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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Hermits, by Charles Kingsley
+
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+Title: The Hermits
+
+Author: Charles Kingsley
+
+Release Date: August, 2005  [EBook #8733]
+[This file was first posted on August 5, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
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+Character set encoding: US-ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE HERMITS ***
+
+
+
+
+Transcribed by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
+
+
+
+
+THE HERMITS
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+
+St. Paphnutius used to tell a story which may serve as a fit
+introduction to this book.  It contains a miniature sketch, not only
+of the social state of Egypt, but of the whole Roman Empire, and of
+the causes which led to the famous monastic movement in the
+beginning of the fifth century after Christ.
+
+Now Paphnutius was a wise and holy hermit, the Father, Abba, or
+Abbot of many monks; and after he had trained himself in the desert
+with all severity for many years, he besought God to show him which
+of His saints he was like.
+
+And it was said to him, "Thou art like a certain flute-player in the
+city."
+
+Then Paphnutius took his staff, and went into the city, and found
+that flute-player.  But he confessed that he was a drunkard and a
+profligate, and had till lately got his living by robbery, and
+recollected not having ever done one good deed.  Nevertheless, when
+Paphnutius questioned him more closely, he said that he recollected
+once having found a holy maiden beset by robbers, and having
+delivered her, and brought her safe to town.  And when Paphnutius
+questioned him more closely still, he said he recollected having
+done another deed.  When he was a robber, he met once in the desert
+a beautiful woman; and she prayed him to do her no harm, but to take
+her away with him as a slave, whither he would; for, said she, "I am
+fleeing from the apparitors and the Governor's curials for the last
+two years.  My husband has been imprisoned for 300 pieces of gold,
+which he owes as arrears of taxes; and has been often hung up, and
+often scourged; and my three dear boys have been taken from me; and
+I am wandering from place to place, and have been often caught
+myself and continually scourged; and now I have been in the desert
+three days without food."
+
+And when the robber heard that, he took pity on her, and took her to
+his cave, and gave her 300 pieces of gold, and went with her to the
+city, and set her husband and her boys free.
+
+Then Paphnutius said, "I never did a deed like that:  and yet I have
+not passed my life in ease and idleness.  But now, my son, since God
+hath had such care of thee, have a care for thine own self."
+
+And when the musician heard that, he threw away the flutes which he
+held in his hand, and went with Paphnutius into the desert, and
+passed his life in hymns and prayer, changing his earthly music into
+heavenly; and after three years he went to heaven, and was at rest
+among the choirs of angels, and the ranks of the just.
+
+This story, as I said, is a miniature sketch of the state of the
+whole Roman Empire, and of the causes why men fled from it into the
+desert.  Christianity had reformed the morals of individuals; it had
+not reformed the Empire itself.  That had sunk into a state only to
+be compared with the worst despotisms of the East.  The Emperors,
+whether or not they called themselves Christian, like Constantine,
+knew no law save the basest maxims of the heathen world.  Several of
+them were barbarians who had risen from the lowest rank merely by
+military prowess; and who, half maddened by their sudden elevation,
+added to their native ignorance and brutality the pride, cunning,
+and cruelty of an Eastern Sultan.  Rival Emperors, or Generals who
+aspired to be Emperors, devastated the world from Egypt to Britain
+by sanguinary civil wars.  The government of the provinces had
+become altogether military.  Torture was employed, not merely, as of
+old, against slaves, but against all ranks, without distinction.
+The people were exhausted by compulsory taxes, to be spent in wars
+which did not concern them, or in Court luxury in which they had no
+share.  In the municipal towns, liberty and justice were dead.  The
+curials, who answered somewhat to our aldermen, and who were
+responsible for the payment of the public moneys, tried their best
+to escape the unpopular office, and, when compelled to serve, wrung
+the money in self-defence out of the poorer inhabitants by every
+kind of tyranny.  The land was tilled either by oppressed and
+miserable peasants, or by gangs of slaves, in comparison with whose
+lot that even of the American negro was light.  The great were
+served in their own households by crowds of slaves, better fed,
+doubtless, but even more miserable and degraded, than those who
+tilled the estates.  Private profligacy among all ranks was such as
+cannot be described in these or in any modern pages.  The regular
+clergy of the cities, though not of profligate lives, and for the
+most part, in accordance with public opinion, unmarried, were able
+to make no stand against the general corruption of the age, because-
+-at least if we are to trust such writers as Jerome and Chrysostom--
+they were giving themselves up to ambition and avarice, vanity and
+luxury, intrigue and party spirit, and had become the flatterers of
+fine ladies, "silly women laden with sins, ever learning, and never
+coming to the knowledge of the truth."  Such a state of things not
+only drove poor creatures into the desert, like that fair woman whom
+the robber met, but it raised up bands of robbers over the whole of
+Europe, Africa, and the East,--men who, like Robin Hood and the
+outlaws of the Middle Age, getting no justice from man, broke loose
+from society, and while they plundered their oppressors, kept up
+some sort of rude justice and humanity among themselves.  Many, too,
+fled, and became robbers, to escape the merciless conscription which
+carried off from every province the flower of the young men, to shed
+their blood on foreign battle-fields.  In time, too, many of these
+conscripts became monks, and the great monasteries of Scetis and
+Nitria were hunted over again and again by officers and soldiers
+from the neighbouring city of Alexandria in search of young men who
+had entered the "spiritual warfare" to escape the earthly one.  And
+as a background to all this seething heap of decay, misrule, and
+misery, hung the black cloud of the barbarians, the Teutonic tribes
+from whom we derive the best part of our blood, ever coming nearer
+and nearer, waxing stronger and stronger, learning discipline and
+civilization by serving in the Roman armies, alternately the allies
+and the enemies of the Emperors, rising, some of them, to the
+highest offices of State, and destined, so the wisest Romans saw all
+the more clearly as the years rolled on, to be soon the conquerors
+of the Caesars, and the masters of the Western world.
+
+No wonder if that, in such a state of things, there arose such
+violent contrasts to the general weakness, such eccentric protests
+against the general wickedness, as may be seen in the figure of
+Abbot Paphnutius, when compared either with the poor man tortured in
+prison for his arrears of taxes, or with the Governor and the
+officials who tortured him.  No wonder if, in such a state of
+things, the minds of men were stirred by a passion akin to despair,
+which ended in a new and grand form of suicide.  It would have ended
+often, but for Christianity, in such an actual despair as that which
+had led in past ages more than one noble Roman to slay himself, when
+he lost all hope for the Republic.  Christianity taught those who
+despaired of society, of the world--in one word, of the Roman
+Empire, and all that it had done for men--to hope at least for a
+kingdom of God after death.  It taught those who, had they been
+heathens and brave enough, would have slain themselves to escape out
+of a world which was no place for honest men, that the body must be
+kept alive, if for no other reason, at least for the sake of the
+immortal soul, doomed, according to its works, to endless bliss or
+endless torment.
+
+But that the world--such, at least, as they saw it then--was doomed,
+Scripture and their own reason taught them.  They did not merely
+believe, but see, in the misery and confusion, the desolation and
+degradation around them, that all that was in the world, the lust of
+the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life, was not of
+the Father, but of the world; that the world was passing away, and
+the lust thereof, and that only he who did the will of God could
+abide for ever.  They did not merely believe, but saw, that the
+wrath of God was revealed from heaven against all unrighteousness of
+men; and that the world in general--above all, its kings and rulers,
+the rich and luxurious--were treasuring up for themselves wrath,
+tribulation, and anguish, against a day of wrath and revelation of
+the righteous judgment of God, who would render to every man
+according to his works.
+
+That they were correct in their judgment of the world about them,
+contemporary history proves abundantly.  That they were correct,
+likewise, in believing that some fearful judgment was about to fall
+on man, is proved by the fact that it did fall; that the first half
+of the fifth century saw, not only the sack of Rome, but the
+conquest and desolation of the greater part of the civilized world,
+amid bloodshed, misery, and misrule, which seemed to turn Europe
+into a chaos,--which would have turned it into a chaos, had there
+not been a few men left who still felt it possible and necessary to
+believe in God and to work righteousness.
+
+Under these terrible forebodings, men began to flee from a doomed
+world, and try to be alone with God, if by any means they might save
+each man his own soul in that dread day.
+
+Others, not Christians, had done the same before them.  Among all
+the Eastern nations men had appeared, from time to time, to whom the
+things seen were but a passing phantom, the things unseen the only
+true and eternal realities; who, tormented alike by the awfulness of
+the infinite unknown, and by the petty cares and low passions of the
+finite mortal life which they knew but too well, had determined to
+renounce the latter, that they might give themselves up to solving
+the riddle of the former; and be at peace; and free, at least, from
+the tyranny of their own selves.  Eight hundred years before St.
+Antony fled into the desert, that young Hindoo rajah, whom men call
+Buddha now, had fled into the forest, leaving wives and kingdom, to
+find rest for his soul.  He denounced caste; he preached poverty,
+asceticism, self-annihilation.  He founded a religion, like that of
+the old hermits, democratic and ascetic, with its convents, saint-
+worships, pilgrimages, miraculous relics, rosaries, and much more,
+which strangely anticipates the monastic religion; and his
+followers, to this day, are more numerous than those of any other
+creed.
+
+Brahmins, too, had given themselves up to penance and mortification
+till they believed themselves able, like Kehama, to have gained by
+self-torture the right to command, not nature merely, but the gods
+themselves.  Among the Jews the Essenes by the Dead Sea, and the
+Therapeutae in Egypt, had formed ascetic communities, the former
+more "practical," the latter more "contemplative:" but both alike
+agreed in the purpose of escaping from the world into a life of
+poverty and simplicity, piety and virtue; and among the countless
+philosophic sects of Asia, known to ecclesiastical writers as
+"heretics," more than one had professed, and doubtless often
+practised, the same abstraction from the world, the same contempt of
+the flesh.  The very Neo-Platonists of Alexandria, while they
+derided the Christian asceticism, found themselves forced to affect,
+like the hapless Hypatia, a sentimental and pharisaic asceticism of
+their own.  This phase of sight and feeling, so strange to us now,
+was common, nay, primaeval, among the Easterns.  The day was come
+when it should pass from the East into the West.  And Egypt, "the
+mother of wonders;" the parent of so much civilization and
+philosophy both Greek and Roman; the half-way resting-place through
+which not merely the merchandise, but the wisdom of the East had for
+centuries passed into the Roman Empire; a land more ill-governed,
+too, and more miserable, in spite of its fertility, because more
+defenceless and effeminate, than most other Roman possessions--was
+the country in which naturally, and as it were of hereditary right,
+such a movement would first appear.
+
+Accordingly it was discovered, about the end of the fourth century,
+that the mountains and deserts of Egypt were full of Christian men
+who had fled out of the dying world, in the hope of attaining
+everlasting life.  Wonderful things were told of their courage,
+their abstinence, their miracles:  and of their virtues also; of
+their purity, their humility, their helpfulness, and charity to each
+other and to all.  They called each other, it was said, brothers;
+and they lived up to that sacred name, forgotten, if ever known, by
+the rest of the Roman Empire.  Like the Apostolic Christians in the
+first fervour of their conversion, they had all things in common;
+they lived at peace with each other, under a mild and charitable
+rule; and kept literally those commands of Christ which all the rest
+of the world explained away to nothing.
+
+The news spread.  It chimed in with all that was best, as well as
+with much that was questionable, in the public mind.  That men could
+be brothers; that they could live without the tawdry luxury, the
+tasteless and often brutal amusements, the low sensuality, the base
+intrigue, the bloody warfare, which was the accepted lot of the
+many; that they could find time to look stedfastly at heaven and
+hell as awful realities, which must be faced some day, which had
+best be faced at once; this, just as much as curiosity about their
+alleged miracles, and the selfish longing to rival them in
+superhuman powers, led many of the most virtuous and the most
+learned men of the time to visit them, and ascertain the truth.
+Jerome, Ruffinus, Evagrius, Sulpicius Severus, went to see them,
+undergoing on the way the severest toils and dangers, and brought
+back reports of mingled truth and falsehood, specimens of which will
+be seen in these pages.  Travelling in those days was a labour, if
+not of necessity, then surely of love.  Palladius, for instance,
+found it impossible to visit the Upper Thebaid, and Syene, and that
+"infinite multitude of monks, whose fashions of life no one would
+believe, for they surpass human life; who to this day raise the
+dead, and walk upon the waters, like Peter; and whatsoever the
+Saviour did by the holy Apostles, He does now by them.  But because
+it would be very dangerous if we went beyond Lyco" (Lycopolis?), on
+account of the inroad of robbers, he "could not see those saints."
+
+The holy men and women of whom he wrote, he says, he did not see
+without extreme toil; and seven times he and his companions were
+nearly lost.  Once they walked through the desert five days and
+nights, and were almost worn out by hunger and thirst.  Again, they
+fell on rough marshes, where the sedge pierced their feet, and
+caused intolerable pain, while they were almost killed with the
+cold.  Another time, they stuck in the mud up to their waists, and
+cried with David, "I am come into deep mire, where no ground is."
+Another time, they waded for four days through the flood of the Nile
+by paths almost swept away.  Another time they met robbers on the
+seashore, coming to Diolcos, and were chased by them for ten miles.
+Another time they were all but upset and drowned in crossing the
+Nile.  Another time, in the marshes of Mareotis, "where paper
+grows," they were cast on a little desert island, and remained three
+days and nights in the open air, amid great cold and showers, for it
+was the season of Epiphany.  The eighth peril, he says, is hardly
+worth mentioning--but once, when they went to Nitria, they came on a
+great hollow, in which many crocodiles had remained, when the waters
+retired from the fields.  Three of them lay along the bank; and the
+monks went up to them, thinking them dead, whereon the crocodiles
+rushed at them.  But when they called loudly on the Lord, "the
+monsters, as if turned away by an angel," shot themselves into the
+water; while they ran on to Nitria, meditating on the words of Job,
+"Seven times shall He deliver thee from trouble; and in the eighth
+there shall no evil touch thee."
+
+The great St. Athanasius, fleeing from persecution, had taken refuge
+among these monks.  He carried the report of their virtues to Treves
+in Gaul, and wrote a life of St. Antony, the perusal of which was a
+main agent in the conversion of St. Augustine.  Hilarion (a
+remarkable personage, whose history will be told hereafter) carried
+their report and their example likewise into Palestine; and from
+that time Judaea, desolate and seemingly accursed by the sin of the
+Jewish people, became once more the Holy Land; the place of
+pilgrimage; whose ruins, whose very soil, were kept sacred by
+hermits, the guardians of the footsteps of Christ.
+
+In Rome itself the news produced an effect which, to the thoughtful
+mind, is altogether tragical in its nobleness.  The Roman
+aristocracy was deprived of all political power; it had been
+decimated, too, with horrible cruelty only one generation before,
+{12} by Valentinian and his satellites, on the charges of
+profligacy, treason, and magic.  Mere rich men, they still lingered
+on, in idleness and luxury, without art, science, true civilization
+of any kind; followed by long trains of slaves; punishing a servant
+with three hundred stripes if he were too long in bringing hot
+water; weighing the fish, or birds, or dormice put on their tables,
+while secretaries stood by, with tablets to record all; hating
+learning as they hated poison; indulging at the baths in conduct
+which had best be left undescribed; and "complaining that they were
+not born among the Cimmerians, if amid their golden fans a fly
+should perch upon the silken fringes, or a slender ray of the sun
+should pierce through the awning;" while, if they "go any distance
+to see their estates in the country, or to hunt at a meeting
+collected for their amusement by others, they think that they have
+equalled the marches of Alexander or of Caesar."
+
+On the wives, widows, and daughters of men of this stamp--and not
+half their effeminacy and baseness, as the honest rough old soldier
+Ammianus Marcellinus describes it, has been told here--the news
+brought from Egypt worked with wondrous potency.
+
+Women of the highest rank awoke suddenly to the discovery that life
+was given them for nobler purposes than that of frivolous enjoyment
+and tawdry vanity.  Despising themselves; despising the husbands to
+whom they had been wedded in loveless marriages de convenance, whose
+infidelities they had too often to endure:  they, too, fled from a
+world which had sated and sickened them.  They freed their slaves;
+they gave away their wealth to found hospitals and to feed the poor;
+and in voluntary poverty and mean garments they followed such men as
+Jerome and Ruffinus across the seas, to visit the new found saints
+of the Egyptian desert, and to end their days, in some cases, in
+doleful monasteries in Palestine.  The lives of such women as those
+of the Anician house; the lives of Marcella and Furia, of Paula, of
+the Melanias, and the rest, it is not my task to write.  They must
+be told by a woman, not by a man.  We may blame those ladies, if we
+will, for neglecting their duties.  We may sneer, if we will, at the
+weaknesses--the aristocratic pride, the spiritual vanity--which we
+fancy that we discover.  We may lament--and in that we shall not be
+wrong--the influence which such men as Jerome obtained over them--
+the example and precursor of so much which has since then been
+ruinous to family and social life:  but we must confess that the
+fault lay not with the themselves, but with their fathers, husbands,
+and brothers; we must confess that in these women the spirit of the
+old Roman matrons, which seemed to have been so long dead, flashed
+up for one splendid moment, ere it sunk into the darkness of the
+Middle Age; that in them woman asserted (however strangely and
+fantastically) her moral equality with man; and that at the very
+moment when monasticism was consigning her to contempt, almost to
+abhorrence, as "the noxious animal," the "fragile vessel," the cause
+of man's fall at first, and of his sin and misery ever since, woman
+showed the monk (to his naively-confessed surprise), that she could
+dare, and suffer, and adore as well as he.
+
+But the movement, having once seized the Roman Empire, grew and
+spread irresistibly.  It was accepted, supported, preached,
+practised, by every great man of the time.  Athanasius, Basil,
+Chrysostom, Gregory of Nazianzen in the East, Jerome, Augustine,
+Ruffinus, Evagrius, Fulgentius, Sulpicius Severus, Vincent of
+Lerins, John Cassian, Martin of Tours, Salvian, Caesarius of Arles,
+were all monks, or as much of monks as their duties would allow them
+to be.  Ambrose of Milan, though no monk himself, was the fervent
+preacher of, the careful legislator for, monasticism male and
+female.  Throughout the whole Roman Empire, in the course of a
+century, had spread hermits (or dwellers in the desert), anchorites
+(retired from the world), or monks (dwellers alone).  The three
+names grew afterwards to designate three different orders of
+ascetics.  The hermits remained through the Middle Ages those who
+dwelt in deserts; the anchorites, or "ankers" of the English Middle
+Age, seem generally to have inhabited cells built in, or near, the
+church walls; the name of "monks" was transferred from those who
+dwelt alone to those who dwelt in regular communities, under a fixed
+government.  But the three names at first were interchangeable; the
+three modes of life alternated, often in the same man.  The life of
+all three was the same,--celibacy, poverty, good deeds towards their
+fellow-men; self-restraint, and sometimes self-torture of every
+kind, to atone (as far as might be) for the sins committed after
+baptism:  and the mental food of all three was the same likewise;
+continued meditation upon the vanity of the world, the sinfulness of
+the flesh, the glories of heaven, and the horrors of hell:  but with
+these the old hermits combined--to do them justice--a personal faith
+in God, and a personal love for Christ, which those who sneer at
+them would do well to copy.
+
+Over all Europe, even to Ireland, {15} the same pattern of Christian
+excellence repeated itself with strange regularity, till it became
+the only received pattern; and to "enter religion," or "be
+converted," meant simply to become a monk.
+
+Of the authentic biographies of certain of these men, a few
+specimens are given in this volume.  If they shall seem to any
+reader uncouth, or even absurd, he must remember that they are the
+only existing and the generally contemporaneous histories of men who
+exercised for 1,300 years an enormous influence over the whole of
+Christendom; who exercise a vast influence over the greater part of
+it to this day.  They are the biographies of men who were regarded,
+during their lives and after their deaths, as divine and inspired
+prophets; and who were worshipped with boundless trust and
+admiration by millions of human beings.  Their fame and power were
+not created by the priesthood.  The priesthood rather leant on them,
+than they on it.  They occupied a post analogous to that of the old
+Jewish prophets; always independent of, sometimes opposed to, the
+regular clergy; and dependent altogether on public opinion and the
+suffrage of the multitude.  When Christianity, after three centuries
+of repression and persecution, emerged triumphant as the creed of
+the whole civilized world, it had become what their lives describe.
+The model of religious life for the fifth century, it remained a
+model for succeeding centuries; on the lives of St. Antony and his
+compeers were founded the whole literature of saintly biographies;
+the whole popular conception of the universe, and of man's relation
+to it; the whole science of daemonology, with its peculiar
+literature, its peculiar system of criminal jurisprudence.  And
+their influence did not cease at the Reformation among Protestant
+divines.  The influence of these Lives of the Hermit Fathers is as
+much traceable, even to style and language, in "The Pilgrim's
+Progress" as in the last Papal Allocution.  The great hermits of
+Egypt were not merely the founders of that vast monastic system
+which influenced the whole politics, and wars, and social life, as
+well as the whole religion, of the Middle Age; they were a school of
+philosophers (as they rightly called themselves) who altered the
+whole current of human thought.
+
+Those who wish for a general notion of the men, and of their time,
+will find all that they require (set forth from different points of
+view, though with the same honesty and learning) in Gibbon; in M. de
+Montalembert's "Moines d'Occident," in Dean Milman's "History of
+Christianity" and "Latin Christianity," and in Ozanam's "Etudes
+Germaniques." {17a}  But the truest notion of the men is to be got,
+after all, from the original documents; and especially from that
+curious collection of them by the Jesuit Rosweyde, commonly known as
+the "Lives of the Hermit Fathers." {17b}
+
+After an acquaintance of now five-and-twenty years with this
+wonderful treasury of early Christian mythology, to which all fairy
+tales are dull and meagre, I am almost inclined to sympathise with
+M. de Montalembert's questions,--"Who is so ignorant, or so
+unfortunate, as not to have devoured these tales of the heroic age
+of monachism?  Who has not contemplated, if not with the eyes of
+faith, at least with the admiration inspired by an incontrollable
+greatness of soul, the struggles of these athletes of penitence? . .
+. .  Everything is to be found there--variety, pathos, the sublime
+and simple epic of a race of men, naifs as children, and strong as
+giants."  In whatever else one may differ from M. de Montalembert--
+and it is always painful to differ from one whose pen has been
+always the faithful servant of virtue and piety, purity and
+chivalry, loyalty and liberty, and whose generous appreciation of
+England and the English is the more honourable to him, by reason of
+an utter divergence in opinion, which in less wide and noble spirits
+produces only antipathy--one must at least agree with him in his
+estimate of the importance of these "Lives of the Fathers," not only
+to the ecclesiologist, but to the psychologist and the historian.
+Their influence, subtle, often transformed and modified again and
+again, but still potent from its very subtleness, is being felt
+around us in many a puzzle--educational, social, political; and
+promises to be felt still more during the coming generation; and to
+have studied thoroughly one of them--say the life of St. Antony by
+St. Athanasius--is to have had in our hands (whether we knew it or
+not) the key to many a lock, which just now refuses either to be
+tampered with or burst open.
+
+I have determined, therefore, to give a few of these lives,
+translated as literally as possible.  Thus the reader will then have
+no reason to fear a garbled or partial account of personages so
+difficult to conceive or understand.  He will be able to see the men
+as wholes; to judge (according to his light) of their merits and
+their defects.  The very style of their biographers (which is copied
+as literally as is compatible with the English tongue) will teach
+him, if he be wise, somewhat of the temper and habits of thought of
+the age in which they lived; and one of these original documents,
+with its honesty, its vivid touches of contemporary manners, its
+intense earnestness, will give, perhaps, a more true picture of the
+whole hermit movement than (with all respect, be it said) the most
+brilliant general panorama.
+
+It is impossible to give in this series all the lives of the early
+hermits--even of those contained in Rosweyde.  This volume will
+contain, therefore, only the most important and most famous lives of
+the Egyptian, Syrian, and Persian hermits, followed, perhaps, by a
+few later biographies from Western Europe, as proofs that the
+hermit-type, as it spread toward the Atlantic, remained still the
+same as in the Egyptian desert.
+
+Against one modern mistake the reader must be warned; the theory,
+namely, that these biographies were written as religious romances;
+edifying, but not historical; to be admired, but not believed.
+There is not the slightest evidence that such was the case.  The
+lives of these, and most other saints (certainly those in this
+volume), were written by men who believed the stories themselves,
+after such inquiry into the facts as they deemed necessary; who knew
+that others would believe them; and who intended that they should do
+so; and the stones were believed accordingly, and taken as matter of
+fact for the most practical purposes by the whole of Christendom.
+The forging of miracles, like the forging of charters, for the
+honour of a particular shrine, or the advantage of a particular
+monastery, belongs to a much later and much worse age; and,
+whatsoever we may think of the taste of the authors of these lives,
+or of their faculty for judging of evidence, we must at least give
+them credit for being earnest men, incapable of what would have been
+in their eyes, and ought to be in ours, not merely falsehood, but
+impiety.  Let the reader be sure of this--that these documents would
+not have exercised their enormous influence on the human mind, had
+there not been in them, under whatever accidents of credulity, and
+even absurdity, an element of sincerity, virtue, and nobility.
+
+
+
+SAINT ANTONY
+
+
+
+The life of Antony, by Athanasius, is perhaps the most important of
+all these biographies; because first, Antony was generally held to
+be the first great example and preacher of the hermit life; because
+next, Athanasius, his biographer, having by his controversial
+writings established the orthodox faith as it is now held alike by
+Romanists, Greeks, and Protestants, did, by his publication of the
+life of Antony, establish the hermit life as the ideal (in his
+opinion) of Christian excellence; and lastly, because that biography
+exercised a most potent influence on the conversion of St.
+Augustine, the greatest thinker (always excepting St. Paul) whom the
+world had seen since Plato, whom the world was to see again till
+Lord Bacon; the theologian and philosopher (for he was the latter,
+as well as the former, in the strictest sense) to whom the world
+owes, not only the formulizing of the whole scheme of the universe
+for a thousand years after his death, but Calvinism (wrongly so
+called) in all its forms, whether held by the Augustinian party in
+the Church of Rome, or the "Reformed" Churches of Geneva, France,
+and Scotland.
+
+Whether we have the exact text of the document as Athanasius wrote
+it to the "Foreign Brethren"--probably the religious folk of Treves-
+-in the Greek version published by Heschelius in 1611, and in
+certain earlier Greek texts; whether the Latin translation
+attributed to Evagrius, which has been well known for centuries past
+in the Latin Church, be actually his; whether it be exactly that of
+which St. Jerome speaks, and whether it be exactly that which St.
+Augustine saw, are questions which it is now impossible to decide.
+But of the genuineness of the life in its entirety we have no right
+to doubt, contrary to the verdicts of the most distinguished
+scholars, whether Protestant or Catholic; and there is fair reason
+to suppose that the document (allowing for errors and variations of
+transcribers) which I have tried to translate, is that of which the
+great St. Augustine speaks in the eighth book of his Confessions.
+
+He tells us that he was reclaimed at last from a profligate life
+(the thought of honourable marriage seems never to have entered his
+mind), by meeting, while practising as a rhetorician at Treves, an
+old African acquaintance, named Potitanius, an officer of rank.
+What followed no words can express so well as those of the great
+genius himself.
+
+"When I told him that I was giving much attention to those writings
+(the Epistles of Paul), we began to talk, and he to tell, of Antony,
+the monk of Egypt, whose name was then very famous among thy
+servants:  {23} but was unknown to us till that moment.  When he
+discovered that, he spent some time over the subject, detailing his
+virtues, and wondering at our ignorance.  We were astounded at
+hearing such well-attested marvels of him, so recent and almost
+contemporaneous, wrought in the right faith of the Catholic Church.
+We all wondered:  we, that they were so great; and he, that we had
+not heard of them.  Thence his discourse ran on to those flocks of
+hermit-cells, and the morals of thy sweetness, and the fruitful
+deserts of the wilderness, of which we knew nought.  There was a
+monastery, too, at Milan, full of good brethren, outside the city
+walls, under the tutelage of Ambrosius, and we knew nothing of it.
+He went on still speaking, and we listened intently; and it befell
+that he told us how, I know not when, he and three of his mess
+companions at Treves, while the emperor was engaged in an afternoon
+spectacle in the circus, went out for a walk in the gardens round
+the walls; and as they walked there in pairs, one with him alone,
+and the two others by themselves, they parted.  And those two,
+straying about, burst into a cottage, where dwelt certain servants
+of thine, poor in spirit, of such as is the kingdom of heaven; and
+there found a book, in which was written the life of Antony.  One of
+them began to read it, and to wonder, and to be warned; and, as he
+read, to think of taking up such a life, and leaving the warfare of
+this world to serve thee.  Now, he was one of those whom they call
+Managers of Affairs. {24}  Then, suddenly filled with holy love and
+sober shame, angered at himself, he cast his eyes on his friend, and
+said, 'Tell me, prithee, with all these labours of ours, whither are
+we trying to get?  What are we seeking?  For what are we soldiering?
+Can we have a higher hope in the palace, than to become friends of
+the emperor?  And when there, what is not frail and full of dangers?
+And through how many dangers we do not arrive at a greater danger
+still?  And how long will that last?  But if I choose to become a
+friend of God, I can do it here and now.'  He spoke thus, and,
+swelling in the labour-pangs of a new life, he fixed his eyes again
+on the pages and read, and was changed inwardly as thou lookedst on
+him, and his mind was stripped of the world, as soon appeared.  For
+while he read, and rolled over the billows of his soul, he shuddered
+and hesitated from time to time, and resolved better things; and
+already thine, he said to his friend, 'I have already torn myself
+from that hope of ours, and have settled to serve God; and this I
+begin from this hour, in this very place.  If you do not like to
+imitate me, do not oppose me.'  He replied that he would cling to
+his companion in such a great service and so great a warfare.  And
+both, now thine, began building, at their own cost, the tower of
+leaving all things and following thee.  Then Potitianus, and the man
+who was talking with him elsewhere in the garden, seeking them, came
+to the same place, and warned them to return, as the sun was getting
+low.  They, however, told their resolution, and how it had sprung up
+and taken strong hold in them, and entreated the others not to give
+them pain.  They, not altered from their former mode of life, yet
+wept (as he told us) for themselves; and congratulated them piously,
+and commended themselves to their prayers; and then dragging their
+hearts along the earth, went back to the palace.  But the others,
+fixing their hearts on heaven, remained in the cottage.  And both of
+them had affianced brides, who, when they heard this, dedicated
+their virginity to thee."
+
+The part which this incident played in St. Augustine's own
+conversion must be told hereafter in his life.  But the scene which
+his master-hand has drawn is not merely the drama of his own soul or
+of these two young officers, but of a whole empire.  It is, as I
+said at first, the tragedy and suicide of the old empire; and the
+birth-agony of which he speaks was not that of an individual soul
+here or there, but of a whole new world, for good and evil.  The old
+Roman soul was dead within, the body of it dead without.
+Patriotism, duty, purpose of life, save pleasure, money, and
+intrigue, had perished.  The young Roman officer had nothing left
+for which to fight; the young Roman gentleman nothing left for which
+to be a citizen and an owner of lands.  Even the old Roman longing
+(which was also a sacred duty) of leaving an heir to perpetuate his
+name, and serve the state as his fathers had before him--even that
+was gone.  Nothing was left, with the many, but selfishness, which
+could rise at best into the desire of saving every man his own soul,
+and so transform worldliness into other-worldliness.  The old empire
+could do nothing more for man; and knew that it could do nothing;
+and lay down in the hermit's cell to die.
+
+Treves was then "the second metropolis of the empire," boasting,
+perhaps, even then, as it boasts still, that it was standing
+thirteen hundred years before Rome was built.  Amid the low hills,
+pierced by rocky dells, and on a strath of richest soil, it had
+grown, from the mud-hut town of the Treviri, into a noble city of
+palaces, theatres, baths, triumphal-arches, on either side the broad
+and clear Moselle.  The bridge which Augustus had thrown across the
+river, four hundred years before the times of hermits and of saints,
+stood like a cliff through all barbarian invasions, through all the
+battles and sieges of the Middle Age, till it was blown up by the
+French in the wars of Louis XIV., and nought remains save the huge
+piers of black lava stemming the blue stream; while up and down the
+dwindled city, the colossal fragments of Roman work--the Black Gate,
+the Heidenthurm, the baths, the Basilica or Hall of Justice, now a
+Lutheran church--stand out half ruined, like the fossil bones of
+giants amid the works of weaker, though of happier times; while the
+amphitheatre was till late years planted thick with vines, fattening
+in soil drenched with the blood of thousands.  Treves had been the
+haunt of emperor after emperor, men wise and strong, cruel and
+terrible;--of Constantius, Constantine the Great, Julian,
+Valentinian, Valens; and lastly, when Potitianus's friends found
+those poor monks in the garden {27} of Gratian, the gentle hunter
+who thought day and night on sport, till his arrows were said to be
+instinct with life, was holding his military court within the walls
+of Treves, or at that hunting palace on the northern downs, where
+still on the bath-floors lie the mosaics of hare and deer, and boar
+and hound, on which the feet of Emperors trod full fifteen hundred
+years ago.
+
+Still glorious outwardly, like the Roman empire itself, was that
+great city of Treves; but inwardly it was full of rottenness and
+weakness.  The Roman empire had been, in spite of all its crimes,
+for four hundred years the salt of the earth:  but now the salt had
+lost its savour; and in one generation more it would be trodden
+under foot and cast upon the dunghill, and another empire would take
+its place,--the empire, not of brute strength and self-indulgence,
+but of sympathy and self-denial,--an empire, not of Caesars, but of
+hermits.  Already was Gratian the friend and pupil of St. Ambrose of
+Milan; already, too, was he persecuting, though not to the death,
+heretics and heathens.  Nay, some fifty years before (if the legend
+can be in the least trusted) had St. Helena, the mother of
+Constantine the Great, returned from Palestine, bearing with her--so
+men believed--not only the miraculously discovered cross of Christ,
+but the seamless coat which he had worn; and, turning her palace
+into a church, deposited the holy coat therein:  where--so some
+believe--it remains until this day.  Men felt that a change was
+coming, but whence it would come, or how terrible it would be, they
+could not tell.  It was to be, as the prophet says, "like the
+bulging out of a great wall, which bursteth suddenly in an instant."
+In the very amphitheatre where Gratian sat that afternoon, with all
+the folk of Treves about him, watching, it may be, lions and
+antelopes from Africa slaughtered--it may be criminals tortured to
+death--another and an uglier sight had been twice seen some seventy
+years before.  Constantine, so-called the Great, had there exhibited
+his "Frankish sports," the "magnificent spectacle," the "famous
+punishments," as his flattering court-historians called them:
+thousands of Frank prisoners, many of them of noble, and even of
+royal blood, torn to pieces by wild beasts, while they stood
+fearless, smiling with folded arms; and when the wild beasts were
+gorged, and slew no more, weapons were put into the hands of the
+survivors, and they were bidden to fight to the death for the
+amusement of their Roman lords.  But fight they would not against
+their own flesh and blood:  and as for life, all chance of that was
+long gone by.  So every man fell joyfully upon his brother's sword,
+and, dying like a German man, spoilt the sport of the good folk of
+Treves.  And it seemed for a while as if there were no God in heaven
+who cared to avenge such deeds of blood.  For the kinsmen, it may be
+the very sons, of those Franks were now in Gratian's pay; and the
+Frank Merobaudes was his "Count of the Domestics," and one of his
+most successful and trusted generals; and all seemed to go well, and
+brute force and craft to triumph on the earth.
+
+And yet those two young staff officers, when they left the imperial
+court for the hermit's cell, judged, on the whole, prudently and
+well, and chose the better part when they fled from the world to
+escape the "dangers" of ambition, and the "greater danger still" of
+success.  For they escaped, not merely from vice and worldliness,
+but, as the event proved, from imminent danger of death if they kept
+the loyalty which they had sworn to their emperor; or the worse evil
+of baseness if they turned traitors to him to save their lives.
+
+For little thought Gratian, as he sat in that amphitheatre, that the
+day was coming when he, the hunter of game--and of heretics--would
+be hunted in his turn; when, deserted by his army, betrayed by
+Merobaudes--whose elder kinsfolk were not likely to have kept him
+ignorant of "the Frankish sports "--he should flee pitiably towards
+Italy, and die by a German hand; some say near Lyons, some say near
+Belgrade, calling on Ambrose with his latest breath. {29}  Little
+thought, too, the good folk of Treves, as they sat beneath the vast
+awning that afternoon, that within the next half century a day of
+vengeance was coming for them, which should teach them that there
+was a God who "maketh inquisition for blood;" a day when Treves
+should be sacked in blood and flame by those very "barbarian"
+Germans whom they fancied their allies--or their slaves.  And least
+of all did they fancy that, when that great destruction fell upon
+their city, the only element in it which would pass safely through
+the fire and rise again, and raise their city to new glory and
+power, was that which was represented by those poor hermits in the
+garden-hut outside.  Little thought they that above the awful arches
+of the Black Gate--as if in mockery of the Roman Power--a lean
+anchorite would take his stand, Simeon of Syracuse by name, a monk
+of Mount Sinai, and there imitate, in the far West, the austerities
+of St. Simeon Stylites in the East, and be enrolled in the new
+Pantheon, not of Caesars, but of Saints.
+
+Under the supposed patronage of those Saints, Treves rose again out
+of its ruins.  It gained its four great abbeys of St. Maximus (on
+the site of Constantine's palace); St. Matthias, in the crypt
+whereof the bodies of the monks never decay; {30} St. Martin; and
+St. Mary of the Four Martyrs, where four soldiers of the famous
+Theban legion are said to have suffered martyrdom by the house of
+the Roman prefect.  It had its cathedral of St. Peter and St.
+Helena, supposed to be built out of St. Helena's palace; its
+exquisite Liebfrauenkirche; its palace of the old Archbishops,
+mighty potentates of this world, as well as of the kingdom of
+heaven.  For they were princes, arch-chancellors, electors of the
+empire, owning many a league of fertile land, governing, and that
+kindly and justly, towns and villages of Christian men, and now and
+then going out to war, at the head of their own knights and yeomen,
+in defence of their lands, and of the saints whose servants and
+trustees they were; and so became, according to their light and
+their means, the salt of that land for many generations.
+
+And after a while that salt, too, lost its savour, and was, in its
+turn, trodden under foot.  The French republican wars swept away the
+ecclesiastical constitution and the wealth of the ancient city.  The
+cathedral and churches were stripped of relics, of jewels, of
+treasures of early art.  The Prince-bishop's palace is a barrack; so
+was lately St. Maximus's shrine; St. Martin's a china manufactory,
+and St. Matthias's a school.  Treves belongs to Prussia, and not to
+"Holy Church;" and all the old splendours of the "empire of the
+saints" are almost as much ruinate as those of the "empire of the
+Romans."  So goes the world, because there is a living God.
+
+
+"The old order changeth, giving place to the new;
+And God fulfils himself in many ways,
+Lest one good custom should corrupt the world."
+
+
+But though palaces and amphitheatres be gone, the gardens outside
+still bloom on as when Potitianus his friends wandered through them,
+perpetual as Nature's self; and perpetual as Nature, too, endures
+whatever is good and true of that afternoon's work, and of that
+finding of the legend of St. Antony in the monk's cabin, which fixed
+the destiny of the great genius of the Latin Church.
+
+The story of St. Antony, as it has been handed down to us, {32} runs
+thus:--
+
+
+The life and conversation of our holy Father Antony, written and
+sent to the monks in foreign parts by our Father among the saints,
+Athanasius, Archbishop of Alexandria.
+
+You have begun a noble rivalry with the monks of Egypt, having
+determined either to equal or even to surpass them in your training
+towards virtue; for there are monasteries already among you, and the
+monastic life is practised.  This purpose of yours one may justly
+praise; and if you pray, God will bring it to perfection.  But since
+you have also asked me about the conversation of the holy Antony,
+wishing to learn how he began his training, and who he was before
+it, and what sort of an end he made to his life, and whether what is
+said of him is true, in order that you may bring yourselves to
+emulate him, with great readiness I received your command.  For to
+me, too, it is a great gain and benefit only to remember Antony; and
+I know that you, when you hear of him, after you have wondered at
+the man, will wish also to emulate his purpose.  For the life of
+Antony is for monks a perfect pattern of ascetic training.  What,
+then, you have heard about him from other informants do not
+disbelieve, but rather think that you have heard from them a small
+part of the facts.  For in any case, they could hardly relate fully
+such great matters, when even I, at your request, howsoever much I
+may tell you in my letter, can only send you a little which I
+remember about him.  But do not cease to inquire of those who sail
+from hence; for perhaps, if each tells what he knows, at last his
+history may be worthily compiled.  I had wished, indeed, when I
+received your letter, to send for some of the monks who were wont to
+be most frequently in his company, that I might learn something
+more, and send you a fuller account.  But since both the season of
+navigation limited me, and the letter-carrier was in haste, I
+hastened to write to your piety what I myself know (for I have often
+seen him), and what I was able to learn from one who followed him
+for no short time, and poured water upon his hands; always taking
+care of the truth, in order that no one when he hears too much may
+disbelieve, nor again, if he learns less than is needful, despise
+the man.
+
+Antony was an Egyptian by race, born of noble parents, {33} who had
+a sufficient property of their own:  and as they were Christians, he
+too was Christianly brought up, and when a boy was nourished in the
+house of his parents, besides whom and his home he knew nought.  But
+when he grew older, he would not be taught letters, {34} not wishing
+to mix with other boys; but all his longing was (according to what
+is written of Jacob) to dwell simply in his own house.  But when his
+parents took him into the Lord's house, he was not saucy, like a
+boy, nor inattentive as he grew older; but was subject to his
+parents, and attentive to what was read, turning it to his own
+account.  Nor again (as a boy who was moderately well off) did he
+trouble his parents for various and expensive dainties, nor did he
+run after the pleasures of this life; but was content with what he
+found, and asked for nothing more.  When his parents died, he was
+left alone with a little sister, when he was about eighteen or
+twenty years of age, and took care both of his house and of her.
+But not six months after their death, as he was going as usual to
+the Lord's house, and collecting his thoughts, he meditated as he
+walked how the Apostles had left all and followed the Saviour; and
+how those in the Acts brought the price of what they had sold, and
+laid it at the Apostles' feet, to be given away to the poor; and
+what and how great a hope was laid up for them in heaven.  With this
+in his mind, he entered the church.  And it befell then that the
+Gospel was being read; and he heard how the Lord had said to the
+rich man, "If thou wilt be perfect, go, sell all thou hast, and give
+to the poor; and come, follow me, and thou shalt have treasure in
+heaven."  Antony, therefore, as if the remembrance of the saints had
+come to him from God, and as if the lesson had been read on his
+account, went forth at once from the Lord's house, and gave away to
+those of his own village the possessions he had inherited from his
+ancestors (three hundred plough-lands, fertile and very fair), that
+they might give no trouble either to him or his sister.  All his
+moveables he sold, and a considerable sum which he received for them
+he gave to the poor.  But having kept back a little for his sister,
+when he went again into the Lord's house he heard the Lord saying in
+the Gospel, "Take no thought for the morrow," and, unable to endure
+any more delay, he went out and distributed that too to the needy.
+And having committed his sister to known and faithful virgins, and
+given to her wherewith to be educated in a nunnery, he himself
+thenceforth devoted himself, outside his house, to training; {35}
+taking heed to himself, and using himself severely.  For monasteries
+were not then common in Egypt, nor did any monks at all know the
+wide desert; but each who wished to take heed to himself exercised
+himself alone, not far from his own village.  There was then in the
+next village an old man, who had trained himself in a solitary life
+from his youth.  When Antony saw him, he emulated him in that which
+is noble.  And first he began to stay outside the village; and then,
+if he heard of any earnest man, he went to seek him, like a wise
+bee; and did not return till he had seen him, and having got from
+him (as it were) provision for his journey toward virtue, went his
+way.  So dwelling there at first, he settled his mind neither to
+look back towards his parents' wealth nor to recollect his
+relations; but he put all his longing and all his earnestness on
+training himself more intensely.  For the rest he worked with his
+hands, because he had heard, "If any man will not work, neither let
+him eat;" and of his earnings he spent some on himself and some on
+the needy.  He prayed continually, because he knew that one ought to
+pray secretly, without ceasing.  He attended, also, so much to what
+was read, that, with him, none of the Scriptures fell to the ground,
+but he retained them all, and for the future his memory served him
+instead of books.  Behaving thus, Antony was beloved by all; and
+submitted truly to the earnest men to whom he used to go.  And from
+each of them he learnt some improvement in his earnestness and his
+training:  he contemplated the courtesy of one, and another's
+assiduity in prayer; another's freedom from anger; another's love of
+mankind:  he took heed to one as he watched; to another as he
+studied:  one he admired for his endurance, another for his fasting
+and sleeping on the ground; he laid to heart the meekness of one,
+and the long-suffering of another; and stamped upon his memory the
+devotion to Christ and the mutual love which all in common
+possessed.  And thus filled full, he returned to his own place of
+training, gathering to himself what he had got from each, and
+striving to show all their qualities in himself.  He never emulated
+those of his own age, save in what is best; and did that so as to
+pain no one, but make all rejoice over him.  And all in the village
+who loved good, seeing him thus, called him the friend of God; and
+some embraced him as a son, some as a brother.
+
+But the devil, who hates and envies what is noble, would not endure
+such a purpose in a youth:  but attempted against him all that he is
+wont to do; suggesting to him the remembrance of his wealth, care
+for his sister, relation to his kindred, love of money, love of
+glory, the various pleasures of luxury, and the other solaces of
+life; and then the harshness of virtue, and its great toil; and the
+weakness of his body, and the length of time; and altogether raised
+a great dust-cloud of arguments in his mind, trying to turn him back
+from his righteous choice.  But when the enemy saw himself to be too
+weak for Antony's determination, but rather baffled by his
+stoutness, and overthrown by his great faith, and falling before his
+continual prayers, then he attacked him with the temptations which
+he is wont to use against young men; . . . . but he protected his
+body with faith, prayers, and fastings, . . . setting his thoughts
+on Christ, and on his own nobility through Christ, and on the
+rational faculties of his soul, . . . and again on the terrors of
+the fire, and the torment of the worm, . . . and thus escaped
+unhurt.  And thus was the enemy brought to shame.  For he who
+thought himself to be equal with God was now mocked by a youth; and
+he who boasted against flesh and blood was defeated by a man clothed
+in flesh.  For the Lord worked with him, who bore flesh on our
+account, and gave to the body victory over the devil, that each man
+in his battle may say, "Not I, but the grace of God which is with
+me."  At last, when the dragon could not overthrow Antony even thus,
+but saw himself thrust out of his heart, then gnashing his teeth (as
+is written), and as if beside himself, he appeared to the sight, as
+he is to the reason, as a black child, and as it were falling down
+before him, no longer attempted to argue (for the deceiver was cast
+out), but using a human voice, said, "I have deceived many; I have
+cast down many.  But now, as in the case of many, so in thine, I
+have been worsted in the battle."  Then when Antony asked him, "Who
+art thou who speakest thus to me?" he forthwith replied in a
+pitiable voice, "I am the spirit of impurity.". . .
+
+Then Antony gave thanks to God, and gaining courage, said, "Thou art
+utterly despicable; for thou art black of soul, and weak as a child;
+nor shall I henceforth cast one thought on thee.  For the Lord is my
+helper, and I shall despise my enemies."  That black being, hearing
+this, fled forthwith, cowering at his words, and afraid thenceforth
+of coming near the man.
+
+This was Antony's first struggle against the devil:  or rather this
+mighty deed in him was the Saviour's, who condemned sin in the flesh
+that the righteousness of the Lord should be fulfilled in us, who
+walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.  But neither did
+Antony, because the daemon had fallen, grow careless and despise
+him; neither did the enemy, when worsted by him, cease from lying in
+ambush against him.  For he came round again as a lion, seeking a
+pretence against him.  But Antony had learnt from Scripture that
+many are the devices of the enemy; and continually kept up his
+training, considering that, though he had not deceived his heart by
+pleasure, he would try some other snares.  For the daemon delights
+in sin.  Therefore he chastised his body more and more, and brought
+it into slavery, lest, having conquered in one case, he should be
+tripped up in others.  He determined, therefore, to accustom himself
+to a still more severe life; and many wondered at him:  but the
+labour was to him easy to bear.  For the readiness of the spirit,
+through long usage, had created a good habit in him, so that, taking
+a very slight hint from others, he showed great earnestness in it.
+For he watched so much, that he often passed the whole night without
+sleep; and that not once, but often, to the astonishment of men.  He
+ate once a day, after the setting of the sun, and sometimes only
+once in two days, often even in four; his food was bread with salt,
+his drink nothing but water.  To speak of flesh and wine there is no
+need, for such a thing is not found among other earnest men.  When
+he slept he was content with a rush-mat:  but mostly he lay on the
+bare ground.  He would not anoint himself with oil, saying that it
+was more fit for young men to be earnest in training, than to seek
+things which softened the body; and that they must accustom
+themselves to labour, according to the Apostle's saying, "When I am
+weak, then I am strong;" for that the mind was strengthened as
+bodily pleasure was weakened.  And this argument of his was truly
+wonderful.  For he did not measure the path of virtue, nor his going
+away into retirement on account of it, by time; but by his own
+desire and will.  So forgetting the past, he daily, as if beginning
+afresh, took more pains to improve, saying over to himself
+continually the Apostle's words, "Forgetting what is behind,
+stretching forward to what is before;" and mindful, too, of Elias'
+speech, "The Lord liveth, before whom I stand this day."  For he
+held, that by mentioning to-day, he took no account of past time:
+but, as if he were laying down a beginning, he tried earnestly to
+make himself day by day fit to appear before God, pure in heart, and
+ready to obey his will, and no other.  And he said in himself that
+the ascetic ought for ever to be learning his own life from the
+manners of the great Elias, as from a mirror.  Antony, having thus,
+as it were, bound himself, went to the tombs, which happened to be
+some way from the village; and having bidden one of his
+acquaintances to bring him bread at intervals of many days, he
+entered one of the tombs, and, shutting the door upon himself,
+remained there alone.  But the enemy, not enduring that, but rather
+terrified lest in a little while he should fill the desert with his
+training, coming one night with a multitude of daemons, beat him so
+much with stripes, that he lay speechless from the torture.  For he
+asserted that the pain was so great that no blows given by men could
+cause such agony.  But by the providence of God (for the Lord does
+not overlook those who hope in him), the next day his acquaintance
+came, bringing him the loaves.  And having opened the door, and
+seeing him lying on the ground for dead, he carried him to the
+Lord's house in the village, and laid him on the ground; and many of
+his kinsfolk and the villagers sat round him, as round a corpse.
+But about midnight, Antony coming to himself, and waking up, saw
+them all sleeping, and only his acquaintance awake, and, nodding to
+him to approach, begged him to carry him back to the tombs, without
+waking any one.  When that was done, the doors were shut, and he
+remained as before, alone inside.  And, because he could not stand
+on account of the daemons' blows, he prayed prostrate.  And after
+his prayer, he said with a shout, "Here am I, Antony:  I do not fly
+from your stripes; yea, if you do yet more, nothing shall separate
+me from the love of Christ."  And then he sang, "If an host be laid
+against me, yet shall not my heart be afraid."  Thus thought and
+spoke the man who was training himself.  But the enemy, hater of
+what is noble, and envious, wondering that he dared to return after
+the stripes, called together his dogs, and bursting with rage,--"Ye
+see," he said, "that we have not stopped this man by the spirit of
+impurity; nor by blows:  but he is even growing bolder against us.
+Let us attack him some other way." {41}  For it is easy for the
+devil to invent schemes of mischief.  So then in the night they made
+such a crash, that the whole place seemed shaken, and the daemons,
+as if breaking in the four walls of the room, seemed to enter
+through them, changing themselves into the shapes of beasts and
+creeping things; {42} and the place was forthwith filled with shapes
+of lions, bears, leopards, bulls, and snakes, asps, scorpions, and
+wolves, and each of them moved according to his own fashion.  The
+lion roared, longing to attack; the bull seemed to toss; the serpent
+did not cease creeping, and the wolf rushed upon him; and altogether
+the noises of all the apparitions were dreadful, and their tempers
+cruel.  But Antony, scourged and pierced by them, felt a more
+dreadful bodily pain than before:  but he lay unshaken and awake in
+spirit.  He groaned at the pain of his body:  but clear in
+intellect, and as it were mocking, he said, "If there were any power
+in you, it were enough that one of you should come on; but since the
+Lord has made you weak, therefore you try to frighten me by mere
+numbers.  And a proof of your weakness is, that you imitate the
+shapes of brute animals."  And taking courage, he said again, "If ye
+can, and have received power against me, delay not, but attack; but
+if ye cannot, why do ye disturb me in vain?  For a seal to us and a
+wall of safety is our faith in the Lord."  The daemons, having made
+many efforts, gnashed their teeth at him, because he rather mocked
+at them, than they at him.  But neither then did the Lord forget
+Antony's wrestling, but appeared to help him.  For, looking up, he
+saw the roof as it were opened and a ray of light coming down
+towards him.  The daemons suddenly became invisible, and the pain of
+his body forthwith ceased, and the building became quite whole.  But
+Antony, feeling the succour, and getting his breath again, and freed
+from pain, questioned the vision which appeared, saying, "Where wert
+thou?  Why didst thou not appear to me from the first, to stop my
+pangs?"  And a voice came to him, "Antony, I was here, but I waited
+to see thy fight.  Therefore, since thou hast withstood, and not
+been worsted, I will be to thee always a succour, and will make thee
+become famous everywhere."  Hearing this, he rose and prayed, and
+was so strong, that he felt that he had more power in his body than
+he had before.  He was then about thirty-and-five years old.  And on
+the morrow he went out, and was yet more eager for devotion to God;
+and, going to that old man aforesaid, he asked him to dwell with him
+in the desert.  But when he declined, because of his age, and
+because no such custom had yet arisen, he himself straightway set
+off to the mountain.  But the enemy again, seeing his earnestness,
+and wishing to hinder it, cast in his way the phantom of a great
+silver plate.  But Antony, perceiving the trick of him who hates
+what is noble, stopped.  And he judged the plate worthless, seeing
+the devil in it; and said, "Whence comes a plate in the desert?
+This is no beaten way, nor is there here the footstep of any
+traveller.  Had it fallen, it could not have been unperceived, from
+its great size; and besides, he who lost it would have turned back
+and found it, because the place is desert.  This is a trick of the
+devil.  Thou shalt not hinder, devil, my determination by this:  let
+it go with thee into perdition."  And as Antony said that, it
+vanished, as smoke from before the face of the fire.  Then again he
+saw, not this time a phantom, but real gold lying in the way as he
+came up.  But whether the enemy showed it him, or whether some
+better power, which was trying the athlete, and showing the devil
+that he did not care for real wealth; neither did he tell, nor do we
+know, save that it was real gold.  Antony, wondering at the
+abundance of it, so stepped over it as over fire, and so passed it
+by, that he never turned, but ran on in haste, until he had lost
+sight of the place.  And growing even more and more intense in his
+determination, he rushed up the mountain, and finding an empty
+inclosure full of creeping things on account of its age, he betook
+himself across the river, and dwelt in it.  The creeping things, as
+if pursued by some one, straightway left the place:  but he blocked
+up the entry, having taken with him loaves for six months (for the
+Thebans do this, and they often remain a whole year fresh), and
+having water with him, entering, as into a sanctuary, into that
+monastery, {44} he remained alone, never going forth, and never
+looking at any one who came.  Thus he passed a long time there
+training himself, and only twice a year received loaves, let down
+from above through the roof.  But those of his acquaintance who came
+to him, as they often remained days and nights outside (for he did
+not allow any one to enter), used to hear as it were crowds inside
+clamouring, thundering, lamenting, crying--"Depart from our ground.
+What dost thou even in the desert?  Thou canst not abide our onset."
+At first those without thought that there were some men fighting
+with him, and that they had got in by ladders:  but when, peeping in
+through a crack, they saw no one, then they took for granted that
+they were daemons, and being terrified, called themselves on Antony.
+But he rather listened to them than cared for the others.  For his
+acquaintances came up continually, expecting to find him dead, and
+heard him singing, "Let the Lord arise, and his enemies shall be
+scattered; and let them who hate him flee before him.  As wax melts
+from before the face of the fire, so shall sinners perish from
+before the face of God."  And again, "All nations compassed me round
+about, and in the name of the Lord I repelled them."  He endured
+then for twenty years, thus training himself alone; neither going
+forth, nor seen by any one for long periods of time.  But after
+this, when many longed for him, and wished to imitate his training,
+and others who knew him came, and were bursting in the door by
+force, Antony came forth as from some inner shrine, initiated into
+the mysteries, and bearing the God. {45}  And then first he appeared
+out of the inclosure to those who were coming to him.  And when they
+saw him they wondered; for his body had kept the same habit, and had
+neither grown fat, nor lean from fasting, nor worn by fighting with
+the daemons.  For he was just such as they had known him before his
+retirement.  They wondered again at the purity of his soul, because
+it was neither contracted as if by grief, nor relaxed by pleasure,
+nor possessed by laughter or by depression; for he was neither
+troubled at beholding the crowd, nor over-joyful at being saluted by
+too many; but was altogether equal, as being governed by reason, and
+standing on that which is according to nature.  Many sufferers in
+body who were present did the Lord heal by him; and others he purged
+from daemons.  And he gave to Antony grace in speaking, so that he
+comforted many who grieved, and reconciled others who were at
+variance, exhorting all to prefer nothing in the world to the love
+of Christ, and persuading and exhorting them to be mindful of the
+good things to come, and of the love of God towards us, who spared
+not his own son, but delivered him up for us all.  He persuaded many
+to choose the solitary life; and so thenceforth cells sprang up in
+the mountains, and the desert was colonized by monks, who went forth
+from their own, and registered themselves in the city which is in
+heaven.
+
+And when he had need to cross the Arsenoite Canal (and the need was
+the superintendence of the brethren), the canal was full of
+crocodiles.  And having only prayed, he entered it; and both he and
+all who were with him went through it unharmed.  But when he
+returned to the cell, he persisted in the noble labours of his
+youth; and by continued exhortations he increased the willingness of
+those who were already monks, and stirred to love of training the
+greater number of the rest; and quickly, as his speech drew men on,
+the cells became more numerous; and he governed them all as a
+father.  And when he had gone forth one day, and all the monks had
+come to him desiring to hear some word from him, he spake to them in
+the Egyptian tongue, thus--"That the Scriptures were sufficient for
+instruction, but that it was good for us to exhort each other in the
+faith." . . .
+
+[Here follows a long sermon, historically important, as being the
+earliest Christian attempt to reduce to a science daemonology and
+the temptation of daemons:  but its involved and rhetorical form
+proves sufficiently that it could not have been delivered by an
+unlettered man like Antony.  Neither is it, probably, even composed
+by St. Athanasius; it seems rather, like several other passages in
+this biography, the interpolation of some later scribe.  It has
+been, therefore, omitted.]
+
+And when Antony had spoken thus, all rejoiced; and in one the love
+of virtue was increased, in another negligence stirred up, and in
+others conceit stopped, while all were persuaded to despise the
+plots of the devil, wondering at the grace which had been given to
+Antony by the Lord for the discernment of spirits.  So the cells in
+the mountains were like tents filled with divine choirs, singing,
+discoursing, fasting, praying, rejoicing over the hope of the
+future, working that they might give alms thereof, and having love
+and concord with each other.  And there was really to be seen, as it
+were, a land by itself, of piety and justice; for there was none
+there who did wrong, or suffered wrong:  no blame from any
+talebearer:  but a multitude of men training themselves, and in all
+of them a mind set on virtue.  So that any one seeing the cells, and
+such an array of monks, would have cried out, and said, "How fair
+are thy dwellings, O Jacob, and thy tents, O Israel; like shady
+groves and like parks beside a river, and like tents which the Lord
+hath pitched, and like cedars by the waters."  He himself,
+meanwhile, withdrawing, according to his custom, alone to his own
+cell, increased the severity of his training.  And he groaned daily,
+considering the mansions in heaven, and setting his longing on them,
+and looking at the ephemeral life of man.  For even when he was
+going to eat or sleep, he was ashamed, when he considered the
+rational element of his soul; so that often, when he was about to
+eat with many other monks, he remembered the spiritual food, and
+declined, and went far away from them; thinking that he should blush
+if he was seen by others eating.  He ate, nevertheless, by himself,
+on account of the necessities of the body; and often, too, with the
+brethren, being bashful with regard to them, but plucking up heart
+for the sake of saying something that might be useful; and used to
+tell them that they ought to give all their leisure rather to the
+soul than to the body; and that they should grant a very little time
+to the body, for mere necessity's sake:  but that their whole
+leisure should be rather given to the soul, and should seek her
+profit, that she may not be drawn down by the pleasures of the body,
+but rather the body be led captive by her.  For this (he said) was
+what was spoken by the Saviour, "Be not anxious for your soul, what
+ye shall eat; nor for your body, what ye shall put on.  And seek not
+what ye shall eat, nor what ye shall drink, neither let your minds
+be in suspense:  for after all these things the nations of the world
+seek:  but your Father knoweth that ye need all these things.
+Rather seek first his kingdom; and all these things shall be added
+unto you."
+
+After these things, the persecution which happened under the
+Maximinus of that time, {49} laid hold of the Church; and when the
+holy martyrs were brought to Alexandria, Antony too followed,
+leaving his cell, and saying, "Let us depart too, that we may
+wrestle if we be called, or see them wrestling."  And he longed to
+be a martyr himself, but, not choosing to give himself up, he
+ministered to the confessors in the mines, and in the prisons.  And
+he was very earnest in the judgment-hall to excite the readiness of
+those who were called upon to wrestle; and to receive and bring on
+their way, till they were perfected, those of them who went to
+martyrdom.  At last the judge, seeing the fearlessness and
+earnestness of him and those who were with him, commanded that none
+of the monks should appear in the judgment-hall, or haunt at all in
+the city.  So all the rest thought good to hide themselves that day;
+but Antony cared so much for the order, that he all the rather
+washed his cloak, and stood next day upon a high place, and appeared
+to the General in shining white.  Therefore, when all the rest
+wondered, and the General saw him, and passed by with his array, he
+stood fearless, showing forth the readiness of us Christians.  For
+he himself prayed to be a martyr, as I have said, and was like one
+grieved, because he had not borne his witness.  But the Lord was
+preserving him for our benefit, and that of the rest, that he might
+become a teacher to many in the training which he had learnt from
+Scripture.  For many, when they only saw his manner of life, were
+eager to emulate it.  So he again ministered continually to the
+confessors; and, as if bound with them, wearied himself in his
+services.  And when at last the persecution ceased, and the blessed
+Bishop Peter had been martyred, he left the city, and went back to
+his cell.  And he was there, day by day, a martyr in his conscience,
+and wrestling in the conflict of faith; for he imposed on himself a
+much more severe training than before; and his garment was within of
+hair, without of skin, which he kept till his end.  He neither
+washed his body with water, nor ever cleansed his feet, nor actually
+endured putting them into water unless it were necessary.  And no
+one ever saw him unclothed till he was dead and about to be buried.
+
+When, then, he retired, and had resolved neither to go forth
+himself, nor to receive any one, one Martinianus, a captain of
+soldiers, came and gave trouble to Antony.  For he had with him his
+daughter, who was tormented by a daemon.  And while he remained a
+long time knocking at the door, and expecting him to come to pray to
+God for the child, Antony could not bear to open, but leaning from
+above, said, "Man, why criest thou to me?  I, too, am a man, as thou
+art.  But if thou believest, pray to God, and it comes to pass."
+Forthwith, therefore, he believed, and called on Christ; and went
+away, with his daughter cleansed from the daemon.  And many other
+things the Lord did by him, saying, "Ask, and it shall be given
+you."  For most of the sufferers, when he did not open the door,
+only sat down outside the cell, and believing, and praying honestly,
+were cleansed.  But when he saw himself troubled by many, and not
+being permitted to retire, as he wished, being afraid lest he
+himself should be puffed up by what the Lord was doing by him, or
+lest others should count of him above what he was, he resolved to go
+to the Upper Thebaid, to those who knew him not.  And, in fact,
+having taken loaves from the brethren, he sat down on the bank of
+the river, watching for a boat to pass, that he might embark and go
+up in it.  And as he watched, a voice came to him:  "Antony, whither
+art thou going, and why?"  And he, not terrified, but as one
+accustomed to be often called thus, answered when he heard it,
+"Because the crowds will not let me be at rest; therefore am I
+minded to go up to the Upper Thebaid, on account of the many
+annoyances which befall me; and, above all, because they ask of me
+things beyond my strength."  And the voice said to him, "Even if
+thou goest up to the Thebaid, even if, as thou art minded to do,
+thou goest down the cattle pastures, {52a} thou wilt have to endure
+more, and double trouble; but if thou wilt really be at rest, go now
+into the inner desert."  And when Antony said, "Who will show me the
+way, for I have not tried it?" forthwith it showed him Saracens who
+were going to journey that road.  So, going to them, and drawing
+near them, Antony asked leave to depart with them into the desert.
+But they, as if by an ordinance of Providence, willingly received
+him; and, journeying three days and three nights with them, he came
+to a very high mountain; {52b} and there was water under the
+mountain, clear, sweet, and very cold; and a plain outside; and a
+few neglected date-palms.  Then Antony, as if stirred by God, loved
+the spot; for this it was what he had pointed out who spoke to him
+beside the river bank.  At first, then, having received bread from
+those who journeyed with him, he remained alone in the mount, no one
+else being with him.  For he recognised that place as his own home,
+and kept it thenceforth.  And the Saracens themselves, seeing
+Antony's readiness, came that way on purpose, and joyfully brought
+him loaves; and he had, too, the solace of the dates, which was then
+little and paltry.  But after this, the brethren, having found out
+the spot, like children remembering their father, were anxious to
+send things to him; but Antony saw that, in bringing him bread, some
+there were put to trouble and fatigue; and, sparing the monks even
+in that, took counsel with himself, and asked some who came to him
+to bring him a hoe and a hatchet, and a little corn; and when these
+were brought, having gone over the land round the mountain, he found
+a very narrow place which was suitable, and tilled it; and, having
+plenty of water to irrigate it, he sowed; and, doing this year by
+year, he got his bread from thence, rejoicing that he should be
+troublesome to no one on that account, and that he was keeping
+himself free from obligation in all things.  But after this, seeing
+again some people coming, he planted also a very few pot-herbs, that
+he who came might have some small solace after the labour of that
+hard journey.  At first, however, the wild beasts in the desert,
+coming on account of the water, often hurt his crops and his
+tillage; but he, gently laying hold of one of them, said to them
+all, "Why do you hurt me, who have not hurt you?  Depart, and, in
+the name of the Lord, never come near this place."  And from that
+time forward, as if they were afraid of his command, they never came
+near the place.  So he was there alone in the inner mountain, having
+leisure for prayer and for training.  But the brethren who
+ministered to him asked him that, coming every month, they might
+bring him olives, and pulse, and oil; for, after all, he was old.
+And while he had his conversation there, what great wrestlings he
+endured, according to that which is written, "Not against flesh and
+blood, but against the daemons who are our adversaries," we have
+known from those who went in to him.  For there also they heard
+tumults, and many voices, and clashing as of arms; and they beheld
+the mount by night full of wild beasts, and they looked on him, too,
+fighting, as it were, with beings whom he saw, and praying against
+them.  And those who came to him he bade be of good courage, but he
+himself wrestled, bending his knees, and praying to the Lord.  And
+it was truly worthy of wonder that, alone in such a desert, he was
+neither cowed by the daemons who beset him, nor, while there were
+there so many four-footed and creeping beasts, was at all afraid of
+their fierceness:  but, as is written, trusted in the Lord like the
+Mount Zion, having his reason unshaken and untost; so that the
+daemons rather fled, and the wild beasts, as is written, were at
+peace with him.
+
+Nevertheless, the devil (as David sings) watched Antony, and gnashed
+upon him with his teeth.  But Antony was comforted by the Saviour,
+remaining unhurt by his craft and manifold artifices.  For on him,
+when he was awake at night, he let loose wild beasts; and almost all
+the hyaenas in that desert, coming out of their burrows, beset him
+round, and he was in the midst.  And when each gaped on him and
+threatened to bite him, perceiving the art of the enemy, he said to
+them all, "If ye have received power against me, I am ready to be
+devoured by you:  but if ye have been set on by daemons, delay not,
+but withdraw, for I am a servant of Christ."  When Antony said this,
+they fled, pursued by his words as by a whip.  Next after a few
+days, as he was working--for he took care, too, to labour--some one
+standing at the door pulled the plait that he was working.  For he
+was weaving baskets, which he used to give to those who came, in
+return for what they brought him.  And rising up, he saw a beast,
+like a man down to his thighs, but having legs and feet like an ass;
+and Antony only crossed himself and said, "I am a servant of Christ.
+If thou hast been sent against me, behold, here I am."  And the
+beast with its daemons fled away, so that in its haste it fell and
+died.  Now the death of the beast was the fall of the daemons.  For
+they were eager to do everything to bring him back out of the
+desert, but could not prevail.
+
+And being once asked by the monks to come down to them, and to visit
+awhile them and their places, he journeyed with the monks who came
+to meet him.  And a camel carried their loaves and their water; for
+that desert is all dry, and there is no drinkable water unless in
+that mountain alone whence they drew their water, and where his cell
+is.  But when the water failed on the journey, and the heat was most
+intense, they all began to be in danger; for going round to various
+places, and finding no water, they could walk no more, but lay down
+on the ground, and they let the camel go, and gave themselves up.
+But the old man, seeing them all in danger, was utterly grieved, and
+groaned; and departing a little way from them, and bending his knees
+and stretching out his hands, he prayed, and forthwith the Lord
+caused water to come out where he had stopped and prayed.  And thus
+all of them drinking took breath again; and having filled their
+skins, they sought the camel, and found her; for it befell that the
+halter had been twisted round a stone, and thus she had been
+stopped.  So, having brought her back, and given her to drink, they
+put the skins on her, and went through their journey unharmed.  And
+when they came to the outer cells all embraced him, looking on him
+as a father.  And he, as if he brought them guest-gifts from the
+mountain, gave them away to them in his words, and shared his
+benefits among them.  And there was joy again in the mountains, and
+zeal for improvement, and comfort through their faith in each other.
+And he too rejoiced, seeing the willingness of the monks, and his
+sister grown old in maidenhood, and herself the leader of other
+virgins.  And so after certain days he went back again to the
+mountain.
+
+And after that many came to him; and others who suffered dared also
+to come.  Now to all the monks who came to him he gave continually
+this command:  To trust in the Lord and love him, and to keep
+themselves from foul thoughts and fleshly pleasures; and, as is
+written in the Parables, not to be deceived by fulness of bread; and
+to avoid vainglory; and to pray continually; and to sing before
+sleep and after sleep; and to lay by in their hearts the commandment
+of Scripture; and to remember the works of the saints, in order to
+have their souls attuned to emulate them.  But especially he
+counselled them to meditate continually on the Apostle's saying,
+"Let not the sun go down upon your wrath;" and this he said was
+spoken of all commandments in common, in order that not on wrath
+alone, but on every other sin, the sun should never go down; for it
+was noble and necessary that the sun should never condemn us for a
+baseness by day, nor the moon for a sin or even a thought by night;
+therefore, in order that that which is noble may be preserved in us,
+it was good to hear and to keep what the Apostle commanded:  for he
+said:  "Judge yourselves, and prove yourselves."  Let each then take
+account with himself, day by day, of his daily and nightly deeds;
+and if he has not sinned, let him not boast, but let him endure in
+what is good and not be negligent, neither condemn his neighbour,
+neither justify himself, as said the blessed Apostle Paul, until the
+Lord comes who searches secret things.  For we often deceive
+ourselves in what we do, and we indeed know not:  but the Lord
+comprehends all.  Giving therefore the judgment to Him, let us
+sympathise with each other; and let us bear each other's burdens,
+and examine ourselves; and what we are behind in, let us be eager to
+fill up.  And let this, too, be my counsel for safety against
+sinning.  Let us each note and write down the deeds and motions of
+the soul as if he were about to relate them to each other; and be
+confident that, as we shall be utterly ashamed that they should be
+known, we shall cease from sinning, and even from desiring anything
+mean.  For who when he sins wishes to be harmed thereby?  Or who,
+having sinned, does not rather lie, wishing to hide it?  As
+therefore when in each other's sight we dare not commit a crime, so
+if we write down our thoughts, and tell them to each other, we shall
+keep ourselves the more from foul thoughts, for shame lest they
+should be known. . . .  And thus forming ourselves we shall be able
+to bring the body into slavery, and please the Lord on the one hand,
+and on the other trample on the snares of the enemy."  This was his
+exhortation to those who met him:  but with those who suffered he
+suffered, and prayed with them.  And often and in many things the
+Lord heard him; and neither when he was heard did he boast; nor when
+he was not heard did he murmur:  but, remaining always the same,
+gave thanks to the Lord.  And those who suffered he exhorted to keep
+up heart, and to know that the power of cure was none of his, nor of
+any man's; but only belonged to God, who works when and whatsoever
+he chooses.  So the sufferers received this as a remedy, learning
+not to despise the old man's words, but rather to keep up heart; and
+those who were cured learned not to bless Antony, but God alone.
+
+For instance, one called Fronto, who belonged to the palace, and had
+a grievous disease (for he gnawed his own tongue, and tried to
+injure his eyes), came to the mountain and asked Antony to pray for
+him.  And when he had prayed he said to Fronto, "Depart, and be
+healed."  And when he resisted, and remained within some days,
+Antony continued saying, "Thou canst not be healed if thou remainest
+here; go forth, and as soon as thou enterest Egypt, thou shalt see
+the sign which shall befall thee."  He, believing, went forth; and
+as soon as he only saw Egypt he was freed from his disease, and
+became sound according to the word of Antony, which he had learnt by
+prayer from the Saviour . . .
+
+[Here follows a story of a girl cured of a painful complaint:  which
+need not be translated.]
+
+But when two brethren were coming to him, and water failed them on
+the journey, one of them died, and the other was about to die.  In
+fact, being no longer able to walk, he too lay upon the ground
+expecting death.  But Antony, as he sat on the mountain, called two
+monks who happened to be there, and hastened them, saying, "Take a
+pitcher of water, and run on the road towards Egypt; for of two who
+are coming hither one has just expired, and the other will do so if
+you do not hasten.  For this has been showed to me as I prayed."  So
+the monks going found the one lying dead, and buried him; and the
+other they recovered with the water, and brought him to the old man.
+Now the distance was a day's journey.  But if any one should ask why
+he did not speak before one of them expired, he does not question
+rightly; for the judgment of that death did not belong to Antony,
+but to God, who both judged concerning the one; and revealed
+concerning the other.  But this alone in Antony was wonderful, that
+sitting on the mountain he kept his heart watchful, and the Lord
+showed him things afar off.
+
+For once again, as he sat on the mountain and looked up, he saw some
+one carried aloft, and a great rejoicing among some who met him.
+Then wondering, and blessing such a choir, he prayed to be taught
+what that might be; and straightway a voice came to him that this
+was the soul of Ammon, the monk in Nitria, {60} who had persevered
+as an ascetic to his old age; and the distance from Nitria to the
+mountain where Antony was, is thirteen days' journey.  Those then
+who were with Antony, seeing the old man wondering, asked the
+reason, and heard that Ammon had just expired, for he was known to
+them on account of his having frequently come thither, and many
+signs having been worked by him, of which this is one. . . .
+
+[Here follows the story (probably an interpolation) of Ammon's being
+miraculously carried across the river Lycus, because he was ashamed
+to undress himself.]
+
+But the monks to whom Antony spoke about Ammon's death noted down
+the day; and when brethren came from Nitria after thirty days, they
+inquired and learnt that Ammon had fallen asleep at the day and hour
+in which the old man saw his soul carried aloft.  And all on both
+sides wondered at the purity of Antony's soul; how he had learnt and
+seen instantly what had happened thirteen days' journey off.
+
+Moreover, Archeleas the Count, finding him once in the outer
+mountain praying alone, asked him concerning Polycratia, that
+wonderful and Christ-bearing maiden in Laodicea; for she suffered
+dreadful internal pain from her extreme training, and was altogether
+weak in body.  Antony, therefore, prayed; and the Count noted down
+the day on which the prayer was offered.  And going back to
+Laodicea, he found the maiden cured; and asking when and on what day
+her malady had ceased, he brought out the paper on which he had
+written down the date of the prayer.  And when she told him, he
+showed at once the writing on the paper.  And all found that the
+Lord had stopped her sufferings while Antony was still praying and
+calling for her on the goodness of the Saviour.
+
+And concerning those who came to him, he often predicted some days,
+or even a month, beforehand, and the cause why they were coming.
+For some came only to see him, and others on account of sickness,
+and others because they suffered from daemons, and all thought the
+labour of the journey no trouble nor harm, for each went back aware
+that he had been benefited.  And when he spoke and looked thus, he
+asked no one to marvel at him on that account, but to marvel rather
+at the Lord, because he had given us, who are but men, grace to know
+him according to our powers.  And as he was going down again to the
+outer cells, and was minded to enter a boat and pray with the monks,
+he alone perceived a dreadfully evil odour, and when those in the
+boat told him that they had fish and brine on board, and that it was
+they which smelt, he said that it was a different smell; and while
+he was yet speaking, a youth, who had an evil spirit, had gone
+before them and hidden in the boat, suddenly cried out.  But the
+daemon, being rebuked in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, went out
+of him, and the man became whole, and all knew that the smell had
+come from the evil spirit.  And there was another man of high rank
+who came to him, having a daemon, and one so terrible, that the
+possessed man did not know that he was going to Antony, but [showed
+the common symptoms of mania].  Those who brought him entreated
+Antony to pray over him, which he did, feeling for the young man,
+and he watched beside him all night.  But about dawn, the young man,
+suddenly rushing on Antony, assaulted him.  When those who came with
+him were indignant, Antony said, "Be not hard upon the youth, for it
+is not he, but the daemon in him; and because he has been rebuked,
+and commanded to go forth into dry places, he has become furious,
+and done this.  Glorify, therefore, the Lord for his having thus
+rushed upon me, as a sign to you that the daemon is going out."  And
+as Antony said this, the youth suddenly became sound, and,
+recovering his reason, knew where he was, and embraced the old man,
+giving thanks to God.  And most of the monks agree unanimously that
+many like things were done by him:  yet are they not so wonderful as
+what follows.  For once, when he was going to eat, and rose up to
+pray about the ninth hour, he felt himself rapt in spirit; and
+(wonderful to relate) as he stood he saw himself as it were taken
+out of himself, and led into the air by some persons; and then
+others, bitter and terrible, standing in the air, and trying to
+prevent his passing upwards.  And when those who led him fought
+against them, they demanded whether he was not accountable to them.
+And when they began to take account of his deeds from his birth, his
+guides stopped them, saying, "What happened from his birth upwards,
+the Lord hath wiped out:  but of what has happened since he became a
+monk, and made a promise to God, of that you may demand an account."
+Then, when they brought accusations against him, and could not prove
+them, the road was opened freely to him.  And straightway he saw
+himself as if coming back and standing before himself, and was
+Antony once more.  Then, forgetting that he had not eaten, he
+remained the rest of the day and all night groaning and praying, for
+he wondered when he saw against how many enemies we must wrestle,
+and through how many labours a man must traverse the air; and he
+remembered that it is this which the Apostle means with regard to
+the Prince of the power of the air; for it is in the air that the
+enemy has his power, fighting against those who pass through it, and
+trying to hinder them.  Wherefore, also he especially exhorts us:
+"Take the whole armour of God, that the enemy, having no evil to say
+about us, may be ashamed."  But when we heard this, we remembered
+the Apostle's saying, "Whether in the body I cannot tell, or out of
+the body I cannot tell:  God knoweth."  But Paul was caught up into
+the third heaven, and, having heard unspeakable words, descended
+again; but Antony saw himself rapt in the air, and wrestling till he
+seemed to be free.
+
+Again, he had this grace, that as he was sitting alone in the
+mountain, if at any time he was puzzled in himself, the thing was
+revealed to him by Providence as he prayed; and the blessed man was,
+as Scripture says, taught of God.  After this, at all events, when
+he had been talking with some who came to him concerning the
+departure of the soul, and what would be its place after this life,
+the next night some one called him from without, and said, "Rise up,
+Antony; come out and see."  So coming out (for he knew whom he ought
+to obey), he beheld a tall being, shapeless and terrible, standing
+and reaching to the clouds, and as it were winged beings ascending;
+and him stretching out his hands; and some of them hindered by him,
+and others flying above him, and when they had once passed him,
+borne upwards without trouble.  But against them that tall being
+gnashed his teeth, while over those who fell, he rejoiced.  And
+there came a voice to Antony, "Consider what thou seest."  And when
+his understanding was opened, he perceived that it was the enemy who
+envies the faithful, and that those who were in his power he
+mastered and hindered from passing; but that those who had not
+obeyed him, over them, as over conquerors, he had no power.  Having
+seen this, and as it were made mindful by it, he struggled more and
+more daily to improve.  Now these things he did not tell of his own
+accord; but when he was long in prayer, and astonished in himself,
+those who were with him questioned him and urged him; and he was
+forced to tell; unable, as a father, to hide anything from his
+children; and considering, too, that his own conscience was clear,
+and the story would be profitable for them, when they learned that
+the life of training bore good fruit, and that visions often came as
+a solace of their toils.
+
+But how tolerant was his temper, and how humble his spirit; for
+though he was so great, he both honoured exceedingly the canon of
+the Church, and wished to put every ecclesiastic before himself in
+honour.  For to the bishops and presbyters he was not ashamed to bow
+his head; and if a deacon ever came to him for the sake of profit,
+he discoursed with him on what was profitable, but in prayer he gave
+place to him, not being ashamed even himself to learn from him. {65}
+For he often asked questions, and deigned to listen to all present,
+confessing that he was profited if any one said aught that was
+useful.  Moreover, his countenance had great and wonderful grace;
+and this gift too he had from the Saviour.  For if he was present
+among the multitude of monks, and any one who did not previously
+know him wished to see him, as soon as he came he passed by all the
+rest, and ran to Antony himself, as if attracted by his eyes.  He
+did not differ from the rest in stature or in stoutness, but in the
+steadiness of his temper, and purity of his soul; for as his soul
+was undisturbed, his outward senses were undisturbed likewise, so
+that the cheerfulness of his soul made his face cheerful, and from
+the movements of his body the stedfastness of his soul could be
+perceived, according to the Scripture, "When the heart is cheerful
+the countenance is glad; but when sorrow comes it scowleth." . . .
+And he was altogether wonderful in faith, and pious, for he never
+communicated with the Meletian {66a} schismatics, knowing their
+malice and apostasy from the beginning; nor did he converse amicably
+with Manichaeans or any other heretics, save only to exhort them to
+be converted to piety.  For he held that their friendship and
+converse was injury and ruin to the soul.  So also he detested the
+heresy of the Arians, and exhorted all not to approach them, nor
+hold their misbelief. {66b}  In fact, when certain of the
+Ariomanites came to him, having discerned them and found them
+impious, he chased them out of the mountain, saying that their words
+were worse than serpent's poison; and when the Arians once pretended
+that he was of the same opinion as they, he was indignant and fierce
+against them.  Then being sent for by the bishops and all the
+brethren, he went down from the mountain, and entering Alexandria he
+denounced the Arians, saying, that that was the last heresy, and the
+forerunner of Antichrist; and he taught the people that the Son of
+God was not a created thing, neither made from nought, but that he
+is the Eternal Word and Wisdom of the Essence of the Father;
+wherefore also it is impious to say there was a time when he was
+not, for he was always the Word co-existent with the Father.
+Wherefore he said, "Do not have any communication with these most
+impious Arians; for there is no communion between light and
+darkness.  For you are pious Christians:  but they, when they say
+that the Son of God and the Word, who is from the Father, is a
+created being, differ nought from the heathen, because they worship
+the creature instead of God the Creator. {67}  Believe rather that
+the whole creation itself is indignant against them, because they
+number the Creator and Lord of all, in whom all things are made,
+among created things."  All the people therefore rejoiced at hearing
+that Christ-opposing heresy anathematized by such a man; and all
+those in the city ran together to see Antony and the Greeks, {68a}
+and those who are called their priests {68b} came into the church,
+wishing to see the man of God; for all called him by that name,
+because there the Lord cleansed many by him from daemons, and healed
+those who were out of their mind.  And many heathens wished only to
+touch the old man, believing that it would be of use to them; and in
+fact as many became Christians in those few days, as would have been
+usually converted in a year.  And when some thought that the crowd
+troubled him, and therefore turned all away from him, he quietly
+said that they were not more numerous than the fiends with whom he
+wrestled on the mountain.  But when he left the city, and we were
+setting him on his journey, when we came to the gate a certain woman
+called to him:  "Wait, man of God, my daughter is grievously vexed
+with a devil; wait, I beseech thee, lest I too harm myself with
+running after thee."  The old man hearing it, and being asked by us,
+waited willingly.  But when the woman drew near, the child dashed
+itself on the ground; and when Antony prayed and called on the name
+of Christ, it rose up sound, the unclean spirit having gone out; and
+the mother blessed God, and we all gave thanks:  and he himself
+rejoiced at leaving the city for the mountain, as for his own home.
+
+Now he was very prudent; and what was wonderful, though he had never
+learnt letters, he was a shrewd and understanding man.  Once, for
+example, two Greek philosophers came to him, thinking that they
+could tempt Antony.  And he was in the outer mountain; and when he
+went out to them, understanding the men from their countenances, he
+said through an interpreter, "Why have you troubled yourselves so
+much, philosophers, to come to a foolish man?"  And when they
+answered that he was not foolish, but rather very wise, he said, "If
+you have come to a fool, your labour is superfluous, but if ye think
+me to be wise, become as I am; for we ought to copy what is good,
+and if I had come to you, I should have copied you; but if you come
+to me, copy me, for I am a Christian."  And they wondering went
+their way, for they saw that even daemons were afraid of Antony.
+
+And again when others of the same class met him in the outer
+mountain, and thought to mock him, because he had not learnt
+letters, Antony answered, "But what do you say? which is first, the
+sense or the letters?  And which is the cause of the other, the
+sense of the letters, or the letters of the sense?"  And when they
+said that the sense came first, and invented the letters, Antony
+replied, "If then the sense be sound, the letters are not needed."
+Which struck them, and those present, with astonishment.  So they
+went away wondering, when they saw so much understanding in an
+unlearned man.  For though he had lived and grown old in the
+mountain, his manners were not rustic, but graceful and urbane; and
+his speech was seasoned with the divine salt, so that no man grudged
+at him, but rather rejoiced over him, as many as came. . . .
+
+[Here follows a long sermon against the heathen worship, attributed
+to St. Antony, but of very questionable authenticity:  the only
+point about it which is worthy of note is that Antony confutes the
+philosophers by challenging them to cure some possessed persons,
+and, when they are unable to do so, casts out the daemons himself by
+the sign of the cross.]
+
+The fame of Antony reached even the kings, for Constantinus the
+Augustus, and his sons, Constantius and Constans, the Augusti,
+hearing of these things, wrote to him as to a father, and begged to
+receive an answer from him.  But he did not make much of the
+letters, nor was puffed up by their messages; and he was just the
+same as he was before the kings wrote to him.  And he called his
+monks and said, "Wonder not if a king writes to us, for he is but a
+man:  but wonder rather that God has written his law to man, and
+spoken to us by his own Son."  So he declined to receive their
+letters, saying he did not know how to write an answer to such
+things; but being admonished by the monks that the kings were
+Christians, and that they must not be scandalized by being despised,
+he permitted the letters to be read, and wrote an answer; accepting
+them because they worshipped Christ, and counselling them, for their
+salvation, not to think the present life great, but rather to
+remember judgment to come; and to know that Christ was the only true
+and eternal king; and he begged them to be merciful to men, and to
+think of justice and the poor.  And they, when they received the
+answer, rejoiced.  Thus was he kindly towards all, and all looked on
+him as their father.  He then betook himself again into the inner
+mountain, and continued his accustomed training.  But often, when he
+was sitting and walking with those who came unto him, he was
+astounded, as is written in Daniel.  And after the space of an hour,
+he told what had befallen to the brethren who were with him, and
+they perceived that he had seen some vision.  Often he saw in the
+mountain what was happening in Egypt, and told it to Serapion the
+bishop, who saw him occupied with a vision.  Once, for instance, as
+he sat, he fell as it were into an ecstasy, and groaned much at what
+he saw.  Then, after an hour, turning to those who were with him, he
+groaned and fell into a trembling, and rose up and prayed, and
+bending his knees, remained so a long while; and then the old man
+rose up and wept.  The bystanders, therefore, trembling and
+altogether terrified, asked him to tell them what had happened, and
+tormented him much, that he was forced to speak.  And he groaning
+greatly--"Ah! my children," he said, "it were better to be dead
+before what I have seen shall come to pass."  And when they asked
+him again, he said with tears, that "Wrath will seize on the Church,
+and she will be given over to men like unto brutes, which have no
+understanding; for I saw the table of the Lord's house, and mules
+standing all around it in a ring and kicking inwards, as a herd does
+when it leaps in confusion; and ye all perceived how I groaned, for
+I heard a voice saying, 'My sanctuary shall be defiled.'"
+
+This the old man saw, and after two years there befell the present
+inroad of the Arians, {72a} and the plunder of the churches, when
+they carried off the holy vessels by violence, and made the heathen
+carry them:  and when too they forced the heathens from the prisons
+to join them, and in their presence did on the holy table what they
+would. {72b}  Then we all perceived that the kicks of those mules
+presignified to Antony what the Arians are now doing without
+understanding, like the brutes.  But when Antony saw this sight, he
+exhorted those about him, saying, "Lose not heart, children; for as
+the Lord has been angry, so will he again be appeased, and the
+Church shall soon receive again her own order and shine forth as she
+is wont; and ye shall see the persecuted restored to their place,
+and impiety retreating again into its own dens, and the pious faith
+speaking boldly everywhere with all freedom.  Only defile not
+yourselves with the Arians, for this teaching is not of the Apostle
+but of the daemons, and of their father the devil:  barren and
+irrational and of an unsound mind, like the irrational deeds of
+those mules."  Thus spoke Antony.
+
+But we must not doubt whether so great wonders have been done by a
+man; for the Saviour's promise is, "If ye have faith as a grain of
+mustard-seed, ye shall say to this mountain, Pass over from hence,
+it shall pass over, and nothing shall be impossible to you;" and
+again, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, if ye shall ask my Father in
+my name, he shall give it you.  Ask, and ye shall receive."  And he
+himself it is who said to his disciples and to all who believe in
+him, "Heal the sick, cast out devils; freely ye have received,
+freely give."  And certainly Antony did not heal by his own
+authority, but by praying and calling on Christ; so that it was
+plain to all that it was not he who did it, but the Lord, who
+through Antony showed love to men, and healed the sufferers.  But
+Antony's part was only the prayer and the training, for the sake
+whereof, sitting in the mountain, he rejoiced in the sight of divine
+things, and grieved when he was tormented by many, and dragged to
+the outer mountain.
+
+For all the magistrates asked him to come down from the mountain,
+because it was impossible for them to go in thither to him on
+account of the litigants who followed him; so they begged him to
+come, that they might only behold him.  And when he declined they
+insisted, and even sent in to him prisoners under the charge of
+soldiers, that at least on their account he might come down.  So
+being forced by necessity, and seeing them lamenting, he came to the
+outer mountain.  And his labour this time too was profitable to
+many, and his coming for their good.  To the magistrates, too, he
+was of use, counselling them to prefer justice to all things, and to
+fear God, and to know that with what judgment they judged they
+should be judged in turn.  But he loved best of all his life in the
+mountain.  Once again, when he was compelled in the same way to
+leave it, by those who were in want, and by the general of the
+soldiers, who entreated him earnestly, he came down, and having
+spoken to them somewhat of the things which conduced to salvation,
+he was pressed also by those who were in need.  But being asked by
+the general to lengthen his stay, he refused, and persuaded him by a
+graceful parable, saying, "Fishes, if they lie long on the dry land,
+die; so monks who stay with you lose their strength.  As the fishes
+then hasten to the sea, so must we to the mountain, lest if we delay
+we should forget what is within."  The general, hearing this and
+much more from him, said with surprise that he was truly a servant
+of God, for whence could an unlearned man have so great sense if he
+were not loved by God?
+
+Another general, named Balacius, bitterly persecuted us Christians
+on account of his affection for those abominable Arians.  His
+cruelty was so great that he even beat nuns, and stripped and
+scourged monks.  Antony sent him a letter to this effect:--"I see
+wrath coming upon thee.  Cease, therefore, to persecute the
+Christians, lest the wrath lay hold upon thee, for it is near at
+hand."  But Balacius, laughing, threw the letter on the ground and
+spat on it; and insulted those who brought it, bidding them tell
+Antony, "Since thou carest for monks, I will soon come after thee
+likewise."  And not five days had passed, when the wrath laid hold
+on him.  For Balacius himself, and Nestorius, the Eparch of Egypt,
+went out to the first station from Alexandria, which is called
+Chaereas's.  Both of them were riding on horses belonging to
+Balacius, and the most gentle in all his stud:  but before they had
+got to the place, the horses began playing with each other, as is
+their wont, and suddenly the more gentle of the two, on which
+Nestorius was riding, attacked Balacius and pulled him off with his
+teeth, and so tore his thigh that he was carried back to the city,
+and died in three days.  And all wondered that what Antony had so
+wonderfully foretold was so quickly fulfilled.  These were his
+warnings to the more cruel.  But the rest who came to him he so
+instructed that they gave up at once their lawsuits, and blessed
+those who had retired from this life.  And those who had been
+unjustly used he so protected that you would think he and not they
+was the sufferer.  And he was so able to be of use to all; so that
+many who were serving in the army, and many wealthy men, laid aside
+the burdens of life and became thenceforth monks; and altogether he
+was like a physician given by God to Egypt.  For who met him
+grieving, and did not go away rejoicing?  Who came mourning over his
+dead, and did not forthwith lay aside his grief?  Who came wrathful,
+and was not converted to friendship?  What poor man came wearied
+out, and when he saw and heard him did not despise wealth and
+comfort himself in his poverty?  What monk who had grown remiss, was
+not strengthened by coming to him?  What young man coming to the
+mountain and looking upon Antony, did not forthwith renounce
+pleasure and love temperance?  Who came to him tempted by devils,
+and did not get rest?  Who came troubled by doubts, and did not get
+peace of mind?  For this was the great thing in Antony's asceticism,
+that (as I have said before), having the gift of discerning spirits,
+he understood their movements, and knew in what direction each of
+them turned his endeavours and his attacks.  And not only he was not
+deceived by them himself, but he taught those who were troubled in
+mind how they might turn aside the plots of daemons, teaching them
+the weakness and the craft of their enemies.  How many maidens, too,
+who had been already betrothed, and only saw Antony from afar,
+remained unmarried for Christ's sake!  Some, too, came from foreign
+parts to him, and all, having gained some benefit, went back from
+him as from a father.  And now he has fallen asleep, all are as
+orphans who have lost a parent, consoling themselves with his memory
+alone, keeping his instructions and exhortations.  But what the end
+of his life was like, it is fit that I should relate, and you hear
+eagerly.  For it too is worthy of emulation.  He was visiting,
+according to his wont, the monks in the outer mountain, and having
+learned from Providence concerning his own end, he said to the
+brethren, "This visit to you is my last, and I wonder if we shall
+see each other again in this life.  It is time for me to set sail,
+for I am near a hundred and five years old."  And when they heard
+that they wept, and embraced and kissed the old man.  And he, as if
+he was setting out from a foreign city to his own, spoke joyfully,
+and exhorted them not to grow idle in their labours or cowardly in
+their training, but to live as those who died daily, and (as I said
+before) to be earnest in keeping their souls from foul thoughts, and
+to emulate the saints, and not to draw near the Meletian
+schismatics, for "ye know their evil and profane determinations, nor
+to have any communion with the Arians, for their impiety also is
+manifest to all.  Neither if ye shall see the magistrates
+patronising them, be troubled, for their phantasy shall have an end,
+and is mortal and only for a little while.  Keep yourselves
+therefore rather clean from them, and hold that which has been
+handed down to you by the fathers, and especially the faith in our
+Lord Jesus Christ which ye have learned from Scripture, and of which
+ye have often been reminded by me."  And when the brethren tried to
+force him to stay with them and make his end there, he would not
+endure it, on many accounts, as he showed by his silence; and
+especially on this:--The Egyptians are wont to wrap in linen the
+corpses of good persons, and especially of the holy martyrs, but not
+to bury them underground, but to lay them upon benches and keep them
+in their houses; {77} thinking that by this they honour the
+departed.  Now Antony had often asked the bishops to exhort the
+people about this, and in like manner he himself rebuked the laity
+and terrified the women; saying that it was a thing neither lawful
+nor in any way holy; for that the bodies of the patriarchs and
+prophets are to this day preserved in sepulchres, and that the very
+body of our Lord was laid in a sepulchre, and a stone placed over it
+to hide it, till he rose the third day.  And thus saying he showed
+that those broke the law who did not bury the corpses of the dead,
+even if they were holy; for what is greater or more holy than the
+Lord's body?  Many, then, when they heard him, buried thenceforth
+underground; and blessed the Lord that they had been taught rightly.
+Being then aware of this, and afraid lest they should do the same by
+his body, he hurried himself, and bade farewell to the monks in the
+outer mountain; and coming to the inner mountain, where he was wont
+to abide, after a few months he grew sick, and calling those who
+were by--and there were two of them who had remained there within
+fifteen years, exercising themselves and ministering to him on
+account of his old age--he said to them, "I indeed go the way of the
+fathers, as it is written, for I perceive that I am called by the
+Lord." . . .
+
+[Then follows a general exhortation to the monk, almost identical
+with much that has gone before, and ending by a command that his
+body should be buried in the ground.]
+
+"And let this word of mine be kept by you, so that no one shall know
+the place, save you alone, for I shall receive it (my body)
+incorruptible from my Saviour in the resurrection of the dead.  And
+distribute my garments thus.  To Athanasius the bishop give one of
+my sheepskins, and the cloak under me, which was new when he gave it
+me, and has grown old by me; and to Serapion the bishop give the
+other sheepskin; and do you have the hair-cloth garment.  And for
+the rest, children, farewell, for Antony is going, and is with you
+no more."
+
+Saying thus, when they had embraced him, he stretched out his feet,
+and, as if he saw friends coming to him, and grew joyful on their
+account (for, as he lay, his countenance was bright), he departed
+and was gathered to his fathers.  And they forthwith, as he had
+commanded them, preparing the body and wrapping it up, hid it under
+ground:  and no one knows to this day where it is hidden, save those
+two servants only.  And each (i.e.  Athanasius and Serapion) having
+received the sheepskin of the blessed Antony, and the cloak which he
+had worn out, keeps them as a great possession.  For he who looks on
+them, as it were, sees Antony; and he who puts them on, wears them
+with joy, as he does Antony's counsels.
+
+Such was the end of Antony in the body, and such the beginning of
+his training.  And if these things are small in comparison with his
+virtue, yet reckon up from these things how great was Antony, the
+man of God, who kept unchanged, from his youth up to so great an
+age, the earnestness of his training; and was neither worsted in his
+old age by the desire of more delicate food, nor on account of the
+weakness of his body altered the quality of his garment, nor even
+washed his feet with water; and yet remained uninjured in all his
+limbs:  for his eyes were undimmed and whole, so that he saw well;
+and not one of his teeth had fallen out, but they were only worn
+down to his gums on account of his great age; and he remained sound
+in hand and foot; and, in a word, appeared ruddier and more ready
+for exertion than all who use various meats and baths, and different
+dresses.  But that this man should be celebrated everywhere and
+wondered at by all, and regretted even by those who never saw him,
+is a proof of his virtue, and that his soul was dear to God.  For
+Antony became known not by writings, not from the wisdom that is
+from without, not by any art, but by piety alone; and that this was
+the gift of God, none can deny.  For how as far as Spain, as Gaul,
+as Rome, as Africa, could he have been heard, hidden as he was in a
+mountain, if it had not been for God, who makes known his own men
+everywhere, and who had promised Antony this from the beginning?
+For even if they do their deeds in secret, and wish to be concealed,
+yet the Lord shows them as lights to all, that so those who hear of
+them may know that the commandments suffice to put men in the right
+way, and may grow zealous of the path of virtue.
+
+Read then these things to the other brethren, that they may learn
+what the life of monks should be, and may believe that the Lord
+Jesus Christ our Saviour will glorify those who glorify him, and
+that those who serve him to the end he will not only bring to the
+kingdom of heaven, but that even if on earth they hide themselves
+and strive to get out of the way, he will make them manifest and
+celebrated everywhere, for the sake of their own virtue, and for the
+benefit of others.  But if need be, read this also to the heathens,
+that even thus they may learn that our Lord Jesus Christ is not only
+Lord and the Son of God, but that those who truly serve him, and
+believe piously on him, not only prove that those daemons whom the
+Greeks think are gods to be no gods, but even tread them under foot,
+and chase them out as deceivers and corrupters of men, through Jesus
+Christ our Lord, to whom be glory and honour for ever and ever.
+Amen.
+
+
+Thus ends this strange story.  What we are to think of the miracles
+and wonders contained in it, will be discussed at a later point in
+this book.  Meanwhile there is a stranger story still connected with
+the life of St. Antony.  It professes to have been told by him
+himself to his monks; and whatever groundwork of fact there may be
+in it is doubtless his.  The form in which we have it was given it
+by the famous St. Jerome, who sends the tale as a letter to Asella,
+one of the many noble Roman ladies whom he persuaded to embrace the
+monastic life.  The style is as well worth preserving as the matter.
+Its ruggedness and awkwardness, its ambition and affectation,
+contrasted with the graceful simplicity of Athanasius's "Life of
+Antony," mark well the difference between the cultivated Greek and
+the ungraceful and half-barbarous Roman of the later Empire.  I
+have, therefore, given it as literally as possible, that readers may
+judge for themselves how some of the Great Fathers of the fifth
+century wrote, and what they believed.
+
+
+
+THE LIFE OF SAINT PAUL, THE FIRST HERMIT
+
+
+
+BY THE DIVINE HIERONYMUS THE PRIEST.  (ST.  JEROME.)
+
+
+PROLOGUE
+
+
+Many have often doubted by which of the monks the desert was first
+inhabited.  For some, looking for the beginnings of Monachism in
+earlier ages, have deduced it from the blessed Elias and John; of
+whom Elias seems to us to have been rather a prophet than a monk;
+and John to have begun to prophesy before he was born.  But others
+(an opinion in which all the common people are agreed) assert that
+Antony was the head of this rule of life, which is partly true.  For
+he was not so much himself the first of all, as the man who excited
+the earnestness of all.  But Amathas and Macarius, Antony's
+disciples (the former of whom buried his master's body), even now
+affirm that a certain Paul, a Theban, was the beginner of the
+matter; which (not so much in name as in opinion) we also hold to be
+true.  Some scatter about, as the fancy takes them, both this and
+other stories; inventing incredible tales of a man in a subterranean
+cave, hairy down to his heels, and many other things, which it is
+tedious to follow out.  For, as their lie is shameless, their
+opinion does not seem worth refuting.
+
+Therefore, because careful accounts of Antony, both in Greek and
+Roman style, have been handed down, I have determined to write a
+little about the beginning and end of Paul's life; more because the
+matter has been omitted, than trusting to my own wit.  But how he
+lived during middle life, or what stratagems of Satan he endured, is
+known to none.
+
+
+THE LIFE OF PAUL
+
+
+Under Decius and Valerius, the persecutors, at the time when
+Cornelius at Rome, and Cyprian at Carthage, were condemned in
+blessed blood, a cruel tempest swept over many Churches in Egypt and
+the Thebaid.
+
+Christian subjects in those days longed to be smitten with the sword
+for the name of Christ.  But the crafty enemy, seeking out
+punishments which delayed death, longed to slay souls, not bodies.
+And as Cyprian himself (who suffered by him) says:  "When they
+longed to die, they were not allowed to be slain."  In order to make
+his cruelty better known, we have set down two examples for
+remembrance.
+
+A martyr, persevering in the faith, and conqueror amid racks and
+red-hot irons, he commanded to be anointed with honey and laid on
+his back under a burning sun, with his hands tied behind him; in
+order, forsooth, that he who had already conquered the fiery
+gridiron, might yield to the stings of flies.
+
+* * *
+
+In those days, in the Lower Thebaid, was Paul left at the death of
+both his parents, in a rich inheritance, with a sister already
+married; being about fifteen years old, well taught in Greek and
+Egyptian letters, gentle tempered, loving God much; and, when the
+storm of persecution burst, he withdrew into a distant city.  But
+
+
+"To what dost thou not urge the human breast
+Curst hunger after gold?"
+
+
+His sister's husband was ready to betray him whom he should have
+concealed.  Neither the tears of his wife, the tie of blood, or God
+who looks on all things from on high, could call him back from his
+crime.  He was at hand, ready to seize him, making piety a pretext
+for cruelty.  The boy discovered it, and fled into the desert hills.
+Once there he changed need into pleasure, and going on, and then
+stopping awhile, again and again, reached at last a stony cliff, at
+the foot whereof was, nigh at hand, a great cave, its mouth closed
+with a stone.  Having moved which away (as man's longing is to know
+the hidden), exploring more greedily, he sees within a great hall,
+open to the sky above, but shaded by the spreading boughs of an
+ancient palm; and in it a clear spring, the rill from which, flowing
+a short space forth, was sucked up again by the same soil which had
+given it birth.  There were besides in that cavernous mountain not a
+few dwellings, in which he saw rusty anvils and hammers, with which
+coin had been stamped of old.  For this place (so books say) was the
+workshop for base coin in the days when Antony lived with Cleopatra.
+
+Therefore, in this beloved dwelling, offered him as it were by God,
+he spent all his life in prayer and solitude, while the palm-tree
+gave him food and clothes; which lest it should seem impossible to
+some, I call Jesus and his holy angels to witness that I have seen
+monks one of whom, shut up for thirty years, lived on barley bread
+and muddy water; another in an old cistern, which in the country
+speech they call the Syrian's bed, was kept alive on five figs each
+day.  These things, therefore, will seem incredible to those who do
+not believe; for to those who do believe all things are possible.
+
+But to return thither whence I digressed.  When the blessed Paul had
+been leading the heavenly life on earth for 113 years, and Antony,
+ninety years old, was dwelling in another solitude, this thought (so
+Antony was wont to assert) entered his mind--that no monk more
+perfect than he had settled in the desert.  But as he lay still by
+night, it was revealed to him that there was another monk beyond him
+far better than he, to visit whom he must set out.  So when the
+light broke, the venerable old man, supporting his weak limbs on a
+staff, began to will to go, he knew not whither.  And now the mid
+day, with the sun roasting above, grew fierce; and yet he was not
+turned from the journey he had begun, saying, "I trust in my God,
+that he will show his servant that which he has promised."  And as
+he spake, he sees a man half horse, to whom the poets have given the
+name of Hippocentaur.  Seeing whom, he crosses his forehead with the
+salutary impression of the Cross, and, "Here!" he says, "in what
+part here does a servant of God dwell?"  But he, growling I know not
+what barbarous sound, and grinding rather than uttering, the words,
+attempted a courteous speech from lips rough with bristles, and,
+stretching out his right hand, pointed to the way; then, fleeing
+swiftly across the open plains, vanished from the eyes of the
+wondering Antony.  But whether the devil took this form to terrify
+him; or whether the desert, fertile (as is its wont) in monstrous
+animals, begets that beast likewise, we hold as uncertain.
+
+So Antony, astonished, and thinking over what he had seen, goes
+forward.  Soon afterwards, he sees in a stony valley a short
+manikin, with crooked nose and brow rough with horns, whose lower
+parts ended in goat's feet.  Undismayed by this spectacle likewise,
+Antony seized, like a good warrior, the shield of faith and
+habergeon of hope; the animal, however, was bringing him dates, as
+food for his journey, and a pledge of peace.  When he saw that,
+Antony pushed on, and, asking him who he was, was answered, "I am a
+mortal, and one of the inhabitants of the desert, whom the Gentiles,
+deluded by various errors, worship by the name of Fauns, Satyrs, and
+Incubi.  I come as ambassador from our herd, that thou mayest pray
+for us to the common God, who, we know, has come for the salvation
+of the world, and his sound is gone out into all lands."  As he
+spoke thus, the aged wayfarer bedewed his face plenteously with
+tears, which the greatness of his joy had poured forth as signs of
+his heart.  For he rejoiced at the glory of Christ, and the
+destruction of Satan; and, wondering at the same time that he could
+understand the creature's speech, he smote on the ground with his
+staff, and said, "Woe to thee, Alexandria, who worshippest portents
+instead of God!  Woe to thee, harlot city, into which all the demons
+of the world have flowed together!  What wilt thou say now?  Beasts
+talk of Christ, and thou worshippest portents instead of God."  He
+had hardly finished his words, when the swift beast fled away as
+upon wings.  Lest this should move a scruple in any one on account
+of its incredibility, it was corroborated, in the reign of
+Constantine, by the testimony of the whole world.  For a man of that
+kind, being led alive to Alexandria, afforded a great spectacle to
+the people; and afterwards the lifeless carcase, being salted lest
+it should decay in the summer heat, was brought to Antioch, to be
+seen by the Emperor.
+
+But--to go on with my tale--Antony went on through that region,
+seeing only the tracks of wild beasts, and the wide waste of the
+desert.  What he should do, or whither turn, he knew not.  A second
+day had now run by.  One thing remained, to be confident that he
+could not be deserted by Christ.  All night through he spent a
+second darkness in prayer, and while the light was still dim, he
+sees afar a she-wolf, panting with heat and thirst, creeping in at
+the foot of the mountain.  Following her with his eyes, and drawing
+nigh to the cave when the beast was gone, he began to look in:  but
+in vain; for the darkness stopped his view.  However, as the
+Scripture saith, perfect love casteth out fear; with gentle step and
+bated breath the cunning explorer entered, and going forward slowly,
+and stopping often, watched for a sound.  At length he saw afar off
+a light through the horror of the darkness; hastened on more
+greedily; struck his foot against a stone; and made a noise, at
+which the blessed Paul shut and barred his door, which had stood
+open.
+
+Then Antony, casting himself down before the entrance, prayed there
+till the sixth hour, and more, to be let in, saying, "Who I am, and
+whence, and why I am come, thou knowest.  I know that I deserve not
+to see thy face; yet, unless I see thee, I will not return.  Thou
+who receivest beasts, why repellest thou a man?  I have sought, and
+I have found.  I knock, that it may be opened to me:  which if I win
+not, here will I die before thy gate.  Surely thou shalt at least
+bury my corpse."
+
+
+"Persisting thus he spoke, and stood there fixed:
+To whom the hero shortly thus replied."
+
+
+"No one begs thus to threaten.  No one does injury with tears.  And
+dost thou wonder why I do not let thee in, seeing thou art a mortal
+guest?"
+
+Then Paul, smiling, opened the door.  They mingled mutual embraces,
+and saluted each other by their names, and committed themselves in
+common to the grace of God.  And after the holy kiss, Paul sitting
+down with Antony thus began--
+
+"Behold him, whom thou hast sought with such labour; with limbs
+decayed by age, and covered with unkempt white hair.  Behold, thou
+seest but a mortal, soon to become dust.  But, because charity bears
+all things, tell me, I pray thee, how fares the human race? whether
+new houses are rising in the ancient cities? by what emperor is the
+world governed? whether there are any left who are led captive by
+the deceits of the devil?"  As they spoke thus, they saw a raven
+settle on a bough; who, flying gently down, laid, to their wonder, a
+whole loaf before them.  When he was gone, "Ah," said Paul, "the
+Lord, truly loving, truly merciful, hath sent us a meal.  For sixty
+years past I have received daily half a loaf, but at thy coming
+Christ hath doubled his soldiers' allowance."  Then, having thanked
+God, they sat down on the brink of the glassy spring.
+
+But here a contention arising as to which of them should break the
+loaf, occupied the day till well-nigh evening.  Paul insisted, as
+the host; Antony declined, as the younger man.  At last it was
+agreed that they should take hold of the loaf at opposite ends, and
+each pull towards himself, and keep what was left in his hand.  Next
+they stooped down, and drank a little water from the spring; then,
+immolating to God the sacrifice of praise, passed the night
+watching.
+
+And when day dawned again, the blessed Paul said to Antony, "I knew
+long since, brother, that thou wert dwelling in these lands; long
+since God had promised thee to me as a fellow servant:  but because
+the time of my falling asleep is now come, and (because I always
+longed to depart, and to be with Christ) there is laid up for me
+when I have finished my course a crown of righteousness; therefore
+thou art sent from the Lord to cover my corpse with mould, and give
+back dust to dust."
+
+Antony, hearing this, prayed him with tears and groans not to desert
+him, but take him as his companion on such a journey.  But he said,
+"Thou must not seek the things which are thine own, but the things
+of others.  It is expedient for thee, indeed, to cast off the burden
+of the flesh, and to follow the Lamb:  but it is expedient for the
+rest of the brethren that they should be still trained by thine
+example.  Wherefore go, unless it displease thee, and bring the
+cloak which Athanasius the bishop gave thee, to wrap up my corpse."
+But this the blessed Paul asked, not because he cared greatly
+whether his body decayed covered or bare (as one who for so long a
+time was used to clothe himself with woven palm leaves), but that
+Antony's grief at his death might be lightened when he left him.
+Antony astounded that he had heard of Athanasius and his own cloak,
+seeing as it were Christ in Paul, and venerating the God within his
+breast, dared answer nothing:  but keeping in silence, and kissing
+his eyes and hands, returned to the monastery, which afterwards was
+occupied by the Saracens.  His steps could not follow his spirit;
+but, although his body was empty with fastings, and broken with old
+age, yet his courage conquered his years.  At last, tired and
+breathless, he arrived at home.  There two disciples met him, who
+had been long sent to minister to him, and asked him, "Where hast
+thou tarried so long, father?"  He answered, "Woe to me a sinner,
+who falsely bear the name of a monk.  I have seen Elias; I have seen
+John in the desert; I have truly seen Paul in Paradise;" and so,
+closing his lips, and beating his breast, he took the cloak from his
+cell, and when his disciples asked him to explain more fully what
+had befallen, he said, "There is a time to be silent, and a time to
+speak."  Then going out, and not taking even a morsel of food, he
+returned by the way he had come.  For he feared--what actually
+happened--lest Paul in his absence should render up the soul he owed
+to Christ.
+
+And when the second day had shone, and he had retraced his steps for
+three hours, he saw amid hosts of angels, amid the choirs of
+prophets and apostles, Paul shining white as snow, ascending up on
+high; and forthwith falling on his face, he cast sand on his head,
+and weeping and wailing, said, "Why dost thou dismiss me, Paul?  Why
+dost thou depart without a farewell?  So late known, dost thou
+vanish so soon?"  The blessed Antony used to tell afterwards, how he
+ran the rest of the way so swiftly that he flew like a bird.  Nor
+without cause.  For entering the cave he saw, with bended knees,
+erect neck, and hands spread out on high, a lifeless corpse.  And at
+first, thinking that it still lived, he prayed in like wise.  But
+when he heard no sighs (as usual) come from the worshipper's breast,
+he fell to a tearful kiss, understanding how the very corpse of the
+saint was praying, in seemly attitude, to that God to whom all live.
+
+So, having wrapped up and carried forth the corpse, and chanting
+hymns of the Christian tradition, Antony grew sad, because he had no
+spade, wherewith to dig the ground; and thinking over many plans in
+his mind, said, "If I go back to the monastery, it is a three days'
+journey.  If I stay here, I shall be of no more use.  I will die,
+then, as it is fit; and, falling beside thy warrior, Christ, breathe
+my last breath."
+
+As he was thinking thus to himself, lo! two lions came running from
+the inner part of the desert, their manes tossing on their necks;
+seeing whom he shuddered at first; and then, turning his mind to
+God, remained fearless, as though he were looking upon doves.  They
+came straight to the corpse of the blessed old man, and crouched at
+his feet, wagging their tails, and roaring with mighty growls, so
+that Antony understood them to lament, as best they could.  Then not
+far off they began to claw the ground with their paws, and, carrying
+out the sand eagerly, dug a place large enough to hold a man:  then
+at once, as if begging a reward for their work, they came to Antony,
+drooping their necks, and licking his hands and feet.  But he
+perceived that they prayed a blessing from him; and at once,
+bursting into praise of Christ, because even dumb animals felt that
+he was God, he saith, "Lord, without whose word not a leaf of the
+tree drops, nor one sparrow falls to the ground, give to them as
+thou knowest how to give."  And, signing to them with his hand, he
+bade them go.
+
+And when they had departed, he bent his aged shoulders to the weight
+of the holy corpse; and laying it in the grave, heaped earth on it,
+and raised a mound as is the wont.  And when another dawn shone,
+lest the pious heir should not possess aught of the goods of the
+intestate dead, he kept for himself the tunic which Paul had woven,
+as baskets are made, out of the leaves of the palm; and returning to
+the monastery, told his disciples all throughout; and, on the solemn
+days of Easter and Pentecost, always clothed himself in Paul's
+tunic.
+
+I am inclined, at the end of my treatise, to ask those who know not
+the extent of their patrimonies; who cover their houses with
+marbles; who sew the price of whole farms into their garments with a
+single thread--What was ever wanting to this naked old man?  Ye
+drink from a gem; he satisfied nature from the hollow of his hands.
+Ye weave gold into your tunics; he had not even the vilest garment
+of your bond-slave.  But, on the other hand, to that poor man
+Paradise is open; you, gilded as you are, Gehenna will receive.  He,
+though naked, kept the garment of Christ; you, clothed in silk, have
+lost Christ's robe.  Paul lies covered with the meanest dust, to
+rise in glory; you are crushed by wrought sepulchres of stone, to
+burn with all your works.  Spare, I beseech you, yourselves; spare,
+at least, the riches which you love.  Why do you wrap even your dead
+in golden vestments?  Why does not ambition stop amid grief and
+tears?  Cannot the corpses of the rich decay, save in silk?  I
+beseech thee, whosoever thou art that readest this, to remember
+Hieronymus the sinner, who, if the Lord gave him choice, would much
+sooner choose Paul's tunic with his merits, than the purple of kings
+with their punishments.
+
+
+This is the story of Paul and Antony, as told by Jerome.  But, in
+justice to Antony himself, it must be said that the sayings recorded
+of him seem to show that he was not the mere visionary ascetic which
+his biographers have made him.  Some twenty sermons are attributed
+to him, seven of which only are considered to be genuine.  A rule
+for monks, too, is called his:  but, as it is almost certain that he
+could neither read nor write, we have no proof that any of these
+documents convey his actual language.  If the seven sermons
+attributed to him be really his, it must be said for them that they
+are full of sound doctrine and vital religion, and worthy, as
+wholes, to be preached in any English church, if we only substitute
+for the word "monk," the word "man."
+
+But there are records of Antony which represent him as a far more
+genial and human personage; full of a knowledge of human nature, and
+of a tenderness and sympathy, which account for his undoubted power
+over the minds of men; and showing, too, at times, a certain covert
+and "pawky" humour which puts us in mind, as does the humour of many
+of the Egyptian hermits, of the old-fashioned Scotch.  These
+reminiscences are contained in the "Words of the Elders," a series
+of anecdotes of the desert fathers collected by various hands; which
+are, after all, the most interesting and probably the most
+trustworthy accounts of them and their ways.  I shall have occasion
+to quote them later.  I insert here some among them which relate to
+Antony.
+
+
+SAYINGS OF ANTONY, FROM THE "WORDS OF THE ELDERS."
+
+
+A monk gave away his wealth to the poor, but kept back some for
+himself.  Antony said to him, "Go to the village and buy meat, and
+bring it to me on thy bare back."  He did so:  and the dogs and
+birds attacked him, and tore him as well as the meat.  Quoth Antony,
+"So are those who renounce the world, and yet must needs have money,
+torn by daemons."
+
+Antony heard high praise of a certain brother; but, when he tested
+him, he found that he was impatient under injury.  Quoth Antony,
+"Thou art like a house which has a gay porch, but is broken into by
+thieves through the back door."
+
+Antony, as he sat in the desert, was weary in heart, and said,
+"Lord, I long to be saved, but my wandering thoughts will not let
+me.  Show me what I shall do."  And looking up, he saw one like
+himself twisting ropes, and rising up to pray.  And the angel (for
+it was one) said to him, "Work like me, Antony, and you shall be
+saved."
+
+One asked him how he could please God.  Quoth Antony, "Have God
+always before thine eyes; whatever work thou doest, take example for
+it out of Holy Scripture:  wherever thou stoppest, do not move
+thence in a hurry, but abide there in patience.  If thou keepest
+these three things, thou shalt be saved."
+
+Quoth Antony, "If the baker did not cover the mill-horse's eyes he
+would eat the corn, and take his own wages.  So God covers our eyes,
+by leaving us to sordid thoughts, lest we should think of our own
+good works, and be puffed up in spirit."
+
+Quoth Antony, "I saw all the snares of the enemy spread over the
+whole earth.  And I sighed, and said, 'Who can pass through these?'
+And a voice came to me, saying, 'Humility alone can pass through,
+Antony, where the proud can in no wise go.'"
+
+Antony was sitting in his cell, and a voice said to him, "Thou hast
+not yet come to the stature of a currier, who lives in Alexandria."
+Then he took his staff, and went down to Alexandria; and the
+currier, when he found him, was astonished at seeing so great a man.
+Said Antony, "Tell me thy works; for on thy account have I come out
+of the desert."  And he answered, "I know not that I ever did any
+good; and, therefore, when I rise in the morning, I say that this
+whole city, from the greatest to the least, will enter into the
+kingdom of God for their righteousness:  while I, for my sins, shall
+go to eternal pain.  And this I say over again, from the bottom of
+my heart, when I lie down at night."  When Antony heard that, he
+said, "Like a good goldsmith, thou hast gained the kingdom of God
+sitting still in thy house; while I, as one without discretion, have
+been haunting the desert all my time, and yet not arrived at the
+measure of thy saying."
+
+Quoth Antony, "If a monk could tell his elders how many steps he
+walks, or how many cups of water he drinks, in his cell, he ought to
+tell them, for fear of going wrong therein."
+
+At Alexandria, Antony met one Didymus, most learned in the
+Scriptures, witty, and wise:  but he was blind.  Antony asked him,
+"Art thou not grieved at thy blindness?"  He was silent:  but being
+pressed by Antony, he confessed that he was sad thereat.  Quoth
+Antony, "I wonder that a prudent man grieves over the loss of a
+thing which ants, and flies, and gnats have, instead of rejoicing in
+that possession which the holy Apostles earned.  For it is better to
+see with the spirit than with the flesh."
+
+A Father asked Antony, "What shall I do?"  Quoth the old man, "Trust
+not in thine own righteousness; regret not the thing which is past;
+bridle thy tongue and thy stomach."
+
+Quoth Antony, "He who sits still in the desert is safe from three
+enemies:  from hearing, from speech, from sight:  and has to fight
+against only one, his own heart."
+
+A young monk came and told Antony how he had seen some old men weary
+on their journey, and had bidden the wild asses to come and carry
+him, and they came.  Quoth Antony, "That monk looks to me like a
+ship laden with a precious cargo; but whether it will get into port
+is uncertain."  And after some days he began to tear his hair and
+weep; and when they asked him why, he said, "A great pillar of the
+Church has just fallen;" and he sent brothers to see the young man,
+and found him sitting on his mat, weeping over a great sin which he
+had done; and he said, "Tell Antony to give me ten days' truce, and
+I hope I shall satisfy him;" and in five days he was dead.
+
+Abbot Elias fell into temptation, and the brethren drove him out.
+Then he went to the mountain to Antony.  After awhile, Antony sent
+him home to his brethren; but they would not receive him.  Then the
+old man sent to them, and saying, "A ship has been wrecked at sea,
+and lost all its cargo; and, with much toil, the ship is come empty
+to land.  Will you sink it again in the sea?"  So they took Elias
+back.
+
+Quoth Antony, "There are some who keep their bodies in abstinence:
+but, because they have no discretion, they are far from God."
+
+A hunter came by, and saw Antony rejoicing with the brethren, and it
+displeased him.  Quoth Antony, "Put an arrow in thy bow, and draw;"
+and he did.  Quoth Antony, "Draw higher;" and again, "Draw higher
+still."  And he said, "If I overdraw, I shall break my bow."  Quoth
+Antony, "So it is in the work of God.  If we stretch the brethren
+beyond measure, they fail."
+
+A brother said to Antony, "Pray for me."  Quoth he, "I cannot pity
+thee, nor God either, unless thou pitiest thyself, and prayest to
+God."
+
+Quoth Antony, "The Lord does not permit wars to arise in this
+generation, because he knows that men are weak, and cannot bear
+them."
+
+Antony, as he considered the depths of the judgments of God, failed;
+and said, "Lord, why do some die so early, and some live on to a
+decrepit age?  Why are some needy, and others rich?  Why are the
+unjust wealthy, and the just poor?"  And a voice came to him,
+"Antony, look to thyself.  These are the judgments of God, which are
+not fit for thee to know."
+
+Quoth Antony to Abbot Pastor, "This is a man's great business--to
+lay each man his own fault on himself before the Lord, and to expect
+temptation to the last day of his life."
+
+Quoth Antony, "If a man works a few days, and then is idle, and
+works again and is idle again, he does nothing, and will not possess
+the perseverance of patience."
+
+Quoth Antony to his disciples, "If you try to keep silence, do not
+think that you are exercising a virtue, but that you are unworthy to
+speak."
+
+Certain old men came once to Antony; and he wished to prove them,
+and began to talk of holy Scripture, and to ask them, beginning at
+the youngest, what this and that text meant.  And each answered as
+best they could.  But he kept on saying, "You have not yet found it
+out."  And at last he asked Abbot Joseph, "And what dost thou think
+this text means?"  Quoth Abbot Joseph, "I do not know."  Quoth
+Antony, "Abbot Joseph alone has found out the way, for he says he
+does not know it."
+
+Quoth Antony, "I do not now fear God, but love Him, for love drives
+out fear."
+
+He said again, "Life and death are very near us; for if we gain our
+brother, we gain God:  but if we cause our brother to offend, we sin
+against Christ."
+
+A philosopher asked Antony, "How art thou content, father, since
+thou hast not the comfort of books?"  Quoth Antony, "My book is the
+nature of created things.  In it, when I choose, I can read the
+words of God."
+
+Brethren came to Antony, and asked of him a saying by which they
+might be saved.  Quoth he, "Ye have heard the Scriptures, and know
+what Christ requires of you."  But they begged that he would tell
+them something of his own.  Quoth he, "The Gospel says, 'If a man
+smite you on one cheek, turn to him the other.'"  But they said that
+they could not do that.  Quoth he, "You cannot turn the other cheek
+to him?  Then let him smite you again on the same one."  But they
+said they could not do that either.  Then said he, "If you cannot,
+at least do not return evil for evil."  And when they said that
+neither could they do that, quoth Antony to his disciples, "Go, get
+them something to eat, for they are very weak."  And he said to
+them, "If you cannot do the one, and will not have the other, what
+do you want?  As I see, what you want is prayer.  That will heal
+your weakness."
+
+Quoth Antony, "He who would be free from his sins must be so by
+weeping and mourning; and he who would be built up in virtue must be
+built up by tears."
+
+Quoth Antony, "When the stomach is full of meat, forthwith the great
+vices bubble out, according to that which the Saviour says:  'That
+which entereth into the mouth defileth not a man; but that which
+cometh out of the heart sinks a man in destruction.'"
+
+[This may be a somewhat paradoxical application of the text:  but
+the last anecdote of Antony which I shall quote is full of wisdom
+and humanity.]
+
+A monk came from Alexandria, Eulogius by name, bringing with him a
+man afflicted with elephantiasis.  Now Eulogius had been a scholar,
+learned, and rich, and had given away all he had save a very little,
+which he kept because he could not work with his own hands.
+
+And he told Antony how he had found that wretched man lying in the
+street fifteen years before, having lost then nearly every member
+save his tongue, and how he had taken him home to his cell, nursed
+him, bathed him, physicked him, fed him; and how the man had
+returned him nothing save slanders, curses, and insults; how he had
+insisted on having meat, and had had it; and on going out in public,
+and had company brought to him; and how he had at last demanded to
+be put down again whence he had been taken, always cursing and
+slandering.  And now Eulogius could bear the man no longer, and was
+minded to take him at his word.
+
+Then said Antony with an angry voice, "Wilt thou cast him out,
+Eulogius?  He who remembers that he made him, will not cast him out.
+If thou cast him out, he will find a better friend than thee.  God
+will choose some one who will take him up when he is cast away."
+Eulogius was terrified at these words, and held his peace.
+
+Then went Antony to the sick man, and shouted at him, "Thou
+elephantiac, foul with mud and dirt, not worthy of the third heaven,
+wilt thou not stop shouting blasphemies against God?  Dost thou not
+know that he who ministers to thee is Christ?  How darest thou say
+such things against Christ?"  And he bade Eulogius and the sick man
+go back to their cell, and live in peace, and never part more.  Both
+went back, and, after forty days, Eulogius died, and the sick man
+shortly after, "altogether whole in spirit."
+
+
+
+HILARION
+
+
+
+I would gladly, did space allow, give more biographies from among
+those of the Egyptian hermits:  but it seems best, having shown the
+reader Antony as the father of Egyptian monachism, to go on to his
+great pupil Hilarion, the father of monachism in Palestine.  His
+life stands written at length by St. Jerome, who himself died a monk
+at Bethlehem; and is composed happily in a less ambitious and less
+rugged style than that of Paul, not without elements of beauty, even
+of tragedy.
+
+
+PROLOGUE
+
+
+Remember me in thy holy prayers, glory and honour of virgins, nun
+Asella.  Before beginning to write the life of the blessed Hilarion,
+I invoke the Holy Spirit which dwelt in him, that, as he largely
+bestowed virtues on Hilarion, he may give to me speech wherewith to
+relate them; so that his deeds may be equalled by my language.  For
+those who (as Crispus says) "have wrought virtues" are held to have
+been worthily praised in proportion to the words in which famous
+intellects have been able to extol them.  Alexander the Great, the
+Macedonian (whom Daniel calls either the brass, or the leopard, or
+the he-goat), on coming to the tomb of Achilles, "Happy art thou,
+youth," he said, "who hast been blest with a great herald of thy
+worth"--meaning Homer.  But I have to tell the conversation and life
+of such and so great a man, that even Homer, were he here, would
+either envy my matter, or succumb under it.
+
+For although St. Epiphanius, bishop of Salamina in Cyprus, who had
+much intercourse with Hilarion, has written his praise in a short
+epistle, which is commonly read, yet it is one thing to praise the
+dead in general phrases, another to relate his special virtues.  We
+therefore set to work rather to his advantage than to his injury;
+and despise those evil-speakers who lately carped at Paul, and will
+perhaps now carp at my Hilarion, unjustly blaming the former for his
+solitary life, and the latter for his intercourse with men; in order
+that the one, who was never seen, may be supposed not to have
+existed; the other, who was seen by many, may be held cheap.  This
+was the way of their ancestors likewise, the Pharisees, who were
+neither satisfied with John's desert life and fasting, nor with the
+Lord Saviour's public life, eating and drinking.  But I shall lay my
+hand to the work which I have determined, and pass by, with stopped
+ears, the hounds of Scylla.  I pray that thou mayest persevere in
+Christ, and be mindful of me in thy prayers, most sacred virgin.
+
+
+THE LIFE
+
+
+Hilarion was born in the village of Thabatha, which lies about five
+miles to the south of Gaza, in Palestine.  He had parents given to
+the worship of idols, and blossomed (as the saying is) a rose among
+the thorns.  Sent by them to Alexandria, he was entrusted to a
+grammarian, and there, as far as his years allowed, gave proof of
+great intellect and good morals.  He was soon dear to all, and
+skilled in the art of speaking.  And, what is more than all, he
+believed in the Lord Jesus, and delighted neither in the madness of
+the circus, in the blood of the arena, or in the luxury of the
+theatre:  but all his heart was in the congregation of the Church.
+
+But hearing the then famous name of Antony, which was carried
+throughout all Egypt, he was fired with a longing to visit him, and
+went to the desert.  As soon as he saw him he changed his dress, and
+stayed with him about two months, watching the order of his life,
+and the purity of his manner; how frequent he was in prayers, how
+humble in receiving brethren, severe in reproving them, eager in
+exhorting them; and how no infirmity ever broke through his
+continence, and the coarseness of his food.  But, unable to bear
+longer the crowd which assembled round Antony, for various diseases
+and attacks of devils, he said that it was not consistent to endure
+in the desert the crowds of cities, but that he must rather begin
+where Antony had begun.  Antony, as a valiant man, was receiving the
+reward of victory:  he had not yet begun to serve as a soldier.  He
+returned, therefore, with certain monks to his own country; and,
+finding his parents dead, gave away part of his substance to the
+brethren, part to the poor, and kept nothing at all for himself,
+fearing what is told in the Acts of the Apostles, the example or
+punishment, of Ananias and Sapphira; and especially mindful of the
+Lord's saying--"He that leaveth not all that he hath, he cannot be
+my disciple."
+
+He was then fifteen years old.  So, naked, but armed in Christ, he
+entered the desert, which, seven miles from Maiuma, the port of
+Gaza, turns away to the left of those who go along the shore towards
+Egypt.  And though the place was blood-stained by robbers, and his
+relations and friends warned him of the imminent danger, he despised
+death, in order to escape death.  All wondered at his spirit,
+wondered at his youth.  Save that a certain fire of the bosom and
+spark of faith glittered in his eyes, his cheeks were smooth, his
+body delicate and thin, unable to bear any injury, and liable to be
+overcome by even a light chill or heat.
+
+So, covering his limbs only with a sackcloth, and having a cloak of
+skin, which the blessed Antony had given him at starting, and a
+rustic cloak, between the sea and the swamp, he enjoyed the vast and
+terrible solitude, feeding on only fifteen figs after the setting of
+the sun; and because the region was, as has been said above, of ill-
+repute from robberies, no man had ever stayed before in that place.
+The devil, seeing what he was doing and whither he had gone, was
+tormented.  And though he, who of old boasted, saying, "I shall
+ascend into heaven, I shall sit above the stars of heaven, and shall
+be like unto the Most High," now saw that he had been conquered by a
+boy, and trampled under foot by him, ere, on account of his youth,
+he could commit sin.  He therefore began to tempt his senses; but
+he, enraged with himself, and beating his breast with his fist, as
+if he could drive out thoughts by blows, "I will force thee, mine
+ass," said he, "not to kick; and feed thee with straw, not barley.
+I will wear thee out with hunger and thirst; I will burden thee with
+heavy loads; I will hunt thee through heat and cold, till thou
+thinkest more of food than of play."  He therefore sustained his
+fainting spirit with the juice of herbs and a few figs, after each
+three or four days, praying frequently, and singing psalms, and
+digging the ground with a mattock, to double the labour of fasting
+by that of work.  At the same time, by weaving baskets of rushes, he
+imitated the discipline of the Egyptian monks, and the Apostle's
+saying--"He that will not work, neither let him eat"--till he was so
+attenuated, and his body so exhausted, that it scarce clung to his
+bones.
+
+One night he began to hear the crying {108} of infants, the bleating
+of sheep, the wailing of women, the roaring of lions, the murmur of
+an army, and utterly portentous and barbarous voices; so that he
+shrank frightened by the sound ere he saw aught.  He understood
+these to be the insults of devils; and, falling on his knees, he
+signed the cross of Christ on his forehead, and armed with that
+helmet, and girt with the breastplate of faith, he fought more
+valiantly as he lay, longing somehow to see what he shuddered to
+hear, and looking round him with anxious eyes:  when, without
+warning, by the bright moonshine he saw a chariot with fiery horses
+rushing upon him.  But when he had called on Jesus, the earth opened
+suddenly, and the whole pomp was swallowed up before his eyes.  Then
+said he, "The horse and his rider he hath drowned in the sea;" and
+"Some glory themselves in chariots, and some in horses:  but we in
+the name of the Lord our God."  Many were his temptations, and
+various, by day and night, the snares of the devils.  If we were to
+tell them all, they would make the volume too long.  How often did
+women appear to him; how often plenteous banquets when he was
+hungry.  Sometimes as he prayed, a howling wolf ran past him, or a
+barking fox; or as he sang, a fight of gladiators made a show for
+him:  and one of them, as if slain, falling at his feet, prayed for
+sepulture.  He prayed once with his head bowed to the ground, and--
+as is the nature of man--his mind wandered from his prayer, and
+thought of I know not what, when a mocking rider leaped on his back,
+and spurring his sides, and whipping his neck, "Come," he cries,
+"come, run! why do you sleep?" and, laughing loudly over him, asked
+him if he were tired, or would have a feed of barley.
+
+So from his sixteenth to his twentieth year, he was sheltered from
+the heat and rain in a tiny cabin, which he had woven of rush and
+sedge.  Afterwards he built a little cell, which remains to this
+day, four feet wide and five feet high--that is, lower than his own
+stature--and somewhat longer than his small body needed, so that you
+would believe it to be a tomb rather than a dwelling.  He cut his
+hair only once a year, on Easter-day, and lay till his death on the
+bare ground and a layer of rushes, never washing the sack in which
+he was clothed, and saying that it was superfluous to seek for
+cleanliness in haircloth.  Nor did he change his tunic, till the
+first was utterly in rags.  He knew the Scriptures by heart, and
+recited them after his prayers and psalms as if God were present.
+And, because it would take up too much time to tell his great deeds
+one by one, I will give a short account of them.
+
+[Then follows a series of miracles, similar to those attributed to
+St. Antony, and, indeed, to all these great Hermit Fathers.  But it
+is unnecessary to relate more wonders which the reader cannot be
+expected to believe.  These miracles, however, according to St.
+Jerome, were the foundations of Hilarion's fame and public career.
+For he says, "When they were noised abroad, people flowed to him
+eagerly from Syria to Egypt, so that many believed in Christ, and
+professed themselves to be monks--for no one had known of a monk in
+Syria before the holy Hilarion.  He was the first founder and
+teacher of this conversation and study in the province.  The Lord
+Jesus had in Egypt the old man Antony; he had in Palestine the young
+Hilarion . . .  He was raised, indeed, by the Lord to such a glory,
+that the blessed Antony, hearing of his conversation, wrote to him,
+and willingly received his letters; and if rich people came to him
+from the parts of Syria, he said to them, 'Why have you chosen to
+trouble yourselves by coming so far, when you have at home my son
+Hilarion?'  So by his example innumerable monasteries arose
+throughout all Palestine, and all monks came eagerly to him . . .
+But what a care he had, not to pass by any brother, however humble
+or however poor, may be shown by this; that once going into the
+Desert of Kadesh, to visit one of his disciples, he came, with an
+infinite crowd of monks, to Elusa, on the very day, as it chanced,
+on which a yearly solemnity had gathered all the people of the town
+to the Temple of Venus; for they honour her on account of the
+morning star, to the worship of which the nation of the Saracens is
+devoted.  The town itself too is said to be in great part semi-
+barbarous, on account of its remote situation.  Hearing, then, that
+the holy Hilarion was passing by--for he had often cured Saracens
+possessed with daemons--they came out to meet him in crowds, with
+their wives and children, bowing their necks, and crying in the
+Syrian tongue, 'Barech!' that is, 'Bless!'  He received them
+courteously and humbly, entreating them to worship God rather than
+stones, and wept abundantly, looking up to heaven, and promising
+them that, if they would believe in Christ, he would come oftener to
+them.  Wonderful was the grace of the Lord.  They would not let him
+depart till he had laid the foundations of a future church, and
+their priest, crowned as he was, had been consecrated with the sign
+of Christ.
+
+*******
+
+He was now sixty-three years old.  He saw about him a great
+monastery, a multitude of brethren, and crowds who came to be healed
+of diseases and unclean spirits, filling the solitude around; but he
+wept daily, and remembered with incredible regret his ancient life.
+"I have returned to the world," he said, "and received my reward in
+this life.  All Palestine and the neighbouring provinces think me to
+be worth somewhat; while I possess a farm and household goods, under
+the pretext of the brethren's advantage."  On which the brethren,
+and especially Hesychius, who bore him a wondrous love, watched him
+narrowly.
+
+When he had lived thus sadly for two years, Aristaeneta, the
+Prefect's wife, came to him, wishing him to go with her to Antony,
+"I would go," he said, weeping, "if I were not held in the prison of
+this monastery, and if it were of any use.  For two days since, the
+whole world was robbed of such a father."  She believed him, and
+stopped.  And Antony's death was confirmed a few days after.  Others
+may wonder at the signs and portents which he did, at his incredible
+abstinence, his silence, his miracles:  I am astonished at nothing
+so much as that he was able to trample under foot that glory and
+honour.
+
+Bishops and clergy, monks and Christian matrons (a great
+temptation), people of the common sort, great men, too, and judges
+crowded to him, to receive from him blessed bread or oil.  But he
+was thinking of nothing but the desert, till one day he determined
+to set out, and taking an ass (for he was so shrunk with fasting
+that he could hardly walk), he tried to go his way.  The news got
+wind; the desolation and destruction of Palestine would ensue; ten
+thousand souls, men and women, tried to stop his way; but he would
+not hear them.  Smiting on the ground with his staff, he said, "I
+will not make my God a liar.  I cannot bear to see churches ruined,
+the altars of Christ trampled down, the blood of my sons spilt."
+All who heard thought that some secret revelation had been made to
+him:  but yet they would not let him go.  Whereon he would neither
+eat nor drink, and for seven days he persevered fasting, till he had
+his wish, and set out for Bethulia, with forty monks, who could
+march without food till sundown.  On the fifth day he came to
+Pelusium, then to the camp Thebatrum, to see Dracontius; and then to
+Babylon to see Philo.  These two were bishops and confessors exiled
+by Constantius, who favoured the Arian heresy.  Then he came to
+Aphroditon, where he met Barsanes the deacon, who used to carry
+water to Antony on dromedaries, and heard from him that the
+anniversary Antony's death was near, and would be celebrated by a
+vigil at his tomb.  Then through a vast and horrible wilderness, he
+went for three days to a very high mountain, and found there two
+monks, Isaac and Pelusianus, of whom Isaac had been Antony's
+interpreter.
+
+A high and rocky hill it was, with fountains gushing out at its
+foot.  Some of them the sand sucked up; some formed a little rill,
+with palms without number on its banks.  There you might have seen
+the old man wandering to and fro with Antony's disciples.  "Here,"
+they said, "he used to sing, here to pray, here to work, here to sit
+when tired.  These vines, these shrubs, he planted himself; that
+plot he laid out with his own hands.  This pond to water the garden
+he made with heavy toil; that hoe he kept for many years."  Hilarion
+lay on his bed, and kissed the couch, as if it were still warm.
+Antony's cell was only large enough to let a man lie down in it; and
+on the mountain top, reached by a difficult and winding stair, were
+two other cells of the same size, cut in the stony rock, to which he
+used to retire from the visitors and disciples, when they came to
+the garden.  "You see," said Isaac, "this orchard, with shrubs and
+vegetables.  Three years since a troop of wild asses laid it waste.
+He bade one of their leaders stop; and beat it with his staff.  'Why
+do you eat,' he asked it, 'what you did not sow?'  And after that
+the asses, though they came to drink the waters, never touched his
+plants."
+
+Then Hilarion asked them to show him Antony's grave.  They led him
+apart; but whether they showed it to him, no man knows.  They hid
+it, they said, by Antony's command, lest one Pergamius, who was the
+richest man of those parts, should take the corpse to his villa, and
+build a chapel over it.
+
+Then he went back to Aphroditon, and with only two brothers, dwelt
+in the desert, in such abstinence and silence that (so he said) he
+then first began to serve Christ.  Now it was then three years since
+the heaven had been shut, and the earth dried up:  so that they said
+commonly, the very elements mourned the death of Antony.  But
+Hilarion's fame spread to them; and a great multitude, brown and
+shrunken with famine, cried to him for rain, as to the blessed
+Antony's successor.  He saw them, and grieved over them; and lifting
+up his hand to heaven, obtained rain at once.  But the thirsty and
+sandy land, as soon as it was watered by showers, sent forth such a
+crowd of serpents and venomous animals that people without number
+were stung, and would have died, had they not run together to
+Hilarion.  With oil blessed by him, the husbandmen and shepherds
+touched their wounds, and all were surely healed.
+
+But when he saw that he was marvellously honoured, he went to
+Alexandria, meaning to cross the desert to the further oasis.  And
+because since he was a monk he had never stayed in a city, he turned
+aside to some brethren known to him in the Brucheion {115} not far
+from Alexandria.  They received him with joy:  but, when night came
+on, they suddenly heard him bid his disciples saddle the ass.  In
+vain they entreated, threw themselves across the threshold.  His
+only answer was, that he was hastening away, lest he should bring
+them into trouble; they would soon know that he had not departed
+without good reason.  The next day, men of Gaza came with the
+Prefect's lictors, burst into the monastery, and when they found him
+not--"Is it not true," they said, "what we heard?  He is a sorcerer,
+and knows the future."  For the citizens of Gaza, after Hilarion was
+gone, and Julian had succeeded to the empire, had destroyed his
+monastery, and begged from the Emperor the death of Hilarion and
+Hesychius.  So letters had been sent forth, to seek them throughout
+the world.
+
+So Hilarion went by the pathless wilderness into the Oasis; {116}
+and after a year, more or less--because his fame had gone before him
+even there, and he could not lie hid in the East--he was minded to
+sail away to lonely islands, that the sea at least might hide what
+the land would not.
+
+But just then Hadrian, his disciple, came from Palestine, telling
+him that Julian was slain, and that a Christian emperor was
+reigning; so that he ought to return to the relics of his monastery.
+But he abhorred the thought; and, hiring a camel, went over the vast
+desert to Paraetonia, a sea town of Libya.  Then the wretched
+Hadrian, wishing to go back to Palestine and get himself glory under
+his master's name, packed up all that the brethren had sent by him
+to his master, and went secretly away.  But--as a terror to those
+who despise their masters--he shortly after died of jaundice.
+
+Then, with Zananas alone, Hilarion went on board ship to sail for
+Sicily.  And when, almost in the middle of Adria, {117a} he was
+going to sell the Gospels which he had written out with his own hand
+when young, to pay his fare withal, then the captain's son was
+possessed with a devil, and cried out, "Hilarion, servant of God,
+why can we not be safe from thee even at sea?  Give me a little
+respite till I come to the shore, lest, if I be cast out here, I
+fall headlong into the abyss."  Then said he, "If my God lets thee
+stay, stay.  But if he cast thee out, why dost thou lay the blame on
+me, a sinner and a beggar?"  Then he made the captain and the crew
+promise not to betray him:  and the devil was cast out.  But the
+captain would take no fare when he saw that they had nought but
+those Gospels, and the clothes on their backs.  And so Hilarion came
+to Pachynum, a cape of Sicily, {117b} and fled twenty miles inland
+into a deserted farm; and there every day gathered a bundle of
+firewood, and put it on Zananas's back, who took it to the town, and
+bought a little bread thereby.
+
+But it happened, according to that which is written, "A city set on
+an hill cannot be hid," one Scutarius was tormented by a devil in
+the Basilica of St. Peter at Rome; and the unclean spirit cried out
+in him, "A few days since Hilarion, the servant of Christ, landed in
+Sicily, and no man knows him, and he thinks himself hid.  I will go
+and betray him."  And forthwith he took ship with his slaves, and
+came to Pachynum, and, by the leading of the devil, threw himself
+down before the old man's hut, and was cured.
+
+The frequency of his signs in Sicily drew to him sick people and
+religious men in multitudes; and one of the chief men was cured of
+dropsy the same day that he came, and offered Hilarion boundless
+gifts:  but he obeyed the Saviour's saying, "Freely ye have
+received; freely give."
+
+While this was happening in Sicily, Hesychius, his disciple, was
+seeking the old man through the world, searching the shores,
+penetrating the desert, and only certain that, wherever he was, he
+could not long be hid.  So, after three years were past, he heard at
+Methone {118} from a Jew, who was selling old clothes, that a
+prophet of the Christians had appeared in Sicily, working such
+wonders that he was thought to be one of the old saints.  But he
+could give no description of him, having only heard common report.
+He sailed for Pachynum, and there, in a cottage on the shore, heard
+of Hilarion's fame--that which most surprised all being that, after
+so many signs and miracles, he had not accepted even a bit of bread
+from any man.
+
+So, "not to make the story too long," as says St. Jerome, Hesychius
+fell at his master's knees, and watered his feet with tears, till at
+last he raised him up.  But two or three days after he heard from
+Zananas, how the old man could dwell no longer in these regions, but
+was minded to go to some barbarous nation, where both his name and
+his speech should be unknown.  So he took him to Epidaurus, {119a} a
+city of Dalmatia, where he lay a few days in a little farm, and yet
+could not be hid; for a dragon of wondrous size--one of those which,
+in the country speech, they call boas, because they are so huge that
+they can swallow an ox--laid waste the province, and devoured not
+only herds and flocks, but husbandmen and shepherds, which he drew
+to him by the force of his breath. {119b}  Hilarion commanded a pile
+of wood to be prepared, and having prayed to Christ, and called the
+beast forth, commanded him to ascend the pile, and having put fire
+under, burnt him before all the people.  Then fretting over what he
+should do, or whither he should turn, he went alone over the world
+in imagination, and mourned that, when his tongue was silent, his
+miracles still spoke.
+
+In those days, at the earthquake over the whole world, which befell
+after Julian's death, the sea broke its bounds; and, as if God was
+threatening another flood, or all was returning to the primaeval
+chaos, ships were carried up steep rocks, and hung there.  But when
+the Epidauritans saw roaring waves and mountains of water borne
+towards the shore, fearing lest the town should be utterly
+overthrown, they went out to the old man, and, as if they were
+leading him out to battle, stationed him on the shore.  And when he
+had marked three signs of the Cross upon the sand, and stretched out
+his hands against the waves, it is past belief to what a height the
+sea swelled, and stood up before him, and then, raging long as if
+indignant at the barrier, fell back little by little into itself.
+
+All Epidaurus, and all that region, talk of this to this day; and
+mothers teach it their children, that they may hand it down to
+posterity.  Truly, that which was said to the Apostles, "If ye
+believe, ye shall say to this mountain, Be removed, and cast into
+the sea; and it shall be done," can be fulfilled even to the letter,
+if we have the faith of the Apostles, and such as the Lord commanded
+them to have.  For which is more strange, that a mountain should
+descend into the sea; or that mountains of water should stiffen of a
+sudden, and, firm as a rock only at an old man's feet, should flow
+softly everywhere else?  All the city wondered; and the greatness of
+the sign was bruited abroad even at Salo.
+
+When the old man discovered that, he fled secretly by night in a
+little boat, and finding a merchantman after two days, sailed for
+Cyprus.  Between Maleae and Cythera {121} they were met by pirates,
+who had left their vessels under the shore, and came up in two large
+galleys, worked not with sails, but oars.  As the rowers swept the
+billows, all on board began to tremble, weep, run about, get
+handspikes ready, and, as if one messenger was not enough, vie with
+each other in telling the old man that pirates were at hand.  He
+looked out at them and smiled.  Then turning to his disciples, "O ye
+of little faith," he said; "wherefore do ye doubt?  Are these more
+in number than Pharaoh's army?  Yet they were all drowned when God
+so willed."  While he spoke, the hostile keels, with foaming beaks,
+were but a short stone's throw off.  He then stood on the ship's
+bow, and stretching out his hand against them, "Let it be enough,"
+he said, "to have come thus far."
+
+O wondrous faith!  The boats instantly sprang back, and made stern-
+way, although the oars impelled them in the opposite direction.  The
+pirates were astonished, having no wish to return back-foremost, and
+struggled with all their might to reach the ship; but were carried
+to the shore again, much faster than they had come.
+
+I pass over the rest, lest by telling every story I make the volume
+too long.  This only I will say, that, while he sailed prosperously
+through the Cyclades, he heard the voices of foul spirits, calling
+here and there out of the towns and villages, and running together
+on the beaches.  So he came to Paphos, the city of Cyprus, famous
+once in poets' songs, which now, shaken down by frequent
+earthquakes, only shows what it has been of yore by the foundations
+of its ruins.  There he dwelt meanly near the second milestone out
+of the city, rejoicing much that he was living quietly for a few
+days.  But not three weeks were past, ere throughout the whole
+island whosoever had unclean spirits began to cry that Hilarion the
+servant of Christ was come, and that they must hasten to him.
+Salonica, Curium, Lapetha, and the other towns, all cried this
+together, most saying that they knew Hilarion, and that he was truly
+a servant of God; but where he was they knew not.  Within a month,
+nearly 200 men and women were gathered together to him.  Whom when
+he saw, grieving that they would not suffer him to rest, raging, as
+it were to revenge himself, he scourged them with such an instancy
+of prayer, that some were cured at once, some after two or three
+days, and all within a week.
+
+So staying there two years, and always meditating flight, he sent
+Hesychius to Palestine, to salute the brethren, visit the ashes of
+the monastery, and return in the spring.  When he returned, and
+Hilarion was longing to sail again to Egypt,--that is, to the cattle
+pastures, {123a} because there is no Christian there, but only a
+fierce and barbarous folk,--he persuaded the old man rather to
+withdraw into some more secret spot in the island itself.  And
+looking round it long till he had examined it all over, he led him
+away twelve miles from the sea, among lonely and rough mountains,
+where they could hardly climb up, creeping on hands and knees.  When
+they were within, they beheld a spot terrible and very lonely,
+surrounded with trees, which had, too, waters falling from the brow
+of a cliff, and a most pleasant little garden, and many fruit-trees-
+-the fruit of which, however, Hilarion never ate--and near it the
+ruin of a very ancient temple, {123b} out of which (so he and his
+disciples averred) the voices of so many daemons resounded day and
+night, that you would have fancied an army there.  With which he was
+exceedingly delighted, because he had his foes close to him; and
+dwelt therein five years; and (while Hesychius often visited him) he
+was much cheered up in this last period of his life, because owing
+to the roughness and difficulty of the ground, and the multitude of
+ghosts (as was commonly reported), few, or none, ever dare climb up
+to him.
+
+But one day, going out of the little garden, he saw a man paralytic
+in all his limbs, lying before the gate; and having asked Hesychius
+who he was, and how he had come, he was told that the man was the
+steward of a small estate, and that to him the garden, in which they
+were, belonged.  Hilarion, weeping over him, and stretching a hand
+to him as he lay, said, "I say to thee, in the name of Jesus Christ
+our Lord, arise and walk."  Wonderful was the rapidity of the
+effect.  The words were yet in his mouth, when the limbs,
+strengthened, raised the man upon his feet.  As soon as it was
+known, the needs of many conquered the difficulty of the ground, and
+the want of a path, while all in the neighbourhood watched nothing
+so carefully, as that he should not by some plan slip away from
+them.  For the report had been spread about him, that he could not
+remain long in the same place; which nevertheless he did not do from
+any caprice, or childishness, but to escape honour and importunity;
+for he always longed after silence, and an ignoble life.
+
+So, in the eightieth year of his age, while Hesychius was absent, he
+wrote a short letter, by way of testament, with his own hand,
+leaving to Hesychius all his riches; namely, his Gospel-book, and a
+sackcloth-shirt, hood, and mantle.  For his servant had died a few
+days before.  Many religious men came to him from Paphos while he
+was sick, especially because they had heard that he had said that
+now he was going to migrate to the Lord, and be freed from the
+chains of the body.  There came also Constantia, a high-born lady,
+whose son-in-law and daughter he had delivered from death by
+anointing them with oil.  And he made them all swear, that he should
+not be kept an hour after his death, but covered up with earth in
+that same garden, clothed, as he was, in his haircloth shirt, hood,
+and rustic cloak.  And now little heat was left in his body, and
+nothing of a living man was left, except his reason:  and yet, with
+open eyes, he went on saying, "Go forth, what fearest thou?  Go
+forth, my soul, what doubtest thou?  Nigh seventy years hast thou
+served Christ, and dost thou fear death?"  With these words, he
+breathed out his soul.  They covered him forthwith in earth, and
+told them in the city that he was buried, before it was known that
+he was dead.
+
+The holy man Hesychius heard this in Palestine; reached Cyprus; and
+pretending, in order to prevent suspicion on the part of the
+neighbours, who guarded the spot diligently, that he wished to dwell
+in that same garden, he, after some ten months, with extreme peril
+of his life, stole the corpse.  He carried it to Maiuma, followed by
+whole crowds of monks and townsfolk, and placed it in the old
+monastery, with the shirt, hood, and cloak unhurt; the whole body
+perfect, as if alive, and fragrant with such strong odour, that it
+seemed to have had unguents poured over it.
+
+I think that I ought not, in the end of my book, to be silent about
+the devotion of that most holy woman Constantia, who, hearing that
+the body of Hilarion, the servant of God, was gone to Palestine,
+straightway gave up the ghost, proving by her very death her true
+love for the servant of God.  For she was wont to pass nights in
+watching his sepulchre, and to converse with him as if he were
+present, in order to assist her prayers.  You may see, even to this
+day, a wonderful contention between the folk of Palestine and the
+Cypriots, the former saying that they have the body, the latter that
+they have the soul, of Hilarion.  And yet, in both places, great
+signs are worked daily; but most in the little garden in Cyprus;
+perhaps because he loved that place the best.
+
+
+Such is the story of Hilarion.  His name still lingers in "the place
+he loved the best."  "To this day," I quote this fact from M. de
+Montalembert's work, "the Cypriots, confounding in their memories
+legends of good and of evil, the victories of the soul and the
+triumph of the senses, give to the ruins of one of those strong
+castles built by the Lusignans, which command their isle, the double
+name of the Castle of St. Hilarion, and the Castle of the God of
+Love."  But how intense must have been the longing for solitude
+which drove the old man to travel on foot from Syria to the Egyptian
+desert, across the pathless westward waste, even to the Oasis and
+the utmost limits of the Egyptian province; and then to Sicily, to
+the Adriatic, and at last to a distant isle of Greece.  And shall we
+blame him for that longing?  He seems to have done his duty
+earnestly, according to his own light, towards his fellow-creatures
+whenever he met them.  But he seems to have found that noise and
+crowd, display and honour, were not altogether wholesome for his own
+soul; and in order that he might be a better man he desired again
+and again to flee, that he might collect himself, and be alone with
+Nature and with God.  We, here in England, like the old Greeks and
+Romans, dwellers in the busy mart of civilized life, have got to
+regard mere bustle as so integral an element of human life, that we
+consider a love of solitude a mark of eccentricity, and, if we meet
+any one who loves to be alone, are afraid that he must needs be
+going mad:  and that with too great solitude comes the danger of too
+great self-consciousness, and even at last of insanity, none can
+doubt.  But still we must remember, on the other hand, that without
+solitude, without contemplation, without habitual collection and re-
+collection of our own selves from time to time, no great purpose is
+carried out, and no great work can be done; and that it is the
+bustle and hurry of our modern life which causes shallow thought,
+unstable purpose, and wasted energy, in too many who would be better
+and wiser, stronger and happier, if they would devote more time to
+silence and meditation; if they would commune with their own heart
+in their chamber, and be still.  Even in art and in mechanical
+science, those who have done great work upon the earth have been men
+given to solitary meditation.  When Brindley, the engineer, it is
+said, had a difficult problem to solve, he used to go to bed, and
+stay there till he had worked it out.  Turner, the greatest nature-
+painter of this or any other age, spent hours upon hours in mere
+contemplation of nature, without using his pencil at all.  It is
+said of him that he was seen to spend a whole day, sitting upon a
+rock, and throwing pebbles into a lake; and when at evening his
+fellow painters showed their day's sketches, and rallied him upon
+having done nothing, he answered them, "I have done this at least:
+I have learnt how a lake looks when pebbles are thrown into it."
+And if this silent labour, this steadfast thought are required even
+for outward arts and sciences, how much more for the highest of all
+arts, the deepest of all sciences, that which involves the
+questions--who are we? and where are we? who is God? and what are we
+to God, and He to us?--namely, the science of being good, which
+deals not with time merely, but with eternity.  No retirement, no
+loneliness, no period of earnest and solemn meditation, can be
+misspent which helps us towards that goal.
+
+And therefore it was that Hilarion longed to be alone; alone with
+God; and with Nature, which spoke to him of God.  For these old
+hermits, though they neither talked nor wrote concerning scenery,
+nor painted pictures of it as we do now, had many of them a clear
+and intense instinct of the beauty and the meaning of outward
+Nature; as Antony surely had when he said that the world around was
+his book, wherein he read the mysteries of God.  Hilarion seems,
+from his story, to have had a special craving for the sea.  Perhaps
+his early sojourn on the low sandhills of the Philistine shore, as
+he watched the tideless Mediterranean, rolling and breaking for ever
+upon the same beach, had taught him to say with the old prophet as
+he thought of the wicked and still half idolatrous cities of the
+Philistine shore, "Fear ye not? saith the Lord; Will ye not tremble
+at my presence who have placed the sand for the bound of the sea,
+for a perpetual decree, that it cannot pass it?  And though the
+waves thereof toss themselves, yet can they not prevail; though they
+roar, yet can they not pass over.  But this people has a revolted
+and rebellious heart, they are revolted and gone."  Perhaps again,
+looking down from the sunny Sicilian cliffs of Taormino, or through
+the pine-clad gulfs and gullies of the Cypriote hills upon the blue
+Mediterranean below,
+
+
+"And watching from his mountain wall
+The wrinkled sea beneath him crawl,"
+
+
+he had enjoyed and profited by all those images which that sight has
+called up in so many minds before and since.  To him it may be, as
+to the Psalmist, the storm-swept sea pictured the instability of
+mortal things, while secure upon his cliff he said with the
+Psalmist, "The Lord hath set my feet upon a rock, and ordered my
+goings;" and again, "The wicked are like a troubled sea, casting up
+mire and dirt."  Often, again, looking upon that far horizon, must
+his soul have been drawn, as many a soul has been drawn since, to
+it, and beyond it, as it were into a region of boundless freedom and
+perfect peace, while he said again with David, "Oh that I had wings
+like a dove; then would I flee away and be at rest!" and so have
+found, in the contemplation of the wide ocean, a substitute at least
+for the contemplation of those Eastern deserts which seemed the
+proper home for the solitary and meditative philosopher.
+
+For indeed in no northern country can such situations be found for
+the monastic cell as can be found in those great deserts which
+stretch from Syria to Arabia, from Arabia to Egypt, from Egypt to
+Africa properly so called.  Here and there a northern hermit found,
+as Hilarion found, a fitting home by the seaside, on some lonely
+island or storm-beat rock, like St. Cuthbert, off the coast of
+Northumberland; like St. Rule, on his rock at St. Andrew's; and St.
+Columba, with his ever-venerable company of missionaries, on Iona.
+But inland, the fens and the forests were foul, unwholesome,
+depressing, the haunts of fever, ague, delirium, as St. Guthlac
+found at Crowland, and St. Godric at Finkhale. {130}  The vast pine-
+woods which clothe the Alpine slopes, the vast forests of beech and
+oak which then spread over France and Germany, gave in time shelter
+to many a holy hermit.  But their gloom, their unwholesomeness, and
+the severity of the climate, produced in them, as in most northern
+ascetics, a temper of mind more melancholy, and often more fierce;
+more given to passionate devotion, but more given also to dark
+superstition and cruel self-torture, than the genial climate of the
+desert produced in old monks of the East.  When we think of St.
+Antony upon his mountain, we must not picture to ourselves, unless
+we, too, have been in the East, such a mountain as we have ever
+seen.  We must not think of a brown northern moorland, sad, savage,
+storm-swept, snow-buried, save in the brief and uncertain summer
+months.  We must not picture to ourselves an Alp, with thundering
+avalanches, roaring torrents, fierce alternations of heat and cold,
+uninhabitable by mortal man, save during that short period of the
+year when the maidens in the sennhutt watch the cattle upon the
+upland pastures.  We must picture to ourselves mountains blazing day
+after day, month after month, beneath the glorious sun and cloudless
+sky, in an air so invigorating that the Arabs can still support life
+there upon a few dates each day; and where, as has been said,--"Man
+needs there hardly to eat, drink, or sleep, for the act of breathing
+will give life enough;" an atmosphere of such telescopic clearness
+as to explain many of the strange stories which have been lately
+told of Antony's seemingly preternatural powers of vision; a
+colouring, which, when painters dare to put it on canvas, seems to
+our eyes, accustomed to the quiet greys and greens of England,
+exaggerated and impossible--distant mountains, pink and lilac,
+quivering in pale blue haze--vast sheets of yellow sand, across
+which the lonely rock or a troop of wild asses or gazelles throw
+intense blue-black shadows--rocks and cliffs not shrouded, as here,
+in soil, much less in grass and trees, or spotted with lichens and
+stained with veins; but keeping each stone its natural colour, as it
+wastes--if, indeed, it wastes at all--under the action of the all
+but rainless air, which has left the paintings on the old Egyptian
+temples fresh and clear for thousands of years; rocks, orange and
+purple, black, white, and yellow; and again and again beyond them
+{131} glimpses, it may be, of the black Nile, and of the long green
+garden of Egypt, and of the dark blue sea.  The eastward view from
+Antony's old home must be one of the most glorious in the world,
+save for its want of verdure and of life.  For Antony, as he looked
+across the blue waters of the Gulf of Akaba, across which, far
+above, the Israelites had passed in old times, could see the sacred
+goal of their pilgrimage, the red granite peaks of Sinai, flaming
+against the blue sky with that intensity of hue which is scarcely
+exaggerated, it is said, by the bright scarlet colour in which Sinai
+is always painted in mediaeval illuminations.
+
+But the gorgeousness of colouring, though it may interest us, was
+not, of course, what produced the deepest effect upon the minds of
+those old hermits.  They enjoyed Nature, not so much for her beauty,
+as for her perfect peace.  Day by day the rocks remained the same.
+Silently out of the Eastern desert, day by day, the rising sun threw
+aloft those arrows of light, which the old Greeks had named "the
+rosy fingers of the dawn."  Silently he passed in full blaze almost
+above their heads throughout the day; and silently he dipped behind
+the western desert in a glory of crimson and orange, green and
+purple; and without an interval of twilight, in a moment, all the
+land was dark, and the stars leapt out, not twinkling as in our
+damper climate here, but hanging like balls of white fire in that
+purple southern night, through which one seems to look beyond the
+stars into the infinite abyss, and towards the throne of God
+himself.  Day after day, night after night, that gorgeous pageant
+passed over the poor hermit's head without a sound; and though sun
+and moon and planet might change their places as the year rolled
+round, the earth beneath his feet seemed not to change.  Every
+morning he saw the same peaks in the distance, the same rocks, the
+same sand-heaps around his feet.  He never heard the tinkle of a
+running stream.  For weeks together he did not even hear the rushing
+of the wind.  Now and then a storm might sweep up the pass, whirling
+the sand in eddies, and making the desert for a while literally a
+"howling wilderness;" and when that was passed all was as it had
+been before.  The very change of seasons must have been little
+marked to him, save by the motions, if he cared to watch them, of
+the stars above; for vegetation there was none to mark the
+difference between summer and winter.  In spring of course the
+solitary date-palm here and there threw out its spathe of young
+green leaves, to add to the number of those which, grey or brown,
+hung drooping down the stem, withering but not decaying for many a
+year in that dry atmosphere; or perhaps the accacia bushes looked
+somewhat gayer for a few weeks, and the Retama broom, from which as
+well as from the palm leaves he plaited his baskets, threw out its
+yearly crop of twigs; but any greenness there might be in the
+vegetation of spring, turned grey in a few weeks beneath that
+burning sun; and be rest of the year was one perpetual summer of
+dust and glare and rest.  Amid such scenes they had full time for
+thought.  Nature and man alike left it in peace; while the labour
+required for sustaining life (and the monk wished for nothing more
+than to sustain mere life) was very light.  Wherever water could be
+found, the hot sun and the fertile soil would repay by abundant
+crops, perhaps twice in the year, the toil of scratching the ground
+and putting in the seed.  Moreover, the labour of the husbandman, so
+far from being adverse to the contemplative life, is of all
+occupations, it may be, that which promotes most quiet and wholesome
+meditation in the mind which cares to meditate.  The life of the
+desert, when once the passions of youth were conquered, seems to
+have been not only a happy, but a healthy one.  And when we remember
+that the monk, clothed from head to foot in woollen, and sheltered,
+too, by his sheepskin cape, escaped those violent changes of
+temperature which produce in the East so many fatal diseases, and
+which were so deadly to the linen-clothed inhabitants of the green
+lowlands of the Nile, we need not be surprised when we read of the
+vast longevity of many of the old abbots; and of their death, not by
+disease, but by gentle, and as it were wholesome natural decay.
+
+But if their life was easy, it was surely not ill-spent.  If having
+few wants, and those soon supplied, they found too much time for the
+luxury of quiet thought, those need not blame them, who having many
+wants, and those also easily supplied, are wont to spend their
+superfluous leisure in any luxury save that of thought, above all
+save that of thought concerning God.  For it was upon God that these
+men, whatever their defects or ignorances may have been, had set
+their minds.  That man was sent into the world to know and to love,
+to obey and thereby to glorify, the Maker of his being, was the
+cardinal point of their creed, as it has been of every creed which
+ever exercised any beneficial influence on the minds of men.  Dean
+Milman in his "History of Christianity," vol. iii. page 294, has,
+while justly severe upon the failings and mistakes of the Eastern
+monks, pointed out with equal justice that the great desire of
+knowing God was the prime motive in the mind of all their best men:-
+-
+
+"In some regions of the East, the sultry and oppressive heat, the
+general relaxation of the physical system, dispose constitutions of
+a certain temperament to a dreamy inertness.  The indolence and
+prostration of the body produce a kind of activity in the mind, if
+that may properly be called activity which is merely giving loose to
+the imagination and the emotions as they follow out the wild train
+of incoherent thought, or are agitated by impulses of spontaneous
+and ungoverned feeling.  Ascetic Christianity ministered new aliment
+to this common propensity.  It gave an object, both vague and
+determinate enough to stimulate, yet never to satisfy or exhaust.
+The regularity of stated hours of prayer, and of a kind of idle
+industry, weaving mats or plaiting baskets, alternated with periods
+of morbid reflection on the moral state of the soul, and of mystic
+communion with the Deity.  It cannot indeed be wondered that this
+new revelation, as it were, of the Deity, this profound and rational
+certainty of his existence, this infelt consciousness of his
+perpetual presence, these as yet unknown impressions of his
+infinity, his power, and his love, should give a higher character to
+this eremitical enthusiasm, and attract men of loftier and more
+vigorous minds within its sphere.  It was not merely the
+pusillanimous dread of encountering the trials of life which urged
+the humbler spirits to seek a safe retirement; or the natural love
+of peace, and the weariness and satiety of life, which commended
+this seclusion to those who were too gentle to mingle in, or who
+were exhausted with, the unprofitable turmoil of the world; nor was
+it always the anxiety to mortify the rebellious and refractory body
+with more advantage.  The one absorbing idea of the Majesty of the
+Godhead almost seemed to swallow up all other considerations.  The
+transcendent nature of the Triune Deity, the relation of the
+different persons of the Godhead to each other, seemed the only
+worthy object of men's contemplative faculties."
+
+And surely the contemplation of the Godhead is no unworthy
+occupation for the immortal soul of any human being.  But it would
+be unjust to these hermits did we fancy that their religion
+consisted merely even in this; much less that it consisted merely in
+dreams and visions, or in mere stated hours of prayer.  That all did
+not fulfil the ideal of their profession is to be expected, and is
+frankly confessed by the writers of the Lives of the Fathers; that
+there were serious faults, even great crimes, among them is not
+denied.  Those who wrote concerning them were so sure that they were
+on the whole good men, that they were not at all afraid of saying
+that some of them were bad,--not afraid, even, of recording, though
+only in dark hints, the reason why the Arab tribes around once rose
+and laid waste six churches with their monasteries in the
+neighbourhood of Scetis.  St. Jerome in like manner does not
+hesitate to pour out bitter complaints against many of the monks in
+the neighbourhood of Bethlehem.  It is notorious, too, that many
+became monks merely to escape slavery, hunger, or conscription into
+the army:  Unruly and fanatical spirits, too, grew fond of
+wandering.  Bands of monks on the great roads and public places of
+the empire, Massalians or Gyrovagi, as they were called, wandered
+from province to province, and cell to cell, living on the alms
+which they extorted from the pious, and making up too often for
+protracted fasts by outbursts of gluttony and drunkenness.  And
+doubtless the average monk, even when well-conducted himself and in
+a well-conducted monastery, was, like average men of every creed,
+rank, or occupation, a very common-place person, acting from very
+mixed and often very questionable motives; and valuing his shaven
+crown and his sheepskin cloak, his regular hours of prayer and his
+implicit obedience to his abbot, more highly than he valued the fear
+and the love of God.
+
+It is so in every creed.  With some, even now, the strict observance
+of the Sabbath; with others, outward reverence at the Holy
+Communion; with others, the frequent hearing of sermons which suit
+heir own views; with others, continual reading of pious books (on
+the lessons of which they do not act), covers, instead of charity, a
+multitude of sins.  But the saint, abbot, or father among these
+hermits was essentially the man who was not a common-place person;
+who was more than an ascetic, and more than a formalist; who could
+pierce beyond the letter to the spirit, and see, beyond all forms of
+doctrine or modes of life, that virtue was the one thing needful.
+
+The Historia Lausiaca and the Pratum Spirituale have many a story
+and many a saying as weighty, beautiful, and instructive now as they
+were fifteen hundred years ago; stories which show that graces and
+virtues such as the world had never seen before, save in the
+persecuted and half-unknown Christians of the first three centuries,
+were cultivated to noble fruitfulness by the monks of the East.  For
+their humility, obedience, and reverence for their superiors it is
+not wise to praise them just now; for those are qualities which are
+not at present considered virtues, but rather (save by the soldier)
+somewhat abject vices; and indeed they often carried them, as they
+did their abstinence, to an extravagant pitch.  But it must be
+remembered, in fairness, that if they obeyed their supposed
+superiors, they had first chosen their superiors themselves; that as
+the becoming a monk at all was an assertion of self-will and
+independence, whether for good or evil, so their reverence for their
+abbots was a voluntary loyalty to one who they fancied had a right
+to rule them, because he was wiser and better than they; a feeling
+which some have found not degrading, but ennobling; and the parent,
+not of servility, but of true freedom.  And as for the obsolete
+virtue of humility, that still remains true which a voice said to
+Antony, when he saw the snares which were spread over the whole
+earth, and asked, sighing, "Who can pass safely over these?" and the
+voice answered, "Humility alone."
+
+For the rest, if the Sermon on the Mount mean anything, as a
+practical rule of life for Christian men, then these monks were
+surely justified in trying to obey it, for to obey it they surely
+tried.
+
+The Words of the Elders, to which I have already alluded, and the
+Lausiaca of Palladius likewise, are full of precious scraps of moral
+wisdom, sayings, and anecdotes, full of nobleness, purity, pathos,
+insight into character, and often instinct with a quiet humour,
+which seems to have been, in the Old world, peculiar to the
+Egyptians, as it is, in the New, almost peculiar to the old-
+fashioned God-fearing Scotsman.
+
+Take these examples, chosen almost at random.
+
+Serapion the Sindonite was so called because he wore nothing but a
+sindon, or linen shirt.  Though he could not read, he could say all
+the Scriptures by heart.  He could not (says Palladius) sit quiet in
+his cell, but wandered over the world in utter poverty, so that he
+"attained to perfect impassibility, for with that nature he was
+born; for there are differences of natures, not of substances."
+
+So says Palladius, and goes on to tell how Serapion sold himself to
+certain play-actors for twenty gold pieces, and laboured for them as
+a slave till he had won them to Christ, and made them renounce the
+theatre; after which he made his converts give the money to the
+poor, and went his way.
+
+On one of his journeys he came to Athens, and, having neither money
+nor goods, starved there for three days.  But on the fourth he went
+up, seemingly to the Areopagus, and cried, "Men of Athens, help!"
+And when the crowd questioned him, he told them that he had, since
+he left Egypt, fallen into the hands of three usurers, two of whom
+he had satisfied, but the third would not leave him.
+
+On being promised assistance, he told them that his three usurers
+were avarice, sensuality, and hunger.  Of the two first he was rid,
+having neither money nor passions:  but, as he had eaten nothing for
+three days, the third was beginning to be troublesome, and demanded
+its usual debt, without paying which he could not well live; whereon
+certain philosophers, seemly amused by his apologue, gave him a gold
+coin.  He went to a baker's shop, laid down the coin, took up a
+loaf, and went out of Athens for ever.  Then the philosophers knew
+that he was endowed with true virtue; and when they had paid the
+baker the price of the loaf, got back their gold.
+
+When he went into Lacedaemon, he heard that a great man there was a
+Manichaean, with all his family, though otherwise a good man.  To
+him Serapion sold himself as a slave, and within two years converted
+him and his wife, who thenceforth treated him not as a slave, but as
+their own brother.
+
+After awhile, this "Spiritual adamant," as Palladius calls him,
+bought his freedom of them, and sailed for Rome.  At sundown first
+the sailors, and then the passengers, brought out each man his
+provisions, and ate.  Serapion sat still.  The crew fancied that he
+was sea-sick; but when he had passed a second, third, and fourth day
+fasting, they asked, "Man, why do you not eat?"  "Because I have
+nothing to eat."  They thought that some one had stolen his baggage:
+but when they found that the man had absolutely nothing, they began
+to ask him not only how he would keep alive, but how he would pay
+his fare.  He only answered, "That he had nothing; that they might
+cast him out of the ship where they had found him."
+
+But they answered, "Not for a hundred gold pieces, so favourable was
+the wind," and fed him all the way to Rome, where we lose sight of
+him and his humour.
+
+To go on with almost chance quotations:--
+
+Some monks were eating at a festival, and one said to the serving
+man, "I eat nothing cooked; tell them to bring me salt."  The
+serving man began to talk loudly:  "That brother eats no cooked
+meat; bring him a little salt."  Quoth Abbot Theodore:  "It were
+more better for thee, brother, to eat meat in thy cell than to hear
+thyself talked about in the presence of thy brethren."
+
+Again:  a brother came to Abbot Silvanus, in Mount Sinai, and found
+the brethren working, and said, "Why labour you for the meat which
+perisheth?  Mary chose the good part."  The abbot said, "Give him a
+book to read, and put him in an empty cell."  About the ninth hour
+the brother looked out, to see if he would be called to eat, and at
+last came to the abbot, and asked, "Do not the brethren eat to-day,
+abbot?"  "Yes."  "Then why was not I called?"  Then quoth Abbot
+Silvanus:  "Thou art a spiritual man:  and needest not their food.
+We are carnal, and must eat, because we work:  but thou hast chosen
+the better part."  Whereat the monk was ashamed.
+
+As was also John the dwarf, who wanted to be "without care like the
+angels, doing nothing but praise God."  So he threw away his cloak,
+left his brother the abbot, and went into the desert.  But after
+seven days he came back, and knocked at the door.  "Who is there?"
+asked his brother.  "John."  "Nay, John is turned into an angel, and
+is no more among men."  So he left him outside all night; and in the
+morning gave him to understand that if he was a man he must work,
+but that if he was an angel, he had no need to live in a cell.
+
+Consider again the saying of the great Antony, when some brethren
+were praising another in his presence.  But Antony tried him, and
+found that he could not bear an injury.  Then said the old man,
+"Brother, thou art like a house with an ornamented porch, while the
+thieves break into it by the back door."
+
+Or this, of Abbot Isidore, when the devil tempted him to despair,
+and told him that he would be lost after all:  "If I do go into
+torment, I shall still find you below me there."
+
+Or this, of Zeno the Syrian, when some Egyptian monks came to him
+and began accusing themselves:  "The Egyptians hide the virtues
+which they have, and confess vices which they have not.  The Syrians
+and Greeks boast of virtues which they have not, and hide vices
+which they have."
+
+Or this:  One old man said to another, "I am dead to this world."
+"Do not trust yourself," quoth the other, "till you are out of this
+world.  If you are dead, the devil is not."
+
+Two old men lived in the same cell, and had never disagreed.  Said
+one to the other, "Let us have just one quarrel, like other men."
+Quoth the other:  "I do not know what a quarrel is like."  Quoth the
+first:  "Here--I will put a brick between us, and say that it is
+mine:  and you shall say it is not mine; and over that let us have a
+contention and a squabble."  But when they put the brick between
+them, and one said, "It is mine," the other said, "I hope it is
+mine."  And when the first said, "It is mine, it is not yours," he
+answered, "If it is yours, take it."  So they could not find out how
+to have a quarrel.
+
+Anger, malice, revenge, were accursed things in the eyes of these
+men.  There was enough of them, and too much, among their monks; but
+far less, doubt not, than in the world outside.  For within the
+monastery it was preached against, repressed, punished; and when
+repented of, forgiven, with loving warnings and wise rules against
+future transgression.
+
+Abbot Agathon used to say, "I never went to sleep with a quarrel
+against any man; nor did I, as far as lay in me, let one who had a
+quarrel against me sleep till he had made peace."
+
+Abbot Isaac was asked why the devils feared him so much.  "Since I
+was made a monk," he said, "I settled with myself that no angry word
+should come out of my mouth."
+
+An old man said, "Anger arises from these four things:  from the
+lust of avarice, in giving and receiving; from loving one's own
+opinion; from wishing to be honoured; and from fancying oneself a
+teacher and hoping to be wiser than everybody.  And anger obscures
+human reason by these four ways:  if a man hate his neighbour; or if
+he envy him; or if he look on him as nought; or if he speak evil of
+him."
+
+A brother being injured by another, came to Abbot Sidonius, told his
+story, and said, "I wish to avenge myself, father."  The abbot
+begged him to leave vengeance to God:  but when he refused, said,
+"Then let us pray."  Whereon the old man rose, and said, "God, thou
+art not necessary to us any longer, that thou shouldest be careful
+of us:  for we, as this brother says, both will and can avenge
+ourselves."  At which that brother fell at his feet, and begged
+pardon, promising never to strive with his enemy.
+
+Abbot Poemen said often, "Let malice never overcome thee.  If any
+man do thee harm, repay him with good, that thou mayest conquer evil
+with good."
+
+In a congregation at Scetis, when many men's lives and conversation
+had been talked over, Abbot Pior held his tongue.  After it was
+over, he went out, and filled a sack with sand, and put it on his
+back.  Then he took a little bag, filled it likewise with sand, and
+carried it before him.  And when the brethren asked him what he
+meant, he said, "The sack behind is my own sins, which are very
+many:  yet I have cast them behind my back, and will not see them,
+nor weep over them.  But I have put these few sins of my brother's
+before my eyes, and am tormenting myself over them, and condemning
+my brother."
+
+A brother having committed a fault, went to Antony, and his brethren
+followed, upbraiding him, and wanting to bring him back; while he
+denied having done the wrong.  Abbot Paphnutius was there, and spoke
+a parable to them:--
+
+"I saw on the river bank a man sunk in the mud up to his knees.  And
+men came to pull him out, and thrust him in up to the neck."
+
+Then said Antony of Paphnutius, "Behold a man who can indeed save
+souls."
+
+Abbot Macarius was going up to the mountain of Nitria, and sent his
+disciple on before.  The disciple met an idol-priest hurrying on,
+and carrying a great beam:  to whom he cried, "Where art thou
+running, devil?"  At which he was wroth, and beat him so that he
+left him half dead, and then ran on, and met Macarius, who said,
+"Salvation to thee, labourer, salvation!"  He answered, wondering,
+"What good hast thou seen in me that thou salutest me?"  "Because I
+saw thee working and running, though ignorantly."  To whom the
+priest said, "Touched by thy salutation, I knew thee to be a great
+servant of God; for another--I know not who--miserable monk met me
+and insulted me, and I gave him blows for his words."  Then laying
+hold of Macarius's feet he said, "Unless thou make me a monk I will
+not leave hold of thee."
+
+After all, of the best of these men are told (with much honesty)
+many sayings which show that they felt in their minds and hearts
+that the spirit was above the letter:  sayings which show that they
+had at least at times glimpses of a simpler and more possible
+virtue; foretastes of a perfection more human, and it may be more
+divine.
+
+"Better," said Abbot Hyperichius, "to eat flesh and drink wine, than
+to eat our brethren's flesh with bitter words."
+
+A brother asked an elder, "Give me, father one thing which I may
+keep, and be saved thereby."  The elder answered, "If thou canst be
+injured and insulted, and hear and be silent, that is a great thing,
+and above all the other commandments."
+
+One of the elders used to say, "Whatever a man shrinks from let him
+not do to another.  Dost thou shrink if any man detracts from thee?
+Speak not ill of another.  Dost thou shrink if any man slanders
+thee, or if any man takes aught from thee?  Do not that or the like
+to another man.  For he that shall have kept this saying, will find
+it suffice for his salvation."
+
+"The nearer," said Abbot Muthues, "a man approaches God, the more he
+will see himself to be a sinner."
+
+Abbot Sisois, when he lay dying, begged to live a little longer,
+that he might repent; and when they wondered, he told them that he
+had not yet even begun repentance.  Whereby they saw that he was
+perfect in the fear of the Lord.
+
+But the most startling confession of all must have been that wrung
+from the famous Macarius the elder.  He had been asked once by a
+brother, to tell him a rule by which he might be saved; and his
+answer had been this:--to fly from men, to sit in his cell, and to
+lament for his sins continually; and, what was above all virtues, to
+keep his tongue in order as well as his appetite.
+
+But (whether before or after that answer is not said) he gained a
+deeper insight into true virtue, on the day when (like Antony when
+he was reproved by the example of the tanner in Alexandria) he heard
+a voice telling him that he was inferior to two women who dwelt in
+the nearest town.  Catching up his staff, like Antony, he went off
+to see the wonder.  The women, when questioned by him as to their
+works, were astonished.  They had been simply good wives for years
+past, married to two brothers, and living in the same house.  But
+when pressed by him, they confessed that they had never said a foul
+word to each other, and never quarrelled.  At one time they had
+agreed together to retire into a nunnery, but could not, for all
+their prayers, obtain the consent of their husbands.  On which they
+had both made an oath, that they would never, to their deaths, speak
+one worldly word.
+
+Which when the blessed Macarius had heard, he said, "In truth there
+is neither virgin, nor married woman, nor monk, nor secular; but God
+only requires the intention, and ministers the spirit of life to
+all."
+
+
+
+ARSENIUS
+
+
+
+I shall give one more figure, and that a truly tragical one, from
+these "Lives of the Egyptian Fathers," namely, that of the once
+great and famous Arsenius, the Father (as he was at one time called)
+of the Emperors.  Theodosius, the great statesman and warrior, who
+for some twenty years kept up by his single hand the falling empire
+of Rome, heard how Arsenius was at once the most pious and the most
+learned of his subjects; and wishing--half barbarian as he was
+himself--that his sons should be brought up, not only as scholars,
+but as Christians, he sent for Arsenius to his court, and made him
+tutor to his two young sons Honorius and Arcadius.  But the two lads
+had neither their father's strength nor their father's nobleness.
+Weak and profligate, they fretted Arsenius's soul day by day; and,
+at last, so goes the story, provoked him so far that, according to
+the fashion of a Roman pedagogue, he took the ferula and
+administered to one of the princes a caning, which he no doubt
+deserved.  The young prince, in revenge, plotted against his life.
+Among the parasites of the Palace it was not difficult to find those
+who would use steel and poison readily enough in the service of an
+heir-apparent, and Arsenius fled for his life:  and fled, as men
+were wont in those days, to Egypt and the Thebaid.  Forty years old
+he was when he left the court, and forty years more he spent among
+the cells at Scetis, weeping day and night.  He migrated afterwards
+to a place called Troe, and there died at the age of ninety-five,
+having wept himself, say his admirers, almost blind.  He avoided, as
+far as possible, beholding the face of man; upon the face of woman
+he would never look.  A noble lady, whom he had known probably in
+the world, came all the way from Rome to see him; but he refused
+himself to her sternly, almost roughly.  He had known too much of
+the fine ladies of the Roman court; all he cared for was peace.
+There is a story of him that, changing once his dwelling-place,
+probably from Scetis to Troe, he asked, somewhat peevishly, of the
+monks around him, "What that noise was?"  They told him it was only
+the wind among the reeds.  "Alas!" he said, "I have fled everywhere
+in search of silence, and yet here the very reeds speak."  The
+simple and comparatively unlearned monks around him looked with a
+profound respect on the philosopher, courtier, scholar, who had cast
+away the real pomps and vanities of this life, such as they had
+never known.  There is a story told, plainly concerning Arsenius,
+though his name is not actually mentioned in it, how a certain old
+monk saw him lying upon a softer mat than his fellows, and indulged
+with a few more comforts; and complained indignantly of his luxury,
+and the abbot's favouritism.  Then asked the abbot, "What didst thou
+eat before thou becamest a monk?" He confessed he had been glad
+enough to fill his stomach with a few beans.  "How wert thou
+dressed?"  He was glad enough, again he confessed, to have any
+clothes at all on his back.  "Where didst thou sleep?"  "Often
+enough on the bare ground in the open air," was the answer.  "Then,"
+said the abbot, "thou art, by thy own confession, better off as a
+monk than thou wast as a poor labouring man:  and yet thou grudgest
+a little comfort to one who has given up more luxury than thou hast
+ever beheld.  This man slept beneath silken canopies; he was carried
+in gilded litters, by trains of slaves; he was clothed in purple and
+fine linen; he fed upon all the delicacies of the great city:  and
+he has given up all for Christ.  And what hast thou given up, that
+thou shouldst grudge him a softer mat, or a little more food each
+day?"  And so the monk was abashed, and held his peace.
+
+As for Arsenius's tears, it is easy to call his grief exaggerated or
+superstitious:  but those who look on them with human eyes will
+pardon them, and watch with sacred pity the grief of a good man, who
+felt that his life had been an utter failure.  He saw his two
+pupils, between whom, at their father's death, the Roman Empire was
+divided into Eastern and Western, grow more and more incapable of
+governing.  He saw a young barbarian, whom he must have often met at
+the court in Byzantium, as Master of the Horse, come down from his
+native forests, and sack the Eternal City of Rome.  He saw evil and
+woe unspeakable fall on that world which he had left behind him,
+till the earth was filled with blood, and Antichrist seemed ready to
+appear, and the day of judgment to be at hand.  And he had been
+called to do what he could to stave off this ruin, to make those
+young princes decree justice and rule in judgment by the fear of
+God.  But he had failed; and there was nothing left to him save
+self-accusation and regret, and dread lest some, at least, of the
+blood which had been shed might be required at his hands.
+Therefore, sitting upon his palm-mat there in Troe, he wept his life
+away; happier, nevertheless, and more honourable in the sight of God
+and man than if, like a Mazarin or a Talleyrand, and many another
+crafty politician, both in Church and State, he had hardened his
+heart against his own mistakes, and, by crafty intrigue and adroit
+changing of sides at the right moment, had contrived to secure for
+himself, out of the general ruin, honour and power and wealth, and
+delicate food, and a luxurious home, and so been one of those of
+whom the Psalmist says, with awful irony, "So long as thou doest
+well unto thyself, men will speak good of thee."
+
+One good deed at least Arsenius had seen done--a deed which has
+lasted to all time, and done, too, to the eternal honour of his
+order, by a monk--namely, the abolition of gladiator shows.  For
+centuries these wholesale murders had lasted through the Roman
+Republic and through the Roman Empire.  Human beings in the prime of
+youth and health, captives or slaves, condemned malefactors, and
+even free-born men, who hired themselves out to death, had been
+trained to destroy each other in the amphitheatre for the amusement,
+not merely of the Roman mob, but of the Roman ladies.  Thousands
+sometimes, in a single day, had been
+
+
+"Butchered to make a Roman holiday."
+
+
+The training of gladiators had become a science.  By their weapons
+and their armour, and their modes of fighting, they had been
+distinguished into regular classes, of which the antiquaries count
+up full eighteen:  Andabatae, who wore helmets without any opening
+for the eyes, so that they were obliged to fight blindfold, and thus
+excited the mirth of the spectators; Hoplomachi, who fought in a
+complete suit of armour; Mirmillones, who had the image of a fish
+upon their helmets, and fought in armour with a short sword, matched
+usually against the Retiarii, who fought without armour, and whose
+weapons were a casting-net and a trident.  These, and other species
+of fighters, were drilled and fed in "families" by Lanistae; or
+regular trainers, who let them out to persons wishing to exhibit a
+show.  Women, even high-born ladies, had been seized in former times
+with the madness of fighting, and, as shameless as cruel, had gone
+down into the arena to delight with their own wounds and their own
+gore the eyes of the Roman people.
+
+And these things were done, and done too often, under the auspices
+of the gods, and at their most sacred festivals.  So deliberate and
+organized a system of wholesale butchery has never perhaps existed
+on this earth before or since, not even in the worship of those
+Mexican gods whose idols Cortez and his soldiers found fed with
+human hearts, and the walls of their temples crusted with human
+gore.  Gradually the spirit of the Gospel had been triumphing over
+this abomination.  Ever since the time of Tertullian, in the second
+century, Christian preachers and writers had lifted up their voice
+in the name of humanity.  Towards the end of the third century, the
+Emperors themselves had so far yielded to the voice of reason, as to
+forbid by edicts the gladiatorial fights.  But the public opinion of
+the mob in most of the great cities had been too strong both for
+saints and for emperors.  St. Augustine himself tells us of the
+horrible joy which he, in his youth, had seen come over the vast
+ring of flushed faces at these horrid sights; and in Arsenius's own
+time, his miserable pupil, the weak Honorius, bethought himself of
+celebrating once more the heathen festival of the Secular Games, and
+formally to allow therein an exhibition of gladiators.  But in the
+midst of that show sprang down into the arena of the Colosseum of
+Rome an unknown monk, some said from Nitria, some from Phrygia, and
+with his own hands parted the combatants in the name of Christ and
+God.  The mob, baulked for a moment of their pleasure, sprang on
+him, and stoned him to death.  But the crime was followed by a
+sudden revulsion of feeling.  By an edict of the Emperor the
+gladiatorial sports were forbidden for ever; and the Colosseum,
+thenceforth useless, crumbled slowly away into that vast ruin which
+remains unto this day, purified, as men well said, from the blood of
+tens of thousands, by the blood of one true and noble martyr.
+
+
+
+THE HERMITS OF ASIA
+
+
+
+The impulse which, given by Antony, had been propagated in Asia by
+his great pupil, Hilarion, spread rapidly far and wide.  Hermits
+took possession of the highest peaks of Sinai; and driven from
+thence, so tradition tells, by fear of those mysterious noises which
+still haunt its cliffs, settled at that sheltered spot where now
+stands the convent of St. Catharine.  Massacred again and again by
+the wild Arab tribes, their places were filled up by fresh hermits,
+and their spiritual descendants hold the convent to this day.
+
+Through the rich and luxuriant region of Syria, and especially round
+the richest and most luxurious of its cities, Antioch, hermits
+settled, and bore, by the severity of their lives, a noble witness
+against the profligacy of its inhabitants, who had half renounced
+the paganism of their forefathers without renouncing in the least,
+it seems, those sins which drew down of old the vengeance of a
+righteous God upon their forefathers, whether in Canaan or in Syria
+itself.
+
+At Antioch, about the year 347, was born the famous Chrysostom, John
+of the Golden Mouth; and near Antioch he became a hermit, and dwelt,
+so legends say, several years alone in the wilderness:  till, nerved
+by that hard training, he went forth again into the world to become,
+whether at Antioch or at Constantinople, the bravest as well as the
+most eloquent preacher of righteousness and rebuker of sin which the
+world had seen since the times of St. Paul.  The labours of
+Chrysostom belong not so much to this book as to a general
+ecclesiastical history:  but it must not be forgotten that he, like
+all the great men of that age, had been a monk, and kept up his
+monastic severity, even in the midst of the world, until his dying
+day.
+
+At Nisibis, again, upon the very frontier of Persia, appeared
+another very remarkable personage, known as the Great Jacob or Great
+St. James.  Taking (says his admiring biographer, Theodoret of Cyra)
+to the peaks of the loftiest mountains., he passed his life on them,
+in spring and summer haunting the woods, with the sky for a roof,
+but sheltering himself in winter in a cave.  His food was wild
+fruits and mountain herbs.  He never used a fire, and, clothed in a
+goats' hair garment, was perhaps the first of those Boscoi, or
+"browsing hermits," who lived literally like the wild animals in the
+flesh, while they tried to live like angels in the spirit.
+
+Some of the stories told of Jacob savour of that vindictiveness
+which Giraldus Cambrensis, in after years, attributed to the saints
+in Ireland.  He was walking one day over the Persian frontier, "to
+visit the plants of true religion" and "bestow on them due care,"
+when he passed at a fountain a troop of damsels washing clothes and
+treading them with their feet.  They seem, according to the story,
+to have stared at the wild man, instead of veiling their faces or
+letting down their garments.  No act or word of rudeness is reported
+of them:  but Jacob's modesty or pride was so much scandalized that
+he cursed both the fountain and the girls.  The fountain of course
+dried up forthwith, and the damsels' hair turned grey.  They ran
+weeping into the town.  The townsfolk came out, and compelled Jacob,
+by their prayers, to restore the water to their fountain; but the
+grey hair he refused to restore to its original hue unless the
+damsels would come and beg pardon publicly themselves.  The poor
+girls were ashamed to come, and their hair remained grey ever after.
+
+A story like this may raise a smile in some of my readers, in others
+something like indignation or contempt.  But as long as such legends
+remain in these hermit lives, told with as much gravity as any other
+portion of the biography, and eloquently lauded, as this deed is, by
+Bishop Theodoret, as proofs of the holiness and humanity of the
+saint, an honest author is bound to notice some of them at least,
+and not to give an alluring and really dishonest account of these
+men and their times, by detailing every anecdote which can elevate
+them in the mind of the reader, while he carefully omits all that
+may justly disgust him.
+
+Yet, after all, we are not bound to believe this legend, any more
+than we are bound to believe that when Jacob saw a Persian judge
+give an unjust sentence, he forthwith cursed, not him, but a rock
+close by, which instantly crumbled into innumerable fragments, so
+terrifying that judge that he at once revoked his sentence, and gave
+a just decision.
+
+Neither, again, need we believe that it was by sending, as men said
+in his own days, swarms of mosquitos against the Persian invaders,
+that he put to flight their elephants and horses:  and yet it may be
+true that, in the famous siege of Nisibis, Jacob played the patriot
+and the valiant man.  For when Sapor, the Persian king, came against
+Nisibis with all his forces, with troops of elephants, and huge
+machines of war, and towers full of archers wheeled up to the walls,
+and at last, damming the river itself, turned its current against
+the fortifications of unburnt brick, until a vast breach was opened
+in the walls, then Jacob, standing in the breach, encouraged by his
+prayers his fellow-townsmen to stop it with stone, brick, timber,
+and whatsoever came to hand; and Sapor, the Persian Sultan, saw
+"that divine man," and his goats'-hair tunic and cloak seemed
+transformed into a purple robe and royal diadem.  And, whether he
+was seized with superstitious fear, or whether the hot sun or the
+marshy ground had infected his troops with disease, or whether the
+mosquito swarms actually became intolerable, the great King of
+Persia turned and went away.
+
+So Nisibis was saved for a while; to be shamefully surrendered to
+the Persians a few years afterwards by the weak young Emperor
+Jovian.  Old Ammianus Marcellinus, brave soldier as he was, saw with
+disgust the whole body of citizens ordered to quit the city within
+three days, and "men appointed to compel obedience to the order,
+with threats of death to every one who delayed his departure; and
+the whole city was a scene of mourning and lamentation, and in every
+quarter nothing was heard but one universal wail, matrons tearing
+their hair, and about to be driven from the homes in which they had
+been born and brought up; the mother who had lost her children, or
+the wife who had lost her husband, about to be torn from the place
+rendered sacred by their shades, clinging to their doorposts,
+embracing their thresholds, and pouring forth floods of tears.
+Every road was crowded, each person struggling away as he could.
+Many, too, loaded themselves with as much of their property as they
+thought they could carry, while leaving behind them abundant and
+costly furniture, which they could not remove for want of beasts of
+burden." {159}
+
+One treasure, however, they did remove, of which the old soldier
+Ammianus says nothing, and which, had he seen it pass him on the
+road, he would have treated with supreme contempt.  And that, says
+Theodoret, was the holy body of "their prince and defender," St.
+James the mountain hermit, round which the emigrants chanted, says
+Theodoret, hymns of regret and praise, "for, had he been alive, that
+city would have never passed into barbarian hands."
+
+There stood with Jacob in the breach, during that siege of Nisibis,
+a man of gentler temperament, a disciple of his, who had received
+baptism at his hands, and who was, like himself, a hermit--Ephraim,
+or Ephrem, of Edessa, as he is commonly called, for, though born at
+Nisibis, his usual home was at Edessa, the metropolis of a Syrian-
+speaking race.  Into the Syrian tongue Ephrem translated the
+doctrines of the Christian faith and the Gospel history, and spread
+abroad, among the heathen round, a number of delicate and graceful
+hymns, which remain to this day, and of which some have lately been
+translated into English. {160}  Soft, sad, and dreamy as they were,
+they had strength and beauty enough in them to supersede the Gnostic
+hymns of Bardesanes and his son Harmonius, which had been long
+popular among the Syrians; and for centuries afterwards, till
+Christianity was swept away by the followers of Mahomet, the Syrian
+husbandman beguiled his toil with the pious and plaintive melodies
+of St. Ephrem.
+
+But Ephrem was not only a hermit and a poet:  he was a preacher and
+a missionary.  If he wept, as it was said, day and night for his own
+sins and the sins of mankind, he did his best at least to cure those
+sins.  He was a demagogue, or leader of the people, for good and not
+for evil, to whom the simple Syrians looked up for many a year as
+their spiritual father.  He died in peace, as he said himself, like
+the labourer who has finished his day's work, like the wandering
+merchant who returns to his fatherland, leaving nothing behind him
+save prayers and counsels, for "Ephrem," he added, "had neither
+wallet nor pilgrim's staff."
+
+"His last utterance" (I owe this fact to M. de Montalembert's book,
+"Moines d'Occident") "was a protest on behalf of the dignity of man
+redeemed by the Son of God."
+
+"The young and pious daughter of the Governor of Edessa came weeping
+to receive his latest breath.  He made her swear never again to be
+carried in a litter by slaves, 'The neck of man,' he said, 'should
+bear no yoke save that of Christ.'"  This anecdote is one among many
+which go to prove that from the time that St. Paul had declared the
+great truth that in Christ Jesus was neither bond nor free, and had
+proclaimed the spiritual brotherhood of all men in Christ, slavery,
+as an institution, was doomed to slow but certain death.  But that
+death was accelerated by the monastic movement, wherever it took
+root.  A class of men who came not to be ministered unto, but to
+minister to others; who prided themselves upon needing fewer
+luxuries than the meanest slaves; who took rank among each other and
+among men not on the ground of race, nor of official position, nor
+of wealth, nor even of intellect, but simply on the ground of
+virtue, was a perpetual protest against slavery and tyranny of every
+kind; a perpetual witness to the world that, whether all men were
+equal or not in the sight of God, the only rank among them of which
+God would take note, would be their rank in goodness.
+
+
+
+BASIL
+
+
+
+On the south shore of the Black Sea, eastward of Sinope, there dwelt
+in those days, at the mouth of the River Iris, a hermit as gentle
+and as pure as Ephrem of Edessa.  Beside a roaring waterfall, amid
+deep glens and dark forests, with distant glimpses of the stormy sea
+beyond, there lived on bread and water a graceful gentleman, young
+and handsome; a scholar too, who had drunk deeply at the fountains
+of Pagan philosophy and poetry, and had been educated with care at
+Constantinople and at Athens, as well as at his native city of
+Caesaraea, in the heart of Asia Minor, now dwindled under Turkish
+misrule into a wretched village.  He was heir to great estates; the
+glens and forests round him were his own:  and that was the use
+which he made of them.  On the other side of the torrent, his mother
+and his sister, a maiden of wonderful beauty, lived the hermit life,
+on a footing of perfect equality with their female slaves, and the
+pious women who had joined them.
+
+Basil's austerities--or rather the severe climate of the Black Sea
+forests--brought him to an early grave.  But his short life was
+spent well enough.  He was a poet, with an eye for the beauty of
+Nature--especially for the beauty of the sea--most rare in those
+times; and his works are full of descriptions of scenery as healthy-
+minded as they are vivid and graceful.
+
+In his travels through Egypt, Palestine, and Syria, he had seen the
+hermits, and longed to emulate them; but (to do him justice) his
+ideal of the so-called "religious life" was more practical than
+those of the solitaries of Egypt, who had been his teachers.  "It
+was the life" (says Dean Milman {163}) "of the industrious religious
+community, not of the indolent and solitary anchorite, which to
+Basil was the perfection of Christianity. . . .  The indiscriminate
+charity of these institutions was to receive orphans" (of which
+there were but too many in those evil days) "of all classes, for
+education and maintenance:  but other children only with the consent
+or at the request of parents, certified before witnesses; and vows
+were by no means to be enforced upon these youthful pupils.  Slaves
+who fled to the monasteries were to be admonished and sent back to
+their owners.  There is one reservation" (and that one only too
+necessary then), "that slaves were not bound to obey their master,
+if he should order what is contrary to the law of God.  Industry was
+to be the animating principle of these settlements.  Prayer and
+psalmody were to have their stated hours, but by no means to intrude
+on those devoted to useful labour.  These labours were strictly
+defined; such as were of real use to the community, not those which
+might contribute to vice or luxury.  Agriculture was especially
+recommended.  The life was in no respect to be absorbed in a
+perpetual mystic communion with the Deity."
+
+The ideal which Basil set before him was never fulfilled in the
+East.  Transported to the West by St. Benedict, "the father of all
+monks," it became that conventual system which did so much during
+the early middle age, not only for the conversion and civilization,
+but for the arts and the agriculture of Europe.
+
+Basil, like his bosom friend, Gregory of Nazianzen, had to go forth
+from his hermitage into the world, and be a bishop, and fight the
+battles of the true faith.  But, as with Gregory, his hermit-
+training had strengthened his soul, while it weakened his body.  The
+Emperor Valens, supporting the Arians against the orthodox, sent to
+Basil his Prefect of the Praetorium, an officer of the highest rank.
+The prefect argued, threatened; Basil was firm.  "I never met," said
+he at last, "such boldness."  "Because," said Basil, "you never met
+a bishop."  The prefect returned to his Emperor.  "My lord, we are
+conquered; this bishop is above threats.  We can do nothing but by
+force."  The Emperor shrank from that crime, and Basil and the
+orthodoxy of his diocese were saved.  The rest of his life and of
+Gregory's belongs, like that of Chrysostom, to general history, and
+we need pursue it no further here.
+
+I said that Basil's idea of what monks should be was never carried
+out in the East, and it cannot be denied that, as the years went on,
+the hermit life took a form less and less practical, and more and
+more repulsive also.  Such men as Antony, Hilarion, Basil, had
+valued the ascetic training, not so much because it had, as they
+thought, a merit in itself, but because it enabled the spirit to
+rise above the flesh; because it gave them strength to conquer their
+passions and appetites, and leave their soul free to think and act.
+
+But their disciples, especially in Syria, seem to have attributed
+more and more merit to the mere act of inflicting want and suffering
+on themselves.  Their souls were darkened, besides, more and more,
+by a doctrine unknown to the Bible, unknown to the early Christians,
+and one which does not seem to have had any strong hold of the mind
+of Antony himself--namely, that sins committed after baptism could
+only be washed away by tears, and expiated by penance; that for them
+the merits of him who died for the sins of the whole world were of
+little or of no avail.
+
+Therefore, in perpetual fear of punishment hereafter, they set their
+whole minds to punish themselves on earth, always tortured by the
+dread that they were not punishing themselves enough, till they
+crushed down alike body, mind, and soul into an abject superstition,
+the details of which are too repulsive to be written here.  Some of
+the instances of this self-invented misery which are recorded, even
+as early as the time of Theodoret, bishop of Cyra, in the middle of
+the fifth century, make us wonder at the puzzling inconsistencies of
+the human mind.  Did these poor creatures really believe that God
+could be propitiated by the torture of his own creatures?  What
+sense could Theodoret (who was a good man himself) have put upon the
+words, "God is good," or "God is love," while he was looking with
+satisfaction, even with admiration and awe, on practices which were
+more fit for worshippers of Moloch?
+
+Those who think these words too strong, may judge for themselves how
+far they apply to his story of Marana and Cyra.
+
+Marana, then, and Cyra were two young ladies of Berhoea, who had
+given up all the pleasures of life to settle themselves in a
+roofless cottage outside the town.  They had stopped up the door
+with stones and clay, and allowed it only to be opened at the feast
+of Pentecost.  Around them lived certain female slaves who had
+voluntarily chosen the same life, and who were taught and exhorted
+through a little window by their mistresses; or rather, it would
+seem, by Marana alone:  for Cyra (who was bent double by her
+"training") was never to speak.  Theodoret, as a priest, was allowed
+to enter the sacred enclosure, and found them shrouded from head to
+foot in long veils, so that neither their faces or hands could be
+seen; and underneath their veils, burdened on every limb, poor
+wretches, with such a load of iron chains and rings that a strong
+man, he says, could not have stood under the weight.  Thus had they
+endured for two-and-forty years, exposed to sun and wind, to frost
+and rain, taking no food at times for many days together.  I have no
+mind to finish the picture, and still less to record any of the
+phrases of rapturous admiration with which Bishop Theodoret comments
+upon their pitiable superstition.
+
+
+
+SIMEON STYLITES
+
+
+
+Of all such anchorites of the far East, the most remarkable,
+perhaps, was the once famous Simeon Stylites--a name almost
+forgotten, save by antiquaries and ecclesiastics, till Mr. Tennyson
+made it once more notorious in a poem as admirable for its savage
+grandness, as for its deep knowledge of human nature.  He has
+comprehended thoroughly, as it seems to me, that struggle between
+self-abasement and self-conceit, between the exaggerated sense of
+sinfulness and the exaggerated ambition of saintly honour, which
+must have gone on in the minds of these ascetics--the temper which
+could cry out one moment with perfect honesty--
+
+
+"Although I be the basest of mankind,
+From scalp to sole one slough and crust of sin;"
+
+
+at the next--
+
+
+"I will not cease to grasp the hope I hold
+Of saintdom; and to clamour, mourn, and sob,
+Battering the gates of heaven with storms of prayer.
+Have mercy, Lord, and take away my sin.
+Let this avail, just, dreadful, mighty God,
+This not be all in vain, that thrice ten years
+Thrice multiplied by superhuman pangs,
+* * * * * *
+A sign between the meadow and the cloud,
+Patient on this tall pillar I have borne
+Rain, wind, frost, heat, hail, damp, and sleet, and snow;
+And I had hoped that ere this period closed
+Thou wouldst have caught me up into thy rest,
+Denying not these weather-beaten limbs
+The meed of saints, the white robe and the palm.
+O take the meaning, Lord:  I do not breathe,
+Not whisper any murmur of complaint.
+Pain heaped ten hundred-fold to this, were still
+Less burthen, by ten-hundred-fold, to bear
+Than were those lead-like tons of sin, that crush'd
+My spirit flat before thee."
+
+
+Admirably also has Mr. Tennyson conceived the hermit's secret doubt
+of the truth of those miracles, which he is so often told that he
+has worked, that he at last begins to believe that he must have
+worked them; and the longing, at the same time, to justify himself
+to himself, by persuading himself that he has earned miraculous
+powers.  On this whole question of hermit miracles I shall speak at
+length hereafter.  I have given specimens enough of them already,
+and shall give as few as possible henceforth.  There is a sameness
+about them which may become wearisome to those who cannot be
+expected to believe them.  But what the hermits themselves thought
+of them, is told (at least, so I suspect) only too truly by Mr.
+Tennyson--
+
+
+   "O Lord, thou knowest what a man I am;
+A sinful man, conceived and born in sin:
+'Tis their own doing; this is none of mine;
+Lay it not to me.  Am I to blame for this,
+That here come those who worship me?  Ha! ha!
+The silly people take me for a saint,
+And bring me offerings of fruit and flowers:
+And I, in truth (thou wilt bear witness here),
+Have all in all endured as much, and more
+Than many just and holy men, whose names
+Are register'd and calendar'd for saints.
+   Good people, you do ill to kneel to me.
+What is it I can have done to merit this?
+It may be I have wrought some miracles,
+And cured some halt and maimed:  but what of that?
+It may be, no one, even among the saints,
+Can match his pains with mine:  but what of that?
+Yet do not rise; for you may look on me,
+And in your looking you may kneel to God.
+Speak, is there any of you halt and maimed?
+I think you know I have some power with heaven
+From my long penance; let him speak his wish.
+   Yes, I can heal him.  Power goes forth from me.
+They say that they are heal'd.  Ah, hark! they shout,
+'St. Simeon Stylites!'  Why, if so,
+God reaps a harvest in me.  O my soul,
+God reaps a harvest in thee.  If this be,
+Can I work miracles, and not be saved?
+This is not told of any.  They were saints.
+It cannot be but that I shall be saved;
+Yea, crowned a saint." . . .
+
+
+I shall not take the liberty of quoting more:  but shall advise all
+who read these pages to study seriously Mr. Tennyson's poem if they
+wish to understand that darker side of the hermit life which became
+at last, in the East, the only side of it.  For in the East the
+hermits seem to have degenerated, by the time of the Mahomedan
+conquest, into mere self-torturing fakeers, like those who may be
+seen to this day in Hindostan.  The salt lost its savour, and in due
+tune it was trampled under foot; and the armies of the Moslem swept
+out of the East a superstition which had ended by enervating instead
+of ennobling humanity.
+
+But in justice, not only to myself, but to Mr. Tennyson (whose
+details of Simeon's asceticism may seem to some exaggerated and
+impossible), I have thought fit to give his life at length, omitting
+only many of his miracles, and certain stories of his penances,
+which can only excite horror and disgust, without edifying the
+reader.
+
+There were, then, three hermits of this name, often confounded; and
+all alike famous (as were Julian, Daniel, and other Stylites) for
+standing for many years on pillars.  One of the Simeons is said by
+Moschus to have been struck by lightning, and his death to have been
+miraculously revealed to Julian the Stylite, who lived twenty-four
+miles off.  More than one Stylite, belonging to the Monophysite
+heresy of Severus Acephalus, was to be found, according to Moschus,
+in the East at the beginning of the seventh century.  This biography
+is that of the elder Simeon, who died (according to Cedrenus) about
+460, after passing some forty or fifty years upon pillars of
+different heights.  There is much discrepancy in the accounts, both
+of his date and of his age; but that such a person really existed,
+and had his imitators, there can be no doubt.  He is honoured as a
+saint alike by the Latin and by the Greek Churches.
+
+His life has been written by a disciple of his named Antony, who
+professes to have been with him when he died; and also by Theodoret,
+who knew him well in life.  Both are to be found in Rosweyde, and
+there seems no reason to doubt their authenticity.  I have therefore
+interwoven them both, marking the paragraphs taken from each.
+
+Theodoret, who says that he was born in the village of Gesa, between
+Antioch and Cilicia, calls him that "famous Simeon--that great
+miracle of the whole world, whom all who obey the Roman rule know;
+whom the Persians also know, and the Indians, and AEthiopians; nay,
+his fame has even spread to the wandering Scythians, and taught them
+his love of toil and love of wisdom;" and says that he might be
+compared with Jacob the patriarch, Joseph the temperate, Moses the
+legislator, David the king and prophet, Micaiah the prophet, and the
+divine men who were like them.  He tells how Simeon, as a boy, kept
+his father's sheep, and, being forced by heavy snow to leave them in
+the fold, went with his parents to the church, and there heard the
+Gospel which blesses those who mourn and weep, and calls those
+miserable who laugh, and those enviable who have a pure heart.  And
+when he asked a bystander what he would gain who did each of these
+things, the man propounded to him the solitary life, and pointed out
+to him the highest philosophy.
+
+This, Theodoret says, he heard from the saint's own tongue.  His
+disciple Antony gives the story of his conversion somewhat
+differently.
+
+
+St. Simeon (says Antony) was chosen by God from his birth, and used
+to study how to obey and please him.  Now his father's name was
+Susocion, and he was brought up by his parents.
+
+When he was thirteen years old, he was feeding his father's sheep;
+and seeing a church he left the sheep and went in, and heard an
+epistle being read.  And when he asked an elder, "Master, what is
+that which is read?" the old man replied, "For the substance (or
+very being) of the soul, that a man may learn to fear God with his
+whole heart, and his whole mind."  Quoth the blessed Simeon, "What
+is to fear God?"  Quoth the elder, "Wherefore troublest thou me, my
+son?"  Quoth he, "I inquire of thee, as of God.  For I wish to learn
+what I hear from thee, because I am ignorant and a fool."  The elder
+answered, "If any man shall have fasted continually, and offered
+prayers every moment, and shall have humbled himself to every man,
+and shall not have loved gold, nor parents, nor garments, nor
+possessions, and if he honours his father and mother, and follows
+the priests of God, he shall inherit the eternal kingdom:  but he
+who, on the contrary, does not keep those things, he shall inherit
+the outer darkness which God hath prepared for the devil and his
+angels.  All these things, my son, are heaped together in a
+monastery."
+
+Hearing this, the blessed Simeon fell at his feet, saying, "Thou art
+my father and my mother, and my teacher of good works, and guide to
+the kingdom of heaven.  For thou hast gained my soul, which was
+already being sunk in perdition.  May the Lord repay thee again for
+it.  For these are the things which edify.  I will now go into a
+monastery, where God shall choose; and let his will be done on me."
+The elder said, "My son, before thou enterest, hear me.  Thou shalt
+have tribulation; for thou must watch and serve in nakedness, and
+sustain ills without ceasing; and again thou shalt be comforted,
+thou vessel precious to God."
+
+And forthwith the blessed Simeon, going out of the church, went to
+the monastery of the holy Timotheus, a wonder-working man; and
+falling down before the gate of the monastery, he lay five days,
+neither eating nor drinking.  And on the fifth day, the abbot,
+coming out, asked him, "Whence art thou, my son?  And what parents
+hast thou, that thou art so afflicted?  Or what is thy name, lest
+perchance thou hast done some wrong?  Or perchance thou art a slave,
+and fleest from thy master?"  Then the blessed Simeon said with
+tears, "By no means, master; but I long to be a servant of God, if
+he so will, because I wish to save my lost soul.  Bid me, therefore,
+enter the monastery, and leave all; and send me away no more."  Then
+the Abbot, taking his hand, introduced him into the monastery,
+saying to the brethren, "My sons, behold I deliver you this brother;
+teach him the canons of the monastery."  Now he was in the monastery
+about four months, serving all without complaint, in which he learnt
+the whole Psalter by heart, receiving every day divine food.  But
+the food which he took with his brethren he gave away secretly to
+the poor, not caring for the morrow.  So the brethren ate at even:
+but he only on the seventh day.
+
+But one day, having gone to the well to draw water, he took the rope
+from the bucket with which the brethren drew water, and wound it
+round his body from his loins to his neck:  and going in, said to
+the brethren, "I went out to draw water, and found no rope on the
+bucket."  And they said, "Hold thy peace, brother, lest the abbot
+know it; till the thing has passed over."  But his body was wounded
+by the tightness and roughness of the rope, because it cut him to
+the bone, and sank into his flesh till it was hardly seen.  But one
+day, some of the brethren going out, found him giving his food to
+the poor; and when they returned, said to the abbot, "Whence hast
+thou brought us that man?  We cannot abstain like him, for he fasts
+from Lord's day to Lord's day, and gives away his food." . . . Then
+the abbot, going out, found as was told him, and said, "Son, what is
+it which the brethren tell of thee?  Is it not enough for thee to
+fast as we do?  Hast thou not heard the Gospel, saying of teachers,
+that the disciple is not above his master?" . . . The blessed Simeon
+stood and answered nought.  And the abbot, being angry, bade strip
+him, and found the rope round him, so that only its outside
+appeared; and cried with a loud voice, saying, "Whence has this man
+come to us, wanting to destroy the rule of the monastery?  I pray
+thee depart hence, and go whither thou wiliest."  And with great
+trouble they took off the rope, and his flesh with it, and taking
+care of him, healed him.
+
+But after he was healed he went out of the monastery, no man knowing
+of it, and entered a deserted tank, in which was no water, where
+unclean spirits dwelt.  And that very night it was revealed to the
+abbot, that a multitude of people surrounded the monastery with
+clubs and swords, saying, "Give us Simeon the servant of God,
+Timotheus; else we will burn thee with thy monastery, because thou
+hast angered a just man."  And when he woke, he told the brethren
+the vision, and how he was much disturbed thereby.  And another
+night he saw a multitude of strong men standing and saying, "Give us
+Simeon the servant of God; for he is beloved by God and the angels:
+why hast thou vexed him?  He is greater than thou before God; for
+all the angels are sorry on his behalf.  And God is minded to set
+him on high in the world, that by him many signs may be done, such
+as no man has done."  Then the abbot, rising, said with great fear
+to the brethren, "Seek me that man, and bring him hither, lest
+perchance we all die on his account.  He is truly a saint of God,
+for I have heard and seen great wonders of him."  Then all the monks
+went out and searched, but in vain, and told the abbot how they had
+sought him everywhere, save in the deserted tank. . . .  Then the
+abbot went, with five brethren, to the tank.  And making a prayer,
+he went down into it with the brethren.  And the blessed Simeon,
+seeing him, began to entreat, saying, "I beg you, servants of God,
+let me alone one hour, that I may render up my spirit; for yet a
+little, and it will fail.  But my soul is very weary, because I have
+angered the Lord."  But the abbot said to him, "Come, servant of
+God, that we may take thee to the monastery; for I know concerning
+thee that thou art a servant of God."  But when he would not, they
+brought him by force to the monastery.  And all fell at his feet,
+weeping, and saying, "We have sinned against thee, servant of God;
+forgive us."  But the blessed Simeon groaned, saying, "Wherefore do
+ye burden an unhappy man and a sinner?  You are the servants of God,
+and my fathers."  And he stayed there about one year.
+
+
+After this (says Theodoret) he came to the Telanassus, under the
+peak of the mountain on which he lived till his death; and having
+found there a little house, he remained in it shut up for three
+years.  But eager always to increase the riches of virtue, he
+longed, in imitation of the divine Moses and Elias, to fast forty
+days; and tried to persuade Bassus, who was then set over the
+priests in the villages, to leave nothing within by him, but to
+close up the door with clay.  He spoke to him of the difficulty, and
+warned him not to think that a violent death was a virtue.  "Put by
+me then, father," he said, "ten loaves, and a cruse of water, and if
+I find my body need sustenance, I will partake of them."  At the end
+of the days, that wonderful man of God, Bassus, removed the clay,
+and going in, found the food and water untouched, and Simeon lying
+unable to speak or move.  Getting a sponge, he moistened and opened
+his lips and then gave him the symbols of the divine mysteries; and,
+strengthened by them, he arose, and took some food, chewing little
+by little lettuces and succory, and such like.
+
+From that time, for twenty-eight years (says Theodoret), he had
+remained fasting continually for forty days at a time.  But custom
+had made it more easy to him.  For on the first days he used to
+stand and praise God; after that, when through emptiness he could
+stand no longer, he used to sit and perform the divine office; and
+on the last day, even lie down.  For when his strength failed
+slowly, he was forced to lie half dead.  But after he stood on the
+column he could not bear to lie down, but invented another way by
+which he could stand.  He fastened a beam to the column, and tied
+himself to it by ropes, and so passed the forty days.  But
+afterwards, when he had received greater grace from on high, he did
+not want even that help:  but stood for the forty days, taking no
+food, but strengthened by alacrity of soul and divine grace.
+
+When he had passed three years in that little house, he took
+possession of the peak which has since been so famous; and when he
+had commanded a wall to be made round him, and procured an iron
+chain, twenty cubits long, he fastened one end of it to a great
+stone, and the other to his right foot, so that he could not, if he
+wished, leave those bounds.  There he lived, continually picturing
+heaven to himself, and forcing himself to contemplate things which
+are above the heavens; for the iron bond did not check the flight of
+his thoughts.  But when the wonderful Meletius, to whom the care of
+the episcopate of Antioch was then commended (a man of sense and
+prudence, and adorned with shrewdness of intellect), told him that
+the iron was superfluous, since the will is able enough to impose on
+the body the chains of reason, he gave way, and obeyed his
+persuasion.  And having sent for a smith, he bade him strike off the
+chain.
+
+[Here follow some painful details unnecessary to be translated.]
+
+When, therefore, his fame was flying far and wide everywhere, all
+ran together, not only the neighbours, but those who were many days'
+journey off, some bringing the palsied, some begging health for the
+sick, some that they might become fathers, and all wishing to
+receive from him what they had not received from nature; and when
+they had received, and gained their request, they went back joyful,
+proclaiming the benefits they had obtained, and sending many more to
+beg the same.  So, as all are coming up from every quarter, and the
+road is like a river, one may see gathered in that place an ocean of
+men, which receives streams from every side; not only of those who
+live in our region, but Ishmaelites, and Persians, and the Armenians
+who are subject to them, and Iberi, and Homerites, and those who
+dwell beyond them.  Many have come also from the extreme west,
+Spaniards, and Britons, and Gauls who live between the two.  Of
+Italy it is superfluous to speak; for they say that at Rome the man
+has become so celebrated that they have put little images of him in
+all the porches of the shops, providing thereby for themselves a
+sort of safeguard and security.
+
+When, therefore, they came innumerable (for all tried to touch him,
+and receive some blessing from those skin garments of his), thinking
+it in the first place absurd and unfit that such exceeding honour
+should be paid him, and next, disliking the labour of the business,
+devised that station on the pillar, bidding one be built, first of
+six cubits, then of twelve, next of twenty-two, and now of thirty-
+six.  For he longs to fly up to heaven, and be freed from this
+earthly conversation.
+
+But I believe that this station was made not without divine counsel.
+Wherefore I exhort fault-finders to bridle their tongue, and not let
+it rashly loose, but rather consider that the Lord has often devised
+such things, that he might profit those who were too slothful.
+
+
+In proof of which, Theodoret quotes the examples of Isaiah, Hosea,
+and Ezekiel; and then goes on to say how God in like manner ordained
+this new and admirable spectacle, by the novelty of it drawing all
+to look, and exhibiting to those who came, a lesson which they could
+trust.  For the novelty of the spectacle (he says) is a worthy
+warrant for the teaching; and he who came to see goes away
+instructed in divine things.  And as those whose lot it is to rule
+over men, after a certain period of time, change the impressions on
+their coins, sometimes stamping them with images of lions, sometimes
+of stars, sometimes of angels, and trying, by a new mark, to make
+the gold more precious; so the King of all, adding to piety and true
+religion these new and manifold modes of living, as certain stamps
+on coin, excites to praise the tongues not only of the children of
+faith, but of those who are diseased with unbelief.  And that so it
+is, not only words bear witness, but facts proclaim aloud.  For many
+myriads of Ishmaelites, who were enslaved in the darkness of
+impiety, have been illuminated by that station on the column.  For
+this most shining lamp, set as it were upon a candlestick, sent
+forth all round its rays, like of the sun:  and one may see (as I
+said) Iberi coming, and Persians, and Armenians, and accepting
+divine baptism.  But the Ishmaelites, coming by tribes, 200 and 300
+at a time, and sometimes even 1,000, deny, with shouts, the error of
+their fathers; and breaking in pieces, before that great
+illuminator, the images which they had worshipped, and renouncing
+the orgies of Venus (for they had received from ancient times the
+worship of that daemon), they receive the divine sacraments, and
+take laws from that holy tongue, bidding farewell to their ancestral
+rites, and renouncing the eating of wild asses and camels.  And this
+I have seen with my own eyes, and have heard them renouncing the
+impiety of their fathers, and assenting to the Evangelic doctrine.
+
+But once I was in the greatest danger:  for he himself told them to
+go to me, and receive priestly benediction, saying that they would
+thence obtain great advantage.  But they, having run together in
+somewhat too barbarous fashion, some dragged me before, some behind,
+some sideways; and those who were further off, scrambling over the
+others, and stretching out their hands, plucked my beard, or seized
+my clothes; and I should have been stifled by their too warm onset,
+had not he, shouting out, dispersed them all.  Such usefulness has
+that column, which is mocked at by scornful men, poured forth; and
+so great a ray of the knowledge of God has it sent forth into the
+minds of barbarians.
+
+I know also of his having done another thing of this kind:--One
+tribe was beseeching the divine man, that he would send forth some
+prayer and blessing for their chief:  but another tribe which was
+present retorted that he ought not to bless that chief, but theirs;
+for the one was a most unjust man, but the other averse to
+injustice.  And when there had been a great contention and barbaric
+wrangling between them, they attacked each other.  But I, using many
+words, kept exhorting them to be quiet, seeing that the divine man
+was able enough to give a blessing to both.  But the one tribe kept
+saying, that the first chief ought not to have it; and the other
+tribe trying to deprive the second chief of it.  Then he, by
+threatening them from above, and calling them dogs, hardly stilled
+the quarrel.  This I have told, wishing to show their great faith.
+For they would not have thus gone mad against each other, had they
+not believed that the divine man's blessing possesses some very
+great power.
+
+I saw another miracle, which was very celebrated.  One coming up
+(he, too, was a chief of a Saracen tribe) besought the divine
+personage that he would help a man whose limbs had given way in
+paralysis on the road; and he said the misfortune had fallen on him
+in Callinicus, which is a very large camp.  When he was brought into
+the midst, the saint bade him renounce the impiety of his
+forefathers; and when he willingly obeyed, he asked him if he
+believed in the Father, the only-begotten Son, and the Holy Spirit.
+And when he confessed that he believed--"Believing," said he, "in
+their names, Arise."  And when the man had risen, he bade him carry
+away his chief (who was a very large man) on his shoulders to his
+tent.  He took him up, and went away forthwith; while those who were
+present raised their voices in praise of God.  This he commanded,
+imitating the Lord, who bade the paralytic carry his bed.  Let no
+man call this imitation tyranny.  For his saying is, "He who
+believeth in me, the works which I do, he shall do also, and more
+than these shall he do."  And, indeed, we have seen the fulfilment
+of this promise.  For though the shadow of the Lord never worked a
+miracle, the shadow of the great Peter both loosed death, and drove
+out diseases, and put daemons to flight.  But the Lord it was who
+did also these miracles by his servants; and now likewise, using his
+name, the divine Simeon works his innumerable wonders.
+
+It befell also that another wonder was worked, by no means inferior
+to the last.  For among those who had believed in the saving name of
+the Lord Christ, an Ishmaelite, of no humble rank, had made a vow to
+God, with Simeon as witness.  Now his promise was this, that he
+would henceforth to the end abstain from animal food.  Transgressing
+this promise once, I know not how, he slew a bird, and dared to eat
+it.  But God being minded to bring him by reproof to conversion, and
+to honour his servant, who was a witness to the broken vow, the
+flesh of the bird was changed into the nature of a stone, so that,
+even if he wished, he could not thenceforth eat it.  For how could
+he, when the body meant for food had turned to stone?  The
+barbarian, stupified by this unexpected sight, came with great haste
+to the holy man, bringing to the light the sin which he had hidden,
+and proclaimed his transgression to all, begging pardon from God,
+and invoking the help of the saint, that by his all-powerful prayers
+he might loose him from the bonds of his sin.  Now many saw that
+miracle, and felt that the part of the bird about the breast
+consisted of bone and stone.
+
+But I was not only an ear-witness of his wonders, but also an ear-
+witness of his prophecies concerning futurity.  For that drought
+which came, and the great dearth of that year, and the famine and
+pestilence which followed together, he foretold two years before,
+saying that he saw a rod which was laid on man, stripes which would
+be inflicted by it.  Moreover, he at another time foretold an
+invasion of locusts, and that it would bring no great harm, because
+the divine clemency soon follows punishment.  But when thirty days
+were past, an innumerable multitude of them hung aloft, so that they
+even cut off the sun's rays and threw a shadow; and that we all saw
+plainly:  but it only damaged the cattle pastures, and in no wise
+hurt the food of man.  To me, too, who was attacked by a certain
+person, he signified that the quarrel would end ere a fortnight was
+past; and I learned the truth of the prediction by experience.
+
+Moreover there were seen by him once two rods, which came down from
+the skies, and fell on the eastern and western lands.  Now the
+divine man said that they signified the rising of the Persian and
+Scythian nations against the Romans; and told the vision to those
+who were by, and with many tears and assiduous prayers, warded that
+disaster, the threat whereof hung over the earth.  Certainly the
+Persian nation, when already armed and prepared to invade the
+Romans, was kept back (the divine will being against them) from
+their attempt, and occupied at home with their own troubles.  But
+while I know many other cases of this kind, I shall pass them over
+to avoid prolixity.  These are surely enough to show the spiritual
+contemplation of his mind.
+
+His fame was great, also, with the King of the Persians; for as the
+ambassadors told, who came to him, he diligently inquired what was
+his life, and what his miracles.  But they say that the King's wife
+also begged oil honoured by his blessing, and accepted it as the
+greatest of gifts.  Moreover, all the King's courtiers, being moved
+by his fame, and having heard many slanders against him from the
+Magi, inquired diligently, and having learnt the truth, called him a
+divine man; while the rest of the crowd, coming to the muleteers and
+servants and soldiers, both offered money, and begged for a share in
+the oil of benediction.  The Queen, too, of the Ishmaelites, longing
+to have a child, sent first some of her most noble subjects to the
+saint, beseeching him that she might become a mother.  And when her
+prayer had been granted, and she had her heart's desire, she took
+the son who had been born, and went to the divine old man; and
+(because women were not allowed to approach him) sent the babe,
+entreating his blessing on it . . . [Here Theodoret puts into the
+Queen's mouth words which it is unnecessary to quote.]
+
+But how long do I strive to measure the depths of the Atlantic sea?
+For as they are unfathomable by man, so do the things which he does
+daily surpass narration.  I, however, admire above all these things
+his endurance; for night and day he stands, so as to be seen by all.
+For as the doors are taken away, and a large part of the wall around
+pulled down, he is set forth as a new and wondrous spectacle to all;
+now standing long, now bowing himself frequently, and offering
+adoration to God.  Many of those who stand by count these
+adorations; and once a man with me, when he had counted 1,244, and
+then missed, gave up counting:  but always, when he bows himself, he
+touches his feet with his forehead.  For as his stomach takes food
+only once in the week, and that very little--no more than is
+received in the divine sacraments,--his back admits of being easily
+bent. . . .  But nothing which happens to him overpowers his
+philosophy; he bears nobly both voluntary and involuntary pains, and
+conquers both by readiness of will.
+
+There came once from Arabena a certain good man, and honoured with
+the ministry of Christ.  He, when he had come to that mountain
+peak,--"Tell me," he cried, "by the very truth which converts the
+human race to itself--Art thou a man, or an incorporeal nature?"
+But when all there were displeased with the question, the saint bade
+them all be silent, and said to him, "Why hast thou asked me this?"
+He answered, "Because I hear every one saying publicly, that thou
+neither eatest nor sleepest; but both are properties of man, and no
+one who has a human nature could have lived without food and sleep."
+Then the saint bade them set a ladder to the column, and him to come
+up; and first to look at his hands, and then feel inside his cloak
+of skins; and to see not only his feet, but a severe wound.  But
+when he saw that he was a man, and the size of that wound, and
+learnt from him how he took nourishment, he came down and told me
+all.
+
+At the public festivals he showed an endurance of another kind.  For
+from the setting of the sun till it had come again to the eastern
+horizon, he stood all night with hands uplift to heaven, neither
+soothed with sleep nor conquered by fatigue.  But in toils so great,
+and so great a magnitude of deeds, and multitude of miracles, his
+self-esteem is as moderate as if he were in dignity the least of all
+men.  Beside his modesty, he is easy of access of speech, and
+gracious, and answers every man who speaks to him, whether he be
+handicraftsman, beggar, or rustic.  And from the bounteous God he
+has received also the gift of teaching, and making his exhortations
+twice a day, he delights the ears of those who hear, discoursing
+much on grace, and setting forth the instructions of the Divine
+Spirit to look up and fly toward heaven, and depart from the earth,
+and imagine the kingdom which is expected, and fear the threats of
+Gehenna, and despise earthly things, and wait for things to come.
+He may be seen, too, acting as judge, and giving right and just
+decisions.  This, and the like, is done after the ninth hour.  For
+all night, and through the day to the ninth hour, he prays
+perpetually.  After that, he first sets forth the divine teaching to
+those who are present; then having heard each man's petition, after
+he has performed some cures, he settles the quarrels of those
+between whom there is any dispute.  About sunset he begins the rest
+of his converse with God.  But though he is employed in this way,
+and does all this, he does not give up the care of the holy
+Churches, sometimes fighting with the impiety of the Greeks,
+sometimes checking the audacity of the Jews, sometimes putting to
+flight the bands of heretics, and sometimes sending messages
+concerning these last to the Emperor; sometimes, too, stirring up
+rulers to zeal for God, and sometimes exhorting the pastors of the
+Churches to bestow more care upon their flocks.
+
+I have gone through these facts, trying to show the shower by one
+drop, and to give those who meet with my writing a taste on the
+finger of the sweetness of the honey.  But there remains (as is to
+be expected) much more; and if he should live longer, he will
+probably add still greater wonders. . . .
+
+
+Thus far Theodoret.  Antony gives some other details of Simeon's
+life upon the column.
+
+
+The devil, he says, in envy transformed himself into the likeness of
+an angel, shining in splendour, with fiery horses, and a fiery
+chariot, and appeared close to the column on which the blessed
+Simeon stood, and shone with glory like an angel.  And the devil
+said with bland speeches, "Simeon, hear my words, which the Lord
+hath commanded thee.  He has sent me, his angel, with a chariot and
+horses of fire, that I may carry thee away, as I carried Elias.  For
+thy time is come.  Do thou, in like wise, ascend now with me into
+the chariot, because the Lord of heaven and earth has sent it down.
+Let us ascend together into the heavens, that the angels and
+archangels may see thee, with Mary the mother of the Lord, with the
+Apostles and martyrs, the confessors and prophets; because they
+rejoice to see thee, that thou mayest pray to the Lord, who hast
+made thee after his own image.  Verily I have spoken to thee:  delay
+not to ascend."  Simeon, having ended his prayer, said, "Lord, wilt
+thou carry me, a sinner, into heaven?"  And lifting his right foot
+that he might step into the chariot, he lifted also his right hand,
+and made the sign of Christ.  When he had made the sign of the
+cross, forthwith the devil appeared nowhere, but vanished with his
+device, as dust before the face of the wind.  Then understood Simeon
+that it was an art of the devil.
+
+Having recovered himself, therefore, he said to his foot, "Thou
+shalt not return back hence, but stand here until my death, when the
+Lord shall send for me a sinner."
+
+[Here follow more painful stories, which had best be omitted.]
+
+But after much time, his mother, hearing of his fame, came to see
+him, but was forbidden, because no woman entered that place.  But
+when the blessed Simeon heard the voice of his mother, he said to
+her, "Bear up, my mother, a little while, and we shall see each
+other, if God will."  But she, hearing this, began to weep, and
+tearing her hair, rebuked him, saying, "Son, why hast thou done
+this?  In return for the body in which I bore thee, thou hast filled
+me full of grief.  For the milk with which I nourished thee, thou
+hast given me tears.  For the kiss with which I kissed thee, thou
+hast given me bitter pangs of heart.  For the grief and labour which
+I have suffered, thou hast laid on me cruel stripes."  And she spoke
+so much that she made us all weep.  The blessed Simeon, hearing the
+voice of her who bore him, put his face in his hands and wept
+bitterly; and commanded her, saying, "Lady mother, be still a little
+time, and we shall see each other in eternal rest."  But she began
+to say, "By Christ, who formed thee, if there is a probability of
+seeing thee, who hast been so long a stranger to me, let me see
+thee; or if not, let me only hear thy voice and die at once; for thy
+father is dead in sorrow because of thee.  And now do not destroy me
+for very bitterness, my son."  Saying this, for sorrow and weeping
+she fell asleep; for during three days and three nights she had not
+ceased entreating him.  Then the blessed Simeon prayed the Lord for
+her, and she forthwith gave up the ghost.
+
+But they took up her body, and brought it where he could see it.
+And he said, weeping, "The Lord receive thee in joy, because thou
+hast endured tribulation for me, and borne me, and nursed and
+nourished me with labour."  And as he said that, his mother's
+countenance perspired, and her body was stirred in the sight of us
+all.  But he, lifting up his eyes to heaven, said, "Lord God of
+virtues, who sittest above the cherubim, and searchest the
+foundations of the abyss, who knewest Adam before he was; who hast
+promised the riches of the kingdom of heaven to those who love thee;
+who didst speak to Moses in the bush of fire; who blessedst Abraham
+our father; who bringest into Paradise the souls of the just, and
+sinkest the souls of the impious to perdition; who didst humble the
+lions, and mitigate for thy servants the strong fires of the
+Chaldees; who didst nourish Elisha by the ravens which brought him
+food--receive her soul in peace, and put her in the place of the
+holy fathers, for thine is the power for ever and ever."
+
+
+Antony then goes on to relate the later years of the saint's life.
+
+He tells how Simeon, some time after this, ascended the column of
+forty cubits; how a great dragon (serpent) crawled towards it, and
+coiled round it, entreating (so it seemed) to be freed from a spike
+of wood which had entered its eye; and how, St. Simeon took pity on
+it, he caused the spike (which was a cubit long) to come out.
+
+He tells how a woman, drinking water from a jar at night, swallowed
+a snake unawares, which grew within her, till she was brought to the
+blessed Simeon, who commanded some of the water of the monastery to
+be given her; on which the serpent crawled out of her mouth, three
+cubits long, and burst immediately; and was hung up there seven
+days, as a testimony to many.
+
+He tells how, when there was great want of water, St. Simeon prayed
+till the earth opened on the east of the monastery, and a cave full
+of water was discovered, which had never failed them to that day.
+
+He tells how men, sitting beneath a tree, on their way to the saint,
+saw a doe go by, and commanded her to stop, "by the prayers of St.
+Simeon;" which when she had done, they killed and ate her, and came
+to St. Simeon with the skin.  But they were all struck dumb, and
+hardly cured after two years.  And the skin of the doe they hung up,
+for a testimony to many.
+
+He tells of a huge leopard, which slew men and cattle all around;
+and how St. Simeon bade sprinkle in his haunts soil or water from
+the monastery; and when men went again, they found the leopard dead.
+
+He tells how, when St. Simeon cured any one, he bade him go home,
+and honour God who had healed him, and not dare to say that Simeon
+had cured him, lest a worse thing should suddenly come to him; and
+not to presume to swear by the name of the Lord, for it was a grave
+sin; but to swear, "whether justly or unjustly, by him, lowly and a
+sinner.  Wherefore all the Easterns, and barbarous tribes in those
+regions, swear by Simeon."
+
+He tells how a robber from Antioch, Jonathan by name, fled to St.
+Simeon, and embraced the column, weeping bitterly, and saying how he
+had committed every crime, and had come thither to repent.  And how
+the saint said, "Of such is the kingdom of heaven:  but do not try
+to tempt me, lest thou be found again in the sins which thou hast
+cast away."  Then came the officials from Antioch, demanding that he
+should be given up, to be cast to the wild beasts.  But Simeon
+answered, "My sons, I brought him not hither, but One greater than
+I; for he helps such as this man, and of such is the kingdom of
+heaven.  But if you can enter, carry him hence; I cannot give him
+up, for I fear him who has sent the man to me."  And they, struck
+with fear, went away.  Then Jonathan lay for seven days embracing
+the column, and then asked the saint leave to go.  The saint asked
+him if he were going back to sin?  "No, lord," he said; "but my time
+is fulfilled," and straightway he gave up the ghost; and when
+officials came again from Antioch, demanding him, Simeon replied:
+"He who brought him came with a multitude of the heavenly host, and
+is able to send into Tartarus your city, and all who dwell in it,
+who also has reconciled this man to himself; and I was afraid lest
+he should slay me suddenly.  Therefore weary me no more, a humble
+man and poor."
+
+But after a few years (says Antony) it befell one day that he bowed
+himself in prayer, and remained so three days--that is, the Friday,
+the Sabbath, and the Lord's day.  Then I was terrified, and went up
+to him, and stood before his face, and said to him, "Master, arise:
+bless us; for the people have been waiting three days and three
+nights for a blessing from thee."  And he answered me not; and I
+said again to him:  "Wherefore dost thou grieve me, lord? or in what
+have I offended?  I beseech thee, put out thy hand to me; or,
+perchance, thou hast already departed from us?"
+
+And seeing that he did not answer, I thought to tell no one; for I
+feared to touch him:  and, standing about half an hour, I bent down,
+and put my ear to listen; and there was no breathing:  but a
+fragrance as of many scents rose from his body.  And so I understood
+that he rested in the Lord; and, turning faint, I wept most
+bitterly; and, bending down, I kissed his eyes, and clasped his
+beard and hair, and reproaching him, I said:  "To whom dost thou
+leave me, lord? or where shall I seek thy angelic doctrine?  What
+answer shall I make for thee? or whose soul will look at this
+column, without thee, and not grieve?  What answer shall I make to
+the sick, when they come here to seek thee, and find thee not?  What
+shall I say, poor creature that I am?  To-day I see thee; to-morrow
+I shall look right and left, and not find thee.  And what covering
+shall I put upon thy column?  Woe to me, when folk shall come from
+afar, seeking thee, and shall not find thee!"  And, for much sorrow,
+I fell asleep.
+
+And forthwith he appeared to me, and said:  "I will not leave this
+column, nor this place, and this blessed mountain, where I was
+illuminated.  But go down, satisfy the people, and send word
+secretly to Antioch, lest a tumult arise.  For I have gone to rest,
+as the Lord willed:  but do thou not cease to minister in this
+place, and the Lord shall repay thee thy wages in heaven."
+
+But, rising from sleep, I said, in terror, "Master, remember me in
+thy holy rest."  And, lifting up his garments, I fell at his feet,
+and kissed them; and, holding his hands, I laid them on my eyes,
+saying, "Bless me, I beseech thee, my lord!"  And again I wept, and
+said, "What relics shall I carry away from thee as memorials?"  And
+as I said that his body was moved; therefore I was afraid to touch
+him.
+
+And, that no one might know, I came down quickly, and sent a
+faithful brother to the Bishop at Antioch.  He came at once with
+three Bishops, and with them Ardaburius, the master of the soldiers,
+with his people, and stretched curtains round the column, and
+fastened their clothes around it.  For they were cloth of gold.
+
+And when they laid him down by the altar before the column, and
+gathered themselves together, birds flew round the column, crying,
+and as it were lamenting, in all men's sight; and the wailing of the
+people and of the cattle resounded for seven miles away; yea, even
+the hills, and the fields, and the trees were sad around that place;
+for everywhere a dark cloud hung about it.  And I watched an angel
+coming to visit him; and, about the seventh hour, seven old men
+talked with that angel, whose face was like lightning, and his
+garments as snow.  And I watched his voice, in fear and trembling,
+as long as I could hear it; but what he said I cannot tell.
+
+But when the holy Simeon lay upon the bier, the Pope of Antioch,
+wishing to take some of his beard for a blessing, stretched out his
+hand; and forthwith it was dried up; and prayers were made to God
+for him, and so his hand was restored again.
+
+Then, laying the corpse on the bier, they took it to Antioch, with
+psalms and hymns.  But all the people round that region wept,
+because the protection of such mighty relics was taken from them,
+and because the Bishop of Antioch had sworn that no man should touch
+his body.
+
+But when they came to the fifth milestone from Antioch, to the
+village which is called Meroe, no one could move him.  Then a
+certain man, deaf and dumb for forty years, who had committed a very
+great crime, suddenly fell down before the bier, and began to cry,
+"Thou art well come, servant of God; for thy coming will save me:
+and if I shall obtain the grace to live, I will serve thee all the
+days of my life."  And, rising, he caught hold of one of the mules
+which carried the bier, and forthwith moved himself from that place.
+And so the man was made whole from that hour.
+
+Then all going out of the city of Antioch received the body of the
+holy Simeon on gold and silver, with psalms and hymns, and with many
+lamps brought it into the greater church, and thence to another
+church, which is called Penitence.  Moreover, many virtues are
+wrought at his tomb, more than in his life; and the man who was made
+whole served there till the day of his death.  But many offered
+treasures to the Bishop of Antioch for the faith, begging relics
+from the body:  but, on account of his oath, he never gave them.
+
+I, Antony, lowly and a sinner, have set forth briefly, as far as I
+could, this lesson.  But blessed is he who has this writing in a
+book, and reads it in the church and house of God; and when he shall
+have brought it to his memory, he shall receive a reward from the
+Most High; to whom is honour, power, and virtue, for ever and ever.
+Amen.
+
+
+After such a fantastic story as this of Simeon, it is full time
+(some readers may have thought that it was full time long since) to
+give my own opinion of the miracles, visions, daemons, and other
+portents which occur in the lives of these saints.  I have refrained
+from doing so as yet, because I wished to begin by saying everything
+on behalf of these old hermits which could honestly be said, and to
+prejudice my readers' minds in their favour rather than against
+them; because I am certain that if we look on them merely with scorn
+and ridicule,--if we do not acknowledge and honour all in them which
+was noble, virtuous, and honest,--we shall never be able to combat
+their errors, either in our own hearts or in those of our children:
+and that we may have need to do so is but too probable.  In this
+age, as in every other age of materialism and practical atheism, a
+revulsion in favour of superstition is at hand; I may say is taking
+place round us now.  Doctrines are tolerated as possibly true,--
+persons are regarded with respect and admiration, who would have
+been looked on, even fifty years ago, if not with horror, yet with
+contempt, as beneath the serious notice of educated English people.
+But it is this very contempt which has brought about the change of
+opinion concerning them.  It has been discovered that they were not
+altogether so absurd as they seemed; that the public mind, in its
+ignorance, has been unjust to them; and, in hasty repentance for
+that injustice, too many are ready to listen to those who will tell
+them that these things are not absurd at all--that there is no
+absurdity in believing that the leg-bone of St. Simon Stock may
+possess miraculous powers, or that the spirits of the departed
+communicate with their friends by rapping on the table.  The ugly
+after-crop of superstition which is growing up among us now is the
+just and natural punishment of our materialism--I may say, of our
+practical atheism.  For those who will not believe in the real
+spiritual world, in which each man's soul stands face to face all
+day long with Almighty God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,
+are sure at last to crave after some false spiritual world, and
+seek, like the evil and profligate generation of the Jews, after
+visible signs and material wonders.  And those who will not believe
+that the one true and living God is above their path and about their
+bed and spieth out all their ways, and that in him they live and
+move and have their being, are but too likely at last to people with
+fancied saints and daemons that void in the imagination and in the
+heart which their own unbelief has made.
+
+Are we then to suppose that these old hermits had lost faith in God?
+On the contrary, they were the only men in that day who had faith in
+God.  And, if they had faith in any other things or persons beside
+God, they merely shared in the general popular ignorance and
+mistakes of their own age; and we must not judge those who, born in
+an age of darkness, were struggling earnestly toward the light, as
+we judge those who, born in an age of scientific light, are retiring
+of their own will back into the darkness.
+
+Before I enter upon the credibility of these alleged saints'
+miracles, I must guard my readers carefully from supposing that I
+think miracles impossible.  Heaven forbid.  He would be a very rash
+person who should do that, in a world which swarms with greater
+wonders than those recorded in the biography of a saint.  For, after
+all, which is more wonderful, that God should be able to restore the
+dead to life, or that he should be able to give life at all?  Again,
+as for these miracles being contrary to our experience, that is no
+very valid argument against them; for equally contrary to our
+experience is every new discovery of science, every strange
+phenomenon among plants and animals, every new experiment in a
+chemical lecture.
+
+The more we know of science the more we must confess, that nothing
+is too strange to be true:  and therefore we must not blame or laugh
+at those who in old times believed in strange things which were not
+true.  They had an honest and rational sense of the infinite and
+wonderful nature of the universe, and of their own ignorance about
+it; and they were ready to believe anything, as the truly wise man
+will be ready also.  Only, from ignorance of the laws of the
+universe, they did not know what was likely to be true and what was
+not; and therefore they believed many things which experience has
+proved to be false; just as Seba or any of the early naturalists
+were ready to believe in six-legged dragons, or in the fatal power
+of the basilisk's eye; fancies which, if they had been facts, would
+not have been nearly as wonderful as the transformation of the
+commonest insect, or the fertilization of the meanest weed:  but
+which are rejected now, not because they are too wonderful, but
+simply because experience has proved them to be untrue.  And
+experience, it must be remembered, is the only sound test of truth.
+As long as men will settle beforehand for themselves, without
+experience, what they ought to see, so long will they be perpetually
+fancying that they or others have seen it; and their faith, as it is
+falsely called, will delude not only their reason, but their very
+hearing, sight, and touch.
+
+In this age we see no supernatural prodigies, because there are none
+to see; and when we are told that the reason why we see no prodigies
+is because we have no faith, we answer (if we be sensible), Just so.
+As long as people had faith, in plain English believed, that they
+could be magically cured of a disease, they thought that they or
+others were so cured.  As long as they believed that ghosts could be
+seen, every silly person saw them.  As long as they believed that
+daemons transformed themselves into an animal's shape, they said,
+"The devil croaked at me this morning in the shape of a raven; and
+therefore my horse fell with me."  As long as they believed that
+witches could curse them, they believed that an old woman in the
+next parish had overlooked them, their cattle, and their crops; and
+that therefore they were poor, diseased, and unfortunate.  These
+dreams, which were common among the peasants in remote districts
+five-and-twenty years ago, have vanished, simply from the spread (by
+the grace of God, as I hold) of an inductive habit of mind; of the
+habit of looking coolly, boldly, carefully, at facts; till now, even
+among the most ignorant peasantry, the woman who says that she has
+seen a ghost is likely not to be complimented on her assertion.  But
+it does not follow that that woman's grandmother, when she said that
+she saw a ghost, was a consciously dishonest person; on the
+contrary, so complex and contradictory is human nature, she would
+have been, probably, a person of more than average intellect and
+earnestness; and her instinct of the invisible and the infinite
+(which is that which raises man above the brutes) would have been,
+because misinformed, the honourable cause of her error.  And thus we
+may believe of the good hermits, of whom prodigies are recorded.
+
+As to the truth of the prodigies themselves, there are several ways
+of looking at them.
+
+First, we may neither believe nor disbelieve them; but talk of them
+as "devout fairy tales," religious romances, and allegories; and so
+save ourselves the trouble of judging whether they were true.  That
+is at least an easy and pleasant method; very fashionable in a
+careless, unbelieving age like this:  but in following it we shall
+be somewhat cowardly; for there is hardly any matter a clear
+judgment on which is more important just now than these same saints'
+miracles.
+
+Next, we may believe them utterly and all; and that is also an easy
+and pleasant method.  But if we follow it, we shall be forced to
+believe, among other facts, that St. Paphnutius was carried
+miraculously across a river, because he was too modest to undress
+himself and wade; that St. Helenus rode a savage crocodile across a
+river, and then commanded it to die; and that it died accordingly
+upon the spot; and that St. Goar, entering the palace of the
+Archbishop of Treves, hung his cape on a sunbeam, mistaking it for a
+peg.  And many other like things we shall be forced to believe, with
+which this book has no concern.
+
+Or, again, we may believe as much as we can, because we should like,
+if we could, to believe all.  But as we have not--no man has as yet-
+-any criterion by which we can judge how much of these stories we
+ought to believe and how much not, which actually happened and which
+did not, therefore we shall end (as not only the most earnest and
+pious, but the most clear and logical persons, who have taken up
+this view, have ended already) by believing all:  which is an end
+not to be desired.
+
+Or we may believe as few as possible of them, because we should
+like, if we could, to believe none.  And this method, for the reason
+aforesaid (namely, that there is no criterion by which we can settle
+what to believe and what not), usually ends in believing none at
+all.
+
+This, of believing none at all, is the last method; and this, I
+confess fairly, I am inclined to think is the right one; and that
+these good hermits worked no real miracles and saw no real visions
+whatsoever.
+
+I confess that this is a very serious assertion.  For there is as
+much evidence in favour of these hermits' miracles and visions as
+there is, with most men, of the existence of China; and much more
+than there, with most men, is of the earth's going round the sun.
+
+But the truth is, that evidence, in most matters of importance, is
+worth very little.  Very few people decide a question on its facts,
+but on their own prejudices as to what they would like to have
+happened.  Very few people are judges of evidence; not even of their
+own eyes and ears.  Very few persons, when they see a thing, know
+what they have seen, and what not.  They tell you quite honestly,
+not what they saw, but what they think they ought to have seen, or
+should like to have seen.  It is a fact too often conveniently
+forgotten, that in every human crowd the majority will be more or
+less bad, or at least foolish; the slaves of anger, spite, conceit,
+vanity, sordid hope, and sordid fear.  But let them be as honest and
+as virtuous as they may, pleasure, terror, and the desire of seeming
+to have seen or heard more than their neighbours, and all about it,
+make them exaggerate.  If you take apart five honest men, who all
+stood by and saw the same man do anything strange, offensive, or
+even exciting, no two of them will give you quite the same account
+of it.  If you leave them together, while excited, an hour before
+you question them, they will have compared notes and made up one
+story, which will contain all their mistakes combined; and it will
+require the skill of a practised barrister to pick the grain of
+wheat out of the chaff.
+
+Moreover, when people are crowded together under any excitement,
+there is nothing which they will not make each other believe.  They
+will make each other believe in spirit-rapping, table-turning, the
+mesmeric fluid, electro-biology; that they saw the lion on
+Northumberland House wagging his tail; {203} that witches have been
+seen riding in the air; that the Jews had poisoned the wells; that--
+but why go further into the sad catalogue of human absurdities, and
+the crimes which have followed them?  Every one is ashamed of not
+seeing what every one else sees, and persuades himself against his
+own eye sight for fear of seeming stupid or ill-conditioned; and
+therefore in all evidence, the fewer witnesses, the more truth,
+because the evidence of ten men is worth more than that of a hundred
+together; and the evidence of a thousand men together is worth still
+less.
+
+Now, if people are savage and ignorant, diseased and poverty-
+stricken; even if they are merely excited and credulous, and quite
+sure that something wonderful must happen, then they will be also
+quite certain that something wonderful has happened; and their
+evidence will be worth nothing at all.
+
+Moreover, suppose that something really wonderful has happened;
+suppose, for instance, that some nervous or paralytic person has
+been suddenly restored to strength by the command of a saint or of
+some other remarkable man.  This is quite possible, I may say
+common; and it is owing neither to physical nor to so-called
+spiritual causes, but simply to the power which a strong mind has
+over a weak one, to make it exert itself, and cure itself by its own
+will, though but for a time.
+
+When this good news comes to be told, and to pass from mouth to
+mouth, it ends of quite a different shape from that in which it
+began.  It has been added to, taken from, twisted in every direction
+according to the fancy or the carelessness of each teller, till what
+really happened in the first case no one will be able to say; {204}
+and this is, therefore, what actually happened, in the case of these
+reported wonders.  Moreover (and this is the most important
+consideration of all) for men to be fair judges of what really
+happens, they must have somewhat sound minds in somewhat sound
+bodies; which no man can have (however honest and virtuous) who
+gives himself up, as did these old hermits, to fasting and vigils.
+That continued sleeplessness produces delusions, and at last actual
+madness, every physician knows; and they know also, as many a poor
+sailor has known when starving on a wreck, and many a poor soldier
+in such a retreat as that of Napoleon from Moscow, that extreme
+hunger and thirst produce delusions also, very similar to (and
+caused much in the same way as) those produced by ardent spirits; so
+that many a wretched creature ere now has been taken up for
+drunkenness, who has been simply starving to death.
+
+Whence it follows that these good hermits, by continual fasts and
+vigils, must have put themselves (and their histories prove that
+they did put themselves) into a state of mental disease, in which
+their evidence was worth nothing; a state in which the mind cannot
+distinguish between facts and dreams; in which life itself is one
+dream; in which (as in the case of madness, or of a feverish child)
+the brain cannot distinguish between the objects which are outside
+it and the imaginations which are inside it.  And it is plain, that
+the more earnest and pious, and therefore the more ascetic, one of
+these good men was, the more utterly would his brain be in a state
+of chronic disease.  God forbid that we should scorn them,
+therefore, or think the worse of them in any way.  They were
+animated by a truly noble purpose, the resolution to be good
+according to their light; they carried out that purpose with
+heroical endurance, and they have their reward:  but this we must
+say, if we be rational people, that on their method of holiness, the
+more holy any one of them was, the less trustworthy was his account
+of any matter whatsoever; and that the hermit's peculiar temptations
+(quite unknown to the hundreds of unmarried persons who lead quiet
+and virtuous, because rational and healthy, lives) are to be
+attributed, not as they thought, to a daemon, but to a more or less
+unhealthy nervous system.
+
+It must be remembered, moreover, in justice to these old hermits,
+that they did not invent the belief that the air was full of
+daemons.  All the Eastern nations had believed in Genii (Jinns),
+Fairies (Peris), and Devas, Divs, or devils.  The Devas of the early
+Hindus were beneficent beings:  to the eyes of the old Persians (in
+their hatred of idolatry and polytheism), they appeared evil beings,
+Divs, or Devils.  And even so the genii and daemons of the Roman
+Empire became, in the eyes of the early Christians, wicked and cruel
+spirits.
+
+And they had their reasons, and on the whole sound ones, for so
+regarding them.  The educated classes had given up any honest and
+literal worship of the old gods.  They were trying to excuse
+themselves for their lingering half belief in them, by turning them
+into allegories, powers of nature, metaphysical abstractions, as did
+Porphyry and Iamblichus, Plotinus and Proclus, and the rest of the
+Neo-Platonist school of aristocratic philosophers and fine ladies:
+but the lower classes still, in every region, kept up their own
+local beliefs and worships, generally of the most foul and brutal
+kind.  The animal worship of Egypt among the lower classes was
+sufficiently detestable in the time of Herodotus.  It had certainly
+not improved in that of Juvenal and Persius; and was still less
+likely to have improved afterwards.  This is a subject so shocking
+that it can be only hinted at.  But as a single instance--what
+wonder if the early hermits of Egypt looked on the crocodile as
+something diabolic, after seeing it, for generations untold, petted
+and worshipped in many a city, simply because it was the incarnate
+symbol of brute strength, cruelty, and cunning?  We must remember,
+also, that earlier generations (the old Norsemen and Germans just as
+much as the old Egyptians) were wont to look on animals as more
+miraculous than we do; as more akin, in many cases, to human beings;
+as guided, not by a mere blind instinct, but by an intellect which
+was allied to, and often surpassed man's intellect.  "The bear,"
+said the old Norsemen, "had ten men's strength, and eleven men's
+wit; "and in some such light must the old hermits have looked on the
+hyaena, "bellua," the monster par excellence; or on the crocodile,
+the hippopotamus, and the poisonous snakes, which have been objects
+of terror and adoration in every country where they have been
+formidable.  Whether the hyaenas were daemons, or were merely sent
+by the daemons, St. Antony and St. Athanasius do not clearly define,
+for they did not know.  It was enough for them that the beasts
+prowled at night in those desert cities, which were, according to
+the opinions, not only of the Easterns, but of the Romans, the
+special haunt of ghouls, witches, and all uncanny things.  Their
+fiendish laughter--which, when heard even in a modern menagerie,
+excites and shakes most person's nerves--rang through hearts and
+brains which had no help or comfort, save in God alone.  The beast
+tore up the dead from their graves; devoured alike the belated child
+and the foulest offal; and was in all things a type and incarnation
+of that which man ought not to be.  Why should not he, so like the
+worst of men, have some bond or kindred with the evil beings who
+were not men?  Why should not the graceful and deadly cobra, the
+horrid cerastes, the huge throttling python, and even more, the
+loathly puff-adder, undistinguishable from the gravel among which he
+lay coiled, till he leaped furiously and unswerving, as if shot from
+a bow, upon his prey--why should not they too be kindred to that
+evil power who had been, in the holiest and most ancient books,
+personified by the name of the Serpent?  Before we have a right to
+say that the hermits' view of these deadly animals was not the most
+rational, as well as the most natural, which they could possibly
+have taken up, we must put ourselves in their places; and look at
+nature as they had learnt to look at it, not from Scripture and
+Christianity, so much as from the immemorial traditions of their
+heathen ancestors.
+
+If it be argued, that they ought to have been well enough acquainted
+with these beasts to be aware of their merely animal nature, the
+answer is--that they were probably not well acquainted with the
+beasts of the desert.  They had never, perhaps, before their
+"conversion," left the narrow valley, well tilled and well
+inhabited, which holds the Nile.  A climb from it into the barren
+mountains and deserts east and west was a journey out of the world
+into chaos, and the region of the unknown and the horrible, which
+demanded high courage from the unarmed and effeminate Egyptian, who
+knew not what monster he might meet ere sundown.  Moreover, it is
+very probable that during these centuries of decadence, in Egypt, as
+in other parts of the Roman Empire, "the wild beasts of the field
+had increased" on the population, and were reappearing in the more
+cultivated grounds.
+
+But these old hermits appear perpetually in another, and a more
+humane, if not more human aspect, as the miraculous tamers of savage
+beasts.  Those who wish to know all which can be alleged in favour
+of their having possessed such a power, should read M. de
+Montalembert's chapter, "Les Moines et la Nature." {209}  All that
+learning and eloquence can say in favour of the theory is said
+there; and with a candour which demands from no man full belief of
+many beautiful but impossible stories, "travesties of historic
+verity," which have probably grown up from ever-varying tradition in
+the course of ages.  M. de Montalembert himself points out a
+probable explanation of many of them:--An ingenious scholar of our
+times{210} (he says) has pointed out their true and legitimate
+origin--at least in Ancient Gaul.  According to him, after the
+gradual disappearance of the Gallo-Roman population, the oxen, the
+horses, the dogs had returned to the wild state; and it was in the
+forest that the Breton missionaries had to seek these animals, to
+employ them anew for domestic use.  The miracle was, to restore to
+man the command and the enjoyment of those creatures, which God had
+given him as instruments.
+
+This theory is probable enough, and will explain, doubtless, many
+stories.  It may even explain those of tamed wolves, who may have
+been only feral dogs, i.e. dogs run wild.  But it will not explain
+those in which (in Ireland as well as in Gaul) the stag appears as
+obeying the hermit's commands.  The twelve huge stags who come out
+of the forest to draw the ploughs for St. Leonor and his monks, or
+those who drew to his grave the corpse of the Irish hermit Kellac,
+or those who came out of the forest to supply the place of St.
+Colodoc's cattle, which the seigneur had carried off in revenge for
+his having given sanctuary to a hunted deer, must have been wild
+from the beginning; and many another tale must remain without any
+explanation whatsoever--save the simplest of all.  Neither can any
+such theory apply to the marvels vouched for by St. Athanasius, St.
+Jerome, and other contemporaries, which "show us (to quote M. de
+Montalembert) the most ferocious animals at the feet of such men as
+Antony, Pachomius, Macarius, and Hilarion, and those who copied
+them.  At every page one sees wild asses, crocodiles, hippopotami,
+hyaenas, and, above all, lions, transformed into respectful
+companions and docile servants of these prodigies of sanctity; and
+one concludes thence, not that these beasts had reasonable souls,
+but that God knew how to glorify those who devoted themselves to his
+glory, and thus show how all Nature obeyed man before he was
+excluded from Paradise by his disobedience."
+
+This is, on the whole, the cause which the contemporary biographers
+assign for these wonders.  The hermits were believed to have
+returned, by celibacy and penitence, to "the life of angels;" to
+that state of perfect innocence which was attributed to our first
+parents in Eden:  and therefore of them our Lord's words were true:
+"He that believeth in me, greater things than these (which I do)
+shall he do."
+
+But those who are of a different opinion will seek for different
+causes.  They will, the more they know of these stories, admire
+often their gracefulness, often their pathos, often their deep moral
+significance; they will feel the general truth of M. de
+Montalembert's words:  "There is not one of them which does not
+honour and profit human nature, and which does not express a victory
+of weakness over force, and of good over evil."  But if they look on
+physical facts as sacred things, as the voice of God revealed in the
+phenomena of matter, their first question will be, "Are they true?"
+
+Some of them must be denied utterly, like that of St. Helenus,
+riding and then slaying the crocodile.  It did not happen.  Abbot
+Ammon {212a} did not make two dragons guard his cell against
+robbers.  St. Gerasimus {212b} did not set the lion, out of whose
+foot he had taken a thorn, to guard his ass; and when the ass was
+stolen by an Arabian camel-driver, he did not (fancying that the
+lion had eaten the ass) make him carry water in the ass's stead.
+Neither did the lion, when next he met the thief and the ass, bring
+them up, in his own justification, {212c} to St. Gerasimus.  St.
+Costinian did not put a pack-saddle on a bear, and make him carry a
+great stone.  A lioness did not bring her five blind whelps to a
+hermit, that he might give them sight. {212d}  And, though Sulpicius
+Severus says that he saw it with his own eyes, {212e} it is hard to
+believe the latter part of the graceful story which he tells--of an
+old hermit whom he found dwelling alone twelve miles from the Nile,
+by a well of vast depth.  One ox he had, whose whole work was to
+raise the water by a wheel.  Around him was a garden of herbs, kept
+rich and green amid the burning sand, where neither seed nor root
+could live.  The old man and the ox fed together on the produce of
+their common toil; but two miles off there was a single palm-tree,
+to which, after supper, the hermit takes his guests.  Beneath the
+palm they find a lioness; but instead of attacking them, she moves
+"modestly" away at the old man's command, and sits down to wait for
+her share of dates.  She feeds out of his hand, like a household
+animal, and goes her way, leaving her guests trembling, "and
+confessing how great was the virtue of the hermit's faith, and how
+great their own infirmity."
+
+This last story, which one would gladly believe, were it possible, I
+have inserted as one of those which hang on the verge of
+credibility.  In the very next page, Sulpicius Severus tells a story
+quite credible, of a she-wolf, which he saw with his own eyes as
+tame as any dog.  There can be no more reason to doubt that fact
+than to ascribe it to a miracle.  We may even believe that the wolf,
+having gnawed to pieces the palm basket which the good old man was
+weaving, went off, knowing that she had done wrong, and after a week
+came back, begged pardon like a rational soul, and was caressed, and
+given a double share of bread.  Many of these stories which tell of
+the taming of wild beasts may be true, and yet contain no miracle.
+They are very few in number, after all, in proportion to the number
+of monks; they are to be counted at most by tens, while the monks
+are counted by tens of thousands.  And among many great companies of
+monks, there may have been one individual, as there is, for
+instance, in many a country parish a bee-taker or a horse-tamer, of
+quiet temper and strong nerve, and quick and sympathetic intellect,
+whose power over animals is so extraordinary, as to be attributed by
+the superstitious and uneducated to some hereditary secret, or some
+fairy gift.  Very powerful to attract wild animals must have been
+the good hermits' habit of sitting motionless for hours, till (as
+with St. Guthlac) the swallows sat and sang upon his knee; and of
+moving slowly and gently at his work, till (as with St. Karilef,
+while he pruned his vines) the robin came and built in his hood as
+it hung upon a tree:  very powerful his freedom from anger, and, yet
+more important, from fear, which always calls out rage in wild
+beasts, while a calm and bold front awes them:  and most powerful of
+all, the kindliness of heart, the love of companionship, which
+brought the wild bison to feed by St. Karilef's side as he prayed
+upon the lawn; and the hind to nourish St. Giles with her milk in
+the jungles of the Bouches du Rhone.  There was no miracle; save the
+moral miracle that, in ages of cruelty and slaughter, these men had
+learned (surely by the inspiration of God) how--
+
+
+"He prayeth well who loveth well
+Both man and bird and beast;
+He prayeth best who loveth best
+All things, both great and small;
+For the dear God who loveth us,
+He made and loveth all."
+
+
+After all, let these old Lives of the Fathers tell their own tale.
+By their own merits let them stand or fall; and stand they will in
+one sense:  for whatsoever else they are not, this they are--the
+histories of good men.  Their physical science and their daemonology
+may have been on a par with those of the world around them:  but
+they possessed what the world did not possess, faith in the utterly
+good and self-sacrificing God, and an ideal of virtue and purity
+such as had never been seen since the first Whitsuntide.  And they
+set themselves to realize that ideal with a simplicity, an energy,
+an endurance, which were altogether heroic.  How far they were right
+in "giving up the world" depends entirely on what the world was then
+like, and whether there was any hope of reforming it.  It was their
+opinion that there was no such hope; and those who know best the
+facts which surrounded them, its utter frivolity, its utter
+viciousness, the deadness which had fallen on art, science,
+philosophy, human life, whether family, social, or political; the
+prevalence of slavery, in forms altogether hideous and
+unmentionable; the insecurity of life and property, whether from
+military and fiscal tyranny, or from perpetual inroads of the so-
+called "Barbarians:" those, I say, who know these facts best will be
+most inclined to believe that the old hermits were wise in their
+generation; that the world was past salvation; that it was not a
+wise or humane thing to marry and bring children into the world;
+that in such a state of society, an honest and virtuous man could
+not exist, and that those who wished to remain honest and virtuous
+must flee into the desert, and be alone with God and their fellows.
+
+The question which had to be settled then and there, at that
+particular crisis of the human race, was not--Are certain wonders
+true or false? but--Is man a mere mortal animal, or an immortal
+soul?  Is his flesh meant to serve his spirit, or his spirit his
+flesh?  Is pleasure, or virtue, the end and aim of his existence?
+
+The hermits set themselves to answer that question, not by arguing
+or writing about it, but by the only way in which any question can
+be settled--by experiment.  They resolved to try whether their
+immortal souls could not grow better and better, while their mortal
+bodies were utterly neglected; to make their flesh serve their
+spirit; to make virtue their only end and aim; and utterly to
+relinquish the very notion of pleasure.  To do this one thing, and
+nothing else, they devoted their lives; and they succeeded.  From
+their time it has been a received opinion, not merely among a few
+philosophers or a few Pharisees, but among the lowest, the poorest,
+the most ignorant, who have known aught of Christianity, that man is
+an immortal soul; that the spirit, and not the flesh, ought to be
+master and guide; that virtue is the highest good; and that purity
+is a virtue, impurity a sin.  These men were, it has been well said,
+the very fathers of purity.  And if, in that and in other matters,
+they pushed their purpose to an extreme--if, by devoting themselves
+utterly to it alone, they suffered, not merely in wideness of mind
+or in power of judging evidence, but even in brain, till they became
+some of them at times insane from over-wrought nerves--it is not for
+us to blame the soldier for the wounds which have crippled him, or
+the physician for the disease which he has caught himself while
+trying to heal others.  Let us not speak ill of the bridge which
+carries us over, nor mock at those who did the work for us as seemed
+to them best, and perhaps in the only way in which it could be done
+in those evil days.  As a matter of fact, through these men's
+teaching and example we have learnt what morality, purity, and
+Christianity we possess; and if any answer that we have learnt them
+from the Scriptures, who but these men preserved the Scriptures to
+us?  Who taught us to look on them as sacred and inspired?  Who
+taught us to apply them to our own daily lives, and find comfort and
+teaching in every age, in words written ages ago by another race in
+a foreign land?  The Scriptures were the book, generally the only
+book, which they read and meditated, not merely from morn till
+night, but, as far as fainting nature would allow, from night to
+morn again:  and their method of interpreting them (as far as I can
+discover) differed in nothing from that common to all Christians
+now, save that they interpreted literally certain precepts of our
+Lord and of St. Paul which we consider to have applied only to the
+"temporary necessity" of a decayed, dying, and hopeless age such as
+that in which they lived.  And therefore, because they knew the
+Scripture well, and learned in it lessons of true virtue and true
+philosophy, though unable to save civilization in the East, they
+were able at least to save it in the West.  The European hermits,
+and the monastic communities which they originated, were indeed a
+seed of life, not merely to the conquered Roman population of Gaul
+or Spain or Britain, but to the heathen and Arian barbarians who
+conquered them.  Among those fierce and armed savages, the unarmed
+hermits stood, strong only by justice, purity, and faith in God,
+defying the oppressor, succouring the oppressed, and awing and
+softening the new aristocracy of the middle age, which was founded
+on mere brute force and pride of race; because the monk took his
+stand upon mere humanity; because he told the wild conqueror, Goth
+or Sueve, Frank or Burgund, Saxon or Norseman, that all men were
+equal in the sight of God; because he told them (to quote
+Athanasius's own words concerning Antony) that "virtue is not beyond
+human nature;" that the highest moral excellence was possible to the
+most low-born and unlettered peasant whom they trampled under their
+horses' hoofs, if he were only renewed and sanctified by the Spirit
+of God.  They accepted the lowest and commonest facts of that
+peasant's wretched life; they outdid him in helplessness,
+loneliness, hunger, dirt, and slavery; and then said, "Among all
+these I can yet be a man of God, wise, virtuous, pure, free, and
+noble in the sight of God, though not in the sight of Caesars,
+counts, and knights."  They went on, it is true, to glorify the
+means above the end; to consecrate childlessness, self-torture,
+dirt, ignorance, as if they were things pleasing to God and holy in
+themselves.  But in spite of those errors they wrought throughout
+Europe a work which, as far as we can judge, could have been done in
+no other way; done only by men who gave up all that makes life worth
+having for the sake of being good themselves and making others good.
+
+
+
+THE HERMITS OF EUROPE
+
+
+
+Most readers will recollect what an important part in the old
+ballads and romances is played by the hermit.
+
+He stands in strongest contrast to the knight.  He fills up, as it
+were, by his gentleness and self-sacrifice, what is wanting in the
+manhood of the knight, the slave too often of his own fierceness and
+self-assertion.  The hermit rebukes him when he sins, heals him when
+he is wounded, stays his hand in some mad murderous duel, such as
+was too common in days when any two armed horsemen meeting on road
+or lawn ran blindly at each other in the mere lust of fighting, as
+boars or stags might run.  Sometimes he interferes to protect the
+oppressed serf; sometimes to rescue the hunted deer which has taken
+sanctuary at his feet.  Sometimes, again, his influence is that of
+intellectual superiority; of worldly experience; of the travelled
+man who has seen many lands and many nations.  Sometimes, again,
+that of sympathy; for he has been a knight himself, and fought and
+sinned, and drank of the cup of vanity and vexation of spirit, like
+the fierce warrior who kneels at his feet.
+
+All who have read (and all ought to have read) Spenser's Fairy
+Queen, must recollect his charming description of the hermit with
+whom Prince Arthur leaves Serena and the squire after they have been
+wounded by "the blatant beast" of Slander; when--
+
+
+   "Toward night they came unto a plain
+By which a little hermitage there lay
+Far from all neighbourhood, the which annoy it may.
+
+"And nigh thereto a little chapel stood,
+Which being all with ivy overspread
+Decked all the roof, and shadowing the rood,
+Seemed like a grove fair branched overhead;
+Therein the hermit which his here led
+In straight observance of religious vow,
+Was wont his hours and holy things to bed;
+And therein he likewise was praying now,
+When as these knights arrived, they wist not where nor how.
+
+"They stayed not there, but straightway in did pass:
+Who when the hermit present saw in place,
+From his devotions straight he troubled was;
+Which breaking off, he toward them did pace
+With staid steps and grave beseeming grace:
+For well it seemed that whilom he had been
+Some goodly person, and of gentle race,
+That could his good to all, and well did ween
+How each to entertain with courtesy beseen.
+
+* * * * *
+
+"He thence them led into his hermitage,
+Letting their steeds to graze upon the green:
+Small was his house, and like a little cage,
+For his own term, yet inly neat and clean,
+Decked with green boughs, and flowers gay beseen
+Therein he them full fair did entertain,
+Not with such forged shews, as fitter been
+For courting fools that courtesies would feign,
+But with entire affection and appearance plain.
+
+* * * * *
+
+How be that careful hermit did his best
+With many kinds of medicines meet to tame
+The poisonous humour that did most infest
+Their reakling wounds, and every day them duly dressed.
+
+"For he right well in leech's craft was seen;
+And through the long experience of his days,
+Which had in many fortunes tossed been,
+And passed through many perilous assays:
+He knew the divers want of mortal ways,
+And in the minds of men had great insight;
+Which with sage counsel, when they went astray,
+He could inform and them reduce aright;
+And all the passions heal which wound the weaker sprite.
+
+"For whilome he had been a doughty knight,
+As any one that lived in his days,
+And proved oft in many a perilous fight,
+In which he grace and glory won always,
+And in all battles bore away the bays:
+But being now attached with timely age,
+And weary of this world's unquiet ways,
+He took himself unto this hermitage,
+In which he lived alone like careless bird in cage."
+
+
+This picture is not poetry alone:  it is history.  Such men actually
+lived, and such work they actually did, from the southernmost point
+of Italy to the northernmost point of Scotland, during centuries in
+which there was no one else to do the work.  The regular clergy
+could not have done it.  Bishops and priests were entangled in the
+affairs of this world, striving to be statesmen, striving to be
+landowners, striving to pass Church lands on from father to son, and
+to establish themselves as an hereditary caste of priests.  The
+chaplain or house-priest who was to be found in every nobleman's,
+almost every knight's castle, was apt to become a mere upper
+servant, who said mass every morning in return for the good cheer
+which he got every evening, and fetched and carried at the bidding
+of his master and mistress.  But the hermit who dwelt alone in the
+forest glen, occupied, like an old Hebrew prophet, a superior and an
+independent position.  He needed nought from any man save the scrap
+of land which the lord was only too glad to allow him in return for
+his counsels and his prayers.  And to him, as to a mysterious and
+supernatural personage, the lord went privately for advice in his
+quarrels with the neighbouring barons, or with his own kin.  To him
+the lady took her children when they were sick, to be healed, as she
+fancied, by his prayers and blessings; or poured into his ears a
+hundred secret sorrows and anxieties which she dare not tell to her
+fierce lord, who hunted and fought the livelong day, and drank too
+much liquor every night.
+
+This class of men sprang up rapidly, by natural causes, and yet by a
+Divine necessity, as soon as the Western Empire was conquered by the
+German tribes; and those two young officers whom we saw turning
+monks at Treves, in the time of St. Augustine, may, if they lived to
+be old men, have given sage counsel again and again to fierce German
+knights and kinglets, who had dispossessed the rich and effeminate
+landowners of their estates, and sold them, their wives, and
+children, in gangs by the side of their own slaves.  Only the Roman
+who had turned monk would probably escape that fearful ruin; and he
+would remain behind, while the rest of his race was enslaved or
+swept away, as a seed of Christianity and of civilization, destined
+to grow and spread, and bring the wild conquerors in due time into
+the kingdom of God.
+
+For the first century or two after the invasion of the barbarians,
+the names of the hermits and saints are almost exclusively Latin.
+Their biographies represent them in almost every case as born of
+noble Roman parents.  As time goes on, German names appear, and at
+last entirely supersede the Latin ones; showing that the conquering
+race had learned from the conquered to become hermits and monks like
+them.
+
+
+
+ST. SEVERINUS, THE APOSTLE OF NORICUM
+
+
+
+Of all these saintly civilizers, St. Severinus of Vienna is perhaps
+the most interesting, and his story the most historically
+instructive. {224}
+
+A common time, the middle of the fifth century, the province of
+Noricum (Austria, as we should now call it) was the very highway of
+invading barbarians, the centre of the human Maelstrom in which
+Huns, Alemanni, Rugi, and a dozen wild tribes more, wrestled up and
+down and round the starving and beleaguered towns of what had once
+been a happy and fertile province, each tribe striving to trample
+the other under foot, and to march southward over their corpses to
+plunder what was still left of the already plundered wealth of Italy
+and Rome.  The difference of race, in tongue, and in manners,
+between the conquered and their conquerors, was made more painful by
+difference in creed.  The conquering Germans and Huns were either
+Arians or heathens.  The conquered race (though probably of very
+mixed blood), who called themselves Romans, because they spoke Latin
+and lived under the Roman law, were orthodox Catholics; and the
+miseries of religious persecution were too often added to the usual
+miseries of invasion.
+
+It was about the year 455-60.  Attila, the great King of the Huns,
+who called himself--and who was--"the Scourge of God," was just
+dead.  His empire had broken up.  The whole centre of Europe was in
+a state of anarchy and war; and the hapless Romans along the Danube
+were in the last extremity of terror, not knowing by what fresh
+invader their crops would be swept off up to the very gates of the
+walled towers which were their only defence:  when there appeared
+among them, coming out of the East, a man of God.
+
+Who he was, he would not tell.  His speech showed him to be an
+African Roman--a fellow-countryman of St. Augustine--probably from
+the neighbourhood of Carthage.  He had certainly at one time gone to
+some desert in the East, zealous to learn "the more perfect life."
+Severinus, he said, was his name; a name which indicated high rank,
+as did the manners and the scholarship of him who bore it.  But more
+than his name he would not tell.  "If you take me for a runaway
+slave," he said, smiling, "get ready money to redeem me with when my
+master demands me back."  For he believed that they would have need
+of him; that God had sent him into that land that he might be of use
+to its wretched people.  And certainly he could have come into the
+neighbourhood of Vienna at that moment for no other purpose than to
+do good, unless he came to deal in slaves.
+
+He settled first at a town called by his biographer Casturis; and,
+lodging with the warden of the church, lived quietly the hermit
+life.  Meanwhile the German tribes were prowling round the town; and
+Severinus, going one day into the church, began to warn the priests
+and clergy and all the people that a destruction was coming on them
+which they could only avert by prayer and fasting and the works of
+mercy.  They laughed him to scorn, confiding in their lofty Roman
+walls, which the invaders--wild horsemen, who had no military
+engines--were unable either to scale or batter down.  Severinus left
+the town at once, prophesying, it was said, the very day and hour of
+its fall.  He went on to the next town, which was then closely
+garrisoned by a barbarian force, and repeated his warning there:
+but while the people were listening to him, there came an old man to
+the gate, and told them how Casturis had been already sacked, as the
+man of God had foretold; and, going into the church, threw himself
+at the feet of St. Severinus, and said that he had been saved by his
+merits from being destroyed with his fellow-townsmen.
+
+Then the dwellers in the town hearkened to the man of God, and gave
+themselves up to fasting and almsgiving and prayer for three whole
+days.
+
+And on the third day, when the solemnity of the evening sacrifice
+was fulfilled, a sudden earthquake happened, and the barbarians,
+seized with panic fear, and probably hating and dreading--like all
+those wild tribes--confinement between four stone walls instead of
+the free open life of the tent and the stockade, forced the Romans
+to open their gates to them, rushed out into the night, and in their
+madness slew each other.
+
+In those days a famine fell upon the people of Vienna; and they, as
+their sole remedy, thought good to send for the man of God from the
+neighbouring town.  He went, and preached to them, too, repentance
+and almsgiving.  The rich, it seems, had hidden up their stores of
+corn, and left the poor to starve.  At least St. Severinus
+discovered (by Divine revelation, it was supposed), that a widow
+named Procula had done as much.  He called her out into the midst of
+the people, and asked her why she, a noble woman and free-born, had
+made herself a slave to avarice, which is idolatry.  If she would
+not give her corn to Christ's poor, let her throw it into the Danube
+to feed the fish, for any gain from it she would not have.  Procula
+was abashed, and served out her hoards thereupon willingly to the
+poor; and a little while afterwards, to the astonishment of all,
+vessels came down the Danube, laden with every kind of merchandise.
+They had been frozen up for many days near Passau, in the thick ice
+of the river Enns:  but the prayers of God's servant (so men
+believed) had opened the ice-gates, and let them down the stream
+before the usual time.
+
+Then the wild German horsemen swept around the walls, and carried
+off human beings and cattle, as many as they could find.  Severinus,
+like some old Hebrew prophet, did not shrink from advising hard
+blows, where hard blows could avail.  Mamertinus, the tribune, or
+officer in command, told him that he had so few soldiers, and those
+so ill-armed, that he dare not face the enemy.  Severinus answered,
+that they should get weapons from the barbarians themselves; the
+Lord would fight for them, and they should hold their peace:  only
+if they took any captives they should bring them safe to him.  At
+the second milestone from the city they came upon the plunderers,
+who fled at once, leaving their arms behind.  Thus was the prophecy
+of the man of God fulfilled.  The Romans brought the captives back
+to him unharmed.  He loosed their bonds, gave them food and drink,
+and let them go.  But they were to tell their comrades that, if ever
+they came near that spot again, celestial vengeance would fall on
+them, for the God of the Christians fought from heaven in his
+servants' cause.
+
+So the barbarians trembled, and went away.  And the fear of St.
+Severinus fell on all the Goths, heretic Arians though they were;
+and on the Rugii, who held the north bank of the Danube in those
+evil days.  St. Severinus, meanwhile, went out of Vienna, and built
+himself a cell at a place called "At the Vineyards."  But some
+benevolent impulse--Divine revelation, his biographer calls it--
+prompted him to return, and build himself a cell on a hill close to
+Vienna, round which other cells soon grew up, tenanted by his
+disciples.  "There," says his biographer, "he longed to escape the
+crowds of men who were wont to come to him, and cling closer to God
+in continual prayer:  but the more he longed to dwell in solitude,
+the more often he was warned by revelations not to deny his presence
+to the afflicted people."  He fasted continually; he went barefoot
+even in the midst of winter, which was so severe, the story
+continues, in those days around Vienna, that wagons crossed the
+Danube on the solid ice:  and yet, instead of being puffed-up by his
+own virtues, he set an example of humility to all, and bade them
+with tears to pray for him, that the Saviour's gifts to him might
+not heap condemnation on his head.
+
+Over the wild Rugii St. Severinus seems to have acquired unbounded
+influence.  Their king, Flaccitheus, used to pour out his sorrows to
+him, and tell him how the princes of the Goths would surely slay
+him; for when he had asked leave of him to pass on into Italy, he
+would not let him go.  But St. Severinus prophesied to him that the
+Goths would do him no harm.  Only one warning he must take:  "Let it
+not grieve him to ask peace even for the least of men."
+
+The friendship which had thus begun between the barbarian king and
+the cultivated saint was carried on by his son Feva:  but his
+"deadly and noxious wife" Gisa, who appears to have been a fierce
+Arian, always, says his biographer, kept him back from clemency.
+One story of Gisa's misdeeds is so characteristic both of the
+manners of the time and of the style in which the original biography
+is written, that I shall take leave to insert it at length.
+
+"The King Feletheus (who is also Feva), the son of the
+aforementioned Flaccitheus, following his father's devotion, began,
+at the commencement of his reign, often to visit the holy man.  His
+deadly and noxious wife, named Gisa, always kept him back from the
+remedies of clemency.  For she, among the other plague-spots of her
+iniquity, even tried to have certain Catholics re-baptized:  but
+when her husband did not consent, on account of his reverence for
+St. Severinus, she gave up immediately her sacrilegious intention,
+burdening the Romans, nevertheless, with hard conditions, and
+commanding some of them to be exiled to the Danube.  For when one
+day, she, having come to the village next to Vienna, had ordered
+some of them to be sent over the Danube, and condemned to the most
+menial offices of slavery, the man of God sent to her, and begged
+that they might be let go.  But she, blazing up in a flame of fury,
+ordered the harshest of answers to be returned.  'I pray thee,' she
+said, 'servant of God, hiding there within thy cell, allow us to
+settle what we choose about our own slaves.'  But the man of God
+hearing this, 'I trust,' he said, 'in my Lord Jesus Christ, that she
+will be forced by necessity to fulfil that which in her wicked will
+she has despised.'  And forthwith a swift rebuke followed, and
+brought low the soul of the arrogant woman.  For she had confined in
+close custody certain barbarian goldsmiths, that they might make
+regal ornaments.  To them the son of the aforesaid king, Frederic by
+name, still a little boy, had gone in, in childish levity, on the
+very day on which the queen had despised the servant of God.  The
+goldsmiths put a sword to the child's breast, saying, that if any
+one attempted to enter without giving them an oath that they should
+be protected, he should die; and that they would slay the king's
+child first, and themselves afterwards, seeing that they had no hope
+of life left, being worn out with long prison.  When she heard that,
+the cruel and impious queen, rending her garments for grief, cried
+out, 'O servant of God, Severinus, are the injuries which I did thee
+thus avenged?  Hast thou obtained by the earnest prayer thou hast
+poured out this punishment for my contempt, that thou shouldst
+avenge it on my own flesh and blood?'  Then, running up and down
+with manifold contrition and miserable lamentation, she confessed
+that for the act of contempt which she had committed against the
+servant of God she was struck by the vengeance of the present blow;
+and forthwith she sent knights to ask for forgiveness, and sent
+across the river the Romans his prayers for whom she had despised.
+The goldsmiths, having received immediately a promise of safety, and
+giving up the child, were in like manner let go.
+
+"The most reverend Severinus, when he heard this, gave boundless
+thanks to the Creator, who sometimes puts off the prayers of
+suppliants for this end, that as faith, hope, and charity grow,
+while lesser things are sought, He may concede greater things.
+Lastly, this did the mercy of the Omnipotent Saviour work, that
+while it brought to slavery a woman free, but cruel overmuch, she
+was forced to restore to liberty those who were enslaved.  This
+having been marvellously gained, the queen hastened with her husband
+to the servant of God, and showed him her son, who, she confessed,
+had been freed from the verge of death by his prayers, and promised
+that she would never go against his commands."
+
+To this period of Severinus's life belongs the once famous story of
+his interview with Odoacer, the first barbarian king of Italy, and
+brother of the great Onulph or Wolf, who was the founder of the
+family of the Guelphs, Counts of Altorf, and the direct ancestors of
+Victoria, Queen of England.  Their father was AEdecon, secretary at
+one time of Attila, and chief of the little tribe of Turklings, who,
+though German, had clung faithfully to Attila's sons, and came to
+ruin at the great battle of Netad, when the empire of the Huns broke
+up once and for ever.  Then Odoacer and his brother started over the
+Alps to seek their fortunes in Italy, and take service, after the
+fashion of young German adventurers, with the Romans; and they came
+to St. Severinus's cell, and went in, heathens as they probably
+were, to ask a blessing of the holy man; and Odoacer had to stoop
+and to stand stooping, so huge he was.  The saint saw that he was no
+common lad, and said, "Go to Italy, clothed though thou be in ragged
+sheepskins:  thou shalt soon give greater gifts to thy friends."  So
+Odoacer went on into Italy, deposed the last of the Caesars, a
+paltry boy, Romulus Augustulus by name, and found himself, to his
+own astonishment, and that of all the world, the first German king
+of Italy; and, when he was at the height of his power, he remembered
+the prophecy of Severinus, and sent to him, offering him any boon he
+chose to ask.  But all that the saint asked was, that he should
+forgive some Romans whom he had banished.  St. Severinus meanwhile
+foresaw that Odoacer's kingdom would not last, as he seems to have
+foreseen many things, by no miraculous revelation, but simply as a
+far-sighted man of the world.  For when certain German knights were
+boasting before him of the power and glory of Odoacer, he said that
+it would last some thirteen, or at most fourteen years; and the
+prophecy (so all men said in those days) came exactly true.
+
+There is no need to follow the details of St. Severinus's labours
+through some five-and-twenty years of perpetual self-sacrifice--and,
+as far as this world was concerned, perpetual disaster.  Eugippius's
+chapters are little save a catalogue of towns sacked one after the
+other, from Passau to Vienna, till the miserable survivors of the
+war seemed to have concentrated themselves under St. Severinus's
+guardianship in the latter city.  We find, too, tales of famine, of
+locust-swarms, of little victories over the barbarians, which do not
+arrest wholesale defeat:  but we find through all St. Severinus
+labouring like a true man of God, conciliating the invading chiefs,
+redeeming captives, procuring for the cities which were still
+standing supplies of clothes for the fugitives, persuading the
+husbandmen, seemingly through large districts, to give even in time
+of dearth a tithe of their produce to the poor;--a tale of noble
+work which one regrets to see defaced by silly little prodigies,
+more important seemingly in the eyes of the monk Eugippius than the
+great events which were passing round him.  But this is a fault too
+common with monk chroniclers.  The only historians of the early
+middle age, they have left us a miserably imperfect record of it,
+because they were looking always rather for the preternatural than
+for the natural.  Many of the saints' lives, as they have come down
+to us, are mere catalogues of wonders which never happened, from
+among which the antiquary must pick, out of passing hints and
+obscure allusions, the really important facts of the time,--changes
+political and social, geography, physical history, the manners,
+speech, and look of nations now extinct, and even the characters and
+passions of the actors in the story.  How much can be found among
+such a list of wonders, by an antiquary who has not merely learning
+but intellectual insight, is proved by the admirable notes which Dr.
+Reeves has appended to Adamnan's life of St. Columba:  but one
+feels, while studying his work, that, had Adamnan thought more of
+facts and less of prodigies, he might have saved Dr. Reeves the
+greater part of his labour, and preserved to us a mass of knowledge
+now lost for ever.
+
+And so with Eugippius's life of St. Severinus.  The reader finds how
+the man who had secretly celebrated a heathen sacrifice was
+discovered by St. Severinus, because, while the tapers of the rest
+of the congregation were lighted miraculously from heaven, his taper
+alone would not light; and passes on impatiently, with regret that
+the biographer omits to mention what the heathen sacrifice was like.
+He reads how the Danube dared not rise above the mark of the cross
+which St. Severinus had cut upon the posts of a timber chapel; how a
+poor man, going out to drive the locusts off his little patch of
+corn instead of staying in the church all day to pray, found the
+next morning that his crop alone had been eaten, while all the
+fields around remained untouched.  Even the well-known story, which
+has a certain awfulness about it, how St. Severinus watched all
+night by the bier of the dead priest Silvinus, and ere the morning
+dawned bade him in the name of God speak to his brethren; and how
+the dead man opened his eyes, and Severinus asked him whether he
+wished to return to life, and he answered complainingly, "Keep me no
+longer here; nor cheat me of that perpetual rest which I had already
+found," and so, closing his eyes once more, was still for ever:--
+even such a story as this, were it true, would be of little value in
+comparison with the wisdom, faith, charity, sympathy, industry,
+utter self-sacrifice, which formed the true greatness of such a man
+as Severinus.
+
+At last the noble life wore itself out.  For two years Severinus had
+foretold that his end was near; and foretold, too, that the people
+for whom he had spent himself should go forth in safety, as Israel
+out of Egypt, and find a refuge in some other Roman province,
+leaving behind them so utter a solitude, that the barbarians, in
+their search for the hidden treasures of the civilization which they
+had exterminated, should dig up the very graves of the dead.  Only,
+when the Lord willed that people to deliver them, they must carry
+away his bones with them, as the children of Israel carried the
+bones of Joseph.
+
+Then Severinus sent for Feva, the Rugian king, and Gisa, his cruel
+wife; and when he had warned them how they must render an account to
+God for the people committed to their charge, he stretched his hand
+out to the bosom of the king.  "Gisa," he asked, "dost thou love
+most the soul within that breast, or gold and silver?"  She answered
+that she loved her husband above all.  "Cease then," he said, "to
+oppress the innocent:  lest their affliction be the ruin of your
+power."
+
+Severinus' presage was strangely fulfilled.  Feva had handed over
+the city of Vienna to his brother Frederic,--"poor and impious,"
+says Eugippius.  Severinus, who knew him well, sent for him, and
+warned him that he himself was going to the Lord; and that if, after
+his death, Frederic dared touch aught of the substance of the poor
+and the captive, the wrath of God would fall on him.  In vain the
+barbarian pretended indignant innocence; Severinus sent him away
+with fresh warnings.
+
+"Then on the nones of January he was smitten slightly with a pain in
+the side.  And when that had continued for three days, at midnight
+he bade the brethren come to him."  He renewed his talk about the
+coming emigration, and entreated again that his bones might not be
+left behind; and having bidden all in turn come near and kiss him,
+and having received the sacrament of communion, he forbade them to
+weep for him, and commanded them to sing a psalm.  They hesitated,
+weeping.  He himself gave out the psalm, "Praise the Lord in his
+saints, and let all that hath breath praise the Lord;" and so went
+to rest in the Lord.
+
+No sooner was he dead than Frederic seized on the garments kept in
+the monastery for the use of the poor, and even commanded his men to
+carry off the vessels of the altar.  Then followed a scene
+characteristic of the time.  The steward sent to do the deed shrank
+from the crime of sacrilege.  A knight, Anicianus by name, went in
+his stead, and took the vessels of the altar.  But his conscience
+was too strong for him.  Trembling and delirium fell on him, and he
+fled away to a lonely island, and became a hermit there.  Frederic,
+impenitent, swept away all in the monastery, leaving nought but the
+bare walls, "which he could not carry over the Danube."  But on him,
+too, vengeance fell.  Within a month he was slain by his own nephew.
+Then Odoacer attacked the Rugii, and carried off Feva and Gisa
+captive to Rome.  And then the long-promised emigration came.
+Odoacer, whether from mere policy (for he was trying to establish a
+half-Roman kingdom in Italy), or for love of St. Severinus himself,
+sent his brother Onulf to fetch away into Italy the miserable
+remnant of the Danubian provincials, to be distributed among the
+wasted and unpeopled farms of Italy.  And with them went forth the
+corpse of St. Severinus, undecayed, though he had been six years
+dead, and giving forth exceeding fragrance, though (says Eugippius)
+no embalmer's hand had touched it.  In a coffin, which had been long
+prepared for it, it was laid on a wagon, and went over the Alps into
+Italy, working (according to Eugippius) the usual miracles on the
+way, till it found a resting-place near Naples, in that very villa
+of Lucullus at Misenum, to which Odoacer had sent the last Emperor
+of Rome to dream his ignoble life away in helpless luxury.
+
+So ends this tragic story.  Of its substantial truth there can be no
+doubt.  The miracles recorded in it are fewer and less strange than
+those of the average legends--as is usually the case when an eye-
+witness writes.  And that Eugippius was an eye-witness of much which
+he tells, no one accustomed to judge of the authenticity of
+documents can doubt, if he studies the tale as it stands in Pez.
+{238}  As he studies, too, he will perhaps wish with me that some
+great dramatist may hereafter take Eugippius's quaint and rough
+legend, and shape it into immortal verse.  For tragic, in the very
+nighest sense, the story is throughout.  M. Ozanam has well said of
+that death-bed scene between the saint and the barbarian king and
+queen--"The history of invasions has many a pathetic scene:  but I
+know none more instructive than the dying agony of that old Roman
+expiring between two barbarians, and less touched with the ruin of
+the empire than with the peril of their souls."  But even more
+instructive, and more tragic also, is the strange coincidence that
+the wonder-working corpse of the starved and barefooted hermit
+should rest beside the last Emperor of Rome.  It is the symbol of a
+new era.  The kings of this world have been judged and cast out.
+The empire of the flesh is to perish, and the empire of the spirit
+to conquer thenceforth for evermore.
+
+But if St. Severinus's labours in Austria were in vain, there were
+other hermits, in Gaul and elsewhere, whose work endured and
+prospered, and developed to a size of which they had never dreamed.
+The stories of these good men may be read at length in the
+Bollandists and Surius:  in a more accessible and more graceful form
+in M. de Montalembert's charming pages.  I can only sketch, in a few
+words, the history of a few of the more famous.  Pushing continually
+northward and westward from the shores of the Mediterranean, fresh
+hermits settled in the mountains and forests, collected disciples
+round them, and founded monasteries, which, during the sanguinary
+and savage era of the Merovingian kings, were the only retreats for
+learning, piety, and civilization.  St. Martin (the young soldier
+who may be seen in old pictures cutting his cloak in two with a
+sword, to share it with a beggar) left, after twenty campaigns, the
+army into which he had been enrolled against his will, a conscript
+of fifteen years old, to become a hermit, monk, and missionary.  In
+the desert isle of Gallinaria, near Genoa, he lived on roots, to
+train himself for the monastic life; and then went north-west, to
+Poitiers, to found Liguge (said to be the most ancient monastery in
+France), to become Bishop of Tours, and to overthrow throughout his
+diocese, often at the risk of his life, the sacred oaks and Druid
+stones of the Gauls, and the temples and idols of the Romans.  But
+he--like many more--longed for the peace of the hermit's cell; and
+near Tours, between the river Loire and lofty cliffs, he hid himself
+in a hut of branches, while his eighty disciples dwelt in caves of
+the rocks above, clothed only in skins of camels.  He died in A.D.
+397, at the age of eighty-one, leaving behind him, not merely that
+famous monastery of Marmontier (Martini Monasterium), which endured
+till the Revolution of 1793, but, what is infinitely more to his
+glory, his solemn and indignant protest against the first
+persecution by the Catholic Church--the torture and execution of
+those unhappy Priscillianist fanatics, whom the Spanish Bishops (the
+spiritual forefathers of the Inquisition) had condemned in the name
+of the God of love.  Martin wept over the fate of the
+Priscillianists.  Happily he was no prophet, or his head would have
+become (like Jeremiah's) a fount of tears, could he have foreseen
+that the isolated atrocity of those Spanish Bishops would have
+become the example and the rule, legalized and formulized and
+commanded by Pope after Pope, for every country in Christendom.
+
+Sulpicius Severus, again (whose Lives of the Desert Fathers I have
+already quoted), carried the example of these fathers into his own
+estates in Aquitaine.  Selling his lands, he dwelt among his now
+manumitted slaves, sleeping on straw, and feeding on the coarsest
+bread and herbs; till the hapless neophytes found that life was not
+so easily sustained in France as in Egypt; and complained to him
+that it was in vain to try "to make them live like angels, when they
+were only Gauls."
+
+Another centre of piety and civilization was the rocky isle of
+Lerins, off the port of Toulon.  Covered with the ruins of an
+ancient Roman city, and swarming with serpents, it was colonized
+again, in A.D. 410, by a young man of rank named Honoratus, who
+gathered round him a crowd of disciples, converted the desert isle
+into a garden of flowers and herbs, and made the sea-girt sanctuary
+of Lerins one of the most important spots of the then world.
+
+"The West," says M. de Montalembert, "had thenceforth nothing to
+envy the East; and soon that retreat, destined by its founder to
+renew on the shores of Provence the austerities of the Thebaid,
+became a celebrated school of Christian theology and philosophy, a
+citadel inaccessible to the waves of the barbarian invasion, an
+asylum for the letters and sciences which were fleeing from Italy,
+then overrun by the Goths; and, lastly, a nursery of bishops and
+saints, who spread through Gaul the knowledge of the Gospel and the
+glory of Lerins.  We shall soon see the rays of his light flash even
+into Ireland and England, by the blessed hands of Patrick and
+Augustine."
+
+In the year 425, Romanus, a young monk from the neighbourhood of
+Lyons, had gone up into the forests of the Jura, carrying with him
+the "Lives of the Hermits," and a few seeds and tools; and had
+settled beneath an enormous pine; shut out from mankind by
+precipices, torrents, and the tangled trunks of primaeval trees,
+which had fallen and rotted on each other age after age.  His
+brother Lupicinus joined him; then crowds of disciples; then his
+sister, and a multitude of women.  The forests were cleared, the
+slopes planted; a manufacture of box-wood articles--chairs among the
+rest--was begun; and within the next fifty years the Abbey of
+Condat, or St. Claude, as it was afterwards called, had become, not
+merely an agricultural colony, or even merely a minster for the
+perpetual worship of God, but the first school of that part of Gaul;
+in which the works of Greek as well as Latin orators were taught,
+not only to the young monks, but to young laymen likewise.
+
+Meanwhile the volcanic peaks of the Auvergne were hiding from their
+Arian invaders the ruined gentry of Central France.  Effeminate and
+luxurious slave-holders, as they are painted by Sidonius
+Appolineris, bishop of Clermont, in that same Auvergne, nothing was
+left for them when their wealth was gone but to become monks:  and
+monks they became.  The lava grottoes held hermits, who saw visions
+and daemons, as St. Antony had seen them in Egypt; while near
+Treves, on the Moselle, a young hermit named Wolflaich tried to
+imitate St. Simeon Stylites' penance on the pillar; till his bishop,
+foreseeing that in that severe climate he would only kill himself,
+wheedled him away from his station, pulled down the pillar in his
+absence, and bade him be a wiser man.  Another figure, and a more
+interesting one, is the famous St. Goar; a Gaul, seemingly (from the
+recorded names of his parents) of noble Roman blood, who took his
+station on the Rhine, under the cliffs of that Lurlei so famous in
+legend and ballad as haunted by some fair fiend, whose treacherous
+song lured the boatmen into the whirlpool at their foot.  To rescue
+the shipwrecked boatmen, to lodge, feed, and if need be clothe, the
+travellers along the Rhine bank, was St. Goar's especial work; and
+Wandelbert, the monk of Prum, in the Eifel, who wrote his life at
+considerable length, tells us how St. Goar was accused to the
+Archbishop of Treves as a hypocrite and a glutton, because he ate
+freely with his guests; and how his calumniators took him through
+the forest to Treves; and how he performed divers miracles, both on
+the road and in the palace of the Archbishop, notably the famous one
+of hanging his cape upon a sunbeam, mistaking it for a peg.  And
+other miracles of his there are, some of them not altogether
+edifying:  but no reader is bound to believe them, as Wandelbert is
+evidently writing in the interests of the Abbey of Prum as against
+those of the Prince-Bishops of Treves; and with a monk's or
+regular's usual jealousy of the secular or parochial clergy and
+their bishops.
+
+A more important personage than any of these is the famous St.
+Benedict, father of the Benedictine order, and "father of all
+monks," as he was afterwards called, who, beginning himself as a
+hermit, caused the hermit life to fall, not into disrepute, but into
+comparative disuse; while the coenobitic life--that is, life, not in
+separate cells, but in corporate bodies, with common property, and
+under one common rule--was accepted as the general form of the
+religious life in the West.  As the author of this organization, and
+of the Benedictine order, to whose learning, as well as to whose
+piety, the world has owed so much, his life belongs rather to a
+history of the monastic orders than to that of the early hermits.
+But it must be always remembered that it was as a hermit that his
+genius was trained; that in solitude he conceived his vast plans; in
+solitude he elaborated the really wise and noble rules of his, which
+he afterwards carried out as far as he could during his lifetime in
+the busy world; and which endured for centuries, a solid piece of
+practical good work.  For the existence of monks was an admitted
+fact; even an admitted necessity:  St. Benedict's work was to tell
+them, if they chose to be monks, what sort of persons they ought to
+be, and how they ought to live, in order to fulfil their own ideal.
+In the solitude of the hills of Subiaco, above the ruined palace of
+Nero, above, too, the town of Nurscia, of whose lords he was the
+last remaining scion, he fled to the mountain grotto, to live the
+outward life of a wild beast, and, as he conceived, the inward life
+of an angel.  How he founded twelve monasteries; how he fled with
+some of his younger disciples, to withdraw them from the disgusting
+persecutions and temptations of the neighbouring secular clergy; how
+he settled himself on the still famous Monte Cassino, which looks
+down upon the Gulf of Gaeta, and founded there the "Archi-
+Monasterium of Europe," whose abbot was in due time first premier
+baron of the kingdom of Naples,--which counted among its
+dependencies {245} four bishoprics, two principalities, twenty
+earldoms, two hundred and fifty castles, four hundred and forty
+towns or villages, three hundred and thirty-six manors, twenty-three
+seaports, three isles, two hundred mills, three hundred territories,
+sixteen hundred and sixty-two churches, and at the end of the
+sixteenth century an annual revenue of 1,500,000 ducats,--are
+matters which hardly belong to this volume, which deals merely with
+the lives of hermits.
+
+
+
+THE CELTIC HERMITS
+
+
+
+It is not necessary to enter into the vexed question whether any
+Christianity ever existed in these islands of an earlier and purer
+type than that which was professed and practised by the saintly
+disciples of St. Antony.  It is at least certain that the earliest
+historic figures which emerge from the haze of barbarous antiquity
+in both the Britains and in Ireland, are those of hermits, who, in
+celibacy and poverty, gather round them disciples, found a convent,
+convert and baptize the heathen, and often, like Antony and
+Hilarion, escape from the bustle and toil of the world into their
+beloved desert.  They work the same miracles, see the same visions,
+and live in the same intimacy with the wild animals, as the hermits
+of Egypt, or of Roman Gaul:  but their history, owing to the wild
+imagination and (as the legends themselves prove) the gross
+barbarism of the tribes among whom they dwell, are so involved in
+fable and legend, that it is all but impossible to separate fact
+from fiction; all but impossible, often, to fix the time at which
+they lived.
+
+Their mode of life, it must always be remembered, is said to be
+copied from that of the Roman hermits of Gaul.  St. Patrick, the
+apostle of Ireland, seems to have been of Roman or Roman British
+lineage.  In his famous "Confession" (which many learned antiquaries
+consider as genuine) he calls his father, Calphurnius a deacon; his
+grandfather, Potitus a priest--both of these names being Roman.  He
+is said to have visited, at some period of his life, the monastery
+of St. Martin at Tours; to have studied with St. Germanus at
+Auxerre; and to have gone to one of the islands of the Tuscan sea,
+probably Lerins itself; and, whether or not we believe the story
+that he was consecrated bishop by Pope Celestine at Rome, we can
+hardly doubt that he was a member of that great spiritual succession
+of ascetics who counted St. Antony as their father.
+
+Such another must that Palladius have been, who was sent, says
+Prosper of Aquitaine, by Pope Celestine to convert the Irish Scots,
+and who (according to another story) was cast on shore on the north-
+east coast of Scotland, founded the church of Fordun, in
+Kincardineshire, and became a great saint among the Pictish folk.
+
+Another primaeval figure, almost as shadowy as St. Patrick, is St.
+Ninian, a monk of North Wales, who (according to Bede) first
+attempted the conversion of the Southern Picts, and built himself,
+at Whithorn in Galloway, the Candida Casa, or White House, a little
+church of stone,--a wonder in those days of "creel houses" and
+wooden stockades.  He too, according to Bede, who lived some 250
+years after his time, went to Rome; and he is said to have visited
+and corresponded with St. Martin of Tours.
+
+Dubricius, again, whom legend makes the contemporary both of St.
+Patrick and of King Arthur, appears in Wales, as bishop and abbot of
+Llandaff.  He too is ordained by a Roman bishop, St. Germanus of
+Auxerre; and he too ends his career, according to tradition, as a
+hermit, while his disciples spread away into Armorica (Brittany) and
+Ireland.
+
+We need not, therefore, be surprised to find Ireland, Wales,
+Cornwall, Scotland, and Brittany, during the next three centuries,
+swarming with saints, who kept up, whether in company or alone, the
+old hermit-life of the Thebaid; or to find them wandering, whether
+on missionary work, or in search of solitude, or escaping, like St.
+Cadoc the Wise, from the Saxon invaders.  Their frequent journeys to
+Rome, and even to Jerusalem, may perhaps be set down as a fable,
+invented in after years by monks who were anxious to prove their
+complete dependence on the Holy See, and their perfect communion
+with the older and more civilized Christianity of the Roman Empire.
+
+It is probable enough, also, that Romans from Gaul, as well as from
+Britain, often men of rank and education, who had fled before the
+invading Goths and Franks, and had devoted themselves (as we have
+seen that they often did) to the monastic life, should have escaped
+into those parts of these islands which had not already fallen into
+the hands of the Saxon invaders.  Ireland, as the most remote
+situation, would be especially inviting to the fugitives; and we can
+thus understand the story which is found in the Acts of St. Senanus,
+how fifty monks, "Romans born," sailed to Ireland to learn the
+Scriptures, and to lead a stricter life; and were distributed
+between St. Senan, St. Finnian, St. Brendan, St. Barry, and St.
+Kieran.  By such immigrations as this, it may be, Ireland became--as
+she certainly was for a while--the refuge of what ecclesiastical
+civilization, learning, and art the barbarian invaders had spared; a
+sanctuary from whence, in after centuries, evangelists and teachers
+went forth once more, not only to Scotland and England, but to
+France and Germany.  Very fantastic, and often very beautiful, are
+the stories of these men; and sometimes tragical enough, like that
+of the Welsh St. Iltut, cousin of the mythic Arthur, and founder of
+the great monastery of Bangor, on the banks of the Dee, which was
+said--though we are not bound to believe the fact--to have held more
+than two thousand monks at the time of the Saxon invasion.  The wild
+warrior was converted, says this legend, by seeing the earth open
+and swallow up his comrades, who had extorted bread, beer, and a fat
+pig from St. Cadoc of Llancarvan, a princely hermit and abbot, who
+had persuaded his father and mother to embrace the hermit life as
+the regular, if not the only, way of saving their souls.  In a
+paroxysm of terror he fled from his fair young wife into the forest;
+would not allow her to share with him even his hut of branches; and
+devoted himself to the labour of making an immense dyke of mud and
+stones to keep out the inundations of a neighbouring river.  His
+poor wife went in search of him once more, and found him in the
+bottom of a dyke, no longer a gay knight, but poorly dressed, and
+covered with mud.  She went away, and never saw him more; "fearing
+to displease God and one so beloved by God."  Iltut dwelt afterwards
+for four years in a cave, sleeping on the bare rock, and seems at
+last to have crossed over to Brittany, and died at Dol.
+
+We must not forget--though he is not strictly a hermit--St. David,
+the popular saint of the Welsh, son of a nephew of the mythic
+Arthur, and educated by one Paulinus, a disciple, it is said, of St.
+Germanus of Auxerre.  He is at once monk and bishop:  he gathers
+round him young monks in the wilderness, makes them till the ground,
+drawing the plough by their own strength, for he allows them not to
+own even an ox.  He does battle against "satraps" and "magicians"--
+probably heathen chieftains and Druids; he goes to the Holy Land,
+and is made archbishop by the Patriarch of Jerusalem:  he
+introduces, it would seem, into this island the right of sanctuary
+for criminals in any field consecrated to himself.  He restores the
+church of Glastonbury over the tomb of his cousin, King Arthur, and
+dies at 100 years of age, "the head of the whole British nation, and
+honour of his fatherland."  He is buried in one of his own
+monasteries at St. David's, near the headland whence St. Patrick had
+seen, in a vision, all Ireland stretched out before him, waiting to
+be converted to Christ; and the Celtic people go on pilgrimage to
+his tomb, even from Brittany and Ireland:  and, canonized in 1120,
+he becomes the patron saint of Wales.
+
+From that same point, in what year is not said, an old monk of St.
+David's monastery, named Modonnoc, set sail for Ireland, after a
+long life of labour and virtue.  A swarm of bees settled upon the
+bow of his boat, and would not be driven away.  He took them,
+whether he would or not, with him into Ireland, and introduced
+there, says the legend, the culture of bees and the use of honey.
+
+Ireland was then the "Isle of Saints."  Three orders of them were
+counted by later historians:  the bishops (who seem not to have had
+necessarily territorial dioceses), with St. Patrick at their head,
+shining like the sun; the second, of priests, under St. Columba,
+shining like the moon; and the third, of bishops, priests, and
+hermits, under Colman and Aidan, shining like the stars.  Their
+legends, full of Irish poetry and tenderness, and not without
+touches here and there of genuine Irish humour, lie buried now, to
+all save antiquaries, in the folios of the Bollandists and Colgan:
+but the memory of their virtue and beneficence, as well as of their
+miracles, shadowy and distorted by the lapse of centuries, is rooted
+in the heart and brain of the Irish peasantry; and who shall say
+altogether for evil?  For with the tradition of their miracles has
+been entwined the tradition of their virtues, as an enduring
+heirloom for the whole Irish race, through the sad centuries which
+part the era of saints from the present time.  We see the Irish
+women kneeling beside some well, whose waters were hallowed, ages
+since, by the fancied miracle of some mythic saint, and hanging
+gaudy rags (just as do the half savage Buddhists of the Himalayas)
+upon the bushes round.  We see them upon holy days crawling on bare
+and bleeding knees around St. Patrick's cell, on the top of Croagh
+Patrick, the grandest mountain, perhaps, with the grandest outlook,
+in these British Isles, where stands still, I believe, an ancient
+wooden image, said to have belonged to St. Patrick himself; and
+where, too, hung till late years (it is now preserved in Dublin) an
+ancient bell; such a strange little oblong bell as the Irish saints
+carried with them to keep off daemons; one of those magic bells
+which appear, so far as I am aware, in no country save Ireland and
+Scotland till we come to Tartary and the Buddhists:  such a bell as
+came down from heaven to St. Senan:  such a bell as St. Fursey sent
+flying through the air to greet St. Cuandy at his devotions when he
+could not come himself:  such a bell as another saint, wandering in
+the woods, rang till a stag came out of the covert, and carried it
+for him on his horns.  On that peak, so legends tell, St. Patrick
+stood once, in the spirit and power of Elias--after whom the
+mountain was long named; fasting, like Elias, forty days and forty
+nights, and wrestling with the daemons of the storm, and the snakes
+of the fen, and the Peishta-More, the gigantic monster of the lakes,
+till he smote the evil things with the golden rod of Jesus, and they
+rolled over the cliff in hideous rout, and perished in the Atlantic
+far below.  We know that these tales are but the dreams of children:
+but shall we sneer at the devotion of those poor Irish?  Not if we
+remember (what is an undoubted fact) that the memory of these same
+saints has kept up in their minds an ideal of nobleness and purity,
+devotion and beneficence, which, down-trodden slaves as they have
+been, they would otherwise have inevitably lost; that it has helped
+to preserve them from mere brutality, and mere ferocity; and that
+the thought that these men were of their own race and their own kin
+has given them a pride in their own race, a sense of national unity
+and of national dignity, which has endured--and surely for their
+benefit, for reverence for ancestors and the self-respect which
+springs from it is a benefit to every human being--through all the
+miseries, deserved or undeserved, which have fallen upon the Irish
+since Pope Adrian IV. (the true author of all the woes of Ireland),
+in the year 1155, commissioned Henry II. to conquer Ireland and
+destroy its primaeval Church, on consideration of receiving his
+share of the booty in the shape of Peter's Pence.
+
+Among these Irish saints, two names stand out as especially
+interesting:  that of St. Brendan, and that of St. Columba--the
+former as the representative of the sailor monks of the early
+period, the other as the great missionary who, leaving his monastery
+at Durrow, in Ireland, for the famous island of Hy, Iona, or
+Icolumbkill, off the western point of Mull, became the apostle of
+Scotland and the north of England.  I shall first speak of St.
+Brendan, and at some length.  His name has become lately familiar to
+many, through the medium of two very beautiful poems, one by Mr.
+Matthew Arnold, and the other by Mr. Sebastian Evans; and it may
+interest those who have read their versions of the story to see the
+oldest form in which the story now exists.
+
+The Celts, it must be remembered, are not, in general, a sea-going
+folk.  They have always neglected the rich fisheries of their
+coasts; and in Ireland every seaport owes its existence, not to the
+natives, but to Norse colonists.  Even now, the Irishman or Western
+Highlander, who emigrates to escape the "Saxons," sails in a ship
+built and manned by those very "Saxons," to lands which the Saxons
+have discovered and civilized.  But in the seventh and eighth
+centuries, and perhaps earlier, many Celts were voyagers and
+emigrants, not to discover new worlds, but to flee from the old one.
+There were deserts in the sea, as well as on land; in them they
+hoped to escape from men, and, yet more, from women.
+
+They went against their carnal will.  They had no liking for the
+salt water.  They were horribly frightened, and often wept bitterly,
+as they themselves confess.  And they had reason for fear; for their
+vessels were, for the most part, only "curachs" (coracles) of
+wattled twigs, covered with tanned hides.  They needed continual
+exhortation and comfort from the holy man who was their captain; and
+needed often miracles likewise for their preservation.  Tempests had
+to be changed into calm, and contrary winds into fair ones, by the
+prayers of a saint; and the spirit of prophecy was needed, to
+predict that a whale would be met between Iona and Tiree, who
+appeared accordingly, to the extreme terror of St. Berach's crew,
+swimming with open jaws, and (intent on eating, not monks, but
+herrings) nearly upsetting them by the swell which he raised.  And
+when St. Baithenius met the same whale on the same day, it was
+necessary for him to rise, and bless, with outspread hands, the sea
+and the whale, in order to make him sink again, after having risen
+to breathe.  But they sailed forth, nevertheless, not knowing
+whither they went; true to their great principle, that the spirit
+must conquer the flesh:  and so showed themselves actually braver
+men than the Norse pirates, who sailed afterwards over the same seas
+without fear, and without the need of miracles, and who found
+everywhere on desert islands, on sea-washed stacks and skerries,
+round Orkney, Shetland, and the Faroes, even to Iceland, the cells
+of these "Papas" or Popes; and named them after the old hermits,
+whose memory still lingers in the names of Papa Strona and Papa
+Westra, in the Orkneys, and in that of Papey, off the coast of
+Iceland, where the first Norse settlers found Irish books, bells,
+and crosiers, the relics of old hermits who had long since fasted
+and prayed their last, and migrated to the Lord.
+
+Adanman, in his life of St. Columba, tells of more than one such
+voyage.  He tells how one Baitanus, with the saint's blessing,
+sailed forth to find "a desert" in the sea; and how when he was
+gone, the saint prophesied that he should be buried, not in a desert
+isle, but where a woman should drive sheep over his grave, the which
+came true in the oak-wood of Calgaich, now Londonderry, whither he
+came back again.  He tells, again, of one Cormac, "a knight of
+Christ," who three times sailed forth in a coracle to find some
+desert isle, and three times failed of his purpose; and how, in his
+last voyage, he was driven northward by the wind fourteen days'
+sail, till he came where the summer sea was full of foul little
+stinging creatures, of the size of frogs, which beat against the
+sides of the frail boat, till all expected them to be stove in.
+They clung, moreover, to the oar blades; {256} and Cormac was in
+some danger of never seeing land again, had not St. Columba, at home
+in Iona far away, seen him in a vision, him and his fellows, praying
+and "watering their cheeks with floods of tears," in the midst of
+"perturbations monstrous, horrific, never seen before, and almost
+unspeakable."  Calling together his monks, he bade them pray for a
+north wind, which came accordingly, and blew Cormac safe back to
+Iona, to tempt the waves no more.  "Let the reader therefore perpend
+how great and what manner of man this same blessed personage was,
+who, having so great prophetic knowledge, could command, by invoking
+the name of Christ, the winds and ocean."
+
+Even as late as the year 891, says the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle:
+"Three Scots came to King Alfred, in a boat without any oars, from
+Ireland, whence they had stolen away, because for the love of God
+they desired to be on pilgrimage, they recked not where.  The boat
+in which they came was made of two hides and a half; and they took
+with them provisions for seven days; and about the seventh day they
+came on shore in Cornwall, and soon after went to King Alfred.  Thus
+they were named, Dubslane, and Macbeth, and Maelinmun."
+
+Out of such wild feats as these; out of dim reports of fairy islands
+in the west; of the Canaries and Azores; of that Vinland, with its
+wild corn and wild grapes which Leif, the son of Eirek Rauda, had
+found beyond the ocean a thousand years and one after the birth of
+Christ; of icebergs and floes sailing in the far northern sea, upon
+the edge of the six-months' night; out of Edda stories of the
+Midgard snake, which is coiled round the world; out of reports, it
+may be, of Indian fakirs and Buddhist shamans; out of scraps of
+Greek and Arab myth, from the Odyssey or the Arabian Nights, brought
+home by "Jorsala Farar," vikings who had been for pilgrimage and
+plunder up the Straits of Gibraltar into the far East;--out of all
+these materials were made up, as years rolled on, the famous legend
+of St. Brendan and his seven years' voyage in search of the "land
+promised to the saints."
+
+This tale was so popular in the middle age, that it appears, in
+different shapes, in almost every early European language. {257}  It
+was not only the delight of monks, but it stirred up to wild voyages
+many a secular man in search of St. Brendan's Isle, "which is not
+found when it is sought," but was said to be visible at times, from
+Palma in the Canaries.  The myth must have been well known to
+Columbus, and may have helped to send him forth in search of
+"Cathay."  Thither (so the Spanish peasants believed) Don Roderic
+had retired from the Moorish invaders.  There (so the Portuguese
+fancied) King Sebastian was hidden from men, after his reported
+death in the battle of Alcazar.  The West Indies, when they were
+first seen, were surely St. Brendan's Isle:  and the Mississippi may
+have been, in the eyes of such old adventurers as Don Ferdinando da
+Soto, when he sought for the Fountain of Perpetual Youth, the very
+river which St. Brendan found parting in two the Land of Promise.
+From the year 1526 (says M. Jubinal), till as late as 1721,
+armaments went forth from time to time into the Atlantic, and went
+forth in vain.
+
+For the whole tale, from whatever dim reports of fact they may have
+sprung, is truly (as M. Jubinal calls it) a monkish Odyssey, and
+nothing more.  It is a dream of the hermit's cell.  No woman, no
+city, nor nation, are ever seen during the seven years' voyage.
+Ideal monasteries and ideal hermits people the "deserts of the
+ocean."  All beings therein (save daemons and Cyclops) are
+Christians, even to the very birds, and keep the festivals of the
+Church as eternal laws of nature.  The voyage succeeds, not by
+seamanship, or geographic knowledge, nor even by chance:  but by the
+miraculous prescience of the saint, or of those whom he meets; and
+the wanderings of Ulysses, or of Sinbad, are rational and human in
+comparison with those of St. Brendan.
+
+Yet there are in them, as was to be expected, elements in which the
+Greek or the Arab legends are altogether deficient; perfect
+innocence, patience, and justice; utter faith in a God who prospers
+the innocent and punishes the guilty; ennobling obedience to the
+saint, who stands out a truly heroic figure above his trembling
+crew; and even more valuable still, the belief in, the craving for,
+an ideal, even though that ideal be that of a mere earthly Paradise;
+the "divine discontent," as it has been well called, which is the
+root of all true progress; which leaves (thank God) no man at peace
+save him who has said, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die."
+
+And therefore I have written at some length the story of St.
+Brendan; because, though it be but a monk-ideal, it is an ideal
+still:  and therefore profitable for all who are not content with
+this world, and its paltry ways.
+
+Saint Brendan, we read, the son of Finnloga, and great grandson of
+Alta, son of Ogaman, of the race of Ciar son of Fergus, was born at
+Tralee, and founded, in 559, the Abbey of Clonfert, {260a} and was a
+man famous for his great abstinence and virtues, and the father of
+nearly 3,000 monks. {260b}  And while he was "in his warfare," there
+came to him one evening a holy hermit named "Barintus," of the royal
+race of Neill; and when he was questioned, he did nought but cast
+himself on the ground, and weep and pray.  And when St. Brendan
+asked him to make better cheer for him and his monks, he told him a
+strange tale.  How a nephew of his had fled away to be a solitary,
+and found a delicious island, and established a monastery therein;
+and how he himself had gone to see his nephew, and sailed with him
+to the eastward to an island, which was called "the land of promise
+of the saints," wide and grassy, and bearing all manner of fruits;
+wherein was no night, for the Lord Jesus Christ was the light
+thereof; and how they abode there for a long while without eating
+and drinking; and when they returned to his nephew's monastery, the
+brethren knew well where they had been, for the fragrance of
+Paradise lingered on their garments for nearly forty days.
+
+So Barintus told his story, and went back to his cell.  But St.
+Brendan called together his most loving fellow-warriors, as he
+called them, and told them how he had set his heart on seeking that
+Promised Land.  And he went up to the top of the hill in Kerry,
+which is still called Mount Brendan, with fourteen chosen monks; and
+there, at the utmost corner of the world, he built him a coracle of
+wattle, and covered it with hides tanned in oak-bark and softened
+with butter, and set up in it a mast and a sail, and took forty
+days' provision, and commanded his monks to enter the boat, in the
+name of the Holy Trinity.  And as he stood alone, praying on the
+shore, three more monks from his monastery came up, and fell at his
+feet, and begged to go too, or they would die in that place of
+hunger and thirst; for they were determined to wander with him all
+the days of their life.  So he gave them leave.  But two of them, he
+prophesied, would come to harm and to judgment.  So they sailed away
+toward the summer solstice, with a fair wind, and had no need to
+row.  But after twelve days the wind fell to a calm, and they had
+only light airs at night, till forty days were past, and all their
+victual spent.  Then they saw toward the north a lofty island,
+walled round with cliffs, and went about it three days ere they
+could find a harbour.  And when they landed, a dog came fawning on
+them, and they followed it up to a great hall with beds and seats,
+and water to wash their feet.  But St. Brendan said, "Beware, lest
+Satan bring you into temptation.  For I see him busy with one of
+those three who followed us."  Now the hall was hung all round with
+vessels of divers metals, and bits and horns overlaid with silver.
+Then St. Brendan told his servant to bring the meal which God had
+prepared; and at once a table was laid with napkins, and loaves
+wondrous white, and fishes.  Then they blessed God, and ate, and
+took likewise drink as much as they would, and lay down to sleep.
+Then St. Brendan saw the devil's work; namely, a little black boy
+holding a silver bit, and calling the brother aforementioned.  So
+they rested three days and three nights.  But when they went to the
+ship, St. Brendan charged them with theft, and told what was stolen,
+and who had stolen it.  Then the brother cast out of his bosom a
+silver bit, and prayed for mercy.  And when he was forgiven and
+raised up from the ground, behold, a little black boy flew out of
+his bosom, howling aloud, and crying, "Why, O man of God, dost thou
+drive me from my habitation, where I have dwelt for seven years?"
+
+Then the brother received the Holy Eucharist, and died straightway,
+and was buried in that isle, and the brethren saw the angels carry
+his soul aloft, for St. Brendan had told him that so it should be:
+but that the brother who came with him should have his sepulchre in
+hell.  And as they went on board, a youth met them with a basket of
+loaves and a bottle of water, and told them that it would not fail
+till Pentecost.
+
+Then they sailed again many days, till they came to an isle full of
+great streams and fountains swarming with fish; and sheep there all
+white, as big as oxen, so many that they hid the face of the earth.
+And they stayed there till Easter Eve, and took one of the sheep
+(which followed them as if it had been tame) to eat for the Paschal
+feast.  Then came a man with loaves baked in the ashes, and other
+victual, and fell down before St. Brendan and cried, "How have I
+merited this, O pearl of God, that thou shouldest be fed at this
+holy tide from the labours of my hand?"
+
+And they learned from that man that the sheep grew there so big
+because they were never milked, nor pinched with winter, but they
+fed in those pastures all the year round.  Moreover, he told them
+that they must keep Easter in an isle hard by, opposite a shore to
+the west, which some called the Paradise of Birds.
+
+So to the nearest island they sailed.  It had no harbour, nor sandy
+shore, and there was no turf on it, and very little wood.  Now the
+Saint knew what manner of isle it was, but he would not tell the
+brethren, lest they should be terrified.  So he bade them make the
+boat fast stem and stern, and when morning came he bade those who
+were priests to celebrate each a mass, and then to take the lamb's
+fleece on shore and cook it in the caldron with salt, while St.
+Brendan remained in the boat.
+
+But when the fire blazed up, and the pot began to boil, that island
+began to move like water.  Then the brethren ran to the boat
+imploring St. Brendan's aid; and he helped them each in by the hand,
+and cast off.  After which the island sank in the ocean.  And when
+they could see their fire burning more than two miles off, St.
+Brendan told them how that God had revealed to him that night the
+mystery; that this was no isle, but the biggest of all fishes which
+swam in the ocean, always it tries to make its head and its tail
+meet, but cannot, by reason of its length; and its name is
+Jasconius.
+
+Then, across a narrow strait, they saw another isle, very grassy and
+wooded, and full of flowers.  And they found a little stream, and
+towed the boat up it (for the stream was of the same width as the
+boat), with St. Brendan sitting on board, till they came to the
+fountain thereof.  Then said the holy father, "See, brethren, the
+Lord has given us a place wherein to celebrate his holy
+Resurrection.  And if we had nought else, this fountain, I think,
+would serve for food as well as drink."  For the fountain was too
+admirable.  Over it was a huge tree of wonderful breadth, but no
+great height, covered with snow-white birds, so that its leaves and
+boughs could scarce be seen.
+
+And when the man of God saw that, he was so desirous to know the
+cause of that assemblage of birds, that he besought God upon his
+knees, with tears, saying, "God, who knowest the unknown, and
+revealest the hidden, thou knowest the anxiety of my heart. . . .
+Deign of thy great mercy to reveal to me thy secret. . . .  But not
+for the merit of my own dignity, but regarding thy clemency, do I
+presume to ask."
+
+Then one of those birds flew from off the tree, and his wings
+sounded like bells over the boat.  And he sat on the prow, and
+spread his wings joyfully, and looked quietly on St. Brendan.  And
+when the man of God questioned that bird, it told how they were of
+the spirits which fell in the great ruin of the old enemy; not by
+sin or by consent, but predestined by the piety of God to fall with
+those with whom they were created.  But they suffered no punishment;
+only they could not, in part, behold the presence of God.  They
+wandered about this world, like other spirits of the air, and
+firmament, and earth.  But on holy days they took those shapes of
+birds, and praised their Creator in that place.
+
+Then the bird told him, how he and his monks had wandered one year
+already, and should wander for six more; and every year should
+celebrate their Easter in that place, and after find the Land of
+Promise; and so flew back to its tree.
+
+And when the eventide was come, the birds began all with one voice
+to sing, and clap their wings, crying, "Thou, O God, art praised in
+Zion, and unto Thee shall the vow be performed in Jerusalem."  And
+always they repeated that verse for an hour, and their melody and
+the clapping of their wings was like music which drew tears by its
+sweetness.
+
+And when the man of God wakened his monks at the third watch of the
+night with the verse, "Thou shalt open my lips, O Lord," all the
+birds answered, "Praise the Lord, all his angels; praise him, all
+his virtues."  And when the dawn shone, they sang again, "The
+splendour of the Lord God is over us;" and at the third hour, "Sing
+psalms to our God, sing; sing to our King, sing with wisdom."  And
+at the sixth, "The Lord hath lifted up the light of his countenance
+upon us, and had mercy on us."  And at the ninth, "Behold how good
+and pleasant it is for brethren to dwell in unity."  So day and
+night those birds gave praise to God.  St. Brendan, therefore,
+seeing these things, gave thanks to God for all his marvels, and the
+brethren were refreshed with that spiritual food till the octave of
+Easter.
+
+After which, St. Brendan advised to take of the water of the
+fountain; for till then they had only used it to wash their feet and
+hands.  But there came to him the same man who had been with them
+three days before Easter, and with his boat full of meat and drink,
+and said, "My brothers, here you have enough to last till Pentecost:
+but do not drink of that fountain.  For its nature is, that
+whosoever drinks will sleep for four-and-twenty hours."  So they
+stayed till Pentecost, and rejoiced in the song of the birds.  And
+after mass at Pentecost, the man brought them food again, and bade
+them take of the water of the fountain and depart.  Then the birds
+came again, and sat upon the prow, and told them how they must,
+every year, celebrate Easter in the Isle of Birds, and Easter Eve
+upon the back of the fish Jasconius; and how, after eight months,
+they should come to the isle called Ailbey, and keep their Christmas
+there.
+
+After which they were on the ocean for eight months, out of sight of
+land, and only eating after every two or three days, till they came
+to an island, along which they sailed for forty days, and found no
+harbour.  Then they wept and prayed, for they were almost worn out
+with weariness; and after they had fasted and prayed for three days,
+they saw a narrow harbour, and two fountains, one foul, one clear.
+But when the brethren hurried to draw water, St. Brendan (as he had
+done once before) forbade them, saying that they must take nought
+without leave from the elders who were in that isle.
+
+And of the wonders which they saw in that isle it were too long to
+tell:  how there met them an exceeding old man, with snow-white
+hair, who fell at St. Brendan's feet three times, and led him in
+silence up to a monastery of four-and-twenty silent monks, who
+washed their feet, and fed them with bread and water, and roots of
+wonderful sweetness; and then at last, opening his mouth, told them
+how that bread was sent them perpetually, they knew not from whence;
+and how they had been there eighty years, since the times of St.
+Patrick, and how their father Ailbey and Christ had nourished them;
+and how they grew no older, nor ever fell sick, nor were overcome by
+cold or heat; and how brother never spoke to brother, but all things
+were done by signs; and how he led them to a square chapel, with
+three candles before the mid-altar, and two before each of the side
+altars; and how they, and the chalices and patens, and all the other
+vessels, were of crystal; and how the candles were lighted always by
+a fiery arrow, which came in through the window, and returned; and
+how St. Brendan kept his Christmas there, and then sailed away till
+Lent, and came to a fruitful island where he found fish; and how
+when certain brethren drank too much of the charmed water they
+slept, some three days, and some one; and how they sailed north, and
+then east, till they came back to the Isle of Sheep at Easter, and
+found on the shore their caldron, which they had lost on Jasconius's
+back; and how, sailing away, they were chased by a mighty fish which
+spouted foam, but was slain by another fish which spouted fire; and
+how they took enough of its flesh to last them three months; and how
+they came to an island flat as the sea, without trees, or aught that
+waved in the wind; and how on that island were three troops of monks
+(as the holy man had foretold), standing a stone's throw from each
+other:  the first of boys, robed in snow-white; the second of young
+men, dressed in hyacinthine; the third of old men, in purple
+dalmatics, singing alternately their psalms, all day and night:  and
+how when they stopped singing, a cloud of wondrous brightness
+overshadowed the isle; and how two of the young men, ere they sailed
+away, brought baskets of grapes, and asked that one of the monks (as
+had been prophesied) should remain with them, in the Isle of Strong
+Men; and how St. Brendan let him go, saying, "In a good hour did thy
+mother conceive thee, because thou hast merited to dwell with such a
+congregation;" and how those grapes were so big, that a pound of
+juice ran out of each of them, and an ounce thereof fed each brother
+for a whole day, and was as sweet as honey; and how a magnificent
+bird dropped into the ship the bough of an unknown tree, with a
+bunch of grapes thereon; and how they came to a land where the trees
+were all bowed down with vines, and their odour as the odour of a
+house full of pomegranates; and how they fed forty days on those
+grapes, and strange herbs and roots; and how they saw flying against
+them the bird which is called gryphon; and how that bird who had
+brought the bough tore out the gryphon's eyes, and slew him; and how
+they looked down into the clear sea, and saw all the fishes sailing
+round and round, head to tail, innumerable as flocks in the
+pastures, and were terrified, and would have had the man of God
+celebrate mass in silence, lest the fish should hear, and attack
+them; and how the man of God laughed at their folly; and how they
+came to a column of clear crystal in the sea, with a canopy round it
+of the colour of silver, harder than marble, and sailed in through
+an opening, and found it all light within; {269} and how they found
+in that hall a chalice of the same stuff as the canopy, and a paten
+of that of the column, and took them, that they might make many
+believe; and how they sailed out again, and past a treeless island,
+covered with slag and forges; and how a great hairy man, fiery and
+smutty, came down and shouted after them; and how when they made the
+sign of the Cross and sailed away, he and his fellows brought down
+huge lumps of burning slag in tongs, and hurled them after the ship;
+and how they went back, and blew their forges up, till the whole
+island flared, and the sea boiled, and the howling and stench
+followed them, even when they were out of sight of that evil isle;
+and how St. Brendan bade them strengthen themselves in faith and
+spiritual arms, for they were now on the confines of hell, therefore
+they must watch, and play the man.  All this must needs be hastened
+over, that we may come to the famous legend of Judas Iscariot.
+
+They saw a great and high mountain toward the north, with smoke
+about its peak.  And the wind blew them close under the cliffs,
+which were of immense height, so that they could hardly see their
+top, upright as walls, and black as coal. {270}  Then he who
+remained of the three brethren who had followed St. Brendan sprang
+out of the ship, and waded to the cliff foot, groaning, and crying,
+"Woe to me, father, for I am carried away from you; and cannot turn
+back."  Then the brethren backed the ship, and cried to the Lord for
+mercy.  But the blessed Father Brendan saw how that wretch was
+carried off by a multitude of devils, and all on fire among them.
+Then a fair wind blew them away southward; and when they looked back
+they saw the peak of the isle uncovered, and flame spouting from it
+up to heaven, and sinking back again, till the whole mountain seemed
+one burning pile.
+
+After that terrible vision they sailed seven days to the south, till
+Father Brendan saw a dense cloud; when they neared it, a form as of
+a man sitting, and before him a veil, as big as a sack, hanging
+between two iron tongs, and rocking on the waves like a boat in a
+whirlwind.  Which when the brethren saw some thought was a bird, and
+some a boat; but the man of God bade them give over arguing, and row
+thither.  And when they got near, the waves were still, as if they
+had been frozen; and they found a man sitting on a rough and
+shapeless rock, and the waves beating over his head; and when they
+fell back, the bare rock appeared on which that wretch was sitting.
+And the cloth which hung before him the wind moved, and beat him
+with it on the eyes and brow.  But when the blessed man asked him
+who he was, and how he had earned that doom, he said, "I am that
+most wretched Judas, who made the worst of all bargains.  But I hold
+not this place for any merit of my own, but for the ineffable mercy
+of Christ.  I expect no place of repentance:  but for the indulgence
+and mercy of the Redeemer of the world, and for the honour of His
+holy resurrection, I have this refreshment; for it is the Lord's-day
+now, and as I sit here I seem to myself in a paradise of delight, by
+reason of the pains which will be mine this evening; for when I am
+in my pains I burn day and night like lead melted in a pot.  But in
+the midst of that mountain which you saw, is Leviathan with his
+satellites, and I was there when he swallowed your brother; and
+therefore the king of hell rejoiced, and sent forth huge flames, as
+he doth always when he devours the souls of the impious."  Then he
+told them how he had his refreshings there every Lord's-day from
+even to even, and from Christmas to Epiphany, and from Easter to
+Pentecost, and from the Purification of the Blessed Virgin to her
+Assumption:  but the rest of his time he was tormented with Herod
+and Pilate, Annas and Caiaphas; and so adjured them to intercede for
+him with the Lord that he might be there at least till sunrise in
+the morn.  To whom the man of God said, "The will of the Lord be
+done.  Thou shalt not be carried off by the daemons till to-morrow."
+Then he asked him of that clothing, and he told how he had given it
+to a leper when he was the Lord's chamberlain; "but because it was
+no more mine than it was the Lord's and the other brethren's,
+therefore it is of no comfort to me, but rather a hurt.  And these
+forks I gave to the priests to hang their caldrons on.  And this
+stone on which I always sit I took off the road, and threw it into a
+ditch for a stepping-stone, before I was a disciple of the Lord."
+{272}
+
+But when the evening hour had covered the face of Thetis," behold a
+multitude of daemons shouting in a ring, and bidding the man of God
+depart, for else they could not approach; and they dared not behold
+their prince's face unless they brought back their prey.  But the
+man of God bade them depart.  And in the morning an infinite
+multitude of devils covered the face of the abyss, and cursed the
+man of God for coming thither; for their prince had scourged them
+cruelly that night for not bringing back the captive.  But the man
+of God returned their curses on their own heads, saying that "cursed
+was he whom they blest, and blessed he whom they cursed;" and when
+they threatened Judas with double torments because he had not come
+back, the man of God rebuked them.
+
+"Art thou, then, Lord of all," they asked, "that we should obey
+thee?"  "I am the servant," said he, "of the Lord of all; and
+whatsoever I command in his name is done; and I have no ministry
+save what he concedes to me."
+
+So they blasphemed him till he left Judas, and then returned, and
+carried off that wretched soul with great rushing and howling.
+
+After which they saw a little isle; and the holy man told them that
+now seven years were nigh past; and that in that isle they should
+soon see a hermit, named Paul the Spiritual, who had lived for sixty
+years without any corporeal food, but for thirty years before that
+he had received food from a certain beast.
+
+The isle was very small, about a furlong round; a bare rock, so
+steep that they could find no landing-place.  But at last they found
+a creek, into which they thrust the boat's bow, and then discovered
+a very difficult ascent.  Up that the man of God climbed, bidding
+them wait for him, for they must not enter the isle without the
+hermit's leave; and when he came to the top he saw two caves, with
+their mouths opposite each other, and a very small round well before
+the cave mouth, whose waters, as fast as they ran out, were sucked
+in again by the rock. {274}  As he went to one entrance, the old man
+came out of the other, saying, "Behold how good and pleasant it is,
+brethren, to dwell together in unity," and bade him call up the
+brethren from the boat; and when they came, he kissed them, and
+called them each by his name.  Whereat they marvelled, not only at
+his spirit of prophecy, but also at his attire; for he was all
+covered with his locks and beard, and with the other hair of his
+body, down to his feet.  His hair was white as snow for age, and
+none other covering had he.  When St. Brendan saw that, he sighed
+again and again, and said within himself, "Woe is me, sinner that I
+am, who wear a monk's habit, and have many monks under me, when I
+see a man of angelic dignity sitting in a cell, still in the flesh,
+and unhurt by the vices of the flesh."  To whom the man of God
+answered, "Venerable father, what great and many wonders God hath
+showed thee, which he hath manifested to none of the fathers, and
+thou sayest in thy heart that thou art not worthy to wear a monk's
+habit.  I tell thee, father, that thou art greater than a monk; for
+a monk is fed and clothed by the work of his own hands:  but God has
+fed and clothed thee and thy family for seven years with his secret
+things, while wretched I sit here on this rock like a bird, naked
+save the hair of my body."
+
+Then St. Brendan asked him how and whence he came thither; and he
+told how he was nourished in St. Patrick's monastery for fifty
+years, and took care of the cemetery; and how when the dean had
+bidden him dig a grave, an old man, whom he knew not, appeared to
+him, and forbade him, for that grave was another man's.  And how he
+revealed to him that he was St. Patrick, his own abbot, who had died
+the day before, and bade him bury that brother elsewhere, and go
+down to the sea and find a boat, which would take him to the place
+where he should wait for the day of his death; and how he landed on
+that rock, and thrust the boat off with his foot, and it went
+swiftly back to its own land; and how, on the very first day, a
+beast came to him, walking on its hind paws, and between its fore
+paws a fish, and grass to make a fire, and laid them at his feet;
+and so every third day for twenty years; and every Lord's day a
+little water came out of the rock, so that he could drink and wash
+his hands; and how after thirty years he had found these caves and
+that fountain, and had fed for the last sixty years on nought but
+the water thereof.  For all the years of his life were 150, and
+henceforth he awaited the day of his judgment in that his flesh.
+
+Then they took of that water, and received his blessing, and kissed
+each other in the peace of Christ, and sailed southward:  but their
+food was the water from the isle of the man of God.  Then (as Paul
+the Hermit had foretold) they came back on Easter Eve to the Isle of
+Sheep, and to him who used to give them victuals; and then went on
+to the fish Jasconius, and sang praises on his back all night, and
+mass at morn.  After which the fish carried them on his back to the
+Paradise of Birds, and there they stayed till Pentecost.  Then the
+man who always tended them, bade them fill their skins from the
+fountain, and he would lead them to the land promised to the saints.
+And all the birds wished them a prosperous voyage in God's name; and
+they sailed away, with forty days' provision, the man being their
+guide, till after forty days they came at evening to a great
+darkness which lay round the Promised Land.  But after they had
+sailed through it for an hour, a great light shone round them, and
+the boat stopped at a shore.  And when they landed they saw a
+spacious land, full of trees bearing fruit as in autumn time.  And
+they walked about that land for forty days, eating of the fruit and
+drinking of the fountains, and found no end thereof.  And there was
+no night there, but the light shone like the light of the sun.  At
+last they came to a great river, which they could not cross, so that
+they could not find out the extent of that land.  And as they were
+pondering over this, a youth, with shining face and fair to look
+upon, met them, and kissed them with great joy, calling them each by
+his name, and said, "Brethren, peace be with you, and with all that
+follow the peace of Christ."  And after that, "Blessed are they who
+dwell in thy house, O Lord; they shall be for ever praising thee."
+
+Then he told St. Brendan that that was the land which he had been
+seeking for seven years, and that he must now return to his own
+country, taking of the fruits of that land, and of its precious
+gems, as much as his ship could carry; for the days of his departure
+were at hand, when he should sleep in peace with his holy brethren.
+But after many days that land should be revealed to his successors,
+and should be a refuge for Christians in persecution.  As for the
+river that they saw, it parted that island; and the light shone
+there for ever, because Christ was the light thereof.
+
+Then St. Brendan asked if that land would ever be revealed to men:
+and the youth answered, that when the most high Creator should have
+put all nations under his feet, then that land should be manifested
+to all his elect.
+
+After which St. Brendan, when the youth had blessed him, took of the
+fruits and of the gems, and sailed back through the darkness, and
+returned to his monastery; whom when the brethren saw, they
+glorified God for the miracles which he had heard and seen.  After
+which he ended his life in peace.  Amen.
+
+Here ends (says the French version) concerning St. Brendan, and the
+marvels which he found in the sea of Ireland.
+
+
+
+ST. MALO
+
+
+
+Intermingled, fantastically and inconsistently, with the story of
+St. Brendan, is that of St. Maclovius or Machutus, who has given his
+name to the seaport of St. Malo, in Brittany.  His life, written by
+Sigebert, a monk of Gembloux, about the year 1100, tells us how he
+was a Breton, who sailed with St. Brendan in search of the fairest
+of all islands, in which the citizens of heaven were said to dwell.
+With St. Brendan St. Malo celebrated Easter on the whale's back, and
+with St. Brendan he returned.  But another old hagiographer,
+Johannes a Bosco, tells a different story, making St. Malo an
+Irishman brought up by St. Brendan, and preserved by his prayers
+from a wave of the sea.  He gives, moreover, to the Isle of Paradise
+the name of Inga, and says that St. Brendan and his companions never
+reached it after all, but came home after sailing round the Orkneys
+and other Northern isles.  The fact is, that the same saints
+reappear so often on both sides of the British and the Irish
+Channels, that we must take the existence of many of them as mere
+legend, which has been carried from land to land by monks in their
+migrations, and taken root upon each fresh soil which it has
+reached.  One incident in St. Malo's voyage is so fantastic, and so
+grand likewise, that it must not be omitted.  The monks come to an
+island whereon they find the barrow of some giant of old time.  St.
+Malo, seized with pity for the lost soul of the heathen, opens the
+mound and raises the dead to life.  Then follows a strange
+conversation between the giant and the saint.  He was slain, he
+says, by his kinsmen, and ever since has been tormented in the other
+world.  In that nether pit they know (he says) of the Holy Trinity:
+but that knowledge is rather harm than gain to them, because they
+did not choose to know it when alive on earth.  Therefore he begs to
+be baptized, and so delivered from his pain.  He is therefore
+instructed, catechised, and in due time baptized, and admitted to
+the Holy Communion.  For fifteen days more he remains alive:  and
+then, dying once more, is again placed in his sepulchre, and left in
+peace.
+
+From fragmentary recollections of such tales as these (it may be
+observed in passing) may have sprung the strange fancy of the modern
+Cornishmen, which identifies these very Celtic saints of their own
+race with the giants who, according to Geoffrey of Monmouth,
+inhabited the land before Brutus and his Trojans founded the
+Arthuric dynasty.  St. Just, for instance, who is one of the
+guardian saints of the Land's End, and St. Kevern, one of the
+guardian saints of the Lizard, are both giants; and Cornishmen a few
+years since would tell how St. Just came from his hermitage by Cape
+Cornwall to visit St. Kevern in his cave on the east side of
+Goonhilly Downs; and how they took the Holy Communion together; and
+how St. Just, tempted by the beauty of St. Kevern's paten and
+chalice, arose in the night and fled away with the holy vessels,
+wading first the Looe Pool, and then Mount's Bay itself; and how St.
+Kevern pursued him, and hurled after him three great boulders of
+porphyry, two of which lie on the slates and granites to this day;
+till St. Just, terrified at the might of his saintly brother, tossed
+the stolen vessels ashore opposite St. Michael's Mount, and, fleeing
+back to his own hermitage, never appeared again in the neighbourhood
+of St. Kevern.
+
+But to return.  St. Malo, coming home with St. Brendan, craves for
+peace, and solitude, and the hermit's cell, and goes down to the
+sea-shore, to find a vessel which may carry him out once more into
+the infinite unknown.  Then there comes by a boat with no one in it
+but a little boy, who takes him on board, and carries him to the
+isle of the hermit Aaron, near the town of Aletha, which men call
+St. Malo now; and then the little boy vanishes away, and St. Malo
+knows that he was Christ himself.  There he lives with Aaron, till
+the Bretons of the neighbourhood make him their bishop.  He converts
+the idolaters around, and performs the usual miracles of hermit
+saints.  He changes water into wine, and restores to life not only a
+dead man, but a dead sow likewise, over whose motherless litter a
+wretched slave, who has by accident killed the sow with a stone, is
+weeping and wringing his hands in dread of his master's fury.  While
+St. Malo is pruning vines, he lays his cape upon the ground, and a
+redbreast comes and lays an egg on it.  He leaves it there, for the
+bird's sake, till the young are hatched, knowing, says his
+biographer, that without God the Father not a sparrow falls to the
+ground.  Hailoch, the prince of Brittany, destroys his church, and
+is struck blind.  Restored to sight by the saint, he bestows large
+lands on the Church.  "The impious generation," who, with their
+children after them, have lost their property by Hailoch's gift,
+rise against St. Malo.  They steal his horses, and in mockery leave
+him only a mare.  They beat his baker, tie his feet under the
+horse's body, and leave him on the sand to be drowned by the rising
+tide.  The sea by a miracle stops a mile off, and the baker is
+saved.
+
+St. Malo, weary of the wicked Bretons, flees to Saintonge in
+Aquitaine, where he performs yet more miracles.  Meanwhile, a dire
+famine falls on the Bretons, and a thousand horrible diseases.
+Penitent, they send for St. Malo, who delivers them and their
+flocks.  But, at the command of an angel, he returns to Saintonge
+and dies there, and Saintonge has his relics, and the innumerable
+miracles which they work, even to the days of Sigebert, of Gembloux.
+
+
+ST. COLUMBA
+
+
+
+The famous St. Columba cannot perhaps be numbered among the hermits:
+but as the spiritual father of many hermits, as well as many monks,
+and as one whose influence upon the Christianity of these islands is
+notorious and extensive, he must needs have some notice in these
+pages.  Those who wish to study his life and works at length will of
+course read Dr. Reeves's invaluable edition of Adamnan.  The more
+general reader will find all that he need know in Mr. Hill Burton's
+excellent "History of Scotland," chapters vii. and viii.; and also
+in Mr. Maclear's "History of Christian Missions during the Middle
+Ages"--a book which should be in every Sunday library.
+
+St. Columba, like St. David and St. Cadoc of Wales, and like many
+great Irish saints, is a prince and a statesman as well as a monk.
+He is mixed up in quarrels between rival tribes.  He is concerned,
+according to antiquaries, in three great battles, one of which
+sprang, according to some, from Columba's own misdeeds.  He copies
+by stealth the Psalter of St. Finnian.  St. Finnian demands the
+copy, saying it was his as much as the original.  The matter is
+referred to King Dermod, who pronounces, in high court at Tara, the
+famous decision which has become a proverb in Ireland, that "to
+every cow belongs her own calf." {283}  St. Columba, who does not
+seem at this time to have possessed the dove-like temper which his
+name, according to his disciples, indicates, threatens to avenge
+upon the king his unjust decision.  The son of the king's steward
+and the son of the King of Connaught, a hostage at Dermod's court,
+are playing hurley on the green before Dermod's palace.  The young
+prince strikes the other boy, kills him, and flies for protection to
+Columba.  He is nevertheless dragged away, and slain upon the spot.
+Columba leaves the palace in a rage, goes to his native mountains of
+Donegal, and returns at the head of an army of northern and western
+Irish to fight the great battle of Cooldrevny in Sligo.  But after a
+while public opinion turns against him; and at the Synod of Teltown,
+in Meath, it is proclaimed that Columba, the man of blood, shall
+quit Ireland, and win for Christ out of heathendom as many souls as
+have perished in that great fight.  Then Columba, with twelve
+comrades, sails in a coracle for the coast of Argyleshire; and on
+the eve of Pentecost, A.D. 563, lands upon that island which, it may
+be, will be famous to all times as Iona, Hy, or Icolumkill,--Hy of
+Columb of the Cells.
+
+Thus had Columba, if the tale be true, undertaken a noble penance;
+and he performed it like a noble man.  If, according to the fashion
+of those times, he bewailed his sins with tears, he was no morbid or
+selfish recluse, but a man of practical power, and of wide humanity.
+Like one of Homer's old heroes, St. Columba could turn his hand to
+every kind of work.  He could turn the hand-mill, work on the farm,
+heal the sick, and command as a practised sailor the little fleet of
+coracles which lay hauled up on the strand of Iona, ready to carry
+him and his monks on their missionary voyages to the mainland or the
+isles.  Tall, powerful, handsome, with a face which, as Adamnan
+said, made all who saw him glad, and a voice so stentorian that it
+could be heard at times a full mile off, and coming too of royal
+race, it is no wonder if he was regarded as a sort of demigod, not
+only by his own monks, but by the Pictish chiefs to whom he preached
+the Cross.  We hear of him at Craig Phadrick, near Inverness; at
+Skye, at Tiree, and other islands; we hear of him receiving visits
+from his old monks of Derry and Durrow; returning to Ireland to
+decide between rival chiefs; and at last dying at the age of
+seventy-seven, kneeling before the altar in his little chapel of
+Iona--a death as beautiful as had been the last thirty-four years of
+his life; and leaving behind him disciples destined to spread the
+light of Christianity over the whole of Scotland and the northern
+parts of England.
+
+St. Columba, at one period or other of his life, is said to have
+visited a missionary hermit, whose name still lingers in Scotland as
+St. Kentigern, or more commonly St. Mungo, the patron saint of
+Glasgow.  The two men, it is said (but the story belongs to the
+twelfth century, and can hardly be depended on), exchanged their
+crooked staves or crosiers in token of Christian brotherhood, and
+that which St. Columba is said to have given to St. Kentigern was
+preserved in Ripon Cathedral to the beginning of the fifteenth
+century.  But who St. Kentigern was, or what he really did, is hard
+to say; for all his legends, like most of these early ones, are as
+tangled as a dream.  He dies in the year 601:  and yet he is the
+disciple of the famous St. Servanus or St. Serf, who lived in the
+times of St. Palladius and St. Patrick, 180 years before.  This St.
+Serf is a hermit of the true old type; and even if his story be, as
+Dr. Reeves thinks, a fabrication throughout, it is at least a very
+early one, and true to the ideal which had originated with St.
+Antony.  He is brought up in a monastery at Culross:  he is tempted
+by the devil in a cave in the parish of Dysart (the Desert), in
+Fifeshire, which still retains that name.  The daemon, fleeing from
+him, enters an unfortunate man, who is forthwith plagued with a
+wolfish appetite.  St. Serf cures him by putting his thumb into his
+mouth.  A man is accused of stealing and eating a lamb, and denies
+the theft.  St. Serf, however, makes the lamb bleat in the robber's
+stomach, and so substantiates the charge beyond all doubt.  He works
+other wonders; among them the slaying of a great dragon in the place
+called "Dunyne;" sails for the Orkneys, and converts the people
+there; and vanishes thenceforth into the dream-land from which he
+sprung.
+
+Two great disciples he has, St. Ternan and St. Kentigern; mystery
+and miracle hang round the boyhood of the latter.  His father is
+unknown.  His mother is condemned to be cast from the rock of
+"Dunpelder," but is saved and absolved by a miracle.  Before the
+eyes of the astonished Picts, she floats gently down through the
+air, and arrives at the cliff foot unhurt.  St. Kentigern is
+thenceforth believed to be virgin-born, and is reverenced as a
+miraculous being from his infancy.  He goes to school to the mythic
+St. Serf, who calls him Mungo, or the Beloved; which name he bears
+in Glasgow until this day.  His fellow-scholars envy his virtue and
+learning, and try to ruin him with their master.  St. Serf has a pet
+robin, which is wont to sit and sing upon his shoulder.  The boys
+pull off its head, and lay the blame upon Kentigern.  The saint
+comes in wrathful, tawse in hand, and Kentigern is for the moment in
+serious danger; but, equal to the occasion then as afterwards, he
+puts the robin's head on again, sets it singing, and amply
+vindicates his innocence.  To this day the robin figures in the arms
+of the good city of Glasgow, with the tree which St. Kentigern, when
+his enemies had put out his fire, brought in from the frozen forest
+and lighted with his breath, and the salmon in whose mouth a ring
+which had been cast into the Clyde had been found again by St.
+Kentigern's prophetic spirit.
+
+The envy of his fellow-scholars, however, is too much for St.
+Kentigern's peace of mind.  He wanders away to the spot where
+Glasgow city now stands, lives in a rock hollowed out into a tomb,
+is ordained by an Irish bishop (according to a Celtic custom, of
+which antiquaries have written learnedly and dubiously likewise),
+and has ecclesiastical authority over all the Picts from the Frith
+of Forth to the Roman Wall.  But all these stories, as I said
+before, are tangled as a dream; for the twelfth century monks, in
+their loyal devotion to the see of Rome, are apt to introduce again
+and again ecclesiastical customs which belonged to their own time,
+and try to represent these primaeval saints as regular and well-
+disciplined servants of the Pope.
+
+It may be remarked that St. Serf is said to have come into a
+"dysart" or desert.  So did many monks of the school of St. Columba
+and his disciples, who wished for a severer and a more meditative
+life than could be found in the busy society of a convent.  "There
+was a 'disert,'" says Dr. Reeves, "for such men to retire to,
+besides the monastery of Derry, and another at Iona itself, situate
+near the shore in the low ground, north of the Cathedral, as may be
+inferred from Portandisiart, the name of a little bay in this
+situation."  A similar "disert" or collection of hermit cells was
+endowed at Cashel in 1101; and a "disert columkill," with two
+townland mills and a vegetable garden, was endowed at Kells, at a
+somewhat earlier period, for the use of "devout pilgrims," as those
+were called who left the society of men to worship God in solitude.
+
+The Venerable Bede speaks of as many as three personages, Saxons by
+their names, who in the Isle of Ireland led the "Pilgrim" or
+anchoritic life, to obtain a country in heaven; and tells of a
+Drycthelm of the monastery at Melrose, who went into a secret
+dwelling therein to give himself more utterly to prayer, and who
+used to stand for hours in the cold waters of the Tweed, as St.
+Godric did centuries afterwards in those of the Wear.  Solitaries,
+"recluses," are met with again and again in these old records, who
+more than once became Abbots of Iona itself.  But there is no need
+to linger on over instances which are only quoted to show that some
+of the noblest spirits of the Celtic Church kept up wherever they
+could the hermit's ideal, the longing for solitude, for passive
+contemplation, for silence and perpetual prayer, which they had
+inherited from St. Antony and the Fathers of the Egyptian Desert.
+
+The same ideal was carried by them over the Border into England.
+Off its extreme northern coast, for instance, nearly half-way
+between Berwick and Bamborough Castle, lies, as travellers northward
+may have seen for themselves, the "Holy Island," called in old times
+Lindisfarne.  A monk's chapel on that island was the mother of all
+the churches between Tyne and Tweed, as well as of many between Tyne
+and Humber.  The Northumbrians had been nominally converted,
+according to Bede, A.D. 627, under their King Edwin, by Paulinus,
+one of the Roman monks who had followed in the steps of St.
+Augustine, the apostle of Kent.  Evil times had fallen on them.
+Penda, at the head of the idolatrous Mercians (the people of Mid-
+England), and Ceadwalla, at the head of the Western Britons, had
+ravaged the country north of Tweed with savage cruelty, slain King
+Edwin, at Hatfield, near Doncaster, and exterminated Christianity;
+while Paulinus had fled to Kent, and become Bishop of Rochester.
+The invaders had been driven out, seemingly by Oswald, who knew
+enough of Christianity to set up, ere he engaged the enemy, a cross
+of wood on the "Heavenfield," near Hexham.  That cross stood till
+the time of Bede, some 150 years after; and had become, like Moses'
+brazen serpent, an object of veneration.  For if chips cut off from
+it were put into water, that water cured men or cattle of their
+diseases.
+
+Oswald, believing that it was through the mercy of him whom that
+cross symbolized he had conquered the Mercians and the Britons,
+would needs reconvert his people to the true faith.  He had been in
+exile during Edwin's lifetime among the Scots, and had learned from
+them something of Christianity.  So out of Iona a monk was sent to
+him, Aidan by name, to be a bishop over the Northumbrians; and he
+settled himself upon the isle of Lindisfarne, and began to convert
+it into another Iona.  "A man he was," says Bede, "of singular
+sweetness, piety, and moderation; zealous in the cause of God,
+though not altogether according to knowledge, for he was wont to
+keep Easter after the fashion of his country;" i.e. of the Picts and
+Northern Scots. . . . "From that time forth many Scots came daily
+into Britain, and with great devotion preached the word to these
+provinces of the English over whom King Oswald reigned. . . .
+Churches were built, money and lands were given of the king's bounty
+to build monasteries; the English, great and small, were by their
+Scottish masters instructed in the rules and observance of regular
+discipline; for most of those who came to preach were monks." {290}
+
+So says the Venerable Bede, the monk of Jarrow, and the father (as
+he has been well called) of English history.  He tells us too, how
+Aidan, wishing, it may be supposed, for greater solitude, went away
+and lived on the rocky isle of Farne, some two miles out at sea, off
+Bamborough Castle; and how, when he saw Penda and his Mercians, in a
+second invasion of Northumbria, trying to burn down the walls of
+Bamborough--which were probably mere stockades of timber--he cried
+to God, from off his rock, to "behold the mischief:" whereon the
+wind changed suddenly, and blew the flames back on the besiegers,
+discomfiting them, and saving the town.
+
+Bede tells us, too, how Aidan wandered, preaching from place to
+place, haunting King Oswald's court, but owning nothing of his own
+save his church, and a few fields about it; and how, when death came
+upon him, they set up a tent for him close by the wall at the west
+end of the church, so that it befell that he gave up the ghost
+leaning against a post, which stood outside to strengthen the wall.
+
+A few years after, Penda came again and burned the village, with the
+church; and yet neither could that fire, nor one which happened soon
+after, destroy that post.  Wherefore the post was put inside the
+church, as a holy thing, and chips of it, like those of the Cross of
+Heaven Field, healed many folk of their distempers.
+
+. . . A tale at which we may look in two different humours.  We may
+pass it by with a sneer, and a hypothesis (which will be probably
+true) that the post was of old heart-of-oak, which is burnt with
+extreme difficulty; or we may pause a moment in reverence before the
+noble figure of the good old man, ending a life of unselfish toil
+without a roof beneath which to lay his head; penniless and
+comfortless in this world:  but sure of his reward in the world to
+come.
+
+A few years after Aidan's death another hermit betook him to the
+rocks of Farne, who rose to far higher glory; who became, in fact,
+the tutelar saint of the fierce Northern men; who was to them, up to
+the time even of the Tudor monarchs, what Pallas Athene was to
+Athens, or Diana to the Ephesians.  St. Cuthbert's shrine, in Durham
+Cathedral (where his biographer Bede also lay in honour), was their
+rallying point, not merely for ecclesiastical jurisdiction or for
+miraculous cures, but for political movements.  Above his shrine
+rose the noble pile of Durham.  The bishop, who ruled in his name,
+was a Count Palatine, and an almost independent prince.  His sacred
+banner went out to battle before the Northern levies, or drove back
+again and again the flames which consumed the wooden houses of
+Durham.  His relics wrought innumerable miracles; and often he
+himself appeared with long countenance, ripened by abstinence, his
+head sprinkled with grey hairs, his casule of cloth of gold, his
+mitre of glittering crystal, his face brighter than the sun, his
+eyes mild as the stars of heaven, the gems upon his hand and robes
+rattling against his pastoral staff beset with pearls. {292}  Thus
+glorious the demigod of the Northern men appeared to his votaries,
+and steered with his pastoral staff, as with a rudder, the sinking
+ship in safety to Lindisfarne; received from the hands of St.
+Brendan, as from a saint of inferior powers, the innocent yeoman,
+laden with fetters, whom he had delivered out of the dungeon of
+Brancepeth, and, smiting asunder the massive Norman walls, led him
+into the forest, and bade him flee to sanctuary in Durham, and be
+safe; or visited the little timber vine-clad chapel of Lixtune, on
+the Cheshire shore, to heal the sick who watched all night before
+his altar, or to forgive the lad who had robbed the nest which his
+sacred raven had built upon the roof, and, falling with the decayed
+timber, had broken his bones, and maimed his sacrilegious hand.
+
+Originally, says Bede, a monk at Melrose, and afterward abbot of the
+same place, he used to wander weeks together out of his monastery,
+seemingly into Ettrick and the Lammermuirs, and preach in such
+villages as "being seated high up among craggy, uncouth mountains,
+were frightful to others even to look at, and whose poverty and
+barbarity rendered them inaccessible to other teachers."  "So
+skilful an orator was he, so fond of enforcing his subject, and such
+a brightness appeared in his angelic face, that no man presumed to
+conceal from him the most hidden secrets of their hearts, but all
+openly confessed what they had done."
+
+So he laboured for many years, till his old abbot Eata, who had
+become bishop and abbot at Lindisfarne, sent for him thither, and
+made him prior of the monks for several years.  But at last he
+longed, like so many before him, for solitude.  He considered (so he
+said afterwards to the brethren) that the life of the disciplined
+and obedient monk was higher than that of the lonely and independent
+hermit:  but yet he longed to be alone; longed, it may be, to recall
+at least upon some sea-girt rock thoughts which had come to him in
+those long wanderings on the heather moors, with no sound to
+distract him save the hum of the bee and the wail of the curlew; and
+so he went away to that same rock of Farne, where Aidan had taken
+refuge some ten or fifteen years before, and there, with the deep
+sea rolling at his feet and the gulls wailing about his head, he
+built himself one of those "Picts' Houses," the walls of which
+remain still in many parts of Scotland--a circular hut of turf and
+rough stone--and dug out the interior to a depth of some feet, and
+thatched it with sticks and grass; and made, it seems, two rooms
+within; one for an oratory, one for a dwelling-place:  and so lived
+alone, and worshipped God.  He grew his scanty crops of barley on
+the rock (men said, of course, by miracle):  he had tried wheat,
+but, as was to be expected, it failed.  He found (men said, of
+course, by miracle) a spring upon the rock.  Now and then brethren
+came to visit him.  And what did man need more, save a clear
+conscience and the presence of his Creator?  Certainly not Cuthbert.
+When he asked the brethren to bring him a beam that he might prop up
+his cabin where the sea had eaten out the floor, and when they
+forgot the commission, the sea itself washed one up in the very cove
+where it was needed:  when the choughs from the cliff stole his
+barley and the straw from the roof of his little hospice, he had
+only to reprove them, and they never offended again; on one
+occasion, indeed, they atoned for their offence by bringing him a
+lump of suet, wherewith he greased his shoes for many a day.  We are
+not bound to believe this story; it is one of many which hang about
+the memory of St. Cuthbert, and which have sprung out of that love
+of the wild birds which may have grown up in the good man during his
+long wanderings through woods and over moors.  He bequeathed (so it
+was believed) as a sacred legacy to the wild-fowl of the Farne
+islands, "St. Cuthbert's peace;" above all to the eider-ducks, which
+swarmed there in his days, but are now, alas! growing rarer and
+rarer, from the intrusion of vulgar sportsmen who never heard St.
+Cuthbert's name, or learnt from him to spare God's creatures when
+they need them not.  On Farne, in Reginald's time, they bred under
+your very bed, got out of your way if you made a sign to them, let
+you take up them or their young ones, and nestled silently in your
+bosom, and croaked joyfully with fluttering wings when stroked.
+"Not to nature, but to grace; not to hereditary tendency, but only
+to the piety and compassion of the blessed St. Cuthbert," says
+Reginald, "is so great a miracle to be ascribed.  For the Lord who
+made all things in heaven and earth has subjected them to the nod of
+his saints, and prostrated them under the feet of obedience."
+Insufficient induction (the cause of endless mistakes, and therefore
+of endless follies and crimes) kept Reginald unaware of the now
+notorious fact that the female eider, during the breeding season, is
+just as tame, allowing for a little exaggeration, as St. Cuthbert's
+own ducks are, while the male eider is just as wild and wary as any
+other sea-bird:  a mistake altogether excusable in one who had
+probably never seen or heard of eider-ducks in any other spot.  It
+may be, nevertheless, that St. Cuthbert's special affection for the
+eider may have been called out by another strange and well-known
+fact about them of which Reginald oddly enough takes no note--
+namely, that they line their nests with down plucked from their own
+bosom; thus realizing the fable which has made the pelican for so
+many centuries the type of the Church.  It is a question, indeed,
+whether the pelican, which is always represented in mediaeval
+paintings and sculptures with a short bill, instead of the enormous
+bill and pouch which is the especial mark of the "Onocrotalus" of
+the ancients, now miscalled pelican, be not actually the eider-duck
+itself, confounded with the true pelecanus, which was the mediaeval,
+and is still the scientific, name of the cormorant.  Be that as it
+may, ill befell any one who dare touch one of St. Cuthbert's birds,
+as was proved in the case of Liveing, servant to AElric, who was a
+hermit in Farne after the time of St. Cuthbert.  For he, tired it
+may be of barley and dried fish, killed and ate an eider-duck in his
+master's absence, scattering the bones and feathers over the cliffs.
+But when the hermit came back, what should he find but those same
+bones and feathers rolled into a lump and laid inside the door of
+the little chapel; the very sea, says Reginald, not having dared to
+swallow them up.  Whereby the hapless Liveing being betrayed, was
+soundly flogged, and put on bread and water for many a day; the
+which story Liveing himself told to Reginald.
+
+Not only the eider, but all birds in Farne, were protected by St.
+Cuthbert's peace.  Bartholomew, who was a famous hermit there in
+after years, had a tame bird, says the chronicler, who ate from his
+hand, and hopped about the table among him and his guests, till some
+thought it a miracle; and some, finding, no doubt, the rocks of
+Farne weary enough, derived continual amusement from the bird.  But
+when he one day went off to another island, and left his bird to
+keep the house, a hawk came in and ate it up.  Cuthbert, who could
+not save the bird, at least could punish the murderer.  The hawk
+flew round and round the island, imprisoned, so it was thought, by
+some mysterious power, till, terrified and worn out, it flew into
+the chapel, and lay, cowering and half dead, in a corner by the
+altar.  Bartholomew came back, found his bird's feathers, and the
+tired hawk.  But even the hawk must profit by St. Cuthbert's peace.
+He took it up, carried it to the harbour, and there bade it depart
+in St. Cuthbert's name, whereon it flew off free, and was no more
+seen.  Such tales as these may be explained, even to their most
+minute details, by simply natural causes:  and yet, in this age of
+wanton destruction of wild birds, one is tempted at moments to wish
+for the return of some such graceful and humane superstition which
+could keep down, at least in the name of mercy and humanity, the
+needless cruelty of man.
+
+But to return.  After St. Cuthbert, says Bede, had served God in the
+solitude of Farne for many years, the mound which encompassed his
+habitation being so high that he could see nothing from thence but
+heaven, to which he so ardently aspired, he was compelled by tears
+and entreaties--King Egfrid himself coming to the island, with
+bishops and religious and great men--to become himself bishop in
+Holy Island.  There, as elsewhere, he did his duty.  But after two
+years he went again to Farne, knowing that his end was near.  For
+when, in his episcopal labours, he had gone across to Lugubalia--old
+Penrith, in Cumberland--there came across to him a holy hermit,
+Herebert by name, who dwelt upon an island in Derwentwater, and
+talked with him a long while on heavenly things; and Cuthbert bade
+him ask him then all the questions which he wished to have resolved,
+for they should see each other no more in this world.  Herebert, who
+seems to have been one of his old friends, fell at Cuthbert's feet,
+and bade him remember that whenever he had done wrong he had
+submitted himself to him utterly, and always tried to live according
+to his rules; and all he wished for now was that, as they had served
+God together upon earth, they might depart for ever to see his bliss
+in heaven:  the which befell; for a few months afterwards, that is,
+on the 20th of March, their souls quitted their mortal bodies on the
+same day, and they were re-united in spirit.
+
+St. Cuthbert wished to have been buried on his rock in Farne:  but
+the brethren had persuaded him to allow his corpse to be removed to
+Holy Island.  He begged them, said Bede, should they be forced to
+leave that place, to carry his bones along with them; and so they
+were forced to do at last; for in the year 875; whilst the Danes
+were struggling with Alfred in Wessex, an army of them, with
+Halfdene at their head, went up into Northumbria, burning towns,
+destroying churches, tossing children on their pike-points, and
+committing all those horrors which made the Norsemen terrible and
+infamous for so many years.  Then the monks fled from the monastery,
+bearing the shrine of St. Cuthbert, and all their treasures, and
+followed by their retainers, men, women, and children, and their
+sheep and oxen:  and behold! the hour of their flight was that of an
+exceedingly high spring tide.  The Danes were landing from their
+ships in their rear; in their front was some two miles of sea.
+Escape seemed hopeless; when, says the legend, the water retreated
+before the holy relics as they advanced; and became, as to the
+children of Israel of old, a wall on their right hand and on their
+left; and so St. Cuthbert came safe to shore, and wandered in the
+woods, borne upon his servants' shoulders, and dwelling in tents for
+seven years, and found rest at last in Durham, till at the
+Reformation his shrine, and that of the Venerable Bede, were robbed
+of their gold and jewels; and no trace of them (as far as I know) is
+left, save that huge slab, whereon is written the monkish rhyme:--
+
+
+Hic jacet in fossa
+Bedae Venerabilis ossa. {299}
+
+
+
+ST. GUTHLAC
+
+
+
+Hermits dwelling in the wilderness, as far as I am aware, were to be
+seen only in the northern and western parts of the island, where not
+only did the forest afford concealment, but the crags and caves
+shelter.  The southern and eastern English seldom possess the vivid
+imagination of the Briton, the Northumbrian, and the Scot; while the
+rich lowlands of central, southern, and eastern England, well
+peopled and well tilled, offered few spots lonely enough for the
+hermit's cell.
+
+One district only was desolate enough to attract those who wished to
+be free from the world,--namely, the great fens north of Cambridge;
+and there, accordingly, as early as the seventh century, hermits
+settled in morasses now so utterly transformed that it is difficult
+to restore in one's imagination the original scenery.
+
+The fens in the seventh century were probably very like the forests
+at the mouth of the Mississippi, or the swampy shores of the
+Carolinas.  Their vast plain is now, in summer, one sea of golden
+corn; in winter, a black dreary fallow, cut into squares by stagnant
+dykes, and broken only by unsightly pumping mills and doleful lines
+of poplar-trees.  Of old it was a labyrinth of black wandering
+streams; broad lagoons; morasses submerged every spring-tide; vast
+beds of reed and sedge and fern; vast copses of willow, alder, and
+grey poplar, rooted in the floating peat, which was swallowing up
+slowly, all-devouring, yet all-preserving, the forests of fir and
+oak, ash and poplar, hazel and yew, which had once grown on that
+low, rank soil, sinking slowly (so geologists assure us) beneath the
+sea from age to age.  Trees, torn down by flood and storm, floated
+and lodged in rafts, damming the waters back upon the land.
+Streams, bewildered in the flats, changed their channels, mingling
+silt and sand with the peat moss.  Nature, left to herself, ran into
+wild riot and chaos more and more, till the whole fen became one
+"Dismal Swamp," in which, at the time of the Norman Conquest, the
+"Last of the English," like Dred in Mrs. Stowe's tale, took refuge
+from their tyrants, and lived, like him, a free and joyous life
+awhile.
+
+For there are islands in the sea which have escaped the destroying
+deluge of peat-moss,--outcrops of firm and fertile land, which in
+the early Middle Age were so many natural parks, covered with
+richest grass and stateliest trees, swarming with deer and roe, goat
+and boar, as the streams around swarmed with otter and beaver, and
+with fowl of every feather, and fish of every scale.
+
+Beautiful after their kind were those far isles in the eyes of the
+monks who were the first settlers in the wilderness.  The author of
+the "History of Ramsey" grows enthusiastic, and somewhat bombastic
+also, as he describes the lovely isle, which got its name from the
+solitary ram who had wandered thither, either in extreme drought or
+over the winter ice, and, never able to return, was found feeding
+among the wild deer, fat beyond the wont of rams.  He tells of the
+stately ashes, most of them cut in his time, to furnish mighty beams
+for the church roof; of the rich pastures painted with all gay
+flowers in spring; of the "green crown" of reed and alder which
+encircled the isle; of the fair wide mere (now drained) with its
+"sandy beach" along the forest side; "a delight," he says, "to all
+who look thereon."
+
+In like humour William of Malmesbury, writing in the first half of
+the twelfth century, speaks of Thorney Abbey and its isle.  "It
+represents," says he, "a very paradise; for that in pleasure and
+delight it resembles heaven itself.  These marshes abound in trees,
+whose length, without a knot, doth emulate the stars.  The plain
+there is as level as the sea, alluring the eye with its green grass,
+and so smooth that there is nought to trip the foot of him who runs
+through it.  Neither is there any waste place; for in some parts are
+apples, in others vines, which are either spread on the ground, or
+raised on poles.  A mutual strife there is between Nature and Art;
+so that what one produces not the other supplies.  What shall I say
+of those fair buildings, which 'tis so wonderful to see the ground
+among those fens upbear?"
+
+So wrote William of Malmesbury, after the industry and wisdom of the
+monks, for more than four centuries, had been at work to civilize
+and cultivate the wilderness.  Yet even then there was another side
+to the picture; and Thorney, Ramsey, or Crowland would have seemed,
+for nine months every year, sad places enough to us comfortable folk
+of the nineteenth century.  But men lived hard in those days, even
+the most high-born and luxurious nobles and ladies; under dark
+skies, in houses which we should think, from darkness, draught, and
+want of space, unfit for felons' cells.  Hardly they lived; and
+easily were they pleased; and thanked God for the least gleam of
+sunshine, the least patch of green, after the terrible and long
+winters of the Middle Ages.  And ugly enough those winters must have
+been, what with snow and darkness, flood and ice, ague and
+rheumatism; while through the dreary winter's night the whistle of
+the wind and the wild cries of the waterfowl were translated into
+the howls of witches and daemons; and (as in St. Guthlac's case),
+the delirious fancies of marsh fever made those fiends take hideous
+shapes before the inner eye, and act fantastic horrors round the
+fen-man's bed of sedge.
+
+Concerning this St. Guthlac full details remain, both in Latin and
+Anglo-Saxon; the author of the original document professing to be
+one Felix, a monk of Ramsey near by, who wrote possibly as early as
+the eighth century. {303}
+
+There we may read how the young warrior-noble Guthlac ("The Battle-
+Play," the "Sport of War"), tired of slaying and sinning, bethought
+him to fulfil the prodigies seen at his birth; how he wandered into
+the fen, where one Tatwin (who after became a saint likewise) took
+him in his canoe to a spot so lonely as to be almost unknown, buried
+in reeds and alders, and how he found among the trees nought but an
+old "law," as the Scots still call a mound, which men of old had
+broken into seeking for treasure, and a little pond; and how he
+built himself a hermit's cell thereon, and saw visions and wrought
+miracles; and how men came to him, as to a fakir or shaman of the
+East; notably one Beccel, who acted as his servant; and how as
+Beccel was shaving the saint one day there fell on him a great
+temptation:  Why should he not cut St. Guthlac's throat, and instal
+himself in his cell, that he might have the honour and glory of
+sainthood?  But St. Guthlac perceived the inward temptation (which
+is told with the naive honesty of those half-savage times), and
+rebuked the offender into confession, and all went well to the end.
+
+There we may read, too, a detailed account of the Fauna now happily
+extinct in the fens; of the creatures who used to hale St. Guthlac
+out of his hut, drag him through the bogs, carry him aloft through
+frost and fire--"Develen and luther gostes"--such as tormented in
+like wise St. Botolph (from whom Botulfston = Boston, has its name),
+and who were supposed to haunt the meres and fens, and to have an
+especial fondness for old heathen barrows with their fancied
+treasure-hoards:  how they "filled the house with their coming, and
+poured in on every side, from above, and from beneath, and
+everywhere.  They were in countenance horrible, and they had great
+heads, and a long neck, and a lean visage; they were filthy and
+squalid in their beards, and they had rough ears, and crooked
+'nebs,' and fierce eyes, and foul mouths; and their teeth were like
+horses' tusks; and their throats were filled with flame, and they
+were grating in their voice; they had crooked shanks, and knees big
+and great behind, and distorted toes, and cried hoarsely with their
+voices; and they came with immoderate noise and immense horror, that
+he thought that all between, heaven and earth resounded with their
+voices. . . .  And they tugged and led him out of the cot, and led
+him to the swart fen, and threw and sunk him in the muddy waters.
+After that they brought him into the wild places of the wilderness,
+among the thick beds of brambles, that all his body was torn. . . .
+After that they took him and beat him with iron whips, and after
+that they brought him on their creaking wings between the cold
+regions of the air."
+
+But there are gentler and more human touches in that old legend.
+You may read in it how all the wild birds of the fen came to St.
+Guthlac, and he fed them after their kind; how the ravens tormented
+him, stealing letters, gloves, and what not, from his visitors; and
+then, seized with compunction at his reproofs, brought them back, or
+hanged them on the reeds; and how, as Wilfrid, a holy visitant, was
+sitting with him, discoursing of the contemplative life, two
+swallows came flying in, and lifted up their song, sitting now on
+the saint's hand, now on his shoulder, now on his knee; and how,
+when Wilfrid wondered thereat, Guthlac made answer, "Know you not
+that he who hath led his life according to God's will, to him the
+wild beasts and the wild birds draw the more near?"
+
+After fifteen years of such a life, in fever, ague, and starvation,
+no wonder if St. Guthlac died.  They buried him in a leaden coffin
+(a grand and expensive luxury in the seventh century) which had been
+sent to him during his life by a Saxon princess; and then, over his
+sacred and wonder-working corpse, as over that of a Buddhist saint,
+there arose a chapel, with a community of monks, companies of
+pilgrims who came to worship, sick who came to be healed; till at
+last, founded on great piles driven into the bog, arose the lofty
+wooden Abbey of Crowland; in "sanctuary of the four rivers," with
+its dykes, parks, vineyards, orchards, rich ploughlands, from which,
+in time of famine, the monks of Crowland fed all people of the
+neighbouring fens; with its tower with seven bells, which had not
+their like in England; its twelve altars rich with the gifts of
+Danish vikings and princes, and even with twelve white bear-skins,
+the gift of Canute's self; while all around were the cottages of the
+corrodiers, or folk who, for a corrody, or life pittance from the
+abbey, had given away their lands, to the wrong and detriment of
+their heirs.
+
+But within those four rivers, at least, were neither tyranny nor
+slavery.  Those who took refuge in St Guthlac's place from cruel
+lords must keep his peace toward each other, and earn their living
+like honest men, safe while they so did:  for between those four
+rivers St. Guthlac and his abbot were the only lords; and neither
+summoner, nor sheriff of the king, nor armed force of knight or
+earl, could enter--"the inheritance of the Lord, the soil of St.
+Mary and St. Bartholomew, the most holy sanctuary of St. Guthlac and
+his monks; the minister free from worldly servitude; the special
+almshouse of most illustrious kings; the sole refuge of any one in
+worldly tribulation; the perpetual abode of the saints; the
+possession of religious men, specially set apart by the common
+council of the realm; by reason of the frequent miracles of the holy
+confessor St. Guthlac, an ever-fruitful mother of camphire in the
+vineyards of Engedi; and, by reason of the privileges granted by the
+kings, a city of grace and safety to all who repent."
+
+Does not all this sound like a voice from another planet?  It is all
+gone; and it was good and right that it should go when it had done
+its work, and that the civilization of the fen should be taken up
+and carried out by men like the good knight, Richard of Rulos, who,
+two generations after the Conquest, marrying Hereward's grand-
+daughter, and becoming Lord of Deeping (the deep meadow), thought
+that he could do the same work from the hall of Bourne as the monks
+did from their cloisters; got permission from the Crowland monks,
+for twenty marks of silver, to drain as much as he could of the
+common marshes; and then shut out the Welland by strong dykes, built
+cottages, marked out gardens, and tilled fields, till "out of slough
+and bogs accursed he made a garden of pleasure."
+
+Yet one lasting work those monks of Crowland seem to have done,
+besides those firm dykes and rich corn-lands of the Porsand, which
+endure unto this day.  For within two generations of the Norman
+conquest, while the old wooden abbey, destroyed by fire, was being
+replaced by that noble pile of stone whose ruins are still standing,
+the French abbot of Crowland (so runs the legend) sent French monks
+to open a school under the new French donjon, in the little Roman
+town of Grante-brigge; whereby--so does all earnest work, however
+mistaken, grow and spread in this world, infinitely and for ever--
+St. Guthlac, by his canoe-voyage into Crowland Island, became the
+spiritual father of the University of Cambridge in the old world;
+and therefore of her noble daughter, the University of Cambridge, in
+the new world which fen-men sailing from Boston deeps colonized and
+Christianized 800 years after St. Guthlac's death.
+
+
+
+ST. GODRIC OF FINCHALE
+
+
+
+A personage quite as interesting, though not as famous, as Cuthbert
+or Guthlac, is St. Godric; the hermit around whose cell rose the
+Priory of Finchale.  In a loop of the river Wear, near Durham, there
+settled in the days of Bishop Flambard, between 1099 and 1128, a man
+whose parentage and history was for many years unknown to the good
+folks of the neighbourhood.  He had come, it seems, from a hermitage
+in Eskdale, in the parish of Whitby, whence he had been driven by
+the Percys, lords of the soil.  He had gone to Durham, become the
+doorkeeper of St. Giles's church, and gradually learnt by heart (he
+was no scholar) the whole Psalter.  Then he had gone to St. Mary's
+church, where (as was the fashion of the times) there was a
+children's school; and, listening to the little ones at their
+lessons, picked up such hymns and prayers as he thought would
+suffice his spiritual wants.  And then, by leave of the bishop, he
+had gone away into the woods, and devoted himself to the solitary
+life in Finchale.  Buried in the woods and crags of the "Royal
+Park," as it was then called, which swarmed with every kind of game,
+there was a little flat meadow, rough with sweet-gale and bramble
+and willow, beside a teeming salmon-pool.  Great wolves haunted the
+woods; but Godric cared nought for them; and the shingles swarmed
+with snakes,--probably only the harmless collared snakes of wet
+meadows, but reputed, as all snakes are by the vulgar, venomous:
+but he did not object to become "the companion of serpents and
+poisonous asps."  He handled them, caressed them, let them lie by
+the fire in swarms on winter nights, in the little cave which he had
+hollowed in the ground and thatched with turf.  Men told soon how
+the snakes obeyed him; how two especially huge ones used to lie
+twined about his legs; till after many years, annoyed by their
+importunity, he turned them all gently out of doors, with solemn
+adjurations never to return, and they, of course, obeyed.
+
+His austerities knew no bounds.  He lived on roots and berries,
+flowers and leaves; and when the good folk found him out, and put
+gifts of food near his cell, he carried them up to the crags above,
+and, offering them solemnly up to the God who feeds the ravens when
+they call on him, left them there for the wild birds.  He watched,
+fasted, and scourged himself, and wore always a hair shirt and an
+iron cuirass.  He sat, night after night, even in mid-winter, in the
+cold Wear, the waters of which had hollowed out a rock near by into
+a natural bath, and afterwards in a barrel sunk in the floor of a
+little chapel of wattle, which he built and dedicated to the blessed
+Virgin Mary.  He tilled a scrap of ground, and ate the grain from
+it, mingled with ashes.  He kept his food till it was decayed before
+he tasted it; and led a life the records of which fill the reader
+with astonishment, not only at the man's iron strength of will, but
+at the iron strength of the constitution which could support such
+hardships, in such a climate, for a single year.
+
+A strong and healthy man must Godric have been, to judge from the
+accounts (there are two, both written by eye-witnesses) of his
+personal appearance--a man of great breadth of chest and strength of
+arm; black-haired, hook-nosed, deep-browed, with flashing grey eyes;
+altogether a personable and able man, who might have done much work
+and made his way in many lands.  But what his former life had been
+he would not tell.  Mother-wit he had in plenty, and showed insight
+into men and things which the monks of Durham were ready enough to
+call the spirit of prophecy.  After awhile it was whispered that he
+wrought miraculous cures:  that even a bit of the bread which he was
+wont to eat had healed a sick woman; that he fought with daemons in
+visible shape; that he had seen (just as one of the old Egyptian
+hermits had seen) a little black boy running about between two monks
+who had quarrelled and come to hard blows and bleeding faces because
+one of them had made mistakes in the evening service:  and, in
+short, there were attributed to him, during his lifetime, and by
+those who knew him well, a host of wonders which would be startling
+and important were they not exactly the same as those which appear
+in the life of every hermit since St. Antony.  It is impossible to
+read the pages of Reginald of Durham (for he, the biographer of St.
+Cuthbert, is also the biographer of St. Godric) without feeling how
+difficult it is to obtain anything like the truth, even from eye-
+witnesses, if only men are (as they were in those days) in a state
+of religious excitement, at a period of spiritual revivals.  The
+ignorant populace were ready to believe, and to report, anything of
+the Fakeer of Finchale.  The monks of Durham were glad enough to
+have a wonder-working man belonging to them; for Ralph Flambard, in
+honour of Godric, had made over to them the hermitage of Finchale,
+with its fields and fisheries.  The lad who, in after years, waited
+on the hermit, would have been ready enough to testify that his
+master saw daemons and other spiritual beings; for he began to see
+them on his own account; {312} fell asleep in the forest coming home
+from Durham with some bottles; was led in a vision by St. John the
+Baptist to the top of a hill, and shown by him wonders unspeakable;
+saw, on another occasion, a daemon in St. Godric's cell, hung all
+over with bottles of different liquors, offering them to the saint,
+who bade the lad drive him out of the little chapel, with a holy
+water sprinkle, but not go outside it himself.  But the lad, in the
+fury of successful pursuit, overstepped the threshold; whereon the
+daemon, turning in self-defence, threw a single drop of one of his
+liquors into the lad's mouth, and vanished with a laugh of scorn.
+The boy's face and throat swelled horribly for three days; and he
+took care thenceforth to obey the holy man more strictly:  a story
+which I have repeated, like the one before it, only to show the real
+worth of the evidence on which Reginald has composed his book.
+Ailred, Abbot of Rievaux (for Reginald's book, though dedicated to
+Hugh Pudsey, his bishop, was prompted by Ailred) was capable (as his
+horrible story of the nun of Watton proves) of believing anything
+and everything which fell in with his fanatical, though pious and
+gentle, temper.
+
+And here a few words must be said to persons with whose difficulties
+I deeply sympathise, but from whose conclusions I differ utterly:
+those, namely, who say that if we reject the miracles of these
+saints' lives, we must reject also the miracles of the New
+Testament.  The answer is, as I believe, that the Apostles and
+Evangelists were sane men:  men in their right minds, wise, calm;
+conducting themselves (save in the matter of committing sins) like
+other human beings, as befitted the disciples of that Son of Man who
+came eating and drinking, and was therefore called by the ascetics
+of his time a gluttonous man, and a wine-bibber:  whereas these
+monks were not (as I have said elsewhere) in their right minds at
+all.
+
+This is, or ought to be, patent to any one who will compare the
+style of the Apostles and Evangelists with that of the monkish
+hagiologists.  The calm, the simplicity, the brevity, the true
+grandeur of the former is sufficient evidence of their healthy-
+mindedness and their trustworthiness.  The affectation, the self-
+consciousness, the bombast, the false grandeur of the latter is
+sufficient evidence that they are neither healthy-minded or
+trustworthy.  Let students compare any passage of St. Luke or St.
+John, however surprising the miracle which it relates, with St.
+Jerome's life of Paul the First Hermit, or with that famous letter
+of his to Eustochium, which (although historically important) is
+unfit for the eyes of pure-minded readers and does not appear in
+this volume; and let them judge for themselves.  Let them compare,
+again, the opening sentences of the Four Gospels, or of the Acts of
+the Apostles, with the words with which Reginald begins this life of
+St. Godric.  "By the touch of the Holy Spirit's finger the chord of
+the harmonic human heart resounds melodiously.  For when the vein of
+the heart is touched by the grace of the Holy Spirit, forthwith, by
+the permirific sweetness of the harmony, an exceeding operation of
+sacred virtue is perceived more manifestly to spring forth.  With
+this sweetness of spirit, Godric, the man of God, was filled from
+the very time of his boyhood, and grew famous for many admirable
+works of holy work (sic), because the harmonic teaching of the Holy
+Spirit fired the secrets of his very bosom with a wondrous contact
+of spiritual grace:"--and let them say, after the comparison, if the
+difference between the two styles is not that which exists between
+one of God's lilies, fresh from the field, and a tawdry bunch of
+artificial flowers?
+
+But to return.  Godric himself took part in the history of his own
+miracles and life.  It may be that he so overworked his brain that
+he believed that he was visited by St. Peter, and taught a hymn by
+the blessed Virgin Mary, and that he had taken part in a hundred
+other prodigies; but the Prologue to the Harleian manuscript (which
+the learned Editor, Mr. Stevenson, believes to be an early edition
+of Reginald's own composition) confesses that Reginald, compelled by
+Ailred of Rievaux, tried in vain for a long while to get the
+hermit's story from him.
+
+"You wish to write my life?" he said.  "Know then that Godric's life
+is such as this:--Godric, at first a gross rustic, an unclean liver,
+an usurer, a cheat, a perjurer, a flatterer, a wanderer, pilfering
+and greedy; now a dead flea, a decayed dog, a vile worm, not a
+hermit, but a hypocrite; not a solitary, but a gad-about in mind; a
+devourer of alms, dainty over good things, greedy and negligent,
+lazy and snoring, ambitious and prodigal, one who is not worthy to
+serve others, and yet every day beats and scolds those who serve
+him:  this, and worse than this, you may write of Godric."  "Then he
+was silent as one indignant," says Reginald, "and I went off in some
+confusion," and the grand old man was left to himself and to his
+God.
+
+The ecclesiastical Boswell dared not mention the subject again to
+his hero for several years, though he came after from Durham to
+visit him, and celebrate mass for him in his little chapel.  After
+some years, however, he approached the matter again; and whether a
+pardonable vanity had crept over Godric, or whether he had begun at
+last to believe in his miracles, or whether the old man had that
+upon his mind of which he longed to unburthen himself, he began to
+answer questions, and Reginald delighted to listen and note down
+till he had finished, he says, that book of his life and miracles;
+{316} and after a while brought it to the saint, and falling on his
+knees, begged him to bless, in the name of God, and for the benefit
+of the faithful, the deeds of a certain religious man, who had
+suffered much for God in this life which he (Reginald) had composed
+accurately.  The old man perceived that he himself was the subject,
+blessed the book with solemn words (what was written therein he does
+not seem to have read), and bade Reginald conceal it till his death,
+warning him that a time would come when he should suffer rough and
+bitter things on account of that book, from those who envied him.
+That prophecy, says Reginald, came to pass; but how, or why, he does
+not tell.  There may have been, among those shrewd Northumbrian
+heads, even then, incredulous men, who used their common sense.
+
+But the story which Godric told was wild and beautiful; and though
+we must not depend too much on the accuracy of the old man's
+recollections, or on the honesty of Reginald's report, who would
+naturally omit all incidents which made against his hero's
+perfection, it is worth listening to, as a vivid sketch of the
+doings of a real human being, in that misty distance of the Early
+Middle Age.
+
+He was born, he said, at Walpole, in Norfolk, on the old Roman sea-
+bank, between the Wash and the deep Fens.  His father's name was
+AEilward; his mother's, AEdwen--"the Keeper of Blessedness," and
+"the Friend of Blessedness," as Reginald translates them--poor and
+pious folk; and, being a sharp boy, he did not take to field-work,
+but preferred wandering the fens as a pedlar, first round the
+villages, then, as he grew older, to castles and to towns, buying
+and selling--what, Reginald does not tell us:  but we should be glad
+to know.
+
+One day he had a great deliverance, which Reginald thinks a miracle.
+Wandering along the great tide-flats near Spalding and the old Well-
+stream, in search of waifs, and strays, of wreck or eatables, he saw
+three porpoises stranded far out upon the banks.  Two were alive,
+and the boy took pity on them (so he said) and let them be:  but one
+was dead, and off it (in those days poor folks ate anything) he cut
+as much flesh and blubber as he could carry, and toiled back towards
+the high-tide mark.  But whether he lost his way among the banks, or
+whether he delayed too long, the tide came in on him up to his
+knees, his waist, his chin, and at last, at times, over his head.
+The boy made the sign of the cross (as all men in danger did then)
+and struggled on valiantly a full mile through the sea, like a brave
+lad never loosening his hold of his precious porpoise-meat till he
+reached the shore at the very spot from which he had set out.
+
+As he grew, his pedlar journeys became longer.  Repeating to
+himself, as he walked, the Creeds and the Lord's Prayer--his only
+lore--he walked for four years through Lindsey; then went to St.
+Andrew's in Scotland; after that, for the first time, to Rome.  Then
+the love of a wandering sea life came on him, and he sailed with his
+wares round the east coasts; not merely as a pedlar, but as a sailor
+himself, he went to Denmark and to Flanders, buying and selling,
+till he owned (in what port we are not told, but probably in Lynn or
+Wisbeach) half one merchant ship and the quarter of another.  A
+crafty steersman he was, a wise weather-prophet, a shipman stout in
+body and in heart, probably such a one as Chaucer tells us of 350
+years after:--
+
+
+"--A dagger hanging by a las hadde hee
+About his nekke under his arm adoun.
+The hote summer hadde made his hewe al broun.
+And certainly he was a good felaw;
+Full many a draught of wine he hadde draw,
+From Burdeaux ward, while that the chapmen slepe,
+Of nice conscience took he no kepe.
+If that he fought, and hadde the higher hand,
+By water he sent hem home to every land.
+But of his craft to recken wel his tides,
+His stremes and his strandes him besides,
+His herberwe, his mone, and his lode manage,
+There was none swiche, from Hull unto Carthage.
+Hardy he was, and wise, I undertake:
+With many a tempest hadde his berd be shake.
+He knew wel alle the havens, as they were,
+From Gotland to the Cape de Finisterre,
+And every creke in Bretagne and in Spain."
+
+
+But gradually there grew on the stout merchantman the thought that
+there was something more to be done in the world than making money.
+He became a pious man after the fashion of those days.  He
+worshipped at the famous shrine of St. Andrew.  He worshipped, too,
+at St. Cuthbert's hermitage at Farne, and there, he said afterwards,
+he longed for the first time for the rest and solitude of the
+hermitage.  He had been sixteen years a seaman now, with a seaman's
+temptations--it may be (as he told Reginald plainly) with some of a
+seaman's vices.  He may have done things which lay heavy on his
+conscience.  But it was getting time to think about his soul.  He
+took the cross, and went off to Jerusalem, as many a man did then,
+under difficulties incredible, dying, too often, on the way.  But
+Godric not only got safe thither, but went out of his way home by
+Spain to visit the sanctuary of St. James of Compostella, a see
+which Pope Calixtus II. had just raised to metropolitan dignity.
+
+Then he appears as steward to a rich man in the Fens, whose sons and
+young retainers, after the lawless fashion of those Anglo-Norman
+times, rode out into the country round to steal the peasants' sheep
+and cattle, skin them on the spot, and pass them off to the master
+of the house as venison taken in hunting.  They ate and drank,
+roystered and rioted, like most other young Normans; and vexed the
+staid soul of Godric, whose nose told him plainly enough, whenever
+he entered the kitchen, that what was roasting had never come off a
+deer.  In vain he protested and warned them, getting only insults
+for his pains.  At last he told his lord.  The lord, as was to be
+expected, cared nought about the matter.  Let the lads rob the
+English villains:  for what other end had their grandfathers
+conquered the land?  Godric punished himself, as he could not punish
+them, for the unwilling share which he had had in the wrong.  It may
+be that he, too, had eaten of that stolen food.  So away he went
+into France, and down the Rhone, on pilgrimage to the hermitage of
+St. Giles, the patron saint of the wild deer; and then on to Rome a
+second time, and back to his poor parents in the Fens.
+
+And now follows a strange and beautiful story.  All love of
+seafaring and merchandise had left the deep-hearted sailor.  The
+heavenly and the eternal, the salvation of his sinful soul, had
+become all in all to him; and yet he could not rest in the little
+dreary village on the Roman bank.  He would go on pilgrimage again.
+Then his mother would go likewise, and see St. Peter's church, and
+the Pope, and all the wonders of Rome, and have her share in all the
+spiritual blessings which were to be obtained (so men thought then)
+at Rome alone.  So off they set on foot; and when they came to ford
+or ditch, Godric carried his mother on his back, until they came to
+London town.  And there AEdwen took off her shoes, and vowed out of
+devotion to the holy apostles Peter and Paul (who, so she thought,
+would be well pleased at such an act) to walk barefoot to Rome and
+barefoot back again.
+
+Now just as they went out of London, on the Dover Road, there met
+them in the way the loveliest maiden they had ever seen, and asked
+to bear them company in their pilgrimage.  And when they agreed, she
+walked with them, sat with them, and talked with them with
+superhuman courtesy and grace; and when they turned into an inn, she
+ministered to them herself, and washed and kissed their feet, and
+then lay down with them to sleep, after the simple fashion of those
+days.  But a holy awe of her, as of some saint and goddess, fell on
+the wild seafarer; and he never, so he used to aver, treated her for
+a moment save as a sister.  Never did either ask the other who they
+were, and whence they came; and Godric reported (but this was long
+after the event) that no one of the company of pilgrims could see
+that fair maid, save he and his mother alone.  So they came safe to
+Rome, and back to London town; and when they were at the place
+outside Southwark, where the fair maid had met them first, she asked
+permission to leave them, for she "must go to her own land, where
+she had a tabernacle of rest, and dwelt in the house of her God."
+And then, bidding them bless God, who had brought them safe over the
+Alps, and across the sea, and all along that weary road, she went on
+her way, and they saw her no more.
+
+Then with this fair mysterious face clinging to his memory, and it
+may be never leaving it, Godric took his mother safe home, and
+delivered her to his father, and bade them both after awhile
+farewell, and wandered across England to Penrith, and hung about the
+churches there, till some kinsmen of his recognised him, and gave
+him a psalter (he must have taught himself to read upon his
+travels), which he learnt by heart.  Then, wandering ever in search
+of solitude, he went into the woods and found a cave, and passed his
+time therein in prayer, living on green herbs and wild honey, acorns
+and crabs; and when he went about to gather food, he fell down on
+his knees every few yards and said a prayer, and rose and went on.
+
+After awhile he wandered on again, until at Wolsingham, in Durham,
+he met with another holy hermit, who had been a monk at Durham,
+living in a cave in forests in which no man dare dwell, so did they
+swarm with packs of wolves; and there the two good men dwelt
+together till the old hermit fell sick, and was like to die.  Godric
+nursed him, and sat by him, to watch for his last breath.  For the
+same longing had come over him which came over Marguerite
+d'Angouleme when she sat by the dying bed of her favourite maid of
+honour--to see if the spirit, when it left the body, were visible,
+and what kind of thing it was:  whether, for instance, it was really
+like the little naked babe which is seen in mediaeval illuminations
+flying out of the mouths of dying men.  But, worn out with watching,
+Godric could not keep from sleep.  All but despairing of his desire,
+he turned to the dying man, and spoke, says Reginald, some such
+words as these:--"O spirit! who art diffused in that body in the
+likeness of God, and art still inside that breast, I adjure thee by
+the Highest, that thou leave not the prison of this thine habitation
+while I am overcome by sleep, and know not of it."  And so he fell
+asleep:  but when he woke, the old hermit lay motionless and
+breathless.  Poor Godric wept, called on the dead man, called on
+God; his simple heart was set on seeing this one thing.  And,
+behold, he was consoled in a wondrous fashion.  For about the third
+hour of the day the breath returned.  Godric hung over him, watching
+his lips.  Three heavy sighs he drew, then a shudder, another sigh:
+{323} and then (so Godric was believed to have said in after years)
+he saw the spirit flit.
+
+What it was like, he did not like to say, for the most obvious
+reason--that he saw nothing, and was an honest man.  A monk teased
+him much to impart to him this great discovery, which seemed to the
+simple untaught sailor a great spiritual mystery, and which was,
+like some other mediaeval mysteries which were miscalled spiritual
+(transubstantiation above all), altogether material and gross
+imaginations.  Godric answered wisely enough, that "no man could
+perceive the substance of the spiritual soul."
+
+But the monk insisting, and giving him no rest, he answered,--
+whether he wished to answer a fool according to his folly, or
+whether he tried to fancy (as men will who are somewhat vain--and if
+a saint was not vain, it was no fault of the monks who beset him)
+that he had really seen something.  He told how it was like a dry,
+hot wind rolled into a sphere, and shining like the clearest glass,
+but that what it was really like no one could express.  Thus much,
+at least, may be gathered from the involved bombast of Reginald.
+
+Another pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre did Godric make before he
+went to the hermitage in Eskdale, and settled finally at Finchale.
+And there about the hills of Judaea he found, says Reginald, hermits
+dwelling in rock-caves, as they had dwelt since the time of St.
+Jerome.  He washed himself, and his hair shirt and little cross, in
+the sacred waters of the Jordan, and returned, after incredible
+suffering, to become the saint of Finchale.
+
+His hermitage became, in due time, a stately priory, with its
+community of monks, who looked up to the memory of their holy father
+Godric as to that of a demigod.  The place is all ruinate now; the
+memory of St. Godric gone; and not one in ten thousand, perhaps, who
+visit those crumbling walls beside the rushing Wear, has heard of
+the sailor-saint, and his mother, and that fair maid who tended them
+on their pilgrimage.
+
+Meanwhile there were hermits for many years in that same hermitage
+in Eskdale, from which a Percy expelled St. Godric, possibly because
+he interfered with the prior claim of some protege of their own; for
+they had, a few years before Godric's time, granted that hermitage
+to the monks of Whitby, who were not likely to allow a stranger to
+establish himself on their ground.
+
+About that hermitage hung one of those stories so common in the
+Middle Ages, in which the hermit appears as the protector of the
+hunted wild beast; a story, too, which was probably authentic, as
+the curious custom which was said to perpetuate its memory lasted at
+least till the year 1753.  I quote it at length from Burton's
+"Monasticon Eboracense," p. 78, knowing no other authority.
+
+"In the fifth year of the reign of King Henry II. after the conquest
+of England by William, duke of Normandy, the Lord of Uglebardby,
+then called William de Bruce, and the Lord of Sneton, called Ralph
+de Perci, with a gentleman and a freeholder called Allatson, did on
+the 16th day of October appoint to meet and hunt the wild boar, in a
+certain wood or desert place belonging to the abbot of the monastery
+of Whitby; the place's name is Eskdale-side; the abbot's name was
+Sedman.  Then these gentlemen being met, with their hounds and boar-
+staves, in the place before-named, and there having found a great
+wild boar, the hounds ran him well near about the chapel and
+hermitage of Eskdale-side, where was a monk of Whitby, who was a
+hermit.  The boar being very sore, and very hotly pursued, and dead
+run, took in at the chapel door, and there died:  whereupon the
+hermit shut the hounds out of the chapel, and kept himself within at
+his meditations and prayers, the hounds standing at bay without.
+The gentlemen in the thick of the wood, being put behind their game,
+followed the cry of their hounds, and so came to the hermitage,
+calling on the hermit, who opened the door and came forth, and
+within they found the boar lying dead, for which the gentlemen in
+very great fury (because their hounds were put from their game) did
+most violently and cruelly run at the hermit with their boar-staves,
+whereby he died soon after:  thereupon the gentlemen, perceiving and
+knowing that they were in peril of death, took sanctuary at
+Scarborough.  But at that time the abbot, being in very great favour
+with King Henry, removed them out of the sanctuary, whereby they
+came in danger of the law, and not to be privileged, but likely to
+have the severity of the law, which was death.  But the hermit,
+being a holy and devout man, at the point of death sent for the
+abbot, and desired him to send for the gentlemen who had wounded
+him:  the abbot so doing, the gentlemen came, and the hermit, being
+very sick and weak, said unto them, 'I am sure to die of those
+wounds you have given me.'  The abbot answered, 'They shall as
+surely die for the same;' but the hermit answered, 'Not so, for I
+will freely forgive them my death, if they will be contented to be
+enjoined this penance for the safeguard of their souls.'  The
+gentlemen being present, and terrified with the fear of death, bade
+him enjoin what penance he would, so that he would but save their
+lives.  Then said the hermit, 'You and yours shall hold your lands
+of the Abbot of Whitby and his successors in this manner:  That upon
+Ascension Eve, you or some of you shall come to the woods of the
+Strag Heads, which is in Eskdale-side, the same day at sun-rising,
+and there shall the abbot's officer blow his horn, to the intent
+that you may know how to find him; and he shall deliver unto you,
+William de Bruce, ten stakes, eleven strut-towers, and eleven
+yethers, to be cut by you or some for you, with a knife of one penny
+price; and you, Ralph de Perci, shall take twenty and one of each
+sort, to be cut in the same manner; and you, Allatson, shall take
+nine of each sort, to be cut as aforesaid, and to be taken on your
+backs, and carried to the town of Whitby, and to be there before
+nine of the clock the same day before-mentioned; at the same hour of
+nine of the clock (if it be full sea) your labour or service shall
+cease; but if it be not full sea, each of you shall set your stakes
+at the brim, each stake one yard from the other, and so yether them
+on each side of your yethers, and so stake on each side with your
+strut-towers, that they may stand three tides without removing by
+the force thereof:  each of you shall do, make, and execute the said
+service at that very hour every year, except it shall be full sea at
+that hour:  but when it shall so fall out, this service shall cease.
+You shall faithfully do this in remembrance that you did most
+cruelly slay me; and that you may the better call to God for mercy,
+repent unfeignedly for your sins, and do good works, the officers of
+Eskdale-side shall blow, Out on you, out on you, out on you, for
+this heinous crime.  If you or your successors shall refuse this
+service, so long as it shall not be full sea at the aforesaid hour,
+you or yours shall forfeit your lands to the Abbot of Whitby, or his
+successors.  This I intreat, and earnestly beg that you may have
+lives and goods preserved for this service; and I request of you to
+promise by your parts in heaven that it shall be done by you and
+your successors, as it is aforesaid requested, and I will confirm it
+by the faith of an honest man.'  Then the hermit said:  'My soul
+longeth for the Lord, and I do as freely forgive these men my death
+as Christ forgave the thieves upon the cross;' and in the presence
+of the abbot and the rest he said, moreover, these words:  'Into thy
+hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit, for from the bonds of death Thou
+hast redeemed me, O Lord of truth.  Amen.'  So he yielded up the
+ghost the eighth day of December, A.D. 1160, upon whose soul God
+have mercy.  Amen."
+
+
+
+ANCHORITES, STRICTLY SO CALLED
+
+
+
+The fertile and peaceable lowlands of England, as I have just said,
+offered few spots sufficiently wild and lonely for the habitation of
+a hermit; those, therefore, who wished to retire from the world into
+a more strict and solitary life than that which the monastery
+afforded were in the habit of immuring themselves, as anchorites, or
+in old English "Ankers," in little cells of stone, built usually
+against the wall of a church.  There is nothing new under the sun;
+and similar anchorites might have been seen in Egypt, 500 years
+before the time of St. Antony, immured in cells in the temples of
+Isis or Serapis.  It is only recently that antiquaries have
+discovered how common this practice was in England, and how
+frequently the traces of these cells are to be found about our
+parish churches.  They were so common in the Diocese of Lincoln in
+the thirteenth century, that in 1233 the archdeacon is ordered to
+inquire whether any Anchorites' cells had been built without the
+Bishop's leave; and in many of our parish churches may be seen,
+either on the north or the south side of the chancel, a narrow slit
+in the wall, or one of the lights of a window prolonged downwards,
+the prolongation, if not now walled up, being closed with a shutter.
+Through these apertures the "incluse," or anker, watched the
+celebration of mass, and partook of the Holy Communion.  Similar
+cells were to be found in Ireland, at least in the diocese of
+Ossory; and doubtless in Scotland also.  Ducange, in his Glossary,
+on the word "inclusi," lays down rules for the size of the anker's
+cell, which must be twelve feet square, with three windows, one
+opening into the church, one for taking in his food, and one for
+light; and the "Salisbury Manual" as well as the "Pontifical" of
+Lacy, bishop of Exeter, in the first half of the fifteenth century,
+contains a regular "service" for the walling in of an anchorite.
+{330}  There exists too a most singular and painful book, well known
+to antiquaries, but to them alone, "The Ancren Riwle," addressed to
+three young ladies who had immured themselves (seemingly about the
+beginning of the thirteenth century) at Kingston Tarrant, in
+Dorsetshire.
+
+For women as well as men entered these living tombs; and there spent
+their days in dirt and starvation, and such prayer and meditation
+doubtless as the stupified and worn-out intellect could compass;
+their only recreation being the gossip of the neighbouring women,
+who came to peep in through the little window--a recreation in which
+(if we are to believe the author of "The Ancren Riwle") they were
+tempted to indulge only too freely; till the window of the recluse's
+cell, he says, became what the smith's forge or the alehouse has
+become since--the place where all the gossip and scandal of the
+village passed from one ear to another.  But we must not believe
+such scandals of all.  Only too much in earnest must those seven
+young maidens have been, whom St. Gilbert of Sempringham persuaded
+to immure themselves, as a sacrifice acceptable to God, in a den
+along the north wall of his church; or that St. Hutta, or Huetta, in
+the beginning of the thirteenth century, who after ministering to
+lepers, and longing and even trying to become a leper herself,
+immured herself for life in a cell against the church of Huy near
+Liege.
+
+Fearful must have been the fate of these incluses if any evil had
+befallen the building of which (one may say) they had become a part.
+More than one in the stormy Middle Age may have suffered the fate of
+the poor women immured beside St. Mary's church at Mantes, who, when
+town and church were burnt by William the Conqueror, unable to
+escape (or, according to William of Malmesbury, thinking it unlawful
+to quit their cells even in that extremity), perished in the flames;
+and so consummated once and for all their long martyrdom.
+
+How long the practice of the hermit life was common in these islands
+is more than my learning enables me to say.  Hermits seem, from the
+old Chartularies, {331} to have been not unfrequent in Scotland and
+the North of England during the whole Middle Age.  We have seen that
+they were frequent in the times of Malcolm Canmore and the old
+Celtic Church; and the Latin Church, which was introduced by St.
+Margaret, seems to have kept up the fashion.  In the middle of the
+thirteenth century, David de Haigh conveyed to the monks of Cupar
+the hermitage which Gilmichael the Hermit once held, with three
+acres of land.  In 1329 the Convent of Durham made a grant of a
+hermitage to Roger Eller at Norham on the Tweed, in order that he
+might have a "fit place to fight with the old enemy and bewail his
+sins, apart from the turmoil of men."  In 1445 James the Second,
+king of Scots, granted to John Smith the hermitage in the forest of
+Kilgur, "which formerly belonged in heritage to Hugh Cominch the
+Hermit, and was resigned by him, with the croft and the green
+belonging to it, and three acres of arable land."
+
+I have quoted these few instances, to show how long the custom
+lingered; and doubtless hermits were to be found in the remoter
+parts of these realms when the sudden tempest of the Reformation
+swept away alike the palace of the rich abbot and the cell of the
+poor recluse, and exterminated throughout England the ascetic life.
+The two last hermits whom I have come across in history are both
+figures which exemplify very well those times of corruption and of
+change.  At Loretto (not in Italy, but in Musselburgh, near
+Edinburgh) there lived a hermit who pretended to work miracles, and
+who it seems had charge of some image of "Our Lady of Loretto."  The
+scandals which ensued from the visits of young folks to this hermit
+roused the wrath of that terrible scourge of monks, Sir David
+Lindsay of the Mount:  yet as late as 1536, James the Fifth of
+Scotland made a pilgrimage from Stirling to the shrine, in order to
+procure a propitious passage to France in search of a wife.  But in
+1543, Lord Hertford, during his destructive voyage to the Forth,
+destroyed, with other objects of greater consequence, the chapel of
+the "Lady of Lorett," which was not likely in those days to be
+rebuilt; and so the hermit of Musselburgh vanishes from history.
+
+A few years before, in 1537, says Mr. Froude, {333} while the
+harbours, piers, and fortresses were rising in Dover, "an ancient
+hermit tottered night after night from his cell to a chapel on the
+cliff, and the tapers on the altar before which he knelt in his
+lonely orisons made a familiar beacon far over the rolling waters.
+The men of the rising world cared little for the sentiment of the
+past.  The anchorite was told sternly by the workmen that his light
+was a signal to the King's enemies" (a Spanish invasion from
+Flanders was expected), "and must burn no more; and, when it was
+next seen, three of them waylaid the old man on his way home, threw
+him down and beat him cruelly."
+
+So ended, in an undignified way, as worn-out institutions are wont
+to end, the hermit life in the British Isles.  Will it ever
+reappear?  Who can tell?  To an age of luxury and unbelief has
+succeeded, more than once in history, an age of remorse and
+superstition.  Gay gentlemen and gay ladies may renounce the world,
+as they did in the time of St Jerome, when the world is ready to
+renounce them.  We have already our nunneries, our monasteries, of
+more creeds than one; and the mountains of Kerry, or the pine
+forests of the Highlands, may some day once more hold hermits,
+persuading themselves to believe, and at last succeeding in
+believing, the teaching of St. Antony, instead of that of our Lord
+Jesus Christ, and of that Father of the spirits of all flesh, who
+made love, and marriage, and little children, sunshine and flowers,
+the wings of butterflies and the song of birds; who rejoices in his
+own works, and bids all who truly reverence him rejoice in them with
+him.  The fancy may seem impossible.  It is not more impossible than
+many religious phenomena seemed forty years ago, which are now no
+fancies, but powerful facts.
+
+The following books should be consulted by those who wish to follow
+out this curious subject in detail:--
+
+The "Vitae Patrum Eremiticorum."
+
+The "Acta Sanctorum."  The Bollandists are, of course, almost
+exhaustive of any subject on which they treat.  But as they are
+difficult to find, save in a few public libraries, the "Acta
+Sanctorum" of Surius, or of Aloysius Lipommasius, may be profitably
+consulted.  Butler's "Lives of the Saints" is a book common enough,
+but of no great value.
+
+M. de Montalembert's "Moines d'Occident," and Ozanam's "Etudes
+Germaniques," may be read with much profit.
+
+Dr. Reeves' edition of Adamnan's "Life of St. Columba," published by
+the Irish Archaeological and Celtic Society, is a treasury of
+learning, which needs no praise of mine.
+
+The lives of St. Cuthbert and St. Godric may be found among the
+publications of the Surtees Society.
+
+
+
+Footnotes:
+
+{12}  About A.D. 368.  See the details in Ammianus Marcellinus, lib.
+xxviii.
+
+{15}  In the Celtic Irish Church, there seems to have been no other
+pattern.  The hermits who became abbots, with their monks, were the
+only teachers of the people--one had almost said, the only
+Christians.  Whence, as early as the sixth century, if not the
+fifth, they, and their disciples of Iona and Scotland, derived their
+peculiar tonsure, their use of bells, their Eastern mode of keeping
+the Paschal feast, and other peculiarities, seemingly without the
+intervention of Rome, is a mystery still unsolved.
+
+{17a}  A book which, from its bearing on present problems, well
+deserves translation.
+
+{17b}  "Vitae Patrum."  Published at Antwerp, 1628.
+
+{23}  He is addressing our Lord.
+
+{24}  "Agentes in rebus."  On the Emperor's staff?
+
+{27}  St. Augustine says, that Potitianus's adventure at Treves
+happened "I know not when."  His own conversation with Potitianus
+must have happened about A.D. 385, for he was baptized April 25,
+A.D. 387.  He does not mention the name of Potitianus's emperor:
+but as Gratian was Augustus from A.D. 367 to A.D. 375, and actual
+Emperor of the West till A.D. 383, and as Treves was his usual
+residence, he is most probably the person meant:  but if not, then
+his father Valentinian.
+
+{29}  See the excellent article on Gratian in Smith's Dictionary, by
+Mr. Means.
+
+{30}  I cannot explain this fact:  but I have seen it with my own
+eyes.
+
+{32}  I use throughout the text published by Heschelius, in 1611.
+
+{33}  He is said to have been born at Coma, near Heracleia, in
+Middle Egypt, A.D. 251.
+
+{34}  Seemingly the Greek language and literature.
+
+{35}  I have thought it more honest to translate [Greek text] by
+"training," which is now, as then, its true equivalent; being a
+metaphor drawn from the Greek games by St. Paul, 1 Tim. iv. 8.
+
+{41}  I give this passage as it stands in the Greek version.  In the
+Latin, attributed to Evagrius, it is even more extravagant and
+rhetorical.
+
+{42}  Surely the imagery painted on the inner walls of Egyptian
+tombs, and probably believed by Antony and his compeers to be
+connected with devil-worship, explain these visions.  In the "Words
+of the Elders" a monk complains of being troubled with "pictures,
+old and new."  Probably, again, the pain which Antony felt was the
+agony of a fever; and the visions which he saw, its delirium.
+
+{44}  Here is an instance of the original use of the word
+"monastery," viz. a cell in which a single person dwelt.
+
+{45}  An allusion to the heathen mysteries.
+
+{49}  A.D. 311.  Galerius Valerius Maximinus (his real name was
+Daza) had been a shepherd-lad in Illyria, like his uncle Galerius
+Valerius Maximianus; and rose, like him, through the various grades
+of the army to be co-Emperor of Rome, over Syria, Egypt, and Asia
+Minor; a furious persecutor of the Christians, and a brutal and
+profligate tyrant.  Such were the "kings of the world" from whom
+those old monks fled.
+
+{52a}  The lonely alluvial flats at the mouths of the Nile.  "Below
+the cliffs, beside the sea," as one describes them.
+
+{52b}  Now the monastery of Deir Antonios, over the Wady el Arabah,
+between the Nile and the Red Sea, where Antony's monks endure to
+this day.
+
+{60}  This most famous monastery, i.e. collection of monks' cells,
+in Egypt is situate forty miles from Alexandria, on a hill where
+nitre was gathered.  The hospitality and virtue of its inmates are
+much praised by Ruffinus and Palladius.  They were, nevertheless,
+the chief agents in the fanatical murder of Hypatia.
+
+{65}  It appears from this and many other passages, that extempore
+prayer was usual among these monks, as it was afterwards among the
+Puritans (who have copied them in so many other things), whenever a
+godly man visited them.
+
+{66a}  Meletius, bishop of Lycopolis, was the author of an obscure
+schism calling itself the "Church of the Martyrs," which refused to
+communicate with the rest of the Eastern Church.  See Smith's
+"Dictionary," on the word "Meletius."
+
+{66b}  Arius (whose most famous and successful opponent was
+Athanasius, the writer of this biography) maintained that the Son of
+God was not co-equal and co-eternal with the Father, but created by
+Him out of nothing, and before the world.  His opinions were
+condemned in the famous Council of Nicaea, A.D. 325.
+
+{67}  If St. Antony could use so extreme an argument against the
+Arians, what would he have said to the Mariolatry which sprang up
+after his death?
+
+{68a}  I.e. those who were still heathens.
+
+{68b}  [Greek text].  The Christian priest is always called in this
+work simply [Greek text], or elder.
+
+{72a}  Probably that of A.D. 341, when Gregory of Cappadocia,
+nominated by the Arian Bishops, who had assembled at the Council of
+Antioch, expelled Athanasius from the see of Alexandria, and great
+violence was committed by his followers and by Philagrius the
+Prefect.  Athanasius meanwhile fled to Rome.
+
+{72b}  I.e. celebrated there their own Communion.
+
+{77}  Evidently the primaeval custom of embalming the dead, and
+keeping mummies in the house, still lingered among the Egyptians.
+
+{108}  These sounds, like those which St. Guthlac heard in the
+English fens, are plainly those of wild-fowl.
+
+{115}  The Brucheion, with its palaces and museum, the residence of
+the kings and philosophers of Egypt, had been destroyed is the days
+of Claudius and Valerian, during the senseless civil wars which
+devastated Alexandria for twelve years; and monks had probably taken
+up their abode in the ruins.  It was in this quarter, at the
+beginning of the next century, that Hypatia was murdered by the
+monks.
+
+{116}  Probably the Northern, or Lesser Oasis, Ouah el Baharieh,
+about eighty miles west of the Nile.
+
+{117a}  Jerome (who sailed that sea several times) uses the word
+here, as it is used in Acts xxvii. 27, for the sea about Malta,
+"driven up and down in Adria."
+
+{117b}  The southern point of Sicily, now Cape Passaro.
+
+{118}  In the Morea, near the modern Navarino.
+
+{119a}  At the mouth of the Bay of Cattaro.
+
+{119b}  This story--whatever belief we may give to its details--is
+one of many which make it tolerably certain that a large snake
+(Python) still lingered in Eastern Europe.  Huge tame snakes were
+kept as sacred by the Macedonian women; and one of them (according
+to Lucian) Peregrinus Proteus, the Cagliostro of his time, fitted
+with a linen mask, and made it personate the god AEsculapius.  In
+the "Historia Lausiaca," cap. lii. is an account by an eye-witness
+of a large snake in the Thebaid, whose track was "as if a beam had
+been dragged along the sand."  It terrifies the Syrian monks:  but
+the Egyptian monk sets to work to kill it, saying that he had seen
+much larger--even up to fifteen cubits.
+
+{121}  Now Capo St. Angelo and the island of Cerigo, at the southern
+point of Greece.
+
+{123a}  See p. 52.  [Around footnote 52a in the text--DP.]
+
+{123b}  Probably dedicated to the Paphian Venus.
+
+{130}  The lives of these two hermits and that of St. Cuthbert will
+be given in a future number.
+
+{131}  Sihor, the black river, was the ancient name of the Nile,
+derived from the dark hue of its waters.
+
+{159}  Ammianus Marcellinus, Book xxv. cap. 9.
+
+{160}  By Dr. Burgess.
+
+{163}  History of Christianity, vol. iii. p. 109.
+
+{203}  An authentic fact.
+
+{204}  If any one doubts this, let him try the game called "Russian
+scandal," where a story, passed secretly from mouth to mouth, ends
+utterly transformed, the original point being lost, a new point
+substituted, original names and facts omitted, and utterly new ones
+inserted, &c. &c.; an experiment which is ludicrous, or saddening,
+according to the temper of the experimenter.
+
+{209}  Les Moines d'Occident, vol. ii. pp. 332-467.
+
+{210}  M. La Borderie, "Discours sur les Saints Bretons;" a work
+which I have unfortunately not been able to consult.
+
+{212a}  Vitae Patrum, p. 753.
+
+{212b}  Ibid. p. 893.
+
+{212c}  Ibid. p. 539.
+
+{212d}  Ibid. p. 540.
+
+{212e}  Ibid. p. 532.
+
+{224}  It has been handed down, in most crabbed Latin, by his
+disciple, Eugippius; it may be read at length in Pez, Scriptores
+Austriacarum Rerum.
+
+{238}  Scriptores Austriacarum Rerum.
+
+{245}  Haeften, quoted by Montalembert, vol. ii. p. 22, in note.
+
+{256}  Dr. Reeves supposes these to have been "crustacea:" but their
+stinging and clinging prove them surely to have been jelly-fish--
+medusae.
+
+{257}  I have followed the Latin prose version of it, which M.
+Achille Jubinal attributes to the eleventh century.  Here and there
+I have taken the liberty of using the French prose version, which he
+attributes to the latter part of the twelfth.  I have often
+condensed the story, where it was prolix or repeated itself:  but I
+have tried to follow faithfully both matter and style, and to give,
+word for word, as nearly as I could, any notable passages.  Those
+who wish to know more of St. Brendan should consult the learned
+brochure of M. Jubinal, "La Legende Latine de St. Brandaines," and
+the two English versions of the Legend, edited by Mr. Thomas Wright
+for the Percy Society, vol. xiv.  One is in verse, and of the
+earlier part of the fourteenth century, and spirited enough:  the
+other, a prose version, was printed by Wynkyn de Worde, in his
+edition of the "Golden Legend;" 1527.
+
+{260a}  In the Barony of Longford, County Galway.
+
+{260b}  3,000, like 300, seems to be, I am informed, only an Irish
+expression for any large number.
+
+{269}  Some dim legend concerning icebergs, and caves therein.
+
+{270}  Probably from reports of the volcanic coast of Iceland.
+
+{272}  This part of the legend has been changed and humanized as
+time ran on.  In the Latin and French versions it has little or no
+point or moral.  In the English, Judas accounts for the presence of
+the cloth thus:--
+
+"Here I may see what it is to give other men's (goods) with harm.
+As will many rich men with unright all day take,
+Of poor men here and there, and almisse (alms) sithhe (afterwards)
+make."
+
+For the tongs and the stone he accounts by saying that, as he used
+them for "good ends, each thing should surely find him which he did
+for God's love."
+
+But in "the prose version of Wynkyn de Worde, the tongs have been
+changed into "ox-tongues," "which I gave some tyme to two preestes
+to praye for me.  I bought them with myne owne money, and therefore
+they ease me, bycause the fysshes of the sea gnaw on them, and spare
+me."
+
+This latter story of the ox-tongues has been followed by Mr.
+Sebastian Evans, in his poem on St. Brendan.  Both he and Mr.
+Matthew Arnold have rendered the moral of the English version very
+beautifully.
+
+{274}  Copied, surely, from the life of Paul the first hermit.
+
+{283}  The famous Cathach, now in the museum of the Royal Irish
+Academy, was long popularly believed to be the very Psalter in
+question.  As a relic of St. Columba it was carried to battle by the
+O'Donnels, even as late as 1497, to insure victory for the clan.
+
+{290}  Bede, book iii. cap. 3.
+
+{292}  These details, and countless stories of St. Cuthbert's
+miracles, are to be found in Reginald of Durham, "De Admirandis
+Beati Cuthberti," published by the Surtees Society.  This curious
+book is admirably edited by Mr. J. Raine; with an English synopsis
+at the end, which enables the reader for whom the Latin is too
+difficult to enjoy those pictures of life under Stephen and Henry
+II., whether moral, religious, or social, of which the book is a
+rich museum.
+
+{299}  "In this hole lie the bones of the Venerable Bede."
+
+{303}  An English translation of the Anglo-Saxon life has been
+published by Mr. Godwin, of Cambridge, and is well worth perusal.
+
+{312}  Vita S. Godrici, pp. 332, 333.
+
+{316}  The earlier one; that of the Harleian MSS. which (Mr.
+Stevenson thinks) was twice afterwards expanded and decorated by
+him.
+
+{323}  Reginald wants to make "a wonder incredible in our own
+times," of a very common form (thank God) of peaceful death.  He
+makes miracles in the same way of the catching of salmon and of
+otters, simple enough to one who, like Godric, knew the river, and
+every wild thing which haunted it.
+
+{330}  That of the Salisbury Manual is published in the
+"Ecclesiologist" for August 1848, by the Rev. Sir W. H. Cope, to
+whom I am indebted for the greater number of these curious facts.
+
+{331}  I owe these facts to the courtesy of Mr. John Stuart, of the
+General Register Office, Edinburgh.
+
+{333}  "History of England," vol. iii. p. 256, note.
+
+
+
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