Uses of the Round Towers of Ireland, fyc. 419 



establishment is noticed, which is not found in the printed edition of the 

 original : 



" In superior! mentis Sion planicie, Monachorum cellules frequentes Ecclesiam magnam circum- 

 dant illic (vt perhibent) ab Apostolis fundatum, eo quod ibi Spiritum Sanctum acceperit, ibiq ; 

 sancta Maria obierit." Cap. iv. 



The origin and antiquity of this kind of monastic establishment, which ap- 

 pears to have been so general in Ireland, is well explained by Bingham, the 

 learned author of the Origines Ecclesiasticce, in his Vllth Book, Chap, ii., which 

 treats " Of the several Sorts of Monks, and their Ways of living in the Church." 



"Sect. 2. The first, called Anchorets, 'A^^i)T/." 



" The first sort were commonly known by the name of anchorets, from their retiring from so- 

 ciety, and living in private cells in the wilderness. Such were Paul, and Anthony, and Hilarion, 

 the first founders of the monastic life in Egypt and Palestine, from whom other monks took their 

 model. Some of these lived in caves, 1 cr7rnX/<{, as Chrysostom" says the monks of Mount Casius, 

 near Antioch, did; and others in little tents or cells. 'Oix<Vx<, Evagrius b calls them; and Chry- 

 sostom, 2xu'i, tabernacles. When many of these were placed together in the same wilderness at 

 some distance from one another, they were all called by one common name, Laura ; which as Eva- 

 grius c informs us, differed from a Ccenobium or community in this, that a Laura was many cells 

 divided from each other, where every monk provided for himself; but a Ccenobium was but one 

 habitation, where the monks lived in society, and had all things in common. Epiphanius says d , 

 Laura or Lubra was the name of a street or district, where a church stood at Alexandria ; and it is 

 probable, that from thence the name was taken to signify a multitude of cells in the wilderness, 

 united, as it were, in a certain district, yet so divided as to make up many separate habitations ; 

 whereas a Coenobium was more like a single house for many monks to dwell in." 



Such collections of anachoretical cells are often distinctly noticed in the 

 lives of the Irish saints, as in the following passage from the Life of St. 

 Carthach, or Mochuda, of Lismore, published in the Acta Sanctorum by the 

 Bollandists, Maii, Tom. 3: 



" Cunctis ergo Deum in Sanctis laudantibus, ad locum eis concessum, scilicet Lismorum nomine, 

 pervenerunt, ac cellulas contemplation! aptas sibi construxerunt." pp. 377, 378. 



And, that such too was the kind of arrangement in the monastic establish- 

 ments founded by the Irish ecclesiastics on the Continent, appears from several 

 passages in the lives of these distinguished persons, as in the following notice 



" " Chrysos. Horn. 17, ad Pop. Antioch. p. 215." b " Evagr. lib. i. c. 21." 

 c " Evagr. ibid." i "Epiph. Hicr. 69, n. 1. 



3 H 2 



