The Hermits
by Charles Kingsley · English · Gutenberg #8733 · 528,732 chars · public domain (US)
The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Hermits
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: The Hermits
Author: Charles Kingsley
Release date: August 1, 2005 [eBook #8733]
Most recently updated: March 3, 2013
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8733
Credits: Transcribed from the 1891 Macmillan and Co. edition by David Price
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HERMITS ***
Transcribed from the 1891 Macmillan and Co. edition by David Price, email
ccx074@pglaf.org
[Picture: St. Brendan setting Sail.—P. 26]
THE HERMITS
* * * * *
BY
CHARLES KINGSLEY
* * * * *
_ILLUSTRATED_
* * * * *
London
MACMILLAN AND CO.
AND NEW YORK
1891
_The Right of Translation is Reserved_
* * * * *
RICHARD CLAY AND SONS, LIMITED,
LONDON AND BUNGAY.
_First printed in parts_ 1868.
_Reprinted in_ 1 _Volume_, _Crown_ 8_vo._ 1871, 1875, 1880, 1885, 1890,
1891.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
INTRODUCTION 1
SAINT ANTONY 21
THE LIFE OF SAINT PAUL, THE FIRST HERMIT 83
HILARION 104
ARSENIUS 149
THE HERMITS OF ASIA 155
BASIL 162
SIMEON STYLITES 167
THE HERMITS OF EUROPE 219
ST. SEVERINUS, THE APOSTLE OF NORICUM 224
THE CELTIC HERMITS 246
ST. MALO 278
ST. COLUMBA 282
ST. GUTHLAC 300
ST. GODRIC OF FINCHALE 309
ANCHORITES, STRICTLY SO CALLED 329
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
ST. BRENDAN SETTING SAIL _Frontispiece_
LIFE OF ST. ANTHONY _To face_ 35
“And having committed his sister to known and
faithful virgins, and given to her wherewith
to be educated in a nunnery,” &c.
PAUL, THE FIRST HERMIT _To face_ 92
“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,” &c.
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 Cæsars, 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
Therapeutæ 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, primæval, 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 Trêves 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 Judæa, 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
Cæsar.”
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 naïvely-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, Cæsarius 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
dæmonology, 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, _naïfs_ 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 Trêves—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 Trêves, 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 Trêves,
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.
Trêves 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. Trêves 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 Trêves, 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 Trêves; 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 Cæsars, 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 Trêves 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 Trêves. 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 Trêves, 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
Trêves 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 Cæsars, but of Saints.
Under the supposed patronage of those Saints, Trêves 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. Trêves 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.
[Picture: Life of St. Anthony]
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
dæmon 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
dæmon 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 dæmons,
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 dæmons’ 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 dæmons, 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 dæmons, 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 dæmons
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 dæmons, 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 dæmons.
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 dæmons. 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 dæmonology and the
temptation of dæmons: 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 dæmon. 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 dæmon. 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 dæmons
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 dæmons 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 dæmons 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 hyænas 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 dæmons, 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 dæmons fled away, so that in its haste it fell and died. Now
the death of the beast was the fall of the dæmons. 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 dæmons, 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 dæmon, 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 dæmon, 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 dæmon 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 dæmon 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 Manichæans 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 dæmons, 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 dæmons 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 dæmons 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 dæmons, 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 Chæreas’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
dæmons, 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
dæmons 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.
[Picture: Paul, the first Hermit]
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 dæmons.”
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 dæmons—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, Aristæneta, 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 Parætonia, 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 primæval 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 Maleæ 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 dæmons 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
mediæval 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 wool
Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/8733