The first monasteries of the Christian world appeared in the western part of the Roman Empire soon after Emperor Constantine made Christianity the state religion. But they were approved with great difficulty and under the most dramatic circumstances.
A significant part of the population of the late Roman Empire opposed its policies, and their protest took a religious form. Among the first Christians, a group of hermits-monks arose, breaking with society and leaving for the mountains and deserts. For them, relationships built on violence and worship of traditional gods were unacceptable.
The desert is better than the army
For slaves and poor people, the new religion, with its postulates of non-violence and the imminent onset of the kingdom of God on earth, was attractive. The choice of such people was an ascetic way of life and constant prayers to the good God Jesus Christ. They literally followed the words of the latter: retire to a secluded place, devoting yourself to prayers for deliverance from the hardships of a sinful world.
In the 3rd century, a monastic movement arose in Egypt. One of the influential figures of this time was Paul the Hermit of Thebes. Saint Jerome later claimed that Paul was the first Christian hermit. Other sources call St. Anthony as such. The latter is known to have left a wealthy home around 290 and settled in an empty grave on a hilltop in a desert area. His example was followed by other Egyptian Christians who settled nearby and chose Antony as their head. But they gathered only for joint services, conducted according to the rules invented by Anthony.
Another Egyptian enthusiast, named Pachomius, organized the first monasteries, in which there were several thousand monks of both sexes. Then monastic Christian monasteries arose in Palestine. The motives of the people were very different: the fanatical piety of the first Christians, the hardships of life, personal disorder and unwillingness to serve in the army of the emperor.
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No place for sinners
Hermitage was often accompanied by savage self-torture, voluntary hunger, rejection of carnal love, up to castration. According to the conviction of the first monks, such measures of self-restraint are necessary in order to avoid the punishment of God for those who could not resist secular temptations. The common point was the impatient anticipation of the imminent appearance of the resurrected God-man Christ in the flesh and the establishment by Him of the millennial kingdom on earth. Among the adepts of monasticism there were sometimes noble people. The letters of the poet Osonius to his friend Paulin, also a poet and senator, have survived, who announced the renunciation of his wealth and retired to a monastic monastery. Osoniy bitterly regrets the decision of Paulin and his wife, who broke with the life of the aristocracy and chose the path of ascetics. Paulin wrote in response that he began to avoid noisy city gatherings and bustle of churches,who can compete with the crowds at the Forum”.
Saint Jerome, who made a great contribution to the formation of church and monastic life by his labors, recalled his own and similar experience of hermits: “My unwashed loins were covered with a shapeless hair shirt; my skin, due to long neglect, has become rough and black like an Ethiopian. Tears and screams were my lot every day. And when sleep overcame my resistance, and my eyes stuck together, I sank to the bare ground. " Jerome explained his departure from the world by the fact that "the world in the material sense belongs to violence."
Bishop Athanasius of Alexandria played a prominent role in the theological disputes of the mid-4th century. In 341, he and two monks appeared in Rome, and then for the first time the Romans saw hermit monks, unlike most Christians. He became the author of The Life of Anthony, in which real facts are mixed with fantasy. This was the first example of the genre of the lives of the saints, which became the literary fashion of this time. The enthusiast of monasticism Augustine the Blessed became famous, having gathered a group of priests in North Africa for community life. He created a treatise "On the Works of Monks", in which he argued that monks should earn a living by hard work, not begging, and, moreover, constantly study the Holy Scriptures, taking the example of the apostles and martyrs for their faith.
European affairs
In Western Europe, one of the first monasteries was founded by a former soldier, Saint Martin of Tours, circa 360 in Ligouges near Poitiers, France. Martin imitated Antony, and his monastery also had a mixture of community and hermitism. Monks lived in caves and tents, meeting during common prayers and meals, and observed fasts. There began a regular rewriting of manuscripts with the Gospel texts, which gave rise to a new tradition that spread to other monasteries. The copying of sacred manuscripts became a contribution of monasticism to the education system of late Antiquity and then the Middle Ages. The cult of Saint Martin arose after the writing of his biography by the Christian author Sulpicius Severus of Gaul. It describes the miracles and death of Martin, which proved in the eyes of his contemporaries the possibility of holy asceticism in Europe, and not only in Egypt. Sulpicius, a wealthy senator, created a new monastery in his domain. His efforts were aimed at strengthening the power of bishops, heads of monastic communities. They were among the ruling elite of late Roman society.
Saint Jerome also contributes to the strengthening of monasticism. In the 370s he founded a community of hermits in northern Italy, in Aquileia. Then he went to Palestine and there, in Bethlehem, he created a new monastery. He developed the rules of monastic life, which were then guided by the leaders of many monastic brotherhoods. Close-knit monastic communities soon emerged, subject to strict rules. This tendency was supported by the Christian emperors, who benefited from the creation of such monasteries as large farms that produce food and preach the subordination of believers to power supposedly coming from God. But the internal order of the monasteries did not always correspond to their formal charter. Jerome in his sermons and letters denounced the insincerity of many monks in matters of faith, their tendency to drunkenness and gluttony, vanity. At the same time, he expressed concernthat bad monks would compromise the very Christian ideas he vigorously defended. The ancient pagan author Eunapius reported that pagan shrines were being destroyed by Christian monks, whom he called tyrants who lived like pigs. At that time, they were criticized by many for begging and laziness. The pagan author Zosimus considered monks to be a parasitic group, useless to the state.
You can't run away from yourself
The Spiritual Synod, held in Asia Minor in 340, expressed regret for the rare visits of monks to general church services. Pope Siricius argued that the monks are not real Christians, but impostors. In some imperial decrees of the first period of Christianization, the inhabitants of the monasteries were declared fanatics and recalcitrant rebels. A case is described when in Alexandria during the reign of Emperor Valens II, Bishop Lucius ordered to severely punish monks for evading church life. As a result, some hermits paid with their lives for their choice. The Emperor Julian compared the monks to pagan cynics, seeing them as "disturbing insolent vagabonds." But the emperor Constantius II in 361 showed patronage to the monks, relieving them of public duties.
Emperor Valentinian forbade men to leave their estates in the countryside and take monastic vows without the permission of the landowners. And in 390 the emperor of Theodosia ordered to keep the monks at a distance from the cities and ordered them to stay in deserted and secluded places. For the empire, the monastic vow of celibacy was dangerous, which meant the risk of population decline. This led to a weakening of the state's defense in the face of frequent invasions of barbarian tribes.
An interesting fact, when the patrician Blesilla died, on whom Jerome had a great influence, a rumor arose that death was accelerated by the woman's asceticism, which he inspired. At the funeral, shouts were heard: "Monks to the Tiber!" Jerome hastily left Rome. The decline in the number of marriages and births in connection with the emergence of monasticism has become a serious problem for the state. The statement of one of the popes has survived: "The monks completed what the Goths began."
Magazine: Mysteries of History №41. Author: Arkady Tsoglin