runners of the Christian monks. But it is more likely that similar causes led to similar effects than that in either case there was direct imitation. Alexandria was a centre of highly artificial civilisation; the desert was close at hand for those who desired to escape from the corrupting influences of city life. The country that had Therapeutæ before the Church appeared, and later dervishes under the Mohammedan régime, might naturally invite to similar practices in Christian times. We need not always assign the most strenuous motives to this movement. Doubtless there have always been men and women drawn to solitude by its own fascination, like Thoreau in his Walden; there have always been lovers of nature who preferred the country to the town.
Fresh light has been recently thrown on the lives and manners of the early Christian ascetics, especially in Egypt, by the publication of The Lausiac History of Palladius, a series of biographical sketches of monks, many of whom the writer had known personally, with some of whom he had shared their cells for a time, while he obtained information about others from reports of their disciples. Palladius was born in Galatia in the year 367; he visited the Egyptian ascetics in 388, spending three years among them. All this was in his youth. Subsequently he visited ascetics in other parts, and he wrote his book in the year 420.[1]
The earliest fugitives to the Egyptian desert simply retired before persecution without any ascetic design.[2] The first of the actual hermits is said to have been Paul, who lived in a cave near the Red Sea and was
- ↑ It was dedicated to Lausus, a chamberlain at the court of Theodosius ii. Hence the name by which it is now known. Its amazing stories have led to its being regarded by some—especially Weingarten and Lucius—as a pure fabrication. But Dom Cuthbert Butler has vindicated its genuineness. The whole question of monkish marvels must be determined with regard to many considerations of hypnotism, telepathy, the sub-conscious ego, inaccuracy of observation, curious ideas as to the obligation of truth. We cannot doubt the genuineness of the life of St. Martin of Tours by Sulpicius Severus; yet that book offers us miracles galore.
- ↑ Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. vi. 42.
