The organization of the church was by no means confined to an ecclesiastical
hierarchy. In any study of Christian institutions a prominent place must be
given to monasticism. Since monasticism was originally an outgrowth of
asceticism, it becomes necessary, first of all, to examine the relationship
between that ideal and the Christian religion. Original Christianity was only
mildly ascetic. Neither Jesus nor his immediate followers practiced any
extremes of self-torture. To be sure, Jesus did not marry; he declared that he
had no place to lay his head; and he was supposed to have fasted for forty days
in the wilderness; but these examples could scarcely have encouraged the
pathological excesses of mortification of the flesh indulged in by the hermits
of the third and fourth centuries. We must therefore look for additional causes
of the growth of this later asceticism. Perhaps the following may be considered
fundamental:
(1) The desire of many pious Christians to protest against the
increasing worldliness of the church. The farther they might go to the opposite
extreme of the luxurious lives of some of the clergy, for example, the more
effective that protest would become.
(2) The choice of morbid self-torture as a substitute for
martyrdom. With the abandonment of persecution by the Romans all chances of
winning a crown of glory in heaven by undergoing death for the faith were
eliminated. But the desire to give evidence of one's religious ardor by
self-abasement and suffering was still present and demanded an outlet.
(3) The desire of some Christians who were sincerely devoted to
the faith to set an example of exalted piety and unselfishness as an inspiration
to their weaker brethren. Even though most men should fail to attain the ideal,
the general level of morality and piety would be raised.
(4) The influence of other Oriental religions, especially
Gnosticism and Manicheism, with their exaggerated spiritualism, contempt for
this world, and degradation of the body.
The earliest Christian ascetics were hermits, who withdrew from
the world to live in seclusion in some wilderness or desert. This form of
asceticism seems to have originated in Egypt in the third century. From there it
spread into other provinces of the eastern section of the Empire and continued
to be popular for more than one hundred years. It developed into a kind of
religious mania characterized by morbid excesses. We read of hermits or
anchorites grazing in the fields after the manner of animals, rolling naked in
thorn bushes, or living in swamps infested with snakes. The famous St. Simeon Stylites passed a whole summer "as a rooted vegetable in a garden" and then
began the construction of his celebrated pillar. He built it to a height of
sixty feet and spent the remaining thirty years of his life on the top. Such
absurdities as these, while certainly not typical of the attitude of the
majority of Christians at this time, were probably the natural fruit of too
strong an emphasis upon the spiritual way of life.
In time the force of the
anchorite hysteria subsided. Certain of the more practical Christian ascetics
came to the conclusion that the solitary life of the hermit was not good for the
soul, since it sometimes drove men insane. The result of this conclusion was
the origin of monasticism. Credit for founding the earliest monastery is
commonly assigned to Pachomius, who lived in Egypt in the middle fourth
century. The movement he initiated was continued by St. Basil, a bishop of Cappadocia, who was the first to issue a set of rules for the government of a
monastic order. Disapproving of extreme self-torture, St. Basil required his
monks to discipline themselves by useful labor. They were not to engage in
prolonged fasting or in degrading laceration of the flesh, but they were
compelled to submit to obligations of poverty and humility and to spend many
hours of the day in silent religious meditation. The Basilian type of
monasticism came to be adopted universally in the eastern division of
Christendom. Many of its units are still to be seen perched on lofty crags to
which access can be gained only by climbing long rope ladders or being hauled up
in a basket. The history of monasticism in western Europe also began in the
fourth century, when ascetic communities on the Egyptian model were established
in Rome. There was really no important monasticism in the West, however, until
the sixth century, when St. Benedict drafted his famous rule which ultimately
became the standard for nearly all the monks of Latin Christendom. The
Benedictine rule imposed obligations similar to those of the rule of St.
Basil—poverty, obedience, labor, and religious devotion. If there was any
essential difference, it probably lay in the stronger emphasis of the
Benedictine system upon organized control. The abbot of each monastery had
practically unlimited authority to discipline the monks under him. The Basilian
rule was predicated more upon the assumption that each monk would discipline
himself.
The influence of
monasticism upon the society of the early Middle Ages would be difficult to
exaggerate. The monks were generally the best farmers in Europe; they reclaimed
waste lands, drained swamps, and made numerous discoveries relating to the
improvement of the soil. They preserved some of the building skill of the Romans
and achieved noteworthy progress in many of the industrial arts, especially in
wood carving, metal-working, weaving, glass-making, and brewing. Indeed, some
modern writers maintain that the foundations of the Industrial Revolution were
actually laid in the medieval monasteries. It was monks, furthermore, who wrote
most of the books, copied the ancient manuscripts, and maintained the majority
of the schools and libraries and nearly all of the hospitals that existed during
the early Middle Ages. The growth of monasticism also profoundly affected the
history of the church. It led to a division in the ranks of the clergy. Living
according to a definite rule or regula, the monks came to be called the
regular clergy; while the priests, bishops, and archbishops, who carried
on their activities in the midst of the affairs of the world (saeculum),
were henceforth known as the secular clergy. Between the two groups
intense rivalry developed, with the monks sometimes organizing reform movements
against the worldliness of the priests. The Benedictine monks enjoyed the
special favor of the Popes, and it was partly on account of an alliance between
the papacy and monasticism that the former was able to extend its power over the
church.
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