Page:The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages.djvu/173

 VII] WESTERN MONASTICISM 166 II. Western Monasticism The monasticism of the West bears the relation to Eastern monasticism which so much that is Latin bears to what is Eastern or Hellenic, — the suggestion comes from the East and is accepted and made into some- thing different by the West, which puts its own quali- ties into whatever it receives. No definite fact or single principle distinguishes Western from Eastern monasticism. Monasticism brought from the East its original moods and aims. Western monasticism, at its beginning, is not conscious of a new or different way of life, save in the modification of some details, as where Egyptian diet and dress were plainly unfit for Gaul. As in the East, so in the West, the early great founders of monasteries or monastic orders begin their ascetic lives as solitary hermits, with no such aim as the subsequent courses of their lives were to shape for them.* They all desire, through solitude and asceti- cism, to free themselves from the lusts of the flesh, and, renouncing the world, to live in contemplation of God and love of Him, and in the assurance of eternal life.* And as monasteries come into existence in the West, they are set far from cities, with stricter pre- cautions against corrupting intercourse with the world than had been taken by the great regulators of Eastern monasticism.' Not in its beginnings did Western mo- 1 Pacbomios and Basil in the East, Martin of Tours and Benedict of Nursia in the West. > This mood is so strong with Gregory the Great that it saddens his entire life after he left the monastery and became pope. BtriDgently than Basil. Basil would have monasteries uear cities,
 * Benedict's regula forbids interconrso with the world more