o were set apart from the multitude by their
continence or by their abstinence from worldly pleasures.

Among the Jews of old there were the Nazarites, who consecrated
themselves to the Lord, some of them the sons of the prophet Elias
and others the followers of Eliseus, the monks of whom, on the
authority of St. Jerome (Epist. 4 and 13), we read in the Old
Testament. More recently there were the three philosophical sects
which Josephus defines in his Book of Antiquities (xviii, 2),
calling them the Pharisees, the Sadducees and the Essenes. In our
times, furthermore, there are the monks who imitate either the
communal life of the Apostles or the earlier and solitary life of
John. Among the gentiles there are, as has been said, the
philosophers. Did they not apply the name of wisdom or philosophy
as much to the religion of life as to the pursuit of learning, as
we find from the origin of the word itself, and likewise from the
testimony of the saints?

There is a passage on this subject in the eighth book of St.
Augustine's "City of God," wherein he distinguishes between the
various schools of philosophy. "The Italian school," he says, "had
as its founder Pythagoras of Samos, who, it is said, originated the
very word 'philosophy.' Before his time those who were regarded as
conspicuous for the praiseworthiness of their lives were called
wise men, but he, on being asked of his profession, replied that he
was a philosopher, that is to say a student or a lover of wisdom,
because it seemed to him unduly boastful to call himself a wise
man." In this passage, therefore, when the phrase "conspicuous for
the praiseworthiness of their lives" is used, it is evident that
the wise, in other words the philosophers, were so called less
because of their erudition than by reason of their virtuous lives.
In what sobriety and continence these men lived it is not for me to
prove by illustration, lest I should seem to instruct Minerva
herself.

Now, she added, if laymen and gentiles, bound by no profession of
religion, lived after this fashion, what ought you, a cleric and a
canon, to do in order not to prefer base voluptuousness to your
sacred duties, to prevent this Charybdis from sucking you down
headlong, and to save yourself from being plunged shamelessly and
irrevocably into such filth as this? If you care nothing for your
privileges as a cleric, at least uphold your dignity as a
philosopher. If you scorn the reverence due to God,