GYROVAGI, wandering monks. Monasticism, as it spread in the ancient church, took, almost immediately, the form of life in common in monasteries. Anthony, the chief originator of the institution, while for a long time he persistently sought a hermit's life for himself, found many seeking out his most lonely retreats and plant ing themselves near him, in order to imitate his example. At length, compelled to yield to their importunity, he induced them to live together, and to adopt rules, to some extent at least, for governing both their devotions and their work. Thus the rudi ments of monasteries grew up in the remote mountain wilds. Many useful and benefi cent consequences followed the increasing establishment of them through the deserts of Egypt and along the shores of the Euxine. A generous hospitality prevailed in them all. The traveler was welcomed and supplied with lodging and food. The Cumobites of Egypt, especially, raised corn abundantly, and sent ship-loads of bread and cloth ing to the poor of Alexandria. But at the same time wild and ridiculous excesses grew naturally out of the system. Bands of roving devotees, known in different places by different names, infested whole districts of country from the Nile to the Black sea. Some of them, professing to practice continually mental prayer, were named cuchites. Others, given to mystical dancing, were called choreutes, and a third class were enthu siasts, indulging in pretended spiritual communications. They abandoned all useful employments and all regular practice of devotion; although they professed to give themselves IT to spiritual contemplations, which not unfrequently, through necessaiv reaction, degenerated into gross licentiousness. Similar wandering habits prevailed in
connection with western monasteries, which were also, at first, centers and schools of useful industries of various kinds. Many monks, breaking away from conventual dis cipline, traveled from place to place and from convent to convent, entertained a short time at each, according to the generous hospitality practiced at them all, but evading all propositions to stay permanently at any. When they had gone round the whole circle they from necessity began again. From this feature of their history, some of them had the epithet gyrovagi—eirculating vagabonds or tramps—fastened on them: Isadore of Seville extended the appellation also to the cireumeelliones (q.v.); and it is equally appro priate to the whole tribe, the earliest as well as the latest, in the east as well as the west. They were all a great nuisance in the convents, carrying everywhere idleness and vice in their train. Augustine wrote strongly against them. Benedict made his rules with them specially in. view. Columbanus condemned the monastic degeneracy which they had done so much to produce. But not until the time of Charlemagne were they effectually restrained. The later mendicant orders seem to be in sonic measure their