attributed in one place to
Sisois in the form -- "Qui peregrinatio nostra est, ut teneat homo os
suum," which appears twice elsewhere as anonymous in the shorter
form "Peregrinatio est tacere." It seems likely in this case that the
longer form is the nearest to the words originally used. I have
endeavoured to give the sense of this saying -- translation I take to be
impossible -- in chapter xiv., number iii.
It is from the collections of these "words of the fathers," which have
been published by Rosweyd and Migne, that the greater part of the
translations in this volume are made. That they are genuine remains of
the teaching of the early monks of the Egyptain and South Palestinian
deserts I have no doubt whatever. At the same time, it is only fair to
warn the reader that these collections have never been critically edited,
and that other collections exist which have not yet been published. It is
much to be desired that some competent scholar would undertake the
labour of editing those which exist only in MS. and critically
examining the whole mass of this literature.
In order to appreciate fully the marvellous spiritual beauty of their
teaching, it is necessary for the modern reader, in the first place, to
realize that the hermits were actual living men, and to make an effort to
understand the kind of lives they lived. It is as a help to such effort that
I offer the first part of this introduction. In the second place, the reader
must try to clear his mind of certain prejudices which exist against the
hermits and their way of life. It is to the consideration of these
prejudices that I have given up the following portion of this
introduction.
II
When the "sumptuous" repast, which I have just described, was
finished, the abbot Serenus said to his guests, "Let us hear your
question." One of them replied, "We want to know what is the origin of
the great variety of hostile powers opposed to men and the difference
between them." In reply, the monk discussed for several hours the
nature of principalities and powers, of Beelzebub, of the Prince of Tyre
mentioned by Ezekiel, of Lucifer, and of the crowds of evil spirits
which hover in the atmosphere around us. Such questions and such
discussions inevitably raise in our minds a prejudice against the men
who engaged in them. We leap at once to the belief that there must
have been in their minds a tendency to fantastic and entirely barren
speculation. I am not inclined to either minimise or explain away the
fact that the whole literature of early Egyptian monasticism is shot
through and through with evidences of a belief in the reality,
personality, and power of demons. The monks believed that every
temptation which came to them was the work of a special demon. There
was the demon of anger, who provoked brethren to quarrel with one
another; there was the demon of despair, whose voice reminded the
penitent of former sins, and urged the impossibility of his salvation;
there was the demon who walked at noonday -- he lured the monk into
the sin of accidie; there were demons of gluttony, of pride, of vainglory,
of covetousness. The demons had the power of assuming appalling or
seducing forms, of becoming visible and palpable. Monks heard them
clamouring and roaring, felt their blows, smelt them when they were
present. Victorious fiends who had terrified their victims into
submission or lured them into sin vanished amid peals of derisive
laughter. Defeated, they departed with lamentable and awe-inspiring
shrieks. Men who had experienced the ferocity and insistence of these
powers of evil cannot be accused of being unpractical or merely
speculative when they discuss their nature. To the Egyptian monk the
power of devils was, except only the power of God, the most practical
and pressing question which could be discussed.
Yet, even if we grant this, our prejudice remains. The whole apparatus
of these powers of evil is strange and incredible to us. Good and evil as
tendencies or opposing principles we understand, or think we
understand. We smile at what seems the rude anthropomorphism which
sees a demon personally present in the natural cravings of a starved
body, and hears a voice through the broken sleep of a long series of
solitary nights. We dismiss such tales as no doubt meant to be true, but
in reality only the delusions resulting from prolonged fasts and the
morbid phenomena of hysterical enthusiasm. It would be possible, of
course, to urge, in defence of the hermits' beliefs, that the apostles
thought substantially as they did about the powers of evil. We might
parallel even such stories as that of the beating of St. Antony
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