Ix. PROLEGOMKNA. 



St. Thecla, St. Flavia Domitilla, and other re- 

 ligious women of the early ages, were the models 

 of the Orders of Nuns, and all the congregations 

 of Religious Virgins that have followed. But 

 towards the middle of the fifth century these 

 Orders began to be regulated by established rules 

 of life. An artificial division of them may be 

 made, as follows, into four divisions, with 

 their respective subdivisions . — 



I. The PRIMITIFE HERMlTS,\yho betook them- 

 selves to the solitude of the wildernesses to converse 

 with God in silence. A state of life existing from the 

 beginning of the world, as 



1. The Religious Solitaries before Christ, as Elisha 



and others. 



2. Those who retreated at times in penitence, as 



David, Job, and others. 



3. The Elian hermits on Mount Carmel, afterwards 



the Carmelite Order, under Christianity. 



4. St. John the Baptist in the wilderness. We 



should nosv consider 



II. The most SANCTIFIED EXAMPLES OF 

 RETIREMEST, as 



1. The retired life of the BLESSED VIRGIN 



MARY. 



2. The forty days passed by JESUS CHRIST in 



the fast. 



III. The EARLY CHRISTIAN HERMITS, 

 MONKS, and PENITENTS, who followed the same 

 habits as the preceding, under the Christian law, and 

 were the prototypes and founders of the earliest Religious 

 Orders, as 



