Deicolæ brought under rule. able property, for almsgiving, and to dispose of it as they please by their wills.24 The object of this rule was certainly to bring the secular clergy of this town to live a cœnobitical life, but with such canonical relaxations as would both allow it to be considerably modified towards certain of the body, and to permit the recluses, though not expressly named, to be included within it; but the new canonical life became so popular, that the rule was revised and enlarged, so as to adapt it to the state of the clergy generally, and enable it to be extended over the whole church. This revised rule consists of eighty-six chapters. By the thirteenth it is provided that within the cloisters there shall be dormitories, refectories, cellars and other habitations; that all shall sleep in one dormitory, living as brethren in one society, except those to whom the bishop shall give leave to sleep separately on separate couches in their own dwellings in the cloister, with seniors among them to watch over them; and that no female or laic shall enter the cloister. Chapter thirty-nine bears that, as there is an evil zeal of bitterness which separates from God and leads to destruction, so there is a good zeal which separates from vice and leads to God and eternal life: therefore they ought to exercise zeal with the most fervent love, as servants of God (Servi Dei). The eighty-first chapter, however, deals directly with the Deicola, with the view of bringing them under the canonical rule. It consists of the epistle of a certain Deicola, sent in the name of Christ to the priests and clerics for their instruction and exhortation; and it is addressed to the beloved priests in the churches of Christ, the therein everywhere, and their living in the whole world.' 25 24 Hefele, Concilien Geschichte, vol. iv. p. 18. 25 Dilectissimis sacerdotibus ec bishops and all the clergy servants, and to all the Deicola He begs of them that, 'living clesiarum Christi præsulibus et cunctis cleris in eisdem ubique et famulantibus et Deicolis omnibus per totum mundum degentibus. justly, piously and holily, they should show a good example to others, and live with soul, heart and body under the canonical rule.' He exhorts 'all clerics under them to give humble obedience, and endeavour to fulfil the canonical rule without murmuring, serving the Lord willingly; seeing that every man ought to be subject to the higher powers and those put over them, how much more should they, as servants of God (Servi Dei), humbly obey their provosts?' He finally exhorts them to be mindful of the canonical rules, and to have their precepts always before their eyes.' 26 By the General Council held at Aix-la-Chapelle in 816 and 817, this canonical rule was adopted, and a number of canons were passed to give effect to it, with some modifications. They begin with the 114th canon. The 117th canon provides that each bishop must see that the cloister in which his clerics live is enclosed with a strong wall; the 120th, that those clerics who possess property of their own and an income from the church shall receive from the community their daily food only, with a share of the oblations. Those who have no private means are entirely supported and clothed. By the 135th, the boys and youths who are educated in the canonry shall be well cared for and instructed, be placed under a senior canon and dwell together in the upper floor of a house. By the 141st, each bishop must provide a hospital for the poor and strangers, and each cleric shall give the tenth of what he received for its support. By the 142d, canons are allowed to have separate dwellings, and proper places shall be provided for the aged and the sick within the canonry; and by the 144th, women must not enter the dwellings and the cloister, with the exception of the church.27 the Saxon In the early English Church we find the name Deicola Deicolæ in in a Saxon form applied to a community of solitaries. We Church. find it stated in the Peterborough MS. of the Anglo-Saxon 26 D'Achery, Spicilegium, vol. i. p. 565. 27 Hefele, Concilien Geschichte, vol. iv. p. 10. Chronicle, in the year 655, that 'Peada, king of the Mercians, and Oswiu, the brother of King Osuald, came together and said that they would rear a monastery to the glory of Christ and the honour of St. Peter; and they did so, and gave it the name of Medeshamstede,' now Peterborough. In 657 the monastery was finished, and consecrated by Deusdedit, archbishop of Canterbury, in the presence of King Wulfhere, the brother and successor of King Peada, and his earls and thanes. There were also present four bishops, and Wilfrid, who was then only a priest; and the king endowed it. Then the abbot desired that he would grant him that which he would desire of him, and the king granted it to him. "I have here," he said, "God-fearing monks, who would pass their lives in an anchoretage, if they knew where. But here is an island, which is called Ancarig," now Thorney Isle, "and I will crave this-that we may there build a monastery to the glory of St. Mary, that they may there dwell who may desire to lead their lives in peace and in rest." The king accordingly grants the request, and endows this monastery also.28 The expression Gode-frihte, or God-fearing, here applied to these anchorite monks, is obviously the Saxon equivalent of Deicola. In the following century the canonical rule was introduced into England, as we find in a legatine synod held in Northumberland, in the year 787, that by the fourth canon bishops are required to take care that all canons live canonically, and all monks or nuns regularly-that is, according to monastic rule; 29 and that the title of God-worshippers passed down to the canon clerics, at least to those who lived separately, appears from this, that, when King Athelstan was on his march against the Scots in 936, he halted at York, and there besought of the ministers of St. Peter's church, who were then called Colidei, to offer up their prayers on behalf of 28 Thorpe, Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, vol. ii. p. 27. 29 Haddan and Stubbs' Councils, vol. iii. p. 450. himself and his expedition. They are said to be' men of holy life and honest conversation, then styled Colidei, who maintained a number of poor people, and withal had but little whereon to live.' 'It would appear,' says Dr. Reeves, 'that these Colidei were the officiating clergy of the cathedral church of St. Peter's at York in 946, and that they discharged the double function of divine service and eleemosynary entertainment;' 30 in other words, they were canon. clerics, and the name Colidei is merely an inversion of that of Deicola. Those of Canterbury we find called in a charter by King Ethelred, in 1006, cultores clerici, or cleric Godworshippers, the word Dei being evidently implied.31 retical life Scotland. In the early Monastic Church of Ireland, this tendency Anchoto prefer a solitary life, as a higher form of the religious life, in Ireland developed itself at a very early period. It seems to have and assumed two different aspects. One when the abbot or one of the brethren of the monastery retired for a time to a separate cell, for solitary prayer, or for penitential exercises, during which time he held no intercourse with the other inmates of the monasteries. The cells adopted for this purpose were usually those primitive dwellings called by the Irish Clochans, built of unmortared stone, with walls of great thickness, circular in shape, with a domeshaped roof, somewhat of a beehive form, and hence often called beehive cells. When used for such retirement they were called Carcair, or prison cells. Thus, in an old poem. attributed to Cuimin of Coindeire, he says of Enda, who founded the monastery on the principal of the Arann Isles: Enda of the high piety loved 30 Reeves, The Culdees of the British Isles, pp. 59, 144. 31 Dei servitium passim nostra in gente a Cultoribus Clericis defleo extinctum et tepefactum.-Statuta Of Ultan of Arbreccan he says Ultan loves his children; A carcair for his lean side, Of Molaissi of Devenish he says Molaissi of the lake loves To be in a carcair of hard stone.34 Adamnan, too, tells us of Feargna, or Virgnous, who, 'after having lived for many years without reproach in obedience among the brethren, led an anchoretic life for other twelve years, as a victorious soldier of Christ, in the abode of the anchorites in Muirbulcmar.' 35 This was, he also tells us, in the island of Hinba, which can be identified with Eilean na Naomh, one of the Garveloch isles, and here, in this solitary isle where there is little to disturb them, we find the remains of this abode of the anchorites in connection with other remains which are evidently the foundations of an early monastic establishment. It consists of two circular dome-shaped buildings joined together, built of uncemented stone. The larger one is internally fourteen feet in diameter; the other, a part of the beehive roof of which still remains, is about a foot less. The two buildings communicate with each other by means of a square-shaped doorway through the points of contact, and the larger one with the outside by another doorway of a similar kind facing south-west.36 The other form of this solitary life was one in which the inmate of a monastery withdrew from it altogether, and sought out some remote and desert spot or island in which he might pass the rest of his life in total solitude. Such 33 Mart. Don., 34 lb., p. 245. p. 235. 35 Adamnan, Vit. S. Col., B. iii. c. 42. 36 See for a description and ground-plan the Appendix No. I., p. 322, to the edition of Reeves's Adamnan in series of Scottish Historians. |