The Wisdom of the Desert | Page 5

his life to receive no
visitors under any pretext whatever. For most of the monks, however,
the arrival of a stranger was a comparatively rare occurrence.
Sometimes, if his cell lay between two great settlements, he would be
called upon to entertain brethren who were travelling from one to the
other. If he lived within reach of any town, clergy and pious laity came
occasionally to his cell as to a kind of retreat, looking for spiritual
refreshment from his words, and participation in his prayers. Aspirants
after the glories of the monastic life visited hermits, of whom they
happened to have heard, in search of advice. On all such occasions it
was the duty of the hermit to entertain his visitors. Hospitality was as
much a duty in the Egyptian deserts in the fourth century as in the
mediaeval monasteries of the Benedictines. The monk brought out his
little store of dainties and spread a "feast" for his guests. Here is the
account of a "sumptuous repast" offered to a traveller. "He set before us
salt and three olives each, after which he produced a basket containing
parched vetches, from which we each took five grains. Then we had
two prunes and a fig a piece. When we had finished our repast, he said
to us, 'Now, let me hear your question.'" The hermit not only afforded
his guest the best food at his command, but, in a true spirit of
hospitality, he ate with him. Very often this necessitated breaking a fast
which he was keeping, or departing from his ordinary rule of life.
Sometimes, for the sake of his guests, he even omitted portions of his
evening prayers, or said them secretly after his visitors had gone to
sleep; for the duty of hospitality came before almost every other.
Sometimes the monks themselves deliberately broke the monotony of
their lives, and went on an expedition to visit some renowned saint.
They did so to seek advice for the conquering of some besetting sin, or
to inquire the meaning of a passage of Holy Scripture over which they
had long meditated in vain. Often they asked vaguely for "a word," so
they called it, from the saint; that is, for any exhortation that might be

offered, any fruit of a religious experience deeper than their own. These
answers, or "words," were eagerly treasured in the memories of those
who heard them. They passed from mouth to mouth as opportunities for
intercourse occurred. The brethren in a laura were eager to hear from a
returning monk what he had learned on his visit. Thus we read of the
brethren in the Scetic desert crowding round St. Macarius on his return
from the "inner mountain," and plying him with so many questions that
he was interrupted in his account of what St. Antony had said to him.
Naturally collections of specially striking sayings and anecdotes came
to be made in the various lauras. I imagine that quite early in the fourth
century the monks took a pride in remembering as many as possible of
the "words" which they had heard. Soon collections of them began to
be written down, and probably before the end of the fourth century
there existed in the greater lauras written lists of famous sayings. These
local collections embodied stories from all sources, and very frequently
the names of the original authors are altogether lost. In the course of the
fifth century larger collections came to be made, probably by travellers
who either had the opportunity of inspecting local collections or heard
the stories from old monks. If we believe that the collection given by
Rosweyd in Book III. of his Vitae Patrum was actually made by
Rufinus himself, we have one dating from the end of the fourth century.
In these larger collections the stories are arranged in one of two ways,
either they are grouped under the names of their authors, where these
are known, or in chapters according to the subjects they deal with. Thus,
in the great Greek collection, (published in Migne P.G. LXV.) all the
anecdotes bearing the name of St. Antony are grouped together, and
those with the name of Besarion together, and so on. In the collections
of which Rosweyd published Latin translations, all the stories
illustrating, for instance, such virtues as humility and patience come
together, without regard to the names of their authors. That these
various collections were made independently of each other, and from
different sources, is seen in the fact that anecdotes which are quoted as
anonymous in one collection bear the name of an author in another.
Sometimes the same saying is attributed to different authors, and
sometimes what is substantially the same story appears in several
different forms. Thus there is a fine saying