Rufinus, too, made translations that were of great significance in the West. In 397 he translated the Rule of St. Basil for Ursacius, abbot of Pinetum in Italy. The Latin text, much shorter than the Greek and lacking the division into “Long and Short Rules,” has been shown to be a translation of the first edition of Basil’s Asceticon, which he later expanded into its fuller Greek form. It is in this earlier and briefer version that Basil became known to Western monks. Rufinus also translated, probably in 404, the Historia Monachorum in Aegypto, an account of a journey of seven monks from the Mount of Olives to visit the famous monks of Egypt in 394. While the authorship of the parallel Greek version is disputed, there can be no doubt of Rufinus’ responsibility for the Latin.
4. MONASTICISM IN GAUL
St. Martin of Tours has been traditionally regarded as the first monk in the West. While this is an exaggeration, in view of the prevalence of ascetical patterns of life that were springing up everywhere in the fourth century, it is true that Martin was the first great propagator of monasticism in Gaul. The influence of Martin and his disciples, however, seems to have been confined, up to the end of the fifth century, to the western part of Gaul. In the eastern part of the province, and especially in the valley of the Rhone, the monastic movement owed its origins to the monastery of Lerins. These two forms of the ascetic life, then, which radiated from Tours and from Lerins, respectively, constitute the twofold source of ancient Gallic monasticism. In each of the two regions, it was principally due to zealous bishops that monasticism was propagated. In Aquitaine, a number of Martin’s disciples who were raised to episcopal sees promoted the cult of Martin and the type of monasticism he had practiced. In eastern Gaul, numerous bishops who had been monks of Lerins or had otherwise been influenced by this monastery spread the monastic ideal through their territory. For more than a century, these two spheres of influence seem to have been mutually exclusive. Under Clovis, however, the cult of Martin was adopted by the Merovingian dynasty, and from this time on his popularity spread throughout the kingdom.12
There were, then, two original currents of Gallic monasticism: the Martinian type and that which stemmed from Lerins.
In Western literature and devotion, Martin of Tours is the typical monk-hero, in much the same way as Antony was in the East. This exemplary role of Martin was due to the publicity he received through the popularity and rapid spread of his Life, written by Sulpicius Severus just before and shortly after the death of the saint in 397. In addition to the Life of Martin itself, Sulpicius published three letters and three dialogues concerning Martin. This biographical collection became immediately popular throughout Western Christendom, rivaling the Life of Antony and influencing all subsequent Latin hagiography.13
Sulpicius Severus was a contemporary and devoted friend of Paulinus of Nola. Like him, he came from a prominent family in Aquitaine, enjoyed a first-class education, and became a prominent lawyer. He married into a noble and wealthy family, but his wife died while still young, an event that probably had an influence upon his decision to renounce his wealth and fame and retire into a life of asceticism and study. He did this soon after the similar move of Paulinus. Sulpicius’ retreat was at a place in southern Gaul called Primuliacum, whose exact location is uncertain. He kept up a lively correspondence with Paulinus, with whom he shared his double enthusiasm for the ascetic life and for the literary culture of late antiquity. Both of them knew Martin personally. Sulpicius, using Martin as the ideal monk-figure, wanted to propagate monasticism in the West, defend it against its opponents, especially some of the Gallic bishops, and show that its fruits were in no way inferior to those of the East.14
The chronology of Martin’s life is problematic, but its principal stages are certain. He was born of a pagan family in Sabaria, modern Hungary, probably about 316, and, like his father, followed a military career. During his military service he became a Christian. It is during his catechumenate that Sulpicius places the famous scene at the gate of Amiens, where Martin gave half his cloak to a shivering beggar, only to receive a vision that night in which Christ himself appeared clothed in the severed garment. When released from the army, probably in 356, he attached himself to Hilary of Poitiers, a supporter of the ascetic movement in Gaul, who ordained him an exorcist. After a visit to his native province, which must have coincided with Hilary’s exile, he began to live as a hermit at Milan, and then on the island of Gallinaria, as we have seen.
When Hilary returned from exile in 360, Martin left his solitude and, after failing to meet him in Rome, followed him to Poitiers. No doubt he benefited from the bishop’s recent contacts with Eastern monasticism. He took up residence in 361 at Ligugé, near Poitiers, to live the solitary life. Disciples were soon attracted, however, and he gradually became the spiritual father of a group of monks who formed a kind of “laura,” or loosely knit group of semi-anchorites, rather than a real coenobium. His popularity grew to such an extent that in 371 he was obliged by popular will to become bishop of Tours, despite his reluctance to leave his solitude. He thus became the first of the great monk-bishops of the Western Church, governing the church of Tours and exercising a remarkable pastoral and charitable activity until his death in 397. At Tours, Martin established a place of solitary retreat outside the city, on the banks of the Loire. Here, too, disciples followed, and another monastic colony was formed that became the monastery of Marmoutier, a source of bishops who contributed a more ascetical quality to the Gallic Church.
Martin propagated the monastic life in his diocese. Sulpicius says that he established hermitages in place of pagan shrines (Sulpic.Sever. Mart. 13) and claims that more than two thousand monks were present for his funeral (Sulpic.Sever. epist. 3). Those of his disciples who became bishops did the same. The best known of these who promoted the ascetic life in northern Gaul in the late fourth century was Victricius of Rouen, the apostle of Normandy. Like Martin, he had been in military service before becoming a bishop about 380. An energetic promoter of the ascetical life, he had contacts with Paulinus of Nola, a fervent admirer of Martin, and also with Ambrose. Like Martin, he worked for the eradication of paganism in the countryside. He certainly considered the virgins and ascetics to constitute the elite ranks of the Church, but there is not much information about the precise nature of the ascetic life at Rouen at this period.15
Martin’s reputation as monastic founder was such that more than a century later, when St. Benedict destroyed the temple and grove of Apollo he found on Montecassino, he dedicated to St. Martin of Tours one of the shrines he built to replace it (Greg. dial. 2,8).
The second early monastic tradition, which dominated the eastern part of Gaul, sprang from the monastery of Lerins, located on an island just opposite Cannes. It was founded by St. Honoratus, probably between 400 and 410. Information about Honoratus, who left no writings, comes from the commemorative oration delivered by St. Hilary, who had been his disciple at Lerins and later succeeded him as bishop of Arles.16 Honoratus, born probably around 360, was from a family of consular rank in Gaul. As a youth he yearned for the desert and converted his brother Venantius to the ascetic ideal. Together they set out for Greece with an elderly anchorite named Caprasius. After Venantius’ death there, Honoratus and Caprasius returned to the West and settled on the island of Lerina, the smaller of the two islands that constitute the Lerins Group, upon the recommendation of Leontius, bishop of Fréjus, their ordinary and adviser. It is not far from Gallinaria, where Martin had lived for a time. Disciples came, and it seems that by 410 Honoratus was directing a community, probably a rather loosely knit one, living in the manner of an Eastern “laura.”
It seems certain that Honoratus gave a rule to his monks, which must have existed in written form at least in later times, but it has not survived, and little is known in detail about the life at Lerins. In later centuries the Benedictine Rule was adopted there, and even today there is a Cistercian monastery on the island. It is certain that the leaders of ecclesiastical life in southern Gaul
had close contacts with Lerins throughout the fifth century, and that the monastery exported monk-bishops to many dioceses. Honoratus himself spent the last two years of his life as bishop of Arles, and his disciple and panegyrist, Hilary, ruled the see from 430 to 449.17
These bishops were the agents who spread the influence of Lerins up and down the valley of the Rhone. Many of them seem to have been members of the Gallo-Roman nobility, fleeing from the incursions of the barbarians farther north; at this time Provence was an island of safety in a world that seemed to be crumbling. Well educated in the classical tradition, these men were naturally suited to be leaders, and the episcopacy provided an arena for leadership in the power vacuum that developed with the collapse of Roman authority. They shared an enthusiasm for the monastic ideal derived from their association with Lerins and left behind a body of literature that contains all that is known of the life and tradition of that monastery. These monastic writings, especially the rules written by the later Lerinians, form a part of the Western monastic context, which, as we shall see later, is indispensable for understanding St. Benedict. Only the principal representatives of this tradition will be considered.
Eucherius of Lyons was an aristocrat who married a devout Christian woman named Galla. Like other couples of the time, they were attracted by the ascetic ideal, placed their two sons in the monastery at Lerins (both later became bishops), and withdrew’ into retirement on the neighboring island of Lero. They were in contact with Paulinus and Therasia at Nola in 412. Eucherius seems also to have lived in the community of Lerins, perhaps after his wife’s death. He became the bishop of Lyons, probably around 424, and left a number of letters and treatises, most notably his Praise of the Desert, in which he salutes Lerins, “who, in her motherly arms, welcomes the sailors cast up from the shipwrecks of the world” (Euch. laud.erem.).
The community of Lerins furnished two bishops for the see of Riez: Maximus, who followed Hilary as abbot in 430 and served as bishop of Riez from 433 until his death in 452; and Faustus, who followed him first as abbot (433–452) and then as bishop of Riez (460–495). Faustus, who was originally a Briton or Breton, was one of the greatest thinkers and writers of his time and the principal spokesman for the anti-Augustinian theological viewpoint after the death of Cassian. Even when bishop, he frequently withdrew into ascetic retreat and returned to Lerins to live the monastic life again for certain periods of time. On these occasions he probably preached to the community the sermons on the monastic life that still survive. Another of the great Lerinian bishops was Lupus of Troyes. He was married to Hilary’s sister, Pimeniola, but after seven years of marriage they separated by mutual agreement, and he went to Lerins. After a year in the monastery, when he had gone to Mâcon to dispose of his goods, he was seized and made bishop of Troyes. This seems to have taken place about 427. He lived until 479.
The most notable theological work to issue from Lerins was the Commonitorium of the monk Vincent of Lerins. There is meager information about him, and it is not even certain whether he was the brother of Lupus, whose name was also Vincent and who seems to have been a monk at Lerins. The Commonitorium, written about 434, is famous for its definition of sound catholic tradition. Salvian of Marseilles was another literary figure associated with the Lerins community. Though he was the tutor of Eucherius’ sons, he does not seem to have been a monk. We know that he came from the region of Trier, was married to Palladia, daughter of pagan parents, and had a daughter Auspiciola. He and his wife agreed to embrace the ascetic life. They apparently fled to the south when Trier was sacked by barbarians and took up residence in Marseilles. Salvian was a priest and was in close contact with monastic circles of southern Gaul.
The connection between Lerins and so many of the principal literary and ecclesiastical leaders of fifth-century Gaul has led some to believe that the monastery was a center of culture. In fact, however, the known literary works were never published by monks, with the sole exception of Vincent, but by former monks who had become bishops and who wrote to meet pastoral needs. Moreover, they had acquired their learning, not at Lerins, but before their entry into monastic life. Although some teaching went on at Lerins, the monastery was a school of asceticism rather than of literary culture or of theology. Contemporary writers invariably speak of discipline, psalmody and fasting at Lerins, not of study and literary production.
From allusions to the life at Lerins, only a general idea of the observance can be reconstructed. It appears that it was primarily cenobitic, but that experienced monks lived in separate cells as hermits, though under the authority of the abbot. They attended, at least on occasion, the common prayer and instruction by the abbot. Discipline was quite severe. The cenobitic monks lived in strict poverty and apportioned their time to work, reading and prayer. Young monks were subject to an elder, and new recruits went through a kind of novitiate of unknown length. Eastern cenobitism seems to have served as the model, but the solitary life was also held in high esteem.
Lerins maintained its discipline and its influence all through the fifth century and was still producing saints in the sixth. The greatest of its alumni, St. Caesarius of Arles, entered Lerins as a young cleric around the year 490. In 503 he became bishop of Arles, where he distinguished himself as a theologian, administrator and shepherd until his death in 542. As bishop, he wrote two monastic rules, one for virgins and another for monks, to regulate monasteries in his diocese. In his monastic teaching, he combined the tradition of Lerins with the teachings of Augustine. His successor, Aurelian of Arles, likewise wrote a rule for monks and another for nuns. These rules will be considered in connection with the Rule of St. Benedict in a later section.
Elsewhere in Gaul, other monasteries existed within the Lerinian sphere of influence. A type of monasticism similar to that of Lerins developed in the middle of the fifth century in the region of the Jura mountains, just west of Lake Geneva. This is better known to us than most of the monasteries of the fifth and sixth centuries, because the history of its founders was written by a monk of the abbey in the sixth century.18 The founders were two brothers, Romanus and Lupicinus. The former, captivated by the ascetic ideal, began to live the solitary life in the Jura forest, at a place called Condadisco, around the year 435. There he was joined by his brother, and soon by an increasing number of disciples, who were attracted by the founders’ reputation for holiness. Thus there grew up the monastery of Condat; at first a grouping of anchorites, it gradually became more cenobitic. So many monks came that a number of foundations were made, notably Laucone, two miles away, and Baume, a women’s monastery built for the founders’ sister.
Romanus and Lupicinus jointly governed this family of ascetics during the lifetime of both; Lupicinus was sole superior after the death of Romanus about 460 until his own death about twenty years later. The anonymous author says little of the next abbot, Minasius, but is expansive in regard to his successor, Eugendus, of whom he claims to be a disciple. Eugendus was born about the middle of the fifth century and was brought to the monastery at the age of six. He grew rapidly in holiness and was chosen to govern the community after the death of Minasius. He lived until 510. It does not appear that there was a written rule during the lifetime of the founders, but probably there was one by the sixth century.19 The reign of St. Eugendus marked a definite evolution toward a more thoroughgoing cenobitism.
The most influential of all the monastic founders of Gaul was John Cassian. Not too much is known about his monastery at Marseilles nor about some aspects of his personal history, but his monastic writings became universally known in the West and have been more influential in the spirituality of Western monasticism than any other, except the Benedictine Rule.20 Cassian was probably not a native of Gaul, but seems to have been born in the Balkan region, a part of the empire where Latin was spoken but the urban population was almost equally at home with Greek. Accordingly, he was admirably suited for the role of mediator between Eastern and Western monasticism. He must have been born about 360. H
is family was presumably prosperous, and he received a good education. As a youth he aspired to undertake the ascetic life and with his friend Germanus went off to enter a monastery in Bethlehem. Certainly this was not Jerome’s monastery, but we know little about it. It is not even certain when Cassian came, nor at what age, nor how long he stayed, nor why he was so far from home.
After spending some time there (he later realized that his initiation had been too brief), Cassian made a pilgrimage to Egypt with Germanus to drink in the wisdom of the desert monks. They visited the monastic colonies of the delta region, of Scete, and of Nitria and the Cells. Later, in the Conferences, Cassian would record the teaching of the great solitaries. The travelers returned to Bethlehem after seven years (unless this number is symbolic) and subsequently made a second visit to Egypt, of unknown duration. Cassian never mentions Evagrius of Pontus, but he has clearly adopted his whole ascetical system. Since he visited the Cells, where Evagrius was then living until his death in 399, he must have known him and absorbed his teaching.
In 400 Cassian and Germanus were in Constantinople; it is certain that they fled from Egypt in connection with the Origenist controversy of 399 and took refuge with Chrysostom, who ordained Cassian a deacon. But Chrysostom was sent into exile, and in 405 the two friends were in Rome to plead his case before the Pope. It is not known whether Cassian returned to the East after this mission, stayed in Rome, or went on immediately to Gaul. At any rate, he was in Provence around 415, and by then he had been ordained priest.
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