THE PATH OF EVOLUTION 



Christian should accept, and of the heresies which he 

 should flee from. Having heard that Didier, Arch- 

 bishop of Yienne (formerly one of the most literary- 

 towns of Gaul) had undertaken to reopen the schools 

 he himself giving lessons in grammar Gregory wrote 

 to him: "My brother, they write me what I cannot 

 repeat without shame that you have thought it right 

 to teach grammar to certain persons! Learn, then, 

 how serious, how frightful it is that a bishop should 

 treat concerning things that even a Layman ought to 

 be ignorant of! If it can be shown to me that the 

 report is false, and that you have not been occupied 

 with such frivolities, with secular literature, I will re- 

 turn thanks to God that He has not let your heart be 

 soiled by the impure felicitations of the perverse." * 

 Such language indicates the temper of the time! 



The heresy of the Montanists, aided by the poverty 

 and desolation of the land, drove thousands into the 

 desert and wild places to lead 'a life of asceticism, 

 fanaticism and idle introspection, following therein 

 the doctrines of the Essenes and the Therapeutse 

 rather than the Christian teachings. Other countless 

 thousands gathered into little knots and founded 

 monasteries throughout the eastern and western em- 

 pires, even in Rome itself. The inmates thereof 

 practiced the self-denial and asceticism that they pro- 



*Haureau: Philosophie Scholastique. 

 6 



