ANACHORETS OR ANCHORETS. 
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Anachorets or Anchorets. 
These were a celebrated order of religious persons, who generally 
passed their whole lives in cells, from which they never removed. 
These habitations were in many instances entirely secluded from all 
other abodes of men ; sometimes in the depths of wildernesses, in 
pits, or in caverns; at other times we find several of these individuals 
fixing their habitations in the neighbourhood of each other, w hen their 
cells were called by the collective name of laura ; but they always 
lived personally separate, and generally in cells at some distance from 
each oiuer. Thus the laura was distinguished from the ccenobium, or 
convents, where the monks form themselves into a society, and sub- 
sist on a common stock ; and the Anchoret differed from a hermit, 
though his abode was frequently called a hermitage, in which the lat- 
ter ranged about at liberty, while the former rarely, and in many 
instances never, quitted his cell. But a convent would sometimes 
be surrounded by a laura, to which the more devout or the more idle 
of the monks w'ould ultimately retire. To Paul the hermit, the distinc- 
tion is assigned of having devoted himself to this kind of solitude. 
The order of Anchorets, in Egypt and in Syria, comprehended, in 
the first instance, all those hermits who abandoned the ordinary 
abodes of mankind, and wandered among the rocks and haunts of 
wild beasts, nourishing themselves with roots and herbs that grew 
spontaneously, and reposing wherever they w'ere overtaken by night. : 
Amongst those early Anchorets, Simeon Stylites, who lived at the 
close of the fourth century, will ever occupy a wretched immortality. 
Having passed a long and severe noviciate in a monastery, which he 
entered at the age of thirteen, this devotee contrived, within the space 
of a small circular enclosure of stones, to which he w as confined by a 
heavy chain, to ascend a column, gradually raised from nine to sixty 
feet in height, on the top of which he passed thirty years of his life, 
and died of an ulcer in his thigh, without descending from it. Crowds 
of pilgrims from Gaul to India are said to have been proud to supply 
his necessities. 
In succeeding ages the order of Anchorets assumed a more entire 
distinction from that of hermits and other religious, and was regu- 
lated by its own rules. Early in the seventh century the councils 
began to notice and to modify this kind of life. “Those who affect 
to be Anchorets,” say the Tuscan Canons, “ shall first for three years 
be confined to a cell in a monastery ; and if, after this, they profess 
that they persist, let them be examined by the bishop or abbot ; let 
them live one year at large ; and if they still approve of their first 
choice, let them be confined to their cell, and not be permitted to go 
out of it, but by consent and benediction of the bishop, in case of great 
necessity.” 
Frequently at this period would the monks of various abbeys se-f 
lect from among them a brother who was thought to be most exem- 
plary in his profession, and devote him to this entire seclusion, as 
an honour, and to give him the greater opportunity of indulging his 
religious contemplations. A similar custom also obtained in the con- 
vents, and there are even many instances of men who became Ancho- 
