CENOBITE, a religious person who lives in a convent, or in community, under a certain rule; in opposition to anchorite or hermit, who lives in solitude. The word comes from the Greek zenos, communis, and bios, vita, life. Cassian makes this difference between a convent and a monastery, that the latter may be applied to the residence of a single religious person or recluse, whereas the convent implies cenobites, or numbers of religious living in common. Fleury speaks of three kinds of monks in Egypt; anchorites, who lived in solitude; cenobites, who continued to live in community; and sarrabailes, who were a kind of monk-errant, strolling from place to place. He refers the institution of cenobites to the times of the apostles, and makes it a kind of imitation of the ordinary lives of the faithful at Jerusalem. But St Pachomius is ordinarily owned the institutor of the cenobite life, as being the first who gave a rule to any community.