LAURA, in Ecclesiastical History, a name given to a collection of little cells at some distance from one another, in which the hermits in ancient times lived together in a wilderness or desert place.
These hermits did not live in community, but each monk provided for himself in his own distinct cell. The most celebrated lauras mentioned in ecclesiastical history were in Palestine; as the laura of St Euthymus, four or five leagues distant from Jerusalem; the laura of St Saba, near the brook Kedron; and the laura of the Towers, near the river Jordan.