d, in addition to
their prayers, devoted themselves to works of charity and mercy. But
they were scarcely less separated from the world and their kindred.
Their manner of life interdicted all common intercourse. The virgin who
could boast that for twenty-five years she never bathed, except the tips
of her fingers, and these only when she was about to receive the
Communion, must have been as foreign to the Rome in which she lived as
if she inhabited a cave in the Thebaid. Her kinsfolk may have reverenced
her sanctity, but it is doubtful if they unqualifiedly appreciated her
presence. The explanation of this transcendent personal neglect is to be
found in the dualism which was so considerable an element in the motif
of monasticism. The religious sphere was exclusively spiritual and of
the mind; the material world was considered to be wholly under the
dominion of the devil if it were not, indeed, his work. The body, with
all its appetites, instincts, pleasures, and pains, was regarded as a
spiritual misfortune. Holiness was not deemed to be in any degree
attainable except by constant and determined thwarting of all natural
desire. The compulsion to give way to any extent to the most essential
of these desires was, so far as it obtained, a moral imperfection. The
three great human faults are lust, pride, and avarice. To subjugate
these, celibacy, absolute submission, and complete poverty, were deemed
necessary by the advocates of monasticism. Because purity is enjoined,
the saint of one sex must treat a person of the other with the same
avoidance as would be displayed toward a poisonous reptile; readiness to
embrace a leper is none too severe a test of humility; and personal
property in a hair blanket is a pitfall laid by wealth. A body so wasted
by fasting as to be incapable of sustaining the continuous round of
tears and prayers is the surest warrant of saintliness. A virgin who has
so abused her stomach by improper and insufficient food that it refuses
a meal necessary to a healthy body is the object of high veneration;
indigestion is a most desirable corollary to holiness. In short, without
outraging reason and contradicting every dictum of common sense, it is
difficult to describe much that belonged to ancient monasticism in any
other spirit than that of impatience.

Like most institutions, monasticism began in a formless, undirected
enthusiasm. Men and women rushed into the wilderness with an abundantly
zealous determ