^ 35. PAUL OF THEBES AJSTD ST. ASTIIOKT. 183
treated, after tlie year 285, further and further from the bosoii, and vicinity of the church, into solitude, and thus became the founder of an anchoretism strictly so called. At first he lived in a sepulclire ; then for twenty years in the ruins of a castle ; and last on Mount Colzim, some seven hours from the Red Sea, a three days' journey east of the Nile, where an old cloister still preserves his name and memory.
In this solitude he prosecuted his ascetic practices with everincreasing rigor. Their monotony was broken only by basket making, occasional visits, and battles with the devil. In fasting he attained a rare abstemiousness. His food consisted of bread and salt, sometimes dates ; his drink, of water. Flesli and wine he never touched. He ate only once a day, generally after sunset, and, like the presbyter Isidore, was ashamed that an immortal spirit should need earthly nourishment. Often he fasted fvom two to five days. Friends, and wandering Saracens, who always had a certain reverence for the saints of the desert, brought him bread from time to time. But in the last years of his life, to render himself entirely independent of others, and to afford hospitality to travellers, he cultivated a small garden on the mountain, near a spring shaded by palms.* Sometimes the wild beasts of the forest destroyed hie modest harvest, till he drove them away forever with the expostulation : " Why do you injure me, who have never done you the slighest harm ? Away with you all, in the name of the Lord, and never come into my neighborhood again," He slept on bare ground, or at best on a pallet of straw ; but often he watched the whole night through in prayer. The anointing of the body with oil he despised, and in later years never washed his feet ; as if filthiness were an essential element of ascetic perfection. His whole wardrobe consisted of a hair chirt, a sheepskin, and a girdle. But notwithstanding all, he had a winning friendliness and cheerfulness in his face.
Conflicts with the devil and his hosts of demons were, as
' Jerome, in his Vita Hilarionis, c. 31, gives an incidental description of this last residence of Anthony, according to which it was not so desolate as from Athanasiuj one would infer. He speaks even of palms, fruit trees, and vines in this garden, the fruit of which any one would have enjoyed.
1.8-J: THIKD PERIOD. A.D. 311-590.
with other solitary saints, a proinlneiit part of Anthony's ex perience, and continued through all his life. The devil appeared to hini in visions and dreams, or even in daylight, in all possihle forms, now as a friend, now as a fascinating woman, now as a dragon, tempting him by reminding him of his former wealth, of his noble family, of the care due to his sister, by promises of wealth, honor, and renown, by exhibitions of tlie difficulty of virtue and the facility of vice, by unchaste thoughts and images, by terrible threatenings of the dangers and punisliments of the ascetic life. Once he struck the hermit so violently, Athanasius says, that a friend, who brought him bread, found him on the ground apparently dead. At another time he broke through the wall of his cave and filled the room with roaring lions, liowling wolves, growling bears, fierce hyenas, crawling serpents and scorpions ; but Anthony turned manfully toward the monsters, till a supernatural light broke in from tlie roof and dispersed them. His sermon, which he delivered to the hermits at their request, treats principally of these wars with demons, and gives also the key to the interpretation of them : "Fear not Satan and his angels. Christ has broken their power. The best weapon against them is faith and piety. . . . The presence of evil spirits reveals itself in perplexity, despondency, hatred of the ascetics, evil desires, fear of death. . . . They take the form answering to the spiritual state they find in us at the time.' They are the reflex of our thoughts and fantasies. If thou art carnally minded, thou art their prey ; but if thou rejoicest in the Lord and occupiest thyself with divine things, they are powerless. . . . The devil is afraid of fasting, of prayer, of humility and good works. His illusions soon vanish, when one arms himself with the sign of the cross."
Only in exceptional cases did Anthony leave his solitude ; and then he made a powerful impression on both Christians and heathens with his hairy dress and his emaciated, ghostlike form. In the year 311, during the persecution under Maximinus, he appeared in Alexandria in the hope of himself gaining
' At.baoas. c. 42 : 'E\^6vt€s yap [ui e'x^po') ^toiods av (vpuxriu Jj/ua?, toiovtoi kcC eiirol -)iVoi'Tai, etc. — an important psNX'holo^ical observation.