Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 10.djvu/522

 MONASTICISM

468

MONASTICISM

Eg>-pt, the first \avpai. St. Athanasius's (d. 373) friendly relations to the Egyptian monks and the refuge he found among llieni during liis second (356- 302) and third (36'2-;il);i) exiles are well known inci- dents of his life. The monks lived each in his own hut, providing for their simijle needs with their own hantls, united by a bond of willing submission to the direction of some older and more experienced hermit, coming together on Saturday and .Sunday for com- mon prayer, otherwise spending their time in private contemplation and works of penance. Cehbacy was from the beginning an essential note of monastioism. A wife and family were part of the "world" they had left.

Poverty and obedience were to some extent rela- tive, though the ideal of both was developing. The monk of the desert was not necessarily a priest; he formed a different class from the clergy who stayed in the world and assisted the bishops. For a long time this difference between monks and clergy re- mained; the monk fled all intercourse with other people to save his sold away from temptation. Later some monks were ordained priests in order to adminis- ter sacraments to their brethren. But even now in the East the i)riest-monk (itpo^xiraxos) is a s|)eeial person distinct from the usual monk (m^poxos), who is a layman.

St. Anthony's scarcely less famous disciple Pacho- mius (d. 315) is believed to have begun the organization of the hermits in groups, " folds" {/livSpai) with stricter subjection to a leader {apxip-ifSpLTris); but the organi- zation was vague. Monasticism was still a manner of life rather than affiliation to an organized body; any one who left wife and family and the "world" to seek peace away from men was a monk. Two codified "Rules" are attributed to Paohomius; of these the longer is translated into Latin by St. Jerome, a second and shorter one is in Palladius, "BUst. Lausiaca" XXXVIIL Sozomenos gives a compendium of the "Rule of Pachomius" (H. E., Ill, xiv). Neither of these rules is authentic, but they may well contain maxims and principles that go back to his time, ini.xefl with later ones. They are already consid- erably advanced towards a regulated monastic life. They order uniformity in dress, obedience to a su- perior, prayers and meals at fixed times in com- mon; they regulate both ascetic practices and hand- work.

About the same time as St. Anthony in Egypt, Hi- larion fJouri.shed at Gaza in Palestine (see St. Jerome, "Life of St. Hilarion" in P. L., XXIII, 29-54). He stands at the head of West Syrian monasticism. In the middle of the fourth century Aphraates speaks of monks in East Syria (Wright, ' ' The HomiUes of Aphra- ates", London, 18f)!), I, Horn. 6and 18). At the same time we hear of them in .\rraenia, Pontus, and Cappa- doeia. Epiphanius, for instance, who in 367 became Bishop of Salamis in Cyprus, had been for thirty years a monk in Palestine. .\t the time of St. Basil (330-379), therefore, there were already monks all over the East. .As soon as he was baptized (357) he determined to be a monk himself; he spent two years travelling "to .\lcxandria, through Egypt, in Pales- tine, Syria, and Mesopotamia" (Ep. 223), studying the life of the monks. Then in 35S he formed the com- munity at -Vnnesos in Pontus that was to be in some sort a new point of departure for Eastern monasticism. He describes the life at Annesos in a letter to St. Greg- ory Xazianzen (Ep. 2). Its principles are codified in various ascetic works by him, of which the chief are the two "Rules", the longer ("Opoi rani ttXiItos, P. G., XXXI, 90.S-10.52) and the shorter ("Opoi rar' iTnTofi-^f, lb., 1051-1.306). (See Basil, Ritle of S-mnt.)

(2) To the great Schinm. — Gradually nearly all East- em monasteries accepted the Rules of "St. Basil. Their inner organization evolved a hierarchy of offi- cials among whom the various offices were distrib-

uted; the prayers, meals, work, punishments were portioned out according to the ascetic works of St. Biisil, and so the whole monastery arrived at a work- ing order.

That order obtains still. In its inner life Eastern monasticism has been extraordinarily stationary. There is practically no development to describe. Its history from the fourth century <lown to our own time is oidy a chronicle of the founding and endowment of new monasteries, of the part taken by monks in the great religious controversies and in one or two contro- versies of their own, of the emperors, empresses, patri- archs, and other great persons who, freely or under compulsion, ended their career in the world by retiring to a monastery. Two ideas that eonslanlly recur in Eastern theology are that the monastic state is that of Christian perfection and also a state of penance. Eu- sebius (d. c. 340) in his " Dcmon.st ratio evangelica" distinguishes the two kinds of life of a Christian, the less perfect hfe in the world and the perfect life of monks.

The idea recurs continually. Monks lead the "an- gelic life", their dress is the "angeUc habit"; like the angels they neither marry nor give in marriage, and hke them the chief object of their existence is to sing the praises of God (in the Divine office). Not incom- patible with this is the other idea, found in St. Basil and many others, that their state is one of penance (luTcivoia). Symeon of Thessalonica (d. 1429) counts the monks simply as "penitents" {/j-eTamoOyTes). The most perfect life on earth, namely, is that of a man who obeys the command to "do penance, for the Kingdom of Heaven is nigh".

The organization and life of a Byzantine monastery before the schism is known to us by the decrees affect- ing it made by various councils, laws in the "Corpus iuris" (in the "Codex" and the "Novelte"), the lives of eminent monks, of which the "Synaxarion" has preserved not a few, and especially by the ascetic writings of monks, letters, sermons, and so on, in which they give ad\'ice to their colleagues. Of such mona,stic writers St. John Damascene (d. c. 754), George Hamartolos (ninth century), and especially St. Theo- dore of Studion (d. 826) are perhaps the most valuable for this purpose. At the head of each independent monastery Q^aSpa is the common name in Greek) was the .superior. At first (e. g., by Justinian: "Nov.", V, vii; CXXIII, v and xxxiv) he is called indifferently d;3/3as, apxip^fSplTTis, -qyoviiepos. Later the common name is iiyoi'tievo^ only. The archimandrite has be- come a person of superior rank and takes precedence of a hegumenos. Goar thinks that archimandrite meant the superior of a patriarchal monastery, that is, one immediately subject to the patriarch and inde- pendent of the jurisdiction of the ordinary. The title then would correspond to that of the Western "Abbas nullius".

Marin (Les Moines de Constantinople, pp. 87-90), admitting this, demonstrates from examples that there was an intermediate period (from about the sixth to the ninth centuries) during which the title archimandrite was given as a purely personal honour to certain hegumenoi ^Ndthout involving any exemp- tion for the monastery. A further precedence be- longed to a "great archimandrite". The election and rights of the hegumenos are described by St. Basil in his two Rules, bv Justinian (Novel., CXXIII, xxxiv), and Theodore of Studion (Testamentum, m P. G., XCIX, 1817-1818). He was elected by the monks by a majority of votes; in cases of dispute the patriarch or ordinary decided; sometimes lots were cast. He was to be chosen for his merit, not according to the time he had already spent in the monastery, and should be sufficiently learned to know the canons. The patriarch or bishop must confirm the election and institute the hegumenos. But the emperor received him in audience and gave him a pastoral staff (the