Page:Lesser Eastern Churches.djvu/133

Rh During the 5th century, when the Persian Church was in its lowest state and all celibacy was abolished among the clergy (p. 81), a synod ordained contemptuously that anyone who wanted not to marry had better go to a monastery. But about this time we hear of even monks and nuns marrying. Now, monasticism without celibacy is no monasticism at all. Always the "angelic" life has been the essence of what we called religious orders. So, in the 5th century, the religious life was nearly extinct in Persia. In the 6th century came a great reform and a new beginning of monasticism. This was made by Abraham of Kashkar, called the Great. He is the second founder of Persian monastic life, the organizer and head of all its later developement, so that he holds a place analogous to that of St. Basil and St. Benedict.

Abraham was born in 491 or 492 in the land of Kashkar. He studied at Nisibis, then went to the Egyptian desert, as St. Basil had done, to learn the rule of monks at the fountain-head of Christian monasticism. After staying at Sinai and other famous centres of the religious life, he came back to Nisibis and founded or restored a monastery at Mount Īzlâ. Here he gathered around him a great number of monks, who then spread his rule throughout the Persian Church. He died in the odour of sanctity, aged ninetyfive, in 586. The Nestorians remember Rabban Abraham the Great rightly as the "Father of Monks." Thomas of Margâ says that God "established him to be the father of the army of virgins and men of abstinence" ; again: "As formerly everyone who wished to learn and become a master of the heathen philosophy of the Greeks went to Athens, the famous city of philosophers, so in this case everyone who desired to be instructed in spiritual philosophy went to the holy monastery of Rabban Mâr Abraham and inscribed himself in sonship to him." After him came