MONACHISM (from the Greek jadves, alone ; whence noniCtw, to live alone ; and aovasc4, a solitary, or•a monk). In this its proper and original signification of a solitary, a monk may be considered as only another name for anachoret, or anchoret (in Greek, itsarapsirbs), that is, a person who withdraws from society, a recluse ; or for an eremite, corrupted into hermit (in the same way as the old and more correct ethniek has been corrupted into heathen), in Greek, ipnarrns, that is, a dweller in a desert or solitude.
The practice of retiring from the world fur mortification or pious contemplation has been in use from time immemorial in the Brahminical and other religions of the East, and was known even among the Jews long before the birth of Christianity. We need mention only the instance of the prophet Elijah, to whom Roman Catholic writers indeed are fond of referring as the founder of monachism. An example of still more venerable antiquity is afforded by the Nazarites, male and female, described in the sixth chapter of the Book of Numbers, whose " vow of separation," however, lasted only for a certain fixed time.
In the earliest days of Christianity, many of the converts to the new religion, in their ambition to signalise themselves by extraordinary piety. adopted a remarkable severity of life and strictness of religious observance, whence they came to be known by the name of ascetics (in Greek &moral), that is, literally, exercisers. Another name by which they are sometimes spoken of by the early ecclesiastical writers is gpoudiei (agovkiku), that is, zealots. The connection of these ascetics with the description of persons afterwards called monks has been a subject of much disputation, the admirers and champions of the monastic system in general asserting the identity of the monks and ascetics, and their opponents maintaining that asceticism, as it existed in the primitive church, and monaehism. as it sprung up in a later age, were two things wholly distinct. The truth appears to be that the early ascetics were certainly not universally, nor perhaps even generally, monks or solitaries ; but still a separation, more or less rigid, from social life was one obvious mode of mortification and devotional abstraction, and one that was undoubtedly practised by some of the ascetics, though most probably without anything resembling the vows and other methodical restrictions which make part of monaehism in its mature state. The ascetics themselves, it may be here observed, are
commonly derived from the Jewish sect of the Therapeutte, or Essenians, who inhabited tho banks of the lake Mareotis, in the delta of Egypt, and who, having previously cast off much of the ancient reverence of their nation for the Mosaic law, had embraced Christianity in great numbers very soon after its promulgation. " The austere life of the Essenians," says Gibbon, " their fasts and excommunications, the community of goods, the love of celibacy, their zeal for martyrdom, and the warmth, though not the purity, of their faith, already offered a very lively image of the primitive discipline." (` Decline and Fall,' chap. 15.) And in a note, after admitting that Basnage, in his Histoire des Julia; has demonstrated, in spite of Eu,ebius and a crowd of modern Roman Catholics, that the Thcrapeutm w ere neither Christians nor monks ; he adds, " It still remains probable that they changed their name, preserved their manners, adopted some new articles of faith, and gradually became the fathers of the Egyptian ascetics." Afterwards (chap. 37), he seems distinctly to represent the ascetics as the fathers of the monks.
It is admitted on all hands that the immediate founders of mona chism were two Egyptians, named Paul and Anthony. St. Jerome calls the former the author of that mode of life, the latter its illus strator—" hujus vitae author Paulus, illustrator etiam Antonius." (Hieron., Ep. 22, ad Eustoch.,' e. 16.) Paul is designated the The bream An account of St. Anthony, as he is styled, and of the pro gress of the monastic system during his life, which extended from A.D. 251 to A.D. 356, has already been given under his name. [ANTHONY, ST., in Bloc. Div.] We shall only note here that the first monastic community is said to have been established at Faioum, near Aphrodi topolis, in the Thebais of Egypt, about the year 305 or 306, that is, after the cessation of the persecutions which had originally driven Anthony, Paul, and others to the deserts. Strictly speaking, however, this and other monasteries appear to have been founded rather by Anthony's disciples, and in obedience to the spirit which his example had diffused, than directly under his own superintendence.