'And let it not move you, nor divert and draw you back from imitation, even if for the present the reason or cause of some matter or deed is not clear to you; because to those who think well and simply of all things, and who study to imitate faithfully rather than to scrutinize all that they shall have perceived to be handed down or done by the elders, the knowledge of all things will also follow through the experience of the work.'
'But whoever begins to be instructed by scrutiny will never enter into the reason of truth; because the enemy, seeing him trusting rather to his own judgement than to that of the fathers, will easily drive him even to this point, that even those things which are most useful and most wholesome may seem to him superfluous and harmful; and thus the cunning foe will so delude his presumption that, by clinging stubbornly to his own unreasonable determinations, he persuades himself that this alone is holy which he has judged right and most just by the error of his own obstinacy only. Wherefore you ought first to learn how and whence the order and origin of our profession has descended.'
'For then can one more effectually attain the discipline of the art he has desired, and be more ardently incited to practise it, when he has come to know the dignity of its authors and founders. There are in Egypt three kinds of monks, of which two are excellent, the third lukewarm and by all means to be avoided. The first is that of the cenobites, who, namely, dwelling together in common, are governed by the judgement of one elder: of which kind the greatest number of monks resides throughout all Egypt. The second is that of the anchorites, who, first trained in the cenobia and now perfected in the active manner of life, have chosen the secret places of solitude: of which profession we too desire to be partakers. The third, the reprehensible one, is that of the Sarabaites.'
'Concerning these we shall discourse more fully, one by one, in order. Of these three professions, therefore, as we have said, you ought first to know the founders. For assuredly from this very thing there may be born either hatred of that profession which is to be avoided, or desire of that which is to be followed; because it is necessary that each way should draw its follower to that same end at which its author and inventor arrived. And so the discipline of the cenobites took its beginning from the time of the apostolic preaching. For such was, in Jerusalem, all that multitude of believers which is thus described in the Acts of the Apostles:'
'Now the multitude of believers had one heart and one soul, nor did any of them say that anything of what he possessed was his own, but all things were common to them. They sold their possessions and goods, and divided them to all, according as every one had need.' And again: 'For neither was there anyone needy among them; for as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the prices of the things they sold, and laid them before the feet of the apostles; and distribution was made to every one according as each had need.' Such, I say, was then the whole Church, of which sort it is now difficult to find even a very few in the cenobia.
But when, after the passing of the Apostles, the multitude of believers began to grow lukewarm, and especially that part which flowed together to the faith of Christ from foreign and various nations, from whom the Apostles, in view of the very rudiments of their faith and their inveterate custom of heathenism, demanded nothing further.
than that they should abstain from things sacrificed to idols, from fornication, from what is strangled, and from blood. And when this liberty, which had been granted to the Gentiles on account of the weakness of their first belief, began little by little to corrupt even the perfection of that Church which was established at Jerusalem, and as the number both of natives and of newcomers daily increased, the fervour of that first faith grew cold, not only did those who had flowed together to the faith of Christ relax from that strictness, but even those who were the leaders of the Church.
For some, thinking that what they saw conceded to the Gentiles on account of weakness was also lawful for themselves, believed that they suffered no loss if they followed the faith and confession of Christ together with their substance and possessions. But those in whom the apostolic fervour still remained, mindful of that former perfection, departed from their cities and from the company of those who deemed it lawful for themselves or for the Church of God to neglect a laxer manner of life; and they began to dwell in suburban and more secluded places, and to practise privately and individually those things which they remembered had been instituted by the Apostles generally throughout the whole body of the Church:
And thus grew up that discipline which we have spoken of, of the disciples who had separated themselves from the contagion of those others. These, as time went on, being little by little set apart from the crowds of believers—because they abstained from marriage and cut themselves off from the fellowship of their kindred and from the ways of this world—were called monks or monazontes from the strictness of their single and solitary life. Whence it followed that, from the fellowship of their common life, they were called cenobites, and their cells and dwellings were called cenobia. This, then, was the most ancient kind of monks, which is first not only in time but also in grace, and which for very many years remained inviolate down to the age of Abba Paul and Anthony:
Whose traces we even now still see abiding in the stricter cenobia. From this number of the perfect, and from this most fruitful root, so to speak, of the saints, there were afterwards brought forth also the flowers and fruits of the anchorites. Of this profession the leaders were those whom we mentioned a little before, namely the holy Paul and Anthony, whom we know to have flourished: men who followed the secrets of the solitude not, as some do, from faint-heartedness or from the disease of impatience, but from the desire of a loftier advancement and of divine contemplation—though the former of them is said to have penetrated into the desert under the plea of necessity, while during the time of persecution he was avoiding the plots of his relatives.
Thus, then, there proceeded from that discipline of which we spoke another kind of perfection, whose followers are rightly named anchorites, that is, those who withdraw; because, by no means content with this victory whereby they had trodden down the hidden snares of the devil among men, and desiring to engage the demons in open battle and manifest conflict, they do not fear to penetrate the vast recesses of the desert—in imitation, that is, of John the Baptist, who remained in the desert his whole life long, and of Elijah too and Elisha, and of those of whom the Apostle thus makes mention: they went about in sheepskins and in goatskins, being in want, afflicted, tormented, of whom the world was not worthy, wandering in deserts and mountains and caves and in the holes of the earth.
Of whom the Lord also speaks figuratively to Job: But who is it that let the wild ass go free, and who has loosed his bonds? I have made the wilderness his dwelling, and the salt land his tabernacles: he scorns the multitude of the city, and hears not the cry of the driver; he shall behold the mountains of his pasture, and seeks after every green thing. In the Psalms too: Let them say now who have been redeemed by the Lord, whom he has redeemed from the hand of the enemy; and a little after: They wandered in a wilderness, in a waterless place; they found no way to a city of habitation, hungry and thirsty; their soul fainted within them, and they cried unto the Lord when they were in trouble, and he delivered them out of their distresses. Whom Jeremiah too thus describes:
Blessed is he who has borne the yoke from his youth; he shall sit alone and keep silence, because he has lifted it upon himself. And they too who in feeling and in deed harmonize with that saying of the Psalmist: I have become like a pelican of the wilderness; I have watched, and have become like a lonely sparrow upon the housetop. And while the Christian religion rejoiced in these two professions of monks, but this order too had begun little by little to fall away into a worse state, there afterwards emerged that most degenerate and faithless kind of monks; or rather that noxious planting revived and grew up again, which, sprouting in the beginning of the Church through Ananias and Sapphira, was cut down by the severity of the Apostle Peter:
Which was for a long time judged among the monks as detestable and accursed, and was never again taken up by anyone, so long as the dread of that so strict a sentence remained fixed in the memory of the faithful—by which the blessed Apostle suffered the aforesaid authors of the new crime to be cured neither by penance nor by any satisfaction, but cut down that most pernicious shoot by a swift death.
When therefore, by that example which was punished in Ananias and Sapphira through apostolic severity, having been little by little withdrawn from the notice of many by long neglect and the obliterating effect of time, there emerged this kind of the Sarabaites, who were named Sarabaites—by a property of the Egyptian tongue—from the fact that they separated themselves from the congregations of the cenobia and provided for their own needs singly; proceeding from the number of those whom we mentioned before, who chose rather to feign evangelical perfection than to seize it in truth, being stirred up, that is, by the emulation or the praises of those who prefer the perfect nakedness of Christ to all the riches of the world.
These men, then, while with a feeble spirit they aim at a thing of the highest virtue, or are compelled by necessity to come to this profession, while they hasten to be reckoned merely by the name of monks without any emulation of its pursuits, in no way seek the discipline of the cenobia, nor submit themselves to the judgment of the elders, nor, instructed by their traditions, learn to conquer their own wills, nor take up any rule of sound discretion by lawful training; but renouncing only publicly, that is, before the face of men, they either persevere in the same occupations in their own homes, bound by these under the privilege of this name, or building themselves little cells and calling them monasteries, they abide in them by their own right and liberty, in no wise submitting to the evangelical precepts—namely, that they should be occupied by no anxiety over the daily food, by no distractions of household affairs.
Which those alone accomplish, without any faithless doubt, who, loosed from all the possessions of this world, have so subjected themselves to the superiors of the cenobia that they do not even confess themselves to be their own masters. But those who, shunning the strictness of the cenobium of which we spoke, dwell two or three together in cells, not content to be governed by the care and command of an abbot, but chiefly taking care of this—that, freed from the yoke of the elders, they may have liberty to exercise their own wills, and to go out or wander wherever they please, and to do what they like—these are consumed by day and night in daily works even more than those who live in the cenobia, but not with the same faith and the same purpose.
For these men do this not that they may subject the fruit of their labour to the judgment of a steward, but that they may acquire monies which they may store up. Consider how great is the difference between them. The former, taking no thought for the morrow, offer to God the most acceptable fruits of their sweat; the latter, extending their faithless anxiety not only into the morrow but even into the span of many years, believe God either a liar or destitute, as though he could not or would not furnish them the promised sufficiency of daily food and clothing. The former desire with all their prayers to possess aktemosyne, that is, nakedness of all things and perpetual poverty; the latter, that they may attain an abundance of all supplies.
The former, on this account, strive in their daily works vying to surpass the appointed measure, so that whatever overflows the holy uses of the monastery may be dispensed, according to the abbot's judgment, either to the prisons, or to the guesthouse, or to the hospital, or to the needy; the latter, that whatever remains over from the day's gluttony may either serve their prodigal will, or at least be laid up for the vice of avarice. Finally, even granting that these things which are heaped up by them with no best of purposes could be distributed better than we have said, not even so do they aspire to the merit of that virtue and perfection. For the former, conferring so many things upon the monastery and daily renouncing them, remain in such
an humility of subjection that, just as of themselves, so also of those things which they acquire by their own sweat, they are deprived of all power; continually renewing the fervour of their first renunciation, while they daily strip themselves of the fruits of their labour: whereas the latter, being puffed up in that very thing that they bestow something upon the poor, are daily hurled headlong. The former, patience and strictness—whereby they so devoutly persevere in this profession which they once took up, that they never fulfil their own wills—make them men crucified to this world and living martyrs daily; the latter, the lukewarmness of their own will plunges into hell. These two kinds of monks, then, in this province indeed, contend with an almost equal number one against the other.
But throughout the other provinces, which the necessity of the catholic faith compelled me to travel through, we found this third kind of the Sarabaites to abound and to be almost the only one. For in the times of Lucius, who was a bishop of the Arian faithlessness, under the reign of Valens, while we were carrying relief to our brethren—namely to those who, out of Egypt and the Thebaid, had for their perseverance in the catholic faith been banished to the mines of Pontus and Armenia—although we saw the discipline of the cenobia in certain cities though very rare, yet we found that among them not even the very name of the anchorites had been heard.
Truly there is also yet another, a fourth kind, which we have lately seen to have emerged among those who flatter themselves with the appearance and image of anchorites, and who in their beginnings seem for a certain brief fervour to seek the perfection of the cenobium, but presently growing lukewarm—while they disdain to cut away their old habits and vices, nor are content to endure any longer the yoke of humility and patience, and scorn to be subject to the command of the elders—seek separate cells and desire to sit in solitude, so that, forsooth, being provoked by no one, they may be esteemed by men as patient, meek, or humble: which institution, or rather lukewarmness, never permits those whom it has once infected to attain to perfection.
For in this way their vices are not only not cut off, but even grow strong for the worse, since, being provoked by no one, like some deadly and inward poison, the more it has been concealed, the more deeply it creeps and breeds an incurable disease in the sick man. For out of reverence for the solitary cell no one now dares to reprove the vices of the solitary, which he preferred to have unknown rather than cured. Furthermore, virtues are begotten not by the concealment of vices, but by their expugnation. GERMANUS: Is there any difference between a cenobium and a monastery, or is the one thing designated by both names? PIAMUN:
Although by some 'monasteries' are wont to be called indifferently instead of 'cenobia,' yet there is this difference, that 'monastery' is the name of a dwelling, signifying nothing more than the place, that is, the habitation of monks; whereas 'cenobium' designates also the quality and discipline of the profession itself. And a monastery may be named even the habitation of a single monk; but a cenobium cannot be called except where the united community of very many living together resides. Indeed those places are also called monasteries in which the assemblies of the Sarabaites dwell.
Wherefore, since I see that you have laid hold of the beginnings of this profession from the best kind of monks, that is, that from the praiseworthy training-ground of the cenobia you are striving toward the lofty heights of the anchoritic discipline, follow after the virtue of humility and patience, which I doubt not that you learned there, with a true affection of heart—not, as some do, feigning it by false humiliation of words, nor by an affected and superfluous bowing in certain services of the body. Which counterfeit of humility Abbot Serapion once elegantly derided.
For when a certain man had come to him displaying by his dress and words the utmost abjection of himself, and when the old man, according to custom, urged him to gather himself for prayer, he by no means assenting to the one who besought him, asserted that he was involved in such great crimes that he did not deserve even to breathe this common air; and refusing even the seat of the mat itself, he rather sat upon the ground.
But when he had shown far less assent to the washing of his feet, then Abbot Serapion, the meal being over and the custom of conference inviting it, began to admonish him kindly and gently, that he should not, idle and roving—especially a young man so robust—run about everywhere with unstable levity, but that, sitting in his cell according to the rule of the elders, he should choose rather to be sustained by his own labour than by another's bounty. Which lest the Apostle Paul should fall into—and this although, as he laboured in the Gospel, this provision was rightly owed to him—yet he chose to work day and night, that with his own hands he might prepare the daily food both for himself and for those who, ministering to him, were not able to perform work.
At this the man was filled with such great sadness and grief that he could not dissemble even in his countenance the bitterness conceived in his heart. To whom the old man said: Hitherto, O son, you loaded yourself with all the weights of crimes, not fearing lest by the confession of such atrocious offences you should incur a mark upon your reputation: what is it now, pray, that at our simple little admonition—which, however, had in itself not only no reproach but even a feeling of edification and love—I see you moved with such great indignation that you could not conceal it even in your face nor dissemble it by the serenity of your brow? Or was it perhaps that sentence which, while you were humbling yourself, you awaited from our mouth: the just man is his own accuser at the beginning of the discourse?
Accordingly, true humility of heart is to be retained, which descends not from an affected humiliation of body and words, but from the inmost lowliness of mind: which will then at last shine forth with the most evident tokens of its patience, when a man shall not himself have boasted of crimes about himself not to be believed by others, but shall have despised those arrogantly heaped upon him by another, and shall have borne the injuries inflicted on him with a meek equanimity of spirit. GERMANUS:
We desire to know how this tranquillity can be acquired or retained, so that, just as we shut the barriers of our mouth by imposing silence upon ourselves and restrain the licence of words, so also we may be able to guard the gentleness of the heart—which sometimes, even when the tongue is bridled, nevertheless loses inwardly the state of its placidity: and therefore we think that the good of meekness cannot be held by anyone otherwise than by the removal of the cell and by a solitary habitation. PIAMUN: True patience and tranquillity is neither acquired nor held without a profound humility of heart: which, if it has descended from this fountain, will need neither the benefit of a cell nor the refuge of solitude.
For it does not seek the protection of any external thing, being upheld inwardly by the virtue of humility, that is, of its own begetter and guardian. But if we are moved when provoked by anyone, it is certain that the foundations of humility are not firmly established within us, and therefore at the onset of even a slight tempest our building is shaken with a ruinous commotion. For patience would be neither praiseworthy nor admirable if it retained its purpose of tranquillity when assailed by no darts of enemies; but in this it is illustrious and glorious, that it perseveres immovable amid the storms of temptations rushing upon it.
For in that in which it is believed to be vexed and broken by adversities, in that rather it is strengthened; and in that in which it is thought to be blunted, in that it is the more sharpened. For no one is ignorant that patience is so called from the suffering and enduring of afflictions; and therefore it is agreed that no one can be pronounced patient except him who has borne without indignation all the things that shall have been inflicted upon him; and therefore not undeservedly is he praised by Solomon: better is the patient man than the strong, and he who restrains his anger than he who takes a city; and again: the long-suffering man is exceeding great in prudence, but the faint-hearted is very foolish.
When therefore anyone, overcome by an injury, is kindled by the fire of wrath, the bitterness of the affront brought upon him is not to be believed to have been the cause of his sin, but rather the manifestation of a hidden weakness—according to that parable of the Lord and Saviour which he sets forth concerning two houses, the one which was founded upon a rock and the other upon the sand; upon which he says that the whirlwinds of rains and rivers and tempests rushed equally: but that the one which was founded upon the solidity of the rock felt absolutely no harm from that so violent a collision, whereas the one which was built upon the shifting instability of the sands was at once overthrown.
Which clearly appears to have fallen not for the reason that it was struck by the inundation of rains or torrents, but because it was imprudently built upon the sand. For the holy man does not differ from the sinner in this, that he too is not tempted in like manner, but in this, that the one is not overcome even by a great assault, while the other is overcome even by a small temptation. For, as we have said, the fortitude of any just man would not be praiseworthy if he conquered untempted, since victory can by no means have place without the adversity of contests. For blessed is the man that endures temptation, because when he has been proved he shall receive the crown of life, which God has promised to them that love him.
According to the Apostle Paul too, virtue is perfected not in ease and delights, but in weakness. For behold, he says, I have set you this day as a fortified city, and as an iron pillar, and as a wall of brass, over all the land, against the kings of Judah, and its princes, and its priests, and all the people of the land. And they shall fight against you, and shall not prevail: for I am with you, says the Lord, to deliver you. Of this patience, then, I wish to set before you at least two examples: one of a certain religious woman, who followed after the virtue of patience with such eagerness that she not only did not avoid the assaults of temptations, but even procured for herself occasions of vexations, by which, being more frequently provoked, she might not give way.
For this woman, while she dwelt at Alexandria and had been born of no obscure ancestors, and in the house which had been left to her by her parents was religiously serving the Lord, came to Athanasius the bishop of blessed memory and besought him that he would give her some widow to nourish, who was fed at the expense of the Church. And, to express her petition in her own words: give me, she said, one of the sisters whom I may cherish.
The bishop then, when he had praised the woman's purpose, because he had seen her most ready for the work of mercy, ordered that there should be chosen out of all a widow who excelled all in honesty of character and in gravity and discipline; lest perchance the desire of the giver's bounty should be overcome by the vice of the recipient, and she who sought a reward should, being offended by the perverse morals of the needy woman, suffer loss of faith.
And when, having taken her home, she served her with all attentions, and had experienced the virtue of her modesty and gentleness, and saw that she was honoured by her at every moment with thanksgiving for her kindly service, after a few days she returned to the aforesaid bishop and said: I had asked you to command that there be given me one whom I might refresh and whom I might serve with obliging attentions.
And when he, not yet understanding the woman's purpose and desire, supposed that her petition had been neglected through the dissimulation of the steward, and inquired the causes of that delay not without agitation of his own mind, and had immediately learned that a widow more honourable than the rest had been assigned to her, he secretly commanded that there be handed over to her the one who was more worthless than all—one who, that is, might surpass in wrath, or in quarrels, or in drunkenness, or in loquacity all those whom these vices ruled.
When she had begun to have at home this woman, much more easily found and handed over to her, and to minister to her with the same diligence as to the former widow, or even more zealously, this alone she received from her in return for such great services: that she was continually afflicted with unworthy injuries, and was vexed by her with continual reproaches and revilings; the widow casting it in her teeth and rebuking her with slanderous detractions, because she had asked her from the bishop not for refreshment but rather for torment and insult, and had transferred herself more from rest to labour than from labour to rest.
When therefore the assiduity of the quarrels broke forth even to this point, that the shameless woman did not even refrain from the assault of hands, but the other doubled the offices of a humbler service, learning to conquer the raging woman not by resisting, but by more humbly subjecting herself, so that, provoked by manifold indignities, she might soothe the madness of the reviler with the meekness of kindness: being fully confirmed by these exercises, and having attained the perfect virtue of the patience she had desired.
she went to the aforesaid bishop to render him thanks both for the judgment of that choice and also for the benefit of her exercise, because at last, according to her desire, he had provided her a most worthy mistress of patience, by whose continual injuries, roborated daily as by a certain oil of the wrestling-ground, she had arrived at the highest patience of soul; saying: at last you have given me one whom I may refresh, for that former woman rather honoured and refreshed me by her services. Let it suffice to have said these things concerning the female sex, that by this commemoration we may not only be edified, but also confounded—we who cannot keep our patience unless we have been shut up, after the manner of wild beasts, in the cages of our cells.
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NuncaliudabbatisPafnutipandamusexemplum, quiinilliusinsignisetubiquepraedicabilisScitioticaeheremiinquanuncpresbyterestsecretistantostudiosemperinsedit, ut. eiceterianachoretaeBubalicognomenindiderint, eoquodingenitoutitadixerimdesideriosolitudinissemperhabitationeganderet .
Now let us set forth another example, that of Abbot Paphnutius, who in the secret places of that famous and everywhere renowned Scetic desert—in which he is now a presbyter—always sat with such great zeal that the other anchorites gave him the surname 'Buffalo,' because with an inborn, so to speak, desire of solitude he ever rejoiced in his habitation there.