The Dark Ages Collection. David Hume
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came to the conclusion that monastic institutions, framed on right lines, would be useful to the Church, and he established a coenobitic community at Neocaesarea (about A.D. 360), and drew up minute regulations. The brethren were not required to take vows; the asceticism of their life was not immoderate; and they were expected to perform work in the fields. St. Basil’s idea had an immediate success and he became the founder of Greek monasticism. Cloisters adopting his Rule133 sprang up throughout Asia Minor, and in the following century in Palestine. But here there flourished also the lauras, or enclosures in which the monks lived an almost eremitical life in separate cells, and these institutions were numerous in the plain of the Jordan.134 The most famous of the ascetics of Palestine were Euthymius, Sabas, and Theodosius.135 Euthymius founded the laura of Sahel, to the east of Jerusalem, in A.D. 428;136 Sabas founded in A.D. 483 the Great Laura on the Cedron, with a grotto which nature had moulded into the form of a church, and many others; and Theodosius his coenobitic monastery at the grotto of the Magi near Bethlehem in A.D. 476. Sabas was appointed archimandrite of all the lauras, and Theodosius of all the coenobia, in the diocese of Jerusalem by the Patriarch Sallust (A.D. 494). It would seem that the monks of the lauras were considered to have attained to a higher grade of spiritual life than those who lived in convents, which were regarded as a preparation in ascetic discipline.137 As Sabas and one of his disciples walked one day from Jericho to the Jordan, they met a young and comely girl. “Did you remark that girl?” said the saint, “she is one-eyed.” “No, Father,” said the disciple, “she had both her eyes.” “How do you know?” “I looked at her intently.” “What about the commandment, ‘Fix not your eyes on her, neither let her take thee with her eyelids’?”138 And the saint sent the youth to a convent till he had learned better to control his eyes and his thoughts.
The history of monasticism at Constantinople begins with the abbot139 Isaac, a Syrian, who in the reign of Theodosius I founded a convent in the quarter of Psamathia outside the Constantinian Wall. He was a typical fanatical ascetic and was buried with great pomp when he died.140 He was succeeded by Dalmatius, an active organiser, who founded new houses under his own authority. The community of the Akoimetoi or Sleepless was established at Gomon, near the northern entrance to the Bosphorus, by one Alexander in the reign of Theodosius II, but his successor John transported the monks to a new cloister at Chibukli, on the Asiatic side of the straits opposite to Sosthenion,141 where it became famous under the next abbot Marcellus, who presided for about forty years. Two other foundations deserve notice. The monastery of Drys, a suburb of Chalcedon, was established by Hypatius, who enforced a very strict discipline, about A.D. 400. Hypatius enjoyed considerable influence. Theodosius II used to visit him, and he was constantly consulted by the nobles and ladies of the capital.142 The most famous of the monastic communities of Constantinople was founded by Studius, an ex-consul who had come from Rome,143 in the reign of Leo I. He dedicated a small basilica to St. John the Baptist, which is still preserved as a mosque,144 not far from the Golden Gate, and subsequently attached to it a monastery, in which he established some of the Sleepless brethren, who had belonged to the convent of Marcellus.145 The Studite community was to become the largest and most influential in Constantinople.
Of the countries of western Europe, early monasticism spread most widely in Gaul. Martin of Tours was the pioneer; he founded a monastery at Poictiers about A.D. 362. Some forty years later Cassian inaugurated monastic life at Marseilles, and Honoratus in the islands of Lérins off the coast of Provence. Both Cassian and Honoratus were under the direct influence of the theories of ascetic life which were practised by the Antonian monks of northern Egypt.146 In the same period, monasteries both for men and for women — women already took their full share in the ascetic movement — were established at Rome and in Italian towns, and Augustine introduced monastic life in Africa. Spain, so far as our evidence goes, seems to have been little affected by the fashion before the sixth century.
We have no information that would enable us to conjecture the total number of the voluntary exiles from social life, who in the fifth century, whether in communities or lonely cells, mortified their bodies and their natural affections in order to assure themselves of eternal happiness. Ascetic enthusiasm was infectious, and the leading authorities of the church, such as Jerome, Ambrose, Augustine, Chrysostom, all held up the monastic life as the highest spiritual ideal, and outdid each other in their praises of celibacy and virginity. But the Church and the State soon found it necessary, in the interests of public order, to exercise control over the ascetics, who in the early period of the movement were each his own master and acknowledged no superior. The towns were often troubled by the invasion of vagrant monks, genuine or spurious, who formed a highly undesirable addition to the idle and mendicant portion of the populace.147 We have seen again and again the turbulence of the monks, who, in their religious zeal, were ready to commit any excess of violence and transgression of decency. Their fanaticism was responsible for the useless destruction of pagan temples. They played a leading part in the disturbances at Alexandria which ended in the murder of Hypatia. They were the chief offenders in the scandalous disorders which disgraced the Council of Ephesus. During the first half of the fifth century, the bishops seem to have been gradually acquiring some control over the cloisters, but the prevailing anarchy was definitely ended by the Council of Chalcedon.148 This assembly deplored the turbulence of the monks, and forbade them to abandon their holy life. It ordained that no one could found a monastery without a licence from the bishop of the diocese, and that no monk could leave his convent without the bishop’s permission. Monastic communities were thus brought under ecclesiastical control.
The estates of the monasteries gradually increased through the donations of the rich and pious, and at the beginning of the sixth century a pagan historian writes thus of the “so-called monks”:149 “They renounce legal marriages and fill their populous institutions in cities and villages with celibate people, useless either for war or for any service to the State; but gradually growing from the time of Arcadius to the present day they have appropriated the greater part of the earth, and on the pretext of sharing all with the poor they have, so to speak, reduced all to poverty.” This is the exaggerated statement of a hostile observer, who had been an official of the treasury; but it testifies to the growing popularity, wealth, and power of monastic institutions.
The ascetic spirit, which expressed itself in monasticism, affected the secular clergy also. The strict austerity of the Manichaean heretics was a certain challenge to the Church,150 and in their extravagant praises of virginity some of the Christian fathers were barely able to stop short of the condemnation of marriage which was a tenet of the Manichees. The view that matrimony is a necessary evil naturally involved the question of the celibacy of the clergy. In this matter ecclesiastics were left free to follow the dictates of their own conscience, and no legislation was attempted, till a Roman council (about A.D. 384) summoned by Pope Siricius, forbade bishops, priests, and deacons to marry. “Celibacy,” it has been said, “was but one of the many shapes in which the rapidly progressing sacerdotalism of Rome was overlaying religion with a multitude of formal observances.”151 Against the encroachments of this sacerdotalism, a protestant movement was led in Gaul by Vigilantius, who denounced celibacy, fasting, prayers for the dead, relics, and the use of incense; but it did not survive his death. By degrees, the celibacy of the clergy became the rule in the west. In the eastern provinces, where Roman influence was not preponderant, it was otherwise. Marriage after ordination was forbidden, but compulsory separation of clergy who were already married was not imposed except in the case of bishops.152
CHAPTER XII: THE REIGN OF ZENO, AND THE GERMAN VICEROYALTY IN ITALY
§ 1. The Usurpation of Basiliscus (A.D. 475-476)
THE new Emperor, Leo II, was a child of seven years, and the regency naturally devolved on his father Zeno. But with the consent of the Senate and the concurrence of the Empress Verina, the child conferred the Imperial dignity on his father, in the Hippodrome (February 9, A.D. 474) and died in the same year, leaving to Zeno nominally as well as actually the sole power (November 17).1
Zeno was not beloved.2 He