Note by the American
Editor.
————————————
Here may be noted the historic fact that this
terrible epoch of persecutions had driven many to the deserts, where
they dwelt as hermits. It now introduced
monasticism, in its earliest and least objectionable forms, into
Egypt, whence it soon spread into the Church at large. For a
favourable view of the character and life of St. Antony, see
Neale’s history of this period; but, if he turns it
into an indirect plea for the subsequent history of monasticism, we
shall find in Canon Kingsley’s Hypatia a high-wrought
testimony of an antagonistic character. Bingham, avoiding the
entanglements of primitive with mediæval history, affords a just
view of what may be said of the rise of this mighty institution, based
upon two texts of Holy
Scripture, proceeding from the Incarnate Word Himself, which impressed
themselves on the fervid spirit of Antony. Who can wonder that
fire and sword and ravening wolves predisposed men and women to avoid
the domestic life, and the bringing of hapless families into existence
as a prey to the remorseless cruelty of the empire? Far be it
from me to forget what the world owes, directly and indirectly, to the
nobler and purer orders,—what learning must ever acknowledge as
its debt to the Benedictines of the West. But, on the other hand, after the
melancholy episcopate of Cyril, we cannot but trace, in the history of
Oriental monasticism, not only the causes of the decay of Alexandrian
scholarship and influence, but of the ignominious fate of the Byzantine
Empire, and of that paltry devotion to images which seemed to invoke
the retributions of a “jealous god,” and which favoured the
rise of an impostor who found in his “abhorrence of idols” an excuse for making himself the “Scourge of God.”