among the Romans, an appellation given to old slaves, who were sold in a lot with others, because they could not be sold alone.

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 κοινός, commonis, and ἀρτί, 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 sarrabaites, 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.

CENOBIUM (κοινοβίον), the state of living in a society or community where all things are common. Pythagoras is believed to be the author or institutor of this kind of life; his disciples, though some hundreds in number, being obliged to give up all their private estates, to be added to the common stock. The Essensians among the Jews, and the Platonists among the Greeks, 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.