Vod Reerspes 0bO 2010
The Ageg Maks.
Tha He d Monks
Manusenst


From
DAVID HIGHAM ASSOCIATES
LIMITED
5-8 LOWER JOHN STREET,
GOLDEN SQUARE, LONDON, WIR 3PE
THE AGE OF MONKS
BY MAURICE ROWDON


THE BATTLE OF THE MONKS
The story of the monks should of course---but for a
better reason than that he started Christianity---begin
with Christ. For a long time I have thought that he
brought something not simpl7 new to Judah-but of en ancient
origin, more ancient than Judah itself. When I first
began to sense this I knew nothing of the fact that there
were early trade routes between India and Mesopatamia,
and between India and Greece----perhaps as early as that
first oral tradition called the Vedas, which some people
put at about two thousand years before Christ and others
very much earlier indeed.
Nor did I know that the theory
that man started in southern Africa was being displaced
by findings that a very much earlier 'ancestral hunanity'
was to be found at the northern tip of India. We are
told that Christ's mission was very much the child of
Greek influence, and it seems to me that we can EO further
and supply the root not only of Greek thought but of the
Mesopatamian cradle of feligion from which Judah itself
cane. lf you look, for instance, at a commentary on
the Upanishads---some of which might be called the Vedas
written down--it is astonishing what aptness some of them
have to the ideas of Flato. But, for the kind of book
I have in mind, the important thing is that Christ
pointed outside Judhh to the kind of renunciation
never practised in Judah, namely a solitary or monastic
one. Buddha overcane the world east of India. Christ
overcame the world west of India: and there are parallels
between their approaches---always to the poor, the
the neglected. And that, I am saying, has a long
Saspicic
tradition in India behind it, This should be the basis
of the book, the key to its story, in the sense that the


Upanishads and the behaviour of the gannvasin or monk
should be aast back to all the time, espocially when we are
talking about the first monke of the desert. It will
certainly, enong other things, eive Us a much clearer
understonding cf why the Jews detested Chriat so mucha he
was digging into the very Bources that had made the survival
of Judah--wthe bare survival, not evaa its victoriesem
possible, namely the race itself, the idea of the race.
"If any man core to no, end hate not his father, and his
mother, and vii fe, ani ohildren, and trtehren, and sisters,
yea, and his cwn life al8o, he cannot be ny diecipler (Luke,
14020), Go thy way, sell whatscever thou hast, and give to
the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heavéne (Lark,
10.21) and *Is 1t not written in your law, I said, Ye are
gods?° (John, 10.54)---theze I take to be the throe key state-
monts towerds a nonastic tradition quito contrary to Judaisn
not to say the running of Israel. In them the lamily (sced
and guarentor of the race), vealth (rover of the stato,
ossential to and identificd with the race) and the social
hiorarchy (uhich made it not simply blaspheny but social
blaspheny to declare oneself a messiah let alone a gode
and therefore oqual to the highest) vere hit very hard.
This is vay his trial was perfunctory, end thy Pontius Pilate
oould see nothing wrong in him (knowing nothing of the factsews
quite different from Roman factsmthat held the state of
Ierael together), and above all why Christ's death should seam
to have beon thought a political neccssity, 'for the poople
More evan than this, the eastern parallel (or, as I
shall naintain, background) cant give us a much clearer
pioture of what Christ vas doing, and how peo ple were listening
to him, than wo could have with simply the bare nerrative
of events in the four books of the apcstles. With the record
before us of the holy men of India, talking quietly in people's
homes, moving about the countyy with a group of devotees
(the nearest rec ord to us 1s the day-to-day acoount of Sri
Ramakrishnats lifo at the end of the lest century), we can
capture not cnly renarkable parallels between what they
said, and how thoy influeneed the people closest to them,
but also a definition of tho whole thing as a tradition
going rar back in time beyond Judeh and beyond the first
Mesopatamien stirrings of religion. And perhaps we ahall
find that Hinduism, being tho oldest of the religions and
the one based not cn a bock or books but cn traal and error
over many centuries, had far nore opportunity to extend itself
across continents than any kind of dootrine: and its basic
tenct, that the paths leading to God are very rany, and that
God has very nany nare 8, summerised its utter leck of doo trinal
contentiousness. Judah, with its urgent need to survive 9
could apparently not afford this kind of tolerano e: and
certainly the society that grew out of its trial of Christ
and establ.ished itoelr eventually in every part of the
Mediterrenemn, and then suporseded the Roman empire, and
became the new Roman empire, had tho same urgent need to a


greater extent, and could afford to be ag little tolerant.
to shall sOG only the beginnings of this in the book, but
they are all we need to know in ordor to understand how the
leter orusades, inquisition, and religious wars and persecutions
cane about.
The question as to why Christ alone of many pr ohhots and
nany reople of divine presence cans not only to change peoplers
lives long after his death but to change an entire empiro, and
to create a new socioty, has not really to my knowledge beon
examined properly o The Chnrch, with her insistence on the
immaculate birth, her doep horrar of the Arian heresy, has put
up as much obsia cle as possible to a roallt careful. explanation
that wants to delve into any deeper background than the fnct
of Christ?s divinity and the destiny that brouhgt him into
boing. The fact to my nind 1s that Christ introduoed mon
asticion--that is to says the solitary experience as basic to
all divine awereness--to the Greek and Roman worlds with a
devastating effect that supported and accompanied and endorsed
the senge of his divinity that the books of' the apostles give
us. He gave A worid thoroughly ignorant of it-he livod in
a society ignorant of itmmothe suggestion of a technique.
And this, coinciding with tho Greak tradition of the philos opher
as one who wandered and humbled hinseli mch 1ike the eastorn
sannvasin (the first desert monks wers called
'philosophers'),
provided the beginning of Christianity.
I think therefore that a book of this kind is worthless 1f
it tries simply to be a narrative of events without looking
into the experience itself, the technique itself, the 'path'
itself, lauglac or otherwise. I think there is more aware-
ness note--certainly than in the nineteenth century---tha t far
from having created EXE an enviahle civilisation, far from
having based a civilication on a relicion, we have really and
truly hardly begun the work of roducing éither, in conperis c
with certain exanples we can find in the easto Chinese
scholars, Hax iiler, the lectures of Vivekenanda in this
country and above ali the States, the translaticns from the
sanskrit, the interost in Yoga and Buddhism are what I am
thinking of---together of course with two vorld wars which
have sanewhat shaken the sense of a clear and rising path.
It will also ba neeessary to distinguish botween 'pagan*
and 'barbarian' and "Christian'. Here again the Church has
had a certain fornative influence, tovards deflating the
ancient world, or pagan world, to below the level of religion,
which is wrong, and also to putting it on tho same lovel as
the barbarian world, which is wranger. I have even seen
an Italian guidesooks--mch written by the ecclosiastical armee
that doscribed the Etruscans as berbarians. They were quite
distinct psychologies. And it was only pos sible to equate
thom because the Roman warld degeneratod int to Luoretian
materialisn, and the body-bound barbarian seened not so distant
from that. It tooks years of Grooming--deliberate and


with a special accelerating force of its own t owards that
endmsmand the some of the desert fathers had the
that there were vast armies of spirits at work with feeling no
other job to do than dise oncert and degrade. Nature, in
the castern tradition, doos its work by blinding 1ts victim,
especially with tho lilusion of permanence, whioh is called
maya, the voil of space and time or freality? which 1s not
the true reality at all but seens to tho viotim inoscapablo.
This is tho reas on for exercises, worked out over centuries
or thousands of yoars 0 They represent a technique, so to
speak, for undoing the eolls of naya with its overlasting
oycle of plonsure-and-pein: that is the function of medite
ation, the eseential aot of throwing off the illusion. At
once the reason for solitary living will be seen: in those
who are just starting out on the journey it is essential.
The finding of a nethod was the whole work of the desert
fathers. Feilure to understand this involves one (it seems
to have invoived most of the historians) in the idea that
they were simply the rather selfish precursors of the later
conobitie arrangements, looking after their own salvation
but nobody elsevs. The desert was really a search for free-
dom---for when maya would loosen its chaina---and/a still
Fo wlink I
seat P wculd at Iast be founu, requiring and fearing nothing,
and tho recluse would know that he was the brier expression
of soret thing overlasting, and that in the dual possession of
the brief and the eternal inside the same body HELBI his struggle. / layl
Ànd the devils were so to speak a pagan nature being exorcised.
How was it that Christianity took hold of the Roman
empire? Gibbon asks this, and the fifth of his reasons
is the most immediately convincing, that the Christians forre d
a disciplined republic inside the empire, and eventually the
only discipline there was. But the dirficulty of naking a
clear XECED answer, at least for historians, is that thore is
little visible to work on, in those first centuries of
Christianity, while the empire was still flourish ingo
True that the best man for the Job incroasingly became the
Christian, because he was reliable, vigourous and optimistic.
But the power that made him so was very invisible---I say
very' because the non-Chrietians, when they saw how happy
the martyrs were to suffer and to die, and to provcke the
greatest cruclty vith the utmost serenity, thought them
simply "desparatotbreatures---they had no further use for
lifo: that is to'say, thoy saw only a frantic external
behaviour, and the light inside was as hiddon to them as
could be. In fact, the Christian had inherited two
which exercisod themselves in tro way# that secured the taipedi
of the empire to Christianity when it happened: they had
all the strength of Mosaic law in them but, as Gibbon says,
'delivered from the veight of its fetters', and they had
what can cnly be called a new source of ecstasy; and the two
played an overlepping role, sanetimes in one and the same
person. All the way through the early history of Christianity
cmnfrom the first Nazarene church in Jerusalem to the slow


displacemont of that church as the sole authority by Antioch,
Alexandrda, Rome, Ephesus, Corinth---we shall see the most
ecstatic zeal (to be burned, to be eaten alive by lions, to
be mocked and spat at) Gonbining with the quiet taking over
of the key positions of stato, until with the conversion of
Constantine in the fourth century (coineiding with the first
Pachomian monasteries) Christianity becomes the religion of Bv
an empire. But my point here also is that the apparent
of the first Christian martyss like Ignatius, and the fact hunger
that the Roman persecutions under Nero and Domitian and Trajan
only stirred Christian feeling to greater zeal, iB/simply the
story of an astonishing state of reckless eostasy that
erek
whon a man had seon as a whole new experience that fer from happened
death boing the story of the eespuptrion/of the body and of
pleasures (and of pains as well, Cicero'said, to oase the
decage
nelancholy of it) into-dust was only an exchange of C ondition,
and no barrier at allrin faot a complete taste of the ecstasy
BIBA so far just hinted ata And what vo have in the desert or
the Thebaid 1s simplya different toohnique se-to-spesk of
gotting rid of the body---the pagan body, that eraved pleasure
and (othor 31de of the same ooin) feared death. My point also
is that Christian organisationa--the fact that iany hishops
became 'defendors of the cityle--and the increasing conversions
in high places were not enough in thenselves on whioh to base
the actual Christian Gooiety that did oome about, or oven tho
aotual Church that did oane about. It was first the martyrs,
and then the monks, who did this. It was quite logically the
Benedic tine monks who, at the olimax so to speak of the whole
operation, were sent to unify all Europe (that is, all the
nonasteries of Europe) under one hoad.
The first Christian asceticisn 1s said to have cmme
about---as a doctrine, distinet from the spontaneous asceticism
of the first martyrs--at Alexandrt, in a school of thought
that combined Platonic and Judaistio ideas. It waa for this
reas on that the first ascetics vere often called philosophers,
because of the Platonic distinction betweon the life of nature
and the life (eSgentially contemplative) above nature. The
first actual movenent towards the desert of the Nile
Antony and Ammon) seems to have takon place tovards the incuha
of tho third century, at the tine of the Decian porseoutions,
which stimulated these men to imitato the martyrs but by leaving
the warld altogether, as a polluted area, very much on the
lines of Alexandrian thought. And this movement later spread
beyond the Nile no doubt vecause of tho existence of other
sects, in Syria and Asia Minor and Italy, which similarly Saw
the world as by definition pollutede St Paul settled in Thebes
(Egypt) suppasedly towards the middle of the third contury
and iived thero in solitude for one hundred and thirteen years.
Icaving-honmnd hinnaontartable-11ts. The story says that
a erow fed him for sixty years, and thet ho vas clothed in
palm leaves. St Antony settled finally in Hount Qolzum,
some miles from the Red Soa, after visiting Faul and being


prosent at his death. Ie and Ammon after hin left inoreas
nunbers of desort disciples.
ing
It was not all a mattor of successful concentretion.
There are some entrancing and some funny stories. Haceriue
the Egyptian solved the probleng C2 a nan who had fand a horse
in his bed instesd of his wife by turning the horse back into
his wife again. ragic, on this low level, Was invalved
with the arnies of deviis. The desert of course attracted together all
sortsa Thero was also sorething of the competitive
of the Olympiad.
Thon Macarius the Alezandrien heard atmcsphere of eny
solf-mortification more extrene than kis he imitated
so that
in the end he held a sort of desert reocrde There is
that his
was
stay
ERO
way
lost for him by demons but that he sucked the
udders of an antelopo for food and the antelope than guided hiin
back to his cell. In other words an atnosphere that soms
call madness and scme would oall eestasy ('the eostasy of the would
angels ) hangs rand the persons of the first monks, and it all
becomes extravagant legond when told by eyekitnesses, especially
the ones who do not quite understand. There is hardly a hormit
oammunity in the world that hasnet had tall stories told about it.
But, more important than that, thore is hardly one to which strange
things have feiled to happen, 80 that it seems as if a cortain
kind of concentration produces unworldly results, as certainly
as another kind of concentration produces warldly results.
So we ohall have to piok our way through these stories trying
solecy) tolgick-cat the aotual real, but not unstirnge, event. Ànd c
top of this we have to remember the eastern injunotion that
the powers of conoentration are not to be tampered with lightly,
and can lead in the unwary and tho unprepared to madness.
There was probably plenty of madness too.
But here the book might usefully dispose of the idea that
the monk was a complete man standing aloe against wavos of
paganism of barbarism, according to the epoch and place he lived
in. He was hinself the pagan, himself the barbarian, and
his avareness came precisely fron the conflict inside him.
One can say that the nonasteries (whether of one monk or meny)
were the only SO urces of light in the darkneas of the decay
of Rome, but the decay vas being fought inside those monasteries
and not outside. That and that alone was the reason for the
lighte Therefore we should expect to see signs of creat
conflict in the first monks, especially the Sc olitaries.
They were so often exorcising the: ir own ignorance. The abbot
Serenus told Cassianus that the space between heaven and oarth
was filled with invis: ible spirits whose entire proocoupation
was causing trouble, but that he thought they had a lot less
power than in earlier times. Here we have to remembor---in
case we think that entirely a jokco---that nature before it is
tempered and controlled. by thought, before the new order of
thought displaces the deceyed old, bofore the things outside
begin to look like a reflection of the things inside, axiKse
can give a man that feeling of a hostile magnetisn always about
to burst, partly through being unknowmand untried. Above all


we have to realise that the psychol.ogy which sees the
possibility of a clemont ordor in the world cutaide has to
be nado: we who have inhorited it find it difficult to
bolieve not only that once peonie did not have 1t but that
it had to be nade with exaoting pationoe and trial,
The ceohitic or comanity forn of tho monastery grew
quite naturally from the Cirst anchoritos of the dosert.
St Antcny organised his followers sonewhate In the wastes
of Nitria there are said to have been about fivo thousand
hermits, with a church, a couneil of olders, and a whip for
punishment. It was fron this finat
which means
literally the path?, roferring both HOTEs to
path that vent
betweon the hermitst'huts and the path of truth, 'the cnly
path'. It was Pachonius (286-340) who first organised the
loose camunitios into setilements undor a superior who
guided the weak and the novices. Ho booane an anchorite in
507, having boen baptised at Thebes. He built his monk's
viliage at Tabennesi, end surrounded/with high walls against
desert brigands, tho were freguent visitors. When tha
settilement got going, after somo yoars of trial and error,
the first real nethod set in--three monks to a cell, and
inside the settloment a conplcte self-sufficient population
of bakors, potters and so c. They ate vegetables, olives
and cheesé, and same wine wes allowed. There was 0 anplete
silence during meals. There were periods of prayer for those
who were not yet the relecte (Nan could be left alone to practise
their own meditation. They wero not priests, and rachomius
was careful not to allow any serB e of a social hierarchy to
creep ino As carmunity-life devoloped from the Pachofnian
secd the 'pollution ' of the world cane in, and there were
quarrels and even persecutione Among some Pachonian nuns
there was a yong wann taken to be madyf by the rest of the
comunity, and persecuted as such. But a male priest,
happening to visit them, and disliking what ho saw, declared
her tope not mad but a saint. The women promptly bogen wor-
Krl shippingh which drove her away: clearly she had taken and
perhaps éncouraged the persecution as her form of self-
nortificaticn.
Many of the hermits came to the desert from other motives
than holy ones: some wanted to esoape army service, others
were an the run fran the police, who never ventured into the
desert. And there nere those who sinply could not face
persecution any more. The desert fathers had tremedous
difficulty with sexual temptation, like all devotees everywhere.
The voluptuous woman in tho nind was one of the nost frequent
of tho demons, and his visits were the longest. A vast andunt
of effort was spent an a passion that seemed only to thrive
on any attention, whe ther rejoction or indulgence. One
anchorite told a wonan in a burst of indulgenco that he could
deal with ten of her. They left the desert toge ther, but
she led him such a life that he cane back after a few months.


There vas something of the later Inlamic rigour about
a few of the superiors. Shenuto, who diod in 466, insisted
on absolute obedience to hia rule, and blindness to any but
his word. Ile used to beat his monks-emand once beat a man
to death. Ho folloved Pachonius to the letter excopt that
he roversed his compassionate fixmoss. Thus the first seed
of eomunity gave rise to tho elomont of something 11ko Givil
war, which was never quite to leave Christian society at any
timo, except in briof lcealised natohes of aivilisation soon
rased by war egain. It was this seed among the first
Eeyptian devotees-wstihat led, fran snall beginnings in the
form of group attacks on idol worshippers, to the crusades
many conturies latera A punitive, a dieastrously aggressive
note entered Christianity carly and nade it perhaps the most
destructive civilisation ever ianovn. The actual person of
Christ was carly left behind (perhans in that first Nazarene
church established forty days after his death) for what looko
like now a gigantic 800: ial operation using his name, to unite
and order all the barbarian and pagan races, and ulbinately
all the races of the world, untii somo kind of global unity
was ostablishod. That, after all, may be the hidden meaning
of Christis/to bring not peacu but the aword.
other Apmuise
hand, wo cannot say that this global operation
StnEn
function of Christienity, since Christianity cane Trom a root,
the sane one as Islan, and when we exanine the root we shall
find scnething of the same urgo, to Work boyond the frontier
until the concept of the frontier itself was broken down.
The novement ta spread east from Esypt early. St
Hilarion, an itinerant monk, lived among other places at
Gaza (307), and died in Cyprus. His friend Epiphanius
(bishop of salanis) had a Pachonian settlement at Besanduc
near Jerusaleme Epiphanius, said to be a quarrelsome man,
given to anger and horosy-hunting, became bishop of Cyprus.
This early we get a shadow of the later Inquisition. In
that first form it looks like a tendenoy to fix orthodox
systans out a quite justifiable fear. In the case of the
later Spaniards, the fear was of Jews and lloors. In the
case of Epiphanius the fear lay,
perhaps all foar does,
in self-doubte And perhaps the touncica was the olimax
of the self-doubt that ran all thw uay thr ough Christienity.
Epiphanius even denounced his friend John Chrysostom, the
bishop of Constantinoplo, and had him banished. He had St
Jerome's brother conseorated by forve---gerged and bound:
and he failed to understand - what all the fuss was about after-
wards.
In Syria the rigour was greater even than in Egypt.
The nonks stagg cred under heavy loads of iron or sand.
Some lived in trees (the Dendrites), othors in the forest
(tho Grazers). St Sineon, a Syrian born in 389, firat lived
in a cistern and onc e tried to have hinself walled up without
food for the whole of Lont: he was walled up according to


his wish but food was put inside, though he did not
touch it. He was released aftor forty days, at the last
gaspe And ho repeated this every Lont afterwards. From
his colum, where he spont thirty-soven yeaxs, he oxorcised
an astonishing influonce ovor the whole countrysido, and
was askod again and again to uno this influonce in affairs
of statee But he rofused to answor tho omperor, and loft
the quarrels over Nestorianism (Iostorius was Chrys sostomes
predecess or as bishop of Constantinoplo, and the Pheroay'
of his name was sinilar to that of the Baiton Taugkus
Pelagius) that were bothering not only heads like John
Cassianus s and St Augustine's but those of the socular
imperial court as wello All in all, the brawling ovor
creeds that went on, the wild gang-rights that were tho lator
religious wars in embryo, should perhaps bo treated Without
the awe usually given to theological discussion and seen
in torns of the barbarian and pagan appetitos that un-
avoidably engulded the gospol.
The shift of the first monasticism goos fron Deypt
to Palestine, ond the up to Constantinoplo, seoming to
correspond with a & gradual shitt of political and social
power into the hands of the Christians: and perhaps the
brawls, spoken or writton or faght out with knives,
were a symptom of this change. St. Chrysoston anong
others tried to stop the monks going into the cities,
and he was hated and reviled by both the monks and the
pricsts for this; and perhaps in this/atenk criticism
Itoirl
of Chrysostom---ihnt he didn't "join in'mmmto can hear
the first note of that element of blame that began under
Christianity to be attached to solitude, with the paraellel
cormendation of anything communal, which has reached its
climax in our epoch.
St Basil marks the shift of nonesticism into the
Greek world. He lived roughly between 329 and 379.
The desert fathers were expected to be good at rhetoric---
which word was not the empty one it is for us today. It
really meant knowing how/expound a systen of thought, and
thererore how to think. st Basil wrote a book called
'To Young Men on the Uses of Holl.enisn'. He L was int-
erested in the Pachomian form of monastery but thought it
too nuch like a town, while the superior was too mch like
an administfrator. He devised a snaller version of the
same thing where contact between the monk and his superior
would be easy and daily. It was a mich more workaday
affair than ever before, and already WO bogin to see the
first molitarsbonoontzaficn in a distilled form. Austorities
were discouraged. Prayer and study were as nuch part of
the day as nanual work. St Basilts simple Rule spread
through the Byzantine World. He ran S chools for children---
one typo for those who were going to be monks, and another
for those who were going into the world.


St Basil, in choosing his cappadocian site, sc0ms to
have had something like a monastic aancept in the mediaeval
sense: that is, he chose a (for him) pleagant spot and not
a scrap of desert as barren as possible. That his friend
Gregory thought the place damp and squalid makes no difference
to tho new idea of clemonoy that seems to onter with the
Byzantine influence. Ho rejectod solitary asceticisn
because the monk in solitude had a tendency to see himself
as perfect too easily, having no neans of comparison: he
all too often needed scmeone to Love hin and therefore guide
and sustain hime St Basil advooated a conmunity of thirty
or forty monks, not the vast establishments of Nitria;
they were to be no more than o culd be served by 'one lam and
one firer. He gave absoluto power of deoision to the
superior. There was nothing like the demooracy which the
later nonasterics practis ed. But the scholars among the
Basilien monks could tell the aperior off if they felt
it nooessery, and the lower monk oculd appeal. to theme
Extrome self-mortification was discouraged. But on the
other hand St Bas 1l allowed far the necessity toaond of the
solitary element by providing cells, though these were not
too far dispersed from each othor. This if anything was
etBe closer to eastern doctrine then the extreine austerity
of the desert anchorites: the doatrine being that the act of
meditation is the necessary thing, and the presence close or
far of other people is irrelovant to this. The utterly
solitary life does not seem to be favoured in the Upanishads
as that likeliest to achieve purity. In bringing about his
changes St Basil brought the nonasteries further into the
organisation of the church, and whatever 0 oncentration was
lost resulted more from this than from his changes in theme
selves.
Monastic discipline was tightened further when it cane s
(by the Council of Chalcedon in 415) under the control of the
local bishope Konks were definitély forbidden by this council
to dabble in secular or even coolesiastical affairs. They
were too muoh seen in the cities. And sone of them liked
a brawl. Later in tho sixth century Justinian ordered that
cells should always be incorporated in the main nucleus
of monastic buildings, and that the bishop must supervise
the EXERETSNZ election of the abbot: thts early do we find
an active hostile attatude towards solitary practises by
authority. At the Second Synod to take nlace in the Trullan
chamber of the imperial palace at Constantinople in 692
it was laid domn that no one under ten years of age could be
a monk and that a mank had to have three years in the
0 ommunity before being allowed a cell of his oma The
hermits were al.so to keep off the streets. Theodore's
reform of the Studion nonastery (the sleeploss € monks)
hundreds of years later in the oighth century was much like
the self-reform of the Church after Luther at the hands of
the Jesuits. It was provoked, that is, by oritioisn from


outside. shoodore had read st Basil's writings on
asceticism and omphasised cammunity Work---but for the
community outsido the monastery now, in tho form of
hospital care for the sick and food for the poor. This
new discipline sproad to the great centres of nonastic ism
at Kiev and Hount Athos. This latter is the oldest of
the monastic states, so to speak: in the tenth century
E monk called Athanasius organised the corunity on Studion
lines, and the hermits lost caste even further. The
community even tried to clain independence fron the outside
world (that is, from the patrierch of Constantinople).
Thoy were successful, and cnly in 1312 was this perniss sion
revoked by the eaperor. The shift we are noticing here is
towards naking the nonastery an embryo-ciiy: sonething of
the scoial operation, to produce a world outside that vould
perfoctly reflect the faith ins ide, had begun. But also
this was part of a fight that developed between the monks
and the seculer arm, which more and ncre, through the
bishops, and exerciaing control even over tho habits of
hernits, tried to control every aspect of the Church, EANE
including its nonastic cutsiders, for political and social
purposes. The nonks put up nore fight than the olorsy,
and Thoodore's work aas an aspec et of this fight.
In Paulinus, who gave up social life in Rome and a
vast property to becoma a nonk, in 395 when he was just
turned fa ty, au/perhaps ono of the first hints of a
wekare/
distinct Christian civilisation in Europe, still in the
vague glow of Greece and brought up in a Romo where it
was thought inconcoivable that its groatness could ever
wane. He began a nonastery at Nola in the Campenia.
He remained urbane and kindly, wrote verse, cont tinued to
read Lucrotius and Virgil and Horace. Ho drew devotees
from Gaul,
the Balkans and the rest of Italy.
In him the GonoPt asceticism was tempered to something
like a classical refinenont: the ezorcises were no less
than those of the desert but they were against a formod
background of olive groves and vineyards.
To the vest, in the outer reaches of the Roman empire
where barbarism and the Church sometines soemed not so
different, some effort was nade to introduce asceticism,
but a vigorous action nippsd it in the bud. Priscillian, a
wealthy Spaniard,was squashed by the Synod of saragossa
(386) which ordered that a priest who becane a monk sh ould
be shut outside the church on grounds of pride. It also
ordered that no virgin could take the voil under the age of
forty. And here, in Europe, we enter a different S tory
from the other one of the desert and the teastern' Church.
There are new forces of a tribal kind, quite different from
the background supplied by ancient Grecoe and Rome. St
Martin of Tours, for instance, was an imperial soldier
before he became a monk and founded a monastery in Hilan.
He worked among the sick---the story of his dividing the


cloak epitomises his life (361-397). Hu was living among
Barberians, and at once we s00 that the 'sooial operation'
I have been talking of had to be different in the north of
Europe from that in the pagan vorld: conversion stretched
further into behaviour and mannors and the ninutest conduot of
daily 31fe. Thc cities established by the Romens were at
best distant affairs, with their susgestion of
and belonged to a former world. Martin could refinements, not stop the
uzurper neximus putting the monk Priscil3i ian to death, but he
conplained loudly. He ras avare of tho need of the desert
traditions. And above all he was aware of the fact that the
business of persuasion and conversion among his ofa kind,
namely the Berberians, took away Ircm the personal powers that
a salitary lifo endows. He said once that as a bishop he hed
much less 'pomer? than he had had as a monk: as a bishop he
rajsed one man fron the dead, as a nonk twoo Here was the
kernel of the conflict---I moan the conflict inside one and the
sane man---shat was more or less forgotten in the next thousand
years of Christianisation for the outside conflict, that 'social
operation'. In the eastern tradition there 1s a clear distinote
ion betveon the "householdert as ho is called and the nonk.
The "householder? has his special tasks, which if anything
are more difficult than those of the moni because he iB mixed:
up all the tine in the frots of the world. But in Christian-
ity nothing 11ke the disciplire a of solf-purifiontion to be
found in Hinduism awaited the ordinory "householder'. The
Church, not to say the monasteries, becans nore and more
institutions as time went on, and it is difficult to see
how it oould have been otherwise, given the ta sk--not of
turning everyone into one of Christ's disoiples, so to speak,
but of producing a more or less presentable hunan being.
The apparently mehnical nature of the whole thing---the fact
that the monasteries got hald of peoplets manners, end evolved
a quite new sooiety, but neoessarily without the deep universal'
conversion to spiritual awareness that all disaiples hop for---
was what made Luther and men like hin do whet they did iany
centuries later. Luther suddonly became anxious for his ov
soul---one can put it like that: he reslised that in himself
there was no unquestioning assumption that the Church could
satisfactorily be left to look after its own. His action
looks l1ke a sudden panic measure to recapture the carlier
ascetic model that had fallen out: that is, not the practices
of self-mortification but the degree of Concentration and purity.
St Augustino too, when he left Milan in 384 to travel
other parts of Italy, proferred the cenobitic monastery to
the solitary cell because of the work that had to be done.
And the nature of this work was recognised bn kis monasteries
which were contres not of conversion on the one hand and
personal salvation on the other, nor cf contemplation c the
one hand and outside duties on the othor, but of tho active
pursuit of ideas. Here the mediaeval monastery takes forn, and
it is easy to see how his writings dominated it. The
ideas, the otudies---those were the new form of a solitary


act for the Christian warld, the transmtation of the literary
act of the Roman world into not only a new but a vh ole exper-
ience, involvins not only the divine but the attempt to permeato
the whole world with this divinity, through tho writing and the
thinkinge Really and truly that was a new dofinition of lito
erature, something far removed from what the ancient authors had
been doing: we all know the sense in which literature to be real
for us has to be :committed', and how being called 'literary
ia tantanount to being called artificial or irrelevent. The
peculiar inter-involvemont of writing and thinking and living,
the C onstruction of a society, tint-camotoboressumod-under
the heading of literature, ator the chonsishorion-hnnd-ctomod-to
bo-virtually the-covernmont-of-iife, originated in the period
we are talking about. In other vords, Augustine 1s ofton
called the first humanistt, but that is a hare best avoided,
since the title is given to so many, and begs further definition.
It is interesting that Augustine's first inkling of what
his life would havo to bo came to him as a result of a certain'
disgus t with himself as a fmerchant of words'.
Therefore he
belonged to the classical tradition: ho was born in a Roman
oolony (Hippo). Virgil brought tears to his eyes. His job
was to bring back the philosophy, and the writing, but as the
arts of contemplation. His first monastery was a cetre of
contemplation, conversion, study and parochial. duty all in one I e
And his type of monastery grew out of a series of disoussions
that took place first at Cassiciacum near Milan and then at
Thagastus in Africa. The meals, especially at his establish-
ment at Hippo, were filling. The monks C ould drink wine, and
somtimes meat was eaten, as well as succulent dishes now and
then sent over by the nuns. Soretimes there could be talk at
the table. Like all other monaaterics, his rather frowned
on ablutions of any kind: the classical beokground-the
association of the baths with scandalous behaviour---accounts
for this close companianship, that can be traced right through
the centuries, between filth and Christian feeling.
His City of God perhaps laid the basis of mediaeval 1ife
more cons Ciously than any other writing. The two cities---
the celostial city and the terrestrial city---are in fcct not
states of the body politic at all but of tho soul: A christian,
for ins tance, could easily be of the terrestrial city whilo a
heathen could be cl ose to the celestial city. The actual
political state, the real city, lay unsatisfactorily between
the two, its peaco necessarily uncertain and much lile the rest-
lossness of the scul. And the Church (with the Roman organ-
isation of political life close hehind it, prompting) took
this to mean that she herself was the oity celestial and the
state the city terrestrial, which cave her the right of the
terrestrial control of everything. It is difficult to see
how that, too, could have been avoided, given the nature of
the job in hand.


St Jeroms, St Augustinets contemporery (he finished
translating the Bible-w-in 305-oathe year before Augustine's
conversion) had in one important way the same funotion as
Augustino, and that was to take monasticisn a further---ong
might almost say/Sophisticatod---atep avay from the desert
traditions. His writings from Bethlohem gave a vivid
pioture of the last day3 of the Roman empire ***pxnr and
he is the one dootor of the Churoh who freoly uses Roman
history in his theological studics. He know Virgil by
hearte ie have to rememb er that for mon like him the
future did not at all look as 1f 1t would contain, cf' all
things, a Christian empire or evon a Christian state. For
ono thing, fow pecple e ould imagine the fall of Rome after
six centuries of power. But more than that, a thought like
the Christian empires mst have seemed a contradiction in
terns. Measured against this idoa, we can see what sort of
change Augustinets Vork, particulariy his City of God, brought
about, by its association of Christian feeling Withatatus
quo. St Jerome had to fly from Bethlehem during a barbarian
attack: to a scholar it must have seemed that tho Gospal
would have little to do with tenporing their actions in the
future. On the whole masses of poople do not take to the
ldvel of truth reprosented in the story of Christ: they tend
to go for casier prizes. It was nothing sh ort of a narvol.
It altered the livos of the apparently most unsuitablo poople.
St Jerome himself was to be f cund in the best Roman sonicty
at one time. He denounced narriage savagely, but had nany
friendships with women.
Sone of then turned their salons
on the Aventine into places of nodiaation, mch like monasteries,
un der his guidance. The dootrine worked in and out of life
in the nost extraordinarily fertile way which wo aro in
danger of not seeing because the ground has been gone over so
man y tires. St Jerone never mastered his own hatreds, and
therefore nover fulfilled the first and preliminery state before
the act of meditation, according at least to the eastern
tradition, nanely a wave of good will towards all creatures.
The battle was going on in him in other torns: he was:
grappling with the pagan in hinsolf. He was brilliant and
turbulent. He worked enough for ten men. He learne d Hebrew
simply in order to give the world a translation not from the
Greek versions of tho Bible, but from the original tongue;
and he translated tho Old Testnnent as well so that the Jews
çould not say that their Book was a mystery closed to the rest
of nankind. Rome was a Babylon---a atwo-footed donkey'---for
him. He has/lavishly vivid doscriptions of the women trying
Wrotel to look younger than they
and of the clergy vaving their
hair. His attacks made life 1903n Rome so hot for hin that he
had to leave. Not only this but his woricing life aad itho
did/
opposite of fulfilling the eastern injunction, 'never contend'.
He contendod with contonding people. He knew the level an
which they had to be addressed, and scolded. Thus it looks
as if the needs of Christianity, to fill every available orack
in life at that tim, brought into being 1ts own specialists


in overy quarter.
At this tine, towards the ond oz tho fourth century,
perhaps the most widely road nonk, never sanotified, was
Origen, onc of the carlior (185-254) "philosophorst of
Isypt, master of the school of Alezandria and often called
tho nost brillient of the Greok Fathers of the Churohe
Ho and Tortullian (tho Latin father) care in for a lot of
reserve, and the cencral Churoh attitude seems to be cne
of gratitude but regret about the ferrorist. Pachonius
once flung a piece by oxaion into the vater and said that
he Would have flung it into the fire had it not contaire d
the neme of God. Origen himself had reserves too, about
the nature of som of the asceticisn praotised: he was in
dcubt about the idea of the stuff of life boing by its
nature polluted. He thought ascetiaism was right l'or
discipline, but that the idea of condemning things innocent
in themselves P was wrong. It will. bo clecr that this ran
into trouble withtho Augustinian doatrine of original sin
lator, Which Won-as far as Church orthodoxy Coos--nover
its opposite, the Pelagian doctrine, thich no doubt dorived
a lot of benefit fron the crégen vritings. Crigen was the
first to organise Christian teaching into sore thing like a
system, so that a book of this kind must; start talking about
him very earlyo Jerom called him *the rastor of tho Church
after the Apostiles'. But whon origen was deolarel by a lot
of people a heretic, Jerome pr captly dropped him. And
beoause his friend Rufinus refused to do this Jerone 0 oncen-
trated his always very fierce attacks on him, calling him among
other things a hypocritgand a swine. One of the reasons
why he was so quick to find heresy in himself was his sentiv-
ity about the very classical leamning he loved: ho onoe had
a droam in which God told him that ho was more a Ciceranian
than a Christien. The doubts he had partly account for the
terrific onorgy of his work. Tho former Greek vorsion of
the Bible that was st tudied evorywharo---the work of Alexandrine
Jows who had lost a lot of their Hebrew in exile--no took
seconl place to his, venerated as it was @ And of course in *
the Council of Trent in 1546 Jerone s was declarod the offic-
ia version. Yot ho always talked longingly about the
21 desert fathers (Lifo/Paul., Life of ialchus, Life of Hilarion).
If there is an equivalent for him in the oassern traditions
at all it would be the so-called karna yogi, whose discipline yosi
is work, whose solf-purifioation is Work: "Hork as edestiny*
The struggle between the Roman ohurch and Arianism (I
wish to keep clear of the words 'orthodox? and 'horetical')
was really thestruggle betneen the old empire and the newly
converted Barbarians. Yet the Barbarian dootrine was a
platondo interpresttion of the doctrine of the Trinity,
and held that only Cod was divino, and Christ hali-divine
(rather like the Sunerian god Golgemesh). It was condermod
in the Council of Nicea (325), which nade it clear that the


Roman dootrine of tho Trinity, with its suggestion of three
divine powors in one, was the more attractive one for people
of imperial (ackground rather than EE tribaivone. I Ec1 in
danger here of over-simplifying. But what I want to do is
to keep that kind of argument, about three-in-one or just
half-a-one, on the level it bolongs to, nanoly sec t-warfare.
A lot of Christian bishops testified to the feot that some
of the Vandals Ior instonce showod more Christionity than
their own pe ople. And the dectrinal strucele was fought
out in terms of porer. When Augustine died (430) hia mt tivo
Africa was being colonised by the Vandals. St
one
Fulgenoius,
cf Augustine's follovers, was banished by then to
sardinia for his Roman viens. And thoro he denounoodthoir
clergy for ignorance, thir soldiers for brutality. 'By
the time of his death (535) the imperial struoture, based
on the Byzantine world, which had tamporerily got the upper
hand and wrested Africi back from the Vandals, and pacificd
Italy, was apparently sefe.
The 1mperiel structurewas in faot having a double and
cantradictory offeot on thé menasteries. Inperiel protection
made life in the nonasteries safe, whether at Hippo or in
tho Campania, but at the same time it was dofining monastic
life as definitely extericr not only to administration, whioh
was obvious, but to the Church. Ilere it is useful to hark
back to the story of Priscilliar. He was brought down by
the gossip of two Spanish bishops (who wero later found out
and flung into a gaol in Neples, but after Prisoillian's
exccution) and handed over to a tribunal of the empire.
It was the first tim the Churoh had failed to deal with one
of its own quarrels, and it was the shape of things to oome.
Priscillian was torared for heresy, a cmoept that of cours e
increased prepcisely with that of orthodoxy, and sentene cd
(385). Not7 this neant not at ell that the Church had bec ome
woak but that its quarrels were now important enough, its
hierarchy public and influential enough, to be regarded as
a stato affair. That 1s what I mean by saying that the idea
or heresy developed with that of orthodoxy.
Priscillian's followers---who continued to flourish
long after his death, in fact for nearly two centuries---
were hunted down. The nonks---otably Hartin and Ambrosoaee
complained bitterly, and said that heresy should not bo
punished physically under any cirounstances. Tho feot
that the two bishops Ithacus and Hydacus were banished to
a Neapolitan prison had---like all oxoncrations post morten--
no effect on the precedent. The long birth of Christienity
in the world was not a pretty business.
In Spain the Vandals were superseded by the Swabians
and the Visigoths, "federalst of the empire (no less a part
cf the enpire than Rome) and Arian by persuasion. It was
their conversion to Roman doctrine---un dertaken by men like
the monk (not the saint) Martin, who started a nonastery at


incrcasinely systematio-e-to produoe a society as selfo
sufficient as mediaoval society, not to mention the turbulent.
(but no longor distinotly barborian or pagen) soaiety that
followed ita For a thousand yerrs arter the fall cf Rom
nonasticion WaS the most important force in the Weabern
world (in vhich I include what was once called tho teastern'
world, namely what bocame conprised in ti Iuslim and the
Greek Orthodcx faiths). Botor fron our socioty being
tho nost eseoular t that has evor existod, 1t is based quite
as squarely and minutoly on roligious argunen et as any other
that has ever beon. A book night very usefully clear up a
lot of ignorance of nineteontih-century origin heroe
Thero is the questiaa of whether the asceticisn that
cane vory nour to Greck athleticiom in some of the first
Teyptian solitaries WaS not already a departure from O3 a
degeneration from eastarn practice. Again and again in
the Upanishads the idea is 3 ounded that self-mortification
1s bad. The arguna nt bahin d this is that the degree of
pain 1s to the degree on the ple asure in 1105, and that a
concentration on either the ploasure or tho pain will have
tho same offcot of missing the blisswthe best ploasura of
all---that is beyond dnth the pleasure-pain cyole. his
1s not the whole story. Asceticisn has alwaya been prau te
ised in India, and as exaggerated as that in the Thebald
desert. Tho Vedas had nothing to do with itmm-noi ther
ascetioism nor renunciation, and it looks as though these
were
already prized-to/an Indian oivilisation bofcre the
Aryan invasion of India
is said
have
Jpmcbitt
that
Neragatt coms
abcut sbout two thousand years before Christ (tha Vedas
were the tradition of the Aryans). And the marriage of
the two peoples produced Hinduisile That ovonts and thoughts
for away in India wora not at all irrolevent to what happened
in anoient Graece and Rone, much lesa in the Thebaid,
is shom by the faet that tha Vedic god of the sky, Dyaus,
is olearly the sare as the Greek Zeus and the Roman Jupiter,
while the Mithra cult that became diffueed in the Roman
empire during the third and fourth centuries after Christ
has its obvicus root in the Iindu god Mitra, or sun god,
taccrtmuisaly Mdent, via the Fersian empire.
Dorotheus of Thebes (Esypt) was asked why he was
destroying the body 3o determinedly and he replied, 'Becauso
it is destroying mer. He tried not to sloep. He never lay
dom. Ile raroly allowsd hinsclf even to sit in a relaxed
positicn. Buddha on the other hand sinply sat undor a tree
and concontrated, and swore that he would not leave his
position until the body had been subdued. But Buddha was
born in the Bixth century before Christ, that is under the
influence of the Upanisheds and long aftor the Vedas and
the first ascetic trails of the original Indian pooples.
What I am saying 1s that when a religion is being tried for
tho first tine, when its endownent of eestasy is discovored
by nunbers of pecple who have gromn up unaware of it and,


more, who have grown up in a socioty more or less olosed
to it, and when it is also diso overed that this eostasy 1a
endowed in return for a certain self-donial, thore is a
terrifio desire to leave the old body of ignorance behind,
soorned and lashod, its old tondency to solf-indulgence
beaton out of 1t, and to prepare in onseself a wholly now
psychology for generations cf othor people to inherito
I think thie, above any othor, is the reason for that extrem
ordinary zeai in the finst monke. Sonething was boing
done that had becn done in India thousands of years beforo,
perhaps many thousands of years bofore, to nake Buddha?s
concontration (which noans his influence on millions of
pecple) possible vithout the slightest solf-mortification.
The ease and harmony that all forns of Yoga insist on, in
fact, as the ossential of concentration,aro perhaps the
lessons learned from thousands of years of intonse psycholog-
ical effort.
Soma explanation cf torms is always tsofule Asoetio
comes fron the Greek for fexerciset, and implies no rigour
in 1tsolf. Ixorcise 1s the basis too of moh of the castern
tradition, whethor 1t is tho physical oxercise of Hatha Yoga
or the act of neditation itsolf. Tho grea tt diffaoulty of
Christianity TaS that it lacked any form of exeroise, and
there was the danger that liturgy and spoken proyer and read-
ing alcud would take the place of real 0 cncentration. It
1s interesting, for exaaplo, that whilo we have the words
ascetic and monk intact fron tho first Groek root, the word
for meditation---haesychia---has disappoared, and we shall
have to look at the problen of whothor the tradition of
moditation, firaly ostablished in Hinduism and inherited
by the desert fathers, did not at sone point drop out, and
where this point was, and why. Partly this will becone
olearer in the rest of this synopsis.
The staries of how the solitary creatures of the Thebaid
lived poacefully with wild aninals---the incidenoe of aninals
in the first stary of St Antony visiting the cave of St Paul
the Hornit---are in excct accordance with the stories of holy
men in the east, befcre whom the wildest croatures are still.
There are many stories fron every epcch inoluding our own
of the sannyasin who stays a tiger or an clephant by remain-
ing still. But the desert fathers were always struggling,
with devils, who took various shapes 6
det ttto acting
under a oomander-in-chief, the devil himselr, and their
opbjective t33 to bring as much fret and annoyance into the
life of the monk as possible, besidet the cbvious function
of tempting him to greed and fornication. This in the
Hindu tradition---did here we see a close resemblance to the
Platonic and Pythagorian doctrines--is simply nature with
its coils of pleasure and pein. That is to say, leit un-
bridled either cutside cr inside a man, nature will leed
quite implabably to chaos. It will evon be seen to work


Dunlo in'spain (560) and converted the Swabian king
Cacaricy--that produced a new kind of fnperial patriotism,
and the possibility of an inperial Christianity for the
first tine. The bishop of Sevillo converted tho Visigoths
(587). The C aavorsion also involved the eurronder cf
pagan habits, such as the sacrifice and the tacit acknowlodgo-
ment of ancient gods in holidays and oortain rituals.
This new patriotism was still towards Rono, but no longer
back-looking, to the anciont gloriec: it saw Rome as the
Christian city. And the Visigoths and Swabians and the
other federals were those who provided the backbone. In
fact wartin?s brother Idadore, who became bishop of Seville,
wrote that the Gothic nation has raised you (Reme) up in
the splendour of its power*. oHere is the seed of the
Holy Roman Empire that would lator havo its seat in Frank-
furt. Like those of the Moors later in the eighth century,
the Barbarian attaoks, tho Barbarien
in some way
stimulated
savagery,
and homogonised Christian feeling, so mch that
they themsalvos, even in viotory, capitulated to ito
The success of the Church---as against that of the monks.
was increasingly of a sooial naturee That point mus t be
made. St nartin's biographer Sulpicius Severus made the
point (in a manusoript that sped through Europe and the
Byzantine world) that priests all too often preferred well-
paddod carriages to the donkey, narble halls to cella and
extravagant robes to S inple habits. The struggle against
barbarism (namely a forn of behaviour) was waged either in
the form of a new society not uniike the Rome that was in
decline, heavily inclining towards luxury and refinement,
or else insido one and the samo men, so that his vory boorish-
ness cried out to him to be transffrmed. There 1s no better
example of the latter than St vartin, who had been a high-
ranking cavalry officer in one of the federal armies before
the famous episode of the cloak took place. The miracles +
credited to him by Severus (apart from Severus 's own incl in-
ation to surround the saint with a certain barbarian
glamour) were half or them gauche and orude in atmosphere.
He onco found a group of peasants apparently practising
some heathen rite and decided with his divino magio to make
them all so stiff that the most they could do was to twist
round on their heels ridiculously like puppets. Then he
realised it was a perfectly Christian burial, and q ickly
unstiffened them all. ihen tho emperor refused to recoive him
he sinply valked into the palace, presumably stiffening the
guards too, and when ValontiAhian failed to rise from his
throne Martin had it hotted up for a few monents to scorch
his backside. Naturally the omperor jumped up with a yell.
The important thing here is the play of the barbarian
imagination, still contred on revenge and the orude reduction
of other people into archetypes, frightened or good or bad,


and good or bad according to whether they assented to
your will or not. In the end me cannot doubt how it was
that the Roman dostrine of the Trinity won ovor the Arian
doo trine, despito the fact that the number of Arians outa
numbered the Romans by far: there VOS evorything for tho:
barbarian to admire in the refinement both of mind and bo
haviour---tho simple pouer of being able to erasp a situation
in all its subtlotios---hich Ior good or for ovil the Roman
could commend. Martin travelled overywhere denouncing pagan
idol worship, which was orficially forbidden by tho imperial
governmont at about this timo, and his crudeness of dolivory
was the very thing that won hordes of peasants over to hine
It is said that because of hin alone certain roads in Gaul
were littered with ascetics and prooessions. The later St
Gregory of Tours (he died in 594) was quito as uncouth, end
could hardly form a decent sentence. But he olaimed (rightly)
that while fow people understood an orator many understocd
an uncouth craature like himsolf. This is the double action
going on all the timowe-orude convorsiaas, and refinement wait-
îng to sooop the victory up.
During the fifth century perhapa the nost fertile settlew
ment in Europe was that formed at Lérins in Provance by
Honoratius, and in its fertility (tho fact that 1t drew people
from Syria, Grecce, Spain, Africa, Ecypt and Italy) we can 800
the later society of the chansons, the seed of chivalry itself,
from which St Franc is drew n hIs laude, those first hyms of
humanisme A kind of cmbryo Christendon quiolly fornod ranl
Honoratius. The fact that his successor Hilary (later
canonisod) was surmoned to Rome by poro Leo and flung into
gaol for sacking the bishop of Besanccn, shous to what extont
by this tino the bare structure of the Christien enpire was
beginning to show itselfo By tho time cf St Francis, in the
twelfth century, cormunication between Provence and Italy is
easy and ra turai, since precisely the sane order, spirituel
and otherwise, permeates lifo in both places, and Latin has
been accepted as tho ccrmon Christian lenguage.
All these roots have to be pointed forvard to their
later maturity. Although I see the book as not going
beyond the Benedictin era, some looking forward to modiaeval
practise will bring out the whole meaninge We are looking
into how a civilisation (1f wo vant to call Christendon that,
and I nyself would not be quite happy about doing Somebut
that wiil be one of the problens faced) cene into being cut
of a religious experience: this I see as the vholo character
of the book.
There was another monastery in Provence, sterted at about
the sane time (435) in Merseilles by John Cassianus. Now
Cassienus braught to Europe the cleurest exposé of desert
life, an sye-wiinesc acoount which show a czea t fascination
with the anchorites buv an implicit rejcctica of themo He was
first a nonk in Bethlehom before going with his friend
Germanus on a tour of Egypt. Ke sp oke to nany monks along


the Nile and wroto down what they said, though ho did not
kef EO to/Thebaid desert itself. Then ho settled in rerseilles
ond died thoro in 435. His Conferences beoane the classio
basis for conventual life, more Chan ST "Athanasiusts Lire of
St - Antonyo His authority was vory greatohe had truvelled
eunons bhe desert nonks not only of the Nile but of Syria and
Palostine and wesopatania for twonty years: he left the desert
at the tino when there was fierce controversy over the
writings of Origen, and the thole questia of solitary ascetm
icism was in quostion. He did perhaps nore against it than
any sincle mano And apert from that his Gonferenees and
Institutiona were an intoresting dovoloprient in Chonselves,
quite arart fron the faot that thoy presentad to the Roman
vorld for the first time a corpeet accout of the articulate
wisdon of the dosert: the point is that this early religious
life is being articulatad in a written fom at all, and the
future market in manuscripts so to speak (requiring supplies
of papyrus brought fron Igypt by Syrian norchants), not to
nention the later accoloration of the hand-to-hand manusoript
into the compact and more easily marketablg form of the book, -
that in turn requirod supplios of paper and tho'firat printing
presses, seem to originato in Casslanusts epocho Cassianus is
2ot alone in itself was important and deeisive. If Marshall
MoLuhan wero vriting this book (I maan thic soriously) he would
no doubt make this his focal point, leading events forvard and
back towards ita The whole literalisation of the religious
ezperience, Which 1a one of the most striking developmonta
of Christianity, quito unparalleled in any othor fora of
seems to show a first cloar beginning towards the
BR010E60 end of
fourth century with tha work of Jerone, Augus tine
and cassiamus. Cassianus was a Barbarian by origin, a
Saythian from Dobrudja. It will be noticed that none of
the three non I have nontioncd aro actually Romanse But
the classical influence is olear,and perhaps it was all the
stronger in these mon because it représentod oflimpse of e
civilisaticn that was not only far fran the world they lived
in but far from themselves too. I tontatively offer the
suggostion that the Augustinian dootrine of original sin
had mch to camend itewith its hint of an indolible
shane and also punitive action--ato berbarians o And that
this went with a certain intel.loctualisation of the religian
may not seem strange. The intolleot is the nost shared
faculty, in that it alone can cut through tribal differences.
This intelloctualication becane more and more evident, until
we reach the Schools of the niddle ages. It roached perhaps
its clinax in St Thonas Aquinas. The existence of God is
reasoned. It is a najur departure from the first very
markedly eastern traditions Tollowed in tho desort, which
made no bones about God being a concept accessible to reason,
OI indeed a concept at all, but an experience to be had then
and there. In the eastorn tradition God can be none other
than experience, and all exercises, written or otherwise,
articulate or otherwiso, are nothing but nothods to capture
this experience. Thus the Upenishads offer the advice that


in the end they thonselves have to be thrown avay e The
nind, far from being stimlated to reason With itseli,
is asked to becons stille Reason is not soon as a guide:
only when 1t: is stilled can it be seon to Da the funotica
it reelly isemethe instrument of sonething bayond it and
sae thing infinitely stronger. And in some it is novor
stillod: this was the vast dangez that Christinnity ran
into, that the religious experience would Tinally be made
impossible by the weight or intelloctuality. No ono could -
say that tho religious expexience---8 a ready faculty avail-
able to people almost by inheritance-m-survived thate
Al1he loud argunant that surroundod Polagianisn too
showed the sane tendency to strain away from the firet desert
experience to a formla that could be seized upon easily by
the mind, which had befcre it, aftor all, tho urgent job of
creating a scolety out of a doxen different races and languagos
and traditions ranging Irom tho primitive to the ovor-rofinod.
Pelagius, a Breton or Englishmon, and a contomporary of
Cassianus, laid it down that a man could attain by oxercioos
to a state where he was virtually incapable of sinninge He
could do it by his own offort. It deponded on his will.
This had a long and deep influonce in Britain, right up to the
time of Augustine'ot Cantorbury's arrival as an enissary of
Gregary the Greato The dootrine was the purest distiliation
of eastern dootrine, in its enphacis an the will and therefore
freedom. The notions of brahne and atnan, narely God that
porvades everything and God uat is tho essence od the man,
reducible to the sume thing (Chandogya Upanishad vl 12-13),
are surely there sonewhere. 1no Wholo Tuca, too, of unvolling
the light ins de by an aot or will is inplicit. And the whole
Hindu attitude to sin, as a basically extraneous symptom of
confliot in the journey towards the divino, and without inher-
ent existence, ES little as the body itseli, and balonging to
the body and not the true self, seems to have found its way
into the Pelagian dootrine. Ând of course the Augustinian
dootrine of original 8: in is quite foreign to its serene
accapetance of all life as an expression of God aloneo Suoh
an idea was one of utmost blasphony for what cne night call
the African school.
Yot at the same time the Upanishad theme that $all paths
lead toGod? makes itself felt in tho faot that even Pegionica Pelegianin
and Angstinianisn can be reconciled, once it is seen that
'predestined by God's will is preoisely the menaing of froG
vill, ir God is the seat of seli, is the solf in purest assonce.
Or rat ther, Pelagius and Augustiné could no doubt have boen
rec ono iled, had it not beon for the struggle going on about
them, which nado little of the religious exporience'in itsolf,
conpared to what I have called the social oporation.
Unlike in the cast, whore such ideas (chat is dualism
against non-dualism) hava been discussed for thousands of
years, and caused divisias for thousands of years, in the


west they were tumed Into a state affair, whore the politics
of the Church required a dogra that oould be spelled out to
everyone, entailing torture Cr death in tho ease of 1ts denial.
It is inpossible not to recognise the heavy Barbarion hand
here.
Augustine vaged war o Pelagius politely, and recognised
the sinccrity and even devoutness of Pelagius and his followers.
Jerome waged war on him, as he did on everycne rudely. And
in 417 Pelagius was conderned. 1Original sai was
and the serror vas rejeated.
It is casy to see why, accepted, if
affairs were 11ke this in the fifth contury, at the virgin
dawn of Christian feeling, the history of Christienity should
have becn cne of endless bitter invective, involving burnings
and the use of the most subtle ins truments of torture, end
witch-hunting, and the perscoution of intell igenne, and
Church-endorsed pillagings (the Crugades), not to say tho
wars
long
religi ous
themeelves.
And yot it cannot be explained in terna of the dootrine I
itself, cortainly not in terns of the dcetrine of criginal sin iin
Es St August tino' S writings. Sonething like the samo 1doa has
its place in eassern teaching: mya binds us in space and tine
from carliest childhood, and cnly ths exercise of the will
may unloose its coils. What is absent from the eastern 1dea
is the over-rational zeal of the Christian theologians, with
its sideways look at tho organisatio of life, at the terns of
power. st Augustine sald whon Pologius was condenned, *Tho
case 1s ovor. iny the error also be over,' as 1f a battle was
under discussicn. Again we cannot afford to underestimate
tho atmosphere of fear in which the first Christien fecling
goww upe It looks as if even the great men C oula not afford
to rec ognise any idea not strictly in acccrdance with their
own experience, in case thoir experience was invalidated.
There is something distinctly pro-civilised in the tone of
Augustinets remark. This atmos phere OS restless and suspic 1ous
fear, producing a reluc tance to discuss, and a tendency to
build a massive library of doctrine and comentary, alnost as
if to persuade us that ce man alone could nevor get to the
bott an of it, never really left the Church. Yot it has to be
shown also that the kind of social operation that had to be put
thr ough required centuries of vigilfance supported by a strong
arme The nature of the social operation can be put simply:
it was the christianisation of slaves and brutos. And to my
mind-I am not asking for disciplos---this process has not so
much as reached its half-way mark. It is interesting in this
context that whatever enlse may be said about the Church,
when it got real controi of Italy in the sixteenth century,
the nightnare of endléss war between villages and towns ceased
under its slcepy hand.
Some mention will have to be made of the passion fc
rellos which was alive as early as the fifth century, and
seems to have escaped the Church as a perfect example of
the continuation of pagan idol-worship. st Radeguta A of Gaul


(she died in 587) shared this passion. Her ancestors
had fought undor Attila the Hune But, more than a survival
of old habits, adlic-hunting was a sympton of the anxiety and
insecurity in which the first dootrines of Christianity
were conceived: people felt the need to have something in
the hand at the end of a pilgrimace, tactile evidence of
an experience of the divino whichitheymay have felt none too
sure of in/Uhtnse1f2, with belief in the visible and the visible
alone almost writteh in/thtorblood. St Radegund sent to
the emperor Julian in Constantinople for a roice cf the
true eross, and actually got it. She had itbraght to
her monastery in Poitiers. And she even persuaded king
Sigiabut to instal a new bishop, because the old one refused
to be present at the cerenony. And Barbarian ineptitudes
of this kind tond to increase, not dininish, as the pover
of the Chureh increases. And they were not entirely in-
eptitudas, civen the yearning for a sign, which
bedevilled even Christis déiciples. They were a
indulged to the
of a
tribal
Saney
point
foaring
rarket.
Once wo have read the horrorstories of how the
Merovingians oz' Frankish kings (and their Christian priests)
lived, in the History of the Franka by St Gregory of Tours,
we shall know quite enough about the kind of temperament
Christianity had to deal with, the kind of soul it 30
successfully and astonishingly entored not only in spite
of but by means of theforuelty and bestial insontience to
everything but the appetito felt at the monent. It oven
begins to look as 1f Christ came into being when he did
to prevent a race of nonsters engulfing the wh ole world.
His influenee was just ripe enough when the barbarian
invasions were at their height; and it was established
by the time Barbarian rule was.
At sme point in describing this long and painful
social operation (mostly called the Dark Ages by his torians
in the dark as to vhat was going on) we shall have to ask
whether the idea of punishmont is not absolutely foreign
to a religion. The smallest glance at the Upanishada
or the Bhagavad Gita may convince us that it is.
What I am saying is that perhaps in these fearful tales
of hell, these sometimes arfful and sometines eostatic
promises of heaven (I am not referring to the desert
fathers, moh less to the martyrs), and in the concepts
of heavén and hell themselves, there is the oid Barbarian
insistence on re vengs and punishment, taken up and
resolved into sonething like an inite ion of spiritual
terms. The child-like repetition of Hail Taries as a
punishment (or, to dress it up, a penance) for a kiss,
a thought in the dark or a burst of anger may have a lot
to do with the sooial operation but as litile AS poss ible
with religion. And this is not an attaci: c tha Hail
Maries, which achieved miracles of change: it is sinply Ic
a desoription of tho prcoess by which the Barbarian


imagination, with its need to punish and its
neod to be punished, required a certain type corresponding of
and how this chaped the form of the religion, until conversion, the
whole quostion of the religion itselt (namely the
of the divine) was lost and, by the sixteenth century experience
nationalism and the development of vernaculars had kilied
Latin, and nothing Charles Vor Philip 11 could do could
hold any kind of spiritual commonwealth together. The
Church, I am seying, served its torm, in the form it had:
and tho term was limited because it bal onged to a definite
funation which turned out to be, paradatically enough,
not eve prirarily religious in SC ope, exoept in the very
long run.
Fifth-century Christendom was as conplicated as
possible. Not only vere the Barbarians divided from
but thore was the schiam between Byzantiun and Rome that Rome,
lasted thirty years or more. Tho actual Roma people wore
divided betwoon the Arian king Theodorie the Ostrogoth (who
Bucceeded Odoacor, who had deposed Romo's last Pllitle
emperore Harcellinus in 476) and the enporor in Constontinoplo.
The emperor Julian vir tually outlawed the Arians in
Constantinoplo and closed their churches. Barbarian troopa
serving under Byoantine officers tried to wrest Italy back
from the Barbarians, in a war that went on up and dovn the
peninsula for tventy years cr more, producing carnage and
famine. Which brings us to the fact that life in Rone and
Constantinople kIx3 has to be described, not only to give
the two poles of the enbryo Christian empire, so to speak,
but to point up the disgust the nonk felt when he lort them,
or heard about thom, and his sense that the world as it vas
could not be relied on to receive Christianity vithout special
efforts of meditation and prayer on his port. He was
affected by decisions taken in theso capitals, and by the
constant shifts of power. Romo veered between luxury and
over-refihenent on the one hand and the surrender of civil
life (as at the cnd o2 Theodoricts reign) to pillage and
murder by factions on tho other. ie mst of co urse picture
a Rome that as yet had none of those squat, self-c ancentratod
buildings with slits for windows that cane about in the middlo
ages. It was still ancient Rome, tall and merbled and full
of vistas,and crumbling to pieces. And Constantinople was
the ancient Greek colony of Byzantium: then people went to
school they learned in the classical nanner. Rhetoric was
still the nark of a man's mind o Anything that could be called
a Chris tian literature was only being begun, and did not in
any case include a nethod of toaching mathenatios O1' logic.
Theodoric was surrounded by loarned (and of courso Christien,
often catholic) Romans, who hoped through him to save what
they could of Italy: nen like Boethius, cassiodorus.
It is clear that convorsion to Christianity in the cities
was very much an aut of assent towards the re W7 administration.
But it is not so clear that the force behind these conversions,


however slight or expedient some of them may have
was the work of the desert fathers, who are often boen, deacribed
as selfish because they lookod aftér their own salvation
andno one elsers; but this was precisely the powor of their
influonee, as it radiated thrcugh the wentorn and soastorn'
Churches, that they never expressed themselves in power
but developod the experience itsolf to where it could be terms,
carried from pors a to porson and even articulated. This
is difficult to convey--e have the nineteenth century with
ita enthronement of the idea that something mst always be
dano close behind ut-ebut it is the kernel of the booke
By the time we reach St Benedict's third and nost
successrul experiment an Monte Cassino (529) it looks as if
the desert experience has been distillod to a aafe community
form, compared to which even the previous cenobitic Or' lauriac
forus of nonastery are made to look solitary and ascetic.
It would be oasy to say Sos But the desert fathers had
quite different problems before them than monks 2our d va
centuries lator, at a tine when the enpire was occupiod by
Barberiansg and when the monka thomselves were invariably
Barbarians. The desert fathera abandoned cities which wore
firmiy flourishing or fimiy decayinga But the Italien
countryside at tha time of Benoliot was very mich as parts of
it are et t his moment---abandoned, the olive trees and the
vines 'gone wild', end vipers in the ascendancy. The
hunan creature vas in a similar sense abandoned too: he was
not a formed and thinking being like those men of an earlior
empire, who spoke Greek or Copiio or Syriac; he had nothing
11ke background of *philosophy ? like the desert fathers,
Adpga igncrant they night have been, however mch like St
Antony, innocent of any read ing. ihen one of Benedict's
monks was seen to be alvays fidgetting in church he was takon
outside and given a good beating, and a 'little bleck boy'
was seen to run out from under his habit, and after that he
was all right. That was the level of belier and perception
among the men Benedict was training for Christianity. Such
a training could never have been in terms of the si mple
exercise of re ditation, given the kind of Barberian psychology
that had to be sl owly ând patiently unravelled. Benodict's
way was not, for that reason, the hard vay. He had tried
the hard way in youth---and his monks had tried to poison
him. At Cassino he was mellowed and tolerant. He asked
not for silence at neals but at least the spirit of' silence'.
He was, as superior, the father of a family. And here lay
perhaps his greatest single contribution: the fanily was to
be the new arfiliation, but under a father as much like
Christ as possible, no longer the absolute, power-hungry
fathor of either the pagan or the barbarian worlds. He
kept a loose rein on the monks, and whatever punishment he
exacted was alvays understood to be in the nature of a medical
cure---some weakness had to be driven out. Ie allowed his
monke nine hours sleep in the winter---an extraordinary


number for the monastic gtrchres world. But ho calculatod
that peoplo were easier to live with---that the fanily Woula
be more harmanious---if pemplo/got plenty of sleopo In the
summer there were five haurs aleep and a sissta in the after-
noca. He had tho nonks working in the ficlds, reclaining
the land. Io drew outsiders to the fanily---there was a
speoial lodging house for vinitors. Tho aot of nediestion
in the desert---the hnoavohi@---now beoae# reading aloud
or ruminatio (*cheving ovorra book) and this cruds and
primitive version becane comon practise in the nediaeval
monastaries. That was how tho Barborian ch ild, 50 to speak,
learned---he had to say the words Over and over
and
this gradually set up a sense of schedule in his again, nind; and
there is nothing better for CO ntrolling wild appetites than
a regular schodule. It la not at all an accident that our
sense of time, out of which. the clcck grov, ticking out the
moments regularly and nechtically, VaS bomn in tho mediaeval
monastery.
Tho potontial monster not only had to ba disciplined,
he had to be treated with rospoot too: that is, ho had to
learn respeot. He had to loorn---Tar from acts of selfo
nortification---hor to treat his om body with respect.
This is enphasised in the Benedictine Rule. The vengeance
cnacted by tho dosert fathers ontheir onn bolies was sinply
not understood in the Barbarisn bontext. The nind had to be
taken off all kinds of-bloodshod and nortifiontion, even if
it meant being accused---ant the Benedictin S were and always
have been-o-of *luxury'. The nonks had two habits, one for
winter and one for summer. They had a rug of wine with
their Ie als, although Benedict hinself felt that wine was unsuit able
for the nonk. And their rolati onahips anong thomselves were
emphasised: poople bent on self-mortification simply could nst
have'made the kind of moditating fanily that Bonedict hed in
mind. Thus while the first dosert cxperience vas distilled
something from even further east was retricved--naczely, the
idoa that the degradation of the body is nothing more nor less
than the degradation of Godts careful work. A stoady s elf-
denial took its place. The nonastic tradition of, vecetarienism
was kept; like the poasants round thom, the "nonkewould -
have
felt the laok of vine more tha that af mat. :
Bendict required of hinself a quite different perforn-
ance. He was nearlt fifty when he started the Cassino
nonastery, and had practised forns of asceticisn since at
least the age of twenty, when he had turned avay from the
tenptations of Roman life. And from his earliest years he
had an extracrdinary influence cn pe oplo. Mothers brought
their children to him to be educated. At one tine he hed -
had to leave a cormunity cf ascetics near Rore because som-
thing happoned---tho story is a vague one, but probably involves
sonething nirnculous--hich threatened to make him proud:
he had to got avay from the a dniration of the others. That
is, some sign of unusual spiritual pover made the others turn


to him with awe, and perhaps it waa his om firat inkling
of it too. He had what among the Hindus has always been
a distinguishing nark of the gonuins yogi, nanely the
ability to divine tho life-story of anyone standing befors
him, however meh a stranger. And this ability was what
made poople offer their lives to Benedict again and again:
and the monastery he made was by reason ot this ability a kind
of stable for Barberians, just beonuse he know the subtlest
neede of each of his motie Ono of the qualitios he triod
to oultdsate---and that least to be fannd in the Barbarian
or even the pagan paycholocy---ns pudore, which is not exact-
Ly shame or exactly nodesty but something in between and of
the nature of solf-cxnmination. Ho once said---apparently
perfectly conscious of the social oporation going on-athat
all he vas out to achieva was a change in bohaviour. He
wanted to make people honest---and that word carries a sense
not only of ita molern neaning of sincerity but the more
ancient one of integrity. Ile has boen called the inventor
of Christian civilisation because his hano--as Cassino was
for its monka---represonted a resouc from the, darlmess and
uncertainty all round it, in the Romon C cuntrys ide, not to
say Rome itsolf. Monasteries like his begen to proliferate
in overy part of Europe: they did the sano wark, reclaiming
abandoned lands, 80 that the actual appearence of the monastory
and the fields round it would be a mirror of that vas going
on inside the cells. It was Benedict who again turned
Europe, cortainly Italy, into a carden, after the pioneering
work of Ancient Rone.
Forty years after he started the Cassino settloment, and
twenty-one years after his death, there was a fresh wave of
Barbarian invasions into Italy, after it had Ed one to seem
that some form of life night be possible under the Eyzantines.
These now Barbarians were the Lomberds. Fer of them wore
Christians. In a short tine they secured for themselves an
unprecedented reputatian for hearblessness and bloodlust.
They established thenselves in tvo capit als, Spoleto and
Benevento, and hoped to dislodge the Byzantines complotely:
whorover they foud them in positions of power they threw
them cut. But again the story is that no arry nore effective
then Christ ian feeling Vas ever found to Work against them.
They destroyed Ilonte cassino (577) but built it up again
after they had beon converted nearly a century later.
Thus wave after vave of Barbarians, intent only on extending
terror of thenselves as an enc. in itself, and leying claim
to as mch proporty as possi ble, were drawn into the Church
with its "gospel of the denial of terror and the denial of
property. Ând this particuler neventh-century operation
has much to do with the single effort of Benedict.
Gregory the Great, the first pope in anything like a
modern sense, naroly hendling a vestern Church and an
impressive wéalth (iands in Sicily, Africa, Corsica,
Dalnatia, Gaul and sardinia) to persuado and cajole and


Borotimos plainly bribe was the moans by which this was
possible. He vas a nonk, and a Benedictine nonk. He
followed Benedictts injunction to govern with Timmess and
compassion combined, always with an eye to What people -
caid be expected to dos Every aspect of the church-m
the smallest details of ito proporty---intereated hin.
Ho built it---paredorionlly, civen the norastic tone of
his ideas---for the first time into a reo ognisable
a political and social body capable of purveying a law
its
Etareti
owne And this tas done dur ing one of the most torrible
invasions and occupations Italy had ever hed. It was
inade possible by the faot that vhen the Lonbards begen to
ravage the country the Benedictina experience was
an example of the bost bohaviour. riThe art of all
Gregory said, is governing souls.
He became pore in 590, the first monk in that place, and
the Lonbards vere just establishing thanselves. That he
did was to use thon as his neane of catablishing a Church
independent of Byzantium, whose holp had necessarily becoma
a cipher, sinco its troops were everyvhore being Hopped upe
He began to maie do without Constantinople r a the first
time. Gradually ho pushed thaxtisz into the past the idea
that the popo was simply bishop of Romo and of" only provincial
inportanc e. He ro-established Rome, as a capital not of
sonething glorious and dead but at an organisn the lilo of
which no one, Jeast of all the Barbarians, had seen before,
namsly an empire held together not by armies but by an at
least noninal religious assente
Five years later he sent Aucustine, the EU perior of
St Andrewts nonastery in Rome, to Britain on a nissionery
enterprise. The encient Romans had never penetratod as
far as Irelend. caesar had raided Britain in 55 EC, and
then Claudius and Agricola had reconquered it between 43
and 85 AD. In Italy it was thought of as the land of fog
and magio (or monsters). Augustire, was sc terrified by
the stories he heard of it at the Lérins manastery in
Provence that he turned back and had to be civen new courage
by Gregory, who told him that the at ories were simply not
true. In fact, Christien settlenents had begun to appear
in Britain from the beginning of the fourth century. The
Ronan roads of cours a provided missionaries (native oms)
with their neans of travel; and the Roman cities seen to
have given people that glinpse of wivil hehavicur thich tas
always useful in the ratter of cuick C onversian. Across
the rater in Treland the fog was thicker, and so vas the
magic. Fatrick (born at Daventry in 309) had a great
strucgle with the Druids. Sone of the stories make
farcical reading. Patrick vas a fighting nonk, and the
fact that his story was tritten centuries after his doath
may account far the farcical elerent. At loast, sone
struggle went c between Christians vith thoir mégio and
the Druids with theirs. In a rationalist or would-be


rationalist opoch like ours it is diffioult to evoke
quite the atmosphore it mst have had, that struggle:
vhoro the two sides bring an enormous concentration-to bear
on the othor's rout and failure. Thoy had Ptests Pomosta
00 ompeted with sach other. Perhaps Voodoo is the no arest
equivalent ve havo in the world today. The Druidical
backgro ound is quite different from tho Barberian one, and
not only ratriok but St Columba of Icna and St Brendan
(both sixth gentury) are quite dist tinct, to judge from the
stories told about them, fron the Ronan* or dosort saints.
The Druidical struscle porhaps accounts for tho hardness
end rigidity, above all the exclusive isolation of Celtio
nonachisn vhen it developed. St Brendan and his disciples
had a gryphon ily over their boat, as big as an CE and with
the beak and claus of an eagle. Thoy moored up on a tiny
island that appeared to be covered not with rocls or moss
but skin, and only daccoverod when they lit a firo and the
skin began to twitch that it was a huge fish. St Colunba
had his famcus fight with the abbot o Moville
his former teacher, for a pealtor of priceless nonastery, worth that
had been brough t ail the wuy from Rome. He nanaged to get
to the coll where the psaltor lay, and a nonk TES sont to BDy
on hine Coiunba had no candle to road the manuucript
but light poured out of A31 hio fingers.
God endowed Kin
Irish saints with nagio equal to that of the iruide. In
tho pitohed battle outside the monastery for possession of
the maakek psalser (the saint overlooked that it wasn tt his)
there were three thousand dead c the abbot's and---becauss
of God's support---only one a Colurbars, and that waS beoause
the silly chap disoboyed orderse Something of this atnosphere
persists even in the story of St Columban (born about 540),
though his Work was consistently practical, and he set up
monastories on the continent whioh wero the closest rivals
to Benediotine models/that existed. He was appalled by the
state of arfairs in Gaul, whca he travolled through it.
The ancient scoiety had all but disappeared, under the Frankish
occupation. He saw that while there was a certain elemont
of Christian awareness in the citles, the countryside vas
barren of it, a desert of pagan and Barbarian superstitions.
Like St Benedict he saw his work as an aprroach to behaviour.
Like nost other nonastories his had penitential lists-
to deal with murder, fomication, drinkenness, greed; ce
of the punishnents vas to be shut
vith a corpse for a nunber
of nights. They were harder than "bncesh of the Bonedictine
Rule to the degroe to which the populations they wero designed
to handle vere harder. While in the Campenia the Ronan
background vas more ar less inteot, in caul it was a matter
of the pasta Te Columban TEEKORNREN nonasteries were
really agricultural settlements, reclaiming the land, and
their influenc e in caul was great bec auso---as the Frankish
kings savmantho: ir discipline was in healthy contrast to the
laxity all round thene Columban first sat hinself up in
Burgundy, at Luxeuil: he was banished eveniually for differ
ences with the local bishops, whose permission he was carerul
never to ask fo: anything. He went down to Italy and esto


ablishod a monastory at St Gall on tho way, and enother
at Bobbio near the Po. It 1s Worthwhile pointing out
here that Britain and Ireland exereised in these years a
certain preserving offect on the Latin tongue, sinply by
being out off from tho continent (where it was langurihing
under Barbarien ocoupation) and keeping it as a dead
the
Language,
with
ave due to dead languages, o It was also alive to
the extent of being the only way of C oununicating with Rome.
It was this that nade Grogory hopeful of bringing the Britons
and eventually the Celts under Rone.
In 407 the Romans had withdrawn from Britain, leaving
the country opeh to Barberians---Saxons, Jutes, Angles, who
were now free tosettle thore. The Britons proper vore
pushed to the west---Cornmall and Walos---and some contact was
made with the Irish monasteries. By the time Augustine,
Gregory's emissary, arrived (on the Isle of Thanot in the
Thames) there was sonething like stability. The king of
Kent, Ethelbert, was converted, though this did not moan the
oonversion of the Anglo-Saxon pecple. A nonaatery was esto -
ablished at Canterbury, and tho Roman liturgy was clevorly
adapted to local expectations. The Angl-Saxon temples were
takon over. It was done in that blandiy talerant but firm
way that only Rome knew how to command. In 617 the monks
went north as far as Northumberland. And they went to Ireland,
where they faoed a people nurtured by isolation to an
obstinacy and detornination they could hardly have expocted
after their British experionce. They came to the Celts to
establish among other things the Roman calendar as far as
Easter vas concormed (this difforence of date vas one of the
reasons why Columban was banishod fron Burgundy) and the
Roman liturgy of the baptism, as woll as the Roman way of
oonsecrating bishops. And the tonsure by which Celtio nonks
were everywhere recognised---a half-crescent band of hair
at the front of the head---would have to go for the acoepted
complete tonsure favoured by Rome and callod 'St
or at least the tonsure of the crown, called St feparet.
Augustine net a group of Irish priests at Bristol and
tried to persuade them to hel.p Christianise the Anglo-Sexons.
And with real Roman astuteness he suggested a kind of test
of faith between them, showing that he und derstood the Draidical
background thoroughly: they were to try to give a blind man
sight. Augustine won. On the other hand, he failed on
diplomacy. Sone Irish bishops asked a wise man, an abbott,
whe ther they should submit to his proposals, and' wero told
that they should do so only if he rose to méet them when
they arrived for tho conference. He did not-wa hint that
Rome looked on its loadership of the Church with sone of the
arrogance of the ancient empire. As a result the Romans
becane, literally, 'untouchablos' for the Colts---they would
not touch any utonsil or food that the Ronans had usede
But gradually the appcal to them to convert othors became
stronger than thoir insularity, and the Celts began to join


in the work on the mainland. In faet a monk from Iona,
St Aidan, set up a monastery in the northern part of North-
umberlend (c35)--Lindisfarne or Holy Islend. And it was
the abbot of Lindisfame, Colman, who retired into silenoe
whon the RomanE---using a erude arrumentum ad honinem suite
able to the erude mind of the men bhoy Were orying to convert
to their liturgy---persuaded King Oawin to CO over to their
side.
Now this whole story is really one of the sproad of
Bonedictinism, not simply because of Gregory's decision to
unify the Celtic and Roman churches at all costs, but because
the missionaries themelves wore Benedicting nonks, who made
it the ir busin SS to understand the kind of minds they were
dealing with, and to appeal to then in their ovn terns.
Illuninated manusoripts, libraries camo with this influence.
Even tho Comdmban estabiishments gave way to the Benedictine
Rule eventually. It was, as Pirenne says, sa msterpicce
of tact, reas on and mothods. Porhaps not paradoxically,
the first universal nonastie Rule in the western torritorios
of the Roman ompire producod the firat suggestion that Rome-me
the now, the Christion Romewe-was a power again, a soveriben
state, even an enpire. Further than this, it might be that
the success of Benedictinisn brought about af universal
intellsctualisation of Christian feoling which made the
printed book conturies later a necessity, for the simple
reason that a method of intellectual control was the surest
way of mustering the Barbarian nature. The reading/renders
the life it reads about
eyek
C ool, detached; and the intellect,
especially when developed excessividy, tends to freeze the
other faculties into inaction.
St Benediot and the success of Benedictinism wauld
alone of thenselves round off an epoch that begins with the
desert fathers and ends with the establislument of a western
(end therefore reastern') church, were it not for the fact
that sonething far nore devastating, far less expeoted
rounded it off by cutting 1t off: namely, Islan. Moharmed
dicd in 652. Ho called into action---in a sonse called into
being---the Arab race. They had sinply not been noticed
bef ore. They now disrupted the Persien enpire (637-644).
Syria, Egypt, Africa and Spain went the sam vay. The
leditérrancan world wes cut in half for the first time.
I have used the word teastern? to nean nostly India, Chira e
But beforo Islam the Lediderranean vorld had its ovi east
and west---the east of course being Constantinoplo, Egypt,
Palestire, Syria. It had denoted the Hellenised areas.
Now these areas wero stripped of the ir Hellenic past.
The Alrican provinces lost their Ronan background. Now
they all came under Baghdad. The implication for the Church
of Rome was obvicus. While the patriarchs of Constant tinople,
Antioch, Jerusalem and Alexendria had rocarded the pope
simply as an equal, it was now clear that Rome alone could


be responsible for Christianity in the non-Islamic
part of the Mediterranean and in Europe, even apart from
Gregory the Great's clever use of the monasteries to bring
about a vestige of unity, for the first time, based on
Roman usages.
One might call Islam the second eruption in the
desert after the Fathers. There was clearly an astonish-
ing ferment stemning from the Mediterranean area, and
we cannot overlook the fact that the roots of Islam
might have been precisely those, in the furthest and
deepest sense, of Judah and Christianity. The sense
of the world being through and through polluted, of the
human being suffering this pollution until he got divine
assistance, which accounts for nuch of the carly Christ-
ian asceticism, is clearly the basis of Islamic fervour
too---and of the breathtaking sweep of its onslaught,
the unhesitating unity of its soldiers, theecstatic
heartlessness with which they murdered. And this had
much to do with producing an answe ring holy murder
centuries later, organised this time by the Eurgundians
and the Venetians, in the first Crusude.
From the seventh century to the eleventh century
(when the mediaeval form of monastery, and mediaeval
life, were astablished) Islam was the master of the Med-
iterraneant all the trade between the Straits of
Gibraltar and the Indian Ocean was theies, while the
Christian world of the west lay closed in on itself,
as if destiny had decided to force unity on it by means
of a universally felt outside threat which even divided
barbarians could share, and with it a concentration on
ideas necessary for a wholly new society. And my book
will have to describe those ideas onn which they con-
centrated at that time, during their long incubation
from the first century onwards. We shall be able to
see what an astonishing achievement mediaeval scciety
was, and how a light was poured on to it---far from
darkness---from the first centuries of Christianity.
This does not mean to say that THE BATTLE OF THE
MONKS will be a discussion of ideas (the Alexandrian
school, lestorianism, original sin etc) current at the
time, but a dramatic narrative of events that will
take: these ideas up as part of the story, not as a
separable intellectual activity. NO ideas between
the first and the eighth centuries were that. The
battle of the monks was fierce and prolonged, and on
all fronts.


MBNASTICISM :
W. Heiy
: yel
THE WIT AND WISDOM OF' THE CHRISTIAN FATHERS
OE EUYPT---Budge (OUP 1934)
ATHANASIUS---Eng Trans by BURGESS (LIBRARY OF
THE FATHERS---OUP 1854)
H. IDRIS BELL, JEWS AND: CHRISTIANS. IN EGYPT
(BRISITISH MUSEUM 1934)
JOHN CASSIAN---Owen Chadwnck (CUP 1950.)
COLLECTIO AVELLANA : LETTERS OF POPES AND
EMPERORS (CSEL 35---1895-8) I
THREE BYZANTINE SAINTS---E.DAMES AND N.H.BAYNES
(Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1948)
THE: DIVINE NAMES, AND THE MYSTICAL THEOLOGY---of
Dionysius Areopagita, trans. by C.E.Rolt SPCK1957.
Eusebius of Caesarea---Historia Ecclesiastica,
-Eng Trans Lawlor and Oulton SPCK 1927-8.
Evagrius Scholasticus---Historia Ecclesiastica--
ed. Bidez and Parmentier London 1898
Stephen Bar-Sudaili,eTHE SYRIAN MYSTIC---by
A.L.FROTHINGHAM,, LEYDE, 1886.
(7ncalas)
JOHN CLIMACUSL-ENG TRANS THE LADDER OF DIVINE
ASCENT by L.MOORE AND: M.HEPPELL (FABER AND FABER1959)
John of Nikiu--CHRONICLE tran's R.H.CHARLES (LONDON
LIVES. AND LEGENDS OF THE: GEORGIAN SAINTS---D.M.Iang
(ALLEN AND UNWIN 1956)
MAXIMUS- THE CONFESSOR---TRANS BY P.. SHERWCOD: in
THE. ASCETIC LIFE: THE FOUE CENTURIES ON CHARITY
LAUSIAC HISTORY---Dom Cuthbert Butler (CUP)
Procopius of Caeserea (WARS/SECRET HISTORY/ BUIDLINGS)
TRANS DEWING AND DOWNEY (LOEB CLASSICAL LIBRARY 7
H.E.Socrates ed. HUssey (3 Vols) Oxmford 1855.


MENASTICISM
THE WIT AND WISDOM OF THE CHRISTIAN FATHERS
OF EUYPT---Budge (OUP 1934)
ATHANASIUS---Ing Trans by BURGESS (LIBRARY OF
THE FATHERS---OUP 1854)
H. IDRIS BELL, JEWS AND CHRISTIANS IN EGYPT
(BRISITISH MUSEUM 1934)
JOHN . CASSIAN---Owen Chadwick (CUP 1950)
COLLECTIO AVELLANA : LETTERS OF POPES AND
EMPERORS (CSEL 35---1895-8)
THREE BYZANTINE SAINTS-- -E.DAWES ÀND N.H.BAYNES
(Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1948)
THE DIVINE NAMÈS AND THE MYSTICAL. THEOLOGY---of
Dionysius Areopagita; trans by C.E:Rolt SPCK1957.
Eusebius of Caesarea---Historia Ecclesiastica,
-Eng Trans Lawlor and Oulton SPCK 1927-8.
Evagrius Scholasticus---Historia Ecclesiastica--
ed. Bidez and Parmentier London. 1898
Stephen Bar-Sudailiyk-tiE SYRIAN, MYSTIC---by
A.L.FROTHINGHAM, LEYDE, 1886..
JOHN CLIMACUS---ENG TRANS THE LADDER OF DIVINE
ASCENT by L.MOORE AND M.HEPPELL (FABER AND FABER1959)
John of Nikiu--CHRONICLE trans R.H.CHARLES (LONDON
LIVES AND LEGENDS OF THE GEORGIAN SAINIS---D.M.Lang
(ALLEN AND UNWIN 1956)
MAXIMUS THE CONFESSOR---TRANS BY P. SHERWOOD in
THE ASCETIC LIFE: THE FOU: CENTURIES ON CHARITY
LAUSIAC HISTORY---Dom Cuthbert Butler (CUP)
Procopius of Caeserea (WARS/SECRET HISTORY/ BUIDLINGS)
TRANS DEWING AND DOWNEY (LOEB CLASSICAL LIBRARY 7
H.E.Socrates ed HUsséy (3 Vols) Oxaford 1855.


MONASTICISM
THE DESERT FATHERS -trans HELEN WADDELL
(LONDON 1931)
THE MONASTERIES OF THE, WADI NATRUN---EVELYN WHITE,
H.Ga (NEW YORK. 1932-33)
CHRISTIAN EGYPT: CHU.CH AND PEOPLE by E.R.HARDY,
(OUP 1962)
THE. LATER ROMAN EMPIRE: (Jones AHM. (BIA.CKWELL. 1964)
THE SOCIAL AND- ECONOMICHISTORY OE: THE ROMAN
EMPIRE, M. Rostovtzeff (OXFORD. 1926)
THE HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY, OF THE" HOLY, LAND--
London 1935 by G. Adam: Smith.
THE' GREEKS. AND THEIR: GODS---W.K.C Guthrie
(METHUEN 1950:)
Sir E.Aon Walls Budget--FROM FETISH TO GODI IN;
ANCIENT EGYPT (OUP: 1054)
SEE CAMBRIDGE" ANCIENT. HISTORY VOL. 10.
THE" PAGAN BACKGROUND OE: EARLY CHRISTIANITY-
W.R.Halliday (LIVERPOOL. UNIV PRESS. 1925)
W.N.Maclean---CHRISTIAN MONASTCISIM IN EGYPT
(SPCK: 1920)
FIRST
The bishop Athanasius con emporar of" St Antony,
patriarch of' A.exander, wrote LIEE OF' ST ANTONY.
SOJRCE
WItHt
Tue DESERT THE CITY - DERWAS
J.CHITTY (Basn BLACKWEHL 1966)
EVEAYn WHITE: Hhistay2
Mmesteris 2 Nitai
Sceti


MONASTICISM
THE DESERT FATHERS -trans HELEN WADDELL
(LONDON 1931)
THE MONASTERIES OF THE WADI NATRUN---EVELYN WHITE,
H.G. (NEW YORK 1932-33)
CHRISTIAN EGYPT: CHU:CH AND PEOPLE by E.R.HARDY
(OUP 1962)
THE LATER ROMAN EMPIRE (Jones AHM (BIA.CKWELL 1964)
THE SOCIAL AND ECONOMICHISTORY OF THE ROMAN
EM?IRE M. Rostovtzeff (OXFORD 1926)
THE HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE HOLY LAND---
London 1935 by G. Adam: Smith.
THE GREEKS AND THEIR GODS---W.K.C Guthrie
(METHUEN 1950)
Sir E.A. Walls Budge--FROM FETISH TO. GOD IN
ANCIENT EGYPT (OUP 1054)
SEE CAMBRIDGE ANCIENT HISTORY VOL 10.
THE PAGAN: BACKGROUND. OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY-
W.R.Halliday (LIVERPOOL UNIV PRESS 1925)
W.N.Maclean---CHRISTIAN MONASTCISIM IN EGYPT
(SPCK 1920).
The bishop Athanasius con emporar' of St Antony,
patriarch of A.exander, wrote LIFE OF ST ANTONY.


Monk 1
Note thi ti
lup
Vice
bue Grida Ape
Nae
Ramakintes
He xecul 100 . -
tke bloeki
btrck A C dru


MONKS AND ALEXANDRA
BIBAIO GRAPHY
PLUTARCH
Voh.l (Evegaa)
higofly ZALEANDER A F
MACEDO A.


MONASTICISM
O2OCKLERL Askese unol Mochham (1897)
Tio HANNAYA Spidv indi Omgin Diclidres Mmestia sm
S. SCHWIETE DAS Mongen d
Minclitum CL904)
Je JJ1 2.talys
an :
EicaBiter
tsingy D Palladiu i(Histonci
hai diaca
thar
VISTAEA SANTons Gov Anlonyh 2 HOAD
E.Prurthentli Halmal Morachihem
Dihalenge: Cénotiliame Pabhomien (1398)- t - ImJ
syPachominds ceuotium
Tabenhis'
Lu Jeultan egypl, fousded 323,
Theipolt = Schenulle Vu Atzype (1903)- -
He Capti abbt Shenout: Hce IM )
write mehastuglnen Akhminr v
Pachonian lien
In Ke (df monestrisss Ireal ke
- piller hemil!),
lessiny Balylonia, Aaha
aftar 500
loph
inesyhs
Ensraltuis
Seluste wu JE dink ls uto dice Grede
licisma
(340), wro aervk Rome
in Jubsr
JLe
p Lov la Gauland
Nuk Afsce
Sv Benedicl CCrans) prrectiol te Surpea modol.
Jee
E.CButtr - Pesedichne Maachims
FAGoguts Skelch 2 Mmastic Cartdationl
lhstmy


leenliodeced ke
idu-de mowe fuaki the
Lal
unly
euphiised un : tr
lime Lere
Sgent
Hapirr
Lat W a hme unh kou pulnic devolion
ono ou d
conpare Pachonian nth benadictue nshsotrcisn)
Benadicione ygle devenab weniin mohadrin with He
tauphes
ke Insn Colle Mil a a cls Is Le
usbie : hie Inion mle.g Sv Clumtu
nsle
b Berediw met i' mones Sci +
Lac
Anil
5hin nohbyi Pcoslial Eusspeti Mkien iiictus
supplanled He Insh mle
calplatag tLu W a adopted
ve - k Colunkalls chm Aicalrgyskekcul I baces
qoluitules coved lin Spain,
lime hue
Beied dme ufhiarte ial
Johe
he tovady wos
Clanyil hrilered
s HROVEr
beer
ade n nd -
N Tere
zlr
came in CCot) u Iuar
the Cistercains Jho cahe
4 Leviie Sr
k ke letter AN
: na A
LAYST 1-
trv-
fer
he eas Chailim cl. 2 - lean Chadurch
Bah)
est'
ati
luhin
Ahicite
Fes.l. Minb N uus
R. CHARANIS 1 Nmate
The Aelz
stzed - E te
m Brufesie 1/928
J. RYAN lush Maaticn
ogu
wi)pt
J W.tt Mackeau Cluin mohasticom lh. Esyl
khe clneste A (125)
L Offènha ISpisl ad Inip 2 Clmm
Aupasttini (1963)
M ma XAr im GRCMe
ECAg 7911)
B. Weckman
Erelutor Aib -
Mnasté
ldeal.


Sovecer t te denu fatin
hile 2 WAntuy
Sv: Athau . - atri
IAt
I A.
hito plaul, hle Iklameiy
Kli2 Malehus
Sv Jerone.
bhossiaoke Mouki
Liven o Pachomini
Pachamias Ci
Cmeck,
Cophre Arlic no
Syn nan)
Hhany - Palladius
Cafoencei asil lustititsin
Ca saranies
Relijuin Dhstrs Briropi Theodivee (as
Sgnan huo ha chim)
Apphleegn
Lives 5 - 5
efr this
Mes
I L e A Aellesion
o Bare
Inring
RA nun called Egerin - Silia N Ethara le siled. k pinup
k the mouh? - - pnot huoldle er d Apmn
Sanid >sko.
87 Aryestci
Cofenin
hiistre n. tte Timas


unid Lemons and Cif 2 Gud
sar
Sypicus Jeunu- Lli 2su Martiy,
histrg 0 The banb-dcrotnsin louns.
8v Benedicr I Te Rule 2 Monks
Bretini
Rotiais
Cislatoi
Ethe
Puloghicrl
Mhes
Cou
d har
who wa a
doviel
Rxeinlisl
lee called the FonE choolmen
1. S - heodone iin 524 aral nik thi
tok in prisos).
Te Letter R-per Guegon, adlin Dalogpe -
ludelg Bagtnan i Primilire ehnsrails


Boks wsed tr Spoper (hmdo Lihay)
Mmb aud Cinlisalion 1y
Jeau Décancaux (avnit Hus t
He huh racelyy A gme desmipls: 2
te dooline 2 Romar GLg av t
beyrin)
Rise 2 clinstiai Mnarticim 1892 5
/ Conegns snith ( lohy
eler, M
Chuielan Onmistan b Hahnal (very lal)
hee fents Mmastic Sclor 2 Irelasl S U.GH tanlon, 1927.
hiduism 4
KM.Sen Cleveri,i cul Gaoe Gufnls
rendl tr hins).
Harnack
Maartian
a lealare 5 Adolf
(boten)
Roman l
luse Glhn's faugt
hwlr 2 Aka dumne (Cas Guporli
Alio Lel hucre tii
Parui)


THE FIRST CHRI STIAN -
MonkS
usui L
6n te alines Arpituns Pelaciu ww
lsk clo the nesulk 2 the idon
7 meriie
Inue I
suy He proypene 1 E deattlane smle,
Lron Fata Wich.Gel hade, hl doth hol
Contrule r
(Poopon e 1 - the Joule
his ulmdis in ecd deive oL Grol as ib
1U rels i - u. lello dial verwr,
corpluls pesuce.
Its corld the creloi
a cntuil preens
rilollecanlg >
divided betves to po wn rxcapi
cletledial
LA Lele a C. sake
he iretion itiéep
ugfais


Bitigaply. . entuucol
Canstiouils
F.J. Foakos Tackson
heginhris -
and kirachh hake
Ti hink
2 caistiinits
Mauie Gogulligs)
Loy Ihistag oti Clnstiui Cluusch I
L. Duchesne 1950
Me heguiaip He censtian Caurch -
Haus Lielgmain
Claserce TCraig
Tai lymmi D.clitiuns
New Testament Theology I Sttalbast Starfr
Clnstaud
1he Misong bapardin 2
fnv Tee Certari
Adole Va Harnack
he Saal
It chashn Caurche,-
Techig"
farnst Treltsch
2 Aprstthil Afe
1894-5- Karl Weyjeachur


Pniitisé Caitans fusz, 1900 -11-olts Pfleidever
he hegning 2 Cluisians I 1903-4 -Paud
Wernle,
hadon: Mubas Clnrsrian Cmcapin 7 lani -
Linsy
8lto eflidore (-sh huin, A
Nmgale 1905).
Prnilie Cenitfamis -Rudief Bulthaun
(Amtau kibay 1964)
he Desett fati -
Helen Waddall
(Fmtam hetray 1965)
Any Me Eun Christian Cluree I 2vol,
Camiglon
Camlile)


PLEXAUDRIA
BIBAIOGRAPHY
BOUCHE-L LECHERA, thilouie da, hagile.
CBEVAN)
4 volunes.
( Tue Platenari - - Dyurts
VoL 4
6GYOT 5
PETRIE
HISTORY
A.COUA 7 - I ha * Poerie Alexandnie
unte He
S. SHARPE 7 Hhitry 2 Fgyr
Aral Crouedt. CVoL.
Rise aal Fal cafo
C BBBON
TLo
2 te Clanred
MRS BUTCH ER A
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THE FATHERS
ANTE-NICENE CHRISTAN LIBRARY


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THE FIRST CHRISTIAN MONKS
MAURICE ROWDON
Introduction
Something like an infection began to grip the
ancient world about the time of Christ. This was
a desire for absolute renunciation. Even the Jews--
who had never had monks or advocated the solitary
ideal---had developed two sects of recluses, the
Essenes near the Dead Sea and the Therapeutae near
Alexandria. In fact, Christ seems to have emerged
from and expressed this new need, rather than pro-
voked it. Both the Greek and the Egyptian worlds
had known something of the solitary ideal---the belief
that perfection was only achieved by prolonged
solitude. Both worlds had had their ascetics and
hermits, their holy men who went from place to place.
But after Christ the need seemed to quicken. until
it became a movement that spread through the Roman empire.
It started as far as we know in the Egyptian desert,
with lone men who retreated into solitude for years
on end. But there is evidence of Christian hermits
settling near the Dead Sea in caves during the second
century after Christ, so that some form of monastic
tradition may have bridged the years between the
crucifixion and the first known settlements in the
Egyptian desert around 250. Paul and Antony, the
first two famous monks, both of them Egyptians,
begin the story precisely because of their fame:
it was their influence on other men, first on other
Egyptians and then on people as far away as Rome
and Constantinople, that turned the solitary need
into a great movement, and brought the words 'monk'
and 'monastery' into the Greek vocabulary for the
first time. It was this influence, beginning from
the utmost solitude, that spread with remarkable
speed throughout Egypt and Greece and Israel until
it had laid hold of the whole Roman empire, and led
in the end, through many stages and changes, to the
highly developed Benedictine monastery of the sixth
cent tury, where solitude had become a communal thing.
Much had been lost by this time of the original
concentration achieved by those first men in the


desert---Antony and Pachomius and Amoun---but then
a new order had been created out of the ruins of
the Greek and Roman empires which stretched from
Ireland to Kiev and included muck of the Balkans
and the Mediterranean lands, in which the monastery
was the essential organ,
COAMANS
1. Antony the Great (AD 251-356), a hermit of
the Egyptian desert, was the first great monk of
Christianity. Paul of Thebes (?-341) may have
preceded him in the same area close to the Red Sea
atvthe time of the Decian persecutions in AD 251.
The custom of retreating into the 'desert' or
deserted countryside behind Alexandria seems to
have begun at this time among a number of men.
There had always been philosophers' in the Greek
world who had wandered from place to place: today
we would call them holy men. They were ascetics:
the Greek word 'askeo' meant simply exercise, and
implied a rigorous course of self-training. Ini
Christian times this tradition was kept by men--
usually old---who lived in villages but kept sol-
itary habits and received devotees. Paul and
Antony certainly learned the Scriptures from these
men, and the way to fast, meditate and pray.
Antony like all the other ascetics worked with his
hands, in or near Alexandria---rope- or mat-making.
He 'trained' himself before. retiring into the desert,
shutting himself in a tomb for long periods in order
to defeat fear and doubt (called 'demons' in the
records of the early fathers). He was 35 when he
went to live in an abandoned fort between the Nile
and the Red Sea. He stayed there for twenty years
(his 'father', the ascetic who had taught him
everything, refused to follow him). 'Bread'
(probably sacks of grain) was brought to him twice
a year, and for the rest he grew his own food.
At all stages of monasticism a vegetarian diet
was considered the basis of physical purity, and
meat and wine stimulants of desire (we find this
in the pre-Christian sects too). Antony emerged
from his retreat shining with health, 'God-borne'
and apparently all the better for his protracted
fasts.
News of these men travelled to Alexandria and
as far as Rome. The desire to imitate them moved
many others to leave their homes, and communities
began to form in the desert behind Alexandria. The
word 'monastery' was used by Athanasius in his bio-
graphy of Antony to mean a monk's cell, and the em-


phasis in his use of both 'monk' and 'monastery'
was on the single or solitary (monos) man in search
of perfection, though he might still share his life
with other solitaries. The ancient Greek world was
used to men initiating themselves into 'mysteries'
in this way. Thus the new religion did not come
into the ancient world as a disburbing revolutionary
force: it was persecuted by the Romans simply for
what appeared to be its subversive side---above all
for its treasonable refusal to believe in the divinity
of the emperor. The monks had little to do with
this. They believed in persuasion by other---
invisible and silent---means. Antony did go to
Alexandria to plead for Christian martyrs in the law
courts, in the first years of the fourth century,
but he did not protoke the judges in any way. He
was by this time (about 306) the 'father' of many
solitary men in the desert. The courts ordered that
no 'monks' should appear. Thus at least fourteen
years before the first organised group-
monasteries solitary men were felt to have a power in
themselves, quite unrelated to wealth, position or
numbers. Their role in the conversion of the empire
(the last persecutions were in about 313) was a basic
if not the principal one.
Pachomius (AT286-346) organised the loose
communities of the desert into settlements under a
superior for the first time at Tabennesis (AD 320),
far south along the Nile valley. It was an abandoned
village, and at first only he and his 'father' Palamon
had celis there.
His brother joined him later but
was against accepting other followers. Pachomius
went through the same self-training as Antony to defeat
the demons of pride, shame and fear, in order to rely
with utter confidence on the will of God. He too was
a. rush-maker, and presumably his products were taken
up the Nile to Alexandria by boat. His community
quickly grew. Bricks for his buildings were made on
the banks of the Nile and dried in the sun as they are
still todgy. The design for his konastery was prob-
ably influenced by his previous military career: it
was surrounded by a wall with a gatehouse, and had a
refectory, hospital, kitchen and halls or houses
cogtaining twenty to thirty monks each. These halls
had their own stewards, who organised the work of the
men under them. Some monks worked the fertile land
round the monastery, others cooked or baked or cleaned,
and others managed commercial relations with the out-
side world. The first monastery in our sense was
thus a self-supporting and self-protecting unit.
There was alwaysacertain amount of danger from brigands,
though nothing like what threatened the later monast-
eries in Barbarian times.


Pachomius taught his followers the techniques
of the night-vigil, the fast, and prayer and meditat-
ion, which had already been developed by the desert
hermits. Amoun (AD 283-352) founded another settle-
ment at Nitria ('the gateway to the desert' from
Alexandria) and Macarius the Egyptian founded one at
Scetis close by, both in about 330. It meant that
Cells were now within easy access of the city. The
so-called 'Cells" themselves were founded as a second
Nitrian community in 338, so great was the number of
new followers: there were six hundred cells spaced
so as to be out of earshot of each other. It was
designed as a place for the Nitrian monks to pass on
to, when they had proved themselves ready for solitude.
The monastery had thus become an instiution for
the first time, and the monk a member of what would
much later be known as an 'order', namely a fraternity
bound together by a common 'rule'.
Thus already at
the desert-stage the monk was ceasing to be a hermit
pure and simple. The idea of a discipline or rule
binding him not only to a faith and a God but a comm-
unity was growing. The new development was necess-
arily fraught with contradictions, which only showed
clearly centuries later.
The Scetis monks, apart from their work producing
rope and baskets, hired themselves out as labourers
at harvest-time. The natron-miners in the area often
acted as their agents in the sale of their products,
when the natron camel-trains returned to Terenuthis
on the Nile, and their goods were loaded on to boats.
It was usual for laymen to 'minister' to monks
in their cells. They would come from town to collect
their work and take it away for sale. And they would
bring food and clothing, no doubt for a commission on
ntrlicdi the sales they made.
he Pexert Fal Im
The monk's greatest inner struggle was naturally
against sex desire. A great proportion of the stories
L lf
about the desert fathers (and the desert nuns) deal
with their success or failure in this 'warfare'.
A certain young monk troubled with lust, his mind
'obscured by the heaviness and visions of the nights',
went to Pachomius (an old man/now) for advice.
Pachomius told him that there was nothing unusual
in it---certainly nothing brought on by negligence
on the young monk's part. He implied that lust
could be the result of both robust health and the
most extreme austerities.V He added that he himself,
when fifty years old, began to be wracked by the most
violent lustful desire which did not leave him night
or day for twelve years. The girl of his sexual
daydreams was a young Ethiopian he had seen gather-
ing canes' one summer long before. In the daydreams
she would come and sit on his knee and they would
begin making love, but when he was on the point of


a climax she would lift herself off him and 'fly
away'. He decided to offer himself to the beasts,
and one night lay down naked outside a cave of hyenas.
They licked him all over during the night but other-
wise did not molest him. He felt this as a reprieve
from God and returned to his cell in a calm state of
mind. But the desire came back, only more powerfully.
His hand felt polluted for two hours after he had
'touched' the Ethiopian girl in his daydream. He
tried to committ suicide by pressing asps to his hand
but they would not suck his blood. And then in his
sixty-second year (though this contradicts his official
dates) he found peace. A voice told him that God had
inflicted lust on him to show that he was not 'mighty'
or 'perfect' as he might think.
Others were less successful in the warfare.
A monk after years of austerity returned to the city
and fornicated almost to madness. He caught a
horrifying disease and had to have bis sex organ
removed. A virgin of Jerusalem Awas in sackcloth
for three years but then 'opened her window' to the
man who ministered to her, and made love to him. She
never returned to her solitary life, and her cell
became a whore's bedroom. There was the nun seduced
by a 'singer of psalms' who starved herself to such
an extent that she almost died. She prayed that her
child by this man would not live, and it did not.
She mortified herself implacably for thirty years
before feeling a mild sense of forgiveness. A
'holy virgin" who had won. over desire was found lying
helpless in a cave in the Scetis area by monks.
She told them that/had been living in the cave,
Istel
'eating grass', for thirty-five years and had not
set eyes on a man in all that time. There is the
story of the bishop who 'fell into fornication' and
lay down at the porch of his church so that his
congregation could walk over him on their way out.
Some stories are ugly. There was the herdsman who
saw a pregnant woman pass him in the desert and was
curious to know what her child looked like. He
ripped her open, killing both her and the child.
He became a monk soon afterwards. He mortified
himself for thirty years, before achievingas sense of
having been forgiven the double murder.
Thus not all the monks were of the quality of
Antony and Pachomius and Amoun. Many came to the
desert to escape conscription and Alexandria's ex-
zessivaly heavy taxes. Many went in for what the
Hindus sometimes call 'monkey-renunciation'-: -one of
show. One monk, seeing a woman pass his cell,
rushed out to teil her that given the chance he could
deal with ten of her. She took him at his word and
they lived together in Alexandria for several months.
He returned to the desert exhausted.
Something of a competitive atmosphere started


up among the more austere monks.
Macarius the
Alexandrian held a kind of desert record in self-
mortification, and imitated any new austerity he
heard about (he died at the age of 100).
There was
a lot of superstition, and 'demons" began to be the
name of spirits more external than fear and pride
and shame. The same Macarius once said that demons
had taken him off the right road in the desert and
that he would have been lost forever had he not
found an antelope and sucked her udders: she then
guided him home. He also claimed that a man had
come to him with the story that he had found a horse
in bed with him one morning instead of his wife:
Macarius had changed her back to human form. again.
The abbot Serenus told John Cassianus, who kept a
record of all his conversations with the desert
hermits, that the space butween heaven and earth
was filled with invisible spirits whose only interest
was causing trouble, but that these were many fewer
than in earlier times. For men who had lived most
of their lives in towns and villages the uninhabited
areas had a genuinely evil atmosphere. It was to
defeat this false trust in other men's company that
the monk chose solitude as the basis of his training.
But with the influx of great numbers of men it was
perhaps inevitable that the communal forms of mon-
astic life should become emphasised at the expense
of the solitary, especially when the movement began
to spread abroad. Aul beg
AL2 4 xtandem ]
Toolid pewe
ihenp
Cont TINKE P. 2,
Monasticism spread east from Alexandria to
Israel, Cyprus, Syria, Constantinople. Hilarion
was born near Gaza in AD 293 and went to school in
Alexandria, where he heard of Antony and met him.
He spent 22 years in a hut near Gaza, until about
330, when other monks joined him. There is evidence
of very early anchoritic life near the Dead Sea,
not only among Christians in the second century after
Christ but among the Jews long before Christ. An
interest in monastic life seems to have come about
long before the Roman empire was in crisis, perhaps
as a result of Buddhist missions in various parts
of the Mediterranean as early as the third century
before Christ, and the presence of Indians in the
Persian army.
Epiphanasius was another monk who learned his
disciplines in Alexandria: he founded a Pachomian
monastery between Gaza and Jerusalem, at Besanduk,
before becoming bishop of Cyprus in 367. He wasa
quarrelsome man, with a hint of the future inquisitor.
He is said to have consecrated Ierome's brother by
force: the man was bound and gagged by other monks,
and dragged to the fount.
Basil of Cappadoccia in Anatolia (AD 329-379)
was baptised a Christian in 397, and then began a


tour of Egyptian and Israelite cells. He founded
the first Greek community at Cappadocia but returned
to the pre-Pachomian, simpler model, where contact
between superior and monk was easy. He discouraged
great austerities. He even ran schools, and his
simple Rule spread throughout the Byzantine world.
He also discouraged solitary life on the grounds
that the devotee could find himself 'perfect' too
easily, through lack of comparison. The Studion
monastery emphasised care for. the sick, and became
the model for other great monastic centres at Kiev
and Mount Athos. In the Greêk or Basilian monastery
the idea took shape of prayer and solitude being the
springboard forakind of mystical participation in
the life outside. Helping the sick, teaching the
young, sheltering the destitute and hopeless were
the new forms of self-abnegation. One did not bind
oneself in chains, or starve almost to death. One's
austerity was seen in and through the sick world all
round in which one worked. Not for nothing is Pall-
adius's history of the desert fathers called The Book
of Paradise. That early sense of paradise in the
Egyptian desert gave place to something less meditative
and less solitary, precisely as monastic forms moved
from the more or less clement desert areas to the
wilds of Anatolia and places north of the Alps. It
was not a matter of the weather, however. Egypt
had for centuries been the home of religious feeling.
Alexander the Macedonian had after all chosen the
Egyptian coast near Memphis as the site for his new
city for this reason above any other---that the air
seemed full of God. Whereas one visitor described
Basil's site in Cappadocia as 'a damp and squalid
place'. Others described it as sweet and serene.
It depended how you felt: but in Egypt religious
thought seemed to have become physical.
In Syria, a country not unlike Egypt from a
geographical point of view, the sttelements were
in the strict desert-tradition, only rigorous to
an alkost suicidal degree. Monks staggered under
loads of iron or sand. Shenute (died 466), a
superior, beat one of his monks to death. St Simeon
(AD 359-459) frequently had himself walled up without
food for long periods, before he retreated to his
column, where he spent 37 years. A meagre and plain
diet, and long periods of fasting, were found aids to
health and long life. Thus by the fifth century
plainly ascetic and solitary forms existed side by
side ix with communal ones.
4. Monasticism spread to Italy with Paulinus,
who gave up a vast property to found a settlement at
Nola south of Rome in 395. And here monastic life
entered one more phase of development. It was not
only a public institution now. It was a place where


a certain type of pubbic behaviour was desirable.
For the first time attention was paid to the way
monks lived together---to their states of mind
outside the religious context, and to the atmosphere
they created within the monastery walls.
With
Paulinus the monastery became a nucleus of civilisation e
He himself continued to read the classical authors,
and he drew followers from Gaul, Spain and the
Balkans. The new role was partly explained by the
Barbarian invasions: which were nowbthreatening the
survival not simply of the Church but of all memory
of the ancient world. Alaric sacked Rome in 410,
the Vandals again in 455. St Augustine left Milan
in 385 to establish monasteries which were further
removed from the original desert pattern than any
before. They were centres of conversion, in a
world dominated by Barbarians. He allowed his monks
on certain occasions to eat meat, drink wine and
talk at table. When he died in 430 Africa, his
birthplace, was being colonised by the Vandals.
One of the fascinating aspects of this book will
be its research into the way these new monks lived
together behind the monasteryvwalls. The stories
are quite different from those of the desert fathers.
We know less of the private desires and conflicts
of these new men, and more about the public frictions
between them. But where there are quarrels between
one monk and another which require the interfernce
of the superior it is often possible to read a
private stress behween the lines. And there was
much work to do, of a kind that tended to discourage
physical austerities on one side and meditation on
the other. The fields round the monastery had to
be ploughed and planted, and defences had to be built
against passing Barbarian armies. Sometimes whole
monast eries were wiped out. This was a phase which
changed the monastic tradition more than any other
before or since: a monk's life was now precarious,
and concentration difficult. This was so in Italy,
in Ireland and Scotland/northern Europe, wherever
Franks or Ostrogoths or Vandals were to be found.
The wild stories about St Patrick and St Columba and
St Brendan in the sixth century may be largely
apocryphal but they give a hint of the warfare that
went on between monk and monk, monastery and monastery,
quite apart from that with marauding tribes. St
Columba had numberless pitched ba ttles with a neigh-
bouring monastery over a precious psalter which he
claimed to be his.
Christianity had become the official religion
of the Roman empire in 323. This too: altered both
the prestige and the behaviour of the monks. Power-
interests started among them. A great dispute over
the nature of Christ divided the embryonic Christian


world. The protagonists were Arius, the patriarch
of Alexandria, and Athanasius (his secretary). The
Athanasian creed won, after much violence. It was
the first of many bitter theological struggles which
often ended in street brawls and even battles, for
the simple reason that they were power-issues as
well. Athanasius saw the political disadvantages
of the Arian description of Christ as of 'like'
substance to God but not the 'same' substance: it
tended to reduce Christ to the status of the pagan
gods, with one foot on the earth. Church authority
might easily diminish. with this divisionnof Christ
from the Godhead.
John Chrysostom, made bishop of Constaninople
in 398, tried to stop monks entering the city, on
account of their unruliness. Monks now all but
ruled Alexandria.
They murdered Hypatia, the last
protagonist of Greek learning, dragging her from her
carriage and beating her to death with tiles. A
monk murdered the imperial prefect from Rome. The
first Barbarian attacks in the Egyptian desert began
in 407, and monks fled from their retreats in great
number.
Some of the wisest felt that it was deserved.
There was a second Barbarian devastation in 434.
The Egyptian settlements degenerated fast, and
homosexuality became widespread. A fiéth-century
Macarius said, 'When you see trees, it is at the
door, but when you see boys, take up your mantles
and withdraw.' A child (Zacharius, son of Carion)
immersed himself in a natron lake until he was totally
disfigured, out of fear of being taken as a monk's
boy.
New monasteries in Franceon the other hand
(Lérins in Provence, and that of John Cassianus in
Marseilles) were flourishing as centres of cultivation
and learning. Initiates came to them from every
part. of the Mediterranean and Europe. Cassianus's
Conferences and Instiutions became the classic basis
of monastic life in Europe (he wrote his history of
the desert fathers in the second decade of the fifth
century). The monastery was now a storage-house
of the Christian and classical past, aniertheugomeral-
darkness ofthe age. There was increasing schism
between Rome and Constantinople on points of doctrine,
and most Barbarians clung to the Arian theology which
was declared heretical by St Augustine.
The one
stable element in all this was still the monastery---
but now in Europe.
In the sixth century the long and difficult
social operation of converting (and thereby taming)
the Barbarians gave Rome a new splendour as the
western centre of the Church, no longer the museum
of a fallen empire. The Swabian king Cacaric aws
converted in 560, the Visigoths in 587. Rome' ' s
last 'little emperor' Marcellinus had been deposed


by the converted Ostrogoths in 476. The monk of
these times, living among Barbarians, was himself
invariably a Barbarian too. He tended to teach
a simplified, in some cases brutalised, religion.
Gregory of Tours, who died in 596, could hardly
form a proper sentende, and claimed that this was
precisely the reason poeple followed him. An
orat tor would have made them feel excluded, he said;
whereas he showed them their own uncouthness in
the new language of Christianity. St Martin too
had a crude delivery, which he used for the ends of
conversion. Hordes of peasants went over to
Christianity because of his simple message. It
was said that the roads of Gaul were 'littered'
with processions and pilgrimages also due to him
alone. The crude doctrines of heaven and hell
and retirbution which dominated the later mediaeval
psychology may well have had their roots in the
Barbarian craving for revenge and punishment and
reward. The penitential telling of hail maries
may have sprung from a simple need for regularity
and repetition. Gregory of Tours in his History
of the Franks describes this race as the most
unthinkably cruel one that ever existed. And it
was these men that the monks (Franks themselves,
in many cases) had to influence, so that some
colouring of the doctrine should be expected.
All monasteries at this time had penitential lists
to deal with murder, forhication, greed and drunk-
enness (the most common vices). St Columban in
Ireland shut up his monks with a corpse for nights
on end if they got too unruly. In fact the Columban
settlements were essentially agricultural settle-
ments, rigidly disciplined, and their success with
the Franks: was due to their exemplary hardness, in
contrast with the social collapse all round them.
A certain luxury entered the Church at this
time. A safely established priesthood drawi from
the Barbarian tribes was, according to St Martin's
biographer Sulpicius Sverus, 'all too often happier
with well-padded carriages than the donkey, with
marble halls rather than cells and with extravagant
robes rather than simple habits'.
St Benedict founded his third and most
successful monastery at Cassino in 529: in it the
new communal form of monastic life reached its
climax. The solitary act of meditation--haesychia
as it had been called in the Greek of the desert
fathers---now became reading aloud or ruminatio,
suitable for the untamed Barbarian mind which was
such different material from the Greek and Jewish
and Coptic mind on which the Christian faith had
first fallen. A new thought-system had to be
created, under the guidance of monks who knew some-


thing of both the ancient world and the fathers of
the desert.
The concept of zero and also our (perhaps
rather odd) concept of time as being ticked away reg-
ularly in seconds came into being in the mediaeval
monastery. The outer world---its silences and voids
fearful to the Barbarian mind--- had to be tamed too
into some kind of order: and that this order was
rather mathematical may not seem odd in the light of
the Barbarian craving for safe foreseeable events
and therefore regular laws.
'Christian' mathematics
was for that reason distinct from ancient (Greek or
Alexandrian) mathematics, though it was rooted in
both. Christianity brought about in the deepest
sense a 'new order' after the Roman collapse, and
this was pre-eminently the work of thinking monks.
The attempts today to 'pierce the imprisonkent of
mathematical time' are perhaps efforts to release
the mind from a Barbarian-based regularity.
Under St Benedict conversion became a carefully
planned operation. He once said that all he was out
to achieve in his monks was a change of behaviour.
He had much Barbarian superstition to deal with.
When one of his monks was seen to be fidgetting about
in church he was taken outside and beaten until
'a little black boy' was seen to run out from under
his habit.
St Benedict allowed his monks an unusual
nine hours sleep in the winter months andAsiesta in
the summer. The monastery was now virtually a self-
supporting little town, the seed of the later walled
city of the middle ages.
Its monks reclaimed the
land all round, and visitors were given lodgings.
There was less sense of a retreat than ever before,
and more sense of an immediate and even social
function. The participation of the monks in the
life of the country round them was perhaps lacking
in the mysticism that the Greek or Basilian monks
had brought to it. The Benedictine settlement was
a practical and above all rational concern. It
flourished in an abandoned and dangerous countryside,
more a desert in the real S ense than Nitria or even
Scetis.
There was constant danger from Barbarian
armies passing northwards or southwards.
There was
danger to the health. The monastery now had a clear
practical task---to reclaim the land and with it the
civilisation: so clear that it seemed to exclude
much of the mystical side. The Church had to be
made safe. The Christian had to be created not
simply as a man of a certain faith but as a man of
a certain civilisation, recognisable as much the
same kind of man from Bari to Northumberland.
was even something of an imperial ideal, and it
explains the important social role (unashamedly
rational and public-minded) of the mediaeval monastery
that sprung from the Benedictine model in every part
of Europe.


St Gregory the Great, who became pope in 590,
was a Benedictine monk. He made Rome independent
of Constantinople and sent Benedictine monks to
every part of Europe (St Augustine of Cantberbury
was one of them) not only to convert men from tribal-
ism or Arianism but to integrate the former Roman
empire north of the Alps under one Roman Church.
These monks underwent great hardship, settling among
the Angles or Celts or Franks as missionaries-cum-
ambassadors, in which work they had been trained at
the blandest school of government in the west,
namely Rome. In Ireland Augustine had to deal
with the Druidical magic that still tended to under-
pin monastic life there.
But even the implacably
exclusive Columban settlements accepted the Bendict-
ine rule in the end.
The Islamic invasions which disrupted first the
Persian empire and then the whole of the Mediterranean
began in 637, and completed the process of dividing
Rome from Constantinople and producing an eastern
and western church. The entire Hellenic world from
Alexandria to Constantinople came under Baghdad.
Rome was back to something like its ancient position.
By 650 the monastery had developed its utmost public
function. It was now a walled city---a model for
the world round it. And all the monastic orders
that developed later, including even the Jesuit order
in the sixteenth century, were only variations on it.
The monastery became a basic social instiution of the
middle ages, and the contradiction that this involved
with the original solitary ideal may have brought
about its later dissolution as an influence on life.
This book will be concerned less with theological
argument than the lives of the monks themselves, how
they looked after themselves, how they divided their
days, how they got on with each other, how the world
round them saw them. Nothing could be falser than
thebidea of a monk's life being necessarily 'unevent-
The sources are enormously rich. No TV company
today could have done the amount of interviewing
carried out by Palladius among the desert hermits.
For twenty years he travelled from cell to cell in
Egypt, Syria and Israel. His work has been trans-
Crtu
lated from the Syriac by E.A.Wallis Budge (nearly a
thousand pages of it) and from the original Greek
by Dom Cuthbert Butler.
But even for Budge most of what the hermits
'believed' in was superstition. This sensible
Victorian churchman gave no credence to the stories
of how the hermits 'attained' to taming wild beasts


and foretelling the future and healing the sick
and surviving the most terrible physical tests.
Today we know much more about Eastern experiences
of hermit life. At least two film companies have
shown yogis walking on red-hot coals. Once we
reject the idea of the first monks as somehow
'primitive' their stories come alive in the most
vivid way. Their so-called war against sex-desire
becomes as anguished as it was for them, when seen
in the light of the Hindu doctrine of the kundalini
or sex-area.
And the later 'war' against the Barbarian becomes
more real too.
This was no less an inner war than
the earlier one. And it was squarely based on the
now. sacred memory of the desert fathers.
We have a mass of eye-witness accounts
(Cassianus's Institutions of the Desert Fathers is
one of them) and biographies (of Pachomius and his
follower Theodor, of Macarius and Shenute and Simeon),
with endless maxims collected from the earliest
hermits.
Whole books have been devoted to the Fayoum
and Nitrian monasteries, notably those of N. Abbott
and Evelyn White, apart from the later Benedictine
literature.
OTHER BOOKS
There seem to be few books on this subject---
apart from the sources, that is. The nearest,
though he stops before the Benedictine period, is
Jacques Lacarrière's THE GOD-POSSESSED (a bad trans-
lation of the excellent original French title of
MEN DRUNK WITH GOD) published in Britain by Allen
and Unwin in 1963. Though always accurate, its
approach is rather intellectual.
There is the same
disbelief as in Budge towards the 'illusions' of the
hermits.
THE DESERT A CITY by Derwas Chitty (Blackwell
1966) is an archaeological study and treats only Egypt
and Israel. It mentions the dearth of books---'At
the moment even such an introduction is sadly needed'.
The reason seems to be that books on monks have been
relegated to Church History---and written that way too.


THE BATTLE OF THE MONKS
MAURICE ROWDON
The General Theme
This book is about the first eight centuries of
Christendom---what could be called the age of the monks.
It is about their battles---against the elements and
their own temptations and voluptuous dreams (in the
Thebaid desert), against the first vagueness of a new
religious experience (Alexandria), against tyrannical
abbots (Suria), against each other in vituperous
writings on biblical interpretation (Jerusalem),
againet animals in the arena and against pogroms
(Home), against the 'fallen man' in themselves
I 4
(Italy,
Africa), against other monks in street-brawls on points
of doctrine (Constantinople), against the barbarian
outside and sometimes inside themselves (northern
Europe), against the emperor, against the Church
that W as based on their thoughts and their struggles
and now wished to disown them, against the increasing
orthodoxy that protected the Church on the one hand
and the increasing 'heresy' that caused and resulted
from the orthodoxy on the other.
The book will counter the idea of a later 'dark
age', because the entire basis of mediaeval society
was laid down then, carefully and even systematically,
by the monks.
The first eight centuries of Christen-
dom were the incubation period before the emergence
of something like a Christian order in the middle
ages. Everything from the walled city to agricultural
implements were prepared then, and the classical
modes of writing and worshipping and reasoning trans-
formed to new uses. The monastery became in fact
the nucleus and heart of the new world. Thus the
incubation went on in the monks. Their centres were
the onlyavailable means of continuity from the time
of the crucifixion through the fall of the Roman
empire to its dismemberment by the barbarian tribest
they made out of this prolonged turmoil a new thought
and a new society, the one the mirror of the other.


THE BATTLE OF THE MONKS is the story of that struggle,
and the ferment that made the later society pos ssible,
and which drove deep into the Christian psyshology a
sense of sin.
The 'dark age' is actually the story (one that has
never been properly told before) of what the book will
call the 'vast social operation' of converting the bar-
barian. It was the climex of the period treated in
this book, not an eclipse or a collapse. In the first
martyrs, the first fathers of the desert and the doctors
of the Church, a whole new world was pioneered and
fought out, and the remarkable conversion of savage
tribes in every part of the European(and Mediterranean)
worlds was the result of that.
THE BATTLE OF THE MONKS will suggest that the
monastic tradition came from India, and travelled long
before the birth of Christ along the trade routes (or
perhaps nigratory routes) from the Ganges to Mesopatamia
and Greece. It will suggest that Christ's whole mission
and story came from that, and that the horror felt by the
Jews towards him was essentially a horror of the monastic
ideal as a force destructive of social life.
The battle
of the monks was a fierce and prolonged effort to cope
with new spiritual demands made in Christ's teaching,
which brought trouble with Roman and later Christian
emperors, and then the Church itself, for the same reason
that it had brought trouble in Judah.
The book will describe something of the Indian
background (the oral tradition of the Vedas ant the
written tradition of the Upanishads) which was perhaps
the model for the Christian monk. we have a good
account of the sannyasin or monk in nineteenth-century
Hindu writings, which will provide us with fresh terms
by means of which to understand the monastic experience,
while Christian terms would sound stale and played-out
to most ears.
The approach will be as chronological as possible,
so as to
theidea of a development, though# not a
'progress get the book will not be saying that' mediaeval
life was the crown of an endeavour that had been going
on since the cruchfixion.
It was more a distillation
of the first experience, a distinct (even an argued)
watering-down to make mass-conversion possible.


The Working Plan
INTRODUCTION
What it meant to be a monk, with reference back
to the Vedas and the Upanishads, and some mention of
the work of Sri Ramakrishna in the late nineteenth
century. The possible ways in which this discipline
could have reached Mesopatamia and Greece. The
methods of this discipline: the fight against desire
and the 'illusions of Maya'. The terror and distraught
sense of deprivation in the early stages. Then, foll-
owing the influence through to Christ, theract that
Greek thought (perhaps the transmitter of 'the discipline)
was a dominant influence in the Judah of Christ's day.
The extraordinary identity of views expressed in Pla to,
Pythagoras and in the Upanishads. The pre-Christian
models of asceticism (the 'transmitters') were the
Essenes, the Therapeutae and the neo-Platonists of
Alexandria.
1. The crucifixion: how Judah resisted the monastic
ideal. The gospel and its clear laying-down of the
new monastic discipline. The failure of the disciples
to understand Christ at the Last Supper was their un-
familiarity with the spiritual discipline he had in
mind.
2. The first Nasarene church that came about after
the crucifixion: the story of these men---the first
proponents of the Christian experience. They were
Jews who believed in the Second Coming though they
still went to the synafgogue. The first attempt to
convert other peoples took place in Antioch, where
Jews preached to Greeks. There were Christians in
Damascus even before the conversion of St Paul. It
was St Paul who took the gospel abroad in something
like a conscious and planned way. It was he who
prevented itfrom remaining provincial or sectual.
A century after Christ there were Christian communities
in all the major cities of the Roman empire. Still
a 'church' (meaning assembly of people, ecclesia) was
not the contradiction of 'monk' (man by himself). The
groups were collections of monks. That is to say,
the monastic discipline wasinherent in the Christian
teaching: the first hermits were renouncing the world
in the sense of abandoning the 'illusions of Maya' and


accepting reality.
The monastic ideal described the
world as unreal: the real only transpired in solitude.
It was not a renuciation of society. The solitude
could as well be practised in society, and the Indian
teachings had in fact never advocated avoiding other
men. The desert was only a fit place for the maximum
concentration, the maximum self-purifcation from pagan
(meaning worldly) environments in the cities. The
idea that in religion there was a necessary friction
between the one-man ideal and the society-ideal only
grew up later, when the Church and the state began to
identify themselves with each other.
It is for this
reason that history books tend to nake io little of the
whole period, and especially of the 'dark age', because
only the social development is noticed, and not the
experiences of the men who made it possible.
VFTh
The Roman persecutions of Christians under Nero
(AD 64), Domitian (AD 96), Trajan (98-117), Hadrian
(117-38). They became mass-affairs much like the
1 ur
pogroms of this century, under Marcus Aurelius (161-80).
Blor
Christianity was seen as a 'Jewish heresy', a subversive
doctrine designed to overthrow Judah and therefore to
bring disturbance into the empire. The fact that the
martyrs wept with joy in their way to death struck so
many people as mad that it began to have a compelling
force which no amount of consciousconversion could
equal.
4. St Paul the hermit settled in the Thebaid desert
in the third century. St Antony on Mount Qolzum.
The school of Alexandria with its combination of Jud ah
and Plato was the system of thought behind the desert
experience. The 'philosopher' of rhe Greek world was
precisely the wandering monk, the sannyasin, of the
Hindu world. The desert fathers were called philosoph-
ers'. The idea of philosophy as academic and intellect-
ual only came into being centuries later as a result
of mediaeval scholasticism, which tried to throw the
whole Christian experience up into the head, so to
speak.
Origen (185-254) was a philosopher' of Egypt.
He was master of the school of Alexandria, andone of
the most brilliant of the 'Breek' fathers of the Church.
Much of his work was described as 'error' when the
catholic faith became more clearly defined.
5. The state of the Roman empire in the third century.
Army whole basis of imperial structure. Lack of Roman
volunteers meant that legionaries now recruited from the
barbarian tribes. Collapse of slave market, inflation.
The Christian experience broke through the mystery religions
(Mithras etc) because of the monastic discipline behind it.


6. Pachomius (286-346) first organised the loose
communities of the desert into settlements under a
superior, with novices.
The monastery in the Christian
sense appears for the first time. I describe the spread
east of Christian monasticism---to Gaza, Cyprus, back
again to Jerusalem. The first light begins to flicker.
Epiphanius, bishop of Cyprus, was a heretic-hunter, per-
haps the first. I take the increasing concern with
heresy to be a sign of fear caused by doubt. I trace
the most bitter conflicts of later times to this doubt
that grew as the number of Christians grew.
The first clear punitive element enters Christianity
with Shenute (died 466). He once beat another hermit to
death. The rigour of the Syrian monks. St Simeon (born
389) was one of these.
7. The shift of the first monasticism from Egypt to
Palestine and then Constantinople. This coincided with
the accumulation of social and political power by the
Christians. They were the most reliable servants of
the state. Basically this was respossible for the adopt-
ion of Christianity as the empire's official religion by
Constantine (323).
8. Now that monasticism was not essential it came
under the control of local bishops by the Council of
Chalcedon (415). The emperor Jdstinian ordered the monk's
cell to be within the main nucleus of a monastic building.
A social emphasis enters Christianity. The monastic
ideal of solitude is for the first time seen as the source
of possible unruliness. And the monks were often unruly.
They had gang fights on points of doctrine.
9. The monastic trdaition entered Italy with Paulinus
(395). Here is the first monastery as the seed of a
new civilisation. The classical world here softens the
rigour and also the ecstasy of the first experience,
and begins something that will centuries later find a
powerful imaginative expression in the Renfaissance.
În 384 St Augustine left Milan to begin hi's work.He
was thefirst perhaps to advance the Christian experience
as some'thing to be written down, as a body of thought.
His CITY OF GOD, where so to speak the mediaeval psych-
ology is Sewn.
His doctrine of original sin defeated
the Pelagian doctrine that man could so perfect himself
as to become incapable of sin. Thus the development
of a recognisably western or European Christianity,
the beginning of a Christian literature and the state-
ment of faith as dogma backed by the state came about
in the same epoch.
10. St Jerome. Fierce and quarrelsome, lived in Rome
and Jerusalem, from which hevfled during a Barbarian
attack. He finished a translation of the bible in the
year of Augustine's conversion (385). Here Christian
'doctrine' forms with argumentative brilliance, and the
punitive element is clear. The desire to liquidate


anyone who disagrees is strong, Here are the first
mental battles of what became the horrifying catholic-
protestant struggle over a thousand years later.
11. The struggle to Christianise the Barbarian.
St Martin of Tours (361-397) was an imperial soldier
himself. When Augustine died (430) idor Africa was
being colanised by the Vandals. By 533 the imperial
structure was based on the Byzantine rule and no longer
Rome. Byzantium wrested Africa back from the Vandals.
St Martin converted the Swabian king Cacaric (560).
The bishop of Seville converted the Visigoths (587).
The Barbarians nursed the 'heresy' of Arianism, which
saw God alone as divine. The battle against Arianism
by men like Augustine was the struggle to produce a
composite Christian, who would be recognised as the
same man in Constantinople or Britanny. The 'universal
society' of the Middle Ages was here being fought for.
12. As a result of the conversion of the Barbarians
Rome (controlled by them) began to seem no longer the
seat of a past and dead glory but a the new centre of
Christian power. The distinction between priests and
monks came to a head at this time. The Church was
having an increasing social success. Its 'luxury' begins
to be talked of.
13. In the fifth century an embryo of the future
civilisation was realised in Lérins in Provence, to
which novitiates came from Egypt, Italy, Africa, Spain
and Greece. Provence was for this reason, I shali
argue, the cradle of the humanism which first showed
itself as a new clear attitude in St Francis of Assisi,
the 'little Frenchman'.
John Cassianus had a monastery at Merseilles (415).
His writings on the Desert Fathers seem to me the first
clear example together with the work of St Augustine
of the 'literalisation' of the Christian experience--
the use of the written word for persuasion, eventually
(when the printed book grew out of the manuscript) for
the persuasion of absent people. The book began its
life here---as the source of a ferment of ideas. A
certain intellectualisation of the religion sets in at
this time. I show that this too was part of the vast
'social operation' undertaken by the monks because only
the façulty of the intellect could cut through E tribal
differences. This was a major departure from the work
of the Desert Fathers. 'God' begins to be a concept.
Dogma and doctrine become important. The Church, with
its task of creating out of the wildest tribes a settled
humanity, required a dogma that could be spelled out to
everyone, entailing death or torture for its denial. I
will thus say that the existence of dogma at all is a
Sign of immaturity, implyêng a social more than a religious
struggle. I shall also argue that the repetition of
hail maries as a penance has more to do with the Barbarian
need for and belief in punishment than with religion dir-
ectly. I shall argue that the adoption of the doctrine


of heaven and hell was not eseentially religious, and
that such a doctrine cannot be religious, and that it
was required by the Barbarian need for reward and revenge.
We have to realise that while 'the ecstasy of the angels'
converted a tiny few, a different and worldlier nethod
was necessary for the most.
14. Fifth-century Christendom was as complicated as
possible, and will require a number of chapters. The
byzantine-Rome struggle complicated the Barbarian-Rome
struggle. Life in Constantinople and Rome will also
give us a breathing-space from the monks, although the
monks make a turbulent-enough story on their own.
Constantinople was Greek learning, Rome was 8 till Latin.
They were essentially still ancient, they looked the
same as in ancient times: this wili give us a chance to
see how new Chrtianity looked against the background, and
how much it took from the ancient world as well. Being
a Christian at this time meant being modern.
15. The top of the curve is reached in St Benedict's
monastery at Cassino (529). The meditation (haesychia
of the Greek 'philosophers') was here distilled into
ruminatio or reading aloud. Things were repeated.
That is, a schedule begins to impose itself. The day
is divided into duties and thoughts. This too was a
method of discipling the rough-shod Barbarian. His
mind responded to regularity, lacking strong initiating
powers of its own, just as habit binds animals. There
was a great development from this single factor (a dev-
elopment often quite wrongly called civilisation). The
first concept of time as a ticking-off in fractions of
equal length came about in the mediaeval monastery, as
a ready transference from this by now long tradition of
regularityi that is, the clock. And the conept of zero
space
was the formless/outside, so to speak, o this closed-
in time: that too---in the form of a nought added to
numbers for the first time--came about in the gUNEWE nemasiery,
The attempts today to pierce 'the imprisonment of mathem-
atical time' are the efforts to release the mind frcm
this Barbarian-besed regularity, which has now fixed
itself into the nervous system to the detriment of the
religious faculty. The yoga disciplines (even the
simplest form of Hatha or physical yoga) are ways out
of this system: the Barbarian fear of the void ('infinity')
falls away with the clock which tried to be a protection
against it. Christianity through immaturity lacks the
disciplines comparable to yoga.
16. Gregory the Great, the first pope in anything like
the modern S ense (590) was a Benedictine. He was in
control of extensive church lands. He began to think and
act independently of Constantinople. He prought about
a new Christian empire based on Rome by sening out Benedict-
ine missionaries to every
of Europe including Ireland,
where the monks were the APSE tdisposed to yield to Roman
guidance. But the ancient Roman experience of how to
handle foreign peoples reached forward into the new Christian
lenderships


leadership. This rationalisation 80 to speak of
Christianity under Rome would naturally end THE BATTLE
OF THE MONKS, but another fact split Christianity
into two and rendered Constantinople inaccessible--
the Islamic invasions.
In the seventh century the
Greek and African worlds came under Baghdad.
While at
one time the patriarchs of Constantinople, Antioch,
Jerusalem, Alexandria had looked on the pope simply as
another.like themselves, they now had to see him as the
man responsible for the entire western church, for
Europe. And that was the work of the monks.
Length: about 120,000 words.


ET EU
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which argued that a man could so perfect himself as to
become incapable of sin. Thus the development of a
recognisably wesetern or European Christianity, the beginn-
ing of a Christian literature (in Augustine' 's CITY OF GOD)
and the statement of faith as
backed by the State
came about in the same epoch. doger Jerome, a fierce and
quarrelsome man, lived in Rome and Jerusalem, and finished
his translation of the bible in the year of Augustine's
conversion (385). In his work Christian iaoctrine' forms
with argumentative brilliance, and the punitive element is
clear. The desire to liquidate anyone who disagrees is
strong. Here was the first echo of the horrifying protest-
ant-catholic struggle of over one thousand years later.
All this was deeply involved with the struggle to Christ-
ianise the barbarian. St Augustine believed in fighting
the tribes. St Martin of Tours (361-397) began as an
imperial soldier. When Augustine died (430) Africa was
being colonised by the Vandals. By 533 the imperial
structure was based on the Byzantine rule and no longer
Rome. Byzantium wrested Africa back from the Vandals.
St Martin converted the Swabian king Cacaric (560). The
bishop of Seville converted the Visigoths (587). The
barbarian tribes nursed the 'heresy' of Arianism, which
saw God alone as divine. The battie against Arianism by
men like Augustine was the struggle to produce a composite
Christianity which would be recognised in Britangy as in
Constantinople. While Byzantium was the centre of power
there was at the same time an interesting shift towards
Rame which began to seem no longer the seat of a past and
dead imperial gdory but a new centre of religious power.
The distinction between priests and monks came to a head
at this time. The Church was having an icreasingosocial
success.
Its 'luxury' began to be talked of.
During the fifth century an embryo of the future Christian
civilisation had also been realised at the monastic settle-
ment of Lérins in Provence, to which névitiates came from
Egypt, Italy, Africa, Spain and Greece. Very much for
this reason Provence became perhaps the earliest centre of
humanism, and deeply influenced the 'little Frenchman' St
Francis of Assisi. John Cassianus had a monastery at
Marseilles (415). His writings on the desert fathers
was the source of a great new ferment of ideas. The top of
the curve was reached in St Benedict's monastery at Cassino
(529). The meditation (haesychia of the Greek 'philosophers*)
was here distilled into ruminatio or reading aloud. Phrases
and prayers were repeated, and a schedule began to impose
itseif, especiallyin the way each day was divided into duties
and thoughte. This was the
the simple, above all
barbarian mind learned. The Prshe concept of time as a
ticking-away of seconds came into being: the schedule was
here transferred to outer reality.
Gregory the Great was a Benedictine: he was in control
of extensive Church lands, and began to think and act ind-
ependly of Constantinople and indeed brought about a new