"The friars repair to the refectory twice a day, at a quarter past eleven in the morning for dinner, or at noon if it be Lent; and at the Ave Maria, or hour of sunset, for supper. They are summoned to their frugal repast by a sound produced by striking an iron bar against a great piece of stone or metal suspended from a wall. The noise thus caused is sufficiently harsh, but very effectual, reverberating as it does through every part of the convent. The brotherhood stand in two rows in the middle of the refectory whilst grace is said, and the effect of the responses, taken up in unison by so large a body of friars, is impressive. Grace being concluded, and all having taken their respective seats, each friar opens a drawer in the table containing his own napkin, knife and fork, and spoon, and spreads the napkin upon the table in front of him by way of table-cloth. This having been done, he begins his slender meal. A capuchin dinner usually consists of 'minestra,' or soup, a very small portion of meat, and a plate of vegetables. Supper comprises a thin soup and a tiny piece of meat. On fast days, of course, they take no meat, nor do they have supper on those days, but 'colezione, or collation only, consisting of some boiled vegetable and a smaller allowance of bread than usual. Their drink is wine and water, ready mixed. During meals complete silence is observed, and one of the junior friars, (or several in succession), reads in a loud voice from a devotional book for the general edification. "When the meal is ended, the whole community rises, on a sign being given by the superior, and forming, as before, in two lines along the centre of the refectory, a thanksgiving is recited, with responses, as mentioned above. It may here be observed that in Italian convents generally, no regular breakfast is served, but only a cup of 'caffé nero,' or coffee without milk, and a mouthful of dry bread. This is not taken in the refectory, but in a chamber set apart for the purpose where each friar takes his cup of coffee and morsel of bread soaked in it, at any time that suits him from about seven o'clock to nine. In the whole matter of diet, the religious communities with which I am acquainted are most abstemious; and were it not that Italians seem to require so little food compared with the inhabitants of more northern climates, it would often appear surprising how the friars contrive to subsist on so small a quantity of nourishment."-Pp. 104-107. We might multiply extracts from this singularly interesting book; but enough has, we think, been said to induce our readers to peruse its pages for themselves. All who have read Montalembert's Monks of the West will no doubt be glad to find that the Monasticism of the present day is not that resort of indolence and sloth which it so often assumes in the eyes of prejudiced Protes tants. 371 THE VIRGINS OF THE EARLY CHURCH. THE high position held by women under the Christian system, as compared with their subjection under the most enlightened forms of Paganism, or even under Judaism and its offshoots, has long formed a staple topic with Christian Apologists, and has now passed into a commonplace. The very wideness of this acceptance has, however, to some extent, chilled the spirit of inquiry, and it is rare to find any adequate reason given to account for so remarkable a fact. Abstract moral superiority will not insure this higher estimation of women, for in that case we should find their position always vary in the ratio of their creeds. Yet the consideration and influence accorded to them under Gothic Paganism was far greater than the amount enjoyed by them under the Mohammedan system; and even the degraded fetiche-worshippers of Western Africa yield a degree of respect to their priestesses, which scarcely a Miriam, a Deborah, or a Huldah could win from the enlightened Jews. Some other cause than the intrinsic superiority of creed must therefore be sought, in order to explain the problem. None seems so clear and comprehensive as that reverence for the state of virginity which is coeval with the foundation of the Church. In Judea, as in Greece or Rome, a young woman was looked on only in the light of a future matron, the highest of her husband's servants, and the mother of a new generation. This ideal, still much in favour even in our own land and our own day, instead of raising and ennobling the state of matrimony, always exerted a direct tendency to degrade it. Under such a theory there could be no true equality, no perfect partnership. Once concede that by marriage a woman rises out of a lower into a higher position, and the natural corollary will be that she is entirely at the disposal of him who has so raised her. There may be caprice and there may be cruelty on the husband's part, but he is a benefactor, and his will may not, in common gratitude, be opposed in anything. Frequent divorce and frequent remarriage, with all the attendant demoralization, invariably followed such a view of the union of man and wife, and this without any attempt at restraint, inasmuch as all the evils thereby brought upon women were esteemed as of no weight when compared with the reproach of celibacy. There are more than signs of the possible revival of such a state of things in our own society, and there appears to be no feasible remedy save that which the Christian Church opposed seventeen centuries ago to the laxity and dissoluteness of the Roman empire. To preach anew the high estate of virginity, hallowed as it is by VOL. XXIV. 3 с the most sacred names which our religion knows, to maintain that a woman in wedding gives as much honour as she receives, and that she mates upon at least equal terms, if she be not rather descending from a higher to a lower station,-is the only way to raise anew that idea of matrimonial purity and dignity which conventional maxims and statute law are doing so much to destroy. The early Christians were not content with merely cherishing a sentiment in favour of virginity, but a careful organization and a distinctive rank kept those who had selected it as their mode of life as patterns before the great body of the faithful. It is no uninteresting study to trace this organization from primitive times to the period when the monastic system was fully developed, in the East by S. Basil the Great, in the West by S. Jerome, in whose writings may be found nearly all that was afterwards fully achieved by S. Benedict. The Scriptural indications, though neither numerous nor precise, are yet as clear as can be expected from the occasional and, so to speak, unsystematic character of the New Testament writings. When we bear in mind the circumstances of the first converts to Christianity, we shall not expect to find any distinct marks of the presence of such a strong sentiment on the subject as already appears in the sub-apostolic age. For the reverence for virginity had in a great degree to be created. The Jews may be said to have been devoid of it. No trace of a vow of virginity, save in the one very doubtful case of Jephthah's daughter, can be found in any of the Hebrew records, and the Greeks and Romans were equally strangers to the idea, save so far as concerned a small number of colleges of priestesses of some two or three rites. We might naturally expect, therefore, in the absence of any positive command upon the subject, that but little evidence could be produced from Holy Writ to prove that the idea which was to bear such abundant fruit was already germinating in the hearts of the disciples of the Apostles. The first counsel given in the matter is in the words of our LORD, in S. Matt. xx. 12. His closing phrase, "He that is able to receive it, let him receive it," has never failed to find willing listeners from the day when He uttered it. At the very first we naturally find only widows mentioned as a distinct class upon the roll of the Church, inasmuch as they had a liberty of choice and action which was of course unattainable by young unmarried women under the Jewish law. The testimony of the Book of Judith seems conclusive that a vow of perpetual widowhood was not unknown at least as early as the time of the Maccabees, and accordingly we find the widows distinctly mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles immediately after the Day of Pentecost, before the institution of the diaconate; for by the Jewish Law (Numb. xxx. 9) a widow was competent to pledge herself in such wise. The Christians were not slow to see the deduction which might be drawn from other passages of the Pentateuch, nor to act on them. In Levit. xxvii., the case of a man or a woman being solemnly dedicated to God by a vow is contemplated, and a specific redemption prescribed. The instance of Samuel shows that the vow was at times suffered to take effect without withdrawal or commutation. So, too, the vow of a young woman, if permitted by her father or her husband, was to stand and to be performed, under a penalty for non-fulfilment. (Numb. xxx.) When virginity was set before men's minds as a holy and honourable estate, vows naturally set in this direction, and the first trace which can be detected is found just at the period of the sacred history where it might be expected, about thirty years from the mission of the Apostles. The four virgin daughters of the deacon Philip, whom S. Paul encountered at Cæsarea on his last journey to Jerusalem, are, so far as Holy Writ plainly tells us, the first of that glorious band who follow the LAMB whithersoever He goeth. The celebrated passage in 1 Cor. vii., though dating somewhat earlier, does not so directly imply a state not merely unmarried, but devoted. Yet even there the counsel is in accord with that in S. Matt. xx. 12. There is, as S. Jerome observes, no positive command, because such would be too hard for human nature; but there is a precept, to show what is pleasing to GOD, and to give man an opportunity of making a voluntary, and not a compulsory offering. The precept was sufficient; for in addition to the widows and deaconesses, we find the virgins enumerated in the special lists of the primitive Church, in terms which do not permit us to doubt of their numbers or their high estimation. At the first they are grouped with the widows, who, no doubt, originally were the far more numerous body. So we find S. Ignatius, in his epistle to the Church of Smyrna, saluting the "virgins who are called widows,” τὰς παρθένους τὰς λεγομένας χήρας.) Α most important variation of this reading exists in the longer form of this epistle. The words are "the ever virgins and the widows," (τὰς ἀειπαρθένους καὶ τὰς χήρας.) The same Saint in his yet earlier letter to S. Polycarp states the object of virginity to be the "honour due to the LORD's Body." (El Tis dúvatai év ȧyvela μével, εἰς τιμὴν τῆς σαρκὸς τοῦ Κυρίου, ἐν ἀκαυχησίᾳ μενέτω.) So too, S. Polycarp himself directs the virgins to walk in a blameless and pure conscience (τὰς παρθένους ἐν ἀμώμῳ καὶ ἁγνῇ συνειδήσει περιπαTE). Whatever be the date assigned to the Apostolical Constitutions, it is clear that at the time of their composition the virgins had already taken their place as a class not only distinct from the widows, but of higher ecclesiastical rank. Thus the deaconesses were to be selected, if possible, from the ranks of the virgins, and recourse was to be had to the widows only in case this were impracticable. (Διακόνισσα δὲ γινέσθω παρθένος ἁγνή· εἰ δὲ μήγε, κἂν χήρα μονόγαμος, πιστὴ καὶ τιμία. vi. 17, i.) Again, the widows and orphans are grouped in one category of honour, while the virgins are set apart in another. (ii. 26, v.) The language of the closing chapter of the fourth book is in such complete accordance with that of S. Paul, that we may probably attribute to it a very high antiquity. It runs as follows: "Concerning virginity we have received no command, but we commit the matter to the free action of those who desire it, giving them this advice as our prayer, not to promise anything hastily; since Solomon says, 'Better it is that thou shouldest not vow, than that thou shouldest vow and not pay.' Let the virgin then be pure in body and soul, as the temple of GOD, as the dwelling of CHRIST, as the shelter of the HOLY GHOST. For she who vows, if she act in a manner worthy of her vow, ought to prove that her vow is a genuine one, and made for the sake of leisure in holiness, not through contempt of marriage." . The same period was probably that of the general spread of the belief (enshrined in the apocryphal Protevangelion which bears the name of S. James the Apostle) that the first example of vows of this kind in the Jewish or Christian Church was set by the Blessed Virgin herself in her childhood. Whatever credit may be attached to the form which the legend has assumed, it is at least sufficiently typical of the temper of the age. Another highly valuable testimony is given by S. Justin Martyr, in his first Apology. Many men and women there are, sixty and seventy years of age, who have been CHRIST's disciples from infancy, and remain in a state of virginity, (ἄφθοροι διαμένουσι) and I declare that I can point out such persons in every rank of society." This apology was presented to the Emperor Antoninus in A.D. 148, and thus testifies to the practice of the year 78, when the Apostle John, and probably some of the other Apostles, were still alive. The direct evidence, so far, tells us only that the virgins were a distinct class, and that they were bound by a vow. What their subdivisions were, at what age they were admitted, or by what rite, and what was the duration of their engagement, whether for life or for a limited period, cannot be gathered from writers of this date. That they were admitted much younger than the age fixed for the widows and deaconesses may not only be inferred from the general phraseology of the Constitutions, but from the more direct testimony of Tertullian, whose words indicate also a life-long profession. "Consider," says he, (Ad Uxor. i. 4,) " the examples of our sisters, whose names are with the LORD, who, not compelled by lack of beauty, or by advanced years, prefer holiness to husbands, for they choose to be the brides of GOD. For GOD they are beautiful, for God they are virgins; with Him they live; with Him they hold converse; with Him they are busied day and night; they offer their prayers to the LORD as their dowries, and so often as they desire, they obtain honour from Him as the Bridegroom's gift. Thus they have won for themselves the eternal gift of the LORD, and even upon earth, |