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| Chapter V. Of the founders who originated the order of Cœnobites.
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Chapter V.
Of the founders who originated the order of
Cœnobites.
And so the system of
Cœnobites took its rise in the days of the preaching of the
Apostles. For such was all that multitude of believers in Jerusalem,
which is thus described in the Acts of the Apostles: “But the
multitude of believers was of one heart and one soul, neither said any
of them that any of the things which he possessed was his own, but they
had all things common. They sold their possessions and property and
divided them to all, as any man had need.” And again: “For
neither was there any among them that lacked; for as many as possessed
fields or houses, sold them and brought the price of the things that
they sold and laid them before the feet of the Apostles: and
distribution was made to every man as he had need.”2075
| 2075 Acts iv. 32; ii. 45; iv. 34,
35. | The whole Church, I say, was then such as
now are those few who can be found with difficulty in Cœnobia. But
when at the death of the Apostles the multitude of believers began to
wax cold, and especially that multitude which had come to the faith of
Christ from diverse foreign nations, from whom the Apostles out of
consideration for the infancy of their faith and their ingrained
heathen habits, required nothing more than that they should
“abstain
from
things sacrificed to idols and from fornication, and from things
strangled, and from blood,”2076
and so that
liberty which was conceded to the Gentiles because of the weakness of
their newly-born faith, had by degrees begun to mar the perfection of
that Church which existed at Jerusalem, and the fervour of that early
faith cooled down owing to the daily increasing number both of natives
and foreigners, and not only those who had accepted the faith of
Christ, but even those who were the leaders of the Church relaxed
somewhat of that strictness. For some fancying that what they saw
permitted to the Gentiles because of their weakness, was also allowable
for themselves, thought that they would suffer no loss if they followed
the faith and confession of Christ keeping their property and
possessions. But those who still maintained the fervour of the
apostles, mindful of that former perfection left their cities and
intercourse with those who thought that carelessness and a laxer life
was permissible to themselves and the Church of God, and began to live
in rural and more sequestered spots, and there, in private and on their
own account, to practise those things which they had learnt to have
been ordered by the apostles throughout the whole body of the Church in
general: and so that whole system of which we have spoken grew up from
those disciples who had separated themselves from the evil that was
spreading. And these, as by degrees time went on, were separated from
the great mass of believers and because they abstained from marriage
and cut themselves off from intercourse with their kinsmen and the life
of this world, were termed monks or solitaries from the strictness of
their lonely and solitary life. Whence it followed that from their
common life they were called Cœnobites and their cells and
lodgings Cœnobia. That then alone was the earliest kind of monks,
which is first not only in time but also in grace, and which continued
unbroken for a very long period up to the time of Abbot Paul and
Antony; and even to this day we see its traces remaining in strict
cœnobia.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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