Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 16.djvu/730

Rh 702 MONACHISM into northern Italy, where it was fostered a little later by the illustrious Ambrose at Milan. From the very beginning a marked difference shows itself in the spirit of Western monachism as compared with the parent institute in the East. Partly from dissimilarity of climate, but still more from that of racial and national temperament, there has always been less tendency in the West to either abstract contemplation or severe self-torture, such as is equally common to many of the Egyptian or Syrian ascetics and to the Yogis of Hindustan. Hard work, with due inter vals for food and recreation, occupied all that part of a Western monk s time which was not devoted to prayer or study, and a careful apportionment of his duties through out the day gave each hour its appointed task to be ful filled, leaving very few loose ends of time to be wasted. It is true that the Basilian rule aimed at this same end, and that a very minute time-table forms a part of other early Eastern codes ; but, as already remarked, the work was neither hard enough nor abundant enough to provide really healthy labour, or to occupy the mind sufficiently to keep it from vague speculation or morbid brooding dur ing the hours of so-called toil. From this fundamental unlikeness springs the broad distinction between the two types of the monastic life, in that the West did not merely provide shelter for such as felt unable to endure the storms of the world, leaving secular society to take care of itself as best it could, but, contrariwise, employed the cloister far more as a training-school for the strong, as the stand point whence to work the lever which moved a world. Even the more remotely secluded monasteries of the West, instead of serving as refuges wherein the inmates might effectually cut themselves off from all intercourse from without, were rather military outposts and frontier forts of civilization, which taught the arts of peace, the pro cesses of agriculture, and at least the rudiments of social morality, to the rude and almost nomadic hunters and forayers, of whom many of the wilder tribes in outlying districts consisted. And if such was the case even where the conditions seemed least favourable, it may readily be understood what an ample field for exertion the more settled regions provided. It would seem that it was some modification of the Pachomian rule which first made its way into Europe, but the interest excited by the movement led to variety of choice on the part of the teachers who aimed at spreading its influence in Italy. Thus, Urseus, abbot of Pinetum (probably near Ravenna), translated the Basilian rule into Latin, and it soon took root in southern Italy, where it continued to hold its ground for a considerable time. But a far more important part in the propagation of the monastic institute in the West was taken by Jerome, who, after spending a considerable time, beginning in 374, first as a hermit in the desert of Chalcis, and later at Constantinople, returned to Rome in 382, where he was secretary to Pope Damasus. He acquired much influence over a distinguished group of Roman ladies of high social position, the most celebrated of whom are Paula, and her daughters Blesilla and Eustochium, and employed that influence in urging the adoption of the monastic life upon them. Blesilla died early, it was said and believed in consequence of austerities pressed upon her which her constitution was unable to bear ; and the unpopularity which this report brought upon Jerome, co-operating Avith the death of his patron Damasus and other causes, drove him back to the East, whither Paula and Eustochium also betook themselves, finally settling down in Bethlehem, where the elder lady built three con vents, of one of which she was superior, while Jerome, who similarly erected a monastery for monks in the immediate vicinity, acted as chaplain and director to the community. As the taste for pilgrimages had already become deeply rooted, the convent at Bethlehem was ere long a favourite resort of pilgrims, and exerted considerable influence in prompting the erection of similar foundations in the West. Quite another impulse was given to the further ance of monachism by Augustine. While, amongst the many documents which have been ascribed to him, the only one which is of the nature of a monastic code is his 109th Epistle, addressed in terms of severe reproval to the nuns of a convent he had himself founded at Hippo, but which had fallen away from discipline, his personal example gave rise to a new type of the common life, in that he formed a sort of college of priests, who shared the episcopal house with him, ate at a common table, and copied in other particulars the observances of monasteries, but with out losing their secular character. This was the origin of the institute afterwards famous as the Austin Canons, a foundation of the llth century. It is true that Eusebius of Vercelli had anticipated Augustine by collecting the clergy of his cathedral (and, as it would seem, the remain ing ecclesiastics of the city) into a common dwelling, but the difference in his case was that he obliged them to adopt the habit and style of monks, and thus was in no sense the originator of a new institute. Another important contri bution of Augustine s to the history of the common life is his treatise De Opere Monachorum, wherein he sets forth the imperative need of making hard work an invariable factor of the monastic profession, notably on the ground that most of the monks in Africa came from the lower ranks of society, such as freedmen, farm-labourers, and artisans, who were spiritually injured by being raised into a grade viewed with more general respect than that from which they had sprung, while they were actually subject to fewer privations and lighter employment than they had been accustomed to. And he adds that amongst other evil consequences of this idleness was that they were found tramping the country selling sham relics, which they palmed off on the unwary, extorting money in other fashions also, and bringing discredit on their profession by their hypocrisy and vices a picture only too faith fully repeated by the Mendicants a thousand years after the date of this treatise. The 5th century was one of rapid progress in the spread of monachism in the West. Chief amongst those who helped to popularize it stands the name of John Cassian (350-433), a monk of Bethlehem, who made a long and careful study of the Egyptian forms of monachism, of which he has bequeathed us valu able details in his De Institutions Coenobiorum and Col- lationes Patrum, the former of which is a treatise on the monastic life, and indeed virtually a rule, though a some what prolix one, mainly derived from Macarius, while the latter is a record of the teachings of some hermits of the desert of Scete. Both of these works exercised a powerful influence in their own day, and the second retained its repute much longer, having been warmly approved and recommended for study by Benedict, Bruno, Dominie, and Ignatius Loyola, all four founders of celebrated orders. Cassian fixed himself at Marseilles, where he founded a famous monastery of which he was probably abbot, and which was the centre whence monachism, uniting the peculiarities of East and West, was propagated in southern Gaul, and notably planted in the island of Lerins, which became the seat of one of the most eminent monasteries of the early Middle Ages. Northern Gaul had received the institute earlier through the agency of Martin, bishop of Tours (316-397), who founded monasteries near Poitiers and in his own diocese, which were soon thronged, so that his funeral was attended by two thousand monks. Spain was even earlier in the field than Gaul, but there is some obscurity as to the history