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salvation to the soul ; hence that cleanliness betokens pride, and 

 filthiness humility. Living in filth was regarded by great num- 

 bers of holy men, who set an example to the Church and society, 

 as an evidence of sanctity. St. Jerome and the Breviary of the 

 Roman Church dwell with unction on the fact that St. Hilarion 

 lived his whole life long in utter physical uncleanness ; St. 

 Athanasius glorifies St. Anthony because he had never washed 

 his feet ; St. Abraham's most striking evidence of holiness was 

 that for fifty years he washed neither his hands nor his feet ; St. 

 Sylvia never washed any part of her body save her fingers ; St. 

 Euphraxia belonged to a convent in which the nuns religiously 

 abstained from bathing ; St. Mary, of Egypt, was eminent for 

 filthiness ; St. Simon Stylites was in this respect unspeakable 

 the only thing that can be said is, that he lived in ordure and 

 stench intolerable to his visitors. The Lives of the Saints dwell 

 with complacency on the statement that when sundry Eastern 

 monks showed a disposition to wash themselves, the Almighty 

 manifested his displeasure by drying up a neighboring stream 

 until the bath which it had supplied was destroyed. 



The religious world was far indeed from the inspired utterance 

 attributed to John Wesley, that " cleanliness is near akin to godli- 

 ness." For century after century the idea prevailed that filthi- 

 ness was akin to holiness, and while we may well believe that the 

 devotion of the clergy to the sick was a main cause why, during 

 the greater plagues, they lost so large a proportion of their num- 

 bers, we can not escape the conclusion that their want of cleanli- 

 ness had much to do with it ; in France, during the fourteenth 

 century, Guy de Chauliac, the great physician of his time, noted 

 particularly that certain Carmelite monks suffered especially from 

 pestilence, and that they were especially filthy ; during the black 

 death no less than nine hundred Carthusian monks fell victims in 

 one group of buildings. 



Naturally, such an example set by the venerated leaders of 

 thought exercised great influence throughout society, and all the 

 more because it justified the carelessness and sloth to which ordi- 

 nary humanity is prone. In the principal towns of Europe, as 

 well as in the country at large, down to a recent period, the most 

 ordinary sanitary precautions were neglected, and pestilences 

 continued to be attributed to the wrath of God or the malice of 

 Satan. As to the wrath of God, a new and powerful impulse was 

 given to this belief in the Church toward the end of the sixth 

 century by St. Gregory the Great. In 590, when he was elected 

 Pope, the city of Rome was suffering from a dreadful pestilence : 

 the people died by thousands ; out of one procession imploring 

 the mercy of Heaven, no less than eighty persons died within an 

 hour ; what the heathen in an earlier epoch had attributed to 



