MONASTICISM. The general term used to describe the system under which those men and women live have abandoned the world for religious reasons, and live. whether separately or in community. in the pursuit of perfection. The cows under which they live (for details see Vow) are based upon what are known as the evangelical counsels (q.v.), or maxims collected from the le:lettings of Christ to guide those who are desirous I if attaining perfection in this life. From their being bound by such vows, them people are known as religious (Lat. religare, to bind). The term monk i. correctly applied only to the members of the older or more strictly cloistered societies, and not to the mendicant Orders, such as the Dominicans and Franciscans, whose members are termed friars. The word monk is, however, sometimes loosely applied to any who sacrifice worldly advantages and rela tionships to give themselves wholly to the ser vice of God and their neighbor under the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.
Forms of monasticism existed among the so called pagan nations long before Christ. Buddha found the institution a practically essential fea ture of Brahmanism when he began his work about the sixth century before Christ. Among the Brahmans, all of the members of the three highest castes were supposed to pass through a stage of life as anchorites, apart from all family relations, or were to be mendicants absorbed entirely in religious contemplation. Not all of the high-caste Brahmans followed this religious prescription. Out of these anchorites and mendi cants Buddha created a monastic Order, for whom he drew up a set of rules that contain many analogies with the rules of Christian reli gious Orders. Confucius also taught at least the principles of monasticism, and there seem to have been some followers of his advice in this matter among his disciples at all times. Among the Greeks the members of the Orphic brother hood and the followers of Pythagoras showed marked tendencies to monasticism. In Egypt the worship of Serapis was associated with the foundation of monasteries. The largest institu tion of the kind was that at Memphis, which flourished just after the Alexandrian period. German antiquaries have pointed out many similarities between the old Egyptian monasti cism and the later Christian monastic founda tions in the same country.
Among the Jews, the Nazirites (q.v.) of the Old Testament may be regarded as a sort of monastic Order, to which, it is supposed, Samuel, Samson, John the Baptist, and .James the dust belonged. The prophet Elijah is known as a hermit and an encourager of this life. There is a very old tradition that he was the original founder of the Carmelites (q.v.) ; and when Saint Jerome founded his Order of monks at Bethlehem he "We have our example in Elijah, the prince of monks; our chief is Elisha; our leathers the prophets who dwelt in fields and solitudes and built their tents along the streams of the Jordan." The Esselte,: (q.v.) seem to have had some of the characteristics of a reli gious Order; in fact, it has been thought that their mode of life was the same in many par ticulars as that prescribed centuries later 1-y the rule of Saint Benedict.
The first reference to the monastic life in Christian writers is considered by sonic to he a letter of Saint Ignatius of Antioch, a disciple of the Apostle John, who writes A .D. 107 to a convent of virgins. The Council of Chaleedon (154) formulated rules for those who assumed the monastic life. and especially for the regula tion of their relations to bishops. The first Christian hermits seem to have established them selves on the shores of the lied Sea, where in ante-Christian times the Therapeutie, an Order of pagan hermits, had been established. Not long afterwards the desert regions of upper Egypt became a favorite retreat for those who fled from the persecutions of the Christians so frequent during the third century, or who found the vices of the decadent Roman Empire intolerable. Among the earliest of these fathers of the desert was Paul of Thebes (q.v.), who lived for over one hundred years (22S-340?) on the fruit of the date tree and water, clothing himself in palm leaves. After Paid came Antony (q.v.), who was the first to gather together the scat tered' hermits in lam-as. These first comobites had their collections of cells in the deserts of the Thebaid. The life of Saint Antony NN as by Athanasius, at whose request lie abandoned his solitude for a time during the troubles caused by the Arians. While the heresy was rampant, Antony established him self at Alexandria, and the fame of his sanctity. as well as his gentleness and learning, drew many disciples to him. Not a few of these new followers accompanied Antony when he again retired to the desert. His greatest disciple was Macarius of Alexandria, who died in 394, and whose reputation for wisdom and saintli ness attracted many monks to the various her mitages over which he ruled. Apparently about the beginning of the fourth century monks began to live together under a common roof, and build ings began to be erected as monasteries instead of the separate cells in which the hermits had lived. Pachomins (q.v.) founded an immense monastery about 340, on the island of Tabennze, in the Nile. Ile drew up for his subjects a monastic rule, the first definite set of regula tions of the kind on record. Many thousands of disciples flocked to him, and he founded several other monasteries for men, and one for women under the direction of his sister. All of these institutions recognized the authority of a single superior—an abbot or archimandrite. They con stitute the original type of the religious Order. Saint Basil the Great (q.v.) made a visit to the Egyptian monasteries shortly after his student days at Athens, about the flint. that Pachomius was beginning his work. Basil. on his return to Asia, founded monasteries in Pontus and Cappadocia, thus acquiring the name of Father of Monasticism in the East. The Greek Father drew up a set of rules, still extant, which has influenced subsequent founders of religious Orders more than any other.