The discipline canons of Nicaea were enforced throughout the universal Church — the first time in Church history this had occurred. The twenty total canons at Nicaea dealt with clerical behavior and liturgical practice. Some examples of the Nicene canons include:
• Members of the clergy must not keep in their house a woman who is not their mother, sister, aunt, or a woman above all suspicion.
• Clerics who practice usury (loaning money at exorbitant interest) are to be deposed.
• Deacons are not to sit with the priests and are not to distribute the Eucharist to them.
• The ancient custom must be observed of praying while standing and not kneeling on Sundays and in the fifty days after Easter.28
The last day of the council coincided with the twentieth anniversary of Constantine’s accession of imperial power (as proclaimed by the legions in Britain). In celebration of this milestone and of the completion of their conciliar efforts, the emperor held a banquet for the bishops. Constantine believed the council had achieved peace and unity in the Church and Empire.
The Beginnings of Monasticism
During the Roman persecutions, many Christians witnessed to their faith by shedding their blood, the ultimate price for refusing to repudiate their beliefs. Now that the Faith was legalized and the Church was recognized as a corporate institution in the Empire, “red martyrdom” was temporarily at an end. Christians still desired to give their lives totally to Christ in a radical and unique manner, however, so a lifestyle of self-sacrifice and renunciation developed in the form of monasticism — a word derived from the Greek monachos, meaning “solitary.”29 Christian monks practiced what became known as “white martyrdom” — a complete self-sacrifice and renunciation of the things of the world, dying to self in order to grow closer to Christ and the Church. The founder of monasticism is usually identified as Saint Anthony the Abbot (250–356), an Egyptian Christian from a wealthy family in Alexandria who, at the age of nineteen, gave his wealth to the poor and began to live an ascetical life. He lived a strict penitential life in the midst of the bustling city and was engaged in spiritual combat against demons for nearly fifteen years. At the age of thirty-five, he left the city and spent the next seven decades in the wild, only returning to Alexandria twice: the first time to encourage his fellow Christians to remain strong in the midst of Diocletian’s Great Persecution, and later to support his bishop, Athanasius, in the fight against the Arians.30 In the desert, Anthony lived a solitary, silent, and penitential life, sustaining his health on a daily meal of bread, seasoned with salt, and water. He did not eat meat or drink wine. His day was spent in prayer.31 Although his life appeared lonely, Anthony sought solitude in order to grow closer to God. Unfortunately for Anthony, this way of life attracted attention, and soon a large following of men appeared in the desert seeking to emulate him.32 Anthony wanted to remain solitary with the Lord, but he realized he had an obligation to assist these men in some way. He organized communal times of prayer, song, and spiritual conferences, while maintaining the eremetical environment.
Another hermit who developed an early form of cenobitic monasticism (monks living in community) was Saint Pachomius (290–348). Pachomius’s first monastic community, established in the year 318, soon grew to over a hundred monks. He realized that a monastery of that size was burdensome, so he created a more manageable structure. Pachomius divided his community into a complex of buildings with individual houses, wherein no more than forty monks had individual cells. Each monk wore the same simple habit. Eventually, Pachomius founded nine other similar monasteries. He composed the first monastic rule, which provided for a life of daily spiritual exercises for the monks, with regular times for prayer, work, and communal meals. Upon his death in the mid-fourth century, Pachomius’s monasteries housed thousands of monks.
While Anthony and Pachomius are credited with establishing the first forms of monasticism, other groups of Christians, especially in Egypt, Palestine, and Syria, practiced very different ways of holy living. There arose some monastic extremists, including such groups as the Dendrites (from the Greek dendron, meaning “tree”), who escaped the world by living in trees and practiced extreme forms of asceticism. Another group, the Adamites, believed that through holy living they could regain Adam’s original innocence in the Garden before the Fall, so they walked around naked. Perhaps the most famous are the Stylites, or “pillar hermits,” who lived on platforms on top of pillars. These men practiced extreme fasting, living on the contributions of passersby who would put food and other necessities in a bucket, which had been lowered down by a rope. The most well-known Stylite was Saint Simeon (d. 459). Annoyed with numerous people disturbing his hermetical life to seek guidance on holy living, he ascended a twenty-eight-foot platform, where he lived for thirty-six years!
Although many monastic groups sought to live out the Christian life in a unique manner, one man would be known as the “Father of Eastern Monasticism,” Saint Basil the Great (329–378). Basil came from a holy family; his grandfather had been martyred, and his grandmother, parents, and siblings are also saints. One of his brothers was also a Church Father and extraordinary theologian, Saint Gregory of Nyssa (335–394). Despite the sanctity of his family, Basil embraced the world in his early life. Undoubtedly, the prayers of his parents brought about his eventual complete conversion. Basil dedicated his life to God by becoming a monk, which he believed would help him fulfill the Christian vocation to embrace “likeness to God as far as possible.”33 Basil wanted to live the monastic life with all excellence, since “mediocrity brings the Christian faith into discredit.”34 So, he founded a new community of monks whose lives were governed by one rule, so that they all could pursue holiness in a common life.
Basil’s rule contributed two important developments to monasticism: the novitiate and organized community life. Basil recognized that new members who wished to join the monastic community should undergo a period of testing and initiation to determine if the monastic life suited them, and if they truly belonged in the community. If a novice was not able to live peacefully in accordance with the rule, then he was not allowed to permanently join the group. Basil wanted the monks to be in communion, rather than remaining a group of disparate hermits who occasionally gathered for certain times or events. He restricted the number of monks living in community to no more than forty and created a life centered on a spirit of moderation, which was balanced between an active and contemplative lifestyle. Basil organized times of common prayer for his monks. He stressed the need for spiritual direction and proper holy living, including the practice of celibacy. He emphasized living a simple life of moderate food consumption and wearing no ostentatious clothing. Basil even forbade his monks from loud laughing, as it would disturb the prayerful atmosphere of the community, although smiling was permitted.35
Basil also created a lasting societal organization to care for the sick and dying — the hospital. Because the first monks were separated from major urban areas, they had to care for their own sick and developed a rudimentary healthcare system. In some monasteries, a separate building, the infirmary, was constructed to care for the sick members of the community. Basil was aware of early monastic health care but wanted to improve upon it by providing a safe place for all the ill, injured, and dying to receive proper medical treatment by trained professionals, offered at no charge.36 Basil was able to support his hospital by utilizing his family’s wealthy connections with the imperial government. The land for the hospital was donated to Basil by the state; he convinced the provincial governor to grant tax-exempt status to the new institution by highlighting the public impact of the hospital, which would care for the sick and poor and provide jobs in the local economy. The new health complex was known as the Basileias,