________________
FRAGMENTS OF A PRISONER'S DIARY
ing of an Aristotle, grovelled at the feet of an illiterate fanatic.
The name and fame of Basil are immortal in monastic history. Educated in the schools of Athens, he gave up the Archbishopric of Caesaria and retired into the mountainous fastness of Asia Minor. Later on he founded a chain of monasteries along the coast of the Black Sca.
Nor was monasticism confined to the Eastern Provinces of the tottering Roman Empire. In the fourth century of the Christian era, the enthusiasm to renounce the world, and practise asccticism, were rampant in Gaul as well as in the distant island of Britain. Saint Martin of Tours was a soldier who became a Bishop, and was cannonised for his life of divine purity. Ecclesiastical historians of his time, particularly his biographers, maintain that the desert of the East did not produce any champion of virtue, renunciation and devotion greater than that of this Gaelic Saint. It is reported that two thousand devoted disciples followed the Master to the grave.
More than two thousand devoted ascetics inhabited the famous monastery of Banchor in Flintshire. The monastic movement reached even the obscure corner of Ireland, and the holy home of Saint Colomba was built in a small island of the Hebrides. In the fifth century of the Christian era, monks and nuns scattered over the ruins of the Roman Empire—from Britain to Ethiopia 248
