governor, and thus constituted the first societies of Ana- chorets, who lived scattered, in single cells or huts, united together under one superior — demonstrating, moreover, that in monasticism prevailed the same law as in every other intellectual movement. An idea exists long in a state of free solution, till the master- mind is revealed, destined to give it fixity and perma- nence; and from that time it becomes a nucleus around which system gathers and crystallizes. Thus the re- cluses of the desert continued to gain in strength and number until gathered by Anthony ; the connecting tie being a triple vow of chastity, jioverty, and manual la- bor for the common good. Thenceforth the attention of Christendom was attracted to the Thebaid; all who needed it found there an asylum. Put it was, after all, only for the East, and not for the world. Christianity had proved itself adapted to the wants of all ; this form of asceticism could prevail only where the climate fa- vored a hermit's life. It was too eccentric and unprac- tical for the West, and hence less frequent there, espe- cially in the rougher climates. To the female sex it was entirely unsuited. An order of widows, emplojed in charitable works, and supported from the offerings of the faithful, was ajiparently one of the primitive institutions of the apostles (Lea, CtUbucy, p. 100 j; yet they were not separated from the world, but moved in it. See Dea- conesses. There was, to be sure, a class of hermits, the Saruhiiites (q. v.) in Egypt, and the Rhevioboths (q. v.) in Syria; but their quarrelsomeness, occasional intem- perance, and opposition to the clergy brought them into ill-repute.
((■) The third step in the progress of the monastic life brings us to Ccenobilism or cloister life — monasti- cism in the ordinary sense of the word. The necessi- ties of the religious life itself — as the attendance at public worship, the participation of the sacraments, the desire for mutual instruction and edification — nat- urally enough led gradually to moditications of the degree and of the nature of the solitude. First came the simplest form of common life, which sought to combine the jiersonal seclusion of individuals with the common exercise of all the public duties ; an aggrega- tion of separate cells into the same district, called by the name Laura, with a common church, in which all assembled for prayer and public worship. From the union of the common life with personal solitude is de- rived the name canohite, i. e. common life, by which this class of monks is distinguished from the strict sol- itaries, as the anchorets or eremites. In this, too, is involved, in addition to the obligations of poverty and chastity, which were vowed by the anchorets, a third obligation of obedience to a superior, which, in con- junction with the two former, has ever been held to constitute the essence of the religious or monastic life. See MoNASTEUY.
Like all the other ascetic institutions, the monastic life also found its home in Egypt. The country was certainly favorable to the production and expansion of just such an institution. "The land where Orien- tal and Grecian literature, philosophy, and religion. Christian orthodoxy and Gnostic heresy, met both in friendship and in hostility," was in every way adapte(> to be "the native land"' of the monastic life. We may add also that "monasticism was favored and promoted here by climate and geographic features, by tlie oasis- like seclusion of the country, by the bold contrast of barren deserts with the fertile valley of the Nile, by the superstition, the contemplative turn, and the pas- sive endurance of the national character, by the ex- ample of the Therapeuta^ and bj' the moral principles of the Alexandrian fathers; especially by Origen's theory of a higher and lower morality, and of the merit of voluntary jwverty and celil)acy." Even back in the days of /Elian we arc told by him that the Egyp- tians bear the most exquisite torture without a mur- mur, and would rather be tormented to death than compromise truth. Such natures, once seized with
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religious enthusiasm, were certainly very eminently qualified for saints of the desert. No wonder, then, that the monastic life soon gained general favor. Pa- chomius (292-348), a disciple of Anthonj^, is recognised as the founder of this peculiar ascetic life. Palla- dius, himself a convert in these earl}' daj's to this in- stitution, furnishes an account of its progress in con- nection with an account of its author, which Neander thus presents: "Pachomius, at the beginning of the 4th century, when a young man, after having obtained his Telease from the military service, into which he had been forced, attached himself to an aged hermit, with whom he passed twelve jears of his life. Here he felt the impulse of Christian love, which taught him that he ought not to live merel}' so as to promote his own growth to perfection, but to seek also the salva- tion of his brethren. He supposed — unless this is a decoration of the legend — that in a vision he heard the voice of an angel giving utterance to the call in his own breast — it was the divine will that he should be an instrument for the good of his brethren, by rec- onciling them to God {Vita Pachom. § 15). On Ta- benna;, an island of the Nile, in Upper Egypt, be- twixt the Nomes of Tenthyra and Thebes, he founded a society of monks, which during the lifetime of Pa- chomius himself numbered three thousand, and after- wards seven thousand members ; and thus went on increasing until, in the first half of the oth century, it could reckon within its rules fifty thousand monks (Lauiiaca, vi, 1, c. 909; also c. 38, fol. 957; Hierony- mi Prcpfat. in regidam Pachomii, § 7)." We are told that when Athatiasius visited Pachomius three thou- sand monks passed before him in procession, chanting liymns, and exhibiting practical proofs of direct piety under the monastic rule. Nor was the new movement confined to the Tabennse region. The development in the Nitrian and Thebaid deserts was equally rapid ; so that Rufinus {V.Patr. ii, 7) affirms that the monas- tic population of Egypt equalled the inhabitants of the towns. In the single district of Nitria, we are told, there were no fewer than fifty monasteries (Sozomen, Ecdes. Hist, vi, 31), and the civil authorities even found it expedient to place restrictions on their excessive multiplication. Neither was the movement confined to Egypt. Arabia, Sj'ria, Palestine, and more especially the region of Mount Sinai, soon swai-med with recluses, and were thicklj' studded with monasteries. "We dail}- receive monks," saj's Jerome (346-420), writing at Bethlehem, "from India, and Persia, and Ethiopia." The entire Eastern Church gave this practice confi- dence, and tlie greatest teachers of the Church — as Gregory Nazianzen (329-389), Basil the Great (328- 379), and the golden-tongued Chrysostom (342-407) — became its enthusiastic admirers and promoters. Nor did the desert remain the home of the new life. Mo- nastic institutions were soon transplanted to the towns, and in agitated times these places became safe houses of refuge from the troubles of the world. Indeed, it must be conceded hj all honest students of early eccle- siastical history that the example of the monasticism of the early Eastern Church had a powerful influence in forwarding the progress of Christianity ; although it is also certain that the admiration which it excited occasionally led to its natural consequence among the members, by eliciting a spirit of pride and ostentation, and bj' provoking, sometimes to fanatical excesses of austeritj', sometimes to hypocritical simulations of rigor. The abuses which arose, even in the early stages of monachism, are deplored by the very fathers who are most eloquent in their praises of the institu- tion itself. These abuses prevailed chiefly in a class of monks called Sarabaites (q. v.), who lived in small communities of three or four, and sometimes led a wandering and irregular life. Yet though many took exception to any abuses growing out of the institution, but few were found, like Jovinian, to assail the princi- ple. And even emperors, as, e. g., Valens and his suc-