Origins
Egypt was the Motherland of Christian monasticism; it sprang into existence there at the beginning of the fourth century. The first chapter in its history of monasticism is the life of St. Anthony; the start of the monastic movement may be dated either about 285, when St. Anthony, no longer content with the life of the ordinary ascetic, went into the wilderness, or about 305, when he organized a kind of monastic life for his disciples.
We hear first of men and women leading the chaste or virgin life. The Apologists pointed triumphantly to such. Voluntary poverty, in the complete renunciation of all worldly possessions, would be difficult till there were monasteries; the examples of Origen, St. Cyprian, and Pamphilus were necessary to show that a monastic life was possible. A full practice of the third Evangelical counsel of obedience could only be realized after the monastic ideal had taken root and passed beyond the purely eremitical stage.
In ante-Nicene ascetics a man would lead a single life, practice long and frequent fasts, abstain from meat and wine, and support himself, if he were able, by some small handicraft, keeping of what he earned only so much as was absolutely necessary for his own sustenance, and giving the rest to the poor. If he were an educated man, he might be employed by the Church in the capacity of catechist. Very often he would don the kind of dress which marked the wearer as a philosopher of an austere school.
In Egypt, at the time when St. Anthony first embraced the ascetic life, there were a number of ascetics living in huts near towns and villages. When St. Anthony died (356 or 357), two types of monasticism flourished in Egypt. There were villages or colonies of hermits - the eremitical type; and monasteries in which a community life was led - the cenobitic type.
Read more about this topic: Christian Monasticism Before 451
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