Asceticism. Among the Greeks, askēsis denoted the training gone through by athletes or wrestlers, who had to harden their bodies by exertion and to avoid all sensual and effeminating indulgences. In the schools of the philosophers, especially of the Stoics, the same word signified the practice of mastering the desires and passions; and in this sense it passed into the language of the early Christians. But to understand the vast influence that ascetic ideas have exercised on the Christian religion, we must look beyond the bounds of its history. Their root lies in the oriental notion of the antagonism between mind and matter. The glowing imagination of the oriental carries the practice of asceticism to a monstrous extravagance, as is seen in the frightful self-tortures inflicted by the yogins (see YOGA) and fakirs (see FAKIR), the suicides in the sacred Ganges and otherwise, and the practices formerly prevalent of offering children in sacrifice, and of burning widows (see SUTTÉE). Buddhism, which may be considered as a kind of Puritan reformation of the Indian religion, carried the principle beyond its previous bounds. In its contemning the world, in its inculcating a life of solitude and beggary, mortification of the body, and abstinence from all uncleanness and from all exciting drinks, the object was to keep as distant and detached as possible from this 'Vale of Sorrow' (see BUDDHISM, Vol. II. p. 519). The ancient Egyptians sought to confine it to monogamy of the priests, rigid purity, moderate flagellation, and frequent contemplation of death.
It is in this light that we must consider Jewish and Christian asceticism. In the oriental mind, especially in Egypt, circumcision, avoiding of all uncleanness, and fasting, were signs of humiliation before God. Among the Jews, voluntary vows of abstinence, even from lawful food or wine, were practised by prophets and men of special calling, and in certain critical circumstances; but self-castigation continued for long foreign to the sobriety of Judaism, and even hermitism came into established practice only shortly before Christ, in Palestine among the Essenes (q.v.), in Egypt among the Therapeutæ (q.v.).
Asceticism was far less congenial to the reflective nations of the West, above all to the cheerful Greeks. A Greek felt himself as well entitled to enjoyment as his gods; hence Greek religious festivals were pervaded by cheerfulness. The only exception appears to be the Eleusinian mysteries, which never took hold of the people generally, and the passing phenomenon of the Pythagorean fraternity. The attack made by the Socratic school upon the body as the prison of the soul, and the extravagant contempt for the elegances, and even decencies of life, professed by the later Stoics and Cynics, were no genuine fruits of the popular Greek mind; and we must also ascribe to the infusion of oriental philosophy the ascetic tendencies of Neoplatonism, in holding abstinence from flesh and from marriage as chief conditions of absorption into the divinity.
It was into the midst of these ideas that Christianity was introduced. The Jewish converts brought with them their convictions about fasting. Fasting and Nazaritic observances were thought sanctifying preparatives for great undertakings; and the inculcation of abstinence from marriage, on the ground of the expected speedy reappearance of Christ, falls in with the same notion—namely, that the flesh, i.e. the sensuous part of our nature, is the seat of sin, and must therefore, before all things, be rigorously chastened. The spirituality of Christianity, pointing away from earth to heaven, and opposition to the corruption of the heathen world, combined to make the Christians of the 2d and 3d centuries hold aloof from the world and its wisdom, and favour abstinence from marriage, more especially on the part of the clergy. This ascetic spirit began as early as the commencement of the 2d century to court trial in the perilous practice of men and women living together under vows of continence. But during the first three centuries no irrevocable vows yet bound the devotees to a life-long asceticism. Fasting was also comparatively rare.
But the tendency to outward manifestations now began to grow stronger. The inward and spiritual life of the Christians had greatly declined; and if the previous bloody persecutions had driven individuals from human society into the deserts, the growing secularisation of the church, after Christianity became the state religion, had the same effect to a still greater degree. All this paved the way for the chief manifestation of asceticism—namely, monasticism, which the church found herself compelled by the overwhelming tide of opinion within and without to recognise, and to take under her protection and care. From the African Church, represented by Tertullian and Augustine, a spirit of gloomy and crushing supernaturalism spread deeper and deeper over the Western Church generally, intensifying the ascetic tendencies, and leading to still more marked separation from a despised world. There were not wanting healthier minds—as Jovianus and Vigilantius—to raise their voices against fasting and the outward works of asceticism generally; but such protests were vain, and became ever rarer.
From the 11th century, the Cathari, Waldenses, and other sects, though ascetics themselves in a way, yet assailed the external asceticism of the church; and so did Wyclif, Huss, and Jerome of Prague, in their premature struggles at reformation. After a preliminary skirmish by Erasmus, the struggle was decided for a great part of Christendom in the reformation of the 16th century; though the Catholic Church and a section of the Anglican Church still set a high value on various ascetic conditions and exercises—a celibate clergy, the monastic life, fasting and penance. Even the disuse of some of the simple comforts of life, such as the disregard of personal cleanliness, has been regarded as a work of holiness. The fundamental principle that salvation is secured by justification through faith, and not through dead works, struck at the root of monasticism and self-mortification in general. Yet the ascetic spirit often shows itself still alive under various disguises even in Protestantism. The extreme forms of Sabbatarianism have a distinctly ascetic colouring; and hostility to dancing, the theatre, card-playing, and other worldly pleasures (if these are not actually regarded as sinful), may be the outcome of ascetic tendencies. The Mennonites inculcated a rigid asceticism; and with the Shakers (q.v.) of America celibacy is insisted on as a virtue. The essence of asceticism is to hold self-denial and suffering to be meritorious in the sight of God, in and for itself. Many traits presented by Puritanism, Methodism, and Quakerism appear ascetic. It is not impossible that vegetarianism, total abstinence, and other recent austerities, though advocated on other grounds, recommend themselves to the feelings of many from their falling in with this deep-seated propensity to asceticism.
Even in the Catholic Church, ascetic practices have been modified in recent times; fastings are less rigorous, and the self-sacrifice of conventional life is more directed to beneficial ends. Mohammedanism (q.v.) has undergone the same change, but Sufism (q.v.) is carried to the greatest excess in Persia. In the Greek Church, monasticism had always a milder form. See the articles CELIBACY, FAST, FLAGELLANTS, HERMIT, LENT, MONACHISM, PENANCE, PURITANS, RUSSIA (p. 36), SABBATH, SHAKERS, STYLITES, TEMPERANCE.