the student will find a Latin translation of the biography of one of
them, Saint Elia Junior. He died in 903. It was written by a
contemporary monk, who tells us that the holy man performed many
miracles, among them that of walking over a river dryshod. And the
Bollandists _(Acta Sanctorum,_ 11th September) have reprinted the
biography of Saint Elia Spelaeotes-the cave-dweller, as composed in
Greek by a disciple. It is yet more interesting. He lived in a "honesta
spelunca" which he discovered in 864 by means of a flight of bats
issuing therefrom; he suffered persecutions from a woman, exactly after
the fashion of Joseph and Potiphar's wife; he grew to be 94 years old;
the Saracens vainly tried to burn his dead body, and the water in which
this corpse was subsequently washed was useful for curing another holy
man's toothache. Yet even these creatures were subject to gleams of
common sense. "Virtues," said this one, "are better than miracles."

How are we to account for these rock-hermits and their inelegant habits?
How explain this poisoning of the sources of manly self-respect?

Thus, I think: that under the influence of their creed they reverted
perforce to the more bestial traits of aboriginal humanity. They were
thrust back in their development. They became solitaries, animalesque
and shy--such as we may imagine our hairy progenitors to have been.
Hence their dirt and vermin, their horror of learning, their unkempt
hair, their ferocious independence, their distrust of sunshine and
ordered social life, their foul dieting, their dread of malign spirits,
their cave-dwelling propensities. All bestial characteristics!

This atavistic movement, this retrogression towards primevalism, must
have possessed a certain charm, for it attracted vast multitudes; it was
only hemmed, at last, by a physical obstacle.