MONASTICISM

INTRODUCTION.
The word "monasticism" comes from the Greek word "monachos" which originally meant "alone, solitary" came to mean "celibate, single". None of the earliest Christians appeared to have lived as hermits, that is, as persons who having withdrawn from society lived a solitary existence, or in separate communities. Early Christian monasticism developed out of asceticism. The word "asceticism" comes from the Greek verb "askeo," which meant to practice or train and the verbal noun "askesis" was used both of athletic training and, especially among Stoics and Cynics, of moral training through education, mastery of passions, and beneficence. The word came to mean the practice of renunciation of the comforts of society and a life of austere self-discipline and self-denial. Among the Greeks there is little evidence of ascetic renunciation and privation, which came to be the mark of Christian asceticism. Asceticism developed among early Christians who interpreted certain statements in the New Testament as teaching the abstaining from certain practices normally considered good (for example, marriage) and adding further requirements and practices (for example, extra periods of prayer) as expressions of one's devotion to God. The statement of Jesus that "there are some who are eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of God" (Matt. 19:12) was interpreted as teaching celibacy, in spite of the fact that he specifically said that this was "for those who can receive it." Similarly, Paul's preference for the single life and his statements in I Corinthians 7 was interpreted as advocating the celibate life. Some of the early church fathers such as Origen, Cyprian, Tertullian and Jerome urged celibacy as the correct interpretation of such Scriptures. Other New Testament passages were interpreted as teaching other obligatory ascetic practices such as selling of property and giving the money from the sale to the poor (Matt. 19:21).
In New Testament times there were both individual and communal ascetics in Palestine. Josephus, the Jewish historian, mentions that he received some of his teaching from a hermit called Banus. John the Baptist, living a solitary ascetic life in the Judean desert, is also represented as being of this hermitic tradition. As an example of the communal ascetics is the Essenes, of whom the group at Qumran produced the Dead Sea Scrolls, who lived ascetic lives in a community, as did some of the Pharisees. None of earliest Christians lived as hermits or in an ascetic community. But there were individuals who were noted for their rigor of life and devotion to God. James, the Lord's brother, for example, was known and admired by his many non-Christian Jews for his constant fasting and prayer. In this early period any Christian life was likely to be viewed as extremely ascetic by a morally laxed society. Under the threat of persecution, congregations tended to be small and isolated from the rest of society. They maintained high standard of morals and martyrdom was valued as the supreme act of devotion to God. On the fringes of mainstream Christianity, among the Jewish-Christian groups, Marcionities and Montanists, asceticism was very popular, often in the form of encratism (from Greek for "self-control"), which rejected marriage, wine and meat. Clement of Alexandria and Origen laid the foundations for an orthodox theology of asceticism.
By the second century A.D., celibacy had become the basis of asceticism. The superiority of the unmarried life is prominent in apocryphal writings. In Syria celibacy was required for baptism. The underlying theology can be clearly seen in the Coptic Gospel of Thomas; it ascribes to the Fall of Adam the origin of the sexual difference between man and female and marriage, which Christ came to abolish (compare the statement in the Gospel of Egyptians, "I am come to undo the works of the woman"). Baptism is seen as return to paradisal state and an approximation to the angelic existence (see Luke 20:36), which includes bodilessness, asexuality, and absence of need of food.
Marcion's prohibition of marriage reflects such beliefs. In his theology this view, that despised the body, was easily combined with the Hellenistic or Gnostic flesh-spirit dualism, that considered the flesh evil and the spirit good. This dualistic hostility to the body was virtually universal in Gnostic and Manichaean groups and tended to develop within Hellenistic philosophy, where such enmity towards the flesh reflects the view that empirical and material world as a whole was unreal and evil. Mortification of the flesh, which among the hermits of Egypt, Syria, and Celtic Ireland assumed bizarre forms, even self-destruction, releases the imprisoned soul and prepares it for discarnate angelic life. An anchorite (male) or anchoress (female) is a person who becomes an hermit in order to overcome the flesh by prayer, contemplation, and mortification. The anchorite asserts, "I am killing the body, because it is killing me." The anchorite prepares for death by despising the body and by such practices as abstinence from animal flesh. The New Testament attacks this dualistic-Gnostic contempt for the body and foods. Paul attacked the teaching that it was wrong to marry or to eat certain foods (see Col. 2:20-23; I Tim. 4:1-4). Jesus, who was considered as the example for ascetic imitation (for example, homelessness), rejected the Pharisees' scruples over clean and unclean food.
ITS HISTORY.
Monasticism went through four main stages during the period of emergence. At first, ascetic practices were carried on by many individuals within the local churches. Later many withdrew from society to live as anchorites or hermits. The holiness of these hermits attracted others, who would then take up residence in nearby caves and look to them for leadership what was called a laura. A cloister for common exercises was often built. In the final stage organized communal life within a monastery appeared. This development began in the East in the fourth century, and from there it spread to the church in the West.
1. Monasticism In the East.
  1. Anthony or Antony (born about 250 A.D. and died about 356 A.D.) is usually regarded as the founder of anchoritic monasticism. Although he may not be the earliest, Anthony, a Coptic peasant from Egypt, was the first famous hermit. He was born in Coma, in middle Egypt, about 250 A.D., of well-to-do Christian native Coptic parents. Impressed with Christ's words to the rich young man (Matt. 19:21), in 270 A.D. at the age of twenty he sold all his possessions, gave the money to the poor, and retired to a solitary cave devoted to a life of prayer and meditation. He put his sister in a convent and became an ascetic devotee, directed by an older solitary first near his house, later outside of Coma, and then in a tomb further afield. In about 285 A.D., seeking isolation, he crossed the Nile eastward to his Outer Mountain, where for twenty years he occupied a disused fort at Pispir. Finally, after 312 A.D. he retreated to his remote Inner Mountain, Mt. Colzim, near the Red Sea. Although such retreat from society to escape from one's troubles was not uncommon in third-century Egypt, Anthony was the first to attract influential publicity by "withdrawing (from the world)" [anchorein], for Christian reasons. His utterances were given first place the Saying of the Fathers. Our knowledge of Anthony depends on the Life written soon after his death by Athanasius and translated at least twice into Latin by 379 A.D. It was influential in disseminating monasticism in both East and West and became the model for later Christian hagiography. Anthony is depicted as the pattern of anachoritic life, one of severe austerity, incessant prayer, supernatural healings and revelations, and above all perpetual warfare with the demons peopling the desert. He believed himself tormented by demons in every imaginable form. He fasted. He practiced the strictest self-denial. He prayed constantly. He believed that by overcoming the flesh he would draw near to God. He had many imitators. His life of holiness gave him such a reputation that others also went to live near him in the numerous caves of the region. He was beset by visitors, people seeking help and imitators, whose attachment to "Father" [Abba, Apa] Anthony created colonies of hermit cells [monasreria] around Pispir. Anthony never organized these followers into a community; rather, each practiced the ascetic life of a hermit in his own cave.
    The main routine of the hermit was prayer and mediation, supplemented by reading of the Bible. Fasting also was important and long vigils of prayer was practiced, where the hermit would stand for hours while praying. These prayers were often rather mechanical, repeating short phrases. The prolonged loneliness and shortage of food and sleep fostered hallucinations. These were interpreted as visions from God and sometimes as from the devil or demons. Many of these visions, trances and revelations of these desert hermits have obvious psychological explanations (for example, the appearance of devil as a seductive woman might be the result of repressed sexual feelings).
    Not all the hermits were as sane as Anthony and his followers. One of them, known as Saint Simeon Stylites (about 390-459 A.D.), after having lived buried up to his neck in the ground for several months, decided to achieve holiness by becoming an religious "pole sitter." He spent over thirty-five years on the top of a sixty-foot pillar near Antioch. Others lived in fields and grazed on grass like cattle. A certain Ammoun had a particular reputation for sanctity because he had never undressed or bathed after he became a hermit. Another wandered naked in the vicinity of Mount Sinai for fifty years. But these were only the fanatic fringe of the movement and were to be found in the East more than in the West. The hermits regarded females as the source of temptation and sin and consequently withdrew from their companionship. The irony of this practice is that they tended to become obsessed with sex. To remove the temptation, the hermit would cut off all his fingers except for the thumb and forefinger on the left hand.
    Although Anthony was known for his individualistic quest for perfection that by-passed the Church, he remained the champion of episcopal orthodoxy, hostile only to schismatics (Melitians) and heretics. In 338 A.D. he visited Alexandria to disavow any sympathy towards Arianism. In 311 A.D. he was there during the persecution of Maximin Dala, sustaining the confessors but being denied the martyrdom he desired. Even though he was a Copt who knew no Greek, untutored (as a boy he was too shy for school) and barely literate, he left eight extant letters.
  2. The communal type of monasticism, often called cenobite ("common life") monasticism, also made its appearance first in Egypt. This type of monasticism was started by an Egyptian named Pachomius (c.290-346 A.D.), who while a soldier, was converted from heathenism to Christianity, when he was about twenty. After he was discharged, he adopted the life of a hermit. After living twelve years with a hermit, he became dissatisfied with its irregularities, and in about 320 A.D. he established the first monastery at Tabennisi on the east bank of the Nile, patterned on the primitive Jerusalem community. His vision of ascetic koinonia inspired many and he soon had several thousand monks under his direct control in Egypt and Syria. Simplicity of life, work, devotion, and obedience were the keynotes of his organization. His Rule survives complete only in Jerome's Latin version. Pachomius set his face against extremism. He insisted on regular meals and worship, and aimed to make his communities self-supporting through such industries as the weaving of palm-mats, or growing fruit and vegetables for sale. Each entrant to his community had to hand over their personal wealth to a common fund, and were only admitted as full members after a period of probation. To prove their initial earnestness they were required to stand outside the monastery door for several days. Part of the qualification for full membership was to memorize parts of the Bible; and if the candidate were illiterate they were taught how to read and write. The first monasteries of Pachomius were for men, but before his death he supervised the establishment of the first communities for women as well. Pachomius created the basic framework which was followed by all later monastic communities.
  3. Basil of Caesarea (c.330-379 A.D.) did much to popularize the communal type of monasticism. Having had an excellent education in Athens and Constantinople, at the age of twenty-seven he gave up worldly advancement for the ascetic life. In about 357 A.D. he was baptized and ordained a reader. This was followed by visits to monastic settlements in Palestine, Syria and Egypt, which helped him later to decide the nature of community he wanted to establish. On his return to Pontus he retired to a small hermitage by the river Iris not far from his home. He left his seclusion in 364 A.D. at the request of his bishop, Eusebius, who was facing much opposition from extreme Arians, and Basil was ordained presbyter and proceeded to write books against the Arian, Eunomius. After the death of Eusebius in 370 A.D., he was made bishop of Caesarea, a large area in Cappadocia, a post he held until his death. He devoted much time to introducing and establishing the monastic system into Pontus, and extensive institutions sprang up under his fostering care. A new feature of this was the coenobium (from Greek, koinobios, "living in community"). Hitherto ascetics had either lived in solitude or in groups of two or three. He gave a more utilitarian and social expression to the monastic movement by insisting that the monks under his Rule work, pray, read the Bible, and perform good deeds. He discouraged extreme asceticism. The monasticism of the Greek and Russian Churches in the Eastern Europe today owes much to the Rule that Basil developed for the guidance of his monks. More and more people were swept into the movement until there were nearly a hundred monasteries in Europe at the accession of Justinian to the throne of the Eastern empire.
2. Monasticism In the West.
  Monasticism appeared first in Eastern Christianity. It was brought to the attention of the Western churches by Athanasius. While he was in exile in the West between 340 and 346 A.D., he was accompanied by two Egyptian monks. Athanasius spent parts of his later exiles hiding among the hermits of the Egyptian desert, and subsequently wrote the Life of Anthony. This biography provides almost all our knowledge about Anthony, and largely helped to spread the ideals of the ascetic movement. It was quickly translated from Greek into Latin, and Augustine of Hippo among others was influenced by it. In the West monasticism had the backing of church leaders such as Martin of Tours, Jerome, Augustine, and Ambrose from the very beginning. Jerome's writings on asceticism ranked next to his translation of the Bible into Latin and Benedict's Rule in the medieval monk's library.
  1. Benedict and the Benedictines.
    The greatest leader of Western monasticism was Benedict of Nursia (born about 480 A.D. and died about 542 A.D.). Shocked by the vice of Rome, he retired to live as a hermit in a cave at Subiaco in the mountains east of Rome in about 500 A.D. After a brief period in a monastery he returned to Subiaco where he set up twelve small monastic communities. About 529 A.D. he was pressured to leave these groups, and so with a small nucleus of men he moved to what is now Monte San Germano (half way between Rome and Naples) and he founded the monastery of Monte Casino, which survived until World War II (1943), when it was destroyed by Allied bombardment. Soon several monasteries were under his control and following his plan of organization, work and worship, that is, his Rule. Making use of previous rules (for example, those of John Cassian and Basil of Caesarea), he composed his own rule. According to this rule, each monastery was considered a self-sufficient, self-supporting unit or garrison of the soldiers of Christ. The day was divided into periods in which reading, worship, and work had important places. The regulations that he drew up provided little meat for the monks but allowed plenty of fish, oil, butter, bread, vegetables, and fruit in their diet. This Rule of Benedict, which emphasized poverty, chastity, and obedience, was one of the most important in the Middle Ages. It was carried by Roman missionaries to England and Germany, and into France by the seventh century and became almost universal in the time of Charlemagne. It became the standard rule in the West by the year 1000 A.D.
  2. Celtic Monasticism.
    In sharp contrast to the stable and moderating ideals of Benedictine monasticism stands the Celtic type with its mystical approach, its undisciplined restlessness and its ascetic rigor. Derived originally from the East by way of South Gaul, it flourished from the fifth to the seventh centuries A.D. in Ireland, Scotland, and England. Its unique contribution lies in its fervent missionary activity and in its devotion to learning. The great monastic schools of Ireland in the fifth and sixth centuries were widely renowned. There the study of Greek was preserved and the Celtic Christian art was developed. Eventually with triumph of Roman Christianity in Britain, the Celtic monastery yielded to the Benedictine rule; but it infused its missionary spirit into later British monks like Willibrored and Boniface, who did so much to convert Northern Europe. A distinctive feature of the Celtic monasticism was its adaptation to the clan system and the consequent hereditary position of the abbot. Moreover, the basis of church orgaization in Celtic Christianity was monastic rather than diocesan, the bishop being inferior to the abbot and even to the abbess. Hence, for instance, the See of Kildare in Ireland, where St. Bridget was abbess in the early sixth century A.D., could be referred to as "a see at once episcopal and virginal." The great names in Celtic monasticism such as Finian of Clonard, Columba and Columbanus will be discussed later.
EVALUATION OF MONASTICISM.
Monasticism may be viewed as a more rigorous practice of the faith than normal for the average Christian. This encourages the idea of a double standard, one standard of morality for the monks and another for the ordinary Christian, with a spiritual elite set above the general level of Christians. Also too often monasticism encourages spiritual pride when the monks became proud of the ascetic acts that they perform to the benefit their own souls. In addition as the monasteries became wealthy because of the thrift and private ownership of the community, laziness, avarice, and gluttony crept in. During early medieval monasticism very often too many of the best men and women of the empire were siphoned off into the monasteries, and their abilities were lost to the world, which was so badly in need of such leaders. Moreover, the celibate life kept these able men and women from marriage and the rearing of able children. This contributed to one standard of morality for the monks (celibacy) and another for the ordinary Christian. Also monasticism aided in the rapid development of a hierarchical, centralized organization in the church, because the monks were bound in obedience to superiors who in turn owed their allegiance to the pope. This practice destroys the democratic character of the local churches and the personal initiative of its members.
On the credit side of sheet, monasticsim aided in the spread of civilization. During the early medieval period the local monastery served as a model for the surrounding community. It encouraged better methods of agriculture. The monks cleared the forests, drained the marshes, made roads, and improved seeds and breeds of livestock. Nearby farmers often emulated the better methods that they saw the monks using. During the Dark Ages between 500 A.D. and 1000 A.D. the monasteries helped to keep alive scholarship, when the life of the Roman empire was disrupted by the barbarian invasion and education and learning was stopped by the barbarians. The schools of the monasteries provided education on the lower levels for nearly everyone who wanted to learn. Without any printing presses to publish books and preserve learning, the monks copied by hand precious manuscripts and preserved them for posterity. In the middle of the sixth century, Casaiodorus (478-573 A.D.), a high government official under the Ostrogoths, retired from government service to devote himself to the task of collecting, translating, and copying patristic and classical literature. He was aided in this task by the monks of a monastery that he founded. The Book of Kells, a lovely illuminated manuscript of the Gospels in Latin, done about the seventh century A.D. by Irish monks, is an example of the beauty of the monks' work. Monks, such as Bede, Einhard, and Matthew Paris, wrote historical records, which are the primary sources of information concerning the history of this period.
The monasteries also provided a refuge for the outcasts of society who were in need of help. Those in need of hospitalization would usually find loving care in the monasteries. The weary traveler could be sure of finding food and bed in the hospice of the monastery. Those who tired of the worldliness of their day could find in the monastery a refuge from the cares and meaningless of secular life. The monasteries provided a place of training for the future leaders of the church. Some of the best leaders of the medieval church, such as Gregory VII, came from the monasteries.
Monasticsim aided in the spread of Christianity. Monks, particularly from Britain, became the missionaries of the medieval church. They went out as fearless soldiers of the Cross to found new monasteries, and these became centers from which whole tribes were won to Christianity. Columba, a monk from Ireland, won the Scots, and one of his followers, Aidan, won the people of northern England. Unfortunately, much of the missionary work was marred by their mass methods of conversion. If a ruler accepted Christianity, he and his people were all baptized whether or not they fully understood the meaning of the act or the implications of Christianity for their lives.