SOURCE: Desprez, Vincent. “The Origins of Western Monasticism II: Africa and Spain.” The American Benedictine Review 41, no. 2 (June 1990): 167-91.

In the following essay, Desprez examines how St. Augustine and St. Fulgentius influenced monasticism in Africa and surveys monasticism in Spain.

A. Roman and Vandal Africa: St. Augustine

African monasticism¹ owes the form it maintained until the Arab conquest principally to St. Augustine. The idea of consecrated virginity had found in Africa one of its proper homes, as Tertullian's On the veil of virgins and St. Cyprian's On the conduct of virgins eloquently witness. In 393, the Council of Hippo sought to bring solitary virgins together into communal groups or to place them under the care of respectable women.² As a priest of the diocese of Hippo, Augustine took part; perhaps the Council's rulings on this subject bear the mark of his work and thought.

We will consider, in order...