RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Monasticism
ment of Egyptian monasticium, especially in the Historia Lausiaca of Pallad us and the Historia monachorum of Rufinus, during Anthony's lifetime independent colonies of hermits appear to have been established in Lower Egypt by Ammonius or Amun, the father of Nitrian monasticism. He had been married against his will; after a life of continence lasting eighteen years, his wife turned their house into a home for consecrated virgins, while he went out into the desert, forty Roman miles to the south of Alexandria, and gathered (according to Palladius) not less than 500 disciples around him. They lived either solitary or in small communities, and assembled every Saturday and Sunday in the church, served by eight priests, for common worship. The day was divided between work and prayer; the strictest discipline prevailed. After twenty-two years of this life, Ammonius died some time before 356, while Anthony was yet living. Among his disciples were Arsisius, Serapion, Cronius, Putubastus, Asion, and Didymus, while the younger generation of the Nitrian colony included Pambo, Benjamin, Apollonius, and the four " Long Brothers," Ammonius, Dioscurus, Eusebius, and Euthymius. The Nitrian monks were especially devoted to the theology of Origen, and when he was declared a heretic by Theophilus of Alexandria in 399, they had their share of persecution.
Twenty-four hours' journey to the southward, in the Scetic desert near a place called Cellia, another famous colony had its abode. The cells were even more primitive than the Nitrian, and perpetual silence was the rule, except when the monks came together on Saturdays and Sundays 5. Other for public worship. According to Cas- Egyptian sian, Macarius, called " the Great," Settlements, was the first to settle here (see Macarius, 1). Palladius asserts that this was at the age of thirteen, and that he possessed the gifts of healing and prophecy. His sayings in the Apophthegmata and the fifty homilies still preserved give the idea of a pious and humble character and an important representative of primitive Christian mysticism. He died at the age of ninety, either in 387 or in 383. His principal associates were the Ethiopian Moses, Pachon, and Macarius the Younger. Two of his disciples, Evagrius Ponticus (q.v.) and Marcus Eremita (q.v.), attained some importance as writers. By the end of the fourth century Egypt was full of hermits, living either solitary or in communities. The numbers attributed to them may be exaggerated (e.g., 20,000 women and 10,000 men at Oxyrhynchus in central Egypt); but the extent of the movement is attested not only by Athanasius in more than one passage, but by the edict of the Emperor Valens in 365, and by his drafting 5,000 Nitrian monks as soldiers in 375. The loose fellowship of the Egyptian hermits was organized by Pachomius (q.v.), who surrounded the scattered cells by a wall and gave the monks a common rule of life. This earliest monastic rule is primitive and incomplete; but it enforces the duty of labor, makes an effort to systematize the devotional life, contains provisions concerning clothing, food, and hours of sleep, and by forbidding the reception of
strangers attempts to shut off the monastery from the world. While the older sort of hermit colonies still maintained their existence, the cenobitic system spread rapidly throughout Egypt. The hermit life was less adapted for women. Pachomius founded the first convent for his sister Mary, and the cloistered life was adopted by a constantly increasing number of female ascetics. At the same time a number of communities of women continued to exist in which a less strict rule of asceticism and seclusion from the world prevailed.
From Egypt monasticism spread to the peninsula of Sinai, which produced two important ascetic writers in Nilus Sinaita (see Nilus, 1) and Johannes Climacus (q.v.), and to Palestine, in the southern part of which Hilarion (q.v.) of Gaza, 6. In a disciple of Anthony, introduced the Palestine hermit life in the latter half of the and Syria, fourth century. Sozomen and Palladius mention a number of Palestinian hermits, and numerous monasteries arose here about the middle of the fourth century. Melania, a rich Roman woman and a friend of Rufinus, founded a convent on the Mount of Olives, and another Roman, Paula (d. 404), houses for both monks and nuns at Bethlehem. A younger Melania (d. 439) was also a noted founder. The western monks and nuns lived here in the spirit of their Egyptian models, and Jerome translated the rule of Pachomius for Paula's convent. Syria was, however, after Egypt, the country in which early monasticism flourished most remarkably. The men and women who were associated with Aphraates did not leave the world, and were " solitary " (as he calls them in the sixth homily, of 337) only in the sense of having taken a vow of celibacy. But Jacob of Nisibis (q.v.) seems to have led a hermit's life with Eugenius, the founder of Persian monasticism, before he became bishop of Nisibis in 309. According to the account which he wrote of Eugenius (published in P. Bedjan, Acta martyrum Syriace, iii. 376-380, 7 vols., Paris, 1890-97), the latter seems to have come from Egypt, bringing with him the cenobitic tradition of the monasteries of Pachomius. He is perhaps to be identified with the Aones whom Sozomen calls (VI., xxxiii. 4) the founder in-^yria of the strict hermit life, as Anthony was in Egypt. Among the monastic pioneers of Edessa and Osrhoene, Jerome names as the first a certain Julian, a contemporary of Julian the Apostate; Ephraem Syrus (q.v.) was one of the celebrated ascetics of this region. In eastern Cilicia and in the neighborhood of Antioch flourishing colonies of hermits existed from the middle of the fourth century in the desert of Chalcis, which acquired the name of the Syrian Thebaid. Here Jerome lived as a hermit from 373 to 380. In northern Syria the peculiar form of asceticism represented by the " pillarsaints " became common in the fifth century. Its earliest example is supposed to have been Simeon, who abode on the top of a column near Antioch, gradually increasing its height, and after thirtysix years died about 460. This form of mortification is apparently connected with pagan Syrian prototypes. Scattered practitioners of it were found in the east until the fifteenth century. The
Monasticism