INTROD. the influence of eastern monasticism. His youthful imagination was fascinated by the fame of that remote and solitary region of the Thebaïs, where, in strange contrast to the prevailing tone of society in the fourth century, the saintly and contemplative life was lived with almost unprecedented austerity. Along with Germanus he penetrated to those burning solitudes. The enthusiasm of the youthful adventurers was in no way diminished by what they there heard and witnessed; and, during a residence of ten years in Palestine and in Egypt, they both submitted to the ascetic discipline and ratified their choice by their mature sanction. It was not until the year 404 that Cassian returned to mingle again with men; but the reputation acquired by his previous life at once marked him out for distinguished service in the Church, and he was forthwith appointed on a mission from Constantinople to Rome which had for its main object the suppression of the Arian heresy. He does not appear, after this time, to have returned to the East, but took up his resiHis Colla- dence at Marseilles. There, in his Collationes, he committed to writing the record of conversations which, in former years, tiones and Institu tiones. he and Germanus had held with eminent anchorites and fathers of the East. There also he founded the famous monastery of St. Victor, and assisted in that of the yet more celebrated society on the neighbouring island of Lérins ; while in the volume of his Institutiones he drew up the rules for their observance-a code which, down to the time when it gave place to that of St. Benedict, is to be regarded as the law of monasticism in Gaul. Hitherto, as he himself tells us, that law had been vague and fluctuating; every monastery had a rule of its own: to Cassian therefore is to be ascribed the original character of those institutions which, for good or for evil, have exercised so powerful an influence on the history of Christianity in Europe. The distrust shewn by the Church of his day of pagan learning was fully shared, perhaps largely increased, by Cassian, but it is evident that his sentiments were not dictated by the aversion of unlettered ignorance. The disciple of St. Chrysostom, he had in his youth studied ardently the His teach ing with respect to pagan literature. masterpieces of Greek learning and eloquence; and in after INTROD. life he found it easier to deplore than to shake off their early fascination. In one of his Collationes his friend Germanus is represented as consulting the abbat Nestorus on the best means of expelling the recollections of profane authors from the mind. He complains that even in the hours of devout meditation these memories will often intrude. The poetic strains, the idle stories, the martial narratives of this forbidden literature rise up and distract his soul. They drag him down from heavenly contemplations; tears are unavailing to wash them away.' The reply of the abbat is not ill-conceived. Read,' he says, 'the sacred books with the same ardour that thou once didst those of heathen writersand then thou shalt be freed from the influence of the latter.' An ominous reply, however, as Kaufmann justly observes, for the fate of letters in the monasteries of Gaul. The sanctification of the heart was Cassian's professed aim; and we find him contrasting the spiritual elevation and profitable thoughts which the discipline of the monastery under his guidance would be likely to develope in its members, with the barren teaching of the rhetorician. Nowhere indeed is the influence of his oriental experiences more clearly to be discerned than in his theory of the right method of arriving at divine truth. He cast aside the com- His theory mentators and directed his monks to give themselves to in relation fasting, prayer, and meditation, in order to attain to an enlightened understanding of Scripture. Such an understand 16 2 nunc mens mea poeticis vel infecta carminibus, illas fabularum nugas historiasque bellorum quibus a parvulo primis studiorum imbuta est rudimentis, orationis etiam tempore meditetur, psallentique, vel pro peccatorum indulgentia supplicanti aut impudens poematum memoria suggeratur, aut quasi bellantium heroum ante oculos imago versetur, taliumque me phantasmatum imaginatio semper eludens, ita mentem meam ad supernos intuitus aspirare non patitur, ut quotidianis fletibus non possit expelli.' Collatio XIV, c. 12 (Migne, xlix 74). 2 Monachum ad Scripturarum notitiam pertingere cupientem nequaquam debere labores suos erga commentatorum libros impendere, sed potius omnem mentis industriam et intentionem cordis erga emundationem vitium carnalium detinere. Quibus expulsis confestim cordis oculi, sublato velamine passionum, sacramenta Scripturarum velut naturaliter incipient contemplari. to the study of the Scriptures. The four senses. INTROD. ing, he held, was not easy of attainment, but had purposely been rendered difficult in order that its very possession might serve to distinguish the sanctified from unregenerate natures. The purport of the Scriptural narrative, which he designated as the historical sense, was, he admitted, obvious to all: it was written that he that ran might read. But beyond or within this lay hidden what he termed a tropological sense; then an allegorical, and finally an anagogical, sense;1 and these different senses revealed themselves only to him who read with the mental illumination proceeding from a sanctified and purified heart. Such illumination, such Scriptural knowledge, were regarded by Cassian as the ultimate aim of the monastic discipline, and in comparison with these all other studies sank into insignificance. He does not, indeed, appear altogether to have proscribed knowledge which might prove of service to the learner in enabling him to understand more correctly the historical sense; but as this same historical sense ranked lowest in his estimation, so all studies that were subsidiary to this alone suffered in his view a corresponding depreciation. His theory of the religious life betrays its oriental origin in its marked similarity to the Neo-Platonic theory of the philosophic life; and there is one passage, wherein he adverts to the exaltation of the soul when absorbed in prayer, which recalls very forcibly the ecstasis of Plotinus. He enjoins active and laborious duties on the monk. But while Cassian undoubtedly regarded the contemplative life as the highest, he seems to have considered, like Aristotle, that the active life was indispensable as a preliminary to the more advanced stage. He held with the eastern proverb, that the industrious spirit is assailed by but one devil-the idle, by a legion. Hence laborious duties and hard, even painful, toil were strictly enjoined upon the monk. When not occupied with religious services or the study of the Bible, he was bound to devote himself to preInstitutiones, v 34. The sense, Cassian held, was often revealed in dreams. Collat. XIV 10. 1 ‘. . . in duas dividitur partes, id est, in historicam interpretationem et intelligentiam spiritalem Spiritalis autem scientiae genera sunt, tropologia, allegoria, anagoge.' Coll. VIII 3. scribed menial tasks. The severity of the labour thus im- INTROD. posed, especially during the novitiate, is one of the harshest features of Cassian's rule, and was wisely mitigated by St. Benedict. monastery The fundamental conception of his rule was in harmony The with the whole discipline. Cassian looked upon the monas- a school for tery as a school where, by the study of the Scriptures and the heaven. instruction of their elders, youth were to be educated to a holy life; and just as the studies of the schoolboy are designed to prepare him for the trials and duties of manhood, so the monk, who has renounced the present world and whose aims and hopes are centered in heaven, was to be trained solely with reference to a future existence. The same theory pervades the rule of St. Benedict; it confronts us again, though with a less rigorous interpretation, in the commentary on the Benedictine rule, drawn up by Rabanus Maurus; it was maintained and defended by the eminent Dominican, Thomas Aquinas, Cassian's warm admirer; and, however its interpretation may have been modified or varied, must be regarded as the prevailing theory of the religious education throughout the mediaeval era. The foregoing outline will serve in some measure to explain the fact that, in spite of its affinities to the oriental spirit, the rule of Cassian nevertheless made its way under the domination of the half-Christianised Frank. The Frank Points in which the could respect a high morality, and in these communities rule of which now began to rise throughout Gaul he found it. He Cassian despised the dreaming asceticism of the East, but in the ised with laborious, hard-faring, and self-denying monks of the West the there was an energy of resolve and action which accorded character. with his own nature. The beauties of classic literature and the refinements and subtleties of Gallic culture lay beyond the range of his intellectual appreciation, but the simple 1 'Ergo, sicut in schola pueri cum disciplina quae illis necessaria sunt discunt et quae in futuro prosint capiunt, ita et monachi in monasterii regularis schola et quae eos in praesenti honeste vivere faciant et quae in futuro felices reddant, discere sagaciter et efficaciter debent implere.' Rabanus Maurus, Comment. in Regulam S. Benedicti, Opera, vi 257. harmon Frankish Rapid progress of monasticism in Gaul in the fifth and sixth centuries. INTROD. narrative and moral grandeur of the Gospels and the fervid eloquence of the prophets appealed forcibly to his heart. And thus, notwithstanding the justice of Ozanam's assertion, that monasticism is alien to the genius of the French character an assertion that may be made with at least equal truth in relation to our English forefathers-monastic foundations in Frankland, as in England, multiplied and grew even in the age of invasion and conquest. As the Frankish supremacy successively extended itself from the Rhine to the Meuse, from the Meuse to the Somme, from the Somme to the Loire, and from the Loire to the Garonne, while the schools of the rhetoricians died out, new monasteries rose throughout the land. Before the close of the fourth century, St. Martin-who may be regarded as the founder of the monastery in Gaul, as Cassian was the author of the monastic discipline-had already instituted the societies of Ligugé near Poitiers and that of Marmoutiers near Tours. Then, with the commencement of the fifth century, there rose under Honoratus, on the island that still bears his name,' the monastery which preeminently reflected the best features in Cassian's influence, and from whence proceeded the great majority of those distinguished men who, known as the Insulani,2 still imparted lustre to the history of southern Gaul. From these islands the movement extended itself along the valley of the Rhone, and from Marmoutiers along that of the Loire; so that when, in the latter part of the sixth century, St. Maur introduced the Benedictine rule into Frankland, the monastery was already a familiar institution in Burgundy and Aquitaine. Still charged, however, with much of the original oriental influences, the movement seems to have faltered as it encountered the rude northern blasts; for while 240 monastic communities are enumerated as existing, at this period, in the country south of the Loire, only ten appear to have been as yet founded in the wide tract that lies between the Vosges and the Rhine. 1 The Isle de St. Honorat, one of the Lérins group off Cannes. 2 The Studium Insulanum was famous in the fifth and sixth centuries; see Bingham, Eccles. Antiq. vII ii 14. |