cution, which was about the middle of the third century, many persons in Egypt, to avoid the fury of the storm, fled to the neighbouring deserts and mountains, where they found not only a safe retreat, but also more time and liberty to exercise themselves in acts of piety and divine contemplations; which sort of life, though at first forced upon them by necessity, became so agreeable to some of them, that, when the persecution was over, they would not return to their ancient habitations again, but chose rather to continue in those cottages, or cells, which they had made themselves in the wilderness. The first and most noted of these were Paul and Antonius, two famous Egyptians, whom therefore St. Jerome calls 'the fathers of the Christian hermits.' But as yet there were no bodies, or communities, of men embracing this life, nor any monasteries built, or any regular societies formed into any method of government; but only a few single persons, scattered here and there in the deserts of Egypt, till Pachomius, in the peaceable reign of Constantine, when the persecutions were ended, procured some monasteries to be built in Thebais, in Egypt, from whence the custom of living as regulars in societies was followed, by degrees, in other parts of the world in the succeeding ages."*

The professed object of the monks was the attainment of superior degrees of holiness. For this purpose they withdrew from the world, vexed their bodies with long fasts and painful austerities, wore scanty or uneasy clothing, made of skins or rough sackcloth, and instituted lengthened exercises of devotion. There were many varieties of the monastic life. Some lived in convents, and supported themselves by manual labour; others chose the solitude of the wilderness, living on roots and similar coarse fare, and dwelling in "dens and caves of the earth," far remote from the usual haunts of men. Many practised abstinence and mortification in the sight of their fellow-creatures, and enjoyed the admiration which their supposed sanctity secured. This class consisted chiefly of bishops and their clergy, who, in many instances, lived together in the metropolitan city, and adopted monastic rules to such an extent as was deemed compatible with the discharge of

* Bingham's Christian Antiquities, book vii.

their public duties. Numbers wandered from place to place, gaining a livelihood by begging. A large proportion of the whole indulged the wildest extravagances, both in opinion and practice, and forfeited all claim to scriptural piety. All these modes of life were embraced by women as well as men, and soon became extremely popular. Monks and nuns acquired the reputation of extraordinary holiness. One result was, that the former were frequently chosen to succeed deceased ecclesiastics; and as they could do this without renouncing altogether their peculiarities, the monastic system was everywhere triumphant. As yet, however, the monasteries, though severally governed by their abbots, were under episcopal control, each monastery being subject to the bishop in whose diocese it was built.

In the sixth century, Benedict, a native of Nursia, in Umbria, gave a new form to the monastic life. After having long lived as a hermit, he founded a convent on a mountain in Campania, the site of the old castrum Cassinum, and hence called Monasterium Cassinense, Monte Cassino. Here he introduced a new system, which, whilst it avoided the extreme rigour of the east, prescribed a variety of suitable employments for the monks; but differed most from other systems in exacting a promise from all who entered a convent to remain for life, and strictly to observe its rules. This system was soon generally adopted in Italy, Gaul, and Spain. Instead of scattered convents, without connexion or communication, they were all now united together; and thus arose the first monastic order. About the same time, the monks began to aspire after independence, voluntarily placing themselves under distant bishops, in order to avoid the personal inspection of a superior. This proved a growing evil, and the fruitful source of contentions.

The progress of monasticism was distinguished for several centuries by unexampled prosperity, and its ordinary attendant, corruption. Replenished with wealth, which the ignorant and superstitious people lavished upon them, thinking to gain favour with God thereby, the monks indulged in every kind of licentious excess, till they were as infamous for vice as their predecessors had been renowned for piety. Reformation was frequently attempted, and many new orders arose, professing,

at first, great zeal for purity, and adopting the strictest modes of discipline, verging sometimes to the extremity of human endurance. But these also soon shared the general fate, and sunk to the same low level of shameless sensuality.*

The institution of the mendicant orders, in the thirteenth century, was a new and important era in monastic history. These orders professed absolute poverty, and proposed to live on the voluntary alms of the pious. The principal of these were the Carmelites, the Augustinians, the Dominicans, and the Franciscans. "As the Pontiffs allowed these four mendicant orders the liberty of travelling wherever they thought proper, of conversing with persons of all ranks, of instructing the youth and the multitude wherever they went; and as these monks exhibited, in their outward appearance and manner of life, more striking marks of gravity and holiness than were observable in the other monastic societies, they arose all at once to the very summit of fame, and were regarded with the utmost esteem and veneration throughout all the countries of Europe. The people were unwilling to receive the sacraments from any other hands than those of the mendicants, to whose churches they crowded to perform their devotions while living, and were extremely desirous to deposit there also their remains after death; all which occasioned grievous complaints among the ordinary priests, to whom the cure of souls was committed, and who considered themselves as the spiritual guides of the multitude."

The learned author whose words have just been cited adds, "The power of the Dominicans and Franciscans surpassed greatly that of the other two orders, and rendered them singularly conspicuous in the eyes of the world. During three centuries, these two fraternities governed, with an almost universal and absolute sway, both state and church; filled the most eminent posts, ecclesiastical and civil; taught in the universities and churches with an authority before which all opposition was silent; and maintained the pretended majesty and prerogatives of the Roman Pontiffs, against kings, princes, bishops, and heretics, with incredible ardour and equal

* Vide Concil. Labbe et Cossart. Ed. Mansi, tom. xviii. p. 270. Gieseler's Text Book of Ecclesiastical History, vol. ii. p. 120.

success.

These two celebrated orders restored the church from that declining condition in which it had been languishing for many years, by the zeal and activity with which they set themselves to discover and extirpate heretics; to undertake various negotiations and embassies for the interests of the hierarchy, and to confirm the wavering multitude in their implicit obedience to the Roman Pontiffs. These ghostly rulers, on the other hand, sensible of their obligations to the new monks, which, no doubt, were very great, not only employed them in every affair they looked upon as of high importance, and raised them to the most eminent stations in the church, but also accumulated upon them employments and privileges which, if they enriched them on the one hand, could not fail to render them odious on the other, and to excite the envy and complaints of other ecclesiastics. Such, among many other extraordinary prerogatives, was the permission they received from the Pontiffs, of preaching to the multitude, hearing confession, and pronouncing absolution, without any licence from the bishops, and even without consulting them; to which we may add, the treasure of ample and extensive indulgences, whose distribution was committed by the popes to the Franciscans, as a mean of subsistence and a rich indemnification for their voluntary poverty. These acts of liberality and marks of protection, lavished upon the Dominican and Franciscan friars with such an ill-judged profusion, as they overturned the ancient discipline of the church, and were a manifest encroachment upon the rights of the first and second orders of the ecclesiastical rulers, produced the most unhappy and bitter dissensions between the mendicant orders and the bishops. And these dissensions, extending their contagious influence beyond the limits of the church, excited throughout all the European provinces, and even in the city of Rome, under the very eye of the Pontiffs, the most dreadful disturbances and tumults."*

Monasticism has done incalculable mischief to religion. Of its three vows, of poverty, chastity, and obedience to the superior, the first two, it is well known, have been systematically and shamelessly broken in thousands of instances. The enor

* Mosheim, Cent. XIII. part ii. chap. 2. s. 21-26. Gieseler, ii. 292; iii. 299.

mous wealth of the monasteries, often procured by the most nefarious methods, and the scandalous lives of their inmates, both male and female, have been exposed by all writers on ecclesiastical history.* If it be said that these are abuses, it may be justly replied, that they are inseparable from the system. For it is beyond the power of any institution entirely to extinguish the propensities of our nature, or to preserve purity in a mode of living which is altogether at variance with the principles and precepts of the word of God.†

It must not be forgotten that this branch of the Romancatholic system furnishes an apt illustration of the effects of its published opinions on human merit. The miserable ascetic, who retires from the world and denies himself the lawful gratifications of life, vainly imagines that by so doing he becomes more worthy of the divine regard. His abstinence, his austerities, his devotions—the meagre diet, the sackcloth garment, the hempen, or, it may be, iron girdle, the flagellations, the watchings, the endless repetitions of Ave-Marias, Pater Nosters, &c., are, in his estimation, undoubted additions to

* See Dr. Geddes' " View of all the Orders of Monks and Friars in the Roman Church," in the third volume of his "Tracts."

+ Vide Vie de Ricci, Evêque de Pistoie et Prato, et Reformateur du Catholicisme en Toscane. Par de Potter. Trois volumes. 2nd Edition. Bruxelles, 1826. The disclosures contained in these volumes are of the most disgusting and horrifying description. See particularly tom. i. chap. 15—18. The prioress of the convent of St. Catharine of Pistoia says-" Excepté troise ou quatre religieux, parmi tant de moines, actuellement vivans ou déjà morts, que j'ai connus, il n'en étoit pas un seul qui ne fut du même calibre. Tous ils professent les mêmes maximes, et tiennent la même conduite. Ils vivent avec les religieuses plus familièrement que ne vivent entre elles les personnes mariées."-Tom i. p. 316. For endeavouring to put a stop to these disorders, Ricci was stigmatized by Pope Pius VI. as a" fanatic, a liar, a calumniator, seditious, and a usurper of other men's rights!" Tom. i. p. 423. He died Jan. 27, 1810.

In 1783, Baron Born, a nobleman of Hungary, and an eminent literary and scientific character, published a work entitled, " Monachologia,” a severe satire on the monks. They are thus described

"MONACHUS. Descriptio. Animal avarum, fœtidum, immundum, siticulosum, iners, inediam potius tolerans quam laborem ; vivunt è rapina et quæstu; mundum sui tantum causâ creatum esse prædicant; coeunt clandestine, nuptias non celebrant, fœtus exponunt; in propriam speciem sæviunt, et hostem ex insidiis aggrediuntur. Usus-terræ pondus inutile. Fruges consumere nati."-Townson's Travels in Hungary, p. 420.