But as it would be too lavish a display of knight-errantry to waste their time and strength without some ostensible purpose, he must, of course, find out for them a pretext, at least, for such; and so, in the eagerness of his milito-monastic zeal, he flies off, at a tangent, to the top of Mount Colzoum, near the desert of Gebel,—“a short day’s journey from the Red Sea,”—where he thinks he has got, in the monasteries of the Egyptian monks, a direct, immediate, and indubitable prototype.
Reader, you shall be the judge. Here is his own translation of Bonnani’s description of the place, viz.:
“There are three churches, of which St. Anthony’s, which is small and very old, is the most distinguished; the second is dedicated to the apostles Peter and Paul; and the third church is raised in honour of St. Macaire, who has been a lay brother in this convent. All the cells stand separately from each other; they are ill built, the walls being composed of clay, covered in with flat roofs and diminutive windows only one foot square. Close to the refectory, which is dark and dirty, the monks have added a rather decent apartment, in their wonted hospitality, destined to the reception of visitors.
“Within the central courtyard, an isolated square tower of masonry, which is approached by a drawbridge, holds a formidable station. Here the Cophtes preserve whatever wealth or precious objects they possess; and if assailed by the plundering Arabs, defend themselves with stones. There are four more celebrated monasteries in the desert of St. Macaire, distant about three days’ journey from Grand Cairo. The first is the convent of St. Macaire, which is ancient and in a ruinous state—the bones of the founder are enshrined in a stone coffin, placed behind an iron gate, enveloped in a chafe or pluvial (a sort of church ornament), formed into a canopy. A square tower of stone, which you enter by a drawbridge, is the only solid building belonging to the Abbey that remains. The friars store their books and their provisions, and obstinately defend themselves in this hold, whenever the wild Arabs come to pay them a predatory visit.
“There are similar (square) towers attached to the three other monasteries in the desert, the doors of which, and of the convent of St. Macaire, are alike covered with iron plates,” etc.
To the candid and dispassionate reader,—who has gone through this extract, and who is told that this is the basis upon which Colonel de Montmorency builds his superstructure of monastic appropriation,—to such I fearlessly appeal whether he will not scout the indignity with intellectual scorn.
Here are edifices spread, in numbers, over our island, in unity of design and elegance of execution, admitted by this writer himself as “the most imposing objects of antiquity in all Christendom,” and “placed by an almost supernatural power to brave the stormy winds and the wrath of time”; yet, in the same breath, made the counterparts of a few trumpery, temporary, and crazy old piles, which were originally erected as military stations, totally distinct from religion or religious uses—similar to those erected by Helena, mother to Constantine the Great, on the coast of Syria, against piratical incursions, and analogous to what we find in India, viz. a whole fortress converted into a conventual establishment. The thing is absurd,—it is revolting to common sense,—and bears on its forehead its own discomfiture.