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struggled for life in their inhospitable home, husbanding even their water as no miser would husband the most precious wine. Thus we have five distinct and widely separated regions in which Egyptian monasticism existed and flourished during the fourth century. First, Nitria, with its offshoot The Cells; second, Scete; third, the region in Upper Egypt which came under St. Antony's more immediate influence; fourth, Southern Egypt; fifth, the sea-coast of the Nile Delta. In very close connection with these, so as to be predominatingly Egyptian in the tone of their monasticism, were the hermitages and lauras of south-western Palestine and the settlements in the Sinai peninsula. Outlying from the greater centres

were single hermitages and small lauras, wherever the monks hoped to find solitude. In many places life was supported only with extreme difficulty. Sometimes water had to be obtained by collecting and storing the dew which fell at certain seasons. Sometimes it was carried with immense toil from distant wells. There were districts where the hermits lived in constant dread of the irruption of barbarian tribes, which destroyed tranquillity and even threatened life itself. Bands of wandering robbers sometimes rifled the cells of their miserable furniture, or captured, insulted, and injured the hermits. At other times the silence of these retreats became so awful, that the hermit was startled into uncontrollable

general topics emotion by the chance shout of some shepherd-boy who had driven his goats too far; or came to find the rustling of dry reeds in the wind an almost insupportable noise. For the most part in the deserts north of the Thebaid the monks saw very little of each other. Even the inhabitants of grouped cells led almost solitary lives. On Saturdays and Sundays they met for public worship and perhaps a common meal, but during the rest of the week they lived alone in their cells, or with a single disciple. If the monk were wise, he worked. Sometimes he wove mats or baskets. These were afterwards exchanged

by the hermit himself or his disciple for the necessities of life in some neighbouring village. If the cell lay too remote from human habitation to permit of such traffic, the mats or baskets were accumulated in piles, and in the end burnt. They had fulfilled their function, and were got rid of that way as well as in the markets; for the hermit was not a tradesman. He worked, not for wages, but lest the devil might tempt him in his idle hours. Sometimes a garden was cultivated around the cell. The hermit struggled with drought and barrenness until he produced a little stock of vegetables. Sometimes his cell

was happily physiogel placed where date palms grew. He watched his fruit against the depredations of wild birds. Nothing is more striking than the insistence of the greater hermits on the necessity for labour of some sort. It was from their experience and their illuminated introspection that St. Benedict learnt the truth on which he built a great part of his rule -- "Idleness is the enemy of the soul." Besides working, the monks prayed. Hours every day were spent in prayer, which must have been more of the nature of meditation than intercession. In the intervals of prayer and work they sang or said psalms, and often repeated aloud long

passages from the prophets. Books were scarce among them, and we read of monks visiting. each other for the purpose of learning off by heart fresh passages of Holy Scripture. The attainment of unbroken monotony was a thing greatly to be desired. Perfect quietness was the monk's opportunity for spiritual communion with God. Therefore they regarded restlessness and the wish for change as a sin to be fought against. Long periods of unbroken monotony were liable to produce in the monk a spirit of irritable peevishness and discontent with his surroundings, which was recognised as subversive of true spirituality. They called this state of mind "accidie" and held that it

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