βίος, 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, or recluse; whereas the convent implies coenobites, or numbers of religious living in common. Fleury speaks of three kinds of monks in Egypt; anachorets, who live in solitude; coenobites, who continue to live in community; and sarabaites, who are a kind of monkerrant, that flit from place to place. He refers the institution of coenobites to the times of the apostles, and makes it a kind of imitation of the ordinary lives of the faithful at Jerusalem. Though St Pachomius is ordinarily owned the institutor of the coenobite life; as being the first who gave a rule to any community.number, the state of living in a society, or community, where all things are common. Pythagoras is thought to be the author or first institutor of this kind of life; his disciples, though some hundreds in number, being obliged to give up all their private estates, in order to be annexed to the joint stock of the whole. The Essenes among the Jews, and Platonists, are said to have lived in the same manner. Many of the Christians also have thought this the most perfect kind of society, as being that in which Christ and his apostles chose to live.