§ 38. PACH0MIU8 AND THE CLOISTER LIFE. 197
nicated to him, and wliicli Jerome trariB.ated into Latin. The formal reception into the society was preceded by a three-years probation. Rigid vows were not yet enjoined. With si3iritua. exercises manual labor was united, agriculture, boat building, basket making, mat and coverlet weaving, by which the monka not only earned their own living, but also supported the poor and the sick. • They were divided, according to the grade of their ascetic piety, into four and twenty classes, named by the letters of the Greek alphabet. They lived three in a cell They ate in common, but in strict silence, and with the face covered. They made known their wants by signs. The sick were treated with special care. On Saturday and Sunday they partook of the communion. Pachomius, as abbot, or archimandrite, took the oversight of the whole ; each cloister having a separate superior and a steward.
Pachomius also established a cloister of nuns for his sister, whom he never admitted to his presence when she would visit him, sending her word that she should be content to know that he was still alive. In like manner, the sister of Anthony and the wife of Ammon became centres of female cloister life, which spread with great rapidity.
Pachomius, after his conversion, never ate a full meal, and for fifteen years slept sitting on a stone. Tradition ascribes to him all sorts of miracles, even the gift of tongues and perfect dominion over nature, so that he trod without harm on serpents and scorpions, and crossed the Nile on the backs of crocodiles ! '
Soon after Pachomius, fifty monasteries arose on the ISTitrian mountain, in no respect inferior to those in the Thebaid. They maintained seven bakeries for the benefit of the anchorets ir the neighboring Libyan desert, and gave attention also, at least in later days, to theological studies ; as the valuable manuscripts recently discovered there evince.
* Mohler remarks on this (Vermischte Schriften, ii. p. 183): "Thus antiquity expresses its faith, that for man perfectly reconciled with God there is no enemy in nature. There is more than poetry here ; there is expressed at least the high opinion his own and future generation 3 had of Pachomius." The last qualifying remark suggests a doubt even in the mind of this famous modern champion of Romanism &» to the real historical character of the wonderful tales of this monastic saint.
198 THEKU PERIOD. A.D. 311-590.
From Egypt the cloister life spread with the i-apidity of the irresistible spirit of the age, over the entire Christian East. The most eminent fathers of the Greek churcli were either themselves monks for a time, or at all events friends and patrons of monasticism. Ephraim propagated it in MesojDotamia ; Eustathius of Sebaste in Armenia and Paphlagonia ; Basil tho Great in Pontiis and Cappadocia. The lattef provided hia monasteries and nunneries with clergy, and gave them an improved rule, which, before his death (379), was accepted by some eighty thousand monks, and translated by Itufinus into Latin. He sought to unite the virtues of the anchorite and coenobite life, and to make the institution useful to the church by promoting the education of youth, and also (as Athanasiua designed before him) by combating Arianism among the people,' He and his friend Gregory Kazianzen were the first to unite scientific theological studies with the ascetic exercises of solitude. Chrysostom wrote three books in praise and vindication of the monastic life, and exhibits it in general in its noblest aspect.
In the beginning of the fifth century. Eastern monasticism was most worthily represented by the elder Nilus of Sinai, a pupil and venerator of Chrysostom, and a copious ascetic writer, who retired with his son from a high civil oflice in Constantinople to Mount Sinai, while his wife, with a daughter, travelled to an Egyptian cloister;* and by the abbot Isidore, of Pelusiuni, on the principal eastern mouth of the Nile, from whom we have two thousand epistles.' The writings of these two men show a rich spiritual experience, and an extended and fer tile field of labor and usefulness in their age and generation.
' Gregory Nazianzen, hi his eulogy on Basil (Orat. xx. of the old order, Orat. xliii. in the new Par. ed.), gives him the honor of endeavoring to unite the theoretical and the practical modes of life in monasticism, Yj/a MiiTe t^ (pi\iitTo(poi' <xKuivtiv7]rov §, uijTf rh irpaKTiKhv a.(piKuao<pov.
' Comp. Neander, iii. 487 (Torrey's translation, vol. ii. p. 250 sqq.), who esteems Nilus highly ; and the article of Gasa in Uerzog's Theol. Encykl. vol. x. p. 355 sqq. His works are in the Bibl. Max. vet. Tatr. torn. vii.,and in Migne's Patrol. (Jr. t. 79.
' Comp. on him Tillemont, xv., and H. A. Nieracyer : " De laid. Pel vita, scriplia et doctrina," Hal. 1825. His Epistles are in the 7th volume of the Bibliothocs Maxima, and in Migne's Patrol. Grajca, torn. r)8, Paris, 1860.