cessors, sought in vain to arrest the too rapid increase of monachism. A picture is drawn by Theodoret, in his Iteligious Histories, of the rigor and mortification practiced in some of the greater monasteries, which goes far to explain the assertion of Protestant writers that the monks were commonh' zealots in religion; and that much of the bitterness of the religious contro- versies of the East was due to their unrestrained zeal ; and that the opinions which led to these controversies originated for the most part among the theologians of the cloisters. (Most famous among these was an or- der called Ac(£met(B [Gr. sleepless^, from their main- taining the public services of the Church day and night without interruption. See Image-worship ; Mono-
PHYSITES; MOXOTHEHTES; NeSTORIANS.)
Under the growing influence of the Byzantine em- perors, the Eastern Church, and with it Eastern mon- achism, lost all vitality and became petrified. No attempts were made to revive its declining vigor hy creating new organizations, and though there have indeed been occasional examples of splendid benevo- lence in Oriental monachism, these are after all iso- lated instances. "As a general rule," says Stanley, "there has arisen in the East no society like the Bene- dictines (see below), held in honor wherever literature or civilization has spread ; no charitable orders, like the Sisters of Mercy, which carr}' light and peace in the darkest haunts of suffering humanity" {Eastern Church, p. 114). Traditionally all the Eastern monks have followed up to the present day the so-called rule of Pachomius, or, as they prefer, of St. Anthony. They remain numerous in all the Eastern churches, and some of their establishments, as the convents of Mount Atlios, are still celebrated for their literary treasures or political influence [see Monks, Eastern] ; but they have ceased to be powerful agencies of religious influ- ence. This is of course easily to be accounted for on general principles. The Eastern Church is b}' us of the West recognised as stationary/ and immutable, while our own motto is progress and jlexilility. Hence ac- tive life is, on the strict Eastern theory, an abuse of the system. And while the monastic life, as we shall presently examine it in detail, in the Western world is characterized by literary' and agricultural activity, the Eastern monks, whether in Egypt or Greece, have al- ways passed a passive life, turning aside, and that only occasionally, simply to secure the necessaries for their subsistence. Some monks, it is true, devoted a por- tion of their time to mechanical trades, among which we find ship-building, and to agriculture; but allJ^heir occupations and rules Avere after all designed to over- come the desires of the body, and to make it a willing servant and instrument of the soul in its excessive re- ligious aspirations. Annihilation of individualism was aimed at, in order to be wholly possessed and owned by God. The wildest individual excesses of a Bruno or a Dunstan seem poor beside the authorized national, we may almost saj' imperial, adoration of the pillar saints of the East. Thus also, e. g., amid all the con- troversies of the 5th centur}-, on one religious subject the conflicting East maintained its unity — in the rever- ence of the hermit on the pillar. The West certainly has never had a Simeon St3-lites (q. v.).
It is clearlj' apparent, then, to the careful student of ecclesiastical history that monasticism proper, in its first stage, was developed in the Eastern Church. But we shall see presently that monasticism was ear- ly transplanted to the West also. We will see it, however, in a modified form, really constituting the fourth and last stage of asceticism, or the second stage of monasticism proper. Before we pass to its consid- eration, it may not be amiss to regard here the third stage in its relation to the other two that preceded it. Pachomius himself, as we have seen, was originally a hermit. It will be found upon examination that all other ascetics who are marked as the most celebrated order-founders of later days were also originally her-
MONASTICISM
468
MOXASTICISM
mits. Cloister life, indeetl, is a regular orjianization of the ascetic life on a social basis, recognising as it does, at least in a measure, the social element of hu- man nature, and representing it in a narrower sphere secluded from the larger -world. Hence hermit life led to cloister life, and the cloister life became not only a refuge for the spirit weary of the world, but also in manj' ways a school for practical life in the Church. We must certainly confess that it formed ttie transi- tion from isolated to social Christianity ; for it con- eists in an association of a number of anchorets of tlie same sex for mutual advancement in ascetic holiness. The coenobites, living somewhat according to tlie laws of civilization, under one roof, and under a superin- tendent or abbot, divide their time between connnon devotions and manual labor, and devote their surjdus provisions to charity; except the mendicant monks, who themselves live by alms.
In this modified form monasticism became available to the female sex, to which the solitary desert life was utterly impracticable ; and with the cloisters of monks there appear at once cloisters also of nuns. Antho- nj' and Pachomius, we are told by their biographers, were tended by their sisters; Ammonius l)y his wife; and crowds of heroic women confided their honor to the wilderness rather than to the caprices of fortune in times of trouble. Hence this germ of nunneries developed their growth even as rapidly as the monas- teries, and, though the cause no longer exists, cloisters for female ascetics abound to this day in the East and in the West. See Nunneries.