But it shall not be so!—
Home, to your bread and water. Home, I tell ye.”
And thus says Alban Butler of him:—“He never would admit of the least thing to give a savour to the herbs or meal-gruel on which he supported himself. If anything was brought him better dressed, he, for the greater self-denial, applied it to his nostrils, and said, ‘Oh Gluttony, Gluttony! thou shalt never taste this! Perpetual war is declared against thee!’” St. William of Maleval was of the same opinion when he cried because he ate his dry bread with a relish, and found that what he called “sensuality” was not inseparable from the coarsest food. St. Benedict of Anian, on the other hand, did not decline the use of a little wine, when it was given him; while St. Martinianus, again, lived upon biscuits and water, brought to him twice a-year—and very nasty fare it must have been towards the end of each six months. It must have been worse than that of St. Peter Damian, who prided himself on never drinking water fresh, and thought there was virtue in having it four-and-twenty hours old. St. Tarasius must have maintained a more decent table, for it is said of him that he used to take the dishes from it and give of them to the poor; and honour be to his name, because of his good sense and his charity! Our venerable acquaintance of the principality, St. David, was not half so wise, however well-intentioned; but St. Charles, Earl of Flanders, followed the better course, and not only lived moderately well, but acted better, by daily distributing seven hundred loaves to the poor. The Welsh saints, generally, kept as austere a table as St. David. There was, for instance, the cacophonous Winwaloe of Winwaloe, who kept his monks at starving point all the week, recalling them to life on Sundays by microscopic rations of hard cheese and shell-fish. His own fare was barley-bread strewn with ashes, and when Lent arrived, the quantity of ashes was doubled, in honour of the season! St. Thomas Aquinas was so abstracted that he never knew, at dinner, what he was eating, nor could remember, after it, if he had dined, which was likely enough. St. Frances, Widow, foundress of the Collations, was in more full possession of her wits; as, indeed, the lady saints were, generally. She had her little fancies indeed, which were “only charming Fanny’s way,” and her beverage at eve was dirty water, out of a human skull; but she had no mercy for lazy devotees, and invariably told sighing wives that they had active duties to perform, and that they had better keep out of monasteries, at least till they were widows. She was a good, humble woman; and, as a commentator says of the abstinence of St. Euphrasia, without humility these facts would be but facts of devils!
Another gleam of good sense shines upon us from the person of St. Benedict. He drank wine, and so did his monks of Vicovara, who liked his wine better than either the toast or sentiment with which he passed it round to them, and who tried to get rid of him by poisoning his glass; but the saint, full of inspired suspicion, made over it the sign of the cross, and away went the flask into fifty fragments. The taste of the good saint was known after he left Vicovara, and a pious soul once sent him a couple of bottles of wine by a faithless messenger, who delivered but one. “Mind what you are about,” said St. Benedict, “when you draw the other cork for yourself.” The knave was not abashed, but when he did secretly open the other bottle for the solace of his own thirsty throat, he found nothing therein but a lively serpent, which glided from him after casting at him a reproachful look!
If St. Benedict was right in the ordering of his table, why St. John of Egypt was wrong, for he never drank anything but stagnant water, nor ate anything cooked by fire; even his bread he complacently swallowed before it was baked;—and what his liver was like, it would puzzle any but a physician even to conjecture.
There was infinitely more sense in the table kept by an abbot of the compound Christian and Pagan title and name of St. Plato. He never ate anything but what had been raised or procured by the labour of his own hands; he was consequently never in debt with respect to his household expenses, and if all men so far followed the example of St. Plato, who was a better practical philosopher than his heathen namesake, what a happy world we should make of it! There would be fewer Christmas bills, and many more joyous dinners, not only at Christmas, but all the year round!
St. Plato deserves our respect; he would not live on alms. He was more useful in his generation than the men who, like St. Aphraates, were content to exist on the eleemosynary contributions of the faithful, or than those who, like Zozimus and his followers, wandered through the desert, trusting to chance and calling it providence. What, compared with our friend Plato, was that St. Droun, the so-called patron of shepherds, who during forty years taught them nothing, and lived on the barley-bread which they brought him in return for his instruction.
I have given one or two instances of the spare tables kept by a few of our ancient bishops; I may here add to them the name of St. Elphege, some time Bishop of Winchester, and subsequently Archbishop of Canterbury. The smell of roast meat was never known in his palace on any but “extraordinary occasions.” This, however, is a very indefinite term, and the table of this primate may have been one to make a cardinal give unctuous thanks for rich mercies, five days out of the seven. There was certainly gastronomic work to do in some of the ancient godly households, or St. James of Sclavonia would not have passed so many years in one, as he did, in the capacity of cook, “improving” the occasion, by drawing ideas of hell from his own fires, which were for ever roasting savoury joints, like those which strike the visitors with awe and appetite in the kitchens at Maynooth.
If in some houses there were busy kitchens, in others there were soft couches, whereon digestion might progress. Thus Adalbert, Bishop of Prague, was a Saint and Martyr; and it is said, that he had a most comfortable bed in his dormitory, but that he never slept upon it! Then, what was the bed for? It is added, that he fasted in private, with great severity,—but it is no more “of faith” to believe this, than it is that he slept every night on the floor, under, and not upon, his own excellent feather-bed; for what says the old refrain?—
“A notre coucher