In the following pages we shall follow the fortunes of this ethical ideal through medieval and modern times. We shall trace the modifying influence upon it of the different and changing elements of the civilization of which it has formed a part, and shall note the reaction of the ideal, in its successive types, upon the history of the passing centuries.
CHAPTER XIII
MORAL HISTORY OF THE AGE OF CHRISTIAN ASCETICISM
I. Conceptions of Life and Historical Circumstances that produced the Ascetic Ideal
General fostering causes of asceticism
Before the close of the third century the development in the Christian communities of the East of asceticism, the germs of which were immanent from the first in Christianity, had given a remarkable trend to the moral movement inaugurated by the new religion. We shall gain a sympathetic understanding of this phase of Christian ethics only as we bear in mind the conceptions of life and of the world, and the historical conditions which in general tend to foster the development of the ascetic ideal of goodness.
Asceticism, a definitive characteristic of which is renunciation of the world and all earthly pleasures, springs from various roots. Sometimes it grows out of a dualistic world philosophy, which, holding matter to be an evil creation and “the corruptible body a load upon the soul,” teaches the meritoriousness of the suppression, in the interest of the spirit, of all bodily impulses and appetites.
Sometimes it arises from inequitable and oppressive conditions of society, which have made life for the enslaved and impoverished masses so joyless and wretched as to create an inappeasable yearning for deliverance from its intolerable burdens.
Again, it springs from a world philosophy, which, because of its vivid vision of another world of eternal realities, undervalues and reduces to nothingness this earthly life and all its relationships.
Still again, it may spring from the soil of a morally decadent civilization, for, unless the sources of spiritual life have been wholly destroyed, from a debasing sensuality and dissoluteness that rob life of worth and dignity there is ever sure to come a reaction—a reaction expressing itself in an extreme emphasis laid upon the worth and meritoriousness of world renunciation.
Fostering causes of Christian asceticism: (a) certain Christian teachings