(from Latin monachus, a monk; Greek μοναχός, solitary) is a general name descriptive of a mode of religious life which has prevailed in the church from almost the earliest ages, and which, during many periods of its history, has formed the most characteristic and powerful expression of its activity. It sprang into settled existence during the third century, and was the natural product of many influences then moving the church. Previously to this period, indeed, a system of solitary and ascetic devotion is found prevailing among the Jews both in Palestine and in Alexandria. The Essenes, on the western shores of the Dead Sea, and the Therapeutae, on the borders of Lake Meritis, seem to have formed regular communities of ascetics, whose existence long preceded the rise of Christian Monachism, and to whose example the origin of the latter may in some degree be attributed. The main causes out of which Monachism arose, however, are undoubtedly to be found within the church itself,—in those hardships and persecutions which oppressed it, especially during that age, and the spirit which these persecutions naturally quickened and fostered. During the severities which followed the edict of Decius in the year 250, many Christians were driven from their homes in search of shelter from the relentless vengeance which pursued them. The comparative security of those remote wilds in which they sought refuge, the peacefulness and freedom from idolatrous intrusion in which they found themselves, combined with a growing spirit of mystical devotion which had sprung up, as in many other cases, from the very extremity of the social distractions in the midst of which they had lived, seem to have been the direct sources of the monastic idea. Such an isolation as that in which many now found themselves came to be regarded by them, under the force of such circumstances as those in which they were placed, as the only possible realization of the Christian life. In such a position alone did it appear practicable to carry out that spirit of self-denial and abstinence from worldly enjoyments which represented the ideal of their holy calling.

Egypt was the fruitful soil in which such thoughts germinated and sprung to maturity. The honour of their original has been shared by two names—Basil and Anthony; the former of whom may be regarded as the first in point of time who exemplified in his own practice that Christian asceticism which developed into Monachism; but the latter of whom was really the first who drew such attention to the monastic life as to spread abroad its fame and attract many to its adoption.

Anthony was born on the borders of Upper Egypt, in the village of Coma, in the province of Heracleopolis, about the year 251. A spirit of simple and earnest, but somewhat unintelligent piety, animated him from his youth. Losing both his parents about his twentieth year, the care of a young sister and of considerable property devolved upon him. Setting aside the ordinary Christian obligations arising out of this position, he conceived himself called upon, like the rich young man in the Gospels, to dispose of his property, and submit to a life of voluntary poverty, in which he might, without impediment, give himself to his spiritual duties. In obedience to this impulse, he assigned his landed estates to the inhabitants of his native village, under condition that he should receive no trouble as to any charges to which they were liable; and having made provision for the education of his sister with a society of pious virgins, he settled down near his paternal mansion, and commenced a life of rigid asceticism. He supported himself by the labour of his hands, and distributed whatever exceeded the supply of his own bare wants for the benefit of the poor. This solitary life, however, was not without its temptations. Those natural feelings which he strove to mortify continued to assert themselves in such a manner as to disturb the serenity of his spiritual contemplations, and grosser feelings even obtruded themselves under the guise of alluring imaginations, which rose before him with a more painful distinctness the more he laboured to subdue them. Afterwards he learned the more Christian way of resisting such temptations by cheerful activity and trust in the presence of the Lord; but at first he thought to overcome them by a still stricter seclusion and more severe regimen. He retired to a farther distance from his native village, and took up his abode in a recess of rock, such as the Egyptians used for purposes of entombment. Here he fasted and afflicted himself till he was overtaken by illness, and carried back in a fainting and semi-deranged condition to the village. A morbid spirit of devotion, however, burned in him too ardently to be quenched. He afterwards sought a still more distant retirement, where he remained for twenty years, maturing a saintly renown which spread abroad his name, and brought many to seek his advice and to settle under his encouragement to the same mode of life. The deserts of Egypt began to swarm with devotees, who courted his presence and example, and naturally acknowledged him as their leader. The love of seclusion prevailed over his love of power; and the numbers who intruded upon his solitude drove him to a still more inaccessible retreat among the mountains. But even here he did not escape molestation. Followers gathered around him in spite of all his efforts to maintain his privacy; and the first rudiments of a monastery grew up in this remote wild. Anthony did not indeed aim at any complete organization of his followers; this task remained for another; but he taught them to labour for their support, and directed to some extent their religious duties.

The life of Anthony was prolonged to upwards of a hundred years, and his saintly fame, as may be easily conceived, grew with his years, till a peculiar sacredness and a miraculous virtue were supposed to attach to his person. On two occasions on which he made his appearance in Alexandria the religious enthusiasm which he excited was intense and universal; and especially on the latter occasion, in the year 352, when he was more than a hundred years old, it reached such a height that even pagans are said to have pressed forward to touch his garment, in the hope of being healed of their diseases. He distinguished himself at such times of public activity as the warm friend of Athanasius in his contest with Ariusian; and it is to this circumstance that we probably owe the record of his life from the pen of the great Trinitarian—a record to which the historian is indebted for such facts as we have now related.

The system thus begun by Anthony speedily spread into Syria and Palestine, favoured by the congenial circumstances of climate and the prevalence of a similar ascetic spirit to that which existed in Egypt. Hilarion, a disciple of Anthony, was chiefly instrumental in the promotion of Monachism in Palestine; while the great Basil of Cesarea, the fellow-student and friend of Gregory Nazianzen, warmly embraced its spirit, and more than any other contributed to its progress throughout Syria and to the shores of the Black Sea. It is interesting to contemplate in such men as Basil and Gregory, particularly in the latter, the struggles of the monastic with the higher and more comprehensive Christian spirit, and the manner in which this spirit at length succumbed to the perverted tendency of their age, always gathering fresh strength from the increase of social confusion and disorder. Gregory, indeed, never virtually assumed, like Basil, the monastic vows; but the triumph of the ascetical bent was in the end scarcely less complete in him than in his friend. It is deserving of notice that the single monastic order which has subsisted in the Greek church derives its name from St Basil.

While the institution of Monachism thus extended itself, from the example of Anthony, not only in Egypt, but throughout the East, its more complete organization is associated with the name of Pachomius, another Egyptian ascetic, who, independently of Anthony, had entered on a similar career. To him is attributed the foundation of the cloister life, or the collection of the monks in several classes, according to a regular system, and in one large connected building. This was properly the first establishment of the monastery or cenobium. The whole community of monks thus formed was placed under a president or abbot (from the Hebrew or Syriac word for father), from whom descended an organized gradation of offices and ranks, fitted to preserve the integrity of the society and to secure its order. In the natural course of things, this organized form of Monachism soon came to usurp an exclusive character as the only valid expression of the ascetic spirit. The earlier Anachoretes—who lived in single cells, with only a casual combination, and without submitting to any definite rule—were gradually absorbed into the more regular establishments, although in the East they long continued to survive, and to assert their independence in all shapes of ungoverned fanaticism. One class of these independent ascetics, who are known to us under the name of Sarabaites, seem to have been peculiarly obnoxious to the regular monks in the vigour with which they maintained their separate position, and refused to own any government or superior. Cassian, a monk of Palestine, who travelled into Egypt towards the close of the fourth century, with the view of inquiring into the various orders of ascetics there, attributes to the Sarabaites all sorts of excesses and disorders; but his picture is to be received with suspicion, as that of a partisan who resented their independence as insubordination, and blackened their characters because they opposed his system.

The most various results, as may be imagined, sprang from an institution like eastern Monachism. In some cases there was formed a comparatively pure spirit of devotion, such as that which, upon the whole, with all his earlier excesses, animated its great founder Anthony. Nor can it be disputed, that social consequences of a useful and benevolent kind followed the establishment of monasteries throughout the deserts of Egypt and along the bleak shores of the Pontus. A ready and generous hospitality distinguished the cloisters. The traveller received with an ungrudging spirit maintenance and lodgings. The Cenobites of Egypt, especially, were productive corn-growers, and sent ships laden with food and articles of clothing to be distributed among the poor of Alexandria. The wildest and most ridiculous excesses at the same time grew out of the system. Bands of roving devotees, historically known under different names, as Euchites (εὐχεῖς), from their notion about constant inward prayer, as Choreutes (χορευταί) from their mystic dances, and as Enthusiasts (ἐνθουσιάσται) from their pretended spiritual communications, infested whole districts of country, and spread themselves from the Nile to the Black Sea. These fanatics abandoned all useful employment, and even any regular practices of devotion, and professed to give themselves up to spiritual contemplation; not unfrequently degenerating, by that necessary reaction inherent in all extremes, into gross licentiousness. Individual fanaticism, moreover, took the most grotesque and incredible shapes; as in the case of the famous Simeon Stylites, who is reported to have passed thirty years on the top of a pillar 60 feet from the ground. "Habit and exercise," writes Gibbon in his characteristic manner, "instructed him to maintain his dangerous position without fear or giddiness, and successively to assume the different postures of devotion. He sometimes prayed in an erect attitude, with his outstretched arms in the figure of a cross; but his most familiar practice was that of bending his meagre skeleton from the forehead to the feet; and a curious spectator, after numbering twelve hundred and forty-four repetitions, at length desisted from the endless account. The progress of an ulcer in the thigh might shorten, but it could not disturb, this celestial life; and the patient hermit expired without descending from his column." (Milman's Gibbon, vol. vi., pp. 251-2.)

Athanasius has obtained the reputation of extending Monachism into the West. During his compulsory sojourn in Rome in 341 he is said to have carried certain Egyptian monks in his train, whose austerities and devotion, though at first disgusting to the polished Romans, gradually attracted interest, and at length admiration. His Life of Anthony, moreover, which was speedily translated into Latin, gave a great impulse to the monastic spirit. It could not fail, indeed, that this spirit, so soon as it became dominant in the East, should spread to Rome, and, in such a centre of mingling superstitions, receive a ready support. All the most illustrious of the western teachers contributed by their countenance to this result. Ambrose of Milan, Martin of Tours, and even Augustine, were drawn within its influence, and lent it their encouragement. The restless activity of Jerome during his residence in Rome was exerted in its behalf, and under his influence rich and noble ladies were led to retire from the world and consecrate themselves, amid the solitudes of Palestine, to a life of devotion.1 The labours of Martin of Tours, and of Cassian at Marseilles, were especially successful in transferring Monachism westwards, until, in the course of the fifth century, thousands of devotees spread themselves through the south and middle of France into Britain and Ireland, carrying with them, it cannot be doubted, many influences of civilization, and forming in their settlement rallying points of Christian enlightenment and education, under the repeated incursions and devastations of barbarian tribes.

It may be readily conceived that such a fanatical spirit, in its growth and extension, had a constant tendency to degenerate from its primitive strictness, and to end in mere indolence and license. A yet more thorough system of organization was accordingly necessary to strengthen its widely-branching relations, and to consolidate it in its diffusion. And such a system was not long wanting. There arose among the monks of Italy one who saw the dangers to which Monachism was exposed, and who resolved to encounter them by a more systematic and efficient control. Benedict of Nursia was prepared for this great task by a self-discipline of the strictest character. Secluding himself

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1 The case of Paula and her daughter Eustochium, alluded to by Gibbon, vol. vi., p. 238, is well known. from all companionship, he spent three years of solitary devotion, unrelied by a single visit, and his retreat unknown to any save a brother monk, who provided him with what he could spare of his own daily allowance of food, by dropping it by a rope to the foot of a steep rock near the grotto in which Benedict lived. Some shepherds at length discovered his retreat, and spread abroad the fame of the holy hermit. His influence was thus at once secured; he was invited to the rule of a neighbouring convent, and accepted it, although under protestation that the severity of the government which he would feel bound to establish would prove intolerable to those who gave him the invitation. It turned out as he supposed; the refractory monks even sought his life; and, leaving them in disgust, he retired once more to his solitude. This event only contributed the more to his fame; wealthy citizens of Rome reverentially sought him out, and entrusted their sons to him for education. He was gradually enabled to found and regulate, according to his own plan, twelve cloisters in the neighbourhood of his original seclusion; and subsequently, on retiring from the scene of his labours to a mountain at some distance, he laid the foundation of a monastic institution, which, under the name of the Abbey of Monte Casino, was destined to play an illustrious part in the annals of the Papacy.

Rigorous as were the personal austerities of St Benedict, he was convinced by experience that an undue severity of fasting and mortification was incompatible with a western climate and western habits. His rule, accordingly, in the ultimate form in which it obtained ascendancy throughout all the monasteries of the West, was characterized rather by its simplicity and order than by any particular severity. He aimed at subordination and discipline by a regular system of alternate labour and devotion, so that no period of the day remained unoccupied. Two hours after midnight the monks were aroused to vigils, and the time between this and daybreak was consumed in learning the psalms by heart, or some other similar study. At daybreak matins were performed, somewhat in the same manner as vigils, by chanting psalms and reading lessons from Scripture. The duty of private and mental prayer was also enjoined under certain restrictions. These early services were followed throughout the day by manual labour and reading. During summer the day was so divided that seven hours were given to the former occupation and at least two to the latter; during winter more time was given to study, but no alteration appears to have been made in the hours of labour. The Sabbath was entirely given to reading and prayer. A system of rigid temperance was of course enjoined, but of such a reasonable character that even the moderate use of wine was not forbidden.

The rule thus established by Benedict extended itself, as we have said, throughout the West, and for many years was instrumental in preserving the integrity and simplicity of devotion in its cloisters. With the gradual increase of riches, however, the Benedictine monasteries lost their primitive character, and became the seats of indolence and vice rather than of cheerful industry and piety.

Many attempts were made to revive the first vigour of the rule, and still more successfully to apply it in new forms, each of which in their turn achieved a great reputation, and powerfully helped the cause of the Papacy in the different countries into which they spread. In this manner arose the Order of St Cluni, and the Cistercian and Carthusian Orders—all branches, as it has been said, from the stem of St Benedict. (Waddington's Church History, vol. ii., p. 377.) One and all of these orders, it is remarkable, sprung from the teeming soil of France, in the south and east; and they follow one another, in their full prosperity, at the interval of about a century, beginning with the commencement of the tenth. As a monk of Cluni it was that Hildebrand nursed those ambitious schemes which he afterwards carried out as Gregory VII. The immortal name of St Bernard is associated with the Cistercian Order, of which the Abbey of Clairvaux was a dependent; and the simple purity of the Carthusians, maintained for many years in the midst of surrounding license, acquired for them a great reputation and a strong settlement in almost every land of Europe, from the south of Italy to the northern shores of Scotland.

In the meantime other forms of monastic order had sprung up, the most notable and distinguished of which, dating from an early period, was the Order of St Augustine, which was destined to play so prominent a part in the advance of the Reformation. This order, at least in its origin—which, although claiming the sanction of the great teacher of the West, cannot be carried back so far—was chiefly composed of those who were looking forward to, or ordained to, the clerical profession—who were ecclesiastics, in short; while in the convents generally, according to their original constitution, there were but a few eligible or devoted to the ecclesiastical life. In the course of time, however, and from the increase of wealth, the number of those exclusively given to spiritual or ecclesiastical offices multiplied in all the convents—a change which was greatly fostered by the institution of what were called Lay Brethren, upon whom the routine of manual labour and the discharge of all servile duties devolved.

There are still two further developments of the monastic system that claim notice, although our space will scarcely enable us to do more than mention them. These are the rise and establishment of the Military and the Mendicant or Preaching orders.

The former sprang up out of the close union subsisting between the ecclesiastical and the military professions in the middle ages, and especially out of the crusading spirit of the twelfth century, and the necessities of defence which it created. They are well known under the historical names of The Knights of the Hospital, The Knights Templar, and The Teutonic Order. They one and all took their rise in Palestine, and are associated with some of the most brilliant, and at the same time tragic, passages in the history of the church. They gradually disappeared about the time of the Reformation—the Knights Templar, especially, having been, two centuries previously, subjected to a fierce persecution, instigated and chiefly carried out by Philip IV. of France, who cherished towards them the most deadly and unrelenting hatred.

While the Military orders arose out of the external necessities of the church, and the warlike spirit kindled by the advance of Mohammedanism; the Mendicant orders originated in the internal dangers of the church from the encroaching spirit of reform and of free opinion. St Dominic (1191) acquired his fame as a preacher against the heresy of the Albigenzes; and, recognizing the effects following such eloquence in his own case, he framed the bold idea of establishing an order of Mendicant preachers, whose vow should especially bind them to the interests of the Holy See, and the extirpation of heresy. Innocent III. at first looked coldly on the project, but its obvious policy soon commended it to papal recognition; and St Dominic found himself at the head of one of the most devoted and illustrious societies which ever sought its own aggrandizement in the gratification of papal ambition and of orthodox vengeance. For it was under the shadow of the Dominican Order—although not, as it has been sometimes maintained, under the sanction of St Dominic himself—that the Inquisition inaugurated its bloody career. St Francis of Assisi was a contemporary of St Dominic, and pursued, independently of him, a similar course of fanatical activity. Enthusiastic almost to insanity, with a temperament capable of sustaining the most intense and prolonged raptures of devotion, and covetous of the most abject and degrading austerities, he burned to realize, in a definite social form, the pictures of evangelical purity and of self-renunciation which his imagination had conjured up. The story of his interview with Innocent III., when he first appeared before him with his plan, is well known. Hurried away from the holy presence as a mean madman—a convenient dream aroused the Pontiff to his mistake, and led him to lend all his countenance to a scheme which at first he repelled.

While preaching was the characteristic feature of the Dominican rule, poverty was intended to be the chief distinction of that of St. Francis; but the two orders gradually merged their distinctive peculiarities, and the members of each gave themselves equally to mendicancy and preaching. The history of these orders, as well as that of Jesuitism—which may be said to be a development of the monastic spirit, but in such a distinct shape as to require separate notice—is inseparably bound up with that of the Papacy. Their labours and rivalries form one of the most stirring chapters of human interest, of ecclesiastical ambition, and, we should add, so far at least as the Dominicans are concerned, of philosophical and theological activity.

Since the Reformation Monachism cannot be said to have manifested any inherent vitality or power. With the advance of modern civilization, its highest meaning and only conservative use are gone; and, so far as it still maintains itself in Europe, it must be held to be an opponent at once of genuine religious life and the advance of an elevated rational cultivation.

(For the more particular history of Monachism, the general reader may be referred to the Church Histories of Neander, Waddington, and Milman; and for a special account of its earlier phases, to Burgham's Antiquities, and the learned reader to Helyot's Histoire des Ordres Monastiques, Paris, 1714 and 1792.)