which seemed to have been so long dead, flashed up for one splendid moment, ere it sunk into the darkness of the Middle Age; that in them woman asserted (however strangely and fantastically) her moral equality with man; and that at the very moment when monasticism was consigning her to contempt, almost to abhorrence, as “the noxious animal,” the “fragile vessel,” the cause of man’s fall at first, and of his sin and misery ever since, woman showed the monk (to his naïvely-confessed surprise), that she could dare, and suffer, and adore as well as he. But the movement, having once seized the Roman Empire, grew and spread irresistibly. It was accepted, supported, preached, practised, by every great man of the time. Athanasius, Basil, Chrysostom, Gregory of Nazianzen in the East, Jerome, Augustine, Ruffinus, Evagrius, Fulgentius, Sulpicius Severus, Vincent of Lerins, John Cassian, Martin of Tours, Salvian, Cæsarius of Arles, were all monks, or as much of monks as their duties would allow them to be. Ambrose of Milan, though no monk himself, was the fervent preacher of, the careful legislator for, monasticism male and female. Throughout the whole Roman Empire, in the course of a century, had spread hermits (or dwellers in the desert), anchorites (retired from the world), or monks (dwellers alone). The three names grew afterwards to designate three different orders of ascetics. The hermits remained through the Middle Ages those who dwelt in deserts; the anchorites, or “ankers” of the English Middle Age, seem generally to have inhabited cells built in, or near, the church walls; the name of “monks” was transferred from those who dwelt alone to those who dwelt in regular communities, under a fixed government. But the three names at first were interchangeable; the three modes of life alternated, often in the same man. The life of all three was the same,—celibacy, poverty, good deeds towards their fellow-men; self-restraint, and sometimes self-torture of every kind, to atone (as far as might be) for the sins committed after baptism: and the mental food of all three was the same likewise; continued meditation upon the vanity of the world, the sinfulness of the flesh, the glories of heaven, and the horrors of hell: but with these the old hermits combined—to do them justice—a personal faith in God, and a personal love for Christ, which those who sneer at them would do well to copy. Over all Europe, even to Ireland, {15} the same pattern of Christian excellence repeated itself with strange regularity, till it became the only received pattern; and to “enter religion,” or “be converted,” meant simply to become a monk.