up by the
superior; and after the morning hymns and psalms, that is, matins and
lauds, all remained in their private cells, where they read the holy
scriptures, and some copied books. All met in the church at the
canonical hours of tierce, sext, none, and vespers, but returned to
their cells, none being allowed to speak, to jest, or to be one moment
idle. The time which others spend a table, or in diversions, they
employed in honoring God; even their meal took up very little time, and
after a short sleep, (according to the custom of hot countries,) {236}
they resumed their exercises, conversing not with men but with God, with
the prophets and apostles in their writings and pious meditation; and
spiritual things were the only subject of their entertainment. For
corporal exercise they employed themselves in some mean manual labor,
such as entertained them in humility, and could not inspire vanity or
pride: they made baskets, tilled and watered the earth, hewed wood,
attended the kitchen, washed the feet of all strangers, and waited on
them without distinction, whether they were rich or poor. The saint
adds, that anger, jealousy, envy, grief, and anxiety for worldly goods
and concerns, were unknown in these poor cells; and he assures us, that
the constant peace, joy, and pleasure which reigned in them, were as
different from the bitterness and tumultuous scenes of the most
brilliant worldly felicity, as the security and calmness of the most
agreeable harbor are, from the dangers and agitation of the most
tempestuous ocean. Such was the rule of these cenobites, or monks who
lived in community. There were also hermits on the same mountains who
lay on ashes, wore sackcloth, and shut themselves up in frightful
caverns, practising more extraordinary austerities. Our saint was at
first apprehensive that he should find it an insupportable difficulty to
live without fresh bread, use the same stinking oil for his food and for
his lamp, and inure his body to hard labor under so great
austerities.[8] But by courageously despising this apprehension, in
consequence of a resolution to spare nothing by which he might learn
perfectly to die to himself; he found the difficulty entirely to vanish
in the execution. Experience shows that in such undertakings, the
imagination is alarmed not so much by realities as phantoms, which
vanish before a courageous heart which can look them in the face with
contempt. Abbot Rance, the reformer of la Trap