FOOTNOTES:
[45] Conclusions against the antiquity of the upper and the lower disciplines, are frequent in the Abbé Boileau’s book; though I have thought it unnecessary to lay them all before the reader. Against the latter kind of discipline, he has been particularly zealous; and, besides his usual charge of novelty, he has, on one occasion, taxed it with being a remnant of idolatry and Pagan superstition. This imputation has much displeased a French Curate, who wrote an answer to him: he thought it reflected on those Saints who practised the discipline in question, and he animadverted on the Abbé in the following terms. Quelle plus grande injure peut-on faire aux Saints & aux Saintes qui se disciplinent par en bas, que de dire qu’ils sont des idolatres & des superstitieux?... Peut on les deshonorer davantage, ces Saints, que d’en parler comme fait M. Boileau? ‘Can a greater insult be put upon those Saints of both Sexes who practise the lower discipline, than saying that they are superstitious persons and idolaters? Is it possible to shew more disrespect to those Saints, than speaking of them as Mons. Boileau does?’
With respect to the silence of the first Monastic Rules, concerning voluntary flagellation, it may be observed that it has been amply compensated in subsequent ones. The Carmes are to discipline themselves twice a week, and the Monks of Monte Cassino, once at least; the Ursuline Nuns, every Friday; the Carmelite Nuns, on Wednesdays and Fridays; the Nuns of the Visitation, when they please; the English Benedictines, a greater or less number of times, weekly, according to the season of the year; the Celestines, on the eve of every great festival; and the Capuchin Friars are to perform a lower discipline every morning in the week, &c. &c.
[46] Οἱ μὲν ἐν ἐκείνοις τὸ ἔδαφος τοῖς δάκρυσιν ἔβρεχον, οἱ δὲ δακρύων ἀποροῦντες ἑαυτοὺς κατέκοπτον.
[47] The above passage of St. Climax, like those of David and St. Paul, discussed in the 2d and 3d Chapters, has caused much disputation between the Assertors, and the Opposers, of the doctrine of the antiquity of voluntary flagellations. The Abbé Boileau has taken much pains, in his text, to prove that St. John Climax, notwithstanding the precision of the expression he has used, only meant to speak in a figurative sense; and he has for that purpose produced a number of authorities from different books, and entered into a long grammatical dissertation on the Greek words used by that Saint, in which he at last bewilders himself, and says the very reverse of what he had promised to prove. He has also bestowed some pains on different passages of other Greek fathers, which are as positive as that quoted from St. John Climax; and among others, upon one of St. Cyril, Patriarch of Alexandria, who expresses himself with great clearness, and says, he whips himself, and exhorts his friends to do the same.
However, notwithstanding the great precision of the words used by the above good Fathers, whether in speaking of themselves, or of other persons, we are not perhaps intirely to refuse to admit the assertions of the Abbé Boileau, that they only spoke in a figurative sense. It is not absolutely impossible that the passages which are quoted from them, though ever so expressly mentioning flagellations, beatings, and scourgings, were no more, after all, than canting ways of expression, like those commonly used by men who affect pretensions to superior sanctity; who take every opportunity of magnifying their sufferings, or those of their friends, though often of an imaginary kind. However, on this important subject, I shall leave the Reader to determine: I will only observe, that the most zealous Supporters of self-flagellation confess, that the same was never so much practised among the Eastern as among the Western Christians, as they had adopted several other means of self-mortification.
[48] Sir Robert Walpole’s Excise Scheme made a wonderful noise in this Nation; but we may safely suppose, that if flagellations, like those above-mentioned, had been made part of the project, the noise would have been still greater.
A fact, supplied by the Abbé Boileau himself, will be introduced in a subsequent Chapter, from which it appears, that Theodoret was not unacquainted with the practice of self-flagellation. The silence of that Author on the subject, in certain parts of his writings, only shews that that practice was not yet become, in his time, that settled method of atoning for past sins, which has been since adopted, and that a scourge had not yet been made a necessary part of the furniture of Devotees.
[49] Insidet dorso ejus festivus Gladiator, & latera calcibus, cervicem flagello verberans.
[50] Instances of flagellations bestowed by the Devil, occur frequently in the Books in which the Lives of Saints, either antient or modern, are recited; whether it was that those Saints, after having dreamed of such flagellations, fancied they had in reality received them, and spoke accordingly, or that they had some scheme in view, when they made complaints of that kind. St. Francis of Assisa, for instance, as is related in the Golden Legend, received a dreadful flagellation from the Devil the very first night he was in Rome, which caused him to leave that place without delay. And, to say the truth, it is not at all unlikely that, having met there with a colder reception than he judged his sanctity intitled him to, he thought proper to decamp immediately, and when he returned to his Convent, told the above story to his Monks.
Among those Saints who received flagellations, or visits in general, from the Devil, St. Anthony is however the most celebrated. At sometimes the Devil, as is mentioned above, flagellated him vigorously; and at others, employed temptations of quite a different kind, in order to seduce him: thus, he assumed in one instance, the shape of a beautiful young Woman, who made all imaginable advances to the Saint: but, happily, all was to no purpose. The celebrated Engraver Calot has made one of those visits of the Devil to St. Anthony, the subject of one of his Prints, which is inscribed The Temptation of St. Anthony; and he has represented in it such a numerous swarm of Devils of all sizes, pouring at once into the Saint’s cavern, and exhibiting so surprising a variety of faces, postures, and ludicrous weapons, such as squirts, bellows, and the like, that this Print may very well be mentioned as an instance, among others, of the great fertility of the imagination of that Engraver.
Besides the persecutions which St. Anthony suffered from the Devil, he has the farther merit of having been the first Institutor of the Monastic life, several other Hermits having in his time chosen to assemble together, and lived under his direction; and though he has not expressly been the Founder of any particular Order, yet it is glory enough for him to have been the Father of the whole family of Friars and Nuns. In more modern times, however, his relicks having been brought from Egypt to Constantinople, and thence transferred to Dauphiné, in France, a Church was built on the spot where they were deposited, and a new Order of Friars was a little after established, who go by the name of Monks of St. Anthony. These Monks form a kind of Order distinct from all others; but yet they have no less ingenuity than the other Monks for procuring the good of their Convent, as may be judged from the following story, which, I think, I may venture to relate as a conclusion both of this Note, and of the whole Chapter.
The Story I mean, is contained in the Book of the Apologie pour Hérodote, which was written about the year 1500 by Henry Etienne, on purpose to shew that those who intirely reject the facts related by Herodotus, on account of their incredibility, treat him with too much severity, since a number of facts daily happen, which are altogether as surprising as those that are found in that Author.
Before relating the story in question, the Reader ought to be informed, that St. Anthony is commonly thought to have a great command over fire, and a power of destroying, by flashes of that element, those who incur his displeasure: the common people have been led into this belief, by constantly seeing a fire placed by the side of that Saint, in the representations that are made of him; though this fire is placed there for no other reason than because the Saint is thought to have the power of curing the erysipelas, which is also called the sacred fire (ignis sacer), in the same manner as St. Hubert cures the Hydrophoby, St. John the Epilepsy, and other Saints other disorders. A certain Monk of St. Anthony (to come to our point) who was well acquainted with the above prepossession of the vulgar concerning the power of his Saint, used on Sundays to preach in public, in different villages within a certain distance from his Convent. One day he assembled his congregation under a tree on which a magpye had built her nest, into which he had previously found means to convey a small box filled with gunpowder, which he had well secured therein; and out of the box hung a long thin match, that was to burn slowly, and was hidden among the leaves of the tree. As soon as the Monk, or his Assistant, had touched the match with a lighted coal, he began his sermon. In the mean while the magpye returned to her nest; and finding in it a strange body which she could not remove, she fell into a passion, and began to scratch with her feet, and chatter unmercifully. The Friar affected to hear her without emotion, and continued his sermon with great composure; only he would now and then lift up his eyes towards the top of the tree, as if he wanted to see what was the matter. At last, when he judged the fire was very near reaching the gun-powder, he pretended to be quite out of patience, he cursed the magpye, and wished St. Anthony’s fire might consume her, and went on again with his sermon; but he had scarcely pronounced a few periods, when the match on a sudden produced its effect, and blew up the magpye with her nest; which miracle wonderfully raised the character of the Friar, and proved afterwards very beneficial both to him and his Convent.