Monasticism (from the Greek word meaning 'alone') is a way of life where a person lives outside of society, under religious vows that may restrict where they live, how they may travel, what relationships they may form and what, if any, property they may own.New Advent website Vows may additionally describe the services or duties they are to perform, such as charitable duties to the poor.
Christian monasticism developed as a spontaneous religious movement, with individuals and groups withdrawing from society throughout the centuries. By the early 5th century, thousands of Christians had chosen to live outside of society. The Council of Chalcedon in 451 officially recognized the Christian monastic way of life, placing all monastic communities and hermits under the authority and supervision of bishops. This move restricted the freedom of movement for monastic individuals.
Origins
Egypt was the motherland of Christian monasticism;Bacchus, Francis Joseph. "Eastern Monasticism Before Chalcedon (A.D. 451)." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 10. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1911. 19 Jul. 2013 it came into existence there in the middle of the third century. Paul of Thebes is recognised as the first lone hermit who claimed to have lived alone in the desert for 97 years. Paul had initially sought shelter in the desert to avoid being persecuted during the Decian persecution. The first monk is seen as being St. Anthony. In the year 285, he went into the wilderness, being no longer content with the life of the ascetic. His reputation for holiness attracted a growing circle of followers and in 305 he organised a monastic life for them. He is considered the first of the Desert Fathers. Melania the Elder is seen as one of the first Desert Mothers in the 370s.Gross, Ernie. This Day in Religion. New York:Neal-Schuman Publications, 1990. .Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America website Anthony's fame spread throughout the Christian world, largely due to the popularity of his biography that had been composed by Athanasius, the patriarch of Alexandria, who himself earned fame for his spirited defense of Trinitarianism against Arianism in & following the First Council of Nicaea.
Choosing to live in poverty voluntarily, by giving up all worldly possessions, was a challenging concept until the establishment of monasteries. Early Christian figures such as Origen, Cyprian, and Pamphilus had to show, through their own lives, that a monastic lifestyle - living in a religious community separate from society - was feasible. 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.
In ante-Nicene period, 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. If he were an educated man, he might be employed by the Church in the capacity of catechist. Very often he would don the kind of dress which marked the wearer as a philosopher of an austere school.
In Egypt, at the time when St. Anthony first embraced the ascetic life, there were a number of ascetics emulating Paul of Thebes who were living in huts outside towns and villages, in order to escape the Diocletianic persecution. When St. Anthony died (356 or 357), two types of monasticism flourished in Egypt. There were villages or colonies of hermits - the eremitical type; and monasteries in which a community life was led - the cenobitic type.
The Greek word μοναχός (monachós), which is now typically used to refer to a monk, was first used to mean 'monk' in a papyrus discovered around the 1970s. It contains a legal petition from June 324 AD filed by Aurelius Isidorus, a man from the town of Karanis in Egypt. This indicates that monasticism was already well established in Egypt during the early 4th century.Judge, Edwin A. (1977). "The Earliest Use of Monachos for 'Monk' and the Origins of Monasticism". Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 20 (1977): 72–89.
The hermit life
The monasticism established under St Anthony's direct influence became the norm in Northern Egypt. In contrast to the fully coenobitical system, established by Pachomius in the South, it continued to be of a semi-eremitical character, the monks living commonly in separate cells or huts, and coming together only occasionally for church services; and the life they lived was not a community life according to rule. This was the form of monastic life in the deserts of Nitria and Scete, as portrayed by Palladius and Cassian. Such groups of semi-independent hermitages were later on called Lauras, or Lavras.Butler, Edward Cuthbert. "St. Anthony." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 1. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1907. 19 Jul. 2013
A brief survey of the opening chapters of Palladius's Lausiac History will serve as a description of the former type.
Palladius was a monk from Palestine who, in 388, went to Egypt. On landing at Alexandria he put himself in the hands of a priest named Isidore, who in early life had been a hermit at Nitria and now apparently presided over a hospice at Alexandria without in any way abating the austerity of his life. By the advice of Isidore, Palladius placed himself under the direction of a hermit named Dorotheus who lived six miles outside Alexandria, with whom he was to pass three years learning to subdue his passions and then to return to Isidore to receive higher spiritual knowledge. Dorotheus spent his days gathering stones to build cells for other hermits and his nights weaving ropes from palm leaves. Although he never lay down to sleep, he occasionally fell asleep while working or eating. Palladius, who seemed to have lived in his cell, learned from other solitaries that this had been Dorotheus's practice since his youth. 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. From Alexandria, he traveled to Nitria, a monastic village with about 5,000 solitaries. There were no specific monastic rules; some solitaries lived alone while others lived in small groups. 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. Doctors were available, and wine was sold. Strangers were welcomed in a guesthouse and, if they could read, were lent books. They could stay as long as they wished but were expected to do some work after a week. 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. Further into the desert was a place called "The Cells", or Cellia, whither the more perfect withdrew. This is described by the author of the "Historia monachorum in Aegypto". Here the solitaries lived in cells so far apart that they were out of sight and out of hearing from one another. Like those of Nitria, they met only on Saturdays and Sundays at church, whither some of them had to travel a distance of three or four miles. Often their death was only discovered by their absence from church.
The collective life
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 pagan, 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. At some town at which the ship touched, the recruits were overwhelmed with the kindness of the Christians. Pachomius at once resolved to be a Christian and carried out his resolution as soon as he was dismissed from military service. 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. He later left Palemon and founded his first monastery at Tabennisi near Denderah. Before he died, in 346, he had under him eight or nine large monasteries of men, and two of women. From a secular point of view, a Pachomian monastery was an industrial community in which almost every kind of trade was practised. 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. From the spiritual point of view, the Pachomian monk was a severe way of religious living.
A Pachomian monastery was a collection of buildings surrounded by a wall. The monks were distributed in houses, each house containing about forty monks. Three or four houses constituted a tribe. There would be thirty to forty houses in a monastery. There was an abbot over each monastery, and provosts with subordinate officials over each house. The monks were divided into houses according to the work they were employed in or what area (or language) they were from. 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,Lausiac History, I, p. 236. 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 is strikingly illustrated in the rules concerning food. According to St. Jerome, in the preface to his translation of the Rule of Pachomius, the tables were laid twice a day except on Wednesdays and Fridays, which, outside the seasons of Easter and Pentecost were fast days. Some only took very little at the second meal; some at one or other of the meals confined themselves to a single food; others took just a morsel of bread. Some abstained altogether from the community meal; for these bread, water, and salt were placed in their cell.