Page:1909historyofdec04gibbuoft.djvu/104

 78 THE DECLINE AND FALL [Chap, xxxvii term of frenzy, have afforded ample materials of supernatural history. It was their firm persuasion that the air which they breathed was peopled with invisible enemies ; with innumerable daemons, who watched every occasion, and assumed every form, to terrify, and above all to tempt, their unguarded virtue. The imagination, and even the senses, were deceived by the illusions of distempered fanaticism ; and the hermit, whose midnight prayer was oppressed by involuntary slumber, might easily confound the phantoms of horror or delight which had occupied his sleeping and his waking dreams. 65 The cceno- The monks were divided into two classes : the Coenobites, Anlchorets who lived under a common and regular discipline; and the Anachorets, who indulged their unsocial, independent fanati- cism. 66 The most devout, or the most ambitious, of the spiritual brethren renounced the convent, as they had renounced the world. The fervent monasteries of Egypt, Palestine, and Syria were surrounded by a Laura/' 7 a distant circle of solitary cells ; and the extravagant penance of the Hermits was stimu- lated by applause and emulation. 68 They sunk under the pain- ful weight of crosses and chains ; and their emaciated limbs were confined by collars, bracelets, gauntlets, and greaves, of massy and rigid iron. All superfluous incumbrance of dress they contemptuously cast away; and some savage saints of both sexes have been admired, whose naked bodies were only covered by their long hair. They aspired to reduce themselves to the rude and miserable state in which the human brute is scarcely distinguished above his kindred animals ; and a numerous sect of Anachorets derived their name from their 65 See the seventh and eighth Collations of Cassian, who gravely examines why the daemons were grown less active and numerous since the time of St. Antony. Eosweyde's copious index to the Vitse Patrum will point out a variety of infernal scenes. The devils were most formidable in a female shape. 66 For the distinction of the Ccenobites and the Hermits, especially in Egypt, see Jerom (torn. i. p. 45, ad Rusticum), the first Dialogue of Sulpicius Severus, Rufinus (c. 22, in Vit. Patrum, 1. ii. p. 478), Palladius (c. 7, 69, in Vit. Patrum, 1. viii. p. 712, 758), and, above all, the eighteenth and nineteenth Collations of Cassian. These writers, who compare the common and solitary life, reveal the abuse and danger of the latter. 67 Suicer. Thesaur. Ecclesiast. torn. ii. p. 205, 218. Thomassin (Discipline de l'Eglise, torn. i. p. 1501, 1502) gives a good account of these cells. When Gerasimus founded his monastery, in the wilderness of Jordan, it was accompanied by a Laura of seventy cells. 68 Theodoret, in a large volume (the Philotheus in Vit. Patrum, 1. ix. p. 793- 863), has collected the lives and miracles of thirty Anachorets. Evagrius (1. i. o. 12) more briefly celebrates the monks and hermits of Palestine.