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- | Bosci the Grazing Hermits. | + | ==== Bosci; the Grazing Hermits. |
- | On one of my explorations through hagiographic literature in the Central Library of Amsterdam, I came across a text which just mentioned a piece of very very odd behavior. | + | On one of my explorations through hagiographic literature in the Central Library of Amsterdam, I came across a text which just mentioned a piece of very very odd behavior, where early Christians literally joined the flock. |
- | When Christianity was legalized by Roman Emperor Constantine, | + | == Historical back-ground: |
+ | When Christianity was legalized by Roman Emperor Constantine, | ||
- | Soon this practice got really out off hand and people would come up with ever less comfortable ways of existence. Starving and suffering, they could go for hours, or even days without | + | ==== In Literature: ==== |
+ | In 'Tales of Early Ages' by Horace Smith, | ||
+ | < | ||
+ | .....Of the same class but labouring under a less desperate hallucination were the Bosci, or grazing hermits, hirsute, bearded, satyr-like savages, clad in the skin of wild beasts; who having neither cells nor habitation of any sort, but living like the cattle in the fields, spent their whole time in praying and singing psalms, and when hungry, tore up with their nails the grass and wild herbs, which they devoured without cooking. | ||
+ | </ | ||
- | Dead to the world they lived in God. Saints became like athletes of Christ and in this passage I read the most stunning account yet, that there were even hermits who grazed like sheep. The golden age of grazers was the 6th century, when people ate grass all their lives at the coasts of the Red Sea. | ||
- | In 'Tales of Early Ages' by Horace Smith, this passage appears claiming the grazing hermits where known by the name of Bosci and were located it the Thebaid, the Southern most part of Egypt. | + | |
+ | In 'An introduction to the history | ||
< | < | ||
- | .....Of the same class but labouring under a less desperate hallucination | + | The Anchorage is to be met in such extravagant types as grazing hermits, those living on grass or herbs, and pillar saints such as Saint Simeon Stylites, who spent some thirty years atop of a sixty foot pillar. |
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+ | Edward Gibbon writes in his work 'The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire', | ||
+ | < | ||
+ | ....some savage saints of both sexes have been admired, whose naked bodies | ||
+ | note: Sozomen, l. vi. c. 33. The great St. Ephrem composed a panegyric on these or grazing | ||
+ | </ | ||
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+ | On page 317 in a Chapter called 'The Mental Condition of Hermits' | ||
+ | < | ||
+ | If they were not recorded by many truthful authors, the extravagancies | ||
</ | </ |