The fame of Moses continued. In the Itinerary of Willibald (c. 750) we read that, after his return from Palestine, he was received by Pope Hadrian in Rome at a time when St. Boniface was asking for help on his mission to evangelise the Germans. The Pope, in his desire to persuade Willibald to undertake the task, referred to Moses the hermit, famous for innumerable miracles in the desert, “who was torn away from the solitary life he was leading at the request of Queen Mania to the Roman emperor, and placed as bishop over the nation of the Saracens, and in a short time he won to Christ that most fierce nation, and clothed them in the fleece of lambs.”[163] The name of Moses was inscribed in the Roman Martyrology on Feb. 27. “In Egypt the feast of Moses, a venerable bishop, who at first lived a solitary life in the desert, and then, at the request of Mauvia, queen of the Saracens, being made bishop, converted that most ferocious nation in great part to the faith, and made glorious by his merits rested in peace.”[164]
Moses was followed in the see of Pharan by Natyr, a disciple of Silvanus, who was a strict ascetic.
CHAPTER XI
THE WRITINGS OF THE HERMITS
THE writings of the hermits from the fifth century onwards throw light on the aspirations and the attitude of mind of these men of the desert, to whom the interests of ordinary mankind were as nothing.
Foremost among these writings are those of Nilus, a man of learning who, after occupying a high position at Constantinople, visited the hermits, with whom he remained. His Narrationes contain valuable information on heathen sacrifice at the time.[165]
About the year 420 Nilus decided to separate from his wife in order to visit the “Bush at the foot of the holy mountain on which God conferred with the people,” taking his youthful son with him. The barbarians, he tells us, dwelt from Arabia to Egypt, from the Red Sea to the Jordan, ever ready to draw the sword, hunting wild beasts, attacking travellers, and making use of their camel-dromedaries for sacrifices which they devoured with dog-like voracity. They had no regard for God, but adored the Morning Star (Lucifer, ἄστρον πρωϊνόν), to which they sacrificed the best product of the chase, or boys of comely appearance, on an altar of rough stones. Failing these, they took a fattened white camel without blemish which they made to kneel. They encircled it three times to the sound of chanting, whereupon the sheykh who acted as leader, made a thrust at the beast’s neck, and all of them hastily drank of the blood that gushed forth.
The whole band then fell upon the victim, and each person hacked off and devoured a piece of the beast’s flesh and skin. It was the rule of the rite that the whole victim with body, bones, blood and entrails, was done away with before the rays of the sun appeared above the horizon (p. 613).