monks and claimed that many of Rome’s noblest young men and women were withdrawn from a life of usefulness into the desert.  He held that there was really but one class of Christians, namely, those who had faith in Christ, and that a monk could be no more.  But Jovinian was far in advance of his age, and it was many years before the truth of his view gained any considerable recognition.  He was severely attacked by Jerome, who called him a Christian Epicurean, and was condemned as a heretic by a synod at Milan, in 390.  Thus the reformers were crushed for centuries.  The Pagan Emperor, Julian, and the Christian, Valens, alike tried in vain to resist the emigration into the desert.  Thousands fled, in times of peril to the state, from their civil and military duties, but the emperors were powerless to prevent the exodus.

That there were grounds for complaint against the monks we may know from the charges made even by those who favored the system.  Jerome Ambrose, Augustine, and in fact almost every one of the Fathers tried to correct the growing disorders.  We learn from them that many fled from society, not to become holy, but to escape slavery and famine; and that many were lazy and immoral.  Their “shaven heads lied to God.”  Avarice, ambition, or cowardice ruled hearts that should have been actuated by a love of poverty, self-sacrifice or courage.  “Quite recently,” says Jerome, “we have seen to our sorrow a fortune worthy of Croesus brought to light by a monk’s death, and a city’s alms collected for the poor, left by will to his sons and successors.”

Many monks traveled from place to place selling sham relics.  Augustine wrote against “those hypocrites who, in the dress of monks, wander about the provinces carrying pretended relics, amulets, preservatives, and expecting alms to feed their lucrative poverty and recompense their pretended virtue.”  It is to the credit of the Fathers of the church that they boldly and earnestly rebuked the vices of the monks and tried to purge the monastic system of its impurities.

But the church sanctioned the monastic movement.  She could not have done anything else.  “It is one of the most striking occurrences in history,” says Harnack, “that the church, exactly at the time when she was developing more and more into a legal institution and a sacramental establishment, outlined a Christian life-ideal which was incapable of realization within her bounds, but only alongside of her.  The more she affiliated herself with the world, the higher and more superhuman did she make her ideal.”

It is also noteworthy that this “life-ideal” seems to have led, inevitably, to fanaticism and other excesses, so that even at this early date there was much occasion for alarm.  Gross immorality was disclosed as well as luminous purity; indolence and laziness as well as the love of sacrifice and toil.  So we shall find it down through the centuries.  “The East had few great men,” says Milman, “many madmen; the West, madmen enough, but still very many, many great men.”  We have met some madmen and some great men.  We shall meet more of each type.