Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 16.djvu/731

Rh MONACHISM 703 of the introduction of monachism there, all that is certain being that it had made its footing good before 380, the date of a council of Saragossa (Caisaraugusta) which for bade priests to assume the monkish habit. Still more obscurity hangs over the first establishment of monachism in Britain, as to which no trustworthy records have come down to us, though all probability points to its importation from Gaul in some variety of the Pachomian rule ; while Germany did not receive the institute till the following century. It must not be supposed, however, that the principle of monachism met with no opposition in the course of its progress. Apart from the opposition of those who disliked it precisely for its merits, for its protest against the dissolute morals and enervated habits of a luxurious and rotting society, and for the manner in which it won to itself many of the noblest and most promising of the young and ardent of both sexes, and without taking into account the more reasonable objections of statesmen, there were not lacking warnings of the dangers attending exaggerations of the principle of monachism, uttered by some of its most eminent upholders. Augustine s sharp censures have been already mentioned, and to them may be added the decrees of the council of Gangra in 363, or thereabouts, which anathematize those who adopt a celibate life on the ground that marriage is evil, who wear a peculiar dress as a mark of holiness, condemning such as use ordinary clothing, or who desert their parents or children dependent on them under the plea of desiring to lead an ascetic life. So, too, the great Chrysostom, him self a warm advocate of monachism, found himself obliged to teach his flock the sanctity of Christian family life, and the truth that there was often as much selfishness as piety in retirement to a hermitage from the cares and duties of society. These arguments and decisions were, however, aimed only at abuses and exaggerations of the monastic idea. It remained for Jovinian and Vigilantius to assail the actual principle. Their writings have not survived, and we can judge of their arguments only from the account given of them by their chief opponent Jerome, whose eminent gifts, however, did not include either moderation or controversial fairness, so that it is not safe to assume that we have all their case before us. As regards Yigilantius, he accurately represents the Puritan type of mind protesting against the external part of the popular religion of his day, often with good reason, but also show ing equal intolerance for harmless, if not useful, practices ; so that his condemnation of monachism is only part of his general objection to the temper of his time. But Jovinian s objections seem to have gone deeper. He had been him self a monk (and indeed never resumed secular life), but he disputed absolutely the thesis that any merit lay in monachism, celibacy, fasting, and asceticism considered in themselves, save in so far as they contributed to foster the Christian temper and life, which might and did flourish equally, he urged, under quite different conditions, while it was by no means unfrequent for spiritual pride, if not Manichsean error, to lay hold of those who devoted them selves to the ascetic profession. This was, in fact, going very little further than Chrysostom had done, or than Nilus did a short time later. But Jovinian s divergence from the standard of his day was not confined to practical questions ; it extended to theological doctrines also, and accordingly his strictures on monachism, probably more incisive and less qualified than those of its other critics, were involved in his condemnation as a heretic by synods at Rome and Milan in 390. The reaction, of which he may be regarded as the mouthpiece rather than as the sole representative, was thus effectually crushed, and that for centuries. And though Jovinian is undoubtedly more in accord than his opponents with the modern temper on the subject of monachism, and while it may be allowed that his teaching might have been a useful corrective in Eastern Christendom, where family life was all but over borne by asceticism, yet the impartial historian must admit that his success would have been an irreparable misfortune for civilization in the West. Such a dispas sionate estimate of asceticism as his, if widely entertained, would have been fatal to the spread of monachism, and thus one of the most important conservative and statical forces in the preservation of the older culture, one of the most powerful dynamical forces in reducing the chaotic materials of early mediueval society to order and coherence, Avould have been lost to Europe; nor is it easy to conjecture what effectual substitute could have taken its place. As. it was, the movement was not checked for a moment by this partial reaction ; and not only did the older com munities thrive and spread during the 5th and early 6th centuries, but new ones were established, chief among which stand those of Csesarius of Aries and of Donatus. of Besanc.on in southern Gaul, that of Isidore of Seville in Spain, and the early Celtic code, of which only tradi tional fragments survive, but which seems in Britain to- have been strongly affected by tribal influences, so that a monastery was often recruited from a single clan, and the abbacy became hereditary in the family of the chief tain, a fact which is noticeable even in the succession of the abbots of lona, who for ten elections after Columba. were of his family in the tribe of Conall Gulban. 1 But, swiftly as monachism spread in Europe during the breaking-up of the Western empire, some of the causes which hastened its progress also tended to its rapid de cay. The disturbed state of society, and, in particular, the prevalence of petty warfare, drove many thousands of persons to seek a quiet refuge in the cloister without any more directly religious motive. W hen once there, they found in every place some rule in force which was either imported directly from Egypt or Syria, or else, like that of Caesarius, modelled on Eastern lines, and therefore ill suited to the severer climate of Europe and the more active habits of the people. The austerities were thus too- oppressive for general observance, and the result was a widespread neglect of rules which continued nominally in force, while at the same time the very monks who had ceased to keep them laid claim to special sanctity on the pretence of their strict way of life. The time was ripe- for a reform, or rather for a wholly new departure in the shape of a rule devised to meet Western needs, and not merely adapted more or less clumsily from Oriental asceticism. The fitting man to accomplish this difficult task appeared in the person of Benedict of Nursia, author of the most famous of all monastic codes. Bprn of a respectable family about 480, he adopted the ascetic life at fourteen in a cave near Subiaco, not far from Home,, where he remained for three years, at the expiration of which he was chosen abbot of a neighbouring con vent, then in a very relaxed state. His rule proved too stern for his new subjects, who attempted to poison him, whereupon he resigned his office and returned to Subiaco, around which he soon erected twelve monas teries, each peopled by an abbot and twelve monks. Fresh attempts on his life and on the discipline of his society drove him out again in the year 528, when he fixed his dwelling at Monte Cassino, the place where his cele brated rule was drafted in the following year, and which has ever since prided itself on its rank as the cradle of the Benedictine Order and the premier abbey of Western Christendom. The famous institute which he devised 1 Adamnan, Vit. Cvlumb., ed. Reeves.