MONACHISM 



265 



The primitive ascetics, however, lived among the 

 brethren, and it is only in the following century 

 that the peculiar characteristic of monachism 

 begins to appear. The earliest form of Christian 

 mouauhism is also the most complete that of the 

 Anchorites or Hermits (q.v.) and is commonly 

 believed to have in part originated in the persecu- 

 tions, from which Christians were forced to retire 

 into deserts and solitary places. The hermits 

 maintained from choice, after the cessation of the 

 persecutions, the seclusion to which they had 

 originally resorted as an expedient of security ; 

 and a later development of the same principle is 

 found in the still more remarkable psychological 

 phenomenon of the celebrated ' Pillar-saints.' (See 

 STYLITES. ) After a time, however, the neces- 

 sities of the religious life itself as the attendance 

 at public worship, the participation in the sacra- 

 ments, the desire for mutual instruction and edifica- 

 tionled to modifications of the degree and of the 

 nature of the solitude. First came the simplest 

 form of common life, which sought to combine the 

 personal seclusion of individuals with the common 

 exercise of all the public duties : an aggregation 

 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 derived the name coenobite (Gr. xoinas bios, com- 

 mon life), by which this class of monks is distin- 

 guished from the strict solitaries, as the hermits, 

 and in which is involved, in addition to the obliga- 

 tions of poverty and chastity which were vowed 

 by the hermits, a third obligation of ol>edience to 

 a superior, which, in conjunction with the two 

 former, has ever since lieen held to constitute the 

 i"~enc.e of the religions or monastic life. The first 

 oiigin of the strictly co-nobitical or monastic life 

 has been detailed under the name of St Antony 

 ([. v. ), who may be regarded as its founder in the 

 Kat, either by himself or by his disciples. So 

 rapid was its progress that his lirst disciple, Pacho- 

 nuns, lived to lind himself the superior of 7000. In 

 tin; single, district of Xitria, the country of the 

 Natron Lakes (q.v.) in the Egyptian delta, there 

 were, according to Sozomen, no fewer than fifty 

 monasteries, and l>efore long the civil authorities 

 judged it expedient to place restrictions on their 

 excessive multiplication. It seems to be admitted 

 that in the East, where asceticism has always l>een 

 held in high estimation, the example of Christian 

 monasticism had a powerful influence in forwarding 

 the progress of Christianity; although it is also 

 certain that the admiration which it excited occa- 

 sionally led to its natural consequence among the 

 members, by eliciting a spirit of pride and osten- 

 tation, and by provoking sometimes to fanatical 

 excesses of austerity, sometimes to hypocritical 

 simulations of rigour. The abuses which arose, 

 even in the early stages of monadiisiii, are deplored 

 by the very Fathers who are most eloquent in 

 their praises of the institution itself. These abuses 

 prevailed chiefly in a class of monks called Sura- 

 oaitte, who lived in small communities of three or 

 four, and sometimes led a wandering and irregular 

 life. On the other hand, a most extraordinary 

 picture is drawn by Theodoret of the rigour and 

 mortification practised in some of the greater 

 monasteries. The monks were commonly zealots 

 in religion ; and much of the bitterness of the 

 religious controversies of the East was due to that 

 unrestrained zeal ; and it may l>c added that the 

 opinions which led to these controversies origin- 

 ated for the most part among the theologians of 

 the cloisters. An order was called Accemeta (Gr., 

 'sleepless'), from their maintaining the public 

 services of the church day and night without in- 

 terruption (see GREEK CHURCH). 



It was in the ccenobitic rather than the eremitic 

 form that monachism was first introduced into the 

 West, at Rome and in Northern Italy by Atha- 

 nasius, in Africa by St Augustine, and afterwards 

 in Gaul by St Martin of Tours. Here also the 

 institution spread rapidly under the same general 

 forms in which it is found in the Eastern Church ; 

 but considerable relaxations were gradually intro- 

 dhced, and it was not until the thorough reforma- 

 tion and, as it may be called, religious revival 

 effected by the celebrated St Benedict (q.v.), in 

 the beginning of the 6th century, that western 

 monachism assumed its peculiar and permanent 

 form. In some of the more isolated churches, as, 

 for instance that of Britain, it would seem that 

 the reformations of St Benedict were not introduced 

 until a late period ; and in that church, as well as 

 in the church of Ireland, they were a subject of 

 considerable controversy. One of the most import- 

 ant modifications of monachism in the West 

 regarded the nature of the occupation in which the 

 monks were to be engaged during the times not 

 directly devoted to prayer, meditation, or other 

 spiritual exercises. In the East manual labour 

 formed the chief, if not the sole external occupa- 

 tion prescribed to the monks ; it being held as a 

 fundamental principle that for each individual the 

 main business of lite was the sanctification of his 

 own soul. In the West, besides the lalxnir of the 

 hands, mental occupation was also prescribed not, 

 it is true, for all, out for those for whom it was 

 especially calculated. From an early period, there- 

 fore, the monasteries of the West, anil particularly 

 those of Ireland or those founded by Irish monks 

 (see COLUMHA, CULDEES), as lonaand Lindisfarne, 

 liecame schools of learning, and training-houses for 

 the clergy. At a later period most monasteries 

 possessed a scriptorium, or writing-room, in which 

 the monks were employed in the transcription of 

 MSS. ; and, although a great proportion of tne work 

 so done was, as might naturally be expected, in the 

 department of sacred learning, yet it cannot be 

 doubted that it is to the scholars'of the cloister we 

 owe the preservation of most of the masterpieces 

 of classic literature which have reached our age. 



In the remarkable religious movement which 

 characterised the church of the 12th century (see 

 FRANCISCANS) the principle of monachism under- 

 went a further modification. The .ijn'ritmil njoism, 

 so to speak, of the early monachism, which in some 

 sense limited the work of the cloister to the sancti- 

 tication of the individual, gave place to the more 

 comprehensive range of spiritual duty, that, in 

 the institute of the various bodies of Friars (q.v.) 

 which that age produced, made the spiritual and 

 even the temporal necessities of one's neighbour, 

 equally with, if not more than, one's own, the 

 object of the work of the cloister. The progress of 

 these various bodies, hot h in the 12th century and 

 since that age, is detailed under their several titles. 

 The monastic institutes of the West are almost all 

 offshoots or modifications of the Benedictines (q.v.); 

 of these the most remarkable are the Carthusians, 

 Cistercians, Clugniacs, Prcmonstratensians, and, 

 above all, Man lists. In more modern times other 

 institutes have been founded for the service of the 

 sick, for the education of the poor, and other similar 

 works of mercy, whose members are also classed 

 under the denomination of monks. The most im- 

 portant of these are described under their several 

 heads. 



The enclosure within which a community of 

 monks reside is called a Monastery (q.v.), and some- 

 times convent. By the strict law of the church, 

 called the law of cloister or enclosure, it is forbidden 

 to all except members of the order to enter a monas- 

 tery ; and in almost all the orders this prohibition 

 ia rigidly enforced as regards the admission of 



