himself unspotted from the world;' or, as a literal rendering of the old Latin version would be, 'Pure and immaculate religious service towards God and the Father is this, to visit the infants and widows in their tribulation, and to keep oneself immaculate from this world.' 14 By an overstrained interpretation of this passage it was assumed that a person could only keep himself immaculate from the world by withdrawing himself from it altogether, and from all association with his fellow-creatures, except in works of benevolence to those in distress; and that this was a form of religion peculiarly acceptable to God and the Father. The other passage is that in the First Epistle of St. Peter, where it is said, 'But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should show forth the praises of Him who hath called you out of darkness into His marvellous light; which in times past were not a people, but are now the people of God; which had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy. Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul.' 15 And this was interpreted to mean that those who passed their lives in mortifying the body and praising God by singing the psalter, in living in this world as strangers from all society and as pilgrims to a better world, were a peculiar people and entitled to call themselves the people of God. called Deicola or They thus came to the conclusion that a solitary life Anchorites passed in devotion and self-mortification, accompanied by c acts of benevolence to the sick and bereaved, was a 'cultus' God-woror 'religio' peculiarly acceptable to God and the Father; 14 Religio munda, et immaculata apud Deum et Patrem hæc est: visitare pupillos et viduas in tribulatione eorum, et immaculatum se custodire ab hoc sæculo.-Cap. i., 27. 15 Qui aliquando non populus, nunc autem populus Dei; qui non shippers. and hence they were called, if they did not call themselves so, Deicolæ, or God-worshippers, in contrast to Christicola, the name applied in a general sense to all Christians, and, in a narrower application, to monks leading a cœnobitical life. Thus in the Life of St. Anthony, written by Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, who introduced monachism into the Western Church, and translated into Latin by Evagrius, a priest of Antioch, in the year 358, we find it stated that 'the neighbours and the monks whom he often visited, seeing St. Anthony, called him a Deicola, and, indulging in the expression of natural affection, they loved him, some as a son, others as a brother.' 16 Again, Martinus, a bishop, who terms himself Scotus, or a native of Ireland, writing to Miro, king of Gallicia, in the sixth century, probably about the year 560, regarding the rules of an honest life,' says that he will not urge him to follow those more arduous and perfect rules which are practised by a few very excellent Deicolo.'17 Columbanus, too, in his second instruction or sermon to his monks, says, 'Whosoever, therefore, willeth to be made a habitation for God, let him strive to become lowly and quiet, that not by glibness of words, nor by suppleness of body, but by the reality of his humility he may be recognised as a Deicola; for goodness of heart requireth not the feigned religion of words; '18 and a disciple of Columbanus, who followed out this life after his master had been driven out of Luxeuil with his monks, retired to a solitary spot called Luthra in the midst of a 16 Nam et vicini et monachi, ad honesta Formula: D'Achery, iii. quos sæpe veniebat, Antonium vi- 312. dentes, Deicolam nuncupabant; indultisque naturæ vocabulis, quidam ut filium, alii ut fratrem diligebant. -Migne, Patrologia, vol. xxxv. col. 129. 17 Non illa ardua et perfecta, quæ a paucis et peregregiis Deicolis patrantur.-Martinus de Vita 18 Quicunque ergo se habitaculum Dei effici voluerit, humilem et quietum se facere contendat, ut non verborum aviditate et corporis flexibilitate, sed humilitatis veritate cognoscatur esse Deicola: cordis enim bonitas non verborum fictis indiget religionibus.-Migne, Patrologia, vol. xxxvii. col. 234. forest, now Lure in the district of Besançon, 'But his virtues having attracted religious men to him from all quarters, he formed a community of monks and erected two oratories; and, after governing his monastery for several years, he appointed one of his disciples abbot in his stead, and again withdrew to a solitary cell, where he devoted himself to divine contemplation till his death about 625. This man bears no other name in the calendars than Deicola, and his memory is still held in high estimation by the people of that country, who call him Saint Die.' 19 called the We find, too, these solitaries also called the people of Anchorites God. In the ancient Life of St. Patrick written by Probus, people of he tells us that, after Patrick had passed four years with God. St. Martin of Tours, where he was trained in monastic life, an angel appeared to him and said, 'Go to the people of God, that is, to the hermits and solitaries, with naked feet, and live with them, that you may be tried for some time; and he went into a solitude, and remained with the hermits. eight years.' , 20 The conception of this cultus' of God is well expressed in a passage of Simeon of Durham, who, in his History of the Kings, under the year 781, says, some 250 years after, of a certain Dregmo, in the territory of the church at Hexham, that he greatly feared God and diligently devoted himself, as far as his means allowed, to the exercise of works of charity, leading a life in all respects apart from the customs of his countrymen-a man of remarkable simplicity 19 Colgan, A.SS., p. 115; Fleury, 1. 37, c. 27. Colgan supposes that Deicola may be the Latin form of the Irish name of Dichuill, and this is usually assumed to be the case; but there is no authority for it, and no other analogy between the names than an accidental resemblance in appearance. 20 Peracto vero quadriennio, apparuit ei angelus Domini et dixit illi, Vade ad plebem Dei, id est, Eremitas et solitarios nudis pedibus et conversare cum eis, ut proberis per aliquot tempus. Et venit in solitudinem et mansit cum Eremitis per 8 annos.-Colgan, Tr. Th., p. 48, recté 52. and innocence, and of profound devotion and reverence towards the saints of God; on which account his neighbours held him in great honour, and called him a true Godworshipper.' 21 In the seventh century attempts were made by several councils to bring the solitaries more under the monastic rule. By the fifth canon of the Council of Toledo, held in 646, it was provided that well-instructed monks alone should be allowed to live separate from a cloister as recluses, and become the trainers of others in the higher forms of ascetic life. Those recluses and wanderers who are unworthy must be brought within a cloister, and in future no one must be devoted to this highest form of the ascetic life, as a recluse, who had not first been trained in a monastery to the knowledge and practice of the monastic life.' 22 By the Council of Trullo, held in 692, it was provided, by canon 41, that those who would live separate in their own cells must have first passed three years in a monastery, and that any one who has once withdrawn himself to a solitary cell must not again leave it; and by canon 42 that, as there are hermits who come to the towns in black clothing and long hair, and associate with secular persons, it is ordered that such persons shall be tonsured and enter a monastery, wearing the monastic dress. If they will not do this, they must be expelled from the town.23 Such attempts, however, seem to have had little effect, and the next century was to see the Anchorites and Recluses, 21 Tempore illo fuit quidam Dregmo in territorio Hagustaldensis ecclesiæ, Deum valde timens et elymosinarum operibus, prout facultas sibi suppeditabat, haud segniter deditus ac per omnia a comprovincialium moribus vita discordans. Erat enim miræ simplicitatis et innocentia homo ac erga sanctos Dei devotionis et ven erationis immensæ. Quapropter eum omnes vicini sui in magno honore habebant, illumque verum Dei cultorem appellabant. —Sim. Dun., Hist. Regum (Surtees Ed.), p. 26. 22 Hefele, Concilien Geschichte, vol. iii. p. 88. 23 Ib., vol. iii. p. 306. Order of instituted. who lived apart from the monastic rule, and practised what A.D. 747. they considered the highest form of asceticism, and the Secular secular clergy, who had never come under the monastic Canons rule, but were subject only to the general canon-law of the church, brought more together, a tendency to which indeed had probably already manifested itself in the end of the previous century, which the forty-second canon of the Council of Trullo was designed to check. For though nothing could be more opposed in spirit, than the secular life of the ordinary clergy on the one hand and the ascetic life of the anchorites on the other, forming, as it were, the opposite poles of the ecclesiastical system, yet they had one feature in common-that both lived separately, in opposition to the cœnobitical life of the monks. The new institution which thus brought them together was that of the secular canons, founded by Chrodegang, bishop of Metz, in the year 747. His rule was at first intended for his clergy of Metz alone, with a view of leading them to adopt a more regular life in the ecclesiastical sense of the term. This rule consists of thirty-four chapters. By the third he directs that the canon clerics shall live together in a cloister, and shall all sleep in one dormitory, with the exception of those to whom the bishop shall give permission to sleep separately in their own dwellings within the cloister; that no woman or layman is to enter the cloister without an order from the bishop, the archdeacon, or the 'primicerius'; that they shall eat in the same refectory, that laics shall only be allowed to remain in the cloister as long as they have work, and that those living separately within the cloister must live alone and have no other cleric with them. By the ninth chapter he enjoins them to perform the bodily labours in common as well as in private. By the thirty-first he enjoins his clerics to give to the church what real property they have, retaining the income only, but gives them leave to reserve to themselves their move૨ VOL. II. |