England.
+
+St. Columba, at one period or other of his life, is said to have visited
+a missionary hermit, whose name still lingers in Scotland as St.
+Kentigern, or more commonly St. Mungo, the patron saint of Glasgow.  The
+two men, it is said (but the story belongs to the twelfth century, and
+can hardly be depended on), exchanged their crooked staves or crosiers in
+token of Christian brotherhood, and that which St. Columba is said to
+have given to St. Kentigern was preserved in Ripon Cathedral to the
+beginning of the fifteenth century.  But who St. Kentigern was, or what
+he really did, is hard to say; for all his legends, like most of these
+early ones, are as tangled as a dream.  He dies in the year 601: and yet
+he is the disciple of the famous St. Servanus or St. Serf, who lived in
+the times of St. Palladius and St. Patrick, 180 years before.  This St.
+Serf is a hermit of the true old type; and even if his story be, as Dr.
+Reeves thinks, a fabrication throughout, it is at least a very early one,
+and true to the ideal which had originated with St. Antony.  He is
+brought up in a monastery at Culross: he is tempted by the devil in a
+cave in the parish of Dysart (the Desert), in Fifeshire, which still
+retains that name.  The dæmon, fleeing from him, enters an unfortunate
+man, who is forthwith plagued with a wolfish appetite.  St. Serf cures
+him by putting his thumb into his mouth.  A man is accused of stealing
+and eating a lamb, and denies the theft.  St. Serf, however, makes the
+lamb bleat in the robber’s stomach, and so substantiates the charge
+beyond all doubt.  He works other wonders; among them the slaying of a
+great dragon in the place called “Dunyne;” sails for the Orkneys, and
+converts the people there; and vanishes thenceforth into the dream-land
+from which he sprung.
+
+Two great disciples he has, St. Ternan and St. Kentigern; mystery and
+miracle hang round the boyhood of the latter.  His father is unknown.
+His mother is condemned to be cast from the rock of “Dunpelder,” but is
+saved and absolved by a miracle.  Before the eyes of the astonished
+Picts, she floats gently down through the air, and arrives at the cliff
+foot unhurt.  St. Kentigern is thenceforth believed to be virgin-born,
+and is reverenced as a miraculous being from his infancy.  He goes to
+school to the mythic St. Serf, who calls him Mungo, or the Beloved; which
+name he bears in Glasgow until this day.  His fellow-scholars envy his
+virtue and learning, and try to ruin him with their master.  St. Serf has
+a pet robin, which is wont to sit and sing upon his shoulder.  The boys
+pull off its head, and lay the blame upon Kentigern.  The saint comes in
+wrathful, tawse in hand, and Kentigern is for the moment in serious
+danger; but, equal to the occasion then as afterwards, he puts the
+robin’s head on again, sets it singing, and amply vindicates his
+innocence.  To this day the robin figures in the arms of the good city of
+Glasgow, with the tree which St. Kentigern, when his enemies had put out
+his fire, brought in from the frozen forest and lighted with his breath,
+and the salmon in whose mouth a ring which had been cast into the Clyde
+had been found again by St. Kentigern’s prophetic spirit.
+
+The envy of his fellow-scholars, however, is too much for St. Kentigern’s
+peace of mind.  He wanders away to the spot where Glasgow city now
+stands, lives in a rock hollowed out into a tomb, is ordained by an Irish
+bishop (according to a Celtic custom, of which antiquaries have written
+learnedly and dubiously likewise), and has ecclesiastical authority over
+all the Picts from the Frith of Forth to the Roman Wall.  But all these
+stories, as I said before, are tangled as a dream; for the twelfth
+century monks, in their loyal devotion to the see of Rome, are apt to
+introduce again and again ecclesiastical customs which belonged to their
+own time, and try to represent these primæval saints as regular and
+well-disciplined servants of the Pope.
+
+It may be remarked that St. Serf is said to have come into a “dysart” or
+desert.  So did many monks of the school of St. Columba and his
+disciples, who wished for a severer and a more meditative life than could
+be found in the busy society of a convent.  “There was a ‘disert,’” says
+Dr. Reeves, “for such men to retire to, besides the monastery of Derry,
+and another at Iona itself, situate near the shore in the low ground,
+north of the Cathedral, as may be inferred from Portandisiart, the name
+of a little bay in this situation.”  A similar “disert” or collection of
+hermit cells was endowed at Cashel in 1101; and a “disert columkill,”
+with two townland mills and a vegetable garden, was endowed at Kells, at
+a somewhat earlier period, for the use of “devout pilgrims,” as those
+were called who left the society of men to worship God in solitude.
+
+The Venerable Bede speaks of as many as three personages, Saxons by their
+names, who in the Isle of Ireland led the “Pilgrim” or anchoritic life,
+to obtain a country in heaven; and tells of a Drycthelm of the monastery
+at Melrose, who went into a secret dwelling therein to give himself more
+utterly to prayer, and who used to stand for hours in the cold waters of
+the Tweed, as St. Godric did centuries afterwards in those of the Wear.
+Solitaries, “recluses,” are met with again and again in these old
+records, who more than once became Abbots of Iona itself.  But there is
+no need to linger on over instances which are only quoted to show that
+some of the noblest spirits of the Celtic Church kept up wherever they
+could the hermit’s ideal, the longing for solitude, for passive
+contemplation, for silence and perpetual prayer, which they had inherited
+from St. Antony and the Fathers of the Egyptian Desert.
+
+The same ideal was carried by them over the Border into England.  Off its
+extreme northern coast, for instance, nearly half-way between Berwick and
+Bamborough Castle, lies, as travellers northward may have seen for
+themselves, the “Holy Island,” called in old times Lindisfarne.  A monk’s
+chapel on that island was the mother of all the churches between Tyne and
+Tweed, as well as of many between Tyne and Humber.  The Northumbrians had
+been nominally converted, according to Bede, A.D. 627, under their King
+Edwin, by Paulinus, one of the Roman monks who had followed in the steps
+of St. Augustine, the apostle of Kent.  Evil times had fallen on them.
+Penda, at the head of the idolatrous Mercians (the people of
+Mid-England), and Ceadwalla, at the head of the Western Britons, had
+ravaged the country north of Tweed with savage cruelty, slain King Edwin,
+at Hatfield, near Doncaster, and exterminated Christianity; while
+Paulinus had fled to Kent, and become Bishop of Rochester.  The invaders
+had been driven out, seemingly by Oswald, who knew enough of Christianity
+to set up, ere he engaged the enemy, a cross of wood on the
+“Heavenfield,” near Hexham.  That cross stood till the time of Bede, some
+150 years after; and had become, like Moses’ brazen serpent, an object of
+veneration.  For if chips cut off from it were put into water, that water
+cured men or cattle of their diseases.
+
+Oswald, believing that it was through the mercy of him whom that cross
+symbolized he had conquered the Mercians and the Britons, would needs
+reconvert his people to the true faith.  He had been in exile during
+Edwin’s lifetime among the Scots, and had learned from them something of
+Christianity.  So out of Iona a monk was sent to him, Aidan by name, to
+be a bishop over the Northumbrians; and he settled himself upon the isle
+of Lindisfarne, and began to convert it into another Iona.  “A man he
+was,” says Bede, “of singular sweetness, piety, and moderation; zealous
+in the cause of God, though not altogether according to knowledge, for he
+was wont to keep Easter after the fashion of his country;” _i.e._ of the
+Picts and Northern Scots. . . . “From that time forth many Scots came
+daily into Britain, and with great devotion preached the word to these
+provinces of the English over whom King Oswald reigned. . . .  Churches
+were built, money and lands were given of the king’s bounty to build
+monasteries; the English, great and small, were by their Scottish masters
+instructed in the rules and observance of regular discipline; for most of
+those who came to preach were monks.” {290}
+
+So says the Venerable Bede, the monk of Jarrow, and the father (as he has
+been well called) of English history.  He tells us too, how Aidan,
+wishing, it may be supposed, for greater solitude, went away and lived on
+the rocky isle of Farne, some two miles out at sea, off Bamborough
+Castle; and how, when he saw Penda and his Mercians, in a second invasion
+of Northumbria, trying to burn down the walls of Bamborough—which were
+probably mere stockades of timber—he cried to God, from off his rock, to
+“behold the mischief:” whereon the wind changed suddenly, and blew the
+flames back on the besiegers, discomfiting them, and saving the town.
+
+Bede tells us, too, how Aidan wandered, preaching from place to place,
+haunting King Oswald’s court, but owning nothing of his own save his
+church, and a few fields about it; and how, when death came upon him,
+they set up a tent for him close by the wall at the west end of the
+church, so that it befell that he gave up the ghost leaning against a
+post, which stood outside to strengthen the wall.
+
+A few years after, Penda came again and burned the village, with the
+church; and yet neither could that fire, nor one which happened soon
+after, destroy that post.  Wherefore the post was put inside the church,
+as a holy thing, and chips of it, like those of the Cross of Heaven
+Field, healed many folk of their distempers.
+
+. . . A tale at which we may look in two different humours.  We may pass
+it by with a sneer, and a hypothesis (which will be probably true) that
+the post was of old heart-of-oak, which is burnt with extreme difficulty;
+or we may pause a moment in reverence before the noble figure of the good
+old man, ending a life of unselfish toil without a roof beneath which to
+lay his head; penniless and comfortless in this world: but sure of his
+reward in the world to come.
+
+A few years after Aidan’s death another hermit betook him to the rocks of
+Farne, who rose to far higher glory; who became, in fact, the tutelar
+saint of the fierce Northern men; who was to them, up to the time even of
+the Tudor monarchs, what Pallas Athene was to Athens, or Diana to the
+Ephesians.  St. Cuthbert’s shrine, in Durham Cathedral (where his
+biographer Bede also lay in honour), was their rallying point, not merely
+for ecclesiastical jurisdiction or for miraculous cures, but for
+political movements.  Above his shrine rose the noble pile of Durham.
+The bishop, who ruled in his name, was a Count Palatine, and an almost
+independent prince.  His sacred banner went out to battle before the
+Northern levies, or drove back again and again the flames which consumed
+the wooden houses of Durham.  His relics wrought innumerable miracles;
+and often he himself appeared with long countenance, ripened by
+abstinence, his head sprinkled with grey hairs, his casule of cloth of
+gold, his mitre of glittering crystal, his face brighter than the sun,
+his eyes mild as the stars of heaven, the gems upon his hand and robes
+rattling against his pastoral staff beset with pearls. {292}  Thus
+glorious the demigod of the Northern men appeared to his votaries, and
+steered with his pastoral staff, as with a rudder, the sinking ship in
+safety to Lindisfarne; received from the hands of St. Brendan, as from a
+saint of inferior powers, the innocent yeoman, laden with fetters, whom
+he had delivered out of the dungeon of Brancepeth, and, smiting asunder
+the massive Norman walls, led him into the forest, and bade him flee to
+sanctuary in Durham, and be safe; or visited the little timber vine-clad
+chapel of Lixtune, on the Cheshire shore, to heal the sick who watched
+all night before his altar, or to forgive the lad who had robbed the nest
+which his sacred raven had built upon the roof, and, falling with the
+decayed timber, had broken his bones, and maimed his sacrilegious hand.
+
+Originally, says Bede, a monk at Melrose, and afterward abbot of the same
+place, he used to wander weeks together out of his monastery, seemingly
+into Ettrick and the Lammermuirs, and preach in such villages as “being
+seated high up among craggy, uncouth mountains, were frightful to others
+even to look at, and whose poverty and barbarity rendered them
+inaccessible to other teachers.”  “So skilful an orator was he, so fond
+of enforcing his subject, and such a brightness appeared in his angelic
+face, that no man presumed to conceal from him the most hidden secrets of
+their hearts, but all openly confessed what they had done.”
+
+So he laboured for many years, till his old abbot Eata, who had become
+bishop and abbot at Lindisfarne, sent for him thither, and made him prior
+of the monks for several years.  But at last he longed, like so many
+before him, for solitude.  He considered (so he said afterwards to the
+brethren) that the life of the disciplined and obedient monk was higher
+than that of the lonely and independent hermit: but yet he longed to be
+alone; longed, it may be, to recall at least upon some sea-girt rock
+thoughts which had come to him in those long wanderings on the heather
+moors, with no sound to distract him save the hum of the bee and the wail
+of the curlew; and so he went away to that same rock of Farne, where
+Aidan had taken refuge some ten or fifteen years before, and there, with
+the deep sea rolling at his feet and the gulls wailing about his head, he
+built himself one of those “Picts’ Houses,” the walls of which remain
+still in many parts of Scotland—a circular hut of turf and rough
+stone—and dug out the interior to a depth of some feet, and thatched it
+with sticks and grass; and made, it seems, two rooms within; one for an
+oratory, one for a dwelling-place: and so lived alone, and worshipped
+God.  He grew his scanty crops of barley on the rock (men said, of
+course, by miracle): he had tried wheat, but, as was to be expected, it
+failed.  He found (men said, of course, by miracle) a spring upon the
+rock.  Now and then brethren came to visit him.  And what did man need
+more, save a clear conscience and the presence of his Creator?  Certainly
+not Cuthbert.  When he asked the brethren to bring him a beam that he
+might prop up his cabin where the sea had eaten out the floor, and when
+they forgot the commission, the sea itself washed one up in the very cove
+where it was needed: when the choughs from the cliff stole his barley and
+the straw from the roof of his little hospice, he had only to reprove
+them, and they never offended again; on one occasion, indeed, they atoned
+for their offence by bringing him a lump of suet, wherewith he greased
+his shoes for many a day.  We are not bound to believe this story; it is
+one of many which hang about the memory of St. Cuthbert, and which have
+sprung out of that love of the wild birds which may have grown up in the
+good man during his long wanderings through woods and over moors.  He
+bequeathed (so it was believed) as a sacred legacy to the wild-fowl of
+the Farne islands, “St. Cuthbert’s peace;” above all to the eider-ducks,
+which swarmed there in his days, but are now, alas! growing rarer and
+rarer, from the intrusion of vulgar sportsmen who never heard St.
+Cuthbert’s name, or learnt from him to spare God’s creatures when they
+need them not.  On Farne, in Reginald’s time, they bred under your very
+bed, got out of your way if you made a sign to them, let you take up them
+or their young ones, and nestled silently in your bosom, and croaked
+joyfully with fluttering wings when stroked.  “Not to nature, but to
+grace; not to hereditary tendency, but only to the piety and compassion
+of the blessed St. Cuthbert,” says Reginald, “is so great a miracle to be
+ascribed.  For the Lord who made all things in heaven and earth has
+subjected them to the nod of his saints, and prostrated them under the
+feet of obedience.”  Insufficient induction (the cause of endless
+mistakes, and therefore of endless follies and crimes) kept Reginald
+unaware of the now notorious fact that the female eider, during the
+breeding season, is just as tame, allowing for a little exaggeration, as
+St. Cuthbert’s own ducks are, while the male eider is just as wild and
+wary as any other sea-bird: a mistake altogether excusable in one who had
+probably never seen or heard of eider-ducks in any other spot.  It may
+be, nevertheless, that St. Cuthbert’s special affection for the eider may
+have been called out by another strange and well-known fact about them of
+which Reginald oddly enough takes no note—namely, that they line their
+nests with down plucked from their own bosom; thus realizing the fable
+which has made the pelican for so many centuries the type of the Church.
+It is a question, indeed, whether the pelican, which is always
+represented in mediæval paintings and sculptures with a short bill,
+instead of the enormous bill and pouch which is the especial mark of the
+“Onocrotalus” of the ancients, now miscalled pelican, be not actually the
+eider-duck itself, confounded with the true _pelecanus_, which was the
+mediæval, and is still the scientific, name of the cormorant.  Be that as
+it may, ill befell any one who dare touch one of St. Cuthbert’s birds, as
+was proved in the case of Liveing, servant to Ælric, who was a hermit in
+Farne after the time of St. Cuthbert.  For he, tired it may be of barley
+and dried fish, killed and ate an eider-duck in his master’s absence,
+scattering the bones and feathers over the cliffs.  But when the hermit
+came back, what should he find but those same bones and feathers rolled
+into a lump and laid inside the door of the little chapel; the very sea,
+says Reginald, not having dared to swallow them up.  Whereby the hapless
+Liveing being betrayed, was soundly flogged, and put on bread and water
+for many a day; the which story Liveing himself told to Reginald.
+
+Not only the eider, but all birds in Farne, were protected by St.
+Cuthbert’s peace.  Bartholomew, who was a famous hermit there in after
+years, had a tame bird, says the chronicler, who ate from his hand, and
+hopped about the table among him and his guests, till some thought it a
+miracle; and some, finding, no doubt, the rocks of Farne weary enough,
+derived continual amusement from the bird.  But when he one day went off
+to another island, and left his bird to keep the house, a hawk came in
+and ate it up.  Cuthbert, who could not save the bird, at least could
+punish the murderer.  The hawk flew round and round the island,
+imprisoned, so it was thought, by some mysterious power, till, terrified
+and worn out, it flew into the chapel, and lay, cowering and half dead,
+in a corner by the altar.  Bartholomew came back, found his bird’s
+feathers, and the tired hawk.  But even the hawk must profit by St.
+Cuthbert’s peace.  He took it up, carried it to the harbour, and there
+bade it depart in St. Cuthbert’s name, whereon it flew off free, and was
+no more seen.  Such tales as these may be explained, even to their most
+minute details, by simply natural causes: and yet, in this age of wanton
+destruction of wild birds, one is tempted at moments to wish for the
+return of some such graceful and humane superstition which could keep
+down, at least in the name of mercy and humanity, the needless cruelty of
+man.
+
+But to return.  After St. Cuthbert, says Bede, had served God in the
+solitude of Farne for many years, the mound which encompassed his
+habitation being so high that he could see nothing from thence but
+heaven, to which he so ardently aspired, he was compelled by tears and
+entreaties—King Egfrid himself coming to the island, with bishops and
+religious and great men—to become himself bishop in Holy Island.  There,
+as elsewhere, he did his duty.  But after two years he went again to
+Farne, knowing that his end was near.  For when, in his episcopal
+labours, he had gone across to Lugubalia—old Penrith, in Cumberland—there
+came across to him a holy hermit, Herebert by name, who dwelt upon an
+island in Derwentwater, and talked with him a long while on heavenly
+things; and Cuthbert bade him ask him then all the questions which he
+wished to have resolved, for they should see each other no more in this
+world.  Herebert, who seems to have been one of his old friends, fell at
+Cuthbert’s feet, and bade him remember that whenever he had done wrong he
+had submitted himself to him utterly, and always tried to live according
+to his rules; and all he wished for now was that, as they had served God
+together upon earth, they might depart for ever to see his bliss in
+heaven: the which befell; for a few months afterwards, that is, on the
+20th of March, their souls quitted their mortal bodies on the same day,
+and they were re-united in spirit.
+
+St. Cuthbert wished to have been buried on his rock in Farne: but the
+brethren had persuaded him to allow his corpse to be removed to Holy
+Island.  He begged them, said Bede, should they be forced to leave that
+place, to carry his bones along with them; and so they were forced to do
+at last; for in the year 875; whilst the Danes were struggling with
+Alfred in Wessex, an army of them, with Halfdene at their head, went up
+into Northumbria, burning towns, destroying churches, tossing children on
+their pike-points, and committing all those horrors which made the
+Norsemen terrible and infamous for so many years.  Then the monks fled
+from the monastery, bearing the shrine of St. Cuthbert, and all their
+treasures, and followed by their retainers, men, women, and children, and
+their sheep and oxen: and behold! the hour of their flight was that of an
+exceedingly high spring tide.  The Danes were landing from their ships in
+their rear; in their front was some two miles of sea.  Escape seemed
+hopeless; when, says the legend, the water retreated before the holy
+relics as they advanced; and became, as to the children of Israel of old,
+a wall on their right hand and on their left; and so St. Cuthbert came
+safe to shore, and wandered in the woods, borne upon his servants’
+shoulders, and dwelling in tents for seven years, and found rest at last
+in Durham, till at the Reformation his shrine, and that of the Venerable
+Bede, were robbed of their gold and jewels; and no trace of them (as far
+as I know) is left, save that huge slab, whereon is written the monkish
+rhyme:—
+
+    Hic jacet in fossâ
+    Bedæ Venerabilis ossa. {299}
+
+
+
+
+ST. GUTHLAC
+
+
+HERMITS dwelling in the wilderness, as far as I am aware, were to be seen
+only in the northern and western parts of the island, where not only did
+the forest afford concealment, but the crags and caves shelter.  The
+southern and eastern English seldom possess the vivid imagination of the
+Briton, the Northumbrian, and the Scot; while the rich lowlands of
+central, southern, and eastern England, well peopled and well tilled,
+offered few spots lonely enough for the hermit’s cell.
+
+One district only was desolate enough to attract those who wished to be
+free from the world,—namely, the great fens north of Cambridge; and
+there, accordingly, as early as the seventh century, hermits settled in
+morasses now so utterly transformed that it is difficult to restore in
+one’s imagination the original scenery.
+
+The fens in the seventh century were probably very like the forests at
+the mouth of the Mississippi, or the swampy shores of the Carolinas.
+Their vast plain is now, in summer, one sea of golden corn; in winter, a
+black dreary fallow, cut into squares by stagnant dykes, and broken only
+by unsightly pumping mills and doleful lines of poplar-trees.  Of old it
+was a labyrinth of black wandering streams; broad lagoons; morasses
+submerged every spring-tide; vast beds of reed and sedge and fern; vast
+copses of willow, alder, and grey poplar, rooted in the floating peat,
+which was swallowing up slowly, all-devouring, yet all-preserving, the
+forests of fir and oak, ash and poplar, hazel and yew, which had once
+grown on that low, rank soil, sinking slowly (so geologists assure us)
+beneath the sea from age to age.  Trees, torn down by flood and storm,
+floated and lodged in rafts, damming the waters back upon the land.
+Streams, bewildered in the flats, changed their channels, mingling silt
+and sand with the peat moss.  Nature, left to herself, ran into wild riot
+and chaos more and more, till the whole fen became one “Dismal Swamp,” in
+which, at the time of the Norman Conquest, the “Last of the English,”
+like Dred in Mrs. Stowe’s tale, took refuge from their tyrants, and
+lived, like him, a free and joyous life awhile.
+
+For there are islands in the sea which have escaped the destroying deluge
+of peat-moss,—outcrops of firm and fertile land, which in the early
+Middle Age were so many natural parks, covered with richest grass and
+stateliest trees, swarming with deer and roe, goat and boar, as the
+streams around swarmed with otter and beaver, and with fowl of every
+feather, and fish of every scale.
+
+Beautiful after their kind were those far isles in the eyes of the monks
+who were the first settlers in the wilderness.  The author of the
+“History of Ramsey” grows enthusiastic, and somewhat bombastic also, as
+he describes the lovely isle, which got its name from the solitary ram
+who had wandered thither, either in extreme drought or over the winter
+ice, and, never able to return, was found feeding among the wild deer,
+fat beyond the wont of rams.  He tells of the stately ashes, most of them
+cut in his time, to furnish mighty beams for the church roof; of the rich
+pastures painted with all gay flowers in spring; of the “green crown” of
+reed and alder which encircled the isle; of the fair wide mere (now
+drained) with its “sandy beach” along the forest side; “a delight,” he
+says, “to all who look thereon.”
+
+In like humour William of Malmesbury, writing in the first half of the
+twelfth century, speaks of Thorney Abbey and its isle.  “It represents,”
+says he, “a very paradise; for that in pleasure and delight it resembles
+heaven itself.  These marshes abound in trees, whose length, without a
+knot, doth emulate the stars.  The plain there is as level as the sea,
+alluring the eye with its green grass, and so smooth that there is nought
+to trip the foot of him who runs through it.  Neither is there any waste
+place; for in some parts are apples, in others vines, which are either
+spread on the ground, or raised on poles.  A mutual strife there is
+between Nature and Art; so that what one produces not the other supplies.
+What shall I say of those fair buildings, which ’tis so wonderful to see
+the ground among those fens upbear?”
+
+So wrote William of Malmesbury, after the industry and wisdom of the
+monks, for more than four centuries, had been at work to civilize and
+cultivate the wilderness.  Yet even then there was another side to the
+picture; and Thorney, Ramsey, or Crowland would have seemed, for nine
+months every year, sad places enough to us comfortable folk of the
+nineteenth century.  But men lived hard in those days, even the most
+high-born and luxurious nobles and ladies; under dark skies, in houses
+which we should think, from darkness, draught, and want of space, unfit
+for felons’ cells.  Hardly they lived; and easily were they pleased; and
+thanked God for the least gleam of sunshine, the least patch of green,
+after the terrible and long winters of the Middle Ages.  And ugly enough
+those winters must have been, what with snow and darkness, flood and ice,
+ague and rheumatism; while through the dreary winter’s night the whistle
+of the wind and the wild cries of the waterfowl were translated into the
+howls of witches and dæmons; and (as in St. Guthlac’s case), the
+delirious fancies of marsh fever made those fiends take hideous shapes
+before the inner eye, and act fantastic horrors round the fen-man’s bed
+of sedge.
+
+Concerning this St. Guthlac full details remain, both in Latin and
+Anglo-Saxon; the author of the original document professing to be one
+Felix, a monk of Ramsey near by, who wrote possibly as early as the
+eighth century. {303}
+
+There we may read how the young warrior-noble Guthlac (“The Battle-Play,”
+the “Sport of War”), tired of slaying and sinning, bethought him to
+fulfil the prodigies seen at his birth; how he wandered into the fen,
+where one Tatwin (who after became a saint likewise) took him in his
+canoe to a spot so lonely as to be almost unknown, buried in reeds and
+alders, and how he found among the trees nought but an old “law,” as the
+Scots still call a mound, which men of old had broken into seeking for
+treasure, and a little pond; and how he built himself a hermit’s cell
+thereon, and saw visions and wrought miracles; and how men came to him,
+as to a fakir or shaman of the East; notably one Beccel, who acted as his
+servant; and how as Beccel was shaving the saint one day there fell on
+him a great temptation: Why should he not cut St. Guthlac’s throat, and
+instal himself in his cell, that he might have the honour and glory of
+sainthood?  But St. Guthlac perceived the inward temptation (which is
+told with the naïve honesty of those half-savage times), and rebuked the
+offender into confession, and all went well to the end.
+
+There we may read, too, a detailed account of the Fauna now happily
+extinct in the fens; of the creatures who used to hale St. Guthlac out of
+his hut, drag him through the bogs, carry him aloft through frost and
+fire—“Develen and luther gostes”—such as tormented in like wise St.
+Botolph (from whom Botulfston = Boston, has its name), and who were
+supposed to haunt the meres and fens, and to have an especial fondness
+for old heathen barrows with their fancied treasure-hoards: how they
+“filled the house with their coming, and poured in on every side, from
+above, and from beneath, and everywhere.  They were in countenance
+horrible, and they had great heads, and a long neck, and a lean visage;
+they were filthy and squalid in their beards, and they had rough ears,
+and crooked ‘nebs,’ and fierce eyes, and foul mouths; and their teeth
+were like horses’ tusks; and their throats were filled with flame, and
+they were grating in their voice; they had crooked shanks, and knees big
+and great behind, and distorted toes, and cried hoarsely with their
+voices; and they came with immoderate noise and immense horror, that he
+thought that all between, heaven and earth resounded with their voices. . . .
+And they tugged and led him out of the cot, and led him to the swart
+fen, and threw and sunk him in the muddy waters.  After that they brought
+him into the wild places of the wilderness, among the thick beds of
+brambles, that all his body was torn. . . .  After that they took him and
+beat him with iron whips, and after that they brought him on their
+creaking wings between the cold regions of the air.”
+
+But there are gentler and more human touches in that old legend.  You may
+read in it how all the wild birds of the fen came to St. Guthlac, and he
+fed them after their kind; how the ravens tormented him, stealing
+letters, gloves, and what not, from his visitors; and then, seized with
+compunction at his reproofs, brought them back, or hanged them on the
+reeds; and how, as Wilfrid, a holy visitant, was sitting with him,
+discoursing of the contemplative life, two swallows came flying in, and
+lifted up their song, sitting now on the saint’s hand, now on his
+shoulder, now on his knee; and how, when Wilfrid wondered thereat,
+Guthlac made answer, “Know you not that he who hath led his life
+according to God’s will, to him the wild beasts and the wild birds draw
+the more near?”
+
+After fifteen years of such a life, in fever, ague, and starvation, no
+wonder if St. Guthlac died.  They buried him in a leaden coffin (a grand
+and expensive luxury in the seventh century) which had been sent to him
+during his life by a Saxon princess; and then, over his sacred and
+wonder-working corpse, as over that of a Buddhist saint, there arose a
+chapel, with a community of monks, companies of pilgrims who came to
+worship, sick who came to be healed; till at last, founded on great piles
+driven into the bog, arose the lofty wooden Abbey of Crowland; in
+“sanctuary of the four rivers,” with its dykes, parks, vineyards,
+orchards, rich ploughlands, from which, in time of famine, the monks of
+Crowland fed all people of the neighbouring fens; with its tower with
+seven bells, which had not their like in England; its twelve altars rich
+with the gifts of Danish vikings and princes, and even with twelve white
+bear-skins, the gift of Canute’s self; while all around were the cottages
+of the corrodiers, or folk who, for a corrody, or life pittance from the
+abbey, had given away their lands, to the wrong and detriment of their
+heirs.
+
+But within those four rivers, at least, were neither tyranny nor slavery.
+Those who took refuge in St. Guthlac’s place from cruel lords must keep
+his peace toward each other, and earn their living like honest men, safe
+while they so did: for between those four rivers St. Guthlac and his
+abbot were the only lords; and neither summoner, nor sheriff of the king,
+nor armed force of knight or earl, could enter—“the inheritance of the
+Lord, the soil of St. Mary and St. Bartholomew, the most holy sanctuary
+of St. Guthlac and his monks; the minister free from worldly servitude;
+the special almshouse of most illustrious kings; the sole refuge of any
+one in worldly tribulation; the perpetual abode of the saints; the
+possession of religious men, specially set apart by the common council of
+the realm; by reason of the frequent miracles of the holy confessor St.
+Guthlac, an ever-fruitful mother of camphire in the vineyards of Engedi;
+and, by reason of the privileges granted by the kings, a city of grace
+and safety to all who repent.”
+
+Does not all this sound like a voice from another planet?  It is all
+gone; and it was good and right that it should go when it had done its
+work, and that the civilization of the fen should be taken up and carried
+out by men like the good knight, Richard of Rulos, who, two generations
+after the Conquest, marrying Hereward’s grand-daughter, and becoming Lord
+of Deeping (the deep meadow), thought that he could do the same work from
+the hall of Bourne as the monks did from their cloisters; got permission
+from the Crowland monks, for twenty marks of silver, to drain as much as
+he could of the common marshes; and then shut out the Welland by strong
+dykes, built cottages, marked out gardens, and tilled fields, till “out
+of slough and bogs accursed he made a garden of pleasure.”
+
+Yet one lasting work those monks of Crowland seem to have done, besides
+those firm dykes and rich corn-lands of the Porsand, which endure unto
+this day.  For within two generations of the Norman conquest, while the
+old wooden abbey, destroyed by fire, was being replaced by that noble
+pile of stone whose ruins are still standing, the French abbot of
+Crowland (so runs the legend) sent French monks to open a school under
+the new French donjon, in the little Roman town of Grante-brigge;
+whereby—so does all earnest work, however mistaken, grow and spread in
+this world, infinitely and for ever—St. Guthlac, by his canoe-voyage into
+Crowland Island, became the spiritual father of the University of
+Cambridge in the old world; and therefore of her noble daughter, the
+University of Cambridge, in the new world which fen-men sailing from
+Boston deeps colonized and Christianized 800 years after St. Guthlac’s
+death.
+
+
+
+
+ST. GODRIC OF FINCHALE
+
+
+A PERSONAGE quite as interesting, though not as famous, as Cuthbert or
+Guthlac, is St. Godric; the hermit around whose cell rose the Priory of
+Finchale.  In a loop of the river Wear, near Durham, there settled in the
+days of Bishop Flambard, between 1099 and 1128, a man whose parentage and
+history was for many years unknown to the good folks of the
+neighbourhood.  He had come, it seems, from a hermitage in Eskdale, in
+the parish of Whitby, whence he had been driven by the Percys, lords of
+the soil.  He had gone to Durham, become the doorkeeper of St. Giles’s
+church, and gradually learnt by heart (he was no scholar) the whole
+Psalter.  Then he had gone to St. Mary’s church, where (as was the
+fashion of the times) there was a children’s school; and, listening to
+the little ones at their lessons, picked up such hymns and prayers as he
+thought would suffice his spiritual wants.  And then, by leave of the
+bishop, he had gone away into the woods, and devoted himself to the
+solitary life in Finchale.  Buried in the woods and crags of the “Royal
+Park,” as it was then called, which swarmed with every kind of game,
+there was a little flat meadow, rough with sweet-gale and bramble and
+willow, beside a teeming salmon-pool.  Great wolves haunted the woods;
+but Godric cared nought for them; and the shingles swarmed with
+snakes,—probably only the harmless collared snakes of wet meadows, but
+reputed, as all snakes are by the vulgar, venomous: but he did not object
+to become “the companion of serpents and poisonous asps.”  He handled
+them, caressed them, let them lie by the fire in swarms on winter nights,
+in the little cave which he had hollowed in the ground and thatched with
+turf.  Men told soon how the snakes obeyed him; how two especially huge
+ones used to lie twined about his legs; till after many years, annoyed by
+their importunity, he turned them all gently out of doors, with solemn
+adjurations never to return, and they, of course, obeyed.
+
+His austerities knew no bounds.  He lived on roots and berries, flowers
+and leaves; and when the good folk found him out, and put gifts of food
+near his cell, he carried them up to the crags above, and, offering them
+solemnly up to the God who feeds the ravens when they call on him, left
+them there for the wild birds.  He watched, fasted, and scourged himself,
+and wore always a hair shirt and an iron cuirass.  He sat, night after
+night, even in mid-winter, in the cold Wear, the waters of which had
+hollowed out a rock near by into a natural bath, and afterwards in a
+barrel sunk in the floor of a little chapel of wattle, which he built and
+dedicated to the blessed Virgin Mary.  He tilled a scrap of ground, and
+ate the grain from it, mingled with ashes.  He kept his food till it was
+decayed before he tasted it; and led a life the records of which fill the
+reader with astonishment, not only at the man’s iron strength of will,
+but at the iron strength of the constitution which could support such
+hardships, in such a climate, for a single year.
+
+A strong and healthy man must Godric have been, to judge from the
+accounts (there are two, both written by eye-witnesses) of his personal
+appearance—a man of great breadth of chest and strength of arm;
+black-haired, hook-nosed, deep-browed, with flashing grey eyes;
+altogether a personable and able man, who might have done much work and
+made his way in many lands.  But what his former life had been he would
+not tell.  Mother-wit he had in plenty, and showed insight into men and
+things which the monks of Durham were ready enough to call the spirit of
+prophecy.  After awhile it was whispered that he wrought miraculous
+cures: that even a bit of the bread which he was wont to eat had healed a
+sick woman; that he fought with dæmons in visible shape; that he had seen
+(just as one of the old Egyptian hermits had seen) a little black boy
+running about between two monks who had quarrelled and come to hard blows
+and bleeding faces because one of them had made mistakes in the evening
+service: and, in short, there were attributed to him, during his
+lifetime, and by those who knew him well, a host of wonders which would
+be startling and important were they not exactly the same as those which
+appear in the life of every hermit since St. Antony.  It is impossible to
+read the pages of Reginald of Durham (for he, the biographer of St.
+Cuthbert, is also the biographer of St. Godric) without feeling how
+difficult it is to obtain anything like the truth, even from
+eye-witnesses, if only men are (as they were in those days) in a state of
+religious excitement, at a period of spiritual revivals.  The ignorant
+populace were ready to believe, and to report, anything of the Fakeer of
+Finchale.  The monks of Durham were glad enough to have a wonder-working
+man belonging to them; for Ralph Flambard, in honour of Godric, had made
+over to them the hermitage of Finchale, with its fields and fisheries.
+The lad who, in after years, waited on the hermit, would have been ready
+enough to testify that his master saw dæmons and other spiritual beings;
+for he began to see them on his own account; {312} fell asleep in the
+forest coming home from Durham with some bottles; was led in a vision by
+St. John the Baptist to the top of a hill, and shown by him wonders
+unspeakable; saw, on another occasion, a dæmon in St. Godric’s cell, hung
+all over with bottles of different liquors, offering them to the saint,
+who bade the lad drive him out of the little chapel, with a holy water
+sprinkle, but not go outside it himself.  But the lad, in the fury of
+successful pursuit, overstepped the threshold; whereon the dæmon, turning
+in self-defence, threw a single drop of one of his liquors into the lad’s
+mouth, and vanished with a laugh of scorn.  The boy’s face and throat
+swelled horribly for three days; and he took care thenceforth to obey the
+holy man more strictly: a story which I have repeated, like the one
+before it, only to show the real worth of the evidence on which Reginald
+has composed his book.  Ailred, Abbot of Rievaux (for Reginald’s book,
+though dedicated to Hugh Pudsey, his bishop, was prompted by Ailred) was
+capable (as his horrible story of the nun of Watton proves) of believing
+anything and everything which fell in with his fanatical, though pious
+and gentle, temper.
+
+And here a few words must be said to persons with whose difficulties I
+deeply sympathise, but from whose conclusions I differ utterly: those,
+namely, who say that if we reject the miracles of these saints’ lives, we
+must reject also the miracles of the New Testament.  The answer is, as I
+believe, that the Apostles and Evangelists were sane men: men in their
+right minds, wise, calm; conducting themselves (save in the matter of
+committing sins) like other human beings, as befitted the disciples of
+that Son of Man who came eating and drinking, and was therefore called by
+the ascetics of his time a gluttonous man, and a wine-bibber: whereas
+these monks were not (as I have said elsewhere) in their right minds at
+all.
+
+This is, or ought to be, patent to any one who will compare the style of
+the Apostles and Evangelists with that of the monkish hagiologists.  The
+calm, the simplicity, the brevity, the true grandeur of the former is
+sufficient evidence of their healthy-mindedness and their
+trustworthiness.  The affectation, the self-consciousness, the bombast,
+the false grandeur of the latter is sufficient evidence that they are
+neither healthy-minded or trustworthy.  Let students compare any passage
+of St. Luke or St. John, however surprising the miracle which it relates,
+with St. Jerome’s life of Paul the First Hermit, or with that famous
+letter of his to Eustochium, which (although historically important) is
+unfit for the eyes of pure-minded readers and does not appear in this
+volume; and let them judge for themselves.  Let them compare, again, the
+opening sentences of the Four Gospels, or of the Acts of the Apostles,
+with the words with which Reginald begins this life of St. Godric.  “By
+the touch of the Holy Spirit’s finger the chord of the harmonic human
+heart resounds melodiously.  For when the vein of the heart is touched by
+the grace of the Holy Spirit, forthwith, by the permirific sweetness of
+the harmony, an exceeding operation of sacred virtue is perceived more
+manifestly to spring forth.  With this sweetness of spirit, Godric, the
+man of God, was filled from the very time of his boyhood, and grew famous
+for many admirable works of holy work (_sic_), because the harmonic
+teaching of the Holy Spirit fired the secrets of his very bosom with a
+wondrous contact of spiritual grace:”—and let them say, after the
+comparison, if the difference between the two styles is not that which
+exists between one of God’s lilies, fresh from the field, and a tawdry
+bunch of artificial flowers?
+
+But to return.  Godric himself took part in the history of his own
+miracles and life.  It may be that he so overworked his brain that he
+believed that he was visited by St. Peter, and taught a hymn by the
+blessed Virgin Mary, and that he had taken part in a hundred other
+prodigies; but the Prologue to the Harleian manuscript (which the learned
+Editor, Mr. Stevenson, believes to be an early edition of Reginald’s own
+composition) confesses that Reginald, compelled by Ailred of Rievaux,
+tried in vain for a long while to get the hermit’s story from him.
+
+“You wish to write my life?” he said.  “Know then that Godric’s life is
+such as this:—Godric, at first a gross rustic, an unclean liver, an
+usurer, a cheat, a perjurer, a flatterer, a wanderer, pilfering and
+greedy; now a dead flea, a decayed dog, a vile worm, not a hermit, but a
+hypocrite; not a solitary, but a gad-about in mind; a devourer of alms,
+dainty over good things, greedy and negligent, lazy and snoring,
+ambitious and prodigal, one who is not worthy to serve others, and yet
+every day beats and scolds those who serve him: this, and worse than
+this, you may write of Godric.”  “Then he was silent as one indignant,”
+says Reginald, “and I went off in some confusion,” and the grand old man
+was left to himself and to his God.
+
+The ecclesiastical Boswell dared not mention the subject again to his
+hero for several years, though he came after from Durham to visit him,
+and celebrate mass for him in his little chapel.  After some years,
+however, he approached the matter again; and whether a pardonable vanity
+had crept over Godric, or whether he had begun at last to believe in his
+miracles, or whether the old man had that upon his mind of which he
+longed to unburthen himself, he began to answer questions, and Reginald
+delighted to listen and note down till he had finished, he says, that
+book of his life and miracles; {316} and after a while brought it to the
+saint, and falling on his knees, begged him to bless, in the name of God,
+and for the benefit of the faithful, the deeds of a certain religious
+man, who had suffered much for God in this life which he (Reginald) had
+composed accurately.  The old man perceived that he himself was the
+subject, blessed the book with solemn words (what was written therein he
+does not seem to have read), and bade Reginald conceal it till his death,
+warning him that a time would come when he should suffer rough and bitter
+things on account of that book, from those who envied him.  That
+prophecy, says Reginald, came to pass; but how, or why, he does not tell.
+There may have been, among those shrewd Northumbrian heads, even then,
+incredulous men, who used their common sense.
+
+But the story which Godric told was wild and beautiful; and though we
+must not depend too much on the accuracy of the old man’s recollections,
+or on the honesty of Reginald’s report, who would naturally omit all
+incidents which made against his hero’s perfection, it is worth listening
+to, as a vivid sketch of the doings of a real human being, in that misty
+distance of the Early Middle Age.
+
+He was born, he said, at Walpole, in Norfolk, on the old Roman sea-bank,
+between the Wash and the deep Fens.  His father’s name was Æilward; his
+mother’s, Ædwen—“the Keeper of Blessedness,” and “the Friend of
+Blessedness,” as Reginald translates them—poor and pious folk; and, being
+a sharp boy, he did not take to field-work, but preferred wandering the
+fens as a pedlar, first round the villages, then, as he grew older, to
+castles and to towns, buying and selling—what, Reginald does not tell us:
+but we should be glad to know.
+
+One day he had a great deliverance, which Reginald thinks a miracle.
+Wandering along the great tide-flats near Spalding and the old
+Well-stream, in search of waifs, and strays, of wreck or eatables, he saw
+three porpoises stranded far out upon the banks.  Two were alive, and the
+boy took pity on them (so he said) and let them be: but one was dead, and
+off it (in those days poor folks ate anything) he cut as much flesh and
+blubber as he could carry, and toiled back towards the high-tide mark.
+But whether he lost his way among the banks, or whether he delayed too
+long, the tide came in on him up to his knees, his waist, his chin, and
+at last, at times, over his head.  The boy made the sign of the cross (as
+all men in danger did then) and struggled on valiantly a full mile
+through the sea, like a brave lad never loosening his hold of his
+precious porpoise-meat till he reached the shore at the very spot from
+which he had set out.
+
+As he grew, his pedlar journeys became longer.  Repeating to himself, as
+he walked, the Creeds and the Lord’s Prayer—his only lore—he walked for
+four years through Lindsey; then went to St. Andrew’s in Scotland; after
+that, for the first time, to Rome.  Then the love of a wandering sea life
+came on him, and he sailed with his wares round the east coasts; not
+merely as a pedlar, but as a sailor himself, he went to Denmark and to
+Flanders, buying and selling, till he owned (in what port we are not
+told, but probably in Lynn or Wisbeach) half one merchant ship and the
+quarter of another.  A crafty steersman he was, a wise weather-prophet, a
+shipman stout in body and in heart, probably such a one as Chaucer tells
+us of 350 years after:—
+
+    “—A dagger hanging by a las hadde hee
+    About his nekke under his arm adoun.
+    The hote summer hadde made his hewe al broun.
+    And certainly he was a good felaw;
+    Full many a draught of wine he hadde draw,
+    From Burdeaux ward, while that the chapmen slepe,
+    Of nice conscience took he no kepe.
+    If that he fought, and hadde the higher hand,
+    By water he sent hem home to every land.
+    But of his craft to recken wel his tides,
+    His stremes and his strandes him besides,
+    His herberwe, his mone, and his lode manage,
+    There was none swiche, from Hull unto Carthage.
+    Hardy he was, and wise, I undertake:
+    With many a tempest hadde his berd be shake.
+    He knew wel alle the havens, as they were,
+    From Gotland to the Cape de Finisterre,
+    And every creke in Bretagne and in Spain.”
+
+But gradually there grew on the stout merchantman the thought that there
+was something more to be done in the world than making money.  He became
+a pious man after the fashion of those days.  He worshipped at the famous
+shrine of St. Andrew.  He worshipped, too, at St. Cuthbert’s hermitage at
+Farne, and there, he said afterwards, he longed for the first time for
+the rest and solitude of the hermitage.  He had been sixteen years a
+seaman now, with a seaman’s temptations—it may be (as he told Reginald
+plainly) with some of a seaman’s vices.  He may have done things which
+lay heavy on his conscience.  But it was getting time to think about his
+soul.  He took the cross, and went off to Jerusalem, as many a man did
+then, under difficulties incredible, dying, too often, on the way.  But
+Godric not only got safe thither, but went out of his way home by Spain
+to visit the sanctuary of St. James of Compostella, a see which Pope
+Calixtus II. had just raised to metropolitan dignity.
+
+Then he appears as steward to a rich man in the Fens, whose sons and
+young retainers, after the lawless fashion of those Anglo-Norman times,
+rode out into the country round to steal the peasants’ sheep and cattle,
+skin them on the spot, and pass them off to the master of the house as
+venison taken in hunting.  They ate and drank, roystered and rioted, like
+most other young Normans; and vexed the staid soul of Godric, whose nose
+told him plainly enough, whenever he entered the kitchen, that what was
+roasting had never come off a deer.  In vain he protested and warned
+them, getting only insults for his pains.  At last he told his lord.  The
+lord, as was to be expected, cared nought about the matter.  Let the lads
+rob the English villains: for what other end had their grandfathers
+conquered the land?  Godric punished himself, as he could not punish
+them, for the unwilling share which he had had in the wrong.  It may be
+that he, too, had eaten of that stolen food.  So away he went into
+France, and down the Rhone, on pilgrimage to the hermitage of St. Giles,
+the patron saint of the wild deer; and then on to Rome a second time, and
+back to his poor parents in the Fens.
+
+And now follows a strange and beautiful story.  All love of seafaring and
+merchandise had left the deep-hearted sailor.  The heavenly and the
+eternal, the salvation of his sinful soul, had become all in all to him;
+and yet he could not rest in the little dreary village on the Roman bank.
+He would go on pilgrimage again.  Then his mother would go likewise, and
+see St. Peter’s church, and the Pope, and all the wonders of Rome, and
+have her share in all the spiritual blessings which were to be obtained
+(so men thought then) at Rome alone.  So off they set on foot; and when
+they came to ford or ditch, Godric carried his mother on his back, until
+they came to London town.  And there Ædwen took off her shoes, and vowed
+out of devotion to the holy apostles Peter and Paul (who, so she thought,
+would be well pleased at such an act) to walk barefoot to Rome and
+barefoot back again.
+
+Now just as they went out of London, on the Dover Road, there met them in
+the way the loveliest maiden they had ever seen, and asked to bear them
+company in their pilgrimage.  And when they agreed, she walked with them,
+sat with them, and talked with them with superhuman courtesy and grace;
+and when they turned into an inn, she ministered to them herself, and
+washed and kissed their feet, and then lay down with them to sleep, after
+the simple fashion of those days.  But a holy awe of her, as of some
+saint and goddess, fell on the wild seafarer; and he never, so he used to
+aver, treated her for a moment save as a sister.  Never did either ask
+the other who they were, and whence they came; and Godric reported (but
+this was long after the event) that no one of the company of pilgrims
+could see that fair maid, save he and his mother alone.  So they came
+safe to Rome, and back to London town; and when they were at the place
+outside Southwark, where the fair maid had met them first, she asked
+permission to leave them, for she “must go to her own land, where she had
+a tabernacle of rest, and dwelt in the house of her God.”  And then,
+bidding them bless God, who had brought them safe over the Alps, and
+across the sea, and all along that weary road, she went on her way, and
+they saw her no more.
+
+Then with this fair mysterious face clinging to his memory, and it may be
+never leaving it, Godric took his mother safe home, and delivered her to
+his father, and bade them both after awhile farewell, and wandered across
+England to Penrith, and hung about the churches there, till some kinsmen
+of his recognised him, and gave him a psalter (he must have taught
+himself to read upon his travels), which he learnt by heart.  Then,
+wandering ever in search of solitude, he went into the woods and found a
+cave, and passed his time therein in prayer, living on green herbs and
+wild honey, acorns and crabs; and when he went about to gather food, he
+fell down on his knees every few yards and said a prayer, and rose and
+went on.
+
+After awhile he wandered on again, until at Wolsingham, in Durham, he met
+with another holy hermit, who had been a monk at Durham, living in a cave
+in forests in which no man dare dwell, so did they swarm with packs of
+wolves; and there the two good men dwelt together till the old hermit
+fell sick, and was like to die.  Godric nursed him, and sat by him, to
+watch for his last breath.  For the same longing had come over him which
+came over Marguerite d’Angoulême when she sat by the dying bed of her
+favourite maid of honour—to see if the spirit, when it left the body,
+were visible, and what kind of thing it was: whether, for instance, it
+was really like the little naked babe which is seen in mediæval
+illuminations flying out of the mouths of dying men.  But, worn out with
+watching, Godric could not keep from sleep.  All but despairing of his
+desire, he turned to the dying man, and spoke, says Reginald, some such
+words as these:—“O spirit! who art diffused in that body in the likeness
+of God, and art still inside that breast, I adjure thee by the Highest,
+that thou leave not the prison of this thine habitation while I am
+overcome by sleep, and know not of it.”  And so he fell asleep: but when
+he woke, the old hermit lay motionless and breathless.  Poor Godric wept,
+called on the dead man, called on God; his simple heart was set on seeing
+this one thing.  And, behold, he was consoled in a wondrous fashion.  For
+about the third hour of the day the breath returned.  Godric hung over
+him, watching his lips.  Three heavy sighs he drew, then a shudder,
+another sigh: {323} and then (so Godric was believed to have said in
+after years) he saw the spirit flit.
+
+What it was like, he did not like to say, for the most obvious
+reason—that he saw nothing, and was an honest man.  A monk teased him
+much to impart to him this great discovery, which seemed to the simple
+untaught sailor a great spiritual mystery, and which was, like some other
+mediæval mysteries which were miscalled spiritual (transubstantiation
+above all), altogether material and gross imaginations.  Godric answered
+wisely enough, that “no man could perceive the substance of the spiritual
+soul.”
+
+But the monk insisting, and giving him no rest, he answered,—whether he
+wished to answer a fool according to his folly, or whether he tried to
+fancy (as men will who are somewhat vain—and if a saint was not vain, it
+was no fault of the monks who beset him) that he had really seen
+something.  He told how it was like a dry, hot wind rolled into a sphere,
+and shining like the clearest glass, but that what it was really like no
+one could express.  Thus much, at least, may be gathered from the
+involved bombast of Reginald.
+
+Another pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre did Godric make before he went
+to the hermitage in Eskdale, and settled finally at Finchale.  And there
+about the hills of Judæa he found, says Reginald, hermits dwelling in
+rock-caves, as they had dwelt since the time of St. Jerome.  He washed
+himself, and his hair shirt and little cross, in the sacred waters of the
+Jordan, and returned, after incredible suffering, to become the saint of
+Finchale.
+
+His hermitage became, in due time, a stately priory, with its community
+of monks, who looked up to the memory of their holy father Godric as to
+that of a demigod.  The place is all ruinate now; the memory of St.
+Godric gone; and not one in ten thousand, perhaps, who visit those
+crumbling walls beside the rushing Wear, has heard of the sailor-saint,
+and his mother, and that fair maid who tended them on their pilgrimage.
+
+Meanwhile there were hermits for many years in that same hermitage in
+Eskdale, from which a Percy expelled St. Godric, possibly because he
+interfered with the prior claim of some _protégé_ of their own; for they
+had, a few years before Godric’s time, granted that hermitage to the
+monks of Whitby, who were not likely to allow a stranger to establish
+himself on their ground.
+
+About that hermitage hung one of those stories so common in the Middle
+Ages, in which the hermit appears as the protector of the hunted wild
+beast; a story, too, which was probably authentic, as the curious custom
+which was said to perpetuate its memory lasted at least till the year
+1753.  I quote it at length from Burton’s “Monasticon Eboracense,” p. 78,
+knowing no other authority.
+
+“In the fifth year of the reign of King Henry II. after the conquest of
+England by William, duke of Normandy, the Lord of Uglebardby, then called
+William de Bruce, and the Lord of Sneton, called Ralph de Perci, with a
+gentleman and a freeholder called Allatson, did on the 16th day of
+October appoint to meet and hunt the wild boar, in a certain wood or
+desert place belonging to the abbot of the monastery of Whitby; the
+place’s name is Eskdale-side; the abbot’s name was Sedman.  Then these
+gentlemen being met, with their hounds and boar-staves, in the place
+before-named, and there having found a great wild boar, the hounds ran
+him well near about the chapel and hermitage of Eskdale-side, where was a
+monk of Whitby, who was a hermit.  The boar being very sore, and very
+hotly pursued, and dead run, took in at the chapel door, and there died:
+whereupon the hermit shut the hounds out of the chapel, and kept himself
+within at his meditations and prayers, the hounds standing at bay
+without.  The gentlemen in the thick of the wood, being put behind their
+game, followed the cry of their hounds, and so came to the hermitage,
+calling on the hermit, who opened the door and came forth, and within
+they found the boar lying dead, for which the gentlemen in very great
+fury (because their hounds were put from their game) did most violently
+and cruelly run at the hermit with their boar-staves, whereby he died
+soon after: thereupon the gentlemen, perceiving and knowing that they
+were in peril of death, took sanctuary at Scarborough.  But at that time
+the abbot, being in very great favour with King Henry, removed them out
+of the sanctuary, whereby they came in danger of the law, and not to be
+privileged, but likely to have the severity of the law, which was death.
+But the hermit, being a holy and devout man, at the point of death sent
+for the abbot, and desired him to send for the gentlemen who had wounded
+him: the abbot so doing, the gentlemen came, and the hermit, being very
+sick and weak, said unto them, ‘I am sure to die of those wounds you have
+given me.’  The abbot answered, ‘They shall as surely die for the same;’
+but the hermit answered, ‘Not so, for I will freely forgive them my
+death, if they will be contented to be enjoined this penance for the
+safeguard of their souls.’  The gentlemen being present, and terrified
+with the fear of death, bade him enjoin what penance he would, so that he
+would but save their lives.  Then said the hermit, ‘You and yours shall
+hold your lands of the Abbot of Whitby and his successors in this manner:
+That upon Ascension Eve, you or some of you shall come to the woods of
+the Strag Heads, which is in Eskdale-side, the same day at sun-rising,
+and there shall the abbot’s officer blow his horn, to the intent that you
+may know how to find him; and he shall deliver unto you, William de
+Bruce, ten stakes, eleven strut-towers, and eleven yethers, to be cut by
+you or some for you, with a knife of one penny price; and you, Ralph de
+Perci, shall take twenty and one of each sort, to be cut in the same
+manner; and you, Allatson, shall take nine of each sort, to be cut as
+aforesaid, and to be taken on your backs, and carried to the town of
+Whitby, and to be there before nine of the clock the same day
+before-mentioned; at the same hour of nine of the clock (if it be full
+sea) your labour or service shall cease; but if it be not full sea, each
+of you shall set your stakes at the brim, each stake one yard from the
+other, and so yether them on each side of your yethers, and so stake on
+each side with your strut-towers, that they may stand three tides without
+removing by the force thereof: each of you shall do, make, and execute
+the said service at that very hour every year, except it shall be full
+sea at that hour: but when it shall so fall out, this service shall
+cease.  You shall faithfully do this in remembrance that you did most
+cruelly slay me; and that you may the better call to God for mercy,
+repent unfeignedly for your sins, and do good works, the officers of
+Eskdale-side shall blow, _Out on you_, _out on you_, _out on you_, for
+this heinous crime.  If you or your successors shall refuse this service,
+so long as it shall not be full sea at the aforesaid hour, you or yours
+shall forfeit your lands to the Abbot of Whitby, or his successors.  This
+I intreat, and earnestly beg that you may have lives and goods preserved
+for this service; and I request of you to promise by your parts in heaven
+that it shall be done by you and your successors, as it is aforesaid
+requested, and I will confirm it by the faith of an honest man.’  Then
+the hermit said: ‘My soul longeth for the Lord, and I do as freely
+forgive these men my death as Christ forgave the thieves upon the cross;’
+and in the presence of the abbot and the rest he said, moreover, these
+words: ‘Into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit, for from the bonds
+of death Thou hast redeemed me, O Lord of truth.  Amen.’  So he yielded
+up the ghost the eighth day of December, A.D. 1160, upon whose soul God
+have mercy.  Amen.”
+
+
+
+
+ANCHORITES, STRICTLY SO CALLED
+
+
+THE fertile and peaceable lowlands of England, as I have just said,
+offered few spots sufficiently wild and lonely for the habitation of a
+hermit; those, therefore, who wished to retire from the world into a more
+strict and solitary life than that which the monastery afforded were in
+the habit of immuring themselves, as anchorites, or in old English
+“Ankers,” in little cells of stone, built usually against the wall of a
+church.  There is nothing new under the sun; and similar anchorites might
+have been seen in Egypt, 500 years before the time of St. Antony, immured
+in cells in the temples of Isis or Serapis.  It is only recently that
+antiquaries have discovered how common this practice was in England, and
+how frequently the traces of these cells are to be found about our parish
+churches.  They were so common in the Diocese of Lincoln in the
+thirteenth century, that in 1233 the archdeacon is ordered to inquire
+whether any Anchorites’ cells had been built without the Bishop’s leave;
+and in many of our parish churches may be seen, either on the north or
+the south side of the chancel, a narrow slit in the wall, or one of the
+lights of a window prolonged downwards, the prolongation, if not now
+walled up, being closed with a shutter.  Through these apertures the
+“incluse,” or anker, watched the celebration of mass, and partook of the
+Holy Communion.  Similar cells were to be found in Ireland, at least in
+the diocese of Ossory; and doubtless in Scotland also.  Ducange, in his
+Glossary, on the word “inclusi,” lays down rules for the size of the
+anker’s cell, which must be twelve feet square, with three windows, one
+opening into the church, one for taking in his food, and one for light;
+and the “Salisbury Manual” as well as the “Pontifical” of Lacy, bishop of
+Exeter, in the first half of the fifteenth century, contains a regular
+“service” for the walling in of an anchorite. {330}  There exists too a
+most singular and painful book, well known to antiquaries, but to them
+alone, “The Ancren Riwle,” addressed to three young ladies who had
+immured themselves (seemingly about the beginning of the thirteenth
+century) at Kingston Tarrant, in Dorsetshire.
+
+For women as well as men entered these living tombs; and there spent
+their days in dirt and starvation, and such prayer and meditation
+doubtless as the stupified and worn-out intellect could compass; their
+only recreation being the gossip of the neighbouring women, who came to
+peep in through the little window—a recreation in which (if we are to
+believe the author of “The Ancren Riwle”) they were tempted to indulge
+only too freely; till the window of the recluse’s cell, he says, became
+what the smith’s forge or the alehouse has become since—the place where
+all the gossip and scandal of the village passed from one ear to another.
+But we must not believe such scandals of all.  Only too much in earnest
+must those seven young maidens have been, whom St. Gilbert of Sempringham
+persuaded to immure themselves, as a sacrifice acceptable to God, in a
+den along the north wall of his church; or that St. Hutta, or Huetta, in
+the beginning of the thirteenth century, who after ministering to lepers,
+and longing and even trying to become a leper herself, immured herself
+for life in a cell against the church of Huy near Liège.
+
+Fearful must have been the fate of these incluses if any evil had
+befallen the building of which (one may say) they had become a part.
+More than one in the stormy Middle Age may have suffered the fate of the
+poor women immured beside St. Mary’s church at Mantes, who, when town and
+church were burnt by William the Conqueror, unable to escape (or,
+according to William of Malmesbury, thinking it unlawful to quit their
+cells even in that extremity), perished in the flames; and so consummated
+once and for all their long martyrdom.
+
+How long the practice of the hermit life was common in these islands is
+more than my learning enables me to say.  Hermits seem, from the old
+Chartularies, {331} to have been not unfrequent in Scotland and the North
+of England during the whole Middle Age.  We have seen that they were
+frequent in the times of Malcolm Canmore and the old Celtic Church; and
+the Latin Church, which was introduced by St. Margaret, seems to have
+kept up the fashion.  In the middle of the thirteenth century, David de
+Haigh conveyed to the monks of Cupar the hermitage which Gilmichael the
+Hermit once held, with three acres of land.  In 1329 the Convent of
+Durham made a grant of a hermitage to Roger Eller at Norham on the Tweed,
+in order that he might have a “fit place to fight with the old enemy and
+bewail his sins, apart from the turmoil of men.”  In 1445 James the
+Second, king of Scots, granted to John Smith the hermitage in the forest
+of Kilgur, “which formerly belonged in heritage to Hugh Cominch the
+Hermit, and was resigned by him, with the croft and the green belonging
+to it, and three acres of arable land.”
+
+I have quoted these few instances, to show how long the custom lingered;
+and doubtless hermits were to be found in the remoter parts of these
+realms when the sudden tempest of the Reformation swept away alike the
+palace of the rich abbot and the cell of the poor recluse, and
+exterminated throughout England the ascetic life.  The two last hermits
+whom I have come across in history are both figures which exemplify very
+well those times of corruption and of change.  At Loretto (not in Italy,
+but in Musselburgh, near Edinburgh) there lived a hermit who pretended to
+work miracles, and who it seems had charge of some image of “Our Lady of
+Loretto.”  The scandals which ensued from the visits of young folks to
+this hermit roused the wrath of that terrible scourge of monks, Sir David
+Lindsay of the Mount: yet as late as 1536, James the Fifth of Scotland
+made a pilgrimage from Stirling to the shrine, in order to procure a
+propitious passage to France in search of a wife.  But in 1543, Lord
+Hertford, during his destructive voyage to the Forth, destroyed, with
+other objects of greater consequence, the chapel of the “Lady of Lorett,”
+which was not likely in those days to be rebuilt; and so the hermit of
+Musselburgh vanishes from history.
+
+A few years before, in 1537, says Mr. Froude, {333} while the harbours,
+piers, and fortresses were rising in Dover, “an ancient hermit tottered
+night after night from his cell to a chapel on the cliff, and the tapers
+on the altar before which he knelt in his lonely orisons made a familiar
+beacon far over the rolling waters.  The men of the rising world cared
+little for the sentiment of the past.  The anchorite was told sternly by
+the workmen that his light was a signal to the King’s enemies” (a Spanish
+invasion from Flanders was expected), “and must burn no more; and, when
+it was next seen, three of them waylaid the old man on his way home,
+threw him down and beat him cruelly.”
+
+So ended, in an undignified way, as worn-out institutions are wont to
+end, the hermit life in the British Isles.  Will it ever reappear?  Who
+can tell?  To an age of luxury and unbelief has succeeded, more than once
+in history, an age of remorse and superstition.  Gay gentlemen and gay
+ladies may renounce the world, as they did in the time of St. Jerome,
+when the world is ready to renounce them.  We have already our nunneries,
+our monasteries, of more creeds than one; and the mountains of Kerry, or
+the pine forests of the Highlands, may some day once more hold hermits,
+persuading themselves to believe, and at last succeeding in believing,
+the teaching of St. Antony, instead of that of our Lord Jesus Christ, and
+of that Father of the spirits of all flesh, who made love, and marriage,
+and little children, sunshine and flowers, the wings of butterflies and
+the song of birds; who rejoices in his own works, and bids all who truly
+reverence him rejoice in them with him.  The fancy may seem impossible.
+It is not more impossible than many religious phenomena seemed forty
+years ago, which are now no fancies, but powerful facts.
+
+The following books should be consulted by those who wish to follow out
+this curious subject in detail:—
+
+The “Vitæ Patrum Eremiticorum.”
+
+The “Acta Sanctorum.”  The Bollandists are, of course, almost exhaustive
+of any subject on which they treat.  But as they are difficult to find,
+save in a few public libraries, the “Acta Sanctorum” of Surius, or of
+Aloysius Lipommasius, may be profitably consulted.  Butler’s “Lives of
+the Saints” is a book common enough, but of no great value.
+
+M. de Montalembert’s “Moines d’Occident,” and Ozanam’s “Etudes
+Germaniques,” may be read with much profit.
+
+Dr. Reeves’ edition of Adamnan’s “Life of St. Columba,” published by the
+Irish Archæological and Celtic Society, is a treasury of learning, which
+needs no praise of mine.
+
+The lives of St. Cuthbert and St. Godric may be found among the
+publications of the Surtees Society.
+
+
+
+
+FOOTNOTES
+
+
+{12}  About A.D. 368.  See the details in Ammianus Marcellinus, lib.
+xxviii.
+
+{15}  In the Celtic Irish Church, there seems to have been no other
+pattern.  The hermits who became abbots, with their monks, were the only
+teachers of the people—one had almost said, the only Christians.  Whence,
+as early as the sixth century, if not the fifth, they, and their
+disciples of Iona and Scotland, derived their peculiar tonsure, their use
+of bells, their Eastern mode of keeping the Paschal feast, and other
+peculiarities, seemingly without the intervention of Rome, is a mystery
+still unsolved.
+
+{17a}  A book which, from its bearing on present problems, well deserves
+translation.
+
+{17b}  “Vitæ Patrum.”  Published at Antwerp, 1628.
+
+{23}  He is addressing our Lord.
+
+{24}  “Agentes in rebus.”  On the Emperor’s staff?
+
+{27}  St. Augustine says, that Potitianus’s adventure at Trêves happened
+“I know not when.”  His own conversation with Potitianus must have
+happened about A.D. 385, for he was baptized April 25, A.D. 387.  He does
+not mention the name of Potitianus’s emperor: but as Gratian was Augustus
+from A.D. 367 to A.D. 375, and actual Emperor of the West till A.D. 383,
+and as Trêves was his usual residence, he is most probably the person
+meant: but if not, then his father Valentinian.
+
+{29}  See the excellent article on Gratian in Smith’s Dictionary, by Mr.
+Means.
+
+{30}  I cannot explain this fact: but I have seen it with my own eyes.
+
+{32}  I use throughout the text published by Heschelius, in 1611.
+
+{33}  He is said to have been born at Coma, near Heracleia, in Middle
+Egypt, A.D. 251.
+
+{34}  Seemingly the Greek language and literature.
+
+{35}  I have thought it more honest to translate ασκήσις by “training,”
+which is now, as then, its true equivalent; being a metaphor drawn from
+the Greek games by St. Paul, 1 Tim. iv. 8.
+
+{41}  I give this passage as it stands in the Greek version.  In the
+Latin, attributed to Evagrius, it is even more extravagant and
+rhetorical.
+
+{42}  Surely the imagery painted on the inner walls of Egyptian tombs,
+and probably believed by Antony and his compeers to be connected with
+devil-worship, explain these visions.  In the “Words of the Elders” a
+monk complains of being troubled with “pictures, old and new.”  Probably,
+again, the pain which Antony felt was the agony of a fever; and the
+visions which he saw, its delirium.
+
+{44}  Here is an instance of the original use of the word “monastery,”
+viz. a cell in which a single person dwelt.
+
+{45}  An allusion to the heathen mysteries.
+
+{49}  A.D. 311.  Galerius Valerius Maximinus (his real name was Daza) had
+been a shepherd-lad in Illyria, like his uncle Galerius Valerius
+Maximianus; and rose, like him, through the various grades of the army to
+be co-Emperor of Rome, over Syria, Egypt, and Asia Minor; a furious
+persecutor of the Christians, and a brutal and profligate tyrant.  Such
+were the “kings of the world” from whom those old monks fled.
+
+{52a}  The lonely alluvial flats at the mouths of the Nile.  “Below the
+cliffs, beside the sea,” as one describes them.
+
+{52b}  Now the monastery of Deir Antonios, over the Wady el Arabah,
+between the Nile and the Red Sea, where Antony’s monks endure to this
+day.
+
+{60}  This most famous monastery, _i.e._ collection of monks’ cells, in
+Egypt is situate forty miles from Alexandria, on a hill where nitre was
+gathered.  The hospitality and virtue of its inmates are much praised by
+Ruffinus and Palladius.  They were, nevertheless, the chief agents in the
+fanatical murder of Hypatia.
+
+{65}  It appears from this and many other passages, that extempore prayer
+was usual among these monks, as it was afterwards among the Puritans (who
+have copied them in so many other things), whenever a godly man visited
+them.
+
+{66a}  Meletius, bishop of Lycopolis, was the author of an obscure schism
+calling itself the “Church of the Martyrs,” which refused to communicate
+with the rest of the Eastern Church.  See Smith’s “Dictionary,” on the
+word “Meletius.”
+
+{66b}  Arius (whose most famous and successful opponent was Athanasius,
+the writer of this biography) maintained that the Son of God was not
+co-equal and co-eternal with the Father, but created by Him out of
+nothing, and before the world.  His opinions were condemned in the famous
+Council of Nicæa, A.D. 325.
+
+{67}  If St. Antony could use so extreme an argument against the Arians,
+what would he have said to the Mariolatry which sprang up after his
+death?
+
+{68a}  _I.e._ those who were still heathens.
+
+{68b}  ἰερεύς.  The Christian priest is always called in this work simply
+πρεσθύτερος, or elder.
+
+{72a}  Probably that of A.D. 341, when Gregory of Cappadocia, nominated
+by the Arian Bishops, who had assembled at the Council of Antioch,
+expelled Athanasius from the see of Alexandria, and great violence was
+committed by his followers and by Philagrius the Prefect.  Athanasius
+meanwhile fled to Rome.
+
+{72b}  _I.e._ celebrated there their own Communion.
+
+{77}  Evidently the primæval custom of embalming the dead, and keeping
+mummies in the house, still lingered among the Egyptians.
+
+{108}  These sounds, like those which St. Guthlac heard in the English
+fens, are plainly those of wild-fowl.
+
+{115}  The Brucheion, with its palaces and museum, the residence of the
+kings and philosophers of Egypt, had been destroyed is the days of
+Claudius and Valerian, during the senseless civil wars which devastated
+Alexandria for twelve years; and monks had probably taken up their abode
+in the ruins.  It was in this quarter, at the beginning of the next
+century, that Hypatia was murdered by the monks.
+
+{116}  Probably the Northern, or Lesser Oasis, Ouah el Baharieh, about
+eighty miles west of the Nile.
+
+{117a}  Jerome (who sailed that sea several times) uses the word here, as
+it is used in Acts xxvii. 27, for the sea about Malta, “driven up and
+down in Adria.”
+
+{117b}  The southern point of Sicily, now Cape Passaro.
+
+{118}  In the Morea, near the modern Navarino.
+
+{119a}  At the mouth of the Bay of Cattaro.
+
+{119b}  This story—whatever belief we may give to its details—is one of
+many which make it tolerably certain that a large snake (Python) still
+lingered in Eastern Europe.  Huge tame snakes were kept as sacred by the
+Macedonian women; and one of them (according to Lucian) Peregrinus
+Proteus, the Cagliostro of his time, fitted with a linen mask, and made
+it personate the god Æsculapius.  In the “Historia Lausiaca,” cap. lii.
+is an account by an eye-witness of a large snake in the Thebaid, whose
+track was “as if a beam had been dragged along the sand.”  It terrifies
+the Syrian monks: but the Egyptian monk sets to work to kill it, saying
+that he had seen much larger—even up to fifteen cubits.
+
+{121}  Now Capo St. Angelo and the island of Cerigo, at the southern
+point of Greece.
+
+{123a}  See p. 52.
+
+{123b}  Probably dedicated to the Paphian Venus.
+
+{130}  The lives of these two hermits and that of St. Cuthbert will be
+given in a future number.
+
+{131}  Sihor, the black river, was the ancient name of the Nile, derived
+from the dark hue of its waters.
+
+{159}  Ammianus Marcellinus, Book xxv. cap. 9.
+
+{160}  By Dr. Burgess.
+
+{163}  History of Christianity, vol. iii. p. 109.
+
+{203}  An authentic fact.
+
+{204}  If any one doubts this, let him try the game called “Russian
+scandal,” where a story, passed secretly from mouth to mouth, ends
+utterly transformed, the original point being lost, a new point
+substituted, original names and facts omitted, and utterly new ones
+inserted, &c. &c.; an experiment which is ludicrous, or saddening,
+according to the temper of the experimenter.
+
+{209}  Les Moines d’Occident, vol. ii. pp. 332–467.
+
+{210}  M. La Borderie, “Discours sur les Saints Bretons;” a work which I
+have unfortunately not been able to consult.
+
+{212a}  Vitæ Patrum, p. 753.
+
+{212b}  Ibid. p. 893.
+
+{212c}  Ibid. p. 539.
+
+{212d}  Ibid. p. 540.
+
+{212e}  Ibid. p. 532.
+
+{224}  It has been handed down, in most crabbed Latin, by his disciple,
+Eugippius; it may be read at length in Pez, Scriptores Austriacarum
+Rerum.
+
+{238}  Scriptores Austriacarum Rerum.
+
+{245}  Hæften, quoted by Montalembert, vol. ii. p. 22, in note.
+
+{256}  Dr. Reeves supposes these to have been “crustacea:” but their
+stinging and clinging prove them surely to have been jelly-fish—medusæ.
+
+{257}  I have followed the Latin prose version of it, which M. Achille
+Jubinal attributes to the eleventh century.  Here and there I have taken
+the liberty of using the French prose version, which he attributes to the
+latter part of the twelfth.  I have often condensed the story, where it
+was prolix or repeated itself: but I have tried to follow faithfully both
+matter and style, and to give, word for word, as nearly as I could, any
+notable passages.  Those who wish to know more of St. Brendan should
+consult the learned _brochure_ of M. Jubinal, “La Légende Latine de St.
+Brandaines,” and the two English versions of the Legend, edited by Mr.
+Thomas Wright for the Percy Society, vol. xiv.  One is in verse, and of
+the earlier part of the fourteenth century, and spirited enough: the
+other, a prose version, was printed by Wynkyn de Worde, in his edition of
+the “Golden Legend;” 1527.
+
+{260a}  In the Barony of Longford, County Galway.
+
+{260b}  3,000, like 300, seems to be, I am informed, only an Irish
+expression for any large number.
+
+{269}  Some dim legend concerning icebergs, and caves therein.
+
+{270}  Probably from reports of the volcanic coast of Iceland.
+
+{272}  This part of the legend has been changed and humanized as time ran
+on.  In the Latin and French versions it has little or no point or moral.
+In the English, Judas accounts for the presence of the cloth thus:—
+
+    “Here I may see what it is to give other men’s (goods) with harm.
+    As will many rich men with unright all day take,
+    Of poor men here and there, and almisse (alms) sithhe (afterwards)
+    make.”
+
+For the tongs and the stone he accounts by saying that, as he used them
+for “good ends, each thing should surely find him which he did for God’s
+love.”
+
+But in the prose version of Wynkyn de Worde, the tongs have been changed
+into “ox-tongues,” “which I gave some tyme to two preestes to praye for
+me.  I bought them with myne owne money, and therefore they ease me,
+bycause the fysshes of the sea gnaw on them, and spare me.”
+
+This latter story of the ox-tongues has been followed by Mr. Sebastian
+Evans, in his poem on St. Brendan.  Both he and Mr. Matthew Arnold have
+rendered the moral of the English version very beautifully.
+
+{274}  Copied, surely, from the life of Paul the first hermit.
+
+{283}  The famous Cathach, now in the museum of the Royal Irish Academy,
+was long popularly believed to be the very Psalter in question.  As a
+relic of St. Columba it was carried to battle by the O’Donnels, even as
+late as 1497, to insure victory for the clan.
+
+{290}  Bede, book iii. cap. 3.
+
+{292}  These details, and countless stories of St. Cuthbert’s miracles,
+are to be found in Reginald of Durham, “De Admirandis Beati Cuthberti,”
+published by the Surtees Society.  This curious book is admirably edited
+by Mr. J. Raine; with an English synopsis at the end, which enables the
+reader for whom the Latin is too difficult to enjoy those pictures of
+life under Stephen and Henry II., whether moral, religious, or social, of
+which the book is a rich museum.
+
+{299}  “In this hole lie the bones of the Venerable Bede.”
+
+{303}  An English translation of the Anglo-Saxon life has been published
+by Mr. Godwin, of Cambridge, and is well worth perusal.
+
+{312}  Vita S. Godrici, pp. 332, 333.
+
+{316}  The earlier one; that of the Harleian MSS. which (Mr. Stevenson
+thinks) was twice afterwards expanded and decorated by him.
+
+{323}  Reginald wants to make “a wonder incredible in our own times,” of
+a very common form (thank God) of peaceful death.  He makes miracles in
+the same way of the catching of salmon and of otters, simple enough to
+one who, like Godric, knew the river, and every wild thing which haunted
+it.
+
+{330}  That of the Salisbury Manual is published in the “Ecclesiologist”
+for August 1848, by the Rev. Sir W. H. Cope, to whom I am indebted for
+the greater number of these curious facts.
+
+{331}  I owe these facts to the courtesy of Mr. John Stuart, of the
+General Register Office, Edinburgh.
+
+{333}  “History of England,” vol. iii. p. 256, note.
+
+
+
+
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