Until nearly the close of the fifth century, the monasteries were placed under the superintendence of the bishops; the monks were regarded as simply laymen, and had no claim to be ranked among the sacerdotal order. Circumstances, however, in course of time, led the monks to assume a clerical character. Many of them were occupied in the work of reading and expounding the scriptures, and all of them were supposed to be engaged in the cultivation of the higher spiritual life; so that they were in great favor with the multitude, especially as they began to exercise their clerical functions beyond the confines of their establishments. Jealousies soon sprung up between the bishops and the abbots: the result was, that the abbots, to deliver themselves from dependence upon their spiritual rivals, made application to be taken under the protection of the Pope at Rome. The proposal was gladly accepted, and very quickly all the monasteries, great and small, abbeys, priories, and nunneries, were subjected to the authority of the See of Rome. This was an immense step towards the pontifical power of Rome.
The Pope could now establish in almost every quarter a kind of spiritual police, who acted as spies on the bishops as well as on the secular authorities. This event is carefully to be noted, if we would watch the ways and means of the rising power, and ultimate supremacy, of the Roman Pontiff.
The monastic system soon spread far beyond the borders of Egypt: and all the great teachers of the age, both in the East and in the West, advocated the cause of celibacy and monasticism. St. Jerome, in particular, the most learned man of his day, is regarded as the connecting link between the two great divisions of the church—the Greek and the Roman, or the Eastern and the Western. He was the means of powerfully forwarding the cause of celibacy and monasticism, especially among females. Many Roman ladies of rank became nuns through his influence. Ambrose so extolled virginity in his sermons, that the mothers of Milan restrained their daughters from attending his ministry; but crowds of virgins from other quarters flocked to him for consecration. Basil introduced monastic life into Pontus and Cappadocia; Martin, into Gaul; Augustine, into Africa; and Chrysostom was prevented by the wisdom of his mother from retiring in his youth to a remote hermitage in Syria.
Before leaving this subject it may be well, once for all, to notice the rise and establishment of nunneries.