DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.11448#0378
7C
THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS.
[chap, vm
become enriched thereby, but they who follow will probably find
only rubbish. The lofty minds of an Anthony and Pachomius
had grown not only to strength, but to power in the hermit's cell,
and thousands hastened to seek for piety in the wilderness, as if
it were some curious natural production that grew there only.
The very desert ceased to be desert; the solitudes of Egypt and
Syria became peopled with gloomy dreamers, who seemed to
think it was on the body, not the soul, that the weight of sin lay
so heavily. These selfish zealots found, no doubt, a fieiue lux.
ury in penance and privation—and devils must have marvelled to
see the body that God had made so strong, and fair, and comely
—torn and disfigured by starvation and the scourge : the soul
that had been given for the exercise of genial thought, and love
and friendship, shrouded by perpetual gloom, and for ever harp-
ing, like the ailing body, upon its own sordid self. Yet these
men were called Catholic !
There were some victims of this literal monomania, like some
of the knights in the darker ages of chivalry, who displayed a
spirit, philanthropy, and understanding, singularly at issue with
their narrow profession. Men travelled into the desert to seek for
dispassionate advice in secular affairs from such hermits, and to
stimulate their faith in spiritual matters by a glimpse at their wild
zeal. St. Anthony is generally considered the Chief of the Soli-
taries : he lived for twenty years in a ruined castle on the banks
of the Nile, and was the friend of Athanasius, who made use of
his testimony against the Arians as if it were the voice of Heaven
,iat spoke through him.
According to the Oriental Christians, the Sethites, or "Sons of
God," set the first example of the monastic life by retiring to
Mount Hermon, in the hope of regaining their lately lost Paradise
by the sanctity and purity of their lives : despairing at last of this,
or weary of celibacy, they descended to the plains, where, inter-
marrying with '•' the daughters of men" — their kinswomen,
through Cain—they begot the Giants.*
Hilarion was the founder of the Christian monastic state in
Syria, and St. Basil in Pontus. The spirit spread rapidly
* D'Herbelot
THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS.
[chap, vm
become enriched thereby, but they who follow will probably find
only rubbish. The lofty minds of an Anthony and Pachomius
had grown not only to strength, but to power in the hermit's cell,
and thousands hastened to seek for piety in the wilderness, as if
it were some curious natural production that grew there only.
The very desert ceased to be desert; the solitudes of Egypt and
Syria became peopled with gloomy dreamers, who seemed to
think it was on the body, not the soul, that the weight of sin lay
so heavily. These selfish zealots found, no doubt, a fieiue lux.
ury in penance and privation—and devils must have marvelled to
see the body that God had made so strong, and fair, and comely
—torn and disfigured by starvation and the scourge : the soul
that had been given for the exercise of genial thought, and love
and friendship, shrouded by perpetual gloom, and for ever harp-
ing, like the ailing body, upon its own sordid self. Yet these
men were called Catholic !
There were some victims of this literal monomania, like some
of the knights in the darker ages of chivalry, who displayed a
spirit, philanthropy, and understanding, singularly at issue with
their narrow profession. Men travelled into the desert to seek for
dispassionate advice in secular affairs from such hermits, and to
stimulate their faith in spiritual matters by a glimpse at their wild
zeal. St. Anthony is generally considered the Chief of the Soli-
taries : he lived for twenty years in a ruined castle on the banks
of the Nile, and was the friend of Athanasius, who made use of
his testimony against the Arians as if it were the voice of Heaven
,iat spoke through him.
According to the Oriental Christians, the Sethites, or "Sons of
God," set the first example of the monastic life by retiring to
Mount Hermon, in the hope of regaining their lately lost Paradise
by the sanctity and purity of their lives : despairing at last of this,
or weary of celibacy, they descended to the plains, where, inter-
marrying with '•' the daughters of men" — their kinswomen,
through Cain—they begot the Giants.*
Hilarion was the founder of the Christian monastic state in
Syria, and St. Basil in Pontus. The spirit spread rapidly
* D'Herbelot