in church history, monks of the Greek church, divided into three degrees: the novices, called archarii; the ordinary professed, called microchoeni; and the more perfect, called megalochoeni: they are likewise divided into cenobites, anchoretes, and recluses. The cenobites are employed in reciting their offices from midnight to sunset, they are obliged to make three genuflexions at the door of the choir, and, returning, to bow to the right and to the left, to their brethren. CAL

The anchorites retire from the conversation of the world, and live in hermitages in the neighborhood of the monasteries; they cultivate a little spot of ground, and never go out but on Sundays and holidays to perform their devotions at the next monastery. As for the recluses, they shut themselves up in grottoes and caverns on the tops of mountains, which they never go out off, abandoning themselves entirely to Providence: they live on the alms sent them by the neighboring monasteries.