LAURA, in church history, a name given to a collection of little cells at some distance from each other, in which the hermits in ancient times lived together in a wilderness.
These hermits did not live in community, but each monk provided for himself in his distinct cell. The most celebrated lauras mentioned in ecclesiastical history were in Palestine: as the laura of St Euthymus, at four or five leagues distance from Jerusalem; the laura of St Saba, near the brook Cedron; the laura of the Towers, near the river Jordan, &c.