§ 207. The Significance and Origin of Monasticism

Monasticism is a product of the moral spirit of Christianity, which in individual persons arouses the striving toward higher perfection. In itself monasticism does not have the character of necessity, and there was a time in history when monasticism did not exist. The priesthood exists by divine right, and Christianity cannot be conceived without the priesthood; monasticism does not exist by that right, and therefore does not possess in the Christian Church that necessity which the priesthood has. It has significance in the Church as a fellowship of persons who, according to the rules of that fellowship, are able to dedicate their whole life to God, and so serve toward the strengthening of the Church and as an example of Christian virtues. Monasticism has, further, this significance too: that it has furnished, as it still furnishes today, capable men who are to occupy the highest hierarchical positions in the Church.

Monasticism formed itself by degrees. In the very beginning of the Church, many devout Christians, the better to serve and please God, abstained from every earthly comfort, that they might thereby merit eternal salvation. Such men withdrew from everything that might dissipate their spirit and turn them away from the goal to which they aspired, but they did not abandon worldly society, nor the services which society and the Church laid upon them. The persecutions against Christians, which raged most fiercely in the third century, moved many such men to hide themselves in deserts and caves, so that in those solitary places they might have greater freedom to perform works of piety and might more easily escape the temptations of the world. To this way of life such men were afterward driven also by the licentiousness that took hold of society when Christianity became the dominant religion in the Roman state, and when many, especially from the higher class, embraced that religion more for reasons of state than out of conviction. These causes led those devout men to settle entirely in solitary places, leading a hermit’s life and no longer thinking of a return among men. The most distinguished of those who gave themselves to such a life, and who may be called the first founders of monasticism in the East, were: Paul of Thebes († 340), Pachomius the Great († 348), Anthony the Great († 356), Hilarion († 371), and Macarius of Egypt († 390). Around these men, who were far renowned for their holy life, many others gathered who wished to lead the same life, and already in Pachomius’s time their number was reckoned at over 7,000, who, after his example, lived solitary in the deserts. On account of their solitary manner of living they were called ἀναχωρηταί, ἐρημιταί, μοναχοί (καλόγηροι), and on account of their manner of life, ἀσκηταί. Pachomius was the first to gather, in Egypt, various anchorites into several groups, in each of which there were several dozen of them, and they had to lead a common life, κοινὸν βίον, and were therefore called κοινοβῖται (coenobitae, cenobites), and the place where they lived was called κοινόβιον (coenobium). Such κοινόβια began afterward to be established also in other places of the East, and were called by the general name μοναστήρια (monasteries, monasteria), in which several dozen, and sometimes even a hundred, monks lived. In the fourth century women too began to devote themselves to such a life, as did men, and special monasteries (μοναστήρια γυναικεῖα) were built for them. There existed also double monasteries (μοναστήρια διπλᾶ), in which, under the direction of one superior, both monks and nuns lived; but such monasteries were soon afterward abolished.