39. HEKETICAL MONASTIC SOCIETIES .N THE EA.8T. 199
§ 39. Fanatical and Ileretieal Monastic Societies in the East.
A-cta Concil. Gangrenensis, in Mansi, ii. 1095 sqq. Epiphan. : llaer. 70, 75 and 80. Soce. : H. E. ii. 43. Sozom. : iv. 24. Tueodok. ; H. E. iv. y, 10; Fab. hjer. iv. 10, 11. Couip. Neander : iii. p. 468 sqq. (ed. Torrey, ii. 238 sqq.).
Monasticism generally adhered closely to the orthodox faith of the church. The friendship between Athanasius, the father of orthodoxy, and Anthony, the father of monachism, is on this point a classical fact. But Nestorianisni also, and Eutychianism, Monopliysitism, Pelagianism, and other heresies, proceeded from monks, and found in monks tlieir most vigorous advocates. And the monastic enthusiasm ran also into ascetic heresies of its own, which we must notice here.
1. The EusTATHiANS, so named from Eustathius, bishop of. Sebaste and friend of Basil, founder of monasticism in Armenia, Pontus, and Paphlagonia. This sect asserted that marriage debarred from salvation and incapacitated for the clerical office. For this and other extravagances it was condemned by a council at Gangra in Paplilagonia (between 360 and 370), and gradually died out.
2. The AuDiANS held similar principles. Their founder, Audius, or Udo, a layman of Syria, charged the clergy of his day with immorality, especially avarice and extravagance. After mucli persecution, which he bore patiently, he forsook the church, with his friends, among whom were some bishops and priests, and, about 330, founded a rigid monastic sect in Scythia, which subsisted perhaps a hundred years. They were Quartodecimans in the practice of Easter, observing it on the 14rth of Nisan, accordiug to Jewish fashion. Epiphanius speaks favorably of their exemplary but severely ascetic life.
3. The EucHiTES or Messalians,' also called Enthusiasts, wore roaming mendicant monks in Mesopotamia and Syria (dating from 360), who conceived the Christian life as an uniiitermitted prayer, despised all physical labor, the moral law, and the sacraments, and boasted themselves perfect. Thej
' From T|"^bs^ = Eux«'"'"i from evxn, prayer.
200 TUIKD TERIOD. A.D. 311-590.
tauglit, tliat every man brings an evil demon with liim into the world, which can only be driven away by prayer ; then the Holy Ghost comes into the soul, liberates it from all the bonda of sense, and raises it above the need of instruction and the means of grace. The gospel history they declared a mere allegory. But they concealed their pantheistic mysticism and autinoniianism under external conformity to the Catholic church. When their principles, toward the end of the fourth century, became known, the persecution of both the ecclesias tical and the civil authority fell upon them. Yet they perpetuated themselves to the seventh century, and reappeared in the Euchites and Bogomiles of the middle age.
§ 40. Monasticism in the West. Athanasius. Ambrose^ Aug2istine, Martin of Tours.
I. Ambeosids : De Virgiiiibus ad Marcellinam sororem suani libri tree,
Avritteu about 377 (in the Benedictine edition of Ambr. Opera, torn. ii. p. 145-183). AuGUSTiNUS (a. d. 400j : De Opera Monadiorum liber nnus (in the Bened. ed., torn. vi. p. 470-504). Sulpitics Severus (about A. D. 408) : Dialogi tres (de virtutibus monachorum orientalium et de virtutibus B. Martini) ; and De Vita Beati Martini (both in the Bibliotheca Maxima vet. Patrum, torn. vi. p. 349 sqq., and better in Oallandi's Bibliotheca vet. Patrum, torn. viii. p. 392 sqcj.).
II, J. Mabillon : Observat. de monachis in occidente ante Benedictuiu
(Prffif. in Acta Sanct. Ord. Bened.). H. II. Milman : Hist, of Latin Christianity, Lond. 1854, vol. i. oh. vi. p. 409-426 : ""Western lilonasticism." Count de Montalembert : The Monks of the "West, Engl, translation, vol, i. p. 379 sqq.
In the Latin church, in virtue partly of the climate, partly of the national character,' the monastic life took a much milder form, but assumed greater variety, and found a larger field oi usefulness than in the Greek. It produced no pillar saints, nor other such excesses of ascetic heroism, but was more practi-
' S-jlpitius Severus, in the first of his three dialogues, gives several amusing instances of tlie difference between the Gallic and Egyptian stoiuach, and was greatli astonished when the first Egyptian anchoret wlioui he 'visited placed before him and his four companions a half loaf of barley bread and a handful of herbs for a dinner, though they tasted very good after the wearisome journey. "Edacitas," says he 'in Graecis gula est, in Gallis natura." (Dial. i. c. 8, in Gallandi, t. viii. p. 406.)