and disgusting; every sensation that is offensive to man was thought acceptable to God; and the angelic rule of Tabenne condemned the salutary custom of bathing the limbs in water and of anointing them with oil.[1] The austere monks slept on the ground, on a hard mat or a rough blanket; and the same bundle of palm-leaves served them as a seat in the day and a pillow in the night. Their original cells were low narrow huts, built of the slightest materials; which formed, by the regular distribution of the streets, a large and populous village, inclosing within the common wall a church, an hospital, perhaps a library, some necessary offices, a garden, and a fountain or reservoir of fresh water. Thirty or forty brethren composed a family of separate discipline and diet; and the great monasteries of Egypt consisted of thirty or forty families.
Their diet Pleasure and guilt are synonymous terms in the language of the monks; and they had discovered, by experience, that rigid fasts and abstemious diet are the most effectual preservatives against the impure desires of the flesh.[2] The rules of abstinence, which they imposed, or practised, were not uniform or perpetual: the cheerful festival of the Pentecost was balanced by the extraordinary mortification of Lent; the fervour of new monasteries was insensibly relaxed; and the voracious appetite of the Gauls could not imitate the patient and temperate virtue of the Egyptians.[3] The disciples of Antony and Pachomius were satisfied with their daily pittance[4] of twelve ounces of bread, or rather biscuit,[5] which they divided into two frugal- ↑ Some partial indulgences were granted for the hands and feet. "Totum autem corpus nemo unguet nisi causâ infirmitatis, nec lavabitur aquâ nudo corpore, nisi languor perspicuus sit." (Regul. Pachom. xcii. part i. p. 78.)
- ↑ St. Jerom, in strong, but indiscreet, language, expresses the most important use of fasting and abstinence: "Non quod Deus universitatis Creator et Dominus, intestinorum nostrorum rugitu, et inanitate ventris, pulmonisque ardore delectetur, sed quod aliter pudicitia tuta esse non possit" (Op. tom. i. p. 137, ad Eustochium [Ep. 22]). See the twelfth and twenty-second Collations of Cassian, de Castitate, and de Illusionibus Nocturnis.
- ↑ Edacitas in Græcis gula est, in Gallis natura (Dialog, i. c. 4, p. 521). Cassian fairly owns that the perfect model of abstinence cannot be imitated in Gaul, on account of the acrum temperies, and the qualitas nostræ fragilitatis (Institut. iv. 11). Among the Western rules, that of Columbanus is the most austere; he had been educated amidst the poverty of Ireland, as rigid perhaps, and inflexible, as the abstemious virtue of Egypt. The Rule of Isidore of Seville is the mildest: on holidays he allows the use of flesh.
- ↑ "Those who drink only water and have no nutritious liquor ought, at least, to have a pound and a half (twenty-four ounces) of bread every day." State of Prisons, p. 40, by Mr. Howard.
- ↑ See Cassian, Collat. l. ii. 19, 20, 21. The small loaves, or biscuit, of six ounces
