,000 monks
gathered together at the Easter festival; that one Egyptian city
mustered 20,000 nuns and 10,000 monks, and that the monastic population
of Egypt at one time equalled in number the rest of the inhabitants. At
a later date, within fifty years of its institution, the Franciscan
Order possessed 8000 houses, with 200,000 members. In the twelfth
century the Cluniacs had 2000 monasteries in France. In England, as late
as 1546, Hooper, afterwards Bishop of Gloucester, declared that there
were no less than 10,000 nuns in England. Every country in Europe
possessed a larger or smaller army of men and women whose ideals were in
direct conflict with nearly all that makes for a sane and progressive
civilisation.

The general character of the monk during the full swing of the ascetic
epidemic has been well sketched by Lecky. His summary here will save a
more extended exposition:--

"There is perhaps no phase in the moral history of mankind of a deeper
and more painful interest than this ascetic epidemic. A hideous, sordid,
and emaciated maniac, without knowledge, without patriotism, without
natural affection, passing his life in a long routine of useless and
atrocious self-torture, and quailing before the ghastly phantoms of his
delirious brain, had become the ideal of the nations which had known the
writings of Plato and Cicero, and the lives of Socrates and Cato. For
about two centuries, the hideous maceration of the body was regarded as
the highest proof of excellence. St. Jerome declares, with a thrill of
admiration, how he had seen a monk, who for thirty years had lived
exclusively on a small portion of barley bread and of mouldy water;
another who lived in a hole and never ate more than five figs for his
daily repast; a third who cut his hair only on Easter Sunday, who never
washed his clothes, who never changed his tunic till it fell to pieces,
who starved himself till his eyes grew dim, and his skin like a pumice
stone.... For six months, it is said, St. Macarius of Alexandria slept
in a marsh, and exposed his naked body to the stings of venomous
flies.... His disciple, St. Eusebius, carried one hundred and fifty
pounds of iron, and lived for three years in a dried-up well.... St.
Besarion spent forty days and nights in the middle of thorn bushes, and
for forty days and nights never lay down when he slept.... Some saints,
like St. Marcian, restricted themselves to one meal a day, so small that
they continually su