Cenobitic monasticism

• 1. Introduction

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  Cenobitic monasticism, a religious tradition built on shared life, took its name from a group of philosophers in Crotone, Italy. The word cenobite was first applied to the followers of Pythagoras there. They founded a commune that existed for more than philosophical study. Its members also practised what is described as the "amicable sharing of worldly goods." The idea of living and owning things together would resurface in religious settings far from Italy. This documentary asks why some monks chose a crowded house over a silent cave. It asks who gave their communities structure, and how a way of life that began with a few scattered groups became the usual shape of monastic life.

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• 2. Naming the Tradition

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  The English words cenobite and cenobitic reached English through Latin, from the Greek words koinos and bios. The adjective also appears as cenobiac, and an obsolete spelling is cœnobitic. A group of monks living together is often called a cenobium, from the Greek koinobion. In the West, the community often belongs to a religious order. The daily life of the monk is regulated by a religious rule, which is a collection of precepts. Cenobitic life is only one form of monasticism. It stands apart from the eremitic life of a hermit. It also differs from the skete and lavritic forms that developed in Eastern Christianity. The tradition appears in several religions, though most commonly in Buddhism and Christianity. One of the earliest portraits of such a community comes from the shores of a lake near Alexandria.

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• 3. The Therapeutae

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  On the shores of Lake Mareotis, near Alexandria in Egypt, Philo of Alexandria described a Jewish ascetic community in the 1st century AD. He called its members the Therapeutae, and the group included both men and women. For six days of each week, members lived apart from one another. They studied the Hebrew Bible by day and ate in the evening. They hoped that on the Sabbath they would dream visions shaped by their studies. They also composed books of midrash, an allegorical method of interpreting scripture.

  The Sabbath was the one day they met. They shared what they had learned and ate a simple common meal of bread and spring water. One of the venerable members then gave a lecture on the Torah. Every seventh Sabbath, called the High Sabbath, was a festival of learning and singing that climaxed in an egalitarian dance.

  The 3rd-century Christian writer Eusebius of Caesarea, who lived from about 263 to 339, read Philo's account in a new light. In his Ecclesiastical History he identified the Therapeutae as the first Christian monks. He saw in them renunciation of property, chastity, fasting, and solitary lives, and he matched these to the cenobitic ideal. That reading made a Jewish community beside an Egyptian lake the possible first chapter of Christian monastic history.

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• 4. From Cave to Community

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  Organized Christian cenobitic monasticism is commonly thought to have started in Egypt in the 4th century AD. Monks of earlier centuries were usually hermits, especially in the Middle East. That pattern stayed very common until the decline of Aramean Christianity in the Late Middle Ages. Solitary living, however, did not suit everyone. Some monks found it too lonely and difficult. For a monk who was not spiritually prepared, it could even lead to mental breakdowns. Organized communities were set up so that monks could draw more support in their spiritual struggle.

  Hermits did have some company, since they met once a week to pray together. Cenobitic monks came together for common prayer far more regularly. Their monasteries were also often in or near inhabited villages. The Bohairic version of Dionysius Exiguus' The Life of Saint Pachomius reports that the monks of Tabenna built a church for the villagers of the nearby town of the same name even "before they constructed one for themselves." Cenobitic monks therefore met lay people, while hermits tried to keep to themselves.

  Housing set the two groups apart as well. A hermit's monastery might be nothing more than a hut or a cave, called a cell. Cenobitic monks lived in a building or a complex of several buildings. In a complex, each dwelling housed about twenty monks, with separate rooms or cells shared by two or three. Early historians credited this layout to a single man, and his name is tied to the tradition's best-known title.

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• 5. The Federation Builder

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  Saint Pachomius is the man usually hailed as the father of cenobitic monasticism. Early historians explained the barracks-like housing by saying he found the idea during his time in the Roman army. The style was described as reminiscent of army barracks. The bishop and historian Palladius of Galatia may have mythologized that impression to some extent. Communal desert dwellings known as cenobia nonetheless existed by the early 4th century.

  Palladius' Lausiac History offers another origin story, in which an angel gave Pachomius the idea of starting a cenobitic monastery. Other sources indicate that communal monastic groups already existed at that time, and possibly before him. Three of the nine monasteries that joined his federation clearly had an independent origin. He was therefore not the first with the idea.

  For that reason, it is more accurate to call him the father of organized cenobitic monasticism. He was the first monk to take smaller communal groups, many of which already existed, and join them into a federation of monasteries. He continued this work until his death in 347 at Pbow, a monastic center he had founded ten years earlier. Not every community chose to join him.

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• 6. Rivals Outside the Federation

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  Melitius of Lycopolis founded a heretical Christian sect, and its followers, the Melitians, were already recruiting members before Pachomius began organizing monastic communities. When they heard of his monastic aspirations, they tried to recruit him. He and his federation remained separate from them.

  The Manichaeans also stayed outside. They were a non-Christian group founded by Mani. Some scholars believe they, rather than Pachomius, were the "pioneers of communal asceticism in Egypt." Mani himself was influenced to begin cenobitic monasticism by other groups, including Buddhists and the Jewish-Christian Elkasites. Founders far from Egypt would soon carry the communal idea into new regions.

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• 7. Founders Across Regions

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  Around the year 350, Mar Awgin founded a monastery on Mount Izla, above Nisibis in Mesopotamia. From that monastery the cenobitic tradition spread through Mesopotamia, Persia, Armenia, Georgia, India and China.

  Around 364, St. Basil of Caesarea founded a monastery at Annesi in Pontus after witnessing the Egyptian monasteries. The Rule of St Basil went on to become the standard monastic rule in the Eastern Orthodox Church.

  In 483, Mar Saba organized the monks of the Judaean Desert in a monastery close to Bethlehem. It is considered the mother of all monasteries of the Eastern Orthodox churches.

  In 529, St. Benedict of Nursia founded the monastery of Monte Cassino in Italy. It was the seed of Roman Catholic monasticism in general, and of the order of Benedict in particular.

  In the 11th century, St. Bruno of Carthusia founded a monastery just outside Paris. He was prompted by the spectre of the damnation of Cenodoxus, the Good Doctor of Paris.

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• 8. Riches and Reform

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  Rulers and nobles richly endowed many cenobitic foundations, in the East and in the West. By then cenobiticism had established itself as the primary form of monasticism in both. That generosity had a cost. The excessive acquisition of wealth and property led to several attempts at reform. Bernard of Clairvaux is named among the reformers in the West, and Nilus of Sora in the East. Their separate efforts show that the problem of wealth was not confined to one half of Christendom.

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