and land connected the provinces of the Roman world; and the life of Hilarion displays the facility with which an indigent hermit of Palestine might traverse Egypt, embark for Sicily, escape to Kpirus, and finally settle in the island of Cyprus.[1] The Latin Christians embraced the religious institutions of Rome. The pilgrims, who visited Jerusalem, eagerly copied, in the most distant climates of the earth, the faithful model of the monastic life. The disciples of Antony spread themselves beyond the tropic, over the Christian empire of Ethiopia.[2] The monastery of Banchor,[3] in Flintshire, which contained above two thousand brethren, dispersed a numerous colony among the Barbarians of Ireland;[4] and Iona, one of the Hebrides, which was planted by the Irish monks, diffused over the northern regions a doubtful ray of science and superstition.[5]
These unhappy exiles from social life were impelled by the dark and implacable genius of superstition. Their mutual resolution was supported by the example of millions, of either sex, of every age, and of every rank; and each proselyte, who entered the gates of a monastery, was persuaded that he trod the steep and thorny path of eternal happiness.[6] But the- ↑ When Hilarion sailed from Parætonium to Cape Pachynus, he offered to pay his passage with a book of the Gospels. Posthumian, a Gallic monk, who had visited Egypt, found a merchant-ship bound from Alexandria to Marseilles, and performed the voyage in thirty days (Sulp. Sever. Dialog, i. 1). Athanasius, who addressed his Life of St. Antony to the foreign monks, was obliged to hasten the composition, that it might be ready for the sailing of the fleets (tom. ii. p. 451).
- ↑ See Jerom (tom. i. p. 126), Assemanni, Bibliot. Orient. tom. iv. p. 92, p. 857-919, and Geddes, Church History of Æthiopia, p. 29, 30, 31. The Abyssinian monks adhere very strictly to the primitive institution.
- ↑ Camden's Britannia, vol. i. p. 666, 667.
- ↑ All that learning can extract from the rubbish of the dark ages is copiously stated by Archbishop Usher, in his Britannicarum Ecclesiarum Antiquitates, cap. xvi. p. 425-503.
- ↑ This small though not barren spot, Iona, Hy, or Columbkill, only two miles in length, and one mile in breadth, has been distinguished, 1. By the monastery of St. Columba, founded A.D. 566, whose abbot exercised an extraordinary jurisdiction over the bishops of Caledonia; 2. By a classic library, which afforded some hopes of an entire Livy; and, 3. By the tombs of sixty kings, Scots, Irish and Norwegians; who reposed in holy ground. See Usher (p. 311, 360-370) and Buchanan (Rer. Scot. l. ii. p. 15, edit. Ruddiman).
- ↑ Chrysostom (in the first tome of the Benedictine edition) has consecrated three books to the praise and defence of the monastic life. He is encouraged, by the example of the ark, to presume that none but the elect (the monks) can possibly be saved (l. i. p. 55, 56). Elsewhere indeed he becomes more merciful (l. iii. p. 83, 84) and allows different degrees of glory, like the sun, moon, and stars. In this lively comparison of a king and a monk (l. iii. p. 116-121) he supposes (what is hardly fair) that the king will be more sparingly rewarded and more rigorously punished.
