american-holocaust

SEX, RACE AND HOLY WAR 157my face haggard with fasting, my mind burnt with desire in my frigid body,and the fires of lust alone leaped before a man prematurely dead. So, destituteof all aid, I used to lie at the feet of Christ, watering them with mytears, wiping them with my hair, struggling to subdue my rebellious fleshwith seven days' fasting.HExtreme though such thoughts and behavior may seem today, in theearly centuries of Christianity, when the seeds of faith were being nurturedinto dogma, such activities characterized the entire adult lives of thousandsof the most saintly and honored men. During the fourth century about5000 holy ascetics lived in the desert of Nitria, with thousands more tormentingthemselves around Antinoe in the Thebiad, at Hermopolis, andelsewhere. Indeed, so popular did the life of the sex-denying hermit becomeamong Christian men that in time it was difficult to find sufficientisolation to live the true hermit's life. They began to live in small groups,and then eventually in organized monasteries. Here, because of the closenessof other bodies, carnal temptation was more difficult to suppress. Theinstitution did what it could to assist, however: rules were instituted prohibitingthe locking of cell doors to discourage masturbation; it was forbiddenfor two monks to speak together in the dark, to ride a donkeytogether, or to approach any closer than an arm's length away; they wereto avoid looking at each other as much as possible, they were required tokeep their knees covered when sitting in a group, and they were admonishedagainst lifting their tunics any higher than was absolutely necessarywhen washing their clothes. 26Although sex was at the core of such commitments to self-denial, itwas not all that the saintly Christian rejected. Indeed, what distinguishedthe Christian saint from other men, said the early Church fathers, was theChristian's recognition of the categorical difference and fundamental oppositionbetween things of the spirit and things of the world. The tworealms were utterly incompatible, with the result, says the Epistle to Diognetus,that "the flesh hates the soul, and wages war upon it, though it hassuffered no evil, because it is prevented from gratifying its pleasures, andthe world hates the Christians though it has suffered no evil, because theyare opposed to its pleasures." 27 In demonstrating their opposition to theworld's proffered pleasures, some monks wrapped themselves in iron chainsin order that they might never forget their proper humility, while others"adopted the life of animals," writes Henry Chadwick, "and fed on grass,living in the open air without shade from the sun and wil'h the minimumof clothing." Still others, such as Saint Simeon Stylites, displayed his asceticismby living his life on top of a column; by so doing, he not only "wonthe deep reverence of the country people," but he also "inspired later imitatorslike Daniel (409-93) who spent thirty-three years on a column nearConstantinople." 28During those same first centuries of the Church's existence some para-