Vol.I - The Coptic Orthodox Church

CH. vii.] Desert Monasteries. 289
more than that the one region was occupied by
hermits some time before the other. For it is very
improbable that SS. Anthony
and Paul were the
founders of any monastery at all, in the ordinary
meaning of the term. They doubtless chose some
lonely spot, which speedily was haunted by other
recluses : but there can be no question that both in
the eastern and in the western desert the first recluses
were solitary hermits living apart in scattered cells
or caves, and not united in any ccenobitic rule of
life, much less congregated within the walls of any
monastic building. Moreover St. Anthony was not
born till the middle of the third century, whereas
the Nitrian valley is said to have been frequented
by the Therapeutse even in the days of St. Mark ;
and it seems certain that St. Frontonius withdrew
there with a company of seventy brethren in the
second century, and St. Ammon, who founded a
hermit settlement there, was rather earlier than St.
Anthony. The monasteries of the Natrun desert
may therefore claim to rest on a site hallowed by
the history of eighteen centuries of Christian wor-
ship, although none of the surviving religious houses
date their first foundation earlier than the third or
fourth century. When to this historic interest is
added the romantic picturesqueness of their situation,
the boundless waste of barren sand that severs
them from the world, the changeless sunshine that
brightens their desolation, their loneliness broken
only by sudden troops of marauding Beduin, the
yearly convoy of friendly camels, or the rare advent
of pilgrim or wayfarer; and when one remembers
the true fairy-tales of the hidden treasures of the
monks, not gold, but books worth their weight in
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