Christianity and Care of the Sick 51 A marked feature of the religious life of that early period was asceticism, but there were all degrees to be met with, and in the Asceticism monasteries organized for active work asceticism seems not to have been carried beyond a very strict discipline. It was a cult of Oriental origin, which inculcated neglect of the body, dress, and physical surroundings, with an intense and mystical spiritual life. It was extremely popular in the Eastern church, and St. Chrysostom tried to persuade the deaconesses under Olympia to go imwashed. In how far the patients suffered from this doctrine we do not know, but in the Orient bathing must have been for many an unattainable luxury. In fastidious Rome asceticism was at first disliked. The Roman matrons probably only carried it so far as to simplify their lives of, for- merly, great luxury, for we know that they bathed and cleansed their patients. The influence of St. Jerome, however, was all toward neglect of cloth- ing and body. Asceticism in extreme forms was practised in monasteries of the contemplative, austere orders, and as the clergy became highly specialized they made continuous attempts to bring more of it into the active working orders. Ill nursing sisterhoods asceticism of the doctrinal type is of course quite out of place. It is alien to
