Lavra

A lavra or laura (Greek: Λαύρα; Cyrillic: Ла́вра) is a type of monastery consisting of a cluster of cells or caves for hermits, with a church and sometimes a refectory at the center.

[7] The Lavra of Saint Sabbas the Sanctified (†532) in the Kidron Valley (known in Syriac as Mar Saba), is one of the most ancient and almost continuously functioning monasteries in the Christian Church.

Weekdays were spent in the cells, accompanied only by a rush mat, a small amount of food and palm blades with which to make ropes and baskets.

[citation needed] The Great Lavra founded by Athanasius the Athonite in 963 is the oldest monastery on Mount Athos in Greece.

[citation needed] Some modern Coptic authors, and they alone, already apply the specific Greek term lavra to even earlier monastic settlements from the Wadi El Natrun and even attribute the writing down of the formal rules of a lavra to the Egyptian sanctified monk Macarius of Egypt in AD 330.