An Overview History of Monasticism in the Early Church
Jewish
Monasticism
The Essene Community of Qumran, discovered
with the uncovering of the Dead Sea Scrolls, disproved the Protestant
contention that Christian Monasticism was a Pagan addition to the pure Jewish
practices of the Early Church once and for all. This discovery shows that they
not only had celibate asceticism, but a ritualized view of meal-covenants, and
extreme commitment to an expectation of the coming of a literal and singular Messiah
(Jerome Kodell, The Eucharist in the New Testament, pgs 46-48). How much they influenced the Early Church is still not
known, but the similarity of the Essene practices with the Baptism of John and
the general Messianic timbre of the time of Christ, leads us to see the
possibility of overlap between this highly organized, separate, ritualistic,
ascetic, and Messianic Jewish cult with the Early Jewish Church. (Williston Walker, The History of the Christian Church, pgs 15-16)
Early Christian Celibacy and Asceticism
As mentioned above, the “Virgins and Widows” of the Early Church were an
inherited prototype for the unmarried ascetic, St. Paul being the primary
supporter of this approach to Christian life, stating that it was, indeed, a
high calling and useful state for the service of the Christ (I Corinthians
7:25-40). With the collision of this way of life with the necessity of fleeing
into the dessert for safety during times of Imperial persecution, the first
evidence of unintentional dessert asceticism can be found at the close of the 2nd
century.
The Formalization of Christian Monasticism
With the conversion of Constantine and the “Edict of Milan”, the
immediate danger of “conversion of convenience” was first felt by the
Christians of the 4th Century. In response to this lowering of
standards and the problem of nominalism and unbelief in the “Popular Church”
after Constantine (IBID, pgs 97 &125), a new form of Christian piety began
to spread in popularity. The reasoning behind this was very simple – if Martyrs
had been the greatest expression of faith within the Early Church, and
martyrdom, the giving of one’s whole being in witness of faith in Christ, was
no longer available because of the new political acceptance, then the giving of
one’s self into a living state of complete and total dedication to Christ was
the next best thing.
Into this mentality came a man, St. Antony, a
wealthy Alexandrian by birth (251-356AD). One day in church he heard the Gospel
read, and as if Christ stood before him Himself, he heard, “Go, sell all that
you have and give to the poor, and follow me!” (Mark 10:21) St. Antony obeyed,
selling all that he had and giving it to the poor. He then followed the voice
of the Holy Spirit that he heard whispering in his heart into the dessert,
where, for 40 years, living in isolation, he battled demons, prayed for himself
and the world, and finally became a teacher and helper, a powerful and
insightful counselor, to all those who came to him from far and wide. A
community sprang up around him and the first Christian monastic community,
albeit a loose one, was born. St. Antony had no formal order, was not a priest
or bishop, and started no formal organization, but his individualistic and
radically charismatic way of life spread like wildfire throughout the newly
converted Roman Empire, transforming the popular devotion of the laity and
cleric alike. While the formal Church, weighed down by tens of thousands of new
converts, many of them becoming Christian for no better reason than to find
political favor, struggled to catechize and transform the worldliness of the
people by teaching of the model lives of the earlier saints, the monks headed
for the hills to start lives as intercessors, “working out their own salvation
with fear and trembling” (Philipians 2:12-13). They would “take up their cross”
to follow Christ (Matthew 16:24-26, Luke 9:23) and could “draw near to God by
overcoming the flesh” (IBID, pg 125). St. Athanasius later popularized monasticism in the West with his Latin
“Vita” of St. Anthony, which was possibly the most influential book within
Early Christianity beside the Bible in the Late Roman period of the West’s
decline.
St. Pachomius (292-346AD), a converted pagan soldier, originally
undertook the life of a hermit upon the inspiration of St. Antony, only to be
disappointed with the irregularity and lack of spiritual accountability of a life
in isolation. Based on a vision of a Christian way of life in contrast to the
world, he established the first Christian monastery in southern Egypt, near the
banks of the Nile in Tabennisi in 315-320AD. “Here all the inmates were knit
into a single body, having assigned hours, regular hours of worship, similar
dress, and cells close to one another – in a word, a life in common under an
abbot.” (IBID, pg 126) This structure was ultimately to win over the rest of
the Christian world, provide a society in which the world could be filtered out
and ignored, and operate a survival mechanism over centuries of prolonged
isolation for cultures that otherwise would have gone extinct under outside
pressure. Cenobite monasticism thus provided a cultural tool that civilizations
had previously lacked for the insurance of long-term survival - the state of
hibernation! Because of monasticism, the Christianity of the 4th and
5th centuries has survived until today, virtually unaltered, as a
witness of a time when Christianity was new, fresh, and still philosophically
controversial! This, along with the advent of the Skete on Mount Athos and its
use by the Hysechasts for the purpose of universal human salvation, makes group
asceticism not only a mechanism for the preservation of theology, practice, and
a way of life, but also the expression of Christianity’s highest
values.
The Stylites, fashioned after the ascetic practice of St. Symeon
Stylites (died 459AD) – Brought radical isolation and asceticism into the
public square, quite literally, by building towers in which they could not lay
down or rest, and thus suspended, isolated from the world, preach to the
thousands who would come to see them every day. The fame of St. Symeon was such
that all that remains of his famous tower is one large boulder that could not
be carted away! St. Symeon brought new meaning to the words “in the world but
not of it” as his feat of monastic self-exhibition brought more pagans and
theologically confused Christians into direct contact with extreme ascesis and
the preaching of the Gospel than anyone before. Only with the advent of
pilgrimages to the hermitages of wonder-working fathers would anyone manage to
effect more people from a state of “isolation”.
St. Basil’s, the Great Cappadocian Father, popularized monasticism with
a “Rule” of his own composition (later thought by scholars to be a compilation
of many of his writing on the subject), based upon his admiration of Origen’s
contemplative principles, his own mystical contemplation and experience, and
his secularly active life of asceticism in the founding of orphanages and the
first hospitals. St. Basil’s “Rule” focused on a sharing an ascetic “life in
common, work, prayer, and Bible reading” (IBID, p. 126), and was thus
eminently practical, flexible, and helpful for the channeling of monkish energy
into ecclesiastically beneficial routes, a problem for which the Eastern Church
was never able to find a completely satisfying solution. Even with the wide
reception of this rule, the monks of Constantinople often ended up on opposing
political sides, inspiring revolt, and on more than one occasion, taking up
arms against one another, inciting riots, civil destruction and mass murder.
While the founder of their “rule” would have never allowed it, the burning of
the first Hagia Sophia was thus accomplished, by monks and laity of the “Blue”
and “Green” parties, monks who were most often noted for their cheering at
chariot races!
Sts. Jerome, Ambrose, and Augustine all championed monasticism, all
living secularly active celibate lives, but it did not capture the practical
Latin sentiment for another two hundred years, when the Roman Commonwealth completely
fell apart in Barbarian conquest and the Monastery became the last surviving
cultural and economic link with the Roman Empire. These “cultural outposts”,
infused with consistency and systematic living by the “Rule” of St. Benedict,
became the active cultural agents within the newly Christianized barbarian
lands of the North, which quickly became more Roman than the best Italians.
This transference of the Roman attitudes of cultural superiority, order, and
military-like drive for conquest, subjection, and authority into Barbarian
lands by the success of the monastery’s excessive discipline would later
manifest as the primary cultural context for the rise of a Frankish Papacy and
the eventual splitting of Christendom into Eastern and Western parts.
St. Martin of Tours lived its ideals in France, establishing a monastery
near Poitiers in 362, and was thus received as its exponent in the popular
imagination of primitive European society because of his miracles and good
works. His dream of Christ as a man whom St. Martin had given half of his
cloak, a “chaplet”, inspired the veneration of the cloak in France, and became
the origin of the word we now identify with small churches with in English – Chapel!
Eusebius, Bishop of Vercelli in Italy, (D371AD) began the practice of
requiring the clergy of his cathedral to live a monastic life, which helped to
change the perception of monasticism as the exclusive domain of the laity (IBID,
pg 126). This change of perception would eventually become another one of the
great differences between the East and West, and contribute to the alienation
that led to the Schism.
The great reformer of Western Monasticism was St. Benedict of Nursia
(480-547AD), who lived as a solitary monk, was abbot of an unnamed monastery
for some time, and then established his own monastery in Monte Cassio, where he
wrote his “Rule” in 529AD. Benedict believed that the primary responsibility of
monasticism was worship, not contemplation, bringing to asceticism the vigorous
aspect and ecclesiastical center that it had lacked in the East. His “Rule” was
a document with profound social and religious implications. By his injunction
that “idleness is the enemy of the soul”, monasteries became centers of
industry, learning, and the preservation of culture, which would, in the end,
prove to be the salvation of the Roman Culture in the West. The economic system
that these monasteries created can be credited with the singlehanded
preservation of the Roman culture, mentality, and literary inheritance through
the Dark Ages, not only in Italy, but also in France, Germany, and the most
famous examples of all, in Ireland. (IBID pg 127). “The highest proof of its
adaptation to the later Roman Empire and the Middle Ages was that not only the
best men supported the institution: they were found in it.” (IBID, pg 128)
Can you include a works cited to help clarify the identity of THOTCC and TEITNT?
ReplyDeleteI updated it to reflect the two sources clearly, Philip. Thanks for pointing this out! This was originally part of a much larger work, so it lacked the reference context on its own. The two works were Williston Walker's "The History of the Christian Church" and Jerome Kodell's "The Eucharist in the New Testament."
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