The rule of the Oriental monks has continued to be
MONKS, EASTERN 500 MONKS, ExVSTERN
Jacobite !Mouk.
Etliiopiau Mouk.
Jlaronitc ilouk.
Ariiieuiau Mouk-
Coptic Mouk.
Montolivetiau Monk.
(A Weattru Order.)
Eussiau Mouk.
MONKS, EASTERN
501
MONKS, EASTERN
that of Pachomius or of Basil. They are divided into two classes — coenobites, or ordinary communities, and anchorets (idiorithmes), who live separately, unless on certain festivals (in recent times) when they eat in common. Each monastery is governed by a prior (he- gumenos), whose office is for life, or in his absence (or the non-existence of one) by a provider or steward (epitropos), elected annually by the community. The brethren are divided into ordinary monlvs (monachi) and consecrated monks (hieromonachi) ; the latter are the learned portion of the communit}' — but these are few indeed. In 1545, when Belon visited Mount Athos (less than a century after the conquest), he found six thousand caloyers, or monks, in the different monas- teries, and of that number, he states, "it would be dif- ficult to find more than two or three in each monastery who can read or write." Recent travellers find no change. Madden says : " This was the state of things in all the monasteries I have visited in the Greek isl- ands, in European Turkej', in Sj'ria, and in Egypt. But among the few — the very small minority of monks who could read and write in the monasteries I visited — there was generall}' one monk, sometimes two of the brotherhood, who were addicted to studj', were ac- quainted with the ancient Greek, had a knowledge of ecclesiastical history and of the writings of the Greek fathers, and some acquaintance with the principal works or rarest MSS. of their several libraries" {Turk- ish Empire, ii, 83). The time of Oriental monastics is divided between religious duties and manual labor, providing food and other necessaries, tending cattle, and domestic afl:airs.
Down to the period of the Greek revolution and its termination in the Hellenic kingdom, but especially till 1821, the monasteries were unmolested by the Turks, and consequently the literary treasures remained un- injured, except by the ignorant members of their com- munities. But the successes of the Greeks in the Mo- rea in 1821 led to irreparable mischief to the monastic libraries of several parts of Greece, and particularly of the monasteries of Mount Athos, at the hands of the infuriated Turks, and vast numbers of rare books and still more valuable and irreplaceable MSS. were de- stroj'ed. It is to be hoped that ere long the treasures still remaining will be in the hands of European schol- ars, and their contents become the possession of the world of letters.
II. Bussian Jfonks. — Eussian monasticism is so un- like that of the other Christian countries in which the institution has gained a footing, that we devote a spe- cial section to its orders. In the consideration of this subject we must dismiss from our minds all the West- em ideas of beneficence, learning, preaching, etc., such as we attribute to the Benedictines or Franciscans; of statecraft, subtlet}^ and policy, such as we ascribe to the Jesuits. In the dark forests of Muscovy is carried out the same rigid system, at least in outward form, that was born and nurtured in the burning desert of the Thebaid. There is no variety of monastic orders in Russia. The one name of the Black Clergy is ap- plied to all alike ; the one rule of St. Basil (q. v.) gov- erns them all. For convenience' sake they might be divided into two classes — the Hermits and the Monks.
1. The Hermits. — Even at the present day the influ- ence of a hermit in Russia is be3'ond what it is in anj' other part of the world, and in earlier times their sanc- tity had acquired the strongest hold over all who came witiiin their reach. Anthony and Theodosius, in the caves of Kief, were known far and wide for their piety and asceticism, and their dried skeletons still attract pilgrims from the utmost bounds of Kamtchatka. The pillar-hermits never reached the West, but were to be found in the heart of Russia. Fletcher, in his Russian Commonu-ealth (p. 117), describes them thus : " There are certain eremites who use to go stark naked, save a clout about their middle, with their hair hanging long and wildly about their shoulders, and many of them
with an iron collar or chain about their necks or mid- dles, even in the very extremity of winter. These they take as prophets and men of great holiness, giv- ing them a liberty to speak what they list without any controlment, though it be of the very highest himself. So that if he reprove any openly, in what sort soever, they answer nothing but that it is 'Po Grecum'' {for their sins). The people liketh very well of them, be- cause they are as pasquils [pasquins] to note their great men's faults, that no man else dare speak of. . . . Of this kind there are not many, because it is a very hard and cold profession to go naked in Russia, espe- cially in winter." Of the numerous hermits, we men- tion Basil of Moscow, "that would take upon him to reprove the old emperor, the terrible Ivan, for all his cruelty and oppression done towards the people. His body the}' have translated into a sumptuous church near the emperor's house in Moscow, and have canon- ized him for a saint." That sumptuous church re- mains a monument of the mad hennit. It is the ca- thedral immediately outside the Kremlin walls, well termed "^/«e dream of a diseased imagination.'" Hun- dreds of artists were kidnapped from Liibeck to erect it, and of all the buildings in Moscow it makes the deepest impression.