Thebaid

I have seen the first monks and anchorites without crossing seas or centuries.

More than once some individual has appeared to me with such negligence of labor and such commanding contemplation, a haughty beneficiary begging in the name of God, as made good to the 19th century Simeon the Stylite, the Thebais, and the first Capuchins.

The priestcraft of the East and West, of the Magian, Brahmin, Druid, and Inca, is expounded in the individual's private life.

The cramping influence of a hard formalist on a young child in repressing his spirits and courage, paralyzing the understanding, and that without producing indignation, but only fear and obedience, even much sympathy with the tyranny, is a familiar fact, explained to the child when he becomes a man, only by seeing that the oppressor of his youth is himself a child, tyrannized over by those names and words and forms of whose influence he was merely the organ to the youth.

Martyrs were put to death in every province.

Africa and Mauritiana, Thebais and Egypt throughout abounded with them.

Five persons of this last country Eusebius speaks of, whom he had known in Palestine and Phoenicia.

He himself saw them suffering under the scourge, or exposed to enraged wild beasts, and celebrates their admirable patience.

Whole families were put to various kinds of death, some by fire, others by water, others by declination, after horrible tortures.

Some perished by famine, others by crucifixion, and of these some of the common manner, others were fastened with their head downwards and preserved alive, that they might die by hunger.

But the torments in Thebais exceed all description.

Women tied by one foot were raised up on high and exposed naked, monuments at once of the inhumanity and indecency of the persecution.

It was his proudest boast that he had acted as acolyte to the great St. Antony.

He resolved, therefore, to visit the district known as the Thebaid where St. Pachomius, the father of monasticism in the East, had founded many monasteries and drawn up a rule for the monks.

Pachomius had been one of a body of young soldiers seized against their will and forced to fight in the wars between Constantine and Maxentius.

It happened one day during a journey that they landed at Thebes in Egypt where they were treated with harshness and cruelty.

I pray and do penance the greater part of the night, sometimes the whole night through." Pachomius shivered, for he was a sound sleeper, but he replied sturdily enough, "I hope in Jesus Christ that, helped by your prayers, I shall persevere." Palaemon could resist him no longer.

He took the young man to live with him, and found him a humble and faithful disciple.

After some years, the two hermits went together to the desert of the Thebaid and began the work to which God had called Pachomius, for Palaemon died soon after.

Many monasteries were founded, and men flocked to the desert to give themselves to God.

I have seen the first monks and anchorites without crossing seas or centuries.

More than once some individual has appeared to me with such negligence of labor and such commanding contemplation, a haughty beneficiary begging in the name of God, as made good to the nineteenth century Simeon the Stylite, the Thebais, and the first Capuchins.

The priestcraft of the East and West, of the Magian, Brahmin, Druid, and Inca, is expounded in the individual's private life.

The cramping influence of a hard formalist on a young child in repressing his spirits and courage, paralyzing the understanding, and that without producing indignation, but only fear and obedience, even much sympathy with the tyranny, is a familiar fact, explained to the child when he becomes a man, only by seeing that the oppressor of his youth is himself a child, tyrannized over by those names and words and forms of whose influence he was merely the organ to the youth.

Thence they descended on the eastern side to the place of the burning bush, where the present convent of St. Catherine is, and after visiting Tabara and several other sites, she returned down the valley again to Faran, and so back after two days' rest by a toilsome route across the desert to Clisma, where she was again glad to rest for a while.

When she had been in Egypt before, she had seen something of Goshen, as well as of the Thebaid and Alexandria, but she was now desirous to explore the route of the Exodus more carefully.

She found it was no easy journey of four stations across the desert to what she calls the city of Arabia, identified by experts with the Dau of Roman official documents, or possibly Bubastir, and the district was apparently at the time unsettled and in military occupation.

However, she was allowed an escort of soldiers and set out.

The remainder of the journey into Goshen was then accomplished.

It took her past Ramesses, which was only four miles from her goal, the city of Arabia, which she reached on the eve of the Epiphany in time for the services.

Here she sent back her military guard as she was now on the high road from the Thebaid to Pelusium and would have no difficulty when she resumed her journey towards Palestine.

At Ramesses, Saf-el-Heneh, which was once a great city, she found nothing but ruins remaining except two great statues cut out of one great Theban stone and an ancient sycamore famous for its healing virtue, which they called the Tree of Truth, according to the Bishop of Arabia, who had come out to meet her there.

Thence they descended on the eastern side to the place of the burning bush, where the present convent of St. Catherine is, and after visiting Tabara and several other sites, she returned down the valley again to Faran, and so back after two days' rest by a toilsome route across the desert to Clisma, where she was again glad to rest for a while.

When she had been in Egypt before, she had seen something of Goshen, as well as of the Thebaid and Alexandria, but she was now desirous to explore the route of the Exodus more carefully.

She found it was no easy journey of four stations across the desert to what she calls the City of Arabia, identified by experts with the Dau of Roman official documents, or possibly Bubastir, and the district was apparently at the time unsettled and in military occupation.

However, she was allowed an escort of soldiers and set out.

The remainder of the journey into Goshen was then accomplished.

It took her past Ramesses, which was only four miles from her goal, the City of Arabia, which she reached on the eve of the Epiphany in time for the services.

Here she sent back her military guard as she was now on the high road from the Thebaid to Pelusium and would have no difficulty when she resumed her journey towards Palestine.

At Ramesses, Saf-el-Heneh, which was once a great city, she found nothing but ruins remaining except two great statues cut out of one great Theban stone and an ancient sycamore famous for its healing virtue, which they called the Tree of Truth, according to the Bishop of Arabia, who had come out to meet her there.

Thus they thought they fulfilled the words of the prophet, The desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose.

Amongst the inhabitants of the holy Thebaid there were some who passed their days in asceticism and contemplation.

Others gained their livelihood by plaiting palm fiber, or by working at harvest time for the neighboring farmers.

The Gentiles wrongly suspected some of them of living by brigandage and allying themselves to the nomadic Arabs who robbed the caravans.

Angels in the likeness of young men came, staff in hand as travelers, to visit the hermitages, whilst demons, having assumed the form of Ethiopians or of animals, wandered around the habitations of the hermits in order to lead them into temptation.

When the monks went in the morning to fill their pitcher at the spring, they saw the footprints of satyrs and aguipons in the sand.

The Thebaid was, really and spiritually, a battlefield, where at all times and more especially at night there were terrible conflicts between heaven and hell.

The ascetics, furiously assailed by legions of the damned, defended themselves, with the help of God and the angels, by fasting, prayer, and penance.