Stoics and Saints - College of Stoic Philosophers

106 THE MONASTIC SYSTEM.
pirants found that they could not bear the presence of their
fellow men, and betook themselves to remote places, the wilder
the better, where they could more freely carry on what they
mistook for the culture of their souls. The ascetic then
became an Anchorite, one who retreats from the world, or
an Eremite, one who lives in the desert, and there, far from
the sobering influence of his fellows, he gave himself up to
austerities and subtleties of self-torment which fill us alter
nately with amazement, pity and disgust. There were wide
districts of the East, especially the Egyptian and Syrian
deserts, which in the fourth century literally swarmed with
hermits. They burrowed in the hill-sides, like rabbits in a
warren, and studiously lowered the pitch of their lives, as
far as food and shelter were concerned, to the level of the
brutes.
The next step in the development of the monastic system
was the association of these isolated anchorites in communities,
for the purposes of fellowship and strength. How the tran
sition was accomplished it is not easy to trace. Much, no
doubt, was due to the influence of powerful
and celebrated
men like Anthony and Pachomius, who drew, by the magnet
of their attraction, crowds of anchorites to their neighbour- ^
hood over whom it Became necessary to establish some kind
of rule. The need of organisation had become imperative.
That ascetic spirit which had been floating in a vaporous
form about the Oriental Church, must condense, take shape,
and enter the congress of life. The Eremites became Coeno
bites, men living in common, under a common rule, with a
common head
;
and then the development of the monastic
institution fairly began. The organisation of the scattered
solitaries was attended by
We may accept Jerome s authority
an immense increase of numbers.
for the vast concourse
which attended a congregation of an order in the fifth cen
tury, without trusting too implicitly to the numeration of