thirty or forty families.

[Footnote 40: Cassian has simply, though copiously, described the
monastic habit of Egypt, (Institut. l. i.,) to which Sozomen (l. iii. c.
14) attributes such allegorical meaning and virtue.]

[Footnote 41: Regul. Benedict. No. 55, in Cod. Regul. part ii. p. 51.]

[Footnote 42: See the rule of Ferreolus, bishop of Usez, (No. 31, in
Cod. Regul part ii. p. 136,) and of Isidore, bishop of Seville, (No. 13,
in Cod. Regul part ii. p. 214.)]

[Footnote 43: Some partial indulgences were granted for the hands
and feet "Totum autem corpus nemo unguet nisi causa infirmitatis, nec
lavabitur aqua nudo corpore, nisi languor perspicuus sit," (Regul.
Pachom xcii. part i. p. 78.)]

[Footnote 431: Athanasius (Vit. Ant. c. 47) boasts of Antony's holy
horror of clear water, by which his feet were uncontaminated except
under dire necessity--M.]

Chapter XXXVII: Conversion Of The Barbarians To Christianity.--Part II.

Pleasure and guilt are synonymous terms in the language of the monks,
and they discovered, by experience, that rigid fasts, and abstemious
diet, are the most effectual preservatives against the impure desires
of the flesh. [44] The rules of abstinence which they imposed, or
practised, were not uniform or perpetual: the cheerful festival of the
Pentecost was balanced by the extraordinary mortification of Lent; the
fervor of new monasteries was insensibly relaxed; and the voracious
appetite of the Gauls could not imitate the patient and temperate
virtue of the Egyptians. [45] The disciples of Antony and Pachomius were
satisfied with their daily pittance, [46] of twelve ounces of bread, or
rather biscuit, [47] which they divided into two frugal repasts, of
the afternoon and of the evening. It was esteemed a merit, and almost a
duty, to abstain from the boiled vegetables which were provided for the
refectory; but the extraordinary bounty of the abbot sometimes indulged
them with the luxury of cheese, fruit, salad, and the small dried
fish of the Nile. [48] A more ample latitude of sea and river fish was
gradually allowed or assumed; but the use of flesh was long confined
to the sick or travellers; and when it gradually prevailed in the less
rigid monasteries of Europe, a singular distinction was introduced;
as if birds, whether wild or domestic, had been less profane than the
grosser animals of the field. Water was the pure and innocent beverage
of the primitive monks; and the founder of the