several eminent virtues ; from one, earnestness in prayer ; from another,. watchfulness ; from a third, excellence in fast- ing ; from a fourth, meekness ; from all, love to Christ and to fellow men. Tlius he made himself universally beloved, and came to be reverenced as a friend of God. But to reach a still higher level of ascetic holiness, he rc- ' Matt. xix. 21. ' Matt. vi. 34. ' El's irapbei/u>vu, savs Athanasius ; \ e., not "un monastere de verges," as Tille- mont translates, for nunneries did not ye^ exist ; but a society of female ascetics within the congregation ; from which, however, a regular cloister might of course very easily grow. § 35, I'AUL OF THEBES A2s^D ST. AI^TUONY. 183 treated, after the year 285, further and further from the bosom and vicinity of the chmx-h, into solitude, and thus became the founder of an anchoretism strictly so called. At first he lived ii] a sepulchre ; then for twenty 3'ears in the ruins of a castle ; and last on Mount Colzim, some seven hours from the Red Sea, a three days' journey east of the Nile, where an old cloister still preserves his name and memory. In this solitude he prosecuted his ascetic practices with ever- increasing rigor. Their monotony was broken only by basket making, occasional visits, and battles with the devil. In fast- ing he attained a rare abstemiousness. His food consisted of bread and salt, sometimes dates ; his drink, of water. Flesh and wine he never touched. He ate only once a day, gener- ally after sunset, and, like the presbyter Isidore, was ashamed that an immortal spirit should need earthly nourishment. Often he fasted from two to five days. Friends, and wander- ing Saracens, who always had a certain reverence for the saints of the desert, brought him bread from time to time. But in the last years of his life, to render himself entirely independent of others, and to afibrd hospitality to travellers, he cultivated a small garden on the mountain, near a spring shaded by palms.^ Sometimes the wild beasts of the forest destroyed his modest harvest, till he drove them away forever with the ex- postulation : " Why do you injure me, who have never done you the slighest harm ? Away with you all, in the name of the Lord, and never come into my neighborhood again." He slept on bare ground, or at best on a pallet of straw ; but often he watched the whole night through in prayer. The anoint- ing of the body with oil he despised, and in later years never washed his feet ; as if filthiness were an essential element of ascetic perfection. His whole wardrobe consisted of a hair shirt, a sheepskin, and a girdle. But notwithstanding all, he had a winning friendliness and cheerfulness in his face. Conflicts with the devil and his hosts of demons were, as ' Jerome, in his