Fragmentary notes on Church history
{illeg} {illeg} going into all the {illeg} {illeg}uration & made many {illeg}
The Clergy also by this means soon bec{ame} {illeg} For besides that divers of them af{illeg} Clergy–men became Monks it grew into custome to elect {illeg} Presbyters & Bishops out of this order of men {illeg} most holy, & the a Pope & b Emperors {illeg} commanded that they should be elected thence: so {illeg} hence forward the fathers of the Church (Athanasius Paphnutius, Spiridion, Iames of Nisibis, Eusebius of Emissa, {illeg} Cæsaria, Cyril of Ierusalem, Basil, Gregory of Nyssen, Epiphanus, Meletius & Flavian of Antioch, Theodorus of Tyre. Amphilochius of Iconium, Chrysostom, Hilary, Paulinus Nolanus, Ephrem Syrus Didymus Alexandrinus, Macarius, Ierom, Ruffin, Cassian & many others) were monks & many of them (as Basil, Nazianzen Vercellensis, Ambrose, Martin, D. Augustin, the founders of monkery in Asia, Thrace, Italy, Lombardy, France, Afr{ica} {the} monasteries out of which they filled their churches. And this {was} the original of the celibacy of the Clergy. For about this time matrimony began to be prohibited to all the Clergy. For a Epiphanius in the year 374 wrote that where the Ecclesiastical canons were accurately observed those only who had no wives or absteined from them were admitted into the orders of Bishops Priests Deacons & Subdeacons: & th{at} where Clergymen did get children it was through licentious{ness} & not by the authority of the Canon. And in another b[1] place that the Priesthood then consisted chiefly of {illeg} order of virgins | Bachelors or if not of virgins | Bachelors certainly of Monks: {illeg} if fit persons are not to be found amongst the Monks, then Priests use to be created out of those who abstein from their wives or after one marriage continue in widdowhood. Whence Ierome in his book against Vigilantius said in general: What shall the Churches {of} the East do? What those of Egypt & of the Apostolic S{ea} which either takes Virgins for Clergimen or Monks {illeg} those that leave their wives if they have any. And Chry{sostom:} The husband of one wife, not so that it should be now {obser}ved in the Churches: for it behoves the Priest to be altogether {adorned} with chastity.[2] So {illeg} in a letter to H{illeg}{illeg} 385 forbids {the ministers} to converse with their {wives} {illeg} appointed the husbands {illeg} {illeg} having {illeg} Council of Arelatam in {illeg} that a married man should not be made a Presbyter {illeg} that is abstinence from the {wife} {illeg} the Monks was of a dark russet or black co{lour} {illeg} Clergy as many as were Monks ware black which {illeg} ever since. For the b[3] Clergy before were {illeg} other colours like the people. This body {illeg} was at first twofold; c[4] Antony planting one body {illeg} headed by the Partriarch & clergy of the Diocess of Alexandria {illeg} planting another in Syria headed by the Patriarch {& clergy} of the dioces of Antioch. Both these bodies began to be numerous {in the} reign of Constantius & from these two fountains monkery overflowed the world but yet became not of a {illeg} so numerous in other regions as in these. For {Palladius}[5] who visited the wilderness of Egypt in the reign of {illeg} tells us that there were then as many monks in the wildnerness as people in the cities {illeg} ten thousand in the single city Oxyrinchus. And its probable that at this time there were as many within the Diocess of Antioch as in Egypt tho not in proportion to the people because long before when the life of Antony was not yet written Hilarion had so well filled the deserts of Syria that when he visited the Monasteries there d[6] he had sometimes a train of 2000 Monks following him and left the wilderness to avoyd so great a multitude. In recconning these two great bodies of Monks to bee headed by the Clergy of the two Diocesses of Egypt & the East I follow Ierome who saith: As if the Clergy were another thing then the Monks & whatever is spoke against the Monks doth not redound upon the Clergy who are the fathers of the Monks. The dammage of the flock is the re{pro}ach of the Shepherd.[7]
{illeg} by propagating #
{illeg} the lives of Antony Hilarion
