Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 9, 2025
In the Upper Thebais, the vacant island of Tabenne, was occupied by Pachomius and fourteen hundred of his brethren. That holy abbot successively founded nine monasteries of men, and one of women; and the festival of Easter sometimes collected fifty thousand religious persons, who followed his angelic rule of discipline.
The rival missionaries, a Melchite and a Jacobite, embarked at the same time; but the empress, from a motive of love or fear, was more effectually obeyed; and the Catholic priest was detained by the president of Thebais, while the king of Nubia and his court were hastily baptized in the faith of Dioscorus.
We see some so happy in the fortune of this nuptial encounter, that their family shineth as it were with the radiant effulgency of an idea, model, or representation of the joys of paradise; and perceive others, again, to be so unluckily matched in the conjugal yoke, that those very basest of devils which tempt the hermits that inhabit the deserts of Thebais and Montserrat are not more miserable than they.
When ten minutes had passed, his bruised knees became so painful that his whole being slowly swooned into ecstasy, in which he pictured himself as a mighty conqueror, the master of an immense empire, flinging down his crown, breaking his sceptre, trampling under foot unheard-of wealth, chests of gold, floods of jewels, and rich stuffs embroidered with precious stones, before going to bury himself in some Thebais, clothed in rough drugget that rasped his back.
"So far as politics and the table give him leisure for it," interposed the Frieslander. "He doesn't seem inclined to make his penance too severe. Quijada is now preparing the penitential cell, and it is neither in the burning Thebais nor in the arid sands of the desert, but in one of the most delightful and charming places in Spain. May our sovereign find there what he seeks!
St. Bonaventure says that, in his days, it had been the means by which several miracles were effected. Francis experienced on Mount Alvernia, what had occurred to St. Anthony in the Desert of Thebais: after having been the means of freeing others from the attacks of the devil, he was exposed to them himself. The subtle spirit often suggested evil thoughts to him.
He expired in 1812, and the contemporaries who have attested his miraculous deeds are not misty phantoms of the Thebais; they were creatures of flesh and blood, human, historical personages, who were dressed and nourished and educated after the fashion of our own grandfathers. Yet it was meet and proper that the documentary evidence as to his divine graces should be conscientiously examined.
Thus, in later ages, the monk of Africa, willingly persuading himself that any intervention to improve Nature is a revolt against the providence of God, spent his worthless life in weaving baskets and mats, or in solitary meditation in the caves of the desert of Thebais; but the monk of Europe encountered the labours of agriculture and social activity, and thereby aided, in no insignificant manner, in the civilization of England, France, and Germany.
He was exiled to Upper Thebais, with several other bishops who refused to subscribe to the condemnation of Athanasius; but was recalled with Lucifer, bishop of Cagliari, Sardinia. In conjunction with Athanasius he attended an Alexandrian synod which declared the Trinity consubstantial. He travelled much, in the Eastern provinces and Italy, engaging in missionary work. He died about A.D. 373.
The fourth picture, apparently by another hand possibly that of Lorenzetti himself is The Life of the Hermits in the wilderness of Thebais, composed of a number of single groups in which the calm life of contemplation is represented in the most varied manner.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking