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RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIES OF WOMEN IN THE
EARLY CHURCH.

IN a former paper we traced the gradual organization of the Ecclesiastical Virgins, without more than indirect reference to the nature and discipline of the common life which was devised for them as early as the external circumstances of the Church permitted. We propose now to dwell for a little upon this branch of the subject, and we shall be obliged, in doing so, to repeat occasionally statements which were made in the previous paper.

It has been so long the custom to accept as rigidly exact the title of Founder of Western Monachism, bestowed by posterity on S. Benedict, that it is often forgotten that he merely codified the great body of existing cœnobitical rules, and that when his sister S. Scholastica was placed by him in the position of the first Benedictine abbess, she did not enter a convent's walls for the first time, but only migrated from an ancient to a later foundation. What were the origin and nature of these earlier institutions we will now endeavour to narrate as briefly as may be.

It is very evident that the Virgins of even sub-apostolic times were not merely isolated persons sharing in the same privileges, and therefore classed together in a vague, indefinite way, just as we now speak of the communicants or the Sunday-school teachers, without implying by these collective appellations any organized sodality. On the contrary, they appear as a distinct class, having special laws and duties as well as special immunities. Thus, in the quasi-Ignatian Epistle to the Philippians, the writer says, "I salute the college of virgins, the band of widows." (άoтáčoμaι Tò (ἀσπάζομαι σύστημα τῶν παρθένων, τὸ τάγμα τῶν χηρῶν). This is only one citation of many that occur in the Epistles of the Apostolical Fathers. We are struck by the notable difference in this respect between their writings and those of the age immediately succeeding which we have preserved to us, in which, despite their much greater length, there is only the very faintest reference to the existence of such bodies as the Virgins, Deaconesses, or Widows. Neither S. Justin Martyr nor S. Irenæus, nor yet S. Hermas, do more than speak in general commendation of purity. There is no reasonable doubt that these writers are posterior in time to the original draft of the Apostolical Constitutions, and to the majority of the Sub-Apostolic Epistles; and it is quite untenable to assume that an institution which we see so powerful in the time of Tertullian could have been even temporarily in abeyance. Yet there is but one intimation, and that quite a casual one in the Stromata of S. Clement of Alexandria, to tell us that the successors of VOL. XXIV.-OCTOBER, 1862. 3 N

Phoebe were still toiling in the Church. The corollary which we should draw from this circumstance is one in favour of the highly systematic organization of the Virgins. For, although there were as yet no formal proscriptions of Christians as a class, it was easy to use edicts against them which had been framed with very different intentions. Three of these are especially noteworthy. The student of history will remember the unenviable notoriety earned by the priestesses of Isis and some other foreign deities in Rome and other Italian cities, and the consequent enactments against "sacra peregrina." A reference to Pliny (Ep. x. 93, 94) will show that the pavos or charitable guilds of Greece did not bask much in the sun of imperial favour, because it was assumed that they, like a great society in an empire of our own day, might not adequately appreciate the blessings of military despotism. A more stringent system of repression was directed against such bodies as, under the name of Hetairiæ, were secret in their constitution and rules, and of which anything might be predicated without open contradiction. It seems clear that bodies like the Virgins and Deaconesses would be particularly obnoxious to hostility of this kind, and that they would apparently combine in themselves the most objectionable characteristics of the three classes enumerated above. They were, so far as the Pagans knew, the priestesses of a strange creed, regarding which the most horrible rumours were prevalent: they were the distributors, like the officials of the pavo, of funds from unknown sources and of unknown amount amongst a needy and discontented population; and, lastly, their rules and vows, their chief and their objects were all buried in mystery, and might, for all that could be learnt of them, have been devised with the express intention of overturning the State. It was the obvious policy of the Christian apologists and writers, under these circumstances, to say as little as possible about them. Had they merely been women professing the faith, and living purer lives than those of their Pagan contemporaries, there would seemingly have been no especial risk in mentioning them; but on the hypothesis that there was a very distinct bond of union amongst them, it was on all grounds better to be silent. Even this silence was not always effectual as a protection. We read of the martyrdom of five virgins at Antioch under Trajan, A.D. 118, and of the sufferings of certain "ministræ" in Bithynia, in the same reign, fourteen years earlier, at the hands of the philosophic Pliny. It is not too much to suppose that these are only a few of many unrecorded victims of their class.

Egypt is usually held to have been the cradle of monasticism, but that title may with greater truth be claimed for Syria, if not for Palestine itself. The few scattered notices that we possess of that very singular sect, the Essenes, disclose the germs of the system in the bosom of their ascetic practice. There appear to

have existed at the same time two communities bearing this name, of which one was merely a peculiarly rigid branch of the Pharisees, while the other was the focus of Christian life in the wild highlands of Ephraim and Gilead. There seems no other reasonable way of reconciling the very different accounts given of them by Josephus in different parts of his Antiquities. He represents that portion of them who appear to be Christians (from the distinct mention of Baptism and the apparent reference to the Holy Eucharist) as living a virginal life, avoiding completely the company of women, and recruiting their numbers by adopting young male children, whom they reared in their own fashion.

Here two things are to be observed: one, that Josephus confines himself chiefly to the Essenes who lived in cities, and does not seem well acquainted with their country life; the other, that he gives no information at all as to whether there were women belonging to the sect. It is not in accordance with either Jewish or Christian ideas to exclude women so completely from a share in religious duties and privileges. One cannot but conjecture that there were women of the sect, and that they too, like the men, lived in the main a common life. The few phrases which may be gathered from the De Vita Contemplativa of Philo Judæus help to confirm this hypothesis. He uses language, in speaking of the Essenes, that can hardly be interpreted otherwise than as it has been by Eusebius, S. Epiphanius, and S. Jerome, namely, as referring to the Christians. In this discussion the important word μovaoThgo first makes its appearance. It is commonly interpreted "a solitary dwelling;" but as Philo speaks of a number of such μovarType in the same immediate neighbourhood, there is but little difference perceptible between such an aggregate as this and the familiar Egyptian Laura, with its street of cells, and its one xaneтάλov, oг place of general assembly, especially as we are expressly assured by all writers that a community of goods existed amongst these ascetic devotees, just as we find it insisted on more than two centuries later by S. Antony of the Thebaid.

Where, then, were the Essene women collected while the men were assembled in these rigid communities? Had they none of the same hopes, beliefs, aspirations? It is true that neither Pliny the Elder nor Solinus seem to have known that there were any women of the sect, which may be taken in partial proof of their entire dissociation from the men. But if the Essenes were Jews, this is most unlikely; if they were Christians, utterly impossible. That they were either Jews or Christians-most probably both-is plainly demonstrable. The most natural conclusion, then, to draw from all the facts is, that there were places of religious retreat for women too; and if we consider the ease with which such retreats could be constructed in the unknown fastnesses of the Syrian mountains, we shall (especially when we remember the independence and se

crecy of the modern Druse population of another range) find little cause to wonder at the obscurity or the impunity of these bodies. They are, however, not likely to have produced much evident result; for the very secrecy which may have ensured their safety, must have deprived them of opportunities for developing in numbers or system, so that their very existence is at the present day matter of speculation, although in remarkable accordance with the words of Tertullian, when he is expressly speaking of the caution and modesty which befits Christian virgins, and when he is urging that they should not make a public boast of their privileges. "If we are forbidden to let the left hand know of the gift of a single victoriatus or any almsdeed, what a cloud ought we to shed round us when we make such an offering to GoD as that of our very body and spirit, when we consecrate our very nature itself?"1

We gather from this author, as well as from S. Cyprian in the next age, that the number of the Virgins was very considerable, but it is difficult to obtain any intimation of their habits or discipline, save that they were required to be much more simple in their dress, circumspect in their conduct, and sparing in their amusements than other Christian women. A hint here and there that their intercourse with one another was sufficiently close to admit of mutual emulation and counsel, is all that we can collect. This much at any rate implies something more than the mere acquaintanceship which community of creed and worship would readily originate. At the least it suggests gatherings of the Virgins together at other times besides those of public prayer and a certain amount of subordination in their ranks, whether to the senior members among them, or to certain selected heads, may also be inferred from the tone of S. Cyprian's language.

But it is not for about half a century later that we begin to have distinct proof of the common life; and the most that can be said is, that when it is evidently in existence, we do not find it mentioned as a new thing. This must result from one of two causes: either the tradition of the Essene communities was unbroken, or the rule of life which guided the Ecclesiastical Virgins in their own homes was so like the monastic system, as to melt into it imperceptibly, without any assignable point of first junction. One of the earliest distinct references which we obtain is that in the Acts of the Martyrs of Nicomedia, A.D. 301. It is there stated that a priestess of Diana and Minerva, named Domina, had been converted to Christianity, through the means, seemingly, of the chief eunuch, Indes. On his martyrdom Domina had disappeared, and Galerius "ordered her to be sought for in the monasteries, and to be kept for her deities. When the superior of the nunnery in which the saint was learnt this, adopting a masculine thought, she dressed the virgin in men's clothes, and cut her hair in men's fashion, 1 De Virg. Veland. xiii.

and giving her prayers and tears as the guides and companions of her path, sent her secretly out of the holy bridal-chamber (ex sacro thalamo)." Again: "And the holy convents (asceteria) were ruthlessly destroyed, and the virgins shamefully insulted."

Even if these Acts be interpolated, it is impossible to refrain from perceiving that their original compilers or subsequent manipulators fully believed that the system somewhat later developed in the Thebaid was not a new discovery, but an amplification and completion of an older practice, exactly as the rule of S. Benedict was in the West. This is completely borne out by the noteworthy fact which we have mentioned before, that when S. Antony was about to begin his own ascetic life, he provided for his sister by placing her in a convent. As he is unquestionably the first who gave any impetus to the formation of communities of men in Egypt, the inference is that those of women were earlier established in that country, most probably, as it seems to us, through the influence of the powerful Essene element which the writings of Philo and Clement enable us to trace in the Church of Alexandria. If, as the chronology of S. Antony's life seems to require, we assign this act of his to the year A.D. 271, it appears that we are on the track of a partly vanished tradition. The saint was born about the year 250, and was eighteen or twenty when his parents died, leaving him guardian of his sister. About six months later he had his call, and then it was that he placed his sister with other devout virgins in their dwelling (apteväva). There is a certain ambiguity in the words of S. Athanasius which makes it at first somewhat uncertain whether S. Antony actually made his sister abbess or not; but two circumstances make it probable that this is the true interpretation of them. For, in the first place, S. Athanasius states, later, that the perseverance of S. Antony's sister, in her vocation and authority, was a signal comfort to her brother (expev ouv xai αὐτός, βλέπων . . . καὶ τὴν ἀδελφὴν γηράσασαν ἐν παρθενία, καθηγουμένην τε τὴν αὐτὴν ἄλλων παρθένων,) and the other proof is that his disciple, S. Pachomius, who was a careful imitator of his example in all respects, placed, as we have before stated, his sister at the head of the convent which he founded. "Very many others joined her, and she became, in a little while, mother of a great multitude." At this time we find the first formal rule of life; for that which S. Antony had left undone, save by the force of his personal example, S. Pachomius completed, by drawing up a sort of code for the monks under his guidance. These rules are important for the present investigation, because they were, with but trifling alterations, enjoined on the nuns of his sister's convent. There were stringent regulations for fasting and self-denial, and the order of prayer was as follows:-on Saturdays and Sundays they received the Holy Communion at the hands of the nearest priest; on other days they 1 Vit. S. Pachomii, c. xxviii.

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