The Monastic Life From The Fathers Of The Desert To Charlemagne

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The Monastic Life - From the Fathers of the Desert to Charlemagne is an unchanged, high-quality reprint of the original edition of 1896. Hansebooks is editor of the literature on different topic areas such as research and science, travel and expeditions, cooking and nutrition, medicine, and other genres. As a publisher we focus on the preservation of historical literature. Many works of historical writers and scientists are available today as antiques only. Hansebooks newly publishes these books and contributes to the preservation of literature which has become rare and historical knowledge for the future.

Allies has compiled a scholarly work on the history of the monastic life from the most reliable sources beginning with the works of Mansi, who reedited many older works in order to preserve them. In addition he has consulted Saint Gregory of Tours and Saint Athnasius as well as more recent works, such a Hefele. After giving an explanantion ofhte first Ecumenical Council, Allies states: "Auout that same year, 325, on the site of a desertedvillage, one day's journey down the Nile from Thebes, Pachomills founded the first Christian monastery. Born in 292, he had, when scarcely twenty years of age, been pressed into the army at the time when Constantine was carrying on war against his colleague Maxentius. He was then a heathen. When, on the conclusion of the war, he returned home, he became a Christian, and heard of the aged anchorite Pidemon, who was quite dead to the world, and led a heavenly life in the desert of the Thebaid. Pachomius induced Palemon to allow him to practise the same spiritual exercises and labours. So Pachomius lived during many years a life of great hardship. Once, searching for a complete solitude, he came to a place where a voice from above said to him interiorly in prayer, " Pachomius, this is the place where thou shalt serve Me, thou and many others. Behold! " And an angel showed him a tablet upon which were written the precepts which he afterwards gave to his monks as the rules of their Order. He submitted all to the judgment of Palemon, who went with him to Tabenna, where he helped him to erect a cell." Let us consider this conflict: "Let us cast a glance upon this mortal duel which has been going on during thirteen centuries, the duel between the life of Nazareth as seen in Benedict, when, in the solitude of Subiaco, as images of his former social life at Home came to tempt him, he threw himself into the thorns, and clasped with them the cross, and the life of Mohammed with his Egyptian slave, or with the wife of his adopted son, threatening with infamous captivity all whom he conquered."Herein the seventh century surpasses the fourth and fifth. Pope Liberius accepted and blessed the sister of St. Ambrose in her profession of the virginal life before him in St. Peter's. Pope Gregory sent forth forty monks from the abbey which he had founded in his father's palace to convert a nation of pagans, the most cruel then known, for they had made a slaughter-house of a once Christian country. This marks the difference of the times. All noman grandeur had perished in the vast domain at the centre of which Liberius spoke. But from the midst of t,hose ruins another Pope saw the Common Life tacitly gathering its spiritual conquests. The monastery in which Benedict caused his rulo to live was everywhere. The seventy two instruments of good works which he drew up for its inhabitants fixed their minds upon the divine life of faith. I will only cite the two first and the three last as a specimen. The first runs: "In the first place, to love the Lord God with all one's heart, all one's soul, and all one's strength." The second: "Then one's neighbour as oneself." The three last: "To pray for one's enemies in the love of Christ; to make peace with an adversary before the setting of the sun; and never to despair of God's mercy." In the home which the abbot constructed for city and for desert alike, he assigned to every member his special work. No one was left idle or to intrude into the function of another. But the common property and business of all were the seventy-two instruments of good works. Every Eon and every daughter of the Northern invasion who accepted Benedict's measure of wine and measure of bread as the food of the body, accepted the seventy-two instruments of good works as the food of the soul."

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