Monasticism (from the Greek word monachos meaning "alone") is a way of life where a person lives outside of society, under religious vows.
[4][5] Choosing to live in poverty voluntarily, by giving up all worldly possessions, was a challenging concept until the establishment of monasteries.
The full practice of obeying the third Evangelical counsel concerning obedience to religious authority only became possible after the idea of monastic life had grown and evolved beyond being just about living alone as a hermit.
[3] In ante-Nicene ascetics a man who wished to lead a spiritual life could lead a single life, practice long and frequent fasts, abstain from meat and wine, and support himself, if he were able, by some small handicraft, keeping only enough money as was absolutely necessary for his own sustenance, and giving the rest to the poor.
It contains a legal petition from June 324 AD filed by Aurelius Isidorus, a man from the town of Karanis in Egypt.
Dorotheus spent his days gathering stones to build cells for other hermits and his nights weaving ropes from palm leaves.
Palladius's health deteriorated before he completed his time with Dorotheus, but he spent three years in Alexandria and its vicinity, visiting hermitages and getting to know around 2,000 monks.
They gathered at the church on Saturdays and Sundays, where eight priests served, with the oldest celebrating, preaching, and judging, while the others assisted.
All engaged in weaving flax, and there were bakeries providing bread not only for the village but also for solitaries living in the surrounding desert.
But, though there was no monastic rule at Nitria, there was municipal law, the outward symbol of which was three whips suspended from three palm trees, one for monks who might be guilty of some fault, one for thieves who might be caught prowling about, and the third for strangers who misbehaved.
[citation needed]In strong contrast with the individualism of the eremitical life was the rigid discipline which prevailed in the cenobitical monasteries founded by St. Pachomius.
When, in 313, Constantine I was at war with Maxentius, Pachomius, still a heathen, was forcibly enlisted together with a number of other young men, and placed on board a ship to be carried down the Nile to Alexandria.
He began as an ascetic in a small village, taking up his abode in a deserted temple of Serapis and cultivating a garden on the produce of which he lived and gave alms.
The fact that Pachomius made an old temple of Serapis his abode was enough for an ingenious theory that he was originally a pagan monk.
Pachomius next embraced the eremitical life and prevailed upon an old hermit named Palemon to take him as his disciple and share his cell with him.
Monks had ships of their own on the Nile, which conveyed their agricultural produce and manufactured goods to the market and brought back what the monasteries required.
On Saturdays and Sundays all the monks assembled in the church for Mass; on other days the Office and other spiritual exercises were celebrated in the houses.
Abbot Edward Joseph Aloysius Butler,[9] wrote that “The fundamental idea of St Pachomius’s rule was to establish a moderate level of observance (moderate in comparison with the life led by the hermits) which might be obligatory on all; and then to leave it open to each - and to indeed encourage each - to go beyond the fixed minimum, according as he was prompted by his strength, his courage, and his zeal".
This threatened schism reveals a feature connected with Pachomius' foundation which is never again seen in the East, and only appeared in the West many centuries later.
"Like Cîteaux in a later age", writes Abbot Butler, "it almost at once assumed the shape of a fully organized congregation or order, with a superior general and a system of visitation and general chapters - in short, all the machinery of a centralized government, such as does not appear again in the monastic world until the Cistercian and the Mendicant Orders arose in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries" (op.
Forty of them were massacred in 373, and on the same day another group of solitaries at Raithe (supposed to be Elim) were killed by a second band of barbarians.
The same kind of life was being led at Mount Sinai, and a similar experience was undergone some twenty years later when St. Nilus was there.
St. Hilarion, who for a time had been a disciple of St. Anthony in Egypt, propagated monasticism of the eremitical type first in the region of Gaza near his native village of Thabata where he founded a monastery[11] and then in Cyprus.
On Saturday they brought their work to the cenobium, where, after receiving Holy Communion on Sundays, they partook of some cooked food and a little wine.
When some of them asked to be allowed to heat some water, that they might cook some food and to have a lamp to read by, they were told that if they wished to live thus they had better take up their abode in the cenobium (Acta Sanctorum., March 1, 386,87).
Basil the Great made a careful study of monasticism in Egypt, Palestine, Coelesyria and Mesopotamia before embracing the monastic life.
His monks assembled together for "psalmody" and "genuflexions" seven times a day, in accordance with the Psalmist's "Septies in die laudem dixi tibi" (Ps.
To complete the tale of seven, the midday prayer was divided into two parts separated by the community meal (Sermo "Asceticus", Benedictine edition, II,321).
With Basil Eastern monasticism reached its final stage - communities of monks leading the contemplative life and devoting themselves wholly to prayer and work.
By the time of Chalcedon, it was agreed that monasteries were not to be erected without the leave of the bishop; monks were to receive due honour, but were not to involve themselves with the affairs of Church or State.