160 THIED PEKIOD. A.D. 311-590.
Voluntary poverty, voluntary celibacy, and absolute obedieucfi tbrni the three monastic vows, as they are called, and are supposed to constitute a higher virtue and to secure a higher reward in heaven.
But this threefold self-denial is only the negative side of the matter, and a means to an end. It places man beyond the reach of the temptations connected with earthly possessions, married life, and independent will, and facilitates his progress toward heaven. The positive as]3ect of monasticism is unreserved surrender of the whole man, with all his time and strength, to God ; though, as we have said, not within, but without the sphere of society and the order of nature. This devoted life is employed in continual prayer, meditation, fasting, and castigation of the body. Some votaries went so far as to reject all bodily employment, for its interference with devotion. But in general a moderate union of spiritual exercises with scientific studies or with such manual labor as agriculture, basket making, weaving, for their own living and the support of the poor, was held not only lawful but wdiolesome for monks. It wats a proverb, that a laborious monk was beset by only one devil ; an idle one, by a legion.
With all the austerities and rigors of asceticism, the monastic life had its spiritual joys and irresistible charms for noble, contemplative, and heaven-aspiring souls, who fled from the turmoil and vain show of the city as a prison, and turned the solitude into a paradise of freedom and sweet communion with God and his saints ; while to others the same solitude became a fruitful nursery of idleness, despondency, and the most perilous temptations and ultimate ruin.'
§ 31. Monasticism and the Bible.
Monasticism, therefore, claims to be the highest and purest form of Christian piety and virtue, and the surest way to
' Comp. the truthful remark of Yves de Chartre8, of the twelfth century, Ep. 192 (quoted by Montaloinbort) : " Xou bcatum faoiuut hominem sccreta sylvarum, cacumina montium, si secum non habct solitudinem mentis, sabbatuni cordis, traiy fluillitatem conscieiitias, ascenriiones in cordo, sine quibus omnem solitudinem comi« tantiL' Taentis acedia, curiositas, vana gloria, ])ericulosai teutationum procellre."
§ 31. MONASTICISM AKD THE BIBLE. 101
heaven. Then, we should think, it must be preeminently commended in the Bible, and actually exhibited in the life of Christ and the apostles. But just in this biblical support il falls short.
The advocates of it uniformly refer first to the examples of Elijah, Elisha, and John the Baptist ; ' but these stand upon the legal level of the Old Testament, and are to be looked upon as extraordinary personages of an extraordinary age ; and though they may be regarded as types of a partial anchoretism (not of cloister life), still they are nowhere commended to our imitation in this particular, but rather in their influence upon the world.
The next appeal is to a few isolated passages of the Kew Testament, which do not, indeed, in their literal sense require the renunciation of property and marriage, yet seem to recommend it as a special, exceptional form of piety for those Christians who strive after higher perfection,'
Finally, as respects the spirit of the monastic life, reference is sometimes made even to the poverty of Christ and his apostles, to the silent, contemplative Mary, in contrast with the busy, practical Martha, and to the voluntary community of goods in the first Christian church in Jerusalem,
' So Jerome, Ep. 49 (ed. Ben.), ad Paulinura, where he adduces, besides Elijah and John, Isaiah also and the sons of the prophets, as the fathers of monasticism ; and in his Vita Pauli, where, however, he more correctly designates Paul of Thebes and Anthony as the first hermits, properly so called, in distinction from the prophets. Comp. also Sozomen : H. E., 1. i. c. 12 : Taimji 5e rHjs aplffT-qs <pi\u<ju<pias ^p^aro, o5s TLves Xdyovcriv, 'H\ius o Trpocp^TTji nai 'Iwavvris 6 ^aTrriffrriT. This appeal to the example of Elijah and John the Baptist has become traditional with Catholic writers on the subject. Albiin Butler says, under Jan. 15, in the life of Paul of Thebes : " Elias and John the Baptist sanctified the deserts, and Jesus Christ himself was a model of the eremitical state during his forty days' fast in the wilderness ; neither is it to be questioned but the Holy Ghost conducted the saint of this day (Paul of Thebes) into the desert, and was to him an instructor there."
■•' Hence called consilia cvangelica, in distinction from mandata divina ; after 1 Cor. vii. 25, where Paul does certainly make a similar distinction. The consilhim and votum pau2^crtatis are based on Matt. xix. 21 ; the votum cantitatis, on 1 Cor. vii. 8, 25, 38-40. For the votum obedieniicf no particular text is quoted. The theory appears substantially as early as in Origen, and was in him not merely a personal opinion, but the reflex of a very widely spread practice. Comp. vol. ii. § 105-107 (p. oS7 sqq.).
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