Page:The ancient Irish church.djvu/89

 which forms such a very striking feature in the early Irish Church. These were men who were not contented with the ordinary Christian life, but were supposed to practise greater austerities than those among whom they lived. They dwelt apart, in the 'Desert,' as their portion of the monastery was called.

The name, Desert, recalls to us the fact that the original anchorites were monks of Egypt, who retired into a real desert, for the purpose of spending lives of loneliness and devotion. As far as we are able to judge of them, they presented a not very inviting picture. They were for the most part not only ignorant, but they gloried in their ignorance; they never engaged in any useful work; some of them seem to have laid aside every vestige of civilization and decency; they placed no bounds to their fanaticism; they banished from their hearts every human affection. Though their lives were in one sense examples of extreme self-denial, in another sense they were examples of extreme selfishness. Whatever may be thought of cenobites, or monks living in community, there can only be one opinion about the hermits. They were as a general rule useless and lazy, and under the cloak of humility were filled with spiritual pride.

When the monastic system was introduced into the West, the names were retained, but the things signified were far from being the same. When we speak of the Irish 'anchorites' living in a 'desert,' we must dismiss from our minds nearly all the ideas that we usually connect with these two words. First of all, the anchorites had scarcely one point in common with those of Egypt and Syria. They did not live lives of isolation, but formed part of the community. In later years there were 'enclosed