MON'ACHISM (Gr. monachos, a monk, from monos, alone)'may in general be described as a state of religious retirement more or less complete, accompanied by contemplation, and by various devotional, ascetical, and penitential practices. It is, in truth, asceticism (q.v.), with the element of religious solitude superadded. The institution of monaellista has, under different forms, entered into several religious systems, ancient and modern. That it was known among the Jews before the coming of our Lord, appears from the example of the prophet Elias, and from that of the Essenians; and it is probable that religious seclusion formed part of the practice of the Nazarites (q.v.), at least in the later periods of Jewish history.. In the Brahmanical religion, it has had a prominent place; and even to the present day, the lamaseries of Thibet may he said to rival in number and extent the monasteries of Italy or Spain. The Christian advocates of monachism find in the gospel exhortations to voluntary poverty (Matt. xis. 21)and to celibacy (1 Con vii. 37), at once the justification and the origin of the primitive institution. Its first form appears in the practice of asceticism, of which we find frequent mention in the early part of the 2d century. The primitive ascetics, however, lived among the brethren, and it is only in the following century that the peculiar characteristic of monachism begins to appear. The earliest form of Christian monachism is also the most complete—that already described under the head Anchorites (q.v.); and is commonly believed to have in part originated in the persecutions, from which Christians were forced to retire into deserts and solitary places. The anchorites maintained from choice, after the cessation of the persecutions, the seclusion to which they had originally resorted as an expedient of security; and a later development of the same principle is found in the still more remarkable psychological phenomenon of the celebrated Pillar-saints (q.v.). After a time, however, the necessities of the religious life itself—as the attendance at public worship, the participation of the sacraments, the desire for mutual instruction and edification—led to modifications of the degree and of the nature of the solitude. First came the simplest form of common life, which sought to combine the personal seclusion of individuals with the common exercise of all the public duties; an aggregation of separate cells into the same district, called by the name Laura, with a common church, in which all assembled for prayer and public worship. From the union of the common life with personal solitude is derived the name cenobite (Gr. koinos bios, common life), by which this class of monks is distinguished from the strict solitaries, as the anchorites or eremites, and in which is involved, in addition to the obligations of poverty and chastity, which were vowed by the anchorites, a third obligation of obedience to a superior, which, In conjunction with the two former, has ever since been held to constitute the essence of the religious or monastic life. The first origin of the strictly cenobitical or monastic life has been detailed under the name of Saint Antony (q.v.), who may be regarded as its founder in the east, either by himself or by his disciples So rapid was its progress, that his first disciple, Pachomius (q.v.), lived to find himself the superior of 7,000. In the single district of Nitria, there were no fewer than 50 monasteries (Sozomen, Eccles. History, vi. 31), and before long, the civil authorities judged it expedient to place restric tions on their excessive .MultblicatiOn. It the east, where asceticism has always been 'held in high estimation, fhe example ofChristian monasticism.
had a powerful influence in forwarding the progress of Christianity; although it is also certain that the admiration which it excited occasionally led to its natural consequence among the members, by eliciting a spirit of pride and ostentation, and by provoking, sometimes to fanatical excesses of austerity, sometimes to hypocritical simulations of rigor. The abuses which arose, even in the early stages of monachism, are deplored by the very Fathers who arc most eloquent in their praises of the institution itself. These abuses prevailed chiefly in a class of monks called Sarabaine, Nvho lived in small com munities of three or four, and sometimes led a wandering and irregular life. On the other hand, a most extraordinary picture is drawn by Theodoret, in his Religious Histories, of the rigor and mortification practiced in some of the greater monasteries. The monks were commonly zealots iii religion; and much of the bitterness of the religious controversies of the cast was due to that unrestrained zeal; and it may he added that the opinions which led to these controversies originated for the most part among the theologians of the cloisters. Most famous among these were an order called Actonctm (Gr. sleepless), from their maintaining the public services of the church day and night without interruption. See Moicormairms, MONOTHELism, NESTORIAlis, It was in the cenobitic rather than the eremetic form that monachism was first intro duced into the west, at Rome and in northern Italy by At.hanasius, in Africa by St. Augustine, and afterwards in Gaul by St. Martin of Tours. Here also the instit-ute spread rapidly under the same general forms in which it is found in the eastern church; but considerable relaxations were gradually introduced, and it was not until the thorough reformation, and, as it may be called, religious revival effected by the celebrated 6t. Benedict (q.v.), in the beginning of the Gth c., that western monachism assumed its peculiar and permanent form. In some of the more isolated churches, as, for instance, that of Britain, it would seem that the reformations of St. Benedict were not introduced until a late period ; and in that church as well as in the church of Ireland, they were a subject of considerable controversy. One of the most important modifications of mona chism in the west, regarded the nature of the occupation in which the monks were to be engaged during the times not directly devoted to prayer, meditation, or other spiritual exercises. In the east, manual labor formed the chief, if not the sole external occupation prescribed to the monks; it being held us a fundamental principle, that for each individual the main business of life was the sanctification of his own soul. In the west, besides the labor of the hands, mental occupation was also prescribed, not, it is true for all, but for those for whom it was especially calculated. From an early period, there fore, the monasteries of the west, and particularly those of Ireland, or of the colonies, founded by Irish monks, as Iona and Lindisfarne, became schools of learning, and train ing-houses for the clergy. At a later period, most monasteries possessed a scriptorium, or writing-room, in which the monks were employed in the transcription of MSS.; and although a great proportion of the work so done was, as might naturally be expected, in the department of sacred learning, yet it cannot be doubted that it is to the scholars of the cloister we owe the preservation of most of those among the master-pieces of classic literature which have reached our age.